Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

‘I’m sorry, Jane,’ Jeff said. ‘This particular development would be what we would call acceptable infill. We’re very pleased that site’s become available. So I don’t think any of us quite understands what you’re getting at there.’

‘Right.’ Jane swallowed more wine. ‘I can draw you a proper plan if you want but, basically, Coleman’s Meadow is the key point on an ancient alignment from the top of Cole Hill, through a burial mound and Ledwardine Church and then on to, like, a couple of other sites. Coleman’s Meadow is really important because the field gates are perfectly sited on the alignment and because the old straight track actually exists there… like, you can see it, and…’

She was going to say feel it. Decided to leave that aspect alone at this stage.

Lyndon Pierce blinked. Jeff and another guy looked at each other.

‘So… so, what I’m saying, if you have new houses – totally unnecessary new houses – built on Coleman’s Meadow it would completely obliterate the most perfect, like one of the clearest examples of… of a…’

‘Ley line?’

An older guy, wearing a cream sports jacket, half-glasses and a half smile.

‘ Ley,’ Jane said.

The older guy nodded. ‘I wondered if that was what you were talking about.’ He looked relieved.

‘So…’ Lyndon Pierce lowered the wine bottle to the flags at his feet ‘… you know what she’s on about, Cliff?’

‘I’m sure you must’ve heard of ley lines, Lyndon.’

‘I’ve heard of them, yeah-’

‘Periodically, someone revives the idea that prehistoric stones and burial sites were arranged, for some mystical purpose, in straight lines, along which old churches were also built. If you ask the County Archaeologist, he’ll tell you it’s a lot of nonsense. But, like many ideas discredited by the archaeological establishment, it’s become a cult belief among… well, usually old hippies or New Age cranks.’

‘So it’s like, flying saucers and that sort of stuff?’ Lyndon Pierce asked.

‘Exactly,’ the older guy said.

‘So nothing to…?’

‘No, no.’ The older guy shook his head, smiling faintly. ‘Not at all.’

Jane thought of Alfred Watkins, reserved, bearded, magisterial, a pillar of the Hereford community but with an open, questing mind. Everything she’d been taught suggested that society in the early part of the twentieth century had been nowhere near as liberal and adventurous as today’s.

Yeah? Well, no wonder there was no statue of Alfred Watkins in High Town, with bastards like this running the county.

‘How can you…’ She couldn’t get her breath for a moment. ‘How can you talk like that? How can you, like, just rubbish something that throws a whole new light on the countryside… that makes it all light up? Especially in Herefordshire, where Alfred Watkins was, like, the first person in the world to… to…’

‘Ah… Watkins, yes.’ Cliff smiled at her, cool with this now. ‘Charming old chap, by all accounts. Typically English eccentric, very entertaining, totally misguided.’

‘That’s a typical Establishment viewpoint!’

‘Oh dear,’ Cliff said. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I rather suppose that’s what we are.’

‘So, thank you for coming, Jane,’ Lyndon Pierce said. ‘But I’m afraid a fantasy conjured up by some old, dead eccentric guy is really not going to cut much ice today. I was elected, as I’m sure your parents will tell you, on an expansionist ticket. Nowadays, rural communities grow or die, and I want to see Ledwardine getting more shops, restaurants, leisure facilities… and far more housing. We could have a thriving little town here.’

‘But it’s not a t-’

Jane stared at Pierce, who seemed to be bloating before her eyes into something obscene.

‘Jane…’

It was the woman who’d given her the hard look. Short curly hair, dark suit. Possibly seen her somewhere before, but not here.

‘Jane, is this just a personal issue for you?’ the woman said.

‘Well, I’m also doing a project for school. On the interpretation of landscape mysteries?’

‘ Ah. How old are you?’

‘Seventeen.’

Somebody started to laugh.

‘And which school do you go to?’ the woman asked.

‘Moorfield High?’

‘Robert Morrell,’ the woman murmured to Cliff. ‘Jane, does Mr Morrell know you’re here?’

‘Look… sorry… what’s it got to do with him?’

‘Quite a lot, I should have thought, as he’s the head of Moorfield High.’

‘Well, he doesn’t live here, does he?’ Jane felt herself going red. ‘Like, I care about this place. I don’t want to see it ruined. I don’t want to see the ancient pattern all smashed for the sake of a bunch of crap, bourgeois piles of pink brick like… like this. I mean, sod your new community centre, you should be having a public meeting about the annihilation of Coleman’s Meadow, don’t you think?’

‘I really don’t think we should be arguing about a plan that’s not yet come before the council,’ the woman said. ‘Certainly not with a schoolgirl.’

‘But if nobody says anything, it’ll just get quietly pushed through, won’t it, by people who don’t give a-’

‘I should be very careful what you say, if I were you,’ the woman said coldly.

‘Particularly to the vice-chair of the Education Committee,’ Cliff said.

A rock landed in Jane’s gut. This was, of course, the woman who’d been sitting next to Morrell on stage at the prizegiving ceremony.

Jane looked down at her wineglass; it was empty.

‘Well, I can see I’m not going to get anywhere with you guys. I think I need to get home to…’

She backed away to the nearest corner of the house called Avalon and then looked at each of them in turn.

‘… Work out how best to shaft you,’ Jane said.

And turned and ran through the summer-scented dusk, past the crooked, sunken, black and white cottages of Virgingate Lane.

A Dim and Bleary Light

Spicer led Merrily and Lol into his spartan kitchen, offered them seats at his table but no tea. The sun had dropped into a bank of cloud, and the conifers at the end of the garden were turning black.

Spicer switched off the radio.

‘I suppose it’s like people seeing Shakespeare’s ghost in Stratford-on-Avon.’

He joined them at the table but didn’t put a light on.

‘Or Wordsworth in Grasmere,’ Merrily said. ‘Brontes in Howarth. Yes, I do get the picture.’

Recalling once looking up a number under E in the Hereford phone book and noticing Elgar Carpets and Interiors, Elgar Coaches, the Elgar Coffee Shop, Elgar Fine Art… like that for about half a page.

In all these establishments, you’d be shelling out twenty-pound notes with an engraved portrait on the back of a man with neat grey hair, a generous moustache, faraway eyes.

‘See, in comparison,’ Spicer said, ‘Wordsworth and Shakespeare are remote figures. Elgar’s been dead barely seventy years. It’s like he still lives around here, with everything he’s come to represent. Go to the Elgar museum at Broadheath, they say you can see his betting slips.’

He had his back to the window bay, blocking more light from the room, which had three doors, all shut. One thing was sure: you’d never see Syd Spicer’s betting slips. Merrily wondered if visitors were confined to the stripped-down kitchen so they wouldn’t clock his books or his CD collection or pictures of his kids.

‘I should’ve realized. The soundtrack of the Malverns. The obvious spirit of the place.’

‘Maybe more obvious than you know,’ Spicer said. ‘Joseph Longworth, the quarry boss who built the church, as well as being a born-again Christian or however they put it in those days, was an Elgar fanatic. The church was built that size to accommodate an orchestra and choir able to perform the great man’s works. Elgar’s said to have attended the dedication.’