Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

On the Line

No point in worrying. It probably wouldn’t be in today’s paper, anyway. After Jane had asssured him that no other media had been in touch, Jerry Isles had said they might well hold it over for a day. Later, media-savvy Eirion had explained that it was a soft story, therefore expendable.

Every time she’d awoken in the night, Jane had been hoping, increasingly, that they’d just dump it. After all, it wasn’t much of a story in the great scheme of things, was it? And what, in the end, was it likely to achieve, apart from dropping her in some deep shit with Morrell?

Still, she was up before Mum and outside the Eight Till Late not long after it opened, this horrible queasy feeling at the bottom of her stomach. Despite the shop’s name, Big Jim Prosser opened around seven, with all these morning papers outside on the rack – Sun s, Mirror s, Independent s.

No Guardian s, however, this morning. Maybe not many people took it in Ledwardine, or they’d all gone for delivery.

The air was already warm, in line with the forecast on Eirion’s car radio last night that this would be the first really hot day of the summer. Ledwardine looked impossibly beautiful, quiet and shaded and guarded by the church, with its glistening spire, and the enigmatic pyramid of Cole Hill. Everything serene and ancient and… vulnerable. Jane felt as though she was carrying the weight of all that late-medieval timber-framing on her shoulders, and was about to duck away when Big Jim appeared in the shop doorway.

‘Lovely morning, Jane. Looking for anything in particular, is it?’

‘No, I-’

‘ Daily Telegraph? Times?’

‘Erm, it was just a Guardian, but if they’ve all gone it doesn’t matter.’

‘Just a Guardian, eh?’ Jim Prosser had his hands behind his back, looking kind of smug. ‘Oh, they ’ve gone, all right. Every single one. Last one got snapped up five minutes before you come in. ’Fact, I just had to turn one feller away.’

‘Oh.’ Jane edged towards the door. ‘Right. Never mind, then.’

This didn’t necessarily mean anything.

‘Lyndon Pierce, it was,’ Jim said happily, the words coming down like the blade of a guillotine. ‘I think he’s driven over to Weobley to try and get one there. Didn’t look a happy man, somehow. Can’t imagine why.’

‘Oh God.’ Jane went hot and cold. ‘They used it, didn’t they?’

‘Used what?’

‘Don’t make me suffer even more, Jim. What did it say?’

‘Well, seeing it’s you, Jane…’ Jim brought a paper out from behind his back. ‘I’ll let you have a quick glance at my own copy, if you like.’

‘You take the Guardian?’

‘I do today,’ Jim said.

He led her inside and spread the paper on the counter, folded at an inside news page, and, Oh God, there it was: in Guardian terms, a big spread, although – Oh God, no – most of the space was taken up by the full-colour picture.

The photographer had been standing on the stile at the bottom of Cole Hill, focusing down on Jane, and now you could see why she’d done it from that angle: Jane’s face was in close-up, unsmiling, moody, with the path racing away over her shoulder, all the way to the church steeple. They’d done something to it with a computer, shading the edges so that the ley looked almost as if it was glowing.

Underneath, a second picture showed a section of Ordnance Survey map, with the ley points encircled, just like Alfred Watkins used to do it.

Altogether, not a story you could easily miss.

Village future on the line, schoolgirl warns Jeremy Isles

A schoolgirl is fighting county planners to defend the legacy of the man whose discovery of ley lines has been causing nationwide controversy for more than eighty years.

Planning officials in Herefordshire were ready to accept an application for new housing in the historic village of Ledwardine in the north of the county, when the vicar’s daughter Jane Watkins, 18, accused them of destroying the sacred heritage of the community.

Ms Watkins says a proposed estate of 24 ‘luxury homes’ would obliterate what she insists is a prehistoric straight track, or ley, linking several sacred sites including her mother’s church and the summit of what she claims is the village’s ‘holy hill’. Ley hunters all over Britain are now set to join the protest.

The theory of ley lines was floated in 1925 by Alfred Watkins (no relation), a Hereford brewer and pioneer photographer, in his book The Old Straight Track, which is still in print and something of a bible for New Agers and ‘earth mysteries’ enthusiasts. The latest theories suggest that Watkins’s leys are lines of earthenergy or possibly spirit paths along which the souls of the dead were believed to be able to travel.

However, Hereford councillors and officials charged with implementing new government demands for more rural housing are taking a hard line on the issue.

At the end of the story, a council spokesman was quoted as saying, ‘It’s a storm in a teacup. We have consulted our county archaeologist who assures us that ley lines are simply a quaint myth. We applaud Jane Watkins’s interest in local traditions, but consider this would be a very silly reason to forsake our commitment to allow quality new housing to be built on suitable sites.’

However, they also had a quote from J. M. Powys, described as ‘an author specializing in landscape phenomena’, who said, ‘Although the concept of leys has been widely dismissed almost since Watkins first came up with it, he was definitely on to something, and his ideas have been powerfully influential. There’s a lot about the ancient landscape we really don’t understand, and I’d be interested in taking a look at this alignment – which looks like one that Watkins missed, even though it was virtually on his own doorstep.’

Earlier in the piece Jane had been quoted as describing council officials as…

‘Philistine morons?’ Jim Prosser said. ‘You actually said that, did you, Jane?’

‘Oh God, Jim.’ Jane covered up her face. ‘I thought we were just having like a preliminary chat? He was really sympathetic, you know? I thought he’d come out with the photographer to interview me properly – I didn’t realize that was it, he was doing it over the phone.’

Jim stood there, slowly shaking his head and smiling the smile of a man who couldn’t quite believe this. He held out the paper.

‘You wanner take this copy, show your mother before somebody else does?’

‘ Christ, no… I mean, it’s OK, she’s going out early.’ Jane felt clammy under her school shirt. ‘Look… what do you think, Jim? What have I done? Is this, like, going to cause trouble?’

‘Hard to say, really. Twenty-four houses, that’s another twenty-four bunches of papers and magazines for me. On the other hand, disturbing the spirits of the dead…’

‘You don’t believe a word, do you? You think it’s all total bollocks.’

‘Well, you know us primitive, superstitious rural types, Jane…’

‘Do you think anybody here is going to agree with me?’

‘Tough question,’ Jim said. ‘Go on, take the paper, you might need one.’

‘Thanks.’

Jane went out and stood by the oak pillars of the medieval market hall. The brilliant sun was suspended over Cole Hill, as though it was either declaring its support or making some kind of ironic gesture. Jane screwed up her eyes and looked up, pleading.

It had been like a dream. Taking herself off to the end of the playing field yesterday lunchtime and sitting down and trying to see it from all sides. Mum’s position in the village – no conflict there, she was supposed to be responsible for the collective soul of the community. And Morrell, always on about liberal causes and free speech and Amnesty International and stuff like that.