Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

‘So, um… the fate of Coleman’s Meadow is probably your fault.’

‘I suppose it is, yes. But you know, Robinson…’ Miss White smiled sweetly. ‘We really aren’t meant to have much of an effect.’

‘And I suppose we’ll never find out what Mrs Pole knew about the significance of that field.’

‘What does the girl think is significant?’

‘Jane? She thinks it more or less holds the secret soul of the village. It connects the church and a few other sites with Cole Hill, which Jane thinks is the village’s holy hill – like Dinedor is to Hereford. She’s at a… an intense age.’

‘A perceptive age,’ Miss White said. ‘Although they often need assistance in decoding their perceptions. What are yours?’

‘Oh, I… just think a particular councillor has a stake in it.’

‘Hmm.’ Miss White kicked off her slippers. She wore a black bow around one ankle. ‘There is a niece, you know. Elizabeth… Kington? Kingsley?’

‘Who got the money.’

‘And the memories. In two suitcases. She came to collect them. I made a point of beckoning her over. I said protect the memory. As if I knew what I was talking about. She knew who I was – or thought she knew what I was. She said, If you get any more messages – oh dear! – and left me her address. I have it somewhere.’

‘Yes, that might…’

Not once had Athena White stopped looking at Lol. Or through him. Eyes like miniature fairy lights. If he hadn’t been feeling so empty inside, it might have been disconcerting.

‘What else?’ she said. ‘Come on, Robinson, you must make the most of me before I’m called away to spend whole aeons in atonement. What ails you? Can’t get it up?’

‘Something like that,’ Lol said.

All the Time in the Worlds

Gomer’s kitchen was this cheerful but fading memorial to Minnie, full of bright, shiny, literal objects like BISCUIT tins with biscuits printed on the side in crumbly brown letters. The letters on the bread bin were badly worn; time after time, when Jane looked up she read ‘bread’ as DEAD.

Even Gomer seemed jittery, unsteady. Around six, he agreed to go and monitor the situation at Coleman’s Meadow, and Jane switched on her mobile to check the answering service. Couldn’t put it off any longer. Supposed if it was all too heavy to handle – follow-up calls from Jerry Isles, threats from Mum – she could always pretend she’d left the phone at home.

Didn’t remember the last time she’d felt this low, this useless.

‘ Where the hell are you? ’ Eirion was demanding, on voicemail. ‘We’re getting masses of emails referred from the EMA site. Have you any idea at all what’s going down here? ’

She called him back. She told him she knew exactly what was going down. Told him about Pierce, how she’d played it all wrong, couldn’t restrain herself, ended up shafting Lol.

‘The Meadow,’ Eirion said. ‘What’s happening at the Meadow?’

‘Fenced off.’

Jane told him about the ragged protest, and how terrible she felt that she hadn’t been there supporting them. But she didn’t dare show her stupid, notorious face, and at least it sounded like it was all over for tonight.

‘Over?’ Eirion said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘They got the police in. I’m dead in the water, Irene. I haven’t been to school again. I’m stuffed.’ Disgusted at how she must sound, how waily. ‘I’m probably going to have to leave, as from like now, get a job or something. Grow up, you know?’

He’d been talking; she’d only half-heard.

‘… The Deathroad Society, of Antwerp? Conservers of coffin tracks in the low countries. Particularly pissed off. Their chairman, Ronald Verheyen-’

‘All right.’ Jane sat down. ‘I’m sorry. What are you on about?’

Eirion laid it out for her. If Alfred Watkins wasn’t much honoured in his home town, it looked like there were thousands of people all over the world to whom he was some kind of minor deity, and earth-mysteries geeks and landscape anoraks from the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, wherever, were now blasting Herefordshire Council with electronic hate-mail. Far as Eirion could make out, just about every department in the authority – planning, health, chief executive’s, trading standards – they’d all been getting it.

‘It’s somehow got tied into the whole international Green politics thing. These guys are picking up email addresses wherever they can find them. Apparently, individual councillors have even been targeted at home.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Because the EMA have had an approach from the council’s lawyers. Jesus, Jane, if the council hated you before…’

‘Irene…’ Jane swallowed. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’

She felt hot and swollen all over, like she’d invaded a wasps’ nest and been multi-stung. Gomer’s phone started ringing just as he came in and he hooked it from the wall by the fridge.

‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire yere.’

‘The EMA guy says if it gets too hot he’ll have to pull the story,’ Eirion was saying. ‘I mean, they haven’t got any lawyers or any money, not to speak of. But it’s too late, anyway, now it’s been picked up by the general media. You watching Midlands Today?’

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Well, I can’t see it either, in Wales, but I gather-’

‘I don’t care! Oh shit, Irene. This explains Pierce. What do I do ?’

‘Just keep your head down, I suppose. I’d come over and try and take your mind off it, but it’s Gwennan’s birthday, and Dad’s got this surprise party, where we all have to pretend nobody speaks English.’

‘Her’s on the mobile right now, boy,’ Gomer said into the phone. ‘I get her to call you back?’

Jane said, ‘I’ll call you back, Irene.’

Clicked him off and went over to secondary-smoke Gomer’s ciggy.

‘All right,’ Gomer said. ‘Will do, boy.’ Handed the phone to Jane. ‘Lol.’

‘Look, what Pierce said before- I didn’t-’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Lol said, ‘I’m over that. It doesn’t get to me any more. Can you write something down?’

The very fact that he knew instantly what she was talking about showed he was far from over it. Jane made scribbling motions to Gomer and he brought her a pen and a receipt book with Gomer Parry Plant Hire billheads. Lol said that if she and Gomer wanted to get out of the village for a while there was a woman they could check out. It might be something or nothing, Lol said. She needed to be polite. Thanks.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m still at The Glades.’

‘I’m bad news today, Lol. Nothing works out for me. Can’t you do it?’

‘No, I’m… I think I’m getting into something else,’ Lol said.

His voice sounding disconnected, like he was with someone, or his mind was already working on the something else.

‘Sholto.’ Lol folded up his mobile. ‘I think that was his name.’

‘Frightfully good-looking. Essence of Ronald Colman.’ Athena was gazing wistfully into a corner of the room. ‘So few of us remember Ronald Colman any more, even here.’

‘I bet they all remember Sholto, though,’ Lol said.

‘We needed him, Robinson. As I think I told your paramour at the time, who among the living could we attract any more?’

The alleged haunting of The Glades, as described by Merrily, had involved a languid shadow on the landing, blown bulbs. Hadn’t there been a smell of cigarette smoke, the flicking of a lighter?

‘The point being,’ Lol said, ‘that Sholto had no history at The Glades. He was just a face from an old photo album. Someone whose image you’d somehow contrived to… appropriate. And insinuate into people’s consciousness.’