Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

‘Mr Watkins?’ Mrs Kingsley smiled at last and nodded and came down from her front doorstep. ‘Yes, I know about Mr Watkins. And his photography, and his ley lines. And he was…’ She looked suddenly uncertain. ‘Your great-grandfather?’

Oh no. ‘Sorry…’ Jane did some rapid arithmetic. ‘I always get this wrong. Great -great-grandfather. It takes me ages to trace it back through the generations. We’re all over the place now, you know, the Watkinses.’

Jane glanced back at Gomer, sitting at the roadside in the old US Army jeep he was driving now. He’d said he probably wouldn’t be much use, not knowing Mrs Kingsley, only her late aunt.

‘Of course, it was my grandmother knew Mr Watkins, not me,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘I’m not that old. My grandmother, you see, was very well connected, that was what I was always told, although I was quite small when she died. I imagine she could’ve told you some marvellous stories about Mr Alfred Watkins.’

‘Really…? Well, that… that’s what I heard,’ Jane said. ‘You see, we live in Ledwardine-’

‘Yes, that’s where my aunt-’

‘And all the main people in Ledwardine told me the person I could’ve spoken to, if I wanted to know about Alfred’s connections with the village, was Mrs… Pole.’

‘Do you know Mr Bull-Davies?’

‘James Bull-Davies! Absolutely. James said Mrs Pole was, erm… he said she was a real lady.’

‘Oh, she was. I’m so glad Mr Bull-Davies remembers her.’

‘They all do, Mrs Kingsley. Ted Clowes, the senior churchwarden? Ted said, Jane, you want to be sure and get Mrs Pole into your project. And her family. Which, erm, could eventually be published, of course, by the Ledwardine Local History Society.’

‘So that was what you meant when you mentioned my inheritance,’ Mrs Kingsley said.

‘Well, it…’

‘You meant Coleman’s Meadow,’ Mrs Kingsley said.

‘I think that was what it was called.’

‘Well, I’m afraid I didn’t inherit the land, dear. That was my cousin. He’s the farmer.’

‘Well, yes, but-’

‘As you’d probably have known if you’d seen the local television news tonight,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘Where he was interviewed.’

‘Oh.’

Shit.

‘The reporter did say they’d tried to find the instigator of the protest, but you were keeping a low profile. Although they did have quite a good photograph of you, from one of the newspapers.’

Just when you thought you were being so smart.

‘It was strange, though,’ Mrs Kingsley said, ‘that they didn’t mention you were the great-great-granddaughter of Alfred Watkins.’

‘Well, it’s not something I…’

‘Talk about,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘No. I don’t suppose you do, you silly little girl.’

Which was when Gomer came over.

He wasn’t even smoking, and he’d buttoned his tweed jacket.

‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire.’ Handing one of his cards up to Mrs Kingsley. ‘Once put in a new soakaway for your auntie, but I don’t suppose her’d’ve talked about it much at family gatherings.’

For a man of seventy-odd he moved fast. Must have seen Jane’s face folding up, and he’d been there before she reached the bottom of the steps.

Mrs Kingsley stood on the top step, holding the card. The ambering sunlight flashed from windows all over the estate and boiled in Gomer’s bottle glasses.

‘Brung Janie over on account o’ the importance o’ this, see. Good girl, means well, but her gets a bit… emotional. Takes things to heart.’ Gomer took off his cap. ‘Got herself in a real state over this argy-bargy, missus, as you can likely see.’

Mrs Kingsley looked at the card, said faintly, ‘Plant hire?’

Gomer looked solemn. It was touching, really. The words plant hire, for Gomer, represented some old and honourable tradition of saving the countryside from flood and famine, bringing mighty machinery to the aid of the needy. A plant-hire code of decency was implied and it shone out of Gomer’s glasses.

‘You see much of your cousin Gerry?’ Gomer said. ‘Gerry Murray, Lyonshall?’

‘No.’

‘Ar,’ Gomer said. ‘What I’d yeard.’

Jane looked at him, curious. He’d had very little to say in the jeep on the way here. But Gomer knew about the local network, its grudges and its feuds, and what he didn’t know he’d find out.

‘ You know him?’ Mrs Kingsley said.

‘No. But I knows of him. If you see what I mean.’

Standing there with his hands behind his back, not pushing it. Little and lean, the cords in his neck like plaited bailer twine.

‘Gerry… knows what he wants and makes sure he gets it,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘One way or another.’

‘Yeard that, too. And your Auntie Maggie… seems to me her was a bit like Janie, yere – worried too much about what was right and what was wrong, kind o’ thing.’

Mrs Kingsley looked down, brushing her apron. It was beige, with black cats on it.

‘My aunt did talk about you once or twice, Mr Parry,’ she said. ‘You’re making this very difficult for me.’

‘Ar?’

‘I have some letters… and photographs.’

‘What Mrs Pole left you.’

‘You obviously know about them.’

‘Mabbe.’

‘I was going to offer them to the Hereford Museum. Or perhaps the Woolhope Club.’

Gomer looked blank.

‘The naturalist and local history club that Alfred Watkins belonged to,’ Jane said. ‘It still exists.’

‘Mr Watkins was a member, yes. Among other important people. The photographs belonged to my grandmother, Hazel Probert. I think it’s what she would have wanted, after all this time.’

Mrs Kingsley looked out over the housing estate. You could hear lawn-mowers and strimmers and a few children shouting. Across the estate and another estate, on higher ground, you could see the top of Dinedor, Hereford’s own holy hill.

Jane found she was holding her breath.

‘After the TV item, I brought them down,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘On television, it didn’t look like the same place – all that fencing and the signs.’

‘That’s nothing to what it’ll look like when it’s covered with executive homes,’ Jane said.

‘Well,’ Mrs Kingsley said, ‘I can’t let you take the photographs. But I can let you see them. I suppose they explain why my grandmother might not have wanted someone like Gerry Murray to have the meadow.’

Of Great Renown

Merrily got in, and there was nobody there except Ethel. Forking out a tray of Felix, drifting through to the scullery, it felt like weeks since she’d last been in here, doing ordinary things. The answering machine was overfed, no longer accepting messages. The air was stale and stuffy, and there was the rattle and hum of a bluebottle in the window.

She opened the window, sat down at the desk with a bag of crisps and rang Lol: no answer. Rang his mobile: engaged.

She needed advice, wanted to pray but wasn’t sure what she’d be asking for. She’d never felt so confused. Laying her head on the sermon pad, she closed her eyes. Forget the answers, some coherent questions would help.

Despite the open window, the bluebottle wouldn’t go out, as though it was determined to tell her something. All the buzzing things that wouldn’t go away.

Merrily jerked upright. The phone was ringing right next to her ear. Last birthday, Jane had bought her another old-fashioned black bakelite phone with a real ring, loud and warm and thrilling, like the church bells which had once pealed across the land from steeple to steeple to warn of impending invasion. She grabbed the phone in a panic, something quaking in her chest.

‘Merrily?’

‘Frannie?’