Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

Lol said, ‘You want to go back to Wychehill, see if she’s around?’

‘What if they come here while we’re gone? They won’t necessarily come the same way we did. Loste knows the hidden paths.’

‘I’ll stay, if you like.’

‘On your own? Here? ’

He shrugged. Merrily tried to make out his expression, but it was too dim now, veils of mauve and sepia.

‘It’s less than ten minutes away,’ Lol said, ‘and we’ve both got mobiles. I’ll walk with you back to the car and when you’re on your way back you call me, so I can be waiting for you. If they turn up, I’ll call you straight away.’

‘OK. Just… you know…’

‘Don’t do pagan things? Merrily, I’m not Jane. I don’t even know any pagan things.’

They walked back, hand in hand, towards the hamlet of Whiteleafed Oak. The night was warm and the air smelled like a wholefood shop. Only a few weeks to the first hay harvest and that rich caramel scent which Merrily would always associate now with the Frome Valley and the first night she’d spent with Lol.

Some things were not worth risking.

‘They’ll come back,’ she told him.

‘Loste and Winnie?’

‘The songs. Your songs. They’ll come back. You know they will.’

She looked back at the oak, a fat old open-air preacher. Or maybe a conductor, the branches like a blurring of arms, summoning and gathering in three hundred and sixty degrees of sacred sound.

The trees are singing my music… or am I singing theirs?

Jesus.

Merrily was quite glad to be leaving. But not glad that Lol was staying.

In the Country, After Dark

Travelling back to Ledwardine in the open-top jeep, the thoughts blowing through Jane’s head were exhilarating and bewildering. Couldn’t wait to tell Mum and Lol, get some idea of where this could take them.

She was on firm ground at last. She could speak out. The council guys had made so much of the fact that the Coleman’s Meadow ley wasn’t in The Old Straight Track. Now she had proof that Watkins had known about it and seen its importance, and…

… And so had Elgar.

Britain’s greatest composer? This figure of serious international distinction, whose involvement nobody could ignore?

It was just a question of getting one of those incredible pictures photocopied – and, although they hadn’t pushed it at all, it had seemed like Mrs Kingsley was well up for that. Clearly no love lost between her and Murray.

And this breakthrough was entirely down to Gomer.

Ciggy between his teeth, glasses like goggles, his cap in his lap and his dense white hair like smoke in the dusk. Driving like he was really concentrating on the road, but he was clearly concentrating on something else.

About three miles from home, he slowed.

‘This new leisure centre. What you reckon o’ that, girl?’

‘Came out of the blue, didn’t it? Nobody ever said we needed one. Mum doesn’t know where it came from.’

‘Ah, well,’ Gomer said. ‘Where it all d’ come from, I reckon, is Stu Twigg.’

‘Huh?’

‘He owns the land what the village hall’s built on.’Herited it off his ole man last year. Gwyn Twigg? No? Had a petrol station over towards Monkland. Supermarket opens up at Leominster, cheap petrol, Gwyn shuts down, but he’s got these bits o’ ground all over the place, worth a good few hundred grand, so he’s all right, ennit? When he dies, Stu’s in the money. Lazy bugger, though, Stu Twigg. Calls hisself a mechanic, all he does is messes around soupin’ up ole bangers and scarin’ the life out o’ folks in the lanes.’

‘Got him now,’ Jane said. ‘I think. White Jaguar?’

‘That’s the boy.’

‘Came round a corner once, had Irene in the ditch. He’s insane.’

‘Not insane enough he don’t know the value of land,’ Gomer said. ‘Ground rent on the village-hall site, that’s peanuts, see – only public-spirited gesture Gwyn Twigg ever made. Mabbe owed somebody on the parish council a favour. Anyway, word is, Stu’s been talkin’ serious to one o’ the supermarket chains.’

‘You mean with a view to…?’

‘Only one suitable site for a supermarket in Ledwardine, they reckons. Only it’s got a village hall on it.’

This didn’t take a lot of thinking out. The village hall was 1960s and a bit run down. Not exactly a listed building.

Jane said, ‘So if there was a new village hall… like one that was built somewhere else…?’

‘Or a posh new leisure centre with playin’ fields, what’d need a bigger site. Mabbe a greenfield site, outside the village kind o’ thing. If you had some’ing like that…’

‘Stu could flog the village-hall site to the supermarket and clean up. And we’d have a big flash superstore dominating the bottom of Church Street like a… a shrine to commercialism.’

‘Ar. Some’ing like that. You wanner take a guess who Stu’s accountant is, Janie?’

‘Wow.’ Jane lurched forward against her seat belt. ‘You are kidding.’

‘Open secret, girl. Like I tole you, startin’ off thinkin’ your local councillor’s bent always saves a bit o’ time.’

‘Gomer, that is just so-’

‘En’t even the whole story, girl. Supermarket chain, they got a limit, kind o’ thing – what I mean is, a place needs to have a partic’lar head o’ population to make it worthwhile movin’ in. And Ledwardine’s borderline. Needs mabbe a hundred or so new houses to qualify. See where I’m goin’ yere?’

‘Luxury… executive…’ Jane lost her breath ‘… homes.’

‘It’s a start.’

‘That’s-’

‘And it don’t stop there. I been talkin’ to Jack Brodrick, see. Jack was a surveyor with the ole Radnorshire Council. He d’reckon Coleman’s Meadow’s a key strategic move. Strategic, see. His word. What it means is this: you got housing on Coleman’s Meadow, you gets to put a road through the ole orchard as was. Which opens up the whole of the east side o’ Ledwardine. And then you’re off, and big time, Janie. More new estates up the back of Ole Barn Lane, out towards the bypass, and all the way to…’

Gomer gave Jane a sideways glance and crushed out his ciggy.

Jane pictured it. The back of Old Barn Lane? That would take the housing to…

‘The bottom of Cole Hill, from the other side?’

‘Sure t’be.’

‘Which would mean… with Coleman’s Meadow built on, Cole Hill would be totally boxed in.’

‘’Course, this is only what Jack Brodrick reckons.’

‘ Christ, Gomer! ’

‘Shrewd ole bugger, Jack, mind.’

‘Pierce is quietly stitching up the whole village! We’ll be like… like a new town.’

‘Looks that way.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘I don’t know, Janie. It’s all guesswork, ennit?’

‘It’s not.’ Jane leaned back against the passenger door, her head out of the jeep, as if this would blow away the images of black and white houses crushed by an avalanche of pink brick.

Gomer drove on towards the Ledwardine turning.

‘ Is it? ’ Jane screamed against the slipstream.

‘Mabbe not,’ Gomer said.

As Gomer slowed for the Ledwardine turn, Jane checked her mobile, found the message from Mum. So what was new? Maybe Mum and Lol would be home by the time she got in. Anyway, she didn’t want to call back now. There was just too much to say. And she was too angry.

They came into the village. Ledwardine in the smoky dusk. The black and white houses timeless and ghostly in the fake gaslight from the square and the orange and lemon light spilling from the diamond-paned windows of the Black Swan. No neon.

Outside the Swan, the high-powered cars and SUVs of smug diners. A few young guys of fourteen or so with lager cans on the square.