Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

Gomer didn’t say anything, but something tightened in his neck and he went rigid, the lamplight swirling like liquid in his glasses. For a terrified couple of seconds, Jane thought, Oh Christ, he’s having a stroke.

Wanting to kill Pierce and only dimly aware of the JCB’s engine revving up, until Pierce turned to the meadow, his hard-hat tipping back as his arm came up like the arm of some petty Roman-emperor figure.

‘You wanner watch?’ he said. ‘All right, you watch.’

‘No!’ Jane screamed. ‘ No! ’

Pierce brought his arm down, a chopping motion.

On the other side of Coleman’s Meadow the big digger rocked, its blade lowering. And then it began to roll on its caterpillars towards the last, pathetic piece of old straight track.

‘Oughter be in an old folks’ home, you ought, Parry,’ Pierce said as he walked away. ‘I should think about that, I were you.’

He’d been blocking the long view of Cole Hill, which never entirely faded away on summer nights. A lick of moon had risen behind it like a candle on a coffin. Down below, the last four or five metres of track made a perfect shadow.

‘Stop him! Please stop him!’ Jane arching forward, screaming at Pierce’s back. ‘You shit!’

He was gone. He’d walked casually away into the orchard, and all there was left was the yellow lights and the roaring, and Jane looked back at Gomer. But Gomer wasn’t moving, he was just standing there, a bit bent now, like one of the old, dying apple trees in the derelict orchard behind him.

It was almost over.

Jane was on her own. She’d failed. She’d mishandled everything, through immaturity, her eagerness to do something, be somebody. She couldn’t live with that.

She was only half aware of running blindly towards the digger’s bobbing lights. Running out, sobbing, into the meadow, where the ruined ley carried what remained of the ancestry of an historic village.

Oh, not historic in the sense of having kings or dukes living there or battles fought on its soil. More important than that.

She heard a shout from behind her, glanced over her shoulder and saw Gomer stumbling after her, and she shouted back at him, ‘ No…’ But he was already slipping sideways into a new-made trench, sinking down on his knees, and her heart lurched and she desperately wanted to go rushing back to help him, but she was too far now, too far gone.

And convinced, despite the savaging of the meadow, that she could still see the mystic line, glowing and alive and fresh with the clean, crisp scent of apples… sharp with the cool, dry tang of the cider… hardened by the hooves of Hereford cattle with hides the colour of the soil… marked out by the shadow of the church, where the bells had called generations of farm workers to prayer… still walked by the sombre shades of Alfred Watkins and his distinguished musical associate and the spirit…

… The sad, sepia spirit of Lucy Devenish herself, hiding her anguish in the folds of her poncho as Jane threw herself into the gutted ground and rolled in front of the blade.

Remembering the Hurt

Half past ten and no signs of apocalypse.

Parked alone in the bay outside Wychehill Church, with the window down, Merrily could just about hear the choir. Not what she’d expected, not the fulsome, floating sound which had gilded the air last Monday night when she and Lol had arrived in Wychehill. This was low-level and travelled in pulses.

She’d walked quietly down to the church, some of whose windows were quietly aglow. Sliding into the porch with the idea of inching open the doors to see if Loste or Winnie was in there. But the doors were locked. No audience for this choir tonight.

She’d crept outside again, found a metal bucket and positioned it upside down below one of the clear windows and stood on it.

‘ Ave Mary,’ she heard. Low and liquid. ‘ Ave Mary.’

She saw a group of heads in the chancel, in a nest of candelight. A candle in a pewter tray on the lectern, a candle on the pulpit, eerily Dickensian.

Also workmanlike. Not a performance.

Anyway, the conductor was bald. Merrily had fled back to the car.

Two police vehicles went past slowly: a lurid traffic car and a dark blue van. Perhaps the action wouldn’t start until the early hours. Perhaps it wouldn’t start at all. Perhaps Khan was right and what worried people like Leonard Holliday was not so much the reality of the Royal Oak as the idea of it, any challenge to the idyll. Hard, however, to imagine Holliday ever experiencing an idyll.

She lit a cigarette, looked across at the Rectory. Like everywhere else, it was in darkness. Ledwardine Vicarage was never entirely in darkness. If there was no light on in the house, a low-powered bulb would be burning in one of the outside lanterns. The light of the world. The glow of sanctuary.

No sanctuary here.

She got out and locked the car and walked up through the cutting into Church Lane, saw a TV flicker in Hannah Bradley’s cottage and thought about knocking. No time. Stay focused.

She walked on up the lane, surprised at how bright the night was with a moon that was far from full. There was a single guiding lamp at the top of the steep path down to Starlight Cottage, but the place itself was unlit and clearly deserted, even the windchimes unmoving in the herb-scented silence. Wind chimes: part of the illusion of innocence.

If Sparke had deliberately misdirected her, neither she nor Loste were going to be easily discovered tonight. Merrily didn’t hang around, walked quickly back up to the lane and down the hill towards the church.

A bulkhead light blinked on across the lane and a door opened.

‘Hey, I thought it was you,’ Hannah said. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Looking for Winnie, that’s all.’ Merrily walked across the road. ‘You haven’t seen her?’

‘I never look out for her.’ Hannah was standing by her gate. She wore a Keane T-shirt and shorts. ‘She looks out for herself.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Nice bloke, Tim Loste. Used to be. I don’t know what he’s like now.’

‘I wouldn’t know, either,’ Merrily said. ‘I haven’t been allowed to talk to him.’

‘Join the club. Phew, it’s hot tonight, innit? Yeh, I do a bit of running on the hill, you know, and I ran into Tim a few times. I thought he’d be all up in the air and highbrow, but he wasn’t. Not like that at all. Quite uncomplicated, really. We went to the theatre in Malvern once. Matinee. It had some quite famous actors in it, from TV. It was a laugh. Then she found out.’

‘Winnie?’

‘And that was it. Our paths, as they say, stopped crossing. And not for want of me going out of my way, I’ll tell you.’

‘When was this, Hannah?’

‘Few months ago. I think he’s back drinking now. She won’t stop him. She’ll bloody kill him before she’s done, and that’s a shame.’

‘Go on. Tell me.’

Merrily leaned on the gate. Hannah looked up and down the lane and then lowered her voice but not much.

‘When we were in Malvern, right? We ran into this old mate of Tim’s, from when he was a teacher. And I remembered his name after and I rang him up to ask him, like, you know, what’s the situation with Tim. And he said the Sparke woman was the reason his engagement was broken off…’

‘Tim’s? What, you mean she-’

‘Oh, nothing like that. She’d eat him for breakfast. She just tells him he’s a genius. She’s good at making people feel special. I don’t know if he’s a genius or not, but what’s it matter if genius is being miserable all the time? You know he tried to top himself? If you see her, you can tell her what I said. I don’t care any more. I wish I could get between them, but he won’t listen.’