Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

‘More likely to’ve banged Pierce,’ Gomer said. ‘Bloody little crook.’

Merrily had advised resisting making that point to the police. Bliss had suggested that Gomer might get a caution… but only if he admitted an offence of, say, Aggravated Taking Without Consent. Which, Gomer being Gomer…

She wondered if she should ring Robert Morrell at home and make a crawling apology, telling him how stressed-out she’d been and what a difficult year it had been for Jane. Wondered whether this might actually work, or whether Jane would just despise her.

Probable answers: no and yes.

Just before twelve, Syd Spicer had rung to say that he’d spoken to Tim Loste’s parents in France. He’d asked Merrily how she’d feel about conducting the funeral. The full Requiem, as High Church as she was prepared to go.

Incense, even.

She’d said OK.

The young guy at the door was in jeans and a Mappa Mundi T-shirt.

‘Neil Cooper. Herefordshire Council.’

‘I think I’ve seen you somewhere before,’ Merrily said.

‘It’s possible, yes. I wondered if Jane was in.’

‘Well, she-’

Jane appeared in the hall.

‘Oh-’

‘This is Mr Cooper, Jane. From the Council.’

‘Look,’ Jane said. ‘I overreacted. I behaved like a kid. But on the other hand I’m not going to apologize.’

‘I don’t expect you to.’ Neil Cooper looked grim. ‘But I think you ought at least to come and see the extent of what you’ve done, you and your… volatile friend.’

‘For what it’s worth, I’m accepting full responsibility. Gomer thought I was in danger, and that’s why he did it. In fact it was an act of protest.’

Merrily said, ‘Jane-’

‘Also, he was insulted by Lyndon Pierce. Made to look small. And old and knackered. Gomer’s a proud sort of guy in his way, and he’s a good guy, and he could drive a JCB in his sleep, and Pierce was stupid to leave his car there with no lights.’

‘I really don’t want to argue,’ Cooper said. ‘If you’re prepared to face up to-’

‘All right, I’ll come. OK? But if you’re going to offer me any kind of a deal, like the police did, to drop Gomer in it…’

Merrily watched them go, wondering what all this was going to cost, in terms of money and their future in the village. Then she went over to Lol’s.

Lol was sitting on his sofa with the Boswell guitar. Merrily sat down next to him and listened while he played a couple of strange, drifting chords, singing in a low mumble.

‘Don’t need… The Angel of the Agony.

Don’t want… the pomp and circumstance.’

He put the guitar down.

‘Lay down here when we got in. Slept for a couple of hours and I woke up and that was in my head. Crap?’

‘It’s haunting,’ Merrily said.

‘Develop it, do you think?’

‘And when you record it, have Simon St John on cello.’

‘Elgar would hate it.’

‘Tell me – would that have bothered you before?

‘Um…’

‘Seventeen,’ Merrily said. ‘You remember?’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘Wasn’t seventeen?’

‘It was Severn… Teme. Elgar said he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered at the confluence of the River Severn and the River Teme.’

‘So Tim meant…’

‘There wasn’t much cremation back then. They talked him out of it, and now he’s with Alice in Little Malvern.’

‘Where does the Severn meet the Teme?’

‘No idea.’

‘I wonder if there’s a country church near there. And an amenable vicar with a fondness for Elgar. Take some arranging and negotiations with relatives, of course, but…’

‘You’re thinking Tim?’

‘Thinking both of them. Tim… and Elgar, in essence. But…’

Faraway eyes and a lonely bicycle lamp in the dusk. A floating sadness.

‘… I just don’t know,’ Merrily said.

It was a mess, no arguing with that. A spreading wound in the belly of the village. OK, some of it had been done by Gerry Murray before they arrived, but a lot of it was clearly down to Gomer. The way the fence had been smashed down and spread across the field. The way the council sign describing the plans for luxury executive homes had been snapped off halfway up its post and crunched and splintered into the mud that used to be Coleman’s Meadow.

And Pierce’s car, of course. The car was still there. Pierce’s BMW with its windscreen smashed and its bonnet turned into a sardine can. Well, it had been dark. How was Gomer supposed to know that Pierce was giving Murray a lift home? And wasn’t the fact that Pierce was doing this a clear demonstration that they were in this together? Pierce wouldn’t want that coming out. Would he?

He wouldn’t give a toss. He had Jane, unhinged, crazy as a binge drinker on New Year’s Eve, and dragging an old man into it.

He wouldn’t get jail for a first offence – Jane hoped – at his age, but there’d be a heavy fine and, worst of all, the possibility of some kind of ban, and if they stopped Gomer driving his JCB he’d just slink off and die.

All her fault.

If anything happened to Gomer because of what she’d done she just couldn’t go on living here.

Didn’t want to live here any more, anyway.

The afternoon was dull and sultry. A bleak posse of clouds had gathered around Cole Hill. It was like a sign. Coleman’s Meadow was desolate, an old battlefield, but the only blood was hers.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Jane said. ‘I’ve messed up. I admit it.’

Neil Cooper strolled out to the middle of the field. He wasn’t bad-looking in an insubstantial kind of way.

‘But it is a ley,’ Jane shouted after him. ‘Or it was.’

‘I’m not sure I believe in leys,’ Cooper said.

‘Yeah, well, you wouldn’t.’

‘Look at the state of this.’ He bent down. ‘Come on. Look at it.’

‘Sod you,’ Jane said. ‘You’re determined to rub my nose in it, aren’t you?’

‘Will you come here?’

Jane sighed. How much more of this? Monday she’d have to face Morrell. Tuesday she’d be looking for a new school. Or a job. Maybe stacking shelves for Jim Prosser.

‘It’s my day off, actually,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘I just heard about it on the radio and thought I’d wander over. OK, here-’

She went and looked over Neil Cooper’s shoulder to where a great slice of soil and clay had been peeled away like a giant pencil-shaving. Murray’s work, but somebody had been at it with a spade and there was a trench there now. Neil Cooper tapped the bottom of it with a trowel. It rang sharply off something.

‘Oops, shouldn’t’ve- You know what this is, Jane?’ Jane stood sullenly on the edge of the trench, which was still roughly aligned with the ley.

‘No.’

‘It’s a stone,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘Approximately four metres long. Like a very big cigar. It was about half a metre under the surface. A large part of it would’ve been underground, but when it was standing it would’ve been taller than me.’

Jane said, ‘Standing?’

Cooper walked lightly along the bottom of the trench and then stopped.

‘It seemed even longer at first and then I realized that…’ He bent down, tapped again with his trowel. ‘That this was a separate one.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘And then I brought in a couple of mates and we found a third.’

‘What?’

‘Have you ever seen Harold’s Stones at Trellech? What’s that – forty miles from here?’

‘Thereabouts.’

She and Eirion had been. Twice. Harold’s stones were magnificent. Jane felt herself growing pale.

‘Probably not going to be quite that tall,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘But when we get them up, at least as high as Wern Derys, which is the tallest prehistoric stone in Herefordshire. And, of course, as a stone row…’