Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

‘And bent as a bloody ole fork-end,’ Gomer said before Danny towed him off.

‘Gomer, we don’t draw attention, right?’

Danny had nearly suggested that they call it off when he’d heard about Lol being in the slammer, but Gomer had said it could be even more important now to nail Savitch on the cocking, and mabbe he was right.

They moved on down past a white van with Oldcastle Catering on the side, Danny beginning to see folks he and Gomer had worked for, digging new soakaways, wildlife ponds. Also, the usual Ledwardine notables – James Bull-Davies tapping the green-oak frame of a new barn that was never gonner be used for hay, swimming pool more like. Poor ole James likely figuring out that it had cost more than his entire stable-block and his new roof. Realizing he was part of history, but mabbe not the kind Savitch was looking to restore.

Between two buildings not yet converted was a dark green marquee with HARDKIT HARDKIT HARDKIT stencilled in black all over it and these display boards with photos of men covered in muck. Alongside, a track ended at a stile, an empty field on the other side, stubbled with the dead stems of last year’s docks and stumps of trees and piles of branches gathered for burning.

‘That it, Gomer? Up there?’

Colder now, mucky-looking clouds converging as Gomer and Danny scaled the stile and walked up the field. The sound of a medieval band floating up behind them, drums and possibly a crumhorn. Merrie Englande. As they moved up the rise, Danny looked around, from landmark to landmark: the church steeple, Cole Hill, The Court itself, in its own green nest.

Then he saw they were standing on the edge of what surely had been the cockpit behind the long-demolished Unicorn pub.

You wouldn’t be able to tell in summer, but the grass hadn’t really started growing yet and the shallow bowl was obvious. Not many trees left around it, and only a few scrubby bushes in the middle, so it had been preserved at one time, sure to’ve been.

And that was the point, wasn’t it?

One time.

‘Shit,’ Danny said.

No blood, no feathers, no beer cans. The ole Ledwardine cockpit was wilderness. Disappointment plunged deep into Danny’s gut.

‘I’m sorry, Gomer.’

Gomer didn’t move.

‘Mabbe we was a bit dull to think they was doin’ it yere,’ Danny said. ‘Most likely it moves around, farm to farm, like a circus.’

‘Where?’ Gomer’s fists clenching in the air like mini digger-buckets. ‘They was moving round, we’d know about it.’

He was right. They likely would.

‘It…’ Danny hesitated. ‘Gomer… it possible you was wrong about that cock?’

Gomer didn’t even answer. They climbed back over the stile, to the sound of some audio-visual presentation going on in the Hardkit tent, the voice of Smiffy Gill, mad-bastard presenter of The Octane Show, which Danny had watched just once when it’d been about Jeeps.

‘… just had an amazing time on the quad bike, Kenny, mate, but I would, wouldn’t I? ’

Smiffy’s haw-haw laugh. Danny couldn’t stand no more of this. Figured he’d forgo the free champagne lunch guaranteed by Lol’s tickets, unless Gomer…

‘You all right, Gomer?’

‘Bloody let her down this time, ennit?’

‘Jane? Gomer, you done everything a man could do. Mabbe we was wrong about Savitch. Mabbe her was wrong.’

‘No. Gotter be folks from Off. It was local folks, I’d know.’

Danny felt suddenly choked up. Things were changing yereabouts. Things were happening that even Gomer Parry didn’t know about. Because Gomer Parry’s era was nearly over.

He looked at the Hardkit tent. Had their catalogues through the post, same as most country folk, only now they were inviting him to spend?250-plus on a waterproof jacket. Three year ago they was just this one tiny little run-down shop with the window all blacked-out, looked on the verge of closing down. Now a bloody chain with jackets at two-fifty.

‘ Listen…’

Gomer was standing by the half-open flap of the framed porch at the front of the tent. His ciggy was out, his face looked flushed. He’d taken off his glasses, like this improved his hearing.

‘ For us, the quad bike is just for getting to the location.’ Another voice, not Smiffy. ‘ After that, yow got to rely on your own power, look.’

Now Danny got it. He walked over, stood in the entrance. A flickering darkness inside; he could just make out rows of chairs, about twenty people watching a video on a big-screen TV, stereo sound turned up loud.

Danny stepped inside. On the screen, two men were bawling at each other across a moonscape: Smiffy Gill, with his kooky grin, and a wiry guy with a shaven head and a kind of circular beard like a big O around his lips.

Smiffy said, ‘So, Kenny, I’m guessing this is where the men get separated from the boys?’

A picture came up of a landscape that was nothing but rocks and shale, sloping down near-vertically to a roaring, spitting river. Two men in crash helmets were crossing the gorge on this unstable-looking rope bridge.

‘Give the lad a coconut,’ Kenny said.

Then heavy-metal music was coming up under the crashing of the river and Smiffy Gill’s laughter, and the temperature in Danny’s gut dropped a few degrees as he walked out to Gomer.

‘Shit,’ Danny said.

In his ears, the whoops of Smiffy Gill getting into his harness for his river crossing. In his head, the metallic rumble of a new JCB tractor with a snowplough attached. Gomer going:

This a hexercise, pal?

Then the long, cold silence. Then the short laugh, then:

Give the ole man a coconut.

No more kitten.

‘So you think it’s happening now, do you?’ Athena White said. ‘And you think it’s happening here.’

‘In a way,’ Merrily said. ‘On some level. Yes, I do.’

Miss White had directed Lol to one of the book cupboards, a repository of information rather than a bibliophile store, with many books stacked horizontally to get more on the shelves. Shelf four, sixth from the bottom, flaking cover. Yes, that one… and the one below it.

She leafed through one of the stained tomes. It smelled of whisky.

‘Mithraism is still quite widely practised by pagans. Remind me of any ancient cult, I’ll show you its modern counterpart. Most of the contemporary groups, of course, are harking back to the original Persian Mithra – the sun god. The Lord of the Wide Pastures as he’s referred to in a cobbled-together but rather pretty ritual. All very green and comparatively bloodless. Some groups even let women in now.’

‘I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at,’ Merrily said. ‘How did it come to be a Roman religion?’

‘I don’t think anyone knows. Senior Romans, to begin with – emperors, generals, then spreading to lower officers, if not the ranks. The chaps most interested in promoting a state of mind conducive to warfare. Mithraists called one another brother. Fusing themselves together as supremely efficient fighting units.’

‘Like the SAS.’

‘I suppose. If it’s any small comfort, Watkins, one writer comments that the Roman cult of Mithras adopts the paganism of the original Persian cult without its apparent tolerance of other religions… and the harshness of Christianity without its redeeming qualities of love and mercy. A combination, therefore, of the least humane aspects of both Christianity and the original Mithraism.’

‘Does that suggest the Roman religion was, to an extent, manufactured?’

‘I’m sure it does. The Romans were such pragmatists, even the Vikings seem soppy in comparison. Even as magic, it’s considered to be a lower form, happy to trade with elementals and demons rather than with what you might call a spiritual source. Make of that what you will. But gosh, frightfully useful in a scrap.’