Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Sort of like Tutankhamen's tomb?'

'If you like.'

Chrissie wanted to laugh. It was pre-Schwarzenegger. More like one of those old Hammer films, Peter Cushing as Roger Hall.

'Keep getting pestered by this man Dawber. Who, admittedly, was quite useful at first. Used to be head teacher at the local school. Sort of… amateur historian.'

Roger said the words 'amateur historian' like other people would say 'dog turd'.

'Oh, of course, I know him,' Chrissie said. 'Mr Dawber. Tubby little chap. Rather cute. I suppose you think he's an eccentric, whereas Stanage…'

'Stanage knows," Roger said strangely. He seemed to remember his coffee. It was cold. He put the cup down.

Looked uncomfortable. 'Dawber's trouble. He says we should – get this – now we've done all our tests and found out everything we can, we should put the thing back in Bridelow Moss, in a secret location of their choosing – this is the bloody villagers – on the scientific basis that if the peat has preserved him for two thousand years it's probably the best way of keeping him in good nick for another two thousand…'

He laughed bitterly. 'The crackpot elements you have to deal with when you unearth something that catches the public imagination.'

Oh, you'll deal with crackpots, Roger, Chrissie thought. You'll deal with crackpots if there's something in it for you.

After about half an hour, Roger tried again.

Disastrously.

Stress, he explained. The stress of keeping your balls in the air.

They lay in the dark and talked some more. Talked about her ex-husband, who drank. Talked about his wife, who was brilliant and capable and seemed to power an entire hospital on an average of twenty-eight hours' sleep per week.

Talked about him, Roger… and him, him.

'Look… what I said about Stanage… forget it, will you? Forget I even mentioned Stanage.'

'All right,' Chrissie said. forehead, Roger said to the ceiling, 'Sometimes… when Janet's on nights at the General… I wake up in the early hours, feeling really sort of cold and clammy.'

Which didn't exactly augur well, Chrissie thought, for the next few hours.

'And you know… I can almost feel it in the bed with me. Lumps of it.'

Jesus. She said, 'Lumps?'

'Peat. Lumps of peat.' Roger slid a damp and hopeless hand along her left thigh. 'That's stress for you.'

The Earl's place was nineteenth-century Gothic, a phoney Dracula's Castle with a lofty Great Hall that stank, the American thought, of aristocratic bullshit, domination and death.

He could tell the woman hated it too. Especially the skulls. Or maybe she had something else on her mind. She was worried; he could tell that much. Still, he wasn't about to miss this opportunity.

He kept glancing at her over dinner at the long baronial table, a couple of hours ago. All that wonderful long black hair, with the single streak of grey. He'd never seen her before, not in concert, not even on the TV, but he knew the face from the album covers, and he'd know the voice.

She was standing alone by the doorway, frowning at the gruesome trophies on the walls. Not talking to anyone, although there were people all around her, expensively dressed people, crystal glasses hanging from their fingers like extra jewellery.

He supposed she'd be a couple of years older than he was, which only added to that mysterious lustrous glamour. Pretty soon she'd pick up her guitar, and take her place on the central dais to sing for them all. Which didn't give him much time.

What he needed was a neat, elegant opening line. Kind of imagining – her general aura being so magical – that one would come naturally.

He carried his glass across, stood alongside her, following her gaze around the overloaded walls.

He said, 'Uh…'

And followed up with something so dumb he could only hope to attribute it to the impact of fifteen-year-old malt on an uncultured brain.

'Impressive, huh?' he said.

She looked at him. Coldly. Looked at him like she was thinking. Yeah, well you would have to be impressed by this kind of Victorian shit. Where you come from, pal, this most likely is what passes for ancient, right?

'After its fashion,' she said mildly.

From the middle of a cluster of people, the Earl was watching them. Or rather, watching him, because he was American and therefore could maybe buy this place and everything else of its kind between here and Pitlochry many times over.

The Earl was a sleek man, English all the way down to the tip of his sporran. But the Earl wanted to be a real Celt and no doubt was counting on the American wanting that too, all the way down to the deepest part of his wallet.

A discreet buff-coloured card, handed to him several weeks ago by his mother – who also, unfortunately, was his boss – had said:

THE CELTIC BOND: A major conference of politicians and poets, writers, broadcasters and business people, to establish an international support mechanism for the regeneration of a submerged European culture. Hosted, at his Scottish family seat, by…

'Shit,' he'd said in some dismay. 'You're kidding, aren't you?'

She wasn't. Since she lost the use of her legs, the single most important element in his mother's life had become her Scottish ancestry. 'We are Celts, Mungo,' she'd say. 'Above all, never forget that.' By which she meant her side of the family; hence he bore her family name rather than that of his long-gone, long-forgotten father.

'If I can say this,' he said now, politely, trying to recover some credibility, 'you don't seem too relaxed.'

'No?' She wore a long, black dress, very plain. He could sense no perfume.

'I mean I can't imagine you'd be nervous about performing.'

She wasn't looking at him. She was still looking at the heads. Huge sets of antlers protruding from bleached fragments of skull, all over three walls, from just above head-height to within a couple of feet of the lavishly moulded ceiling.

'And I guess you aren't the nervous kind, anyway,' he said. 'So…'

Wherever you sat, the remains of three or four dozen butchered stags were always in view. On the central wooden dais, where she'd sit to sing, she'd probably feel herself constricted by some grisly necklace of bone.

Gross.

'I was just wondering,' she said at last, 'when it must have been clear he wasn't going to go away, 'why people should be proud of being a Celt. Killing things for fun and showing off about it.'

A good work popped up in the American's head, like somebody had flashed him a prompt-card.

'Pantheistic,' he said. 'The old Celts were highly pantheistic. So I'm told.'

'That means they had respect for animals,' she said scornfully. She had a soft Scottish voice but not too much of an accent. 'A bit like your Red Indians.'

'Native Americans.' He smiled. 'To be politically and ethnically correct.' The smile was supposed to say, I may be devilishly attractive, with my untamed curly black hair, this cool white tuxedo, thistle in the buttonhole. But you can trust me. I'm a sincere guy. 'Can I get you another drink?'

'No,' she said. 'No, thank you.'

'I… ah…' He hesitated. 'I have a couple of your albums.'

'Oh?' She didn't seem too interested. 'Which ones?'

'Well, uh, my favourite, I guess, is still the one you did with The Philosopher's Stone. That'd be quite some years ago.'

'Oh.' She glanced away, as if looking for someplace else to put herself.

'Uh, I also have your first solo album,' he said quickly. 'How I recognized you. From the sleeve. You haven't changed.'

'Oh, I've changed, believe me. Look, I…'

'You never did cut your hair, though,' he said, urbanely displaying his knowledge of the album's prime cut.