Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'What?'

'"Never let them cut your hair,'" he quoted, '"or tell you where…" Listen, I… I just wanted to say it's real good to meet you… Moira. No one said you'd be here. Makes me glad I came after all.'

She said, 'I'm a last-minute replacement. For Rory McBain. He's sick. We have the same agent.'

A flunkey needed to come past with a tray of drinks, and he took the opportunity to manoeuvre her into a corner, unfortunately under two pairs of huge yellowing antlers. He said, 'Listen, that album – with the Stone – it had some magic.'

'He has bronchitis,' Moira said.

'Huh?'

'Rory McBain.'

He smiled. 'See, when I hear you sing, it always sounds to me like…'

'That album,' she said with an air of finality, 'was a mistake. I was too young, too stupid, and I never should have left Matt Castle's band.'

'Huh?'

She shook her head, wide-eyed, like she was waking up.

'Matt Castle?' He had his elbow resting on a wooden ledge below another damned antlered skull.

'He was… He was just the guy who taught me about traditional music when I was a wee girl. Look, I don't know why I said that, I…'

Her poise wavered. She looked suddenly confused and vulnerable. Something inside of him melted with pure longing while something else – something less admirable but more instinctive – tensed like a big cat ready to spring. The album cover hadn't lied. Even after all these years, she was sensational.

'Traditional music,' he said, looking into her brown eyes. 'That's interesting, because that's all you do these days, right? You used to write all your own songs, and now you're just performing these traditional folksongs, like you're feeling there's something that old stuff can teach you. Is that this, uh, Matt Castle? His influence?'

'No… No, Matt was a long time ago, when I was in Manchester. He… Look, if you don't mind…'

He was losing her. He couldn't bear it. He tried to hold her eyes, babbling. 'Manchester? That's the North of England? See, why I find that interesting, this guy was telling us at the conference this afternoon, how the English are the least significant people – culturally that is – in these islands. Unlike the Scottish, the Welsh, the Irish, the English are mongrels with no basic ethnic tradition…'

She smiled faintly. 'Look, I'm sorry, I --'

'See this guy, this Irish professor – McGann, McGuane? – he said there was nothing the English could give us. Best they could do is return what they took, but it's soiled goods. At which point this other guy, this writer… No, first off it was this Cornish bard, but he didn't make much sense… then, this writer – Stanton, Stanhope? – he's on his feet, and is he mad…This guy's face is white. I thought he was gonna charge across the room and bust the first guy, the professor, right in the mouth. He's going, Listen, where I come from we got a more pure, undiluted strain of, uh, heritage, tradition…than you'll find anywhere in Western Europe. And the guy, this Stanfield, he's from the North…'

Moira Cairns said, 'I'm sorry, I really do have to make a phone call.'

And she turned and glided out of the doorway, like the girl in the Irish folksong who went away from this guy and mov'd through the fair.

'…the North of England,' the American said to the stag's head.

This wasn't a new experience for him, but it was certainly rare. You blew it, he told himself, surprised. She could feel him watching her through the doorway, all the way down the passage.

Was he the one?

She took a breath of cool air. The man was a fanatic. Probably one of those rich New Yorkers bankrolling the IRA. Surely there was some other unattached female he could find to sleep with tonight. Why were fanatics always promiscuous?

And was he the one whose examination she could feel all over her skin, like she was being touched up by hands in clinical rubber gloves?

'Phone?' she said to a butler-type person in the marble-tiled hallway.

'Next to the drawing room, madam, I'll take you.'

'Don't bother yourself, I'll find it.'

Dong.

She'd found herself, for no obvious reason, while this smoothie American was trying to come on to her, hearing the name Matt Castle, then saying it out aloud apropos of nothing… and then…

Dong.

This was the dong. The hollow chime. Not the link, not the ping.

Aw, hey, no, please…

The phone turned out to be in the room where she'd left her guitar, where it would be safe – the black case lying in state, like a coffin, across two Jacobean chairs. Safe here, she'd thought, surely. This is a castle. But she'd take it with her when she'd made her call.

She stood in front of the phone, picked it up and put it back a couple of times. She didn't know who to ring.

Malcolm. If in doubt, call Malcolm. She was planning, anyway, to strangle the bastard for tonight. 'You'll enjoy it,' he'd insisted. 'You'll find it absolutely fascinating. Rory's mortified.'

She rang him at home in Dumbarton. 'Malcolm,' she said, 'I may never convince myself to forgive you for this. I may even cast about in the shark-infested waters you inhabit for a new agent.

He didn't say a word. Had he heard all this before from her? More than once? Was she becoming querulous? Creeping middle age? She felt tired, woozy. She shook herself, straightened her back, raised her voice.

'Listen, there are so-called Celts here not only from Ireland and Wales and Brittany, but from Switzerland and Italy – with Mafia connections, no doubt – and America and some wee place nudging up to Turkey. And they are, to a man, Malcolm – they are a bunch of pretentious, elitist, possibly racist wankers.'

'Racism?' Malcolm said. 'I thought it was about money. EC grants. Cultural exchanges. More EC grants…'

'Aye, well…'

'Is it not a good fee for you?'

'Is it the same fee as Rory's fee would have been?'

'Oh, Moira, come now…'

'Forget it. Listen, the real reason I disturbed you on the sabbath…'

'Not my sabbath, as it happens.'

'… is my answering machine is on the blink and I suspect someone's trying to get hold of me, and it's no' my daddy because I called him.'

'Nothing urgent that I'm aware of, Moira, don't you worry your head."

'No messages?'

'None at all.' He paused. 'You aren't feeling unwell again, you?'

'I'm fine.' Her left hand found the guitar case, clutched at it. She had that feeling again, of being touched. She shivered. She felt cold and isolated but also crowded in, under detailed examination. Too many impressions: the hollow chime, the eyes, the touch – impersonal, like a doctor's. Too much, too close. She had to get out of here.

'It's none of my business, of course,' said Malcolm, who believed in the Agent's Right to Know, 'but what was it exactly that made you think someone wanted to contact you?'

'Just a feeling.'

'Just a feeling?'

'Aye,' she said wearily. There was nothing touching her now. The room was static and heavy, no atmosphere. The furniture lumpen, without style. A museum. Nothing here.

Nothing… right?

He said, 'You are a strange, witchy woman, Moira.'

'Malcolm,' Moira said. 'Go fuck yourself, huh?' From Dawber's Book of Bridelow: RELIGION (i)

Bridelow is dominated by the ancient church dedicated to Saint Bride and built upon a small rise, thought to be the remains of the 'low' or burial mound from which the village gets the other half of its name.

The tower is largely Norman, with later medieval embellishments, although there was considerable reconstruction work to this and to the main body of the church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The clock was added to the tower following a donation by the Bridelow Brewery in 1889 and was subsequently illuminated, enhancing the role of the tower as a 'beacon' for travellers lost on Bridelow Moss.