Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

Not any of this confusion over the gratitude that he was gone and the wanting him back… but back as he used to be, before all this. Before his project. A blinding sun through leafless trees ricocheted from the windscreens of cars on the forecourt. A perky breeze ruffled the flags projecting from the motel's awning and lifted tufts of Chrissie's auburn hair. She thought she probably looked quite good, all things considered.

That, she told herself, was what a good night's sleep could do for you.

Ha!

Roger Hall paused, gripping the door-handle of his Volvo Estate. Don't say it, Chrissie thought. Just don't give me that, I still can't understand it, this has never happened to me before…

He didn't. He merely put on an upside-down, pathetic grin.

'Can we try again sometime?' Eyes crinkled appealingly, full of silly morning optimism, and she felt herself falling for it – even if she knew he still wasn't telling the half of it.

'Why not,' she said, daft bitch. She squeezed his arm. 'How long will you be gone?'

'Oh, only until Tuesday. That is, I'll be back late tonight so I'll see you tomorrow morning. Have lunch together, shall we? Would that be…?'

'Of course,' she said. She would have wangled the day off and gone to London with him. They'd been too close to the Field Centre last night, that was probably the problem. Too close to him.

'I'm really only going down there,' Roger said, 'to make sure we get all the stomach returned. Don't want them trying to pinch him back, bit by bit.'

Shut up! Just shut up about that fucking thing!

'Don't worry about it, Roger. Just drive carefully.'

As the Volvo slid away past the Exit Southbound sign, two commercial traveller types came out to their twin Cavaliers and gave her the once-over. Chrissie found herself smiling almost warmly at the younger one. It would be two years in January since her divorce.

She got into her Golf. She looked at her face in the driving-mirror and decided it could probably take a couple more years of this sort of thing before she ought to start looking for something… well, perhaps semi-permanent.

Sadly, Roger's marriage was now in no danger whatsoever. Not from her, anyway.

All the trouble he'd gone to to deceive his wife. Was that for her? Was that really all for her? And then he couldn't do it. Because of 'tension'.

She imagined him driving like the clappers to London, where he was supposed to have spent the night, and then driving determinedly back with the bogman's peaty giblets in a metal samples case.

There was his real love. And there was more to it

Alter the way he'd been talking last night, she'd half expected to wake up in the early hours to find him all wet and clammy and moaning in his sleep about lumps of the stuff in the bed.

But that hadn't happened either. Indeed, the only thing to remind her of soft, clammy peat was the consistency of Roger's dick.

Chrissie got out of the motel compound by the service entrance and drove to work.

Not to worry. Later that morning, little Willie Wagstaff went to see his mother in her end-of-terrace cottage across from the post office.

'Need to find a job now, then,' the old girl said sternly before he'd even managed to clear himself a space on the settee. Ma was practical; no time for sentiment. Dead was dead. Matt Castle was dead; no living for Willie playing the drums on his own.

'Can't do owt yet,' Willie said. "Sides, there's no work about.'

'Always work,' said Ma, 'for them as has a mind to find it.'

Willie grinned. Rather than see him relax for a while, Ma would have him commuting to Huddersfield or Chorlton-cum- Hardy to clean lavatories or sweep the streets.

'Devil makes work for idle hands,' she said. Her as ought to know – half the village reckoned she'd been in league with the bugger for years.

'Aye, well, I've been over to see Lottie this morning.'

'Oh aye? Relieved, was she? Looking better?'

'Ma!'

'Grief's one thing, our Willie, hypocrisy's summat else. She's done her grieving, that one.'

'I've to tell you…' Willie's fingers were off… dum, dum de-dum, side of his knees.

Ma's eyes narrowed. Her hair was tied up in a bun with half a knitting-needle shoved up it.

'Er…' Dum, dum, dum-di-di, dum-di-di…

'Gerrit out!' Ma squawked.

'No messing about,' Willie mumbled quickly. 'Lottie says, none of that.'

'What's that mean?' Making him say it.

'Well, like… well, naturally he'll be buried in t'churchyard. First one. First one since…' His fingers finding a different, more complicated rhythm. 'What I'm saying, Ma, is, do we have to…? Does it have to be Matt?'

Ma scowled. She had a face like an over-ripe quince. She wore an old brown knee-length cardigan over a blue boiler-suit, her working clothes. The two cats, one black, one white, sat side-by-side on the hearth, still as china. Bob and Jim. Willie reckoned they must be the fourth or fifth generation of Ma's cats called Bob and Jim, and all females.

Willie liked his mother's cottage. Nothing changed. Bottles of stuff everywhere. On the table an evil-looking root was rotting inside a glass jar, producing a fluid as thick as Castrol.

Comfrey – known as knitbone. And if it didn't knit your bones at least it'd stop your back gate from squeaking.

'Rector come round,' Ma told him. 'Said was I sure I'd given him right stuff for his arthritis.'

'Bloody hell,' said Willie. 'Chancing his arm there.'

'No, he were right,' said Ma surprisingly. 'It's not working. Never happened before, that hasn't. Never not worked, that arthritis mixture. Leastways, it's always done summat.'

She reached down to the hearth, picked up an old brown medicine bottle with a cork in it; Ma didn't believe in screw tops. 'Full-strength too. Last summer's.'

Willy smiled slyly. 'Losing thi touch, Ma?'

'Now, don't you say that!' His mother pointing a forefinger stiff as a clothes-peg. Think what you want, but don't you go saying it. It's not lucky.'

'Aye. I'm sorry.'

'Still…' She squinted into the bottle then put it back on the hearth behind Bob or Jim. 'You're not altogether wrong, for once.'

'Nay.' Willie shook his head. 'Shouldn't've said it. Just come out, like.'

'I'm not what I was.'

'Well, what d'you expect? You're eighty… three? Six?'

'That's not what I'm saying, son.'

Ma's brown eyes were calm. She still didn't need glasses, and her eyes did wonderful things. In Manchester, of a Saturday, all dolled up, she could still summon a waitress in the cafe with them eyes, even when the waitress had her back turned. And Willie had once seen this right vicious-looking street-gang part clean down the middle to let her through; Ma had sent the eyes in first.

But now the eyes were oddly calm. Accepting. Worrying, that. Never been what you might call an accepter, hadn't Ma.

'None of us is what we was this time last year,' Ma said.

'Ever since yon bogman were took…'

'Oh, no, Willie stood up. 'Not again. You start on about that bogman and I'm off.'

'Don't be so daft. You know I'm right, our Willie. Look at yer fingers, drummin' away, plonk, plonk. Always was a giveaway, yer fingers.'

'Nay,' Willie said uncomfortably, wishing he hadn't come.

'I'm telling you, we're not protected same as we was.' Ma Wagstaff stopped rocking. 'Sit down. Get your bum back on that couch a minute.'

Willie sat. He was suddenly aware of how dim it was in the parlour, despite all the sunlight, and how small it was. And how little and wizened Ma appeared. It was like looking at an old sepia photo from Victorian times. Hard to imagine this was the fiery-eyed old woman who'd blowtorched a path through a bunch of Moss Side yobboes.

'We've bin protected in this village,' Ma said. 'You know that.'