Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

Lottie wasn't here this lunchtime. Stan Burrows, who'd also been made redundant from the brewery, was minding the bar. Stan said, 'I heard as how Gannons was kicking up, claiming they'd been sabotaged, not given proper recipe, like. Threatening legal action, what I heard.'

'Balls,' said Young Frank, glaring at his discarded glass. 'They don't give a shit.'

Ernie Dawber, on his usual stool at the end of the bar, by the telephone, pondered this. The way he saw it, there was no way the Horridge family could have got away with not providing Gannons with the correct recipe. And why should they want to, with Shaw Horridge on the Board?

Yet it was a fact. Since the brewery had been taken over, the stuff had been slowly shedding its distinctive flavour.

Surprising, because it was well known that Gannons, whose bestselling product was a fizzy lager with a German name produced down Matlock way, had been anxious for some time to acquire their own genuine, old-established Real Ale – and would therefore be expected to treat Bridelow beer with more than a modicum of respect.

Ernie decided he'd better go up to the Hall one night and have a bit of a chat with Shaw Horridge or his mother. Bridelow Black Bitter had a reputation. Even if the brewery was in new hands, even if there'd been this swingeing 'rationalization', which meant firing half the lads, it was still Bridelow beer.

Gnat's piss! By 'eck, he'd never thought to hear that. When his daughter rang from Oxford, in the early afternoon, the Rector barely made it to the phone in time.

'Were you in the garden?' Catherine asked him suspiciously, and Hans didn't deny it. It had taken him almost a minute to hobble from the kitchen to the study.

Pointless, however, trying to conceal anything from Cathy. 'How's the knee?' she demanded at once and with a certain menace.

'Oh,' Hans said, as airily as he could manage with clenched teeth. 'Could be worse, you know.'

'I've no doubt that it could, Pop. But worse than what is what I'd like to know.'

Hans tried to keep from screaming out loud as he fell into the window chair, pulling the phone on to his knees.

Cathy said, 'I don't suppose you'd even tell me if you'd had to have a Zimmer frame screwed into the back of the pulpit.'

The still-aggressive sun, having gouged chunks out of the church wall, began to attack the study window, and when the Rector twisted away from it, his left knee felt like a slab of volcanic rock with a core of molten lava.

'Well, actually,' he said, abandoning pretence with a sigh, 'it couldn't be a lot worse.'

'That's it,' his daughter said. 'I'm on my way. Pop. Expect me for supper.'

'No, no, no. Your studies… whatever they are.'

Cathy said crisply, 'In a post-graduate situation, as I keep explaining, you get a fair bit of leeway. I'm coming up.'

'No. Listen. You don't understand.' Raising his voice, trying to shout down the pain as much as her. 'I'm getting a lot of help. The Mothers' Union… terribly kind, and… look, when I need you, I promise I'll be in touch. You know I will.'

He swallowed a great slab of breath and bit his tongue, jamming his palm over the mouthpiece just in time. Change the subject. Talk about something else. 'Erm, Matt Castle… Poor Matt died on Sunday night.'

'Oh, no.'

'It was a mercy, Catherine.'

'Yes, I suppose it would be. Did…?'

'Oh, very quick. In the end, he spent no more than a few hours in hospital. Kept signing himself out, you see. Determined to die in Bridelow. He was even out on the Moss yesterday morning, I'm told, with Lottie and the boy. Brave man. Poor Matt.'

'What's going to happen to the pub?'

'She'll stay on, I imagine. For a while. You know what she's like. Terribly independent. Old Mrs Wagstaff sent one of her special potions across, to help her sleep. Lottie bunged it back at once, with Willie. She's very resistant to all that.'

'When's the funeral?'

'Friday afternoon.'.

'You're going to have difficulty, aren't you? Especially if it gets colder.'

Putting her finger on it, as usual. So Hans had to come out with what, apart from the pain, was on his mind. 'Cathy, they've given me a curate.'

'Oh,' she said, surprised. 'Well, you certainly could do win the help. But it, er… that could be a headache, couldn't it?'

'It was only a matter of time,' Hans said, 'parish this size. Suppose I've been holding out. Putting it off. That is, I realise this sort of thing – new chaps – has always taken care of itself in the past. I mean, I myself was not… well, not, perhaps, the man they would have chosen at the time. But one gets acclimatized. Headache? Hmm… let's hope not.'

'Anybody I know?'

'Oh, a young fellow, few months out of college. Simon's very keen… Well, actually not that young. Late twenties, I suppose. Used to be a teacher. Joel Beard, his name. Pleasant enough lad. Slightly earnest, but so many of them are, aren't they?'

Cathy said, 'Jesus Christ.'

Hans didn't say anything. His daughter never blasphemed for effect.

'I was at the high school with him.' Hans could hear her frowning. 'For a year or two. That is, he was four or five years in front of me. He was Head Boy. One of those who takes it seriously. Very authoritative, very proper. Seemed more of a grown-up than some of the teachers, do you know what I mean? Most of the girls were crazy about him. But I was never into Greek gods.'

She stopped. 'Pop, listen, you do know he was at St Oswald's, don't you?'

Yes, he did. He was surprised, though, that she knew the significance of this. 'It's not necessarily a drawback, you know, Cathy.'

He tried to straighten his right leg and, although there was no great pain in this one, the right knee fought him all the way. Both knees now. God save us. Wheelchair job soon. Or one could go into hospital and leave Joel Beard in charge.

'Simon thinks he's a star,' he said. 'Which means, I suppose, that the silly sod's fallen in love with him. He used, apparently… Joel, this is… he used to be some sort of Born Again Christian. Before he decided to go straight, as it were.'

You call two years at St Oswald's going straight? The most notoriously fundamentalist theological college in the country?'

'I like to think I'm broadminded,' Hans said.

'Sure, but how broadminded is Ma Wagstaff?'

'Look,' Hans said, 'people adjust. Bridelow adjusts people. I'd rather have a fundamentalist or a charismatic than some bureaucrat with a briefcase and a mobile phone. Anyway, the Diocese likes him. "He's tough, he's athletic" – this is Simon talking – "and he's bringing God back into the arena." Bit of muscle. They're into that these days. The anti-pansy lobby. Even Simon, ironically. I mean, all right, I could refuse him, I could tell them to take him back, say he doesn't fit it… but somebody's going to ask, why doesn't he fit? And anyway, who's to say…? They might not be… orthodox here, but they have a strong faith and strong, simple principles. Ma Wagstaff? Very broadminded in some ways.'

'Hmmm,' said Cathy, unconvinced.

'However, rest assured, I won't let him take Matt's funeral. I suspect the ladies have plans.'

'God, no, you mustn't let him do that.'

'So if I have to go out there on a pair of crutches… or a Zimmer frame.'

'Don't you go talking about Zimmer frames. Pop.'

'You did.'

'That's when I'll come,' Catherine decided. 'I'll come on Wednesday night. I'll get you through the funeral. I won't have you talking about Zimmer frames.'

'Now, look…'

'I'm not going to argue, my phone bill's getting ridiculous. I'll see you Wednesday night.'

And she hung up on him.

'Thank you,' the Rector said with resignation into the dead phone. 'I suppose.' The Hall had once been surrounded by parkland, although now it just looked like ordinary fields with a well-ordered assembly of mature trees – beech and sycamore and horse-chestnut.