Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

He turned and looked at her; she saw something swirling in his eyes and the truth exploded in her mind. Oh, Christ, don't let me taste it. God almighty, don't let it come. Was the girl, what's her name, Gina…it was the girl, it wasny you, Matt, wasny you… please, don't let it be you… In the silence, the kind which only new snow seemed to make, they looked at each other in the streetlight made brighter by the snow.

'This is it then,' Matt said flatly.

'Think I might cry again.' But she was lying now. There was the residue of something unpleasant here, something more than sadness swirling in Matt's eyes.

Matt had his door open. 'Pass us your guitar.'

'Huh? Oh. Right. Sorry.'

The street was silent, snow starting to make the three and four-storey houses look like soft furnishings. Lights shone pastel green, pink and cream behind drawn curtains. Matt took the guitar case, snowflakes making a nest in his denim cap. He pushed it back. He said, just as relaxed, just as mild and just as offhand as he'd been earlier, 'One thing I've always meant to ask. Why do you always take this thing on stage with you?'

'The guitar?'

'No, lass. The case. This old and cracked and not very valuable guitar case. You never let the bloody thing out of your sight.'

'Oh.' How long had he been noticing this? She looked at him. His eyes were hard. He'd never asked her questions; everything he knew about her she'd volunteered. Matt was incurious.

And because of that she told him.

'There's… kind of a wee pocket inside the case, and inside of that there's, like, something my mother gave me when I was young.'

He didn't stop looking at her.

'It's only a comb. Kind of an antique, you know? Very old. Too heavy to carry around in your pocket. It means a lot to me, I suppose.'

'That's your mother, the…?'

'The gypsy woman. Aye. Ma mother, the gypsy woman.'

She shook snow off her hair. 'They're big on good luck tokens, the gypsies. Throw'm around like beads.'

Matt said roughly, 'Don't go making light of it.'

'Huh?'

'You're trying to make it seem of no account. Traditions are important. Sometimes I think they're all we have that's worthwhile.' He propped the instrument in its stiff black case against the wide concrete base of the streetlamp.

Moira said, 'Look, you're gonny get soaked.'

He laughed scornfully, like the noise a crow makes.

'Matt,' she said, 'I'll see you again, yeh?' And she did want to, she really did. Sure she did.

He smiled. 'We'll be on different circuits now, lass. You in a suite at the Holiday Inn, me over the kitchen at the Dog and Duck. Tell you what, I'll buy all your records. Even if it is rock and roll. How's that?'

She took a step towards him, hesitant. He was only a wee bit taller than she was.

This was it. The final seconds of the last reel.

Two years in the band, building up her reputation on the back of his. Matt watching her with some pride. A touch supervisory at first, then graciously taking half a pace back until even the wee folk clubs were announcing 'The Matt Castle Band with Moira Cairns'. And a couple of times, to her embarrassment, Moira Cairns in bigger letters.

And now she was leaving. Off to London for the big money.

Traitorous bitch…

'Matt.. It was the worst moment. She should kiss him too, but that would seem perfunctory, demeaning and pretty damn cheap.

Also, for the first time, she didn't want to go that close to him.

He'd pulled down his cap; she tried to peer under the peak, to find out what his eyes were saying.

Nothing. His eyes would show no resentment, no disappointment. She was leaving the band which had changed her life, made her name. Leaving the band just when she was starting to put something back, and Matt felt…

He felt nothing.

Because… Jesus…

'Did you go on the peat today?' she asked him in a very small voice, the snow falling between them. 'Did you go on the peat with the pipes? Did you let the damn peat absorb it?'

And then the projector stuttered and stalled again, images shivering on the screen of the night, and she saw him suddenly all in white. Maybe just an illusion of the snow. He was very still and framed in white. It wasn't nice. The white was frilled around him, like the musty lace handkerchiefs in the top dresser drawer at her gran's house.

And a whiff of soiled perfume.

Death?

For the first time, there was a real menace to him. Too transient to tell whether it was around him or from him. Her throat swelled. She coughed and the tears came, the wrong kind of tears. She felt the snow forming on the top of her own head; it was almost warm. Maybe she looked like that too, shrouded in white.

Matt held out his right hand and she gripped it like a lifeline, but the hand was deathly cold. She told herself, Cold hands, warm heart, yeah? And tried to pull him closer – but all the time wanting to keep him away and hating herself for that.

He dropped her hand and then put both of his on her shoulders. His arms were rigid, like girders, but she felt they were trembling, his whole body quivering with some titanic tension, something strong holding out against something potentially stronger, like a steel suspension bridge in a hurricane.

Then he said, 'Going to show me?' Voice colder than the snow.

She wanted to squirm away; she made herself remain still, trying to find his eyes. No. Please. Don't spoil this. I'll buy it. You're a selfless, self sacrificing guy. I don't want to know any more.

'This famous comb,' he said with a smile that was faintly unpleasant.

'It's no' famous,' she said quickly, almost snapping.

His brown eyes were steady. Hey, come on…this is Matt Castle. What's he gonna do, steal it off you, snatch it out your hand and drive away?

Keep it safe. Never take it out for show… Never treat it as a trinket or a wee souvenir. You understand, child?

No, see, all it is. He wants a link. A special moment, something between us and no one else.

You owe him. You owe him that.

You owe him nothing.

She stopped searching his eyes, didn't want to know what they might have to tell her about Matt Castle, the kindly father figure, that Matt Castle who'd said, Take your chance, grab it while you can, lass. Never mind us. We're owd men.

Dumbly, Moira laid the guitar case on the pavement in the snow and – hands shaking with the cold and the nerves – flipped up the chromium catch.

It was like opening someone's coffin.

Only the guitar lay in state. In a panic, she felt beneath the machine-heads for the velvet pouch which held the ancient metal comb.

I have to. I owe him, Mammy. I'm sorry, but I owe him.

From Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

This little book bids you, the visitor, a cordial welcome to Bridelow Across the Moss, a site of habitation for over two thousand years and the home of the famous Bridelow Black Beer.

Bridelow folk would never be so immodest as to describe their tiny, lonely village as unique. But unique it is, both in situation and character.

Although little more than half an hour's drive from the cities of Manchester and Sheffield, the village is huddled in isolation between the South Pennine moors and the vast peatbog known as Bridelow Moss. So tucked away, as the local saying goes, 'It's a wonder the sun knows where to come of a morning…'

A spring morning. A hesitant sun edging over the moor out of a mist pale as milk. Only when it clears the church tower does the sun find a few patches of blue to set it off, give it a bit of confidence.

The sun hovers a while, blinking in and out of the sparse shreds of cloud before making its way down the village street, past the cottage where Ma Wagstaff lives, bluetits breakfasting from the peanuts in two mesh bags dangling from the rowan trees in the little front garden.