Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'A time ago, lad, not long after you left school, we had some trouble. D'you remember? Wi' a man?'

'I do and I don't,' Willie said evasively. Meaning he'd always found it best not to get involved in what the village traditionally regarded as woman's work, no matter how close to home.

Ma said, 'He were clever. I'll say that for him. Knew his stuff. Knew what he were after. But he were bad news. Wanted to use us. Had to be repelled.'

Willie did believe, though, at the bottom of him. Most of them did, despite all the jokes.

'What about him?"

Ma's lips tightened, then she said, 'They're allus looking for an opening, and this one stood out a bloody mile. And Matt Castle dint help, chipping away at it, making it bigger.'

'Eh?'

'This musical thing he were working on. T' Bogman.'

'Oh…aye…'

'Another way in, Willie. Weren't doing that on his own, were he?'

Willie went quiet. He knew Matt had been consulting with some writer, but the man never came to Bridelow, Matt always went to the man. Until the final few weeks when he couldn't drive himself any more.

He looked at his mother with her big, daft funeral hat and dared to feel compassion. She didn't need this, her time of life.

'Look, don't get me wrong, Ma…'

Ma Wagstaff's fearsome eyes flared, but they couldn't hold the fire for very long nowadays.

'… but you've bin at this for a fair few years now…'

'More than fifty,' Ma said wistfully.

'So, like… like I were saying to Milly… don't you ever get to, like… retire I mean, is there nobody else can take over?'

Ma straightened her hat. 'There is one,' she said biblically, 'who will come after me.'

'But what 'asn't come yet, like,' Willie said, stepping carefully. You could push it just so far with Ma, and then…

The eyes switched from dipped to full-beam. 'Now, look, you cheeky little bugger! When I need your advice, that's when they'll be nailing me up an' all.'

Willie held up both hands, backed off towards the door.

'Which is not yet! Got that?'

'Oh, aye,' said Willie.

Outside in the hard, white daylight, he looked across at the church.

'On me way, Matt,' Willie said with a sniff and a sigh, rubbing his hands in the cold. 'I hope they've nailed you down, me old mate. Good and tight.'

Shit, could this be the right place?

Realistically – no.

First off, there was no elevator. The stairway, when he managed to find it, was real narrow, the steps greasy. He didn't even like to think what that smell was, but if he was unfortunate enough to be accommodated in this block he'd surely be kicking somebody's ass to get the goddamn drains checked out.

Hardly seemed likely she'd trust her fortunes to a guy working out of a dump like this. But when he made the third landing, there was the sign on the door, and the gold lettering said,

THE M. W. KAUFMANN AGENCY. PLEASE KNOCK AND ENTER.

Which he did, and inside it was actually a little better than he'd guessed it would be. Clean, anyhow, with a deep pink carpet and wall-to-wall file-cabinets. Also, one of those ancient knee hole desks up against the window. And the knees in the hole were not, he noticed, in there because they needed to be concealed.

She was about eighteen, with ringlets and big eyes. She swivelled her chair around and looked at him the way, to his eternal gratitude, women always had.

'I… uh.. He stood in the doorway for a couple of seconds, trying to salvage some breath. This guy Kaufmann had to be pretty damn fit, working here.

'Mr Macbeth, is it?'

He nodded dumbly.

'Do excuse the stairs,' she said. 'Mr Kaufmann represents quite a number of singers.'

'Huh?' Doubtless there was some underlying logic here concerning singers and breath-control, but he was too bushed to figure it out. He hung around in the doorway while she went off to consult with M. W. Kaufmann in his inner sanctum.

Thinking, So you did this again, Macbeth. Put on a suit and tie this time, cancelled your lunch appointment, got busted for speeding by a cop with an accent so thick it sounded like he hadn't got around to swallowing his breakfast. You really did all of this. Over a woman. Again. Maybe, he thought, as the kid beckoned him in, maybe this is what they call a mid-life crisis. Sure. Like all the other mid-life crises I been having since I turned twenty-nine.

'Mr Macbeth,' M. W. Kaufmann said. 'I am Malcolm Kaufmann.'

They shook hands, and, waving him to a chair, Kaufmann said, 'This all seems rather, er, irregular.'

'I'm an irregular kind of guy,' Macbeth said winningly.

Malcolm Kaufmann looked less than won. He was a small, foxy-eyed person with stiff hair the unnatural colour of light-tan shoes.

The secretary was hanging around, eyeing up Macbeth without visible embarrassment. 'Thank you, Fiona.' Kaufmann waved her out, eyeing up Macbeth himself but in a more discriminating fashion.

'So,' he said. 'You're in television, I understand.'

Macbeth confessed he was, planning to build up the image a little. Then he changed his mind and built it up a lot. How he was over here for the international Celtic conference, but also on account of his company was tossing around an idea for a major mini-series… piece of shlock about this American guy, doesn't know his ass from his sporran, comes over to Scotland to look up his Celtic roots and before he knows it he's besotted with this, uh, mysterious Scottish lady.

'I see,' Kaufmann said.

Yeah, I guess you do at that, Macbeth was thinking. Besotted with a beautiful, mysterious lady who sings like a fallen angel and has wild, black hair all down her back with just one single, long-established strand of grey. Under the spell of an enchantress who can make the earth move, and the walls and the ceiling, and after you meet her you don't sleep too good any more.

He said, 'Did Moira ever act?'

'Ah.' Kaufmann leaned back in his chair, tilting it against the wall, tapping his rather prominent front teeth with a ballpoint pen. 'Well, her first love, naturally, is her music, but I do believe…' Clearly searching his memory for the time she'd done a walk-on for some local soap.

Macbeth helped him out. 'Certainly has the charisma, don't you think?'

'Indeed, indeed. The same, er, quality, perhaps, as that apparent in… who shall I…? Cher…? Does that comparison do her justice, would you say?'

'Spoken like a good agent, Malcolm.'

Kaufmann's eyes narrowed. 'Don't be deceived by the surroundings, Mr Macbeth. I am a good agent. You say… that you encountered Moira at the Earl's recent Celtic gathering. That would be on the evening when her performance was unaccountably disrupted.'

'Right,' Macbeth said. 'Unaccountably disrupted.'

'By what appears to have been an earth tremor…'

'Which, when it happened, I don't recall having felt.'

'Really.'

'Maybe I'm insensitive that way,' Macbeth said.

'But you don't really think so.'

Macbeth shrugged. 'Like you say, she has charisma.'

They both nodded.

'Of course,' Macbeth said, 'this is early days. See, first off, what I'd really like is to meet with Moira over lunch before I leave here… discuss things informally.'

'And how long will you be here?'

'Two weeks, at the outside.'

'Well, I shall no doubt be in touch with her very shortly.' Kaufmann smoothed down his unconvincing hair. 'And I shall naturally inform her of your interest. Then perhaps the three of us might…'

'Yeah, that'd be, uh, that'd be just… She in town right now?'

'I fear not.'

'See, I thought if she was doing a gig someplace, I'd kind of like to be in the audience.'

Kaufmann smiled. 'This sudden interest in Moira… this is entirely professional, of course.'