Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

He was aware that Rob and Rhona had entered the circle and were murmuring to themselves in low voices. They seemed to have taken all their clothes off. They began to touch each other and then to have sex. Shaw was deeply shocked but kept quiet about it. It went on for some time. Until suddenly, dreamily, a plump, spotty, middle-aged woman called Andrea stood up and joined Rob and Rhona in the circle and began to behave as though there were some other people in there too.

'Hello, David,' she said joyfully, the first time she'd spoken all afternoon. 'All right, Kevin?'

She giggled. 'Yes,' she said. 'Me too. Do you like it here? It's nice, isn't it?'

At that stage Rhona and Rob left her and came out and sat with Therese and Shaw. Flies and midges buzzed around Andrea in the dusk. Shaw seemed to fall asleep. When he awoke he saw Andrea on her knees in the circle with her arms around what looked like two dusty shadows.

'Isn't it heart-warming?' Therese was whispering, as if they were watching a weepy from the back stalls. 'She's becoming reconciled to the loss of her brothers.'

'What happened to them?'

'They died,' Therese said. 'A long time ago. She killed them. With a penknife. They were only little. 'Course she was only a child herself. It was such a shame, they put her away for a long time.'

He didn't remember how they got back to the cars except that it was dark by then and it didn't seem to take nearly as long as it had taken them to get to the circle. In the churchyard, Therese said, 'Is she here – your mother?'

'No, she… she thinks she's got that Taiwanese flu. I've tendered her apologies.'

'Funny, isn't it, the way she won't come into Bridelow?

'She should leave. She's no connections here.'

'Why won't she leave?'

'I don't know,' Shaw said, but he did. His mother couldn't bear to be supplanted by Therese. His mother did not like Therese. This was understandable. Sometimes he wasn't sure that the word 'like' precisely conveyed his own feelings.

Her dark hair, swept back today, was mostly inside the collar of the fur coat. She wore a deep purple lipstick.

Nor, he thought, was 'love' appropriate. So why…

Therese nodded back towards the village. Shaw looked his watch: three minutes to four, and the light was weakening.

… why…

Therese said, 'It's coming.' Meaning the funeral procession.

Shaw shuddered again, with a cold pleasure that made him afraid of her and of himself.

'You know,' Therese said, 'I think it's time you met father. Properly.'

'Is he dead?' Shaw asked fearfully.

Everything that happened, the dreadful inevitability of it all, Ernie Dawber would remember in horribly exquisite detail. Like a series of grim cameos. Or the meticulously etched illustrations in the pre-war picture-book from which he used to tell stories to the youngest children on Friday afternoons, enjoying the measured resonance of his own headmasterly tones and then holding up the book to what was left of the light so they could all see the pictures.

Cosy, back then. Friday afternoons in mid-autumn, with Mr Dawber and The Brothers Grimm. Home to buttered toast for tea.

Now it was another Friday afternoon. But this time the text was being read to Ernie and he could see all the pictures, the pages turning over in a terrible, considered rhythm, until he wanted to leap up from his seat in the back row, crying out, Stop… stop!

He didn't leap up much any more. Sometimes, lately, he felt unsteady and disconnected in his head. But when he went to the doc's for some pills for it, the doc had made him have tests. Sorry he'd gone now.

No leaping up, anyroad. Nowt he could do except to witness it, for this was all he was now: the observer. The local historian, dry and factual. Not for him to comment or to judge. Nothing that happened on this day would ever be recorded, anyway, in The Book of Bridelow. And so was best forgotten.

As if ever he could. Cosy, too (the first picture) in the bar at The Man before the funeral, having a whisky for the cold, with his half of Black, his mind charting the changes from that warm evening when Matt Castle had brought them hope.

Although, unknown to him at the time, the Change must have begun on the bright March morning when the roadmen found the bog body.

Hand clenching on his glass of Black, now condemned as gnat's piss by them as knows. The only light in the bar is greenish-blue, from the old gas-mantle Matt Castle reinstated, childishly happy when he found it could still be made to work.

Such small things seemed to delight Matt, painstakingly patching up frail memories of his childhood.

Unaware that he, too, was part of the Change.

Behind the bar, Stan Burrows in a black waistcoat, says passively, 'Tough about Gus Bibby, eh?'

'Why? What's up?'

'You not heard, Ernie? He's closing up the Stores.'

'No!'

'I could see it coming, me. Just not up to it no more. Bent double half the time. I went in for a bucket last week, had to climb up and get it meself. 'Sides which, he's selling nowt. What can you buy in Gus's you can't get in Macclesfield twenty per cent cheaper?'

'It's a matter of principle, Stan. We're glad enough to shop at Gus Bibby's when there's snow or floods and you can't get across the Moss. Anyway, what about his son?'

'How many days a year can't you get across t'Moss since they've built that road up? Nay, it's price of progress, int it?'

'Progress? Ernie nearly choking on his so-so half of Black.

Stan saying, 'Nay, Bibby's'll shut and it'll stay shut. Who's going t'buy that place?'

'What about his son?'

'He'll not come back, will he? Got a good job wi' Gas Board in Stockport. Would you come back?'

'Aye,' said Ernie. 'I would.'

'How many's like you, though, Ernie? Any more. Be honest. How many?' Second picture.

Halfway up the street, church behind him, looking down towards The Man. From up here, the pub looks as if it's built on the Moss itself.

A bitter wind has blown through Bridelow, snatching the leaves from the trees and bleaching the colour from the faces inside the front porches. The faces hovering, ghostly in the shadows, the bodies invisible in black.

The villagers start to step from their doorways; the coffin's coming.

A fair turn-out, thanks to Matt's folk-music friends from the Manchester circuit and outsiders with an interest in Bridelow like Dr Roger Hall. And the former brewery workers who failed to find employment in Buxton, Macclesfield, Glossop, or even Manchester and Sheffield; they're all here, except for the ones hunched over their fires with their Beecham's Powders and a bad case of Taiwanese flu, the like of which would never have got Across the Moss in the old days.

Ernie fancies he can hear wretched coughing from behind the drawn curtains, as if the virus has spread to the stones themselves. Turn the page, lad.

Up by the arched lych-gate now, watching people stepping down to the cobbles to join the ragged tail of the procession.

The blinds are down at the Post Office, soon to be the only shop remaining in Bridelow. Ernie hardly recognizes black-clad Milly Gill, who normally looks like a walking botanical garden. Is she in mourning just for Matt Castle, or for Bridelow itself?

The coffin's at a funny angle because of the respective heights of the men carrying it, from little Willie to gangling Frank. Are Willie and Milly Gill back together? Ernie hopes so; they need each other, time like this.

Lottie Castle follows immediately behind and, by 'eck, mourning becomes her, she's never looked as fine, the red hair swept back under a neat, black pillbox hat with a little veil, generous mouth set hard. With her, half a pace behind, is the lad, Dic, a leather case under his arm. Go on, turn over, you've got to look…