Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

The cats, Bob and Jim, sitting together on Ma's front step – donkeystoned to a full-moon whiteness – observe the bluetits through narrowed green eyes but resist their instincts because Ma will be about soon.

And while Ma understands their instincts all too well, she does not appreciate blood on her step. Milly Gill, shedding her cardigan at the Post Office door, thought the mist this morning was almost like a summer heat-haze, which wasn't bad for the second week in March.

It made Milly feel excited, somewhere deep inside her majestic bosom. It made her feel so energetic that she wanted to wander off for long walks, to fill up her reservoirs after the winter. And to go and see the Little Man. See what he had in his reservoir.

And of course it made her feel creative, too. Tonight she'd be pulling out that big sketch pad and the coloured pencils and getting to work on this year's design to be done in flowers for the dressing of the Holy Well. It was, she decided, going to reflect everything she could sense about her this morning.

Milly Gill thought, I'm forty-nine and I feel like a little girl.

This was what the promise of spring was supposed to do.

'Thank you. Mother,' Milly said aloud, with a big, innocent grin. 'And you too, sir!'

The Moss, a vast bed, hangs on to its damp duvet as usual until the sun is almost overhead. Behind temporary traffic-lights, about half a mile from the village, a Highways Authority crew is at work, widening the road which crosses the peat, a long-overdue improvement, although not everybody is in favour of improving access to the village.

It's close to midday before the foreman decides it's warm enough to strip to the waist.

This is the man who finds the chocolate corpse. The splendour of the morning dimmed a little for the Rector when, on getting out of bed, he felt a twinge.

It was, as more often than not, in the area of his left knee. 'We really must get you a plastic one,' the doctor had said last time. 'I should think the pain's pretty awful, isn't it?'

'Oh.' The Rector flexing his creased-up Walter Matthau semi-smile. 'Could be worse.' Then the. doctor ruefully shaking his head, making a joke about the Rector being determined to join the league of Holy Martyrs.

'I was thinking of joining the squash club, actually,' the Rector had said, and they'd both laughed and wondered how he was managing to keep this up.

The answer to this was Ma Wagstaff's mixture.

Standing by the window of his study, with sunshine strewn all over the carpet, pleasant around his bare feet, the Rector balanced a brimming teaspoonful of Ma's mixture, and his eyes glazed briefly at the horror of the stuff.

It looked like green frogspawn. He knew it was going to make his throat feel nostalgic for castor oil.

The bottle, as usual, was brown and semi-opaque so he wouldn't have to see the sinister strands and tendrils waving about in there like weed on the bottom of an aquarium.

But still, it worked.

Not a 'miracle' cure, of course. Ma Wagstaff, who promised nothing, would have been shocked at any such suggestion.

'Might just ease it a bit,' she'd say gruffly, leaving the bottle on his hall table, by the phone.

Through the study window the Rector saw sun-dappled gravestones and the great Norman tower of St Bride's.

He rubbed his feet into the sunshiny carpet, raised his eyes to heaven, the spoon to his lips, and swallowed. Out on the Moss, the foreman stands in the middle of the trench, in front of the JCB, waving his arms until the driver halts the big digger and sticks his head inquiringly round the side of the cab.

"Owd on a bit, Jason. I've found summat.'

The trench, at this point, is about five feet deep.

'If it's money,' says the JCB driver, 'just pass it up 'ere and I'll hide it under t'seat.' 'Well,' said Mr Dawber. 'as it's such a lovely day, we'd best be thinking about the spring. Now – think back to last year – what does that mean?'

Some of them had the good manners to put their hands up, but two little lads at the back just shouted it out.

'THE SPRING CROSS!'

Mr Dawber didn't make an issue of it. 'Aye,' he said. 'The Spring Cross.' And the two troublemakers at the back cheered at that because it would get them out of the classroom, into the wood and on to the moors.

'So,' said Mr Dawber. 'Who can tell me what we'll be looking for to put in the Spring Cross?'

The hands went up as fast and rigid as old-fashioned railway signals. Ernie Dawber looked around, singled out a little girl.

'Yes… Meryl.'

'Catkins!'

'Aye, that's right, catkins. What else? Sebastian.'

'Pussy willows!'

'Ye-es. What else? Benjamin.'

'Acorns?'

They all had a good cackle at this. Benjamin was the smallest child in the class and had the air of one who found life endlessly confusing. Ernie Dawber sympathized. He'd always reckoned that the day he retired he'd be able to sit back, job well enough done, and start to understand a few basics. But everything had just got hazier.

With them all looking at him, giggling and nudging each other, Benjamin seemed to get even smaller. Mr Dawber had a little deliberation about this while the class was settling down.

'Now then…' he said thoughtfully. 'Who can tell me when we find acorns?'

'Autumn!' four or five of the cleverer ones chorused scornfully.

'That's right. So, what I'm going to do – and don't forget to remind me when the times comes, lad – I'm going to put Benjamin, because he knows all about acorns… in charge of making the Autumn Cross.'

The clever ones looked aghast, unable to find any justice in this, and Ernie Dawber smiled to see it. Corning in just a few hours a week, to teach the children about nature, at least gave him more time to consider the psychology of the job.

'Now then.' He clapped his hands to change the mood.

'What else do we need for the Spring Cross? Tom.'

'Birds' eggs.'

Mr Dawber's voice dropped an octave.

'We most certainly do not take birds' eggs to put into the Spring Cross, or for any other reason, Thomas Garside. And if it comes to my notice that any of you nave disturbed any nests there's going to be Trouble.'

There was silence.

'And don't anybody think I won't find out about it,' said Mr Dawber.

And they knew he would, because, one way or another, Mr Dawber found out about everything. And if it was important enough he put it in The Book of Bridelow. The foreman tells the JCB driver to switch his engine off. His voice is shaking.

'Come down a minute, Jason. Come and take a look at this.' The driver, a younger man, swings, loose-limbed, to the ground. His boots shudder on the surface of the Moss. 'What you got?'

'I'm not sure.' The foreman seems reluctant to go back in the trench.

The driver grinning, shambling over to the pit and balancing expertly on the rim. Can't make it out at first. Looks like a giant bar of dark chocolate.

Then, while the foreman is attempting to light a cigarette and nervously scattering matches over the peat, the driver suddenly realises what he's staring at, and, when the thought lurches into his head, it's eerily echoed by the foreman's fractured croak.

'Looks like a dead 'un to me, Jason.'

The driver falls over backwards trying not to topple into the trench. Just Eliza Horridge and Shaw now, and the drawing room at The Hall was too big.

He was taller but slighter than his father, who used to stand, legs apart, in front of the fireplace, lighting his pipe, belching dragon's breath and making it seem as if the room had been built around him. When Arthur Horridge spoke, the walls had closed in, as if the very fabric of the building was paying attention.

'The w-w-w-worst thing about all this…' Shaw's thin voice no more emphatic than the tinkling of the chandelier when a window was open, '… is that when der-der-Dad wanted to expand ter-ten years ago, the bank wouldn't back him, and now…'