Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'We'll ride it,' Liz Horridge told him firmly. 'We always have. We've got twenty-three people depending on us for an income.'

'Ter-ter-too many,' said Shaw. 'Fer-far…'

'No!' The first time ever that she hadn't waited politely for him to finish a sentence. 'That's not something your father would have said.'

She turned away from him, glaring out of the deep Georgian-style window at the brewery's grey tower through the bare brown tree trunks. Its stonework badly needed repointing, one more job they couldn't afford.

'When sales were sagging,' Liz said, as she'd said to him several times before, 'Arthur always blamed himself, and it was our belt – the family's – that was tightened. I remember when he sold the Jag to-'

'It was der-different then!' Shaw almost shrieked, making her look at him. 'There was no competition to ser-speak of. Wh-what did they need to know about mer-mer-market forces in those days?'

'And it's all changed so quickly, has it, in the six months since your father's death?'

'It was cher-changing… yer-years before. He just couldn't see it. He didn't w-want to ser-see it.'-

'He knew what his duty was,' Liz snapped, and her son began to wring his hands in frustration.

The sun shone through the long window, a cruel light on Shaw, the top of his forehead winking like a feeble flashlight.

If baldness was hereditary, people doubtless asked, why had\ Arthur managed to keep most of his hair until the end, while Shaw's had begun to fall out before he turned twenty?

Behind the anger, Liz felt the usual sadness for him, while acknowledging that sympathy was a poor substitute for maternal pride.

'Mother,' Shaw said determinedly, 'listen to me. We've ger-got to do it. Ser-soon. We've got to trim the workforce. Ser-ser-some of them have ger-got to go. Or else…'

'Never,' said Liz Horridge. But she knew that such certainty was not her prerogative. Shaw was the owner of the Bridelow Brewery now. He glared mutinously at her, thin lips pressed tight together, only too aware of how much authority he lost whenever he opened them.

'Or else what?' Liz demanded. 'What happens if we don't trim the workforce?'

She looked down at herself, at the baggy jeans she wore, for which she was rather too old and a little too shapeless these days. Realising why she was wearing the jeans. Spring cleaning.

An operation which she would, for the first time, be undertaking alone, because, when Josie had gone into hospital, she hadn't taken on another cleaner for economic reasons. Thus trimming her own workforce of one.

The ber-ber-brewery's not a charity, Mother,' Shaw said pleadingly. 'Jim Ford says we could be out of ber-business inside a year.'

'Or else what?' Liz persisted.

'Or else we sell it,' Shaw said simply.

Liz laughed. 'To whom?'

'Ter-ter-to an outside… one of the big firms.'

'That's not an option,' Liz said flatly. 'You know that. Beer's been brewed in Bridelow since time immemorial. It's part of the local heritage.'

'And still cer-could be! Sell it as a going concern. Why not?'

'And you could live with that, could you?'

He didn't answer. Liz Horridge was shaking with astonishment. She faced him like an angry mother cat, narrowing her eyes, penetrating. 'Who's responsible for this? Who's been putting these thoughts in your head?'

'Ner-nobody.' But he couldn't hold her gaze. He was wearing a well-cut beige suit over a button-down shirt and a strange leather tie. He was going out again. He'd been going out a lot lately. He had no interest in the brewery, and he wasn't even trying to hide this any longer.

'And what about the pub? Is this fancy buyer going to take that on as well?'

'Ser-somebody will.' Shaw shrugged uselessly, backing towards the door. 'Anyway, we'll talk about it later, I've got to…'

'Where are you going?'

'I… I'm…' He went red and began to splutter. Pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, wiped his lips. For years she'd worried because he didn't go out enough, because he hadn't got a girlfriend (although this had hardly been surprising). Now at last, at the age of thirty-one, he was feebly groping for control of his own destiny… and floundering about, unbalancing everything.

Liz Horridge turned away from him and walked to the other window, the one with the view of Bridelow, which summer would soon obscure. She could see the humped but still sprightly figure of Mrs Wagstaff in the distance, lugging a shopping basket across the cobbles to Gus Bibby's General Stores.

Her breast heaved and she felt tears pumping behind her eyes.

Arthur… it's not my fault.

Mrs Wagstaff stopped in the middle of the street and – although it was too far away for Liz to be certain – seemed to stare up through the trees at the Hall… at this very window.

As though the old girl had overheard Liz's thoughts. As though she could feel the agony.

When Liz turned around, wet-eyed, she found she was alone; Shaw had quietly left the room. Although he'll be cool enough when the Press and the radio and TV reporters interview him in a few hours' time, the County Highways foreman is so shaken up right now that he has to be revived with whisky from the JCB driver's secret flask.

What he's discovered will come to be known as the Bridelow Bogman. Or the Man in the Moss. Important people are going to travel hundreds of miles to gaze with reverence upon its ancient face.

'And what was your reaction when you found it?' asks one of the reporters. 'What did you think it was?'

'Thought it were a sack o' spuds or summat,' the foreman says, quotably. His moment of glory. But out of his hands soon enough – so old and so exciting to the experts, like one of them Egyptian mummies, that nobody else seems to find it upsetting or horrifying, not like a real body.

But, though he'll never admit it, the foreman reckons he's never going to forget that first moment.

'And what did you think when you realised what it was?'

'Dunno, really… thought it were maybe an owd tramp or summat.'

'Were you shocked?'

'Nah. You find all sorts in this job.'

But that night the foreman will dream about it and awake with a whimper, reaching for his warm missus. And then fall asleep and wake again, his sweat all over both of them and his mind bulging with the moment he bent down and found his hand was gripping its cold and twisted face, his thumb between what might have been its teeth. Part Two black glow

From Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

The first-time visitor to Bridelow is strongly urged to approach it from the west, from which direction a most dramatic view of the village is attained.

From a distance of a mile or two, Bridelow appears almost as a craggy island when viewed from the narrow road which is virtually a causeway across Bridelow Moss.

A number of legends are attached to the Moss, some of which will be discussed later in this book.

In early summer, Bridelow hopefully dolls herself up, puts on a bit of make-up and an obliging smile for the sun. But the sun doesn't linger. On warm, cloudless evenings like this it saves its final pyrotechnics for the moor.

Sunset lures hues from the moor that you see at no other time – sensual pinks and melodramatic mauves which turn its stiff and spiky surface into velvet

… a delusion, thought Joel Beard, soon to leave theological college. A red light tenderizing the face of an old whore.

He had his back to the sinking sun. To him, it seemed agitated tonight, throwing out its farewell flames in a long, dying scream. As well it might.

Most of the lonely village was below the moor, and the sun's flailing rays were missing it. The stone houses hanging from the hill were in shadow and so was the body of the church on its summit. Only the spikes of the church tower were dusted with red and gold.