Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

Joel dismounted from his motorbike.

In the centre of the tower was a palely shining disc. Like a rising full moon, it sent sneering signals to the sun: as you fade, it promised gleefully, I'll grow ever brighter.

Joel glared at the village across the sullen, scabby surface of the Moss. He imagined Bridelow under moonlight, stark and white as crow-picked bones.

Its true self.

The disc at the centre of the tower was actually an illuminated clock face, from which the hands had long ago fallen.

Often said to be a friendly face which turned the church into a lighthouse at night, across the black ocean of the Moss.

… you see, at one time, Mr Beard, very few people dared to cross the Moss… except those for whom the Devil lit the way – have you heard that legend?

It was no legend. On a dark night, all you would see of the village would be this silver disc, Bridelow's own, permanent full moon.

Was this how the Devil lit the path? Was this the Devil's light, shining from the top of the stairs in God's house, a false beacon for the weak, the uncertain and the disturbed?

Joel's black leathers straightened him, like armour, and the hard white collar lifted his eyes above the village to the luminous moor. Its lurid colours too would soon grow dull under the night. Like a harlot's cheap dress.

From the village, across the barren Moss, he heard voices raised, a shriek of laughter.

The village would be alive tonight. A new landlord had installed himself at the decrepit local inn. The Man I'th Moss, thus saving it from closure, a side-effect of the widely condemned sale of the Bridelow brewery.

Joel waited, astride his motorbike, his charger, until the moor no longer glowed and the illusion of beauty was gone.

Everyone saw shadows in the blackened cities, those obvious pits of filth and fornication, where EVIL was scrawled in neon and the homeless slept with the rats. And yet the source of it was up here, where city-dwellers surged at weekends to stroll through the springy heather, picnic among the gorse… young couples, families, children queuing at the roadside ice-cream vans, pensioners in small cars with their flasks of tea.

It's all around you, Mr Beard… once you know what you're looking for. Look at the church, look at the pub, look at the people… you'll see the signs everywhere.

Beneath him, the bike lurched into life, his strong, gauntleted hands making the engine roar and crackle, spitting holy fire.

He rode away from the village, back into the hills. 'Shades,' Ma Wagstaff would say later that night. 'Them's what's kept this place the way it is. Shades of things.'

Of all Ma's famous sayings, these were the words that would keep coming back at Ernie Dawber during the short, anxious days and the long, chill nights of the declining year.

And when, as local historian, he tried to find the beginning (as in, What exactly started the First World War? What caused the first spark that set off the Great Fire of London?), he'd keep coming back to this particular evening. A vivid evening at the end of May. The evening he'd blithely and thoughtlessly told Ma Wagstaff what he'd learned about the death of the bogman… and Ma had made a fateful prediction.

But it started well enough, with a big turn-out for the official reopening of The Man, under its new proprietor. The two bars couldn't hold all those come to welcome him home. So several dozen folk, including Ernie Dawber – best suit, waistcoat, watch-chain – were out on the cobbled forecourt, having a pint or two and watching the sun go down over the big hills beyond the Moss.

A vivid evening at the end of May. Laughter in the streets. Hope for the future. Most enmities sheathed and worries left at home under the settee cushions.

A real old Bridelow night That was how it ought to have been enshrined in his memory. All those familiar faces. A schoolteacher all his working life, Ernie Dawber had known at least three-quarters of this lot since they were five-year-olds at the front of the school hall: eager little faces, timid little faces… few belligerent ones too – always reckoned he could spot a future troublemaker in its pram.

He remembered Young Frank Manifold in the pram, throttling his panda.

'Well, well…' Twenty-odd years on. Young Frank strolling up to his boss, all jutting chin and pint mug clenched like a big glass knuckle-duster. 'It's Mr Horridge.'

Shaw said nothing.

'What's that you're drinking, Mr Horridge?' Sneering down at Shaw's slim glass.

Shaw's smile faltered. But he won't reply, Ernie thought, because if he does he'll start stuttering and he knows it.

There'd been a half-smile on Shaw's face as he stood alone on the cobbles. A nervous, forced-looking smile but a smile none the less. Ernie had to admire the lad, summoning the nerve to show himself tonight, not a month since Andy Hodgson died.

Especially with more than a few resentful brewery employees about.

'Looks like vodka.' Frank observed 'That what it is, Mr Horridge? Vodka?' A few people starting to look warily at Frank and Shaw, a couple of men guiding their wives away.

''Course, I forgot. Bloody Gannons make vodka on t'side. Gannons will make owt as'll sell. That Gannons vodka? That what it is… Mr Horridge?'

Shaw sipped his drink, not looking at Frank. This could be nerves. Or it could be an insult, Shaw pointedly pretending that Young Frank was not there. Whichever, Ernie decided he ought to break this up before it started to spoil the atmosphere. But somebody better equipped than him got there first.

'Where's your dad, Frank?' Milly Gill demanded, putting herself firmly between him and Shaw, like a thick, flowery bush sprouting between two trees.

'Be around somewhere.' Frank staring over the postmistress's head at Shaw, who was staring back now. Frank's knuckles whitening around the handle of his beer mug.

'I think you'd better find him, Frank,' Milly said briskly. 'See he doesn't drink too much with that diabetes.'

Frank ignored her, too tanked-up to know his place. 'Fancy new car. I see… Mr Horridge. Porsche, int it? Andy Hodgson just got 'isself a new car, day before he fell. Well, I'm saying "new" – Austin Maestro, don't even make um no more. He were chuffed wi' it. Easily pleased, Andy, weren't he, Milly?'

'It was an accident,' Milly said tightly. 'As you well know.'

'Aye, sure it were, I'm not accusing Mr Horridge of murder.

Only, why don't you ask him why Andy were suddenly ordered to reconnect a bloody old clapped-out pulley system for winching malt-sacks up to a storeroom right at top of t'building as isn't even used no more except by owls. You ask this bastard that, Milly.'

'We've had the inquest,' Milly said. 'Go and see to your dad.'

'Inquest? Fucking whitewash. I'll tell you why Andy were sent up. On account of place were being tarted up to look all quaint and old-fashioned for a visit from t'Gannons directors. Right, Mr Horridge?'

'Wasn't c… Not quite like that,' said Shaw quietly.

'Oh aye. How were it different? Lad dies for a bit of fucking cosmetic. You're all shit, you. Shit.'

The air between them fizzed. Shaw was silent. He'd been an expert at being silent during the three years Ernie had taught him before the lad was sent to prep school. And still an expert when he came back from University, poor bugger.

'And this Porsche.' Young Frank popped out the word with a few beery bubbles. 'How many jobs Gannons gonna axe to buy you that, eh?'

'Frank,' Milly Gill told him very firmly, big floral bosom swelling, 'I'll not tell you again!'

Careful, lass, Ernie thought. Don't do owt.

'You're a jammy little twat,' Frank spat. 'Don't give a shit. You never was a proper Horridge.'

A widening circle around them, conversations trailing off.