Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

Ashton nodded, relieved. 'And you'll keep this to yourself?'

'Oh, I wouldn't want to alert anybody who might have cause to be… embarrassed.' Lottie smiled grimly, 'I certainly wouldn't.' Suspicious, at first, as he came up the street. Fingers going on his thighs, nose twitching as if he had whiskers. Then he saw who it was, and she watched the sun come up in his cheeks and knew it was all right.

'Moira!'

More than ten years dissolved in the Pennine air.

'Willie, hey, I was looking for you the whole morning.'

'I were down me workshop. Doin' a bit o' bodgin' an' fettlin'.' He stepped back, put his hands on her shoulders like a dog on its hind legs. 'Eee, lass, I can't tell you… you're looking bloody grand.',

She thought he was going to lick her ears, but he backed off and they stood a couple of yards apart, inspecting each other. He hadn't changed at all: small and wiry, brown hair down to his quick eyes. She didn't know what to say. So damn much to talk about, and none of it superficial.

It started to rain again. 'Once it starts,' Willie said, twitching his nose at the sky, 'it gets to be a bloody habit in Brid'lo.'

He smiled. 'Got time for a cup o' tea, lass?'

Did he think she was just passing through? 'Jesus, Willie,' Moira said, feeling close to collapse. 'I've got time for a whole damn pot.' She would come in by the back door.

Same way he'd come in. It hadn't been locked, didn't even have a lock on it. He remembered how, as a child, he'd been dared to go in by other kids. Into the witch's den. He'd refused. He was afraid.

This time last year he'd still have been afraid. Even a couple of months ago he would.

He came to his feet and stood behind the balustrade, his hands around the wooden ball on top. It was sticky with layers of brown varnish. The paper on the walls was brown with age. There'd been flowers on it; they just looked like grease patches now.

Late afternoon dimness enclosing him. He'd have been afraid of that too, once. Afraid to open the bedroom doors, afraid of the ghosts within. Afraid of what he might disturb.

Afraid not to be afraid.

But not any more. Willie had a teapot in a woollen tea-cosy made out of an outsize bobble hat.

'You make it yourself?'

'I have a friend,' Willie said, looking embarrassed about it, the way Willie had always looked embarrassed about women, although it never seemed to get in his way.

'You've a girlfriend here? In Bridelow?'

'More of an arrangement,' said Willie. 'Been on and off for years. What about you?'

'Oh. You know. Livin' alone, as the song says, is all I've ever done well.'

'Your song? Sorry, luv, I've not been keeping track.'

'Nana Griffith. Found an echo. Sometimes other people take the songs right out of your head.'

'Aye,' Willie said. He took a long, assessing look at her as she sprawled in a fat easy-chair with a loud pattern of big yellow marigolds. 'You look good,' Willie said. 'But you look tired.'

'I don't know why. All I've done is wandered around and talked to people. Yeah, I'm knackered. Must be the air.'

'Air's not what it was,' said Willie. 'Fancy a biscuit? Cheese butty?'

'No, thanks.' She closed her eyes, it's nice in here. I could go to sleep in this chair.'

'Feel free:

'No.' She forced her eyes open. 'You've got trouble here, Willie. Your ma. Like, I realise it's not my business, but I think she's got some private war on, you know?'

'Oh, aye, I know that all right. I…' He hesitated, refilling her teacup. 'How long you been here? I were looking out for you at Matt's funeral.'

'I was being low-profile,' Moira said. 'But I saw the business with the witch bottle, if that's…'

'Oh…' Willie sat down and crossed his legs, started up a staccato finger-rhythm on the side of a knee, 'I don't know. Sometimes I think we're living inside a bloody folk museum.'

'It's no' a museum,' Moira said, 'I just watched her out on the Moss. There's kind of a dead tree out there.'

'Bog oak,' Willie said. 'That's what it is.'

'Then why're your fingers drumming up a storm?'

'Shit,' Willie said. 'Shit, shit, shit.'

'Come on.' Moira dragged herself out of the chair. 'Let's go and talk to her.' Moira's left foot was feeling cold and wet. She stamped it on the cobbles. 'Went out on the Moss with no wellies. Stupid, huh?'

Rainy afternoon in a small village, nobody else about, no distractions, and they were both on edge. The hush before the thunder.

It's in the air. A damp tension.

So quiet.

'Catch my death.' Moira smiled feebly.

Both of Willie's hands drumming. It happened to Willie through his fingers. People said it was nerves. But what were nerves for if not to respond to things you couldn't see?

'Hey, come on,' Moira said softly, 'what's wrong here, Willie?'

'I don't know.' He sounded confused. 'Nowt I can put me finger on.'

They'd hammered on Ma's door. Waited and waited. All dark inside.

Willie started blinking. The only noise in the street was the rapid rhythmic chinking of his fingers on the coins in one hip pocket and something else, maybe keys, in the other. It echoed from the cobbles and the stone walls of the cottages. Willie's fingers knew something that Willie didn't.

'Willie, quick, come on, think, where would she be? Where would she go if she was scared?'

He looked swiftly from side to side, up and down the street.

'Willie…?' Hands wet with the once-holy spring water, white with powdered plaster. Wind blowing through her head. Mind a-crackle with shredded leaves and lashing boughs. No thoughts, only shifting sensations, everything shaken up like medicine gone sour in the bottle. Air full of evil sediment.

Sky white, trees black, church tower black.

Twisted legs and malformed feet crabbing it through the bracken and the headier.

Broken owd woman going back to her useless bottles.

'Let me help you, Mrs Wagstaff, for God's sake.' Long, striding legs, head in the clouds. Wanted to help for appearances' sake; wouldn't look good if he buggered off and owd Ma fell and broke a leg.

'Gerroff me!' she shrieked.

'You've got to turn away from all this! Make your peace with Almighty God. It's not too late…'

Screeching through the gale in her brain, 'What would you know? It's long too late!'

Wretched gargoyles screaming along with her from the church's blackened walls.

At the churchyard gate, relief for both of them, him going one way, to his church, not looking back; Ma the other, down towards the street. Sky like lead crushing her into the brown ground.

Top of the street, Ma stopped and squinted. Two people. Willie and a woman. The woman from the funeral, the woman from the Moss, the woman with the Gift.

Bugger!

Couldn't be doing with it. Questions. Concern. Sit down, Ma. have a cuppa, put thi' feet up, tell us all about it. Tell me how I can help.

Pah!

Ma turned back up the street, waited at the opening to the brewery road till they'd gone past then took the path round the back of the cottages so nobody else would see the state of her. 'This?'

Water trickled dispiritedly from under the rock and plopped into the pool.

'Used to be a torrent,' Willie remembered.

'This is the holy well?'

The pool looked flat and sullen in the rain.

'There should be a statue,' Willie said.

'Of whom?'

'The… Mother. On that ledge. She had her hands out, blessing the spring. There's a ceremony, every May Day. Flowers everywhere. You can see it for miles. Then the lads'd come up from t'brewery, fill up a few dozen barrels, roll um down the hill. At one time, all the beer'd be made wi' this water, now it's shared out, so there's a few drops in each cask.'

Willie kicked a pebble into the pool. 'I'm saying 'now'. Gannons'll've stopped it.'