Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'You better check the house,' Moira said.

Cathy had a cursory look around the downstairs rooms. Everything seemed to be in order. 'Little sods. Everybody knows Pop's in hospital.' She looked at Moira. 'Oh. Yes. That's another thing. They're sending him to a convalescent home.'

'I thought it wasn't too serious.'

'Coronary,' Cathy said despondently. 'That's serious. They're sending him – committing him is how he sees it – to this Church nursing home down in Shropshire. At least a month. Which means Joel's got to move in here.'

'With you?'

'You're joking,' Cathy said. 'Even if I could bear to have him in the house, he's much too proper to countenance it. No, I'll go back to Oxford. Come up at weekends and see Pop. I mean, I expect you'll be wanting to be off, won't you?'

Moira said. 'Look, you got any cardboard in the garage or somewhere? We can block up this window.'

'Never mind, Alf Becket'll fix it tomorrow.'

Moira said, 'Cathy… um… something bad's happened.' Because of the Post Office's strict security regulations, Milly Gill's front door had two steel bolts and a fancy double lock, which she'd always thought was damn stupid in a place like Bridelow. Tonight, though, first time ever, Milly was glad to turn the key twice over and slide the big bolts. Even though she knew there were some things no locks could keep out.

The urgent banging on the door shook her. Willie Wagstaff never used the knocker. Willie would beat out his own personal tattoo with his fingers.

'Oh, Mother,' Milly Gill said, clutching her arms over her breast. 'I'm not going to be up to this.'

It was an hour since the doctor'd had Ma taken away, Across the Moss. He'd said there might have to be a post-mortem, probably no more than a formality, it was most likely natural causes. But if there was reason to think she might have fallen accidentally, there'd have to be a public inquest.

Pity Bridelow didn't have a resident doctor any more; this was an Asian gentleman from Across the Moss who couldn't be expected to understand. Milly had pleaded with him not to let them cut Ma up if there was any way it could be avoided. It was important that all of Ma's bits should be returned to Bridelow for burial, not tissue and stuff left in some hospital waste bin.

More crashing at the from door.

'Who is it?' Milly shouted. Didn't recognize her own voice, it sounded that feeble.

'It's me. Alf.'

Milly tut-tutted at her cowardice. Why she should think there might be something abroad because something that happened to hundreds of pensioners every week had happened to Ma Wagstaff…

She undid the bolts and turned the key twice. 'I'm sorry, Alf. Not like me to be nervy.'

But, if anything, Alf Beckett looked worse than she felt. There was a streetlamp outside the door, a converted gas lamp with an ice-blue bulb. Its light made Alf look quite ill, eyes like keyholes.

'Milly,' he said. 'We're in t'shit.'

'Come in, luv,' Milly said. Her responsibility now, this sort of problem, keeping up community morale. She sat Alf down on the floral settee. He was ashen.

'Now then, come on,' Milly said, it's all right. We'll get over this. We've had bad patches before.'

'No…' Alf shook his head. 'Listen…'

'It's my fault,' Milly said. 'We always left too much to poor old Ma. We thought she were immortal. Thought we could sit back, everybody getting on with their lives, foreign holidays, videos. Didn't seem to matter like it used to. And then when Ma started getting gloomy, we all thought it were just her age. Even me, daft cow. And now everything's happened at once, and it's shaken us. But we'll be all right, honest, luv.'

She got up to put the kettle on. 'I've sent Willie to t'Man for a pint. Life's got to go on, Alf. Just means we'll have to have a bit of a get-together. Soon as possible. Sort this lad Joel Beard out for a start. Then we'll see what else we've got to tackle. Mrs Horridge, that's another thing…'

'Milly!' Alf Beckett's hearth brush moustache looked bent and spiky. 'Police've come.'

'Eh? Because of Ma? Have they found summat?'

'No, no listen to me, woman, for Christ's sake.' Alf sat up on the couch, hands clasped so tightly together that his knuckles were whiter than his cheeks, it's t'grave. They're coming to dig Matt's grave up.'

In the narrow doorway to the back kitchen, Milly froze, filling it.

Alf said, 'Some bugger's told t'coppers as t'bogman's in theer.'

Milly felt sick. All churned up inside. Ma gone, the Rector in hospital. And her at the wrong time of life to cope with it all. She covered up her face with her hands and looked at him through her fingers.

'Lord,' she whispered. 'What've we done, Alf? What've we done in Brid'lo to deserve this?' Cathy said to Moira, 'If Pop hears about this, he's going to do something stupid.'

She'd told Cathy only about Ma's death. Not about seeing the old woman out on the Moss fighting a dead tree.

She said, 'Like what?'

'Like discharge himself,' Cathy said glumly. 'Moira, I don't know what to do. They ran this place between them, Pop and Ma Wagstaff. They hardly ever met, but they had an understanding, you know?'

They were in the sitting room. Cathy had lit the fire. She was sitting on the sofa where Dic Castle had sprawled. She'd taken off her shoes and her thick woollen socks were planted on an old rag hearthrug dark with scorchmarks from stray coals.

'He doesn't talk much about it, but it was obviously really tough for Pop when he first came here. He was pretty young – younger than Joel. And a Southerner. With a funny German name. Hell of a culture shock. Series of shocks, I suppose.'

'Like, when he finds out they're all heathens?'

'Is that what we are?'

Moira smiled, 'It's no' that simple, is it? I was up on the moor with Willie Wagstaff earlier. We saw the holy well. Who's that dedicated to? The goddess Brigid? St Bride? The Mother Goddess? Or the Holy Mother of God?'

'Gets confusing, doesn't it?' Cathy said.

'And the cross that was in the church, made out of twigs and stuff.'

'The Autumn Cross.'

'And there's a Winter Cross – yeh? – made of holly and mistletoe and stuff, and then a Spring Cross, made of…'

'You've got it.'

Moira said, putting it all together finally, 'They can't make up their minds what they are, can they?'

Cathy folded her legs on to the sofa. 'Like I said, you need to talk to Mr Dawber, he can put it into an historical context. But the first Church in Britain was the Celtic Church, and by the time they came along I like to think Celtic paganism was pretty refined, with this give-and-take attitude to nature and animals and things.'

'In parts of Scotland,' said Moira, 'particularly some of the Western Isles, it's not been so much a takeover as a merger. Like, nobody could say the teachings of Christ were anything less than a hell of a good framework for, say, human behaviour, the way we treat each other. But…'

'… in isolated areas, there were aspects of life it didn't quite cover,' said Cathy. 'Maybe still doesn't. And this area was always very isolated. Cut off. Self-sufficient. Immune from outside influences. We got electricity later than everybody else. Piped water was a long time coming. Television signals are still so lousy that most people haven't got one yet.'

'Yeh, but look…'

'… now it's a brick through your window and "Sheffield United are shit" on the walls, and somebody has one on a public seat – that's outside influences for you. Be a rape next.'

'Cathy, this bogman…'

'Oh, he's all right.'

'No, he's not. Matt Castle was besotted with him. The Man in the Moss. Matt was seeing him in Biblical terms – sacrificial saviour of the English Celts.'

'He died to save us all,' Cathy said. 'Gosh. Isn't that a terrible piece of blasphemy? Can you imagine the sleepless nights Pop had over this? The bogman: was he some sort of Pennine Jesus?'