Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

Language of the angels. Open up your hearts to God and He'll fill your mouth with rubbish. 'It's a block,' he said to Milly Gill and Ernie Dawber. 'They're blocking everything out. They're surrounding um selves with sound and emotion. But it's like blanket emotion – you feel good, you feel you're being drawn into something. It's just like candyfloss. You know what I mean? Like… psychic candyfloss.'

Ernie couldn't remember when he'd heard such a long speech from Willie Wagstaff. Always such a shy lad, in and out of class. You kept forgetting he was Ma's son and therefore, even in a Goddess-oriented society, he must have picked up a few tips.

'It's stirring things up, though,' Milly said. 'And that's not good at All Hallows. You've got to be very careful at All Hallows.'

'We probably asked for it,' Willie said. 'Whole congregation going on strike like that.'

'He provoked it,' Milly said. 'He destroyed things dear to us. He provoked us. Were we supposed to sit there and listen to his pious ramblings after that?'

'Perhaps,' Ernie said reasonably, 'that was what he wanted to do. Provoke a confrontation. It's no great secret, if you know what you're looking for, that the religious practices in Bridelow are not as elsewhere. His brand of Christianity views it with very serious disapproval, not to say abject horror.'

'Hans could've said no to him,' Milly Gill said, 'Hans could've said he didn't want a curate.'

'Hans was a sick man, Millicent. He did need the help. And Bridelow does change people, you know. Straightened out, a lad like Beard could even be an asset. It's just everything happened so quickly. Left on his own in what he sees as an evil, pagan parish… The way he is now, everything's either black or white. Which is what Ma warned me about. Beware of black, she said, and beware of white.'

'Aye,' Willie said. 'But where's the black corning from?'

'Mr Beard thinks we're the black,' Milly said.

Ernie almost smiled. There she was in one of her endless wardrobe of floral dresses sitting on her flower-patterned sofa with her flower pictures on the walls, bundles of dried flowers and herbs dangling from the beams. She was life, she was colour. Flowers were all the children she'd never had.

Even if the flowers were wilting.

'You keep saying that,' Willie almost snapped. '"He's God, we're Satan". You're avoiding the bloody issue. There is bad here. Real bad. Ma saw it coming, and we all said, Ah, poor old woman's off her trolley. We ignored the signs. Look at that bloody tree as suddenly appears out on t'Moss. Did anybody really check that thing out?'

'I never go on the Moss,' Ernie admitted.

'No, you don't, Mr Dawber. You like t'rest of us – we can't turn it into allotments, so we ignore it. And when somebody like Matt comes back and he looks out there and he says, Thai's where we're from… Well, we pat him on the back; we know he'll settle down. That's the trouble, see, we've all bloody settled down… even the Mothers've settled down. This is not a place you can totally settle down, you've always got to keep an eye open and perhaps Ma was the last one who did.'

It's a balancing act, Ernie Dawber heard in his head, Ma nagging him again. Willie was right. Even this morning, going up to find Liz Horridge, he was telling her to go away, leave me alone, Ma, get off my back.

'I were out there,' Willie said, 't'other morning. Wi' t'dog. Young Benjie kept going on at me – "Oh, there's a dragon out there, Uncle Willie." "Nay," I said, "it's bog oak." But I went out t'ave a look, just to satisfy him, like. Dog come wi' me… and he knew what it were about. And what did I do? I buggered off sharpish. I dint listen to t'dog and I made fun of Ma. I made fun of Ma over Matt's coffin and the witch bottle – scared stiff she'd ask me to do it. I dint mind helping pinch t'bogman back, bit of a lark, that were. But opening Matt's coffin…'

Willie shuddered. 'Wimp,' he said. 'That's me.'

'She was right,' Milly said. 'Matt wasn't protected. We were putting him in as the Man's guardian. What use is a guardian without a sword?'

As usual, Ernie Dawber, schoolteacher, man of words, man of science, was floored by the exquisite logic of all this.

'Who… was it?' he asked delicately. 'Who dug them up?'

Milly's sigh was full of despair, 'I can't begin to guess, Mr Dawber. So many signs. We could see them, but we couldn't see a pattern. I've been praying to the Mother for a pattern. Can't seem to get through, even to meself. It's like all the wires are crossed. Or there's a fog.'

'There's a fog in the church,' Willie said. 'They're making one. White fog. You can't get through because it's like all your lines of communication've been pulled down. The holy well, the church. Ma. It's like the white and the black have joined forces to crush us.'

'And what are we supposed to do?' There was no colour in Milly's cheeks. 'What can we do when we're so weakened, and we don't know who we're fighting or why?'

Ernie Dawber thought, So many sad, bewildered, frightened people. An invisible enemy. An ancient culture feebly fighting for its soul.

He noticed that all of Willie's fingers lay motionless on his knees.

'You know what I think,' Ernie said calmly, 'I think we need another sacrifice.'

Milly Gill shifted on the sofa. It creaked.

'Eh?'

Ernie Dawber smiled in a resigned sort of way. He was sitting on a straight-backed chair, still wearing his old gaberdine mac, his hat on his knees.

'I don't know the story of the Man in the Moss,' he said, 'any more than anybody does. Some say he came all the way from Wales, or even Ireland. That he was sent as a sacrifice. Well, that seems likely, but we don't really know for certain why he was sacrificed.'

Willie said, 'I thought…' Then he shut up.

'Some historians speculate it was to keep the Romans at bay,' said Mr Dawber. 'But we don't know that. And in the end the Romans weren't so bad. They were a relatively civilized people. Bit stiff and starchy, like Joel Beard, but nowt wrong with them really. They taught us how to build proper roads and walls and useful things like that, but I like to think we taught them a lot as well.'

'We?' said Willie.

'The Celts. The earliest real civilization in Europe. Cultured, spiritual. Knew how to fight when it was needed, but not military like the Romans. The Celts never sought to impose order, only to recognise the order that existed around them. And the moods of nature and the atmosphere. "Shades of things," Ma said.'

'Aye,' said Willie, remembering. 'Shades of things.'

'Moderation,' said Mr Dawber. 'Equality. Respect for each other, nature, animals. For religions. A simple, logical philosophy and one I've tried to pass on to generations of schoolkids, just like my forefathers did. And do you know…'

'Aye,' Willie said, it worked. It always worked. Kids leave school, bugger off to the cities, rebel against their parents and their parents' values and that. But there's summat about Bridelow. What we learned here, we didn't reject. I suppose… 'cause it was so different. Radical, like, in its quiet way.'

'Little island, Willie. Sacred island of the Celts. Little island of moderation in an ocean of extremes. Takes some protecting that. A balancing act.'

Mr Dawber turned his hat round on his knees. He's nervous, Willie thought.

'I've written a new edition of The Book of Bridelow. What you might call the unexpurgated edition. Just for me own benefit really. Just to reason things out. You'll find it in a blue typing paper box on top of the big bookcase in my study.'

Willie said, 'Why're you telling us that?'

'Maybe it should be printed. Just one copy, to be kept in safekeeping, for posterity. As a reminder of how Bridelow was and why it was what it was. To look back on when everything's changed, when the outside world's absorbed us.'