Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Martyrdom,' Chrissie said.

'He didn't get over her exactly. He just went in search of a new obsession and ended up reviving an old one. Which was coming back to Bridelow. Not my idea of heaven on earth.'

'Not tonight anyway,' Chrissie said, looking over to the window. It was like staring into a dark fish tank.

'Naturally, I encouraged him. Sent him up here at weekends with Dic and a picnic lunch. Safe enough – I just didn't think it would ever happen. Then they found that blasted bog body and he just went nuts over it. Kept going to see the damn thing, like visiting a relative in hospital or prison or somewhere. Next thing, he hears the brewery's been flogged off and this place is on the market, and I was just carried along, like a whirlwind picks you up and you come down somewhere else you never wanted to be.'

Lottie stopped, as if realising there was little more to be said. 'And then he got ill and died.'

She nodded at the door to the bar. 'That gas-mantle. He worked for hours on it. Place was a tip, plastering needed doing, but all he was bothered about was his precious gas-mantle. Bit of atmosphere. Matt all over: tunnel vision.'

'I read once…' Chrissie hesitated. 'An article in some magazine at the dentist's. This chap said there were certain things they came back to. Gh… dead people… Christ, that sounds even worse. Anyway, things they'd been attracted to in life.'

'Aye. Makes sense he'd come back to his bloody gaslight, rather than me.'

'I didn't mean it that way. Sort of landmark for them to home in on. Like a light in the fog. You could always have it taken down.'

'He'd go daft. He'd hold it against me for ever.'

'What did he look like? His old self, or what?'

'He looked terrible.' Lottie started to cry again. Why can't you ever learn to button it, kid? Chrissie told herself.

'It was very misty,' Lottie said through a crumpled handkerchief. 'He kept fading and then… like a bad TV picture in the old days, remember? As if – I suppose your chap was right – as if he was trying to hold on to his old gas-mantle, for comfort, and something was trying to pull him back.'

'Back where?'

'Into the darkness behind the mirror. He couldn't see me, I'm sure he couldn't see me at all. Am I going mad, Chrissie?'

'No more than any of us. Do you want me to stay with you tonight? I've nowhere else to go.'

Lottie's hands clutched each other, began to vibrate. She's wringing her hands, Chrissie thought. I've never seen anybody actually wring their hands before.

'The truth is,' Lottie said, 'I hated him by the end. There was nothing left but the negative side. No enthusiasm, only obsession. He was, when it comes down to it, a very nasty man.'

Lottie stared into her empty coffee cup as if trying to read a message in the grains. 'But he was also dying, you see, and you aren't allowed to hate dying people, especially if the nastiness is to some extent out of character and therefore, you think, must be connected with the dying.'

Chrissie lit another cigarette. 'When my mother was dying, towards the end, I wanted it to be over. For her sake. But, if I'm honest, partly for my sake too.'

'I don't think we're talking about the same thing, luv. Christ almighty…' Lottie covered her ears – '… isn't that bloody rain ever going to stop?'

'Listen to me,' Chrissie said. 'When you thought… when you saw this… when he was in the mirror, tonight… did, you hate him then?'

'No. I felt sorry for him. Don't get me wrong, I was very frightened, but at the bottom of that there was a pity. It was the gas-mantle. Putting that together, wiring it up, was about the only innocent, gentle thing he did here. I was irritated at the time, but when I look back… It's the only thing makes me want to cry for rum.'

Chrissie stood up. 'I don't know why, but I think we should put it on. The light, I mean. The gas thing.'

'Why?'

'Because if that represents the nice, harmless side of him, perhaps you should show him you recognise that. I don't know, maybe it's stupid. But perhaps he wants your forgiveness, perhaps he wants to know you remember that side of him. The good side. So maybe, if you gave him a sign that you understood, then he… he'd be… you know… at peace. Isn't that what they say?'

'Who?'

Chrissie shrugged. 'Old wives, I suppose.'

'Old mothers in this village. OK.' Lottie came wearily to her feet. 'Let's try it.'

'Might make you feel better.'

'Might, at that.'

They went through to the darkened bar and Chrissie lifted the flap and went round to the customers' side, so they were standing either side of the brass mantle. In the arrow of light from the kitchen, she could see it was on a hinged base screwed into the wooden frame of the bar and projecting about eighteen inches. Behind it, on Lottie's side, was the mirror in a Victorian mahogany frame. Chrissie made herself gaze into the mirror and saw only her own dim reflection, looking rather pale and solemn.

'Perhaps we could say a prayer, Lottie.'

'No, thanks,' Lottie said.

'Well, at least think of him as you press the switch. Think of the good times.'

'My memory isn't what it was,' said Lottie. 'No, I'm sorry. You're doing your best. All right. Matt, listen, if you can hear me…'

At the end of the gas-mantle a feeble glow appeared.

'Switch it off a second, Lottie. Let's get this right.'

'I didn't…' Lottie said, in a voice which rose in pitch until it cracked. '…switch it on.'

'Merciful God,' Chrissie pulled from somewhere in her past, 'please…'

The small light at once flare to a dazzling, magnesium white. Huge shadows reared. Lottie screamed once and backed off into the kitchen.

When the bulb exploded, with a crack like snapping bone, Chrissie found herself at the far end of the bar trying to hug the stone wall.

'Listen,' Macbeth said, clutching Milly's plump arm, 'let me call the cops. Maybe it wasn't her car.'

'Don't make it worse, lad,' Willie Wagstaff said, his eyes hollowed out with grief. 'I've already been on to um. I said me wife were out in a BMW and I were worried sick after hearing the news. I didn't want to get involved in identification or owt, so in the end I said the wife's car were red and they said this one was grey – had been grey – and give me the registration, and I went off, sounding relieved. Relieved. Jesus.'

'I don't understand.' Macbeth stared desperately around the room. 'These things don't happen. I just don't fucking understand.'

'They do happen,' Willie said hopelessly.

'Especially here.' Milly was looking hard into the fire. 'Especially now.'

'Shurrup,' said Willie gruffly. 'How far you come, lad?'

'Glasgow.' The One Big Thing, he thought. God damn. And closed his eyes against the pain.

'She was special,' Willie said. 'We all knew that.'

'Yeah,' he whispered.

'Special like your mother,' Milly said. 'I think we knew that too. And now they're both dead.'

'Leave it, luv. It's coincidence.'

'Is it?'

Macbeth opened his eyes. Something badly wrong here, but did he care? And what could he do anyway? One week. Before that, Moira Cairns had been a face on an old album cover.

One week. A chance meeting, an inexplicable cascade of bones, a talk on the terrace in the aftermath.

There'd be another album now. The Best of Moira Cairns. In memoriam. Even if he'd never met her, he'd be grieving. In one week, she'd become the core of his existence – a woman whose last glance at him had said, fuck off.

'There was a guy,' he heard himself saying, 'who meant her harm.'

Donald told me the dogs disliked this man intensely. On sight.

Willie Wagstaff and his girlfriend were both staring at him.

'The Duchess wanted me to look out for her, you know? The Duchess said wherever she went she'd be… touched with madness.'