Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Who's the Duchess?' Willie asked. Macbeth noticed that the fingers of Willie's left hand had struck up a rhythm on the side of his knee. He seemed unaware of it.

Macbeth said, 'Her mother.'

'The gypsy?'

Macbeth nodded. He looked out of the window. A big van with a blue beacon and an illuminated sign had stopped down the Street. The sign said, Ambulance. 'Is this rain never gonna ease off? Is it normal?'

'No,' Milly said, it's not normal. Who was the man? You said there was a man. Who… meant her harm.'

Macbeth's mind slipped out of gear for a moment. He panicked, clutched at the air.

The air in the room, so dense. The rain bombarding the roof. The Duchess said, If there was a problem and you were to deal with it, she need never know, need she?

And how badly he'd wanted to deal with it and wanted her to know, and now it was too late to deal with it and, sure, she would never know.

'John Peveril Stanage,' he said.

And the other two people in the room slowly turned and looked at each other, and Willie blanched.

The fingers of both hands were slamming into his knees and this time he was aware of it but seemed unable to stop it. When the ambulance arrived at the chip shop for Maurice Winstanley, both Maurice and his wife, Dee, were in a state bordering on hysteria.

'I knew summat like this'd happen. I never wanted to open, me,' Dee shrilled, a skinny little woman – how could you work in a chip shop and be that thin? It fascinated one of the ambulance men for a couple of seconds until he saw how badly burned Maurice was.

They had to treat his arm best they could, but there wasn't a whole lot they could do on the spot, what with Maurice gawping around and then kind of giggling with pain, and his wife going on and on like a budgie on amphetamines.

'I says to him. Who's going to come out for chips, night like this? He says, What about all them young people up at church, they'll be starving before t'night's through. I says, All right, I says, you want to do it, you can do it on your own.'

The ambulance man had fancied a bag of chips himself, especially after that drive over the hills and across the Moss: gruesome – he'd been driving and felt sure he could see the bloody peat rising and sucking; put one wheel in there you'd have had it.

'All right, Mr Winstanley, if we can get you out this way…'

'Where's your stretcher, then?'

'He can walk, can't he, Mrs Winstanley? I was going to say, we need to get him in as quick as we can. He might need to go to the burns unit.'

But chips would never be the same again. How gut-churning an appetizing smell like that could become when, on top of battered cod and mushy peas, there was the subtle essence of frazzled flesh, the result of Maurice Winstanley's right arm blistering and bubbling in the fryer.

'Lucky you haven't got a heart attack case, as well,' Dee said. 'He let out such a shriek.'

'I'm not surprised, luv. Any of us'd've gone through the roof.'

'Oh, this were before he stuck his arm in t'fat. I says, Now, what's up, I says. And he turns round, white as a sheet, I says, Whatever have you done? And then he does it. Thirty years frying and he shoves his arm in. I don't think he knew what he were doing at all.'

In the ambulance, racing back across the Moss, Maurice shivered and shook a lot, a red blanket round him, his arm in about half a mile of bandage. 'Never believe me, lad, she never will. I wouldn't believe me.'

'Don't matter how long you've been at it, Mr Winstanley, you can always have an accident.'

'No, not that.' Now Maurice looked like a chip shop proprietor. Maurice was a fat man. Maurice's big cheeks had that high-cholesterol glow about them and there were black, smoky rings around his eyes.

'She had to believe that, naturally,' Maurice said. 'She seen it happen. Fact it were only t'bloody agony of it brought me 'round, see, and I couldn't even feel that at first. I were looking at it a good two seconds. I thought, what's that pink thing in t'bloody fat?'

'Don't think about it, Mr Winstanley. We'll not be long now. What d'you reckon to United's chances, then?'

'I don't want to talk about United, lad! I hate bloody soccer. Listen, no, it weren't that she'll not believe, I've allus been a clumsy bugger. No, see, what it were as caused it in t'first place, I'd just seen summat as frightened life outer me. Froze me to t'spot, you know? Numb, I were. Numb.'

'Sounds like my mother-in-law.'

Ok, Christ." said Maurice Winstanley, subsiding into his pain. What's the bloody use?' Even though Deirdre Winstanley opened all the windows into the place, the smell of fried skin wouldn't go away; only seemed to get stronger.

When she opened the door, Susan Manifold, having seen the ambulance ran across the street through the torrent, asking her what was wrong, could she help.

'His own fault,' Dee said. 'Silly bugger. Thirty years, I don't know.'

'Will he be all right?'

'Will any of us?'

'I'm sorry?' Susan Manifold stepped inside the chip shop, to escape the wet, wrinkling her nose at the smell.

'Well, look at it.' Dee gestured at the water, now level over cobbles and the drains weren't taking it. She seemed more worried about that than Maurice's injury, or perhaps she was looking for something to take her mind off it.

'Will it flood?' Susan asked.

'Never has before, but there's always a first time. Look at them drains. Is there nowt you can do?'

I'm not a plumber,' said Susan.

'No,' said Dee. 'But you're a Mother.'

'Oh, come on!' Susan flicked back her ash-blonde fringe. We can't alter the weather.'

'Could've, once. Not you, maybe, Susan. Happen before your time.'

'Old wives' tale,' Susan said carelessly, and the full horror of what she'd said came back at her like a slap in the mouth. She was betraying Milly Gill and the memory of Ma Wagstaff. But, God help her, Mother help her, she had no belief in it any more.

Upset, she walked back across the drowned cobbles, Frank wasn't home yet from the pub. When he did arrive he'd be drunk and nasty. Another problem the Mothers were supposed to be able to deal with. Dee Winstanley slammed the door. That was stupid, what she'd said. Stupid what Susan had replied. Stupid what Maurice had done. Stupid to have lived behind a stinking chip shop for thirty years.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And the smell wouldn't go away; the layer of fat, from fish and pies and peas and fried human skin, hung from the ceiling like a dirty curtain, and the fluorescent tubelight was a bar of grease.

Dee threw up the flap, stumbled behind the counter, slammed down the chromium lid on a fryer full of flabby chips congealing together like a heap of discarded yellow rubber gloves.

Couldn't clean that tonight. Just couldn't.

'Cod and six pennorth o' chips. Please.'

The nerve of some people. 'We're closed,' Dee yelled into the thick air around the high counter.

'… and six pennorth o' chips.'

Dee sighed. Some people still thought it was funny to demand six pennorth o' chips, same as what they'd asked for in old money when they were kids.

'We've had to close early,' she explained patiently. 'Maurice's had an accident. Gone to hospital. All the chips are ruined.'

She peered through the shimmering grease at the persistent customer. Recognised the voice straight away, just couldn't put a name to it.

'…pennorth o' chips. Please '

The customer clambered through the lardy light and she heard the clatter of coins on the glass counter.

'You deaf or summat Matt? I can't serve you. It's Maurice…they've taken Maurice off in th'ambulance. He's had a…'

'.. and six pennorth..: At first there was no sound in the crowded, flowery sitting room, except for the endlessly percussive weather and Willie Wagstaff 's fingers on his jeans picking up the same rapid rhythm.