December (17 page)

      
'No, no, no ... the van, man. The big, white van.'
      
'Van?'

      
Mr Edwards said that shortly after the service he had seen the
van coming up the valley road, having a hell of a job getting past all the Land
Rovers.

      
Too fast, far too fast, it had ploughed through the lane, past
the church and the village and the cottages and the new bungalow, the way some
vehicles often did before the drivers realised their mistake and turned round,
the lane being a dead end leading only to a certain ruined, twelfth-century abbey.

      
But this van did not return.

      
'So,' Mr Edwards said, with his customary drama. 'To the
abbey, it went. And at the Abbey it stayed, for quite some time. Four men, at
least. Went into the tower block, they did, and there was knocking and
hammering, I am told.'

      
'You are told,' said the vicar.

      
'Oh, all right, I cannot lie to the clergy, I went to see for
myself. I couldn't get close enough, mind, to make out what they were doing
exactly. That building, well, the windows are high, you can't see a thing from
the outside. But is it changing hands again, I wonder? Is it being converted
into something else? Have you heard anything?'
      
Now, why should anyone tell me,
Eddie? The Abbey's got no connection with the church. It's just an ancient
monument.'
      
Apart, that is, from the tower
house. Which has been locked and derelict for years, and nobody knows who owns
it.'
      
The vicar stared at him. The late
November mist hung drably over the grey settlement like dust-sheets over old
furniture.

      
And another thing,' Mr Edwards said. He paused, his glasses
misting. 'Lights!'

      
'Lights?'

      
'In the Abbey, man. At night.'
      
'You've seen the lights in the
Abbey?'
      
'Not me! I don't go out there at
night, got to be careful at my age. But the farmers have seen them.'
      
'What kind of lights?'

      
'They would hardly go close enough to find out, now, would they?

      
'Look, Eddie,' the vicar said hastily, 'funerals being major
social occasions in these parts, I need to do some mingling. Why don't you pop
round to my gaff in an hour or so, have some coffee.'

      
'Good idea,' said Mr Edwards happily. 'I never refuse a warm
drink. Gets to you, this damp, when you're retired.'

After the burial of her
mother, Moira concluded it was not wise to go back to the croft house on Skye.
Too powerful, too much natural magic. The island didn't compromise; it made you
confront your own weaknesses.

      
'And there's things,' she said to Donald in the Duchess's
caravan - no more character, now, than a china shop - 'that I don't even
dare
to think about.'

      
'Get yourself some sleep,' Donald said.

      
Moira rubbed her tired eyes. 'Big circles, huh?'

      
'Aye,' said Donald, 'big circles.'

      
The Duchess had made no formal will. Moira, as the nearest
relative, had found herself presiding over an informal meeting of the Elders,
assuring them she wanted nothing. The china and the brass were to be divided
among the nieces, the palace to be sold and the proceeds to go, despite his
protests, to Donald.
      
There was no obvious successor, and
the Duchess, she figured, was not in the market for a shrine.

      
'Donald, before I go ...' Moira fumbled in her bag. 'I want you
to read this.'

      
She showed him the paper, with the two words on it.

BREADWINNER

and

DEATHOAK

      
'This wis it?' Donald scratched his head through the hole in
his hat. 'What she wrote for you?'

      
Mean anything to you, Donald?' Watching his eyes.
      
He shook his head slowly, baffled.
No, it meant nothing to him; wasn't supposed to. It meant nothing to anybody
but her. Donald looked at her inquiringly, waiting. He would have sat there,
silently waiting, for an hour or more until she was ready.

This was his first visit.
They'd always spoken at the church, or the village hall or during one of Mr
Edwards's personal guided tours of the surrounding countryside.

      
His first time inside the vicarage, and the little man was
clearly making a mental inventory of the contents of the living-room.

      
The vicar was glad to note that he seemed disappointed, the
room being utterly anonymous, the furniture tidy and modern, the books on the
shelves ecclesiastically anodyne. Only the view from the double-glazed, aluminium-framed
window was at all distinctive, an expanse of wild hill-country probably
unchanged for a thousand years.

      
'Are we alone?' asked Mr Edwards.

      
Mrs Pugh, who came in for half a day to clean and wash and
prepare the vicar's lunch, had departed. The vicar nodded, trying not to smile.
      
'Then,' said Mr Edwards, 'it's time
I confessed that I have been studying you.'

      
Mr Edwards was squashed into a wicker chair with his cap on
his knees. He wore a collar and tie, suit and waistcoat. This was how he
dressed even when there was no funeral. As well as an education adviser, he had
been a churchwarden and a member of the local history society. The vicar had
learned that there was, beneath his garrulous manner, a disturbingly shrewd
man.

      
'My conclusion, see, is that you are unlike most clergymen,
Certainly the least reverent reverend I've encountered on my travels.'

      
'That a compliment?'

      
'For the life of me,' Mr Edwards said thoughtfully, 'I do not know.
Most of the time you act as if you just don't care. Your eulogy to old Emlyn
this morning, tongue quite patently in cheek. And - I have to say this - your
language, for a man your calling, is often quite appalling.'

      
'Jesus Christ,' the vicar said. 'So it's true what they about
you Welsh being natural poets.'

      
'See ...' Mr Edwards threw an exasperated fist at the air. 'And
yet - I cannot help feeling in my gut that it is all a façade. Tell you what I
think, shall I?'

      
'Go ahead.'

      
'Well, first, a man with your disregard of convention and
protocol would surely feel happier in a rough area of Cardiff or Manchester or
London, among the delinquent youngsters, the joy-riders, the ram-raiders, the
racial problems. The people here, your irony is wasted on them. They are
working farmers. All they want is someone to marry them, bury them and dip
their offspring in the font.'

      
'Oh, I don't know. It's an interesting area, really,' said the
vicar inadequately. 'I've four churches to manage, scattered over fifty or so
square miles of the Black Mountains. I keep busy.'

      
'Pah,' said Mr Edwards. 'You know what I think? A man with a
past. You've come here to hide away. What was it, a woman?'

      
The vicar laughed.

      
'And then,' said Mr Edwards, 'there is the Abbey. Why are you
afraid of the Abbey?'

'OK,' Moira said, 'a long
time ago I was at a recording session down in Gwent, South Wales.'

      
She broke off, thought about what she was going to say and
then started again, at the beginning this time.

      
Starting with when she'd left Scotland to go to university in
Manchester and left there on a whim, mid-term, to join a professional folk group
led by a man who played the pipes. Saying no more about that; it was part of a
different story.
      
'It'd all really started with the awakening
to the glamour, you know? Meeting my mother again on the very edge of adolescence,
rediscovering the bizarre family heritage, all this stuff. Discovering there
were certain things I could ...do.'
      
She laughed lightly, but Donald
stayed sober-faced.
      
'I was no' very discreet,' Moira
said. 'It went to ma head in a big way, the glamour.'

      
'Aye, well... The Duchess herself when she was young wis a
wild and wanton creature, as your daddy ...'

      
'No' what I'm saying, Donald. Wasny a question of promiscuity
so much as, hey, look at me, I've got the Power, I can read your palm, your
future in the tealeaves. And the exotic black dresses and stuff ... You parade
around like that, you've got yourself a reputation in the music business almost
overnight.'

      
She told him about Max Goff, the independent record company
boss who followed mysticism the way people followed Celtic and Rangers and was
just as blinkered. How Max Goff had been told of Moira Cairns, the witchy
woman.

      
'He called me up. He said, "Would you like to realise
your full potential? I can help you.'"

      
She laughed. 'I thought, aw, hey ... Then he started talking money
and nationwide tours and two-album contracts. I was just a kid, twenty,
twenty-one. I started thinking - the way you do - I may never get an offer like
this again. I mean, I was flattered. He liked the voice, the whole Celtic bit -
this was before Clannad and Enya and all this ethereal, breathy stuff was hot.
And then he hit me with the clincher.'
      
Moira thought, The folly of youth,
eh?
      
'Which was working with Tom Storey,
who was like, the guitarist. A musician's musician. Not the fastest or the
loudest in the business; what they said about Tom - and it was true - was that
it was the
spaces,
the spaces between
the notes that sang the sweetest.'

      
Donald nodded, maybe knowing where this was headed.

      
'What it came down to was Tom had my own problem - except I
didn't know it was a problem then and he did. And Dave had it too, and Simon.
We'd been set up.' Moira smiled. Stupid, huh?'

      
'We're all of us stupid,' Donald said, 'when we're young.'

      
'Aye. Anyway, we made the one album together and it was fine.
We understood each other, we meshed musically. Yeah, it was fine. Built up our
confidence no end. And Goff was very fair; there was none of this "All-psychic
Rock Band" stuff on the cover. Nobody knew about that, ostensibly, apart
from Goff and us. Then he said he wanted to try something special. An experiment.
There was this studio in a place he said was ... resonant. But nothing to worry
about, this was an abbey, a holy place. Seen a lot of violence over the
centuries, sure, but it'd survived, was therefore a strong place, full of ...
potent
spirituality.
Jesus, I can't believe we swallowed that shit.'

      
'You wis ...'

      
'Wis young. Yeah. No excuse, Donald. No ... excuse ... at ...
all. So, the idea was we'd talk to the Abbey and let it kind of talk to us, and
come out with on album that told the story of the Abbey and maybe said
something about us, too. This is where Breadwinner comes in.'

      
Donald opened out the paper again and read the name. He looked
up at Moira.

      
'His name was Aelwyn,' she said. 'Known as Aelwyn Breadwinner,
and he died at the Abbey many years ago. When did the Duchess write this,
Donald?'

      
The old guy shook his head.

      
'When did she give it to you, then?'

      
'Wid be a couple of days before she died, hen.'

      
'Yes. And what did she say when she gave it to you?'

      
'Well... she ... she had it in the wee box she kept by her
bed, y'know? And she said, Donald, y'see where I'm putting this - it's for
Moira. She said, if I see her I'll gie it her myself. If I dinna see her before
I'm dead and buried …'

      
He took off his hat. Tears had formed in his eyes like marbles.

      
'Right,' Moira said, 'I know the box. Where she used to keep
the stuff she d written down from dreams. Donald, I've asked you this before:
she really had no feeling she was gonna die?'

      
'If she knew ...' Donald rolled his head from side to side in
anguish. 'If she knew, she didny tell me.'
      
This hurt.