December (84 page)

      
Moira glances up at the two shadowy towers, about twenty-five
yards apart, the bitten-off top of the ruined one almost obscured by the frigid
mist. The heavy truck with the hydraulic platform is still parked in the courtyard
behind what is now the TMM tower; restoration will resume as soon as the band's
out of here. So much to restore.

      
you have some damage to
repair.

      
Tonight, Mammy. Tonight.

      
The cold bites. The tower house looms over them, a single,
watchful light in one of the upper rooms.

      
The place observes her, she feels again, with an ancient knowledge.
And a frightening edge of derision.

III

Bluefoot

Night and mist obscure the
great rock overhanging the church as Eddie walks up the lane, worrying.
      
Always mist in this valley in
winter. But it shouldn't be too bad, see, it's a reasonably distinct path ...
for those who dare take it.

      
Eddie is still far from sure about going to the Abbey, is not sure
why
they're going, even if Meryl is.
But he has to go with them; he's an old-fashioned man and would hate to think
of women and children - well, one woman and one child - walking that path at
night to emerge among the decaying stone teeth in the very mouth of Walden's
abbey.

      
The other problem is: what are they going to do about Isabel?
She isn't the type of person to sit demurely at home with her knitting, waiting
for news. Isabel is a doer, a mover.

      
And Isabel in love is probably unstoppable.

There should be headlights
on this machine, Isabel thinks. Why did nobody think to fit sodding headlights?

      
She has an elderly bicycle lamp on her lap; its glass has a crack
across one corner and rattles. The lamp illuminates the road for no more than
about five yards ahead, which is not
that
much of a problem because the electric wheelchair is grinding along so
slowly that even a geriatric hedgehog wouldn't break a sweat getting out of the
way.

      
But the narrow road is empty. A hedgehog would at least be a
bit of company. The verges and undergrowth are silent with frost. The
wheelchair whines.

      
It's very,
very
cold. Isabel wears her woollen cape and mittens and a white ski-hat with
daft-looking brown reindeer on it. She's someone you see and feel sorry for, or
so she hopes. For the first time in her life, this is what she hopes.
      
That's another first.

      
But the
first
first,
the most dramatic first is that she's glided out of the front gate of the
cottage ... and turned right.

      
Never before has she done this in the chair; seems incredible,
but it's true. Everything lies to the left: the church, the village hall, the
school as used to be, the pub, the house of anyone she's ever wanted to visit.
And, of course, the way out of the village.
      
To the left lies civilization.

 
    
To
the right: heartbreak, death, the Abbey.

      
And so never before, in the chair.

      
And, even before the advent of the chair, never alone.

      
And never in the dark. It was afternoon, quite a fine
afternoon for the time of year, when she'd gone with Gareth and his little
haversack containing, among other items, one of those blow-up airbeds you took
to the seaside but which would lie equally well on a stone floor at the top of
an old, ruined tower.

      
But she wouldn't have gone there in the dark, not even for Gareth
who was two years older, a grown man, a man of the world.

      
Not that Isabel is particularly afraid of the dark, even now.
      
No more so, anyway, than the
average chair bound cripple wondering how she's going to kick an attacker in
the balls with toes she hasn't been able to wriggle in over two decades.

      
What's more unnerving than the night is the slowness of the
blasted chair. Keeps making her think the bloody batteries are about to give
out. Thank God that this is a valley road, following the river, with no major humps
and pitches.

      
And thank God that Meryl's not with her, with her talk of spirits
and life beyond the grave.

      
Is he right, Isabel? Is
this path impossible for a wheelchair?
      
I know which one he means. Used to.
As a kid. Yes, he's right, damn it. I'll have to go the usual way, by the road.
      
But that's hopeless; they'll never
let you in.
      
Deal with that problem when I come
to it.

      
Well, take some of this.
Please.

      
Oh
that's daft ... They're definitely not going to admit a crippled crank with a
plastic bin sack full of soil on her knees.

      
Take it
anyway. We can't manage it all.

      
But the only thing on Isabel's knee, as the wheelchair moves through
the night with all the speed and grace of an old badger on Valium, is the bike
lamp with the cracked glass.

They don't exactly stroll
in singing, with their arms around each other, but Prof has detected a distinct
raising of spirits.

      
They've worked something out. Obviously.

      
Dave goes directly to his booth and thumbs a chord on the new
Martin. 'Hey, listen to this!'

      
'Brilliant,' Tom says, 'I heard you was having lessons again.'

      
'What's wrong?' Prof adjusts one of Dave's mikes. 'You're gonna
sit on the amp, as usual, I take it.'

      
'Yeh. No, nothing
wrong
.
Listen. The bugger's in tune! Whenever I leave a guitar for five minutes in
this studio, it's always way out of tune when I get back. Used to drive Russell
spare. Now, listen to this ... spot bloody on. After over an hour.
Unprecedented! It's an omen. We'll get it right, now, I can feel it. I'm locked
into it.'

      
'Don't go talking about omens,' Moira calls over. It's unlucky.'

      
Dave throws
 
his
 
plectrum
 
at
  
her.
  
'Only if you'd superstitious.'

      
'Superstitious?' Tom crosses himself. 'Me?'

      
'By the way,' Dave says to him. 'I took that dead albatross out
of your booth. It was starting to smell.'

      
'You bastard, I was teaching him to talk.'

      
Dave and Simon exchange grins.

      
Psychic humour, Prof thinks. Whatever next.

      
'Right, then,' he says. 'Aelwyn, The Ballad of. Go for it then,
shall we?'

The mist's getting thicker,
Eddie thinks, as he crosses the road to the vicarage. But not
that
bloody thick.
      
'Ah. Mr Edwards.'
      
This is smoke, from a familiar
pipe.

      
'If you're on your way to see your good friend, the vicar, I'm
afraid he's not there.'

      
With that damn pipe and his long mac, Superintendent Gwyn
Arthur Jones looks like nobody so much as Sherlock flaming Holmes.

      
'But perhaps you know that already, Eddie. Man like you. Nose
to the ground.'

      
Eddie recovers some composure. 'Why is it, Gwyn, that you only
come out at night, like a bloody vampire.'

      
'Hmmph.' The policeman looks affronted. 'No one's ever said that
before. Pig, I get usually. And Filth. Anyone would think I was not welcome.
Especially at the vicarage. What an extraordinary woman. And do you know ...'

      
Gwyn Arthur throws his long shadow over Eddie under the second
of the village's three lamp posts. ... she's staying in his house but claims
she doesn't know where he's gone. The vicar, this is. Oxford, she says. Or somewhere.
Now, isn't that odd?'
      
'Gone to stay with friends, he
has.'

      
'Oh well. Just the time for a holiday. December. Come and have
a drink with me, Eddie.'
      
'Well, I would, see, only I've got
to meet someone, isn't it?'
      
'Oh yes?' Into Eddie's face Gwyn
Arthur blows enough smoke to evacuate a wasp's nest. 'Anyone I know?'
      
'Just a quick one then,' Eddie says
miserably.

Oh God, oh God, not far
now.

      
The trees either side of the road are now embracing overhead,
the mesh of shadow-branches infilled by nightmist, making the road into a
tunnel, but one with no light at the end.

      
There was a moon that night, in 1973. She's sure there was a
moon. Some sort of light, anyway. Or maybe it was just her, incandescent, in
love.

      
If there's a moon tonight, she can't see it; the further she trundles
down this road the worse the mist comes down. And the likelier it seems that
the batteries will give out.

      
You can go back. You can still go back. To the fire and the telly
and the chair lift to bed.

      
Big deal.

      
At least she'll be there before Meryl, who's relying on Eddie
to take her. Rather him than me. See how
he
liked the saga of Lady Bluefoot and the fuzzy brown apparition with an
extra hole in his face and the awful vision of slaughter around the dinner
table.

      
Isabel sighs. Suddenly everybody's a visionary.
      
Except for me. Well, only the once.
The night of flying.

      
Pinned down like a victim of the Blitz under tons of masonry. Pinned
down all night, next to a poor boy whose eager, young loins have pumped their
last.

      
Pinned down and feverish, but soothed by the body's natural morphine
and some strange and ancient magic in the night.

      
The flying.

      
She didn't say a word about this to Meryl. In all these years,
Simon St John has been the only person she's felt able to trust with her
memories of ecstatic night-flight, escape from a broken body, freedom ...
sensations so cruelly crushed with the coming of the dawn and the police and
the fire brigade and ambulance, the dawning of days, months, years of numb misery
and doctors shaking their stupid heads.

      
Only Simon understands - even if he's done his best to discourage
it - her need to make just one meaningful return to the place where ecstasy and
horror collided. To go back for what she left behind?

      
Isabel stops the chair for a moment in the lane. Last chance to
turn back.

      
She has her deepest and most terrible wish. She's returning to
the Abbey, alone, in December of a seventh year.

      
I mean, talk about crazy. Talk about bloody fanciful, mystical
bullshit, talk about ...

      
talk about flying.

      
Isabel presses the green button, goes on.

He's on his own. Really on
his own this time.

      
The hills are the same, more woodland maybe and harder, more bristly,
Less scenic, less picturesque - what a strange, senseless word; Dave's suddenly
mystified by the idea that a hard, frozen winter landscape could ever be
considered pleasing to the eye.

      
The windblown snow is there, the same harsh, grey spattering.
And the track's the same, although you stay off it to avoid making footprints. And
your feet, by God, are as cold as ever you remember.

      
But he isn't surprised to find Aelwyn is not the same and has
a new voice.

      
Aelwyn Mark One was gentle and breathy, like the wimpy singers
in all those acoustic bands of the early 70s. Sounding like a martyr before he
was even over the wall of Abergavenny Castle ... and running ... crouching.

      
The new Aelwyn's singing isn't sweet, his notes soar only with
pain. His song is free-form; it comes without rhyme or obvious meter. It
struggles against the structure imposed by the tune. The song of the new Aelwyn
makes no concessions.