The Man in the Moss (13 page)

           
'Nothing
urgent that I'm aware of, Moira, don't you worry your head."

           
'No
messages?'

           
'None
at all.'
He paused. 'You aren't feeling unwell again, you?'

           
'I'm fine.' Her left hand found the guitar case, clutched
at it. She had that feeling again, of being touched. She shivered. She felt
cold and isolated but also crowded in, under detailed examination. Too many
impressions: the hollow chime, the eyes, the touch - impersonal, like a
doctor's. Too much, too close. She had to get out of here.

           
'It's none of my business, of course,' said Malcolm, who
believed in the Agent's Right to Know, 'but what was it exactly that made you
think someone wanted to contact you?'

           
'Just a feeling.'
           
'Just a
feeling
?'

           
'Aye,' she said wearily. There was nothing touching her
now. The room was static and heavy, no atmosphere. The furniture lumpen,
without style. A museum. Nothing here.

           
Nothing
...
right?

           
He said, 'You are a strange, witchy woman, Moira.'
           
'Malcolm,' Moira said. 'Go
fuck yourself, huh?'

From
Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

RELIGION (i)

Bridelow is dominated by
the ancient church dedicated to Saint Bride and built upon a small rise,
thought to be the remains of the 'low' or burial mound from which the village
gets the other half of its name.

                       
The tower is largely Norman, with later medieval
embellishments, although there was considerable reconstruction work to this and
to the main body of the church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The
clock was added to the tower following a donation by the Bridelow Brewery in
1889 and was subsequently illuminated, enhancing the role of the tower as a
'beacon' for travellers lost on Bridelow Moss.

                       
The churchyard offers a spectacular view over
the Moss and the surrounding
    
countryside,
which, to the rear, gives way to a large tract of moorland, uninhabited since
prehistoric days.

CHAPTER
IV

During evensong, though he
still didn't know quite what had happened with Matt, the Rector said a short
prayer for the dying landlord of The Man I'th Moss.

           
Holding on to the lectern, eyes raised to the bent and
woven branches of the Autumn Cross, he said carefully, 'Grant him strength, O
Lord, and ... a peaceful heart.'

           
Not quite sure what he meant, but he felt it was the
right thing to say; you learned to trust your instincts in Bridelow. Sure
enough, several members of the congregation looked up at him, conveying tacit
approval. Briefly, he felt the warmth of the place again, the warmth he'd
always remember, a quite unexpected warmth the first time he'd experienced it.

           
Unexpected because, from the outside, the church had such
a forbidding, fortress-like appearance, especially from a distance, viewed from
the road which traversed the Moss. He remembered his first sight of the
building, close on thirty years ago. Not inspiring, in those days, for a novice
minister: hard and grey-black with too many spiky bits and growling gargoyles.
And Our Sheila perpetually playing with herself over the porch.

           
This was the 1960s, when what the young clergyman dreamed
of was a bright, modern church with a flat roof and abstract stained glass
(after ten years it would look like a lavatory block, but in the sixties one
imagined things could only get better and better.)

           
'Amen,' the congregation said as one. The old
schoolmaster, Ernest Dawber, glanced up at the Rector and gave him a quick, sad
smile.

           
The warmth.

           
Sometimes it had seemed as if the church walls themselves
were heating up under the pale amber of the lights - they were old gas-mantles
converted to electricity, like the scattered streetlamps outside. And at Christmas
and other festivals, it felt as though the great squat pillars either side of
the nave had become giant radiator pipes.

           
But the warmth was rarely as apparent now. The Rector
wondered if it would even be noticeable any more to a newcomer. Perhaps not.
He'd gone to the expense of ordering more oil for the boiler and increasing the
heat level. Knowing, all the same, as he went through the motions, that it
couldn't be that simple.

           
There'd been a draught in the pulpit today; he certainly
hadn't known that here before. The draught was needle-thin but it wasn't his
imagination because, every so often, the Autumn Cross would sway a little over
his head, rustling.

           
It rustled now, as he read out the parish notices, and
something touched his hair, startling him. When he reached out, his flingers
found a dead leaf. It crackled slightly, reminding him of the furious flurry of
leaves blasted against his study window at dusk, like an admonishment:
you must not watch us ... you must turn your
face away.

           
A strikingly cold autumn. October frost, nearly all the
trees were bare. His arthritis playing up.

           
Giving him a hard time tonight. Difficult keeping his
mind on the job, wanting only to get it over and limp back to his study - even
though, since Judy's death, this had become the loneliest place of all.

           
'... and on Wednesday evening, there'll be a meeting of
the morrismen in the Function Room at The Man, that's 7.30 ...

           
The congregation numbered close on seventy tonight, not a
bad turnout. A few regular faces missing, including several members of the
committee of the Mothers' Union, but that wasn't too surprising, they'd been
here this morning. Couldn't expect anyone to attend twice, even the Mothers.

           
He rounded off the service with a final hymn, accompanied
as usual by Alfred Beckett on the harmonium - a primitive reedy sound, but
homely; there'd never been an organ In Bridelow Church, despite its size.

           
'Well done, lad,' Ernie Dawber said at the church door
patting his shoulder. 'Keep thi chin up.' Fifteen years his senior, Bridelow
born and bred, Ernie Dawber had always called him 'lad'. When the Rector had
first arrived, he'd expected a few problems over his name. It had still seemed
too close to the War for the locals not to be dubious about a new minister
called ...

           
'... Hans Gruber,' the schoolmaster had repeated slowly
rolling it round his mouth like a boiled sweet.

           
'Yes.'

           
'That's German, isn't it?'

           
Hans had nodded. 'But I was actually born near Leighton
Buzzard.'

           
Ernie Dawber had narrowed his eyes, giving the new
minister a very hard look. 'Word of advice, lad. Keep quiet about that, I
should. Thing is ...' Glancing from side to side '... there's a few folks round
here who're not that keen on ...' dropping his voice,'... southerners.'

           
The Rector said now, thinking of his lonely study, 'Come
back for a glass, Ernie?'

           
'I don't trunk so, lad.' Ernie Dawber pulled on his hat
'Not tonight.'

'I'll never forgive you for
this.'

           
He was gripping the stiffened edge of the sheet like a
prisoner clutching at the bars of his cell, his final appeal turned down.

           
'We should never have let you go home, Mr Castle,' the
nursing sister said.

           
'Matt, please ...' Lottie put her cool hand over his
yellowed claw. 'Don't say that ...'

           
'You never listen.' Feebly shaking his head, inconsolable
    
All the way here in the ambulance,
Lottie holding his hand, he'd been silent, away somewhere, still on the Moss
perhaps.

           
His eyes shone with the tears that wouldn't come, no
moisture left in his body.

           
The nurse said, 'I think he should have some sleep, don't
you, Mrs Castle?'

           
'Sleep?' Matt was bleakly contemptuous. 'No real sleep in
here. Comes out of the bloody ... drug cabinet ... only sort sleep you can get
in here.' He looked past the nurse, 'Where's Dic?'

           
'I told you, Matt,' Lottie said gently. 'He wouldn't come
in. He's too confused. He's probably walking round the
grounds, walking it off. He'll come in tomorrow, when he's ...'

           
'Might be too late, tomorrow.'

           
Lottie smiled at him. 'Don't be soft.' There was a small
commotion behind her, a nurse and a young porter putting screens around a bed
opposite Matt's.

           
'Another one gone,' Matt grunted.

           
'Bath time, that's all,' the nurse said unconvincingly.

           
'Give you any old crap in here. Look, tell Dic ...' His
faltering voice forming words as dry and frail as an ancient cobweb... Tell
him, he can be in the band. If he wants to. Then ... when Moira comes, he can
play. But you won't, will you? You never do owt I say.'

           
'You tell him,' Lottie said. 'Tell him when you see him
in the morning.'

           
Matt Castle made no reply. He seemed too dehydrated to
sweat or to weep. It was as though somebody had talcumed his face, like a ...

           
Lottie swallowed hard.

           
'Useless... bitch.'

           
Matt fell asleep.

Shrivelled leaves, unseen,
chattered on the window-pane. The dead leaves said,
Go away, draw the curtains, put on the light.

           
It's not your
affair,
the dead leaves said.

           
The Rector didn't move, just as he hadn't moved in the
late afternoon, at dusk, when the warning flurry had hit the pane, as if flung.

           
At the top end, the vicarage garden almost vanished into
the moor. When the light faded, the low stone wall between them dissolved into
shadow and the garden and the moor became one. On the other side of the wall
was a public footpath; it was along this they came, and sometimes, over the
years, around dusk, the Rector had seen them, had made himself watch them.

           
Tonight, resting up before evening service, sitting in the
window of the darkening study, wedged into a hard chair, his swollen foot on
the piano stool, he'd watched three of them enter the churchyard from the
footpath, passing through the wooden wicket gate. They were black, shapeless,
hooded and silent. A crescent moon had wavered behind smoky cloud.

           
It was all over, though, as was usual, when he walked out
across his garden, through the gate and into the churchyard
           
Half an hour before the
evening service.

           
Now he was back in his study, listening to the leaves
with the lights out. All he could see through the window was the reflection of
two bars of the ineffectual electric fire.
 
When Judy, his wife, was alive there'd
been a coal fire in the study every night from the end of September until the
end of April.

           
The Rector was cold. Eleven years now since Judy's death.
Where had all the warmth gone, the warmth which before had only increased with
the drawing-in of the days? Where had the smiles gone, the smiles which lit the
eyes while the mouths stayed firm?

           
And why, for that matter, had Ma Wagstaff's herbal
preparation had so little effect this time on his arthritis?

           
He stood up, hobbled close to the window, cupped his
hands to the pane and peered through.

           
At the garden's edge, a few graves lurched giddily on the
slope, and then the church loomed like an enormous black beast. Lately, Hans
Gruber had been wondering if life would not have been a good deal simpler in
one of those modern churches, where one's main headache was glue-sniffing
behind the vestry. Us and Them. Good and evil. God and Satan.
           
Hans thought, Wouldn't that be
wonderful?