The Man in the Moss (16 page)

           
Most of those in the room were still seated at their
tables, with drinks in front of them, the men and women in their evening wear,
white shirts and black bow-ties, jewellery and silk and satin. The American
half out of his seat, dark Irish hair tumbling on to his forehead. The Earl on
his feet; his expression ... dismay turning to disgust; was this woman having a
fit
? In
his castle
?

           
Everybody shimmering with movement, but nobody going
anywhere.

           
Projector-jam.

Until the first skull fell.

It was possibly the
smallest of them, so comparatively insignificant that Moira wondered briefly
why anyone would have admitted to having shot it, let alone wanted to display
it. She watched it happen, saw the antlers just lean forward, as if it was bowing
its head, and then the wooden shield it was mounted on splintered and the poor
bleached exhibit crashed seven or eight feet on to a table, crystal glasses
flying into the air around it.

           
'God almighty!' a man blurted.

           
The white, eyeless head toppled neatly from the table
into the lap of a woman in a wine-coloured evening dress, the antlers suddenly
seeming to be sprouting from her ample Celtic cleavage.

           
For a whole second, the woman just looked at it, as
though it was some kind of novelty, like a big, fluffy bunny popped onto her
knees by an admirer at a party. Her glossy red lips split apart into what
appeared for an instant to be an expression of pure delight.

           
It was this older woman next to her, whose ornate,
red-brown coiffure had been speared by an antler, she was the one who screamed
first.

           
More of an escalating gurgle actually. Both women jerking
to their feet in quaking revulsion, clutching at one another, chairs flying ...

           
... as, with a series of sickening ripping sounds,
several other skulls cracked themselves from the walls, all at once ...

           
(
Look!'
Some
guy grabbing the Earl by the shoulders, shaking him.)

           
... and began to descend in, like, slow motion, some so
old they fell apart in the air and came down in pieces.

           
Moira's audience in cowering disarray. 'Stop this!' the
Earl commanding irrationally, limbs jerking in spasms, semaphoring
incomprehensible fear, like a spider caught in its own web.
           
'Stop it! Stop it
at once
!'

           
This tumultuous tending and creaking from all the walls.
Even the great fire looking cowed, burning, back, low and smoky as though
someone had thrown muffling peat at it.

           
Next to the fireplace, this severe and heavy lady - a
matriarch of Welsh-language television, it was said - just sitting there
blinking, confused because her spectacles had been torn off and then trodden on
by a flailing bearded man, some distinguished professor of Celtic Studies, eyes
full of broken glass, one cheek gashed by a blade of bone.

           
And, pulling her gaze away from this carnage, in the choking
maw of the great fireplace Moira thought she saw a face ... so grey it could
only have been formed from smoke. The face swirled; two thrashing arms of smoke
came out into the room, as if reaching for her.

           
Moira whispered faintly, 'Matt?' But it was smoke, only
smoke.

           
The butler guy weaving about helplessly in the great
doorway as the stag skulls fell and fell, this roaring, spitting avalanche of
white bone and splattering glass, battered heads and scored skin, people
yelping, moaning, hurling themselves under collapsing tables, craving shelter
from the storm.

She caught the black guitar
case as it fell towards her. Caught it in her arms.

           
Come to mammy.

           
She sat bewildered on the bottom step of the dais, in the
refrigerated air, in the absurdly shocking mess of glass and antlers.

           
I have to be
leaving
, she thought.

           
Hands on her shoulders. 'You OK? Moira, for Chrissake ...
?'

           
'Get the fuck off me!'

           
But it was only the American, Mr Semtex.

           
'Please ... You OK? Here, let me take that...'
           
'No! Let it alone, will you?'

           
She saw the white-faced man on his knees, not six feet
away. He was holding one of the skulls, a big skull, one antler snapped off
halfway, ending in a savage point, a dagger of bone. There was blood on the
point.

           
And blood welling slowly out of his left eye, blood and
mucus, a black pool around the eye.

           
The other eye was very pale, grey going on pink. He was
staring at her out of it.

           
Moira clutched the guitar case defiantly to her throbbing
breast.

           
'Just hang on in there, pal,' the American said to the
white-faced man. 'We're gonna get you a doctor.'

           
Ignoring the American, the man with the injured eye said
(and later the American would swear to her that he hadn't heard this, that the
guy was too messed up to speak at all)...

           
The man said, very calm, very urbane, 'Don't think, Miss
Cairns, that this is anything but the beginning.'

CHAPTER
VI

In Matt Castle's band,
Willie Wagstaff had played various hand-drums - bongo-type things and what the
Irish called the
bodhran
, although
Matt would never call it that; to him it was all
Pennine
percussion.

           
This morning, without some kind of drum under his hands,
Willie looked vaguely disabled, both sets of fingers tapping nervously at his
knees, creating complex, silent rhythms.

           
Lottie smiled wanly down at him. They were sitting on
wooden stools at either end of the kitchen stove, for warmth
           
'Can you finish it, Willie?
Can it be done?'
           
Willie looked up at her
through his lank, brown fringe, like a mouse emerging from a hole in the wall.
Lukewarm autumn sunbeams danced with the dust in the big kitchen behind the
public bar. Such a lot of dust. She'd been neglecting the cleaning, like
everything else, since Matt had been bad. Now it was over. Dust to dust.

           
Willie said, 'We got two or three instrumental tracks
down, y'know. The lament. It all got a bit, like ... half-hearted, as you can
imagine. Me and Eric, we could see it weren't going to get finished. Not wi'
Matt, anyroad.'

           
'I want it finished,' Lottie said crisply. 'It was his
last ... I'm not going to use the word obsession, I've said it too much.' She
hesitated. '... I'm not religious, Willie, you know that, not in any ... any
respect.'

           
Willie gave three or four nods, his chin keeping time
with the fingers on his knees.

           
'But I just feel that he won't be at peace ... that it
won't be over ... until that music's finished.'
           
'Aye.' Willie's fingers didn't
stop. Nerves.
           
'So what about Dic?' Lottie
said.
           
'Will Dic want to do it?'

           
Lottie said grimly, 'He'll do it. Is he good enough?'
           
'Oh, aye,' Willie said without
much difficulty. 'I reckon he is. With a bit of practice, like. But really,
like, what we could do with is ...He beat his knees harder to help him get it
out. ' ... Moira.'

           
'She rang me,' Lottie said. 'Last night.'

           
Willie's eyes lit up, expectant. Dear God, Lottie
thought, they're all in love with her.

           
'Actually, it was early this morning. I mean very early.
Gone midnight. The kind of time people don't ring up unless it's an emergency.'

           
'Oh,' Willie said, and his hands were suddenly still.

           
'She asked me about Matt. She said, was he ill? I told
her yes he was very ill. I told her it was close to the end. I told her ...'
Lottie stood up and put her hands on the warm metal covers over the hot-plates
of the kitchen stove, pressing down with both hands, hard. 'I didn't
need
to tell her.'

           
Willie was quiet.

           
'We didn't say much. She started to explain why she'd put
him off when he wrote to her. I stopped her. I said we'd discuss it some other
time.'

           
There was a new kind of silence in the room.

           
'I put the phone down,' Lottie said. 'It was about
twenty-five past twelve. I waited for a minute or two, in case Dic had heard
the phone, but he was fast asleep. I thought, I'll make some cocoa, take it up
with me. But I didn't move. I knew. I mean, why should she suddenly ring after
all these years at that time of night? And sure enough, not five minutes had
passed and the phone rang again, and it was Sister Murtry at the hospital. And
I just said, He's gone, hasn't he?'

           
There was more silence, then Lottie said, 'I've not slept
since. I've just sent Dic to bed for a few hours. I'm not tired, Willie. I'm
not using up any energy - not thinking, you know?'

           
Lottie sat down again. 'I shan't be staying here. Only
until it's done. His
bloody
project.
I think coming back here, buying the pub, the whole bit, that was all part of
it. The project. All I want is to draw a line under it, do you see? I mean, I
hope somebody'll buy the pub, somebody sympathetic, but if not ...' She
shrugged. 'Well, I've got to get away, regardless.'
           
Willie nodded. Fingers
starting up very slowly. 'Um ... what about Moira?'

           
'I'm not inviting her to the funeral, that's for sure.'
Lottie folded her arms, making a barrier. 'If she wants to help complete these
songs, that'd be ... I'll not be
begging
.
No more of that. And another thing, Willie - tell whoever needs to be told,
tell them I'm not having anything to do with these stupid ... traditions. You
know what I'm saying? Matt might've accepted it, I don't. All right?'

           
'Aye, all right,' Willie said, not sounding too happy.
But that was
his
problem, Lottie
thought. 'Yeh,' he said. 'I'll tell her.'

           
When Willie had gone, Lottie pushed her hands on to the
hot-plate covers again, seeking an intensity of heat, needing to feel
something. Something beyond this anaesthetized numbness.

           
Wanting pain - simple pain. Loss. Sorrow.

           
Not any of this confusion over the gratitude that he was
gone and the wanting him back ... but back as he used to be, before all this.
Before his
project.

A blinding sun through
leafless trees ricocheted from the windscreens of cars on the forecourt. A
perky breeze ruffled the flags projecting from the motel's awning and lifted
tufts of Chrissie's auburn hair. She thought she probably looked quite good,
all things considered.

           
That, she told herself, was what a good night's sleep
could do for you.
           
Ha!

           
Roger Hall paused, gripping the door-handle of his Volvo
Estate. Don't say it, Chrissie thought. Just don't give me that,
I still can't understand it, this has never
happened to me before ...

           
He didn't. He merely put on an upside-down, pathetic
grin.

           
'Can we try again sometime?' Eyes crinkled appealingly,
full of silly morning optimism, and she felt herself falling for it - even if
she knew he still wasn't telling the half of it.

           
'Why not,' she said, daft bitch. She squeezed his arm.
'How long will you be gone?'

           
'Oh, only until Tuesday. That is, I'll be back late
tonight so I'll see you tomorrow morning. Have lunch together, shall we? Would
that be ... ?'

           
'Of course,' she said. She would have wangled the day off
and gone to London with him. They'd been too close to the Field Centre last
night, that was probably the problem. Too close to
him
.