The Man in the Moss (36 page)

           
'No?'

           
'
No
,' she said firmly.

           
The
minister's daughter had left them alone in the Rectory sitting room. Dic had
wanted her to stay, like he needed a chaperone with this Scottish whore, but
she wouldn't. They could hear her banging at a piano somewhere, ragtime
numbers, with a lot of bum notes. Letting them know she wasn't listening at the
door.

           
'He
never touched me sexually,' Moira said. 'He never came near. On stage, it was
always him on one side, me on the other, Eric and Willie in between but a yard
or two back. That was how it was on stage. That was how it was in the van. That
was how it was.'

           
Somewhere,
walls away, Catherine Gruber went into the 'Maple Leaf Rag', savaging the
ivories, getting something out of her system...

           
'And
you clearly don't believe me.' Moira was sitting on a cushion by the fireplace.
Paper had been laid in it, a lattice of wood and a few pieces of coal.

           
Dic
said, 'Followed him once. After a charity gig. She was waiting for him in the
car park. About twenty-one, twenty-two. About my age. Long, dark hair.'

           
'When
was this?'

           
'Fucking
little groupies,' Dic said. He was semi-sprawled across a sofa, clutching a
cushion. 'At his age. Er ... 'bout a year ago, just before he ... before it was
diagnosed.'

           
Dic
had a lean face, full lips like Matt. Dark red hair, like Lottie. Still had a
few spots. 'And, yeah,' he said, 'I do know she wasn't the first.' Staring at
Moira in her jeans and her fluffy white angora sweater, hands clasped around
her knees, black hair down to her elbows.

           
'Because
you still think the first was me. Sure. And you know something ... Gimme a
cigarette, will you?'

           
He
tossed the cushion aside, got out a crumpled pack of Silk Cut and a book of
matches. 'Didn't know you smoked.'

           
'Tonight,'
she said, taking a cigarette, tearing off a match, 'I smoke.'

           
The
minister's daughter was playing 'The Entertainer', sluggishly.

           
Moira
said, 'Just answer me this. Earlier tonight, at your dad's funeral, at the
graveside ... I mean, how'd you feel about that?'

           
His
face closed up, hard as stone. 'I just played the pipes. Badly. I didn't see
anything.'
           
She nodded. 'OK.'

           
'So I
don't know what you're talking about.'
           
'I understand. We'll forget
that, then.'
           
He lit his own cigarette, said
through the smoke, 'Mum said you wouldn't be coming anyway.'
           
'She didn't know.'
           
'You seen her?'

           
'No.
And that's not because... Listen, I'm gonna say this. There was a time when I
felt bad. Twenty, fifteen years ago. When I felt bad
because
I never came on to him, not even after a gig in some
faraway city when we were pissed. And I felt bad that I was twenty years
younger and I was taking off nationally, and he was maybe never going to.'

           
'I
bet you did.' Dic sneered. 'I bet that really cut you up.'
           
She ignored it. 'I was
thinking, if we'd slept together, just the once, to kind of get it over, bring
down that final barrier ... You got the vaguest idea what I'm saying?'
           
He just looked at her through
the smoke.
           
'Anyway,' Moira said, 'we
didn't. It never happened. Maybe that's another piece of guilt I'm carrying
around. I don't know.'

           
The
piano music stopped. Dic lay back on the sofa, hands clasped behind his head.
Outside, the wind was getting up, spraying dead leaves at the windows.

           
There
was a polite knock on the door and Cathy came in.
           
'I'm making some tea, if...'

           
'Oh,
yeah, thanks.' Dic sitting up, looking sheepish.
           
'Be ten minutes,' Cathy said.

           
Moira
said as the door closed, 'Lottie. Your mother. She know about this?'

           
'We
never discussed it."
           
'But you think she knows,
right?"
           
Dic shrugged.

           
'This
girl. This so-called girl of Matt's. You know who she was?'

           
'No.
I tried to find out from people at the folk club - The Bear, you remember the
joint? Nobody seemed to know her.'

           
'So
how do you know they were ... ?'

           
'Because
they went straight into this shop doorway. Would've taken a jack to prise them
apart.'

           
'Right,'
Moira said sadly. 'And she looked ... like me?'

           
'Yeah.
Superficially. Like you used to look.'

           
'Thanks
a lot.'

           
Dic
picked up the cushion and hurled it with all his strength at a bare wall. 'I
didn't mean it like that, OK? I don't mean a fucking thing I say. I just like
insulting people, yeah?'

           
'Sure,'
Moira said. This wasn't getting either of them anywhere. She wished she'd stuck
to her original plan and never agreed to come here with him. So he had
problems. They'd made him stand there playing the pipes while they messed with
his dad's body in its coffin. She could feel the confusion and the rage
billowing out of him.

           
'Dic
...' She was going to regret this.

           
'Yes?'

           
No,
she wasn't. She wasn't going to say anything either of them might regret. She
gathered up her cloak from the carpet.
           
'I'm away, all right?'

The hissing sound disturbed him. And the occasional
popping. And the blue glow.

           
It
came from the circular wick of the paraffin stove. Intense, slightly hellish,
ice-blue needles pricking the dark, the close stone walls shimmering like the
inside of a cave lit by a cold and alien sea-glare.

           
Joel
turned the flame up fully until it was flaccid and yellow, and then he blew it
out. The stove was having little or no effect anyway. His original plan had
been to bring an electric heater down here, but there was no power point, and
the nearest one in the church was too far away for Alfred Beckett's extension
lead to reach.

           
Joel
lit a candle.

           
With
the stove out, the temperature must be plunging, but at least it didn't look as
cold.

           
He
sat on the side of the camp-bed, with the double duvet wound around him.

           
Cold
he could live with, anyway, insulated by years of refereeing schoolboy rugby
matches. Cold he could almost relish.

           
He'd
taken off his boots but added an extra pair of rugby socks. When he lay down,
his feet - projecting from the bottom of the bed - would touch the stone blocks
of the far wall. That was how cramped this cell was.

           
But
discomfort was good. It was a holy place. Above him the nave of St Bride's,
around him its ancient foundations. Rock of Ages. A blessed place, a sanctuary
where bishops - well, at least one bishop - had passed the dark, cold hours in
sacred solitude.

           
If he
hadn't been so bone-tired, so sated with righteous rage, Joel might have spent
the night in holy vigil, on his knees on the stone floor, like some mediaeval
knight. Praying for divine aid in the deliverance of Bridelow from its own dark
dragon.

           
But
his body and his mind were both demanding sleep ... a state often at its most
elusive when most needed. He was also rather appalled to find his loins
apparently yearning for the comfort of a woman.

Before his conversion, Joel had exploited his
God-given glamour at every opportunity - and there had been many. Now he did
not deny himself the yearning, only its habitual, casual assuagement.

           
He
told himself this unseemly erection in the House of God was merely a side-effect
of the cold and the pressure of the duvet.

           
His
watch told him it was not yet 10 p.m. But tomorrow, he felt, would be a long
day. So he would allow his body sleep.

           
When
he blew out the candle and lay back, the paraffin stench hung over him like a
chloroform cloth. He must not sleep in this air. Clutching the duvet around
him, he arose into the absolute darkness, followed his nose to the stinking
heater and pulled it two yards to the oaken door. Bent almost double, he
carried the appliance into the little tunnel which led to the stairway.

           
And
then, leaving it out there, shuffled back to his cell. Locking the thick and
ancient door of his sanctuary against the pagan night. Falling uncomfortably
into the rickety bed.

           
Tread carefully, Joel.

           
What did
the Archdeacon mean by that? Joel would tread with the courage and
determination of the first Christians to walk these hills. Those who had driven
the heathens from their place of worship and built upon it this church.

           
And
whose holy task, because of the isolation of the place and the inbred
superstition of the natives, had yet to be completed. .

           
With
God's help, Joel Beard would drive out the infidel. For ever.

Cathy was pouring boiling water out of a big white
teapot, down the sink. 'Forgot to put the bloody tea in. I'm a bit
impractical.'

           
'Well,
don't bother for me,' Moira said. 'I have to go.'

           
'You're
the singer, aren't you?' Cathy filled the kettle, plugged it into an
old-fashioned fifteen-amp wall-socket. It was that kind of kitchen, thirty years
out of date but would never be antique. Moira said wearily, yes, she was the
singer.

           
Cathy
said, 'Still, I bet you don't play the piano as good as me:

           
Moira
grinned. 'How long you known Dic?'
           
'Years. On and off. He'd come
up to Bridelow with his father at weekends. I used to fancy him rotten at one
time.'
           
'Used to?'

           
Cathy
shrugged. 'That was when we were the same age,' she said elliptically.

           
Moira
looked at her. A little overweight; pale, wispy hair pulled back off a face
that was too young, yet, to reflect Cathy's cute sense of irony.

           
'When
we came in, you said you thought your father was knackered. You said it'd do
him good to get out of this place for a while.'

           
'I
said that, did I?'

           
Try
again. 'You were born here?'

           
'So
they tell me. I don't live here at present. I'm in Oxford.'
           
'Doing what?'

           
'Studying,'
Cathy said. 'The principal occupation in Oxford, next to watching daytime telly
and getting pissed.'

           
'What
are you studying? Oh, hey, forget it. I'm tired of walking all around things.
What I really want to know is what happened at Matt's funeral that fucked your
dad up so bad. And who's the other minister, the big guy, and how come you
don't like him. Also, who's the crone who fumbles in coffins, and why was your
daddy letting it go on. That's for starters.'

           
Cathy
straightened up at the sink. 'You can't do that.'

           
'Huh?'

           
'You
can't just come into Bridelow and ask questions like that straight out.'

           
'Oh.
Really. Well, I'll be leaving then.'
           
'OK,' Cathy said lightly.

           
The
avalanche of liquid peat hit him like effluent in a flooded drain and then it
was swirling around him and he was like a seabird trapped in an oil-slick, his
wings glued to his body. If he struggled it would tear his wings from his
shoulders and enter his body and choke him. He could taste it already in his
throat and his nose.