The Man in the Moss (71 page)

           
Chrissie followed her into a big farmhouse-type kitchen,
taking off her sodden mac and tossing it into a corner, useless thing.
Underneath, she was wearing her navy-blue suit over a light blue silk blouse
and pearls. Classy and understated for John Peveril Stanage's soiree, she
thought with a sardonic shudder.

           
'Just keep talking." Mrs Castle said. 'I'll be all
right in a minute.' She was wearing a big, sloppy Icelandic-type sweater, but
she still looked almost blue with cold and she hunched herself over the stove.
Chrissie went and stood next to her and folded her arms.

           
'Well, this chap I was with, called Roger. Married, of
course. I'm his bit on the side, except that's not as frivolous or
irresponsible as it sounds, for either of us ... well, it never is, is it,
really?'

           
Mrs Castle was just looking into space. There was a full
coffee cup on the table, but the coffee had gone cold, a whirl of cream almost
solid on the top like piped icing.

           
'Roger's a prat,' Chrissie said. 'There's no getting around
that. He's got a terrific opinion of himself and yet at the same time he's
obviously a bit intimidated by his wife - she's a doctor. He wanted something
else, less demanding. Which was me. One slightly shop soiled divorcee off the
bottom shelf - flattering, eh? High powered wife, so he's looking for something
cosy and undemanding and, worst of all, a bit cheap, you know what I mean?'

           
Mrs Castle nodded and struggled to smile, a little bit of
colour in her cheeks. She was actually very attractive, good bones.

           
'I mean, you talk about undemanding, he didn't even have
to go anywhere to pick me up. We work in the same office, I'm his
secretary-cum-personal assistant - soon found out what
that
meant.'

           
Realising she'd never talked to anybody about her and Roger
before. Maybe this could turn out to be unexpectedly therapeutic.

           
'But at the end of the day,' Chrissie went on, 'his
biggest love - I mean, listen to this - his biggest love, who's far more
important to Roger than cither me or his wife - is a squidgy little brown man
who's been dead about two thousand years and came out of a bog. Now, can you
...? Ow!'

           
A kind of mad revulsion in her eyes, Mrs Castle had
suddenly swung round from the stove, grabbed hold of Chrissie's wrist and was
digging her nails into it.

           
As if, Chrissie thought, pulling away, cold, to make sure
I'm actually flesh and blood.

           
'I tell you what, Mrs Castle. I reckon you're the one who
would benefit from talking about it.'

'Where are we going
exactly?'

           
'Rog, mustn't be so
anxious,
m'friend! Mind holding the umbrella? Oops! Two hands, please, or you'll lose
it.'

           
Huge golf umbrella; anything else would have been turned
inside out by the sheer force of the downpour. Hard, vertical, brutal rain.

           
'There, that's stopped 'em from dithering.'

           
'I wasn't d—'

           
'Surrounded by
ditherers.
Don't worry, I like 'em. Shaw used to be a ditherer, didn't you, Shaw?
Ditherer, stammerer, cowardly little bastard. Fixed it, though, didn't we?
Fixed
everything.
Right, then, if
we're all ready, in we go. Been here before, Rog?'

           
Darkness. Cold.
           
'Never. Pretty chilly, isn't
it?'

           
'Chilly? This? Hear that. Tess? Poor Roger thinks it's
chilly This is Tess, my niece, aren't you, darling? And what shall we say about
these others? What they are is a bunch of unfortunates befriended by the lass,
she's
so ... good ... hearted.'

           
'Uncle, please ...'

           
'Apologies, my love. Yes, up the stairs is where we go.
Onwards and upwards. Into the Attic of Death, do you like that?

           
'Not really.'

           
'Relax, relax. Relax
ation.
The key to everything, Shaw knows that, don't you, m'boy? Up again. Ought
to be a lift, be totally cream-crackered, time we get there. How you feeling
now, Rog?'

           
'A touch light-headed, now, actually. How many drinks did
I have, I can't...'

           
'Just the one, Roger, just the one. Famous for our
cocktails aren't we, Tess?'

           
'What's that smell?'

           
'New one on you, is it, Rog? What a terribly sheltered
life you must have had, m'boy.'
           
'Oh,
dear God.'

           
'Ah, now, let's not bring
that
chap into it, Roger.'
           
'I'm going to be sick.'

           
'No you're not, you're going to get used to it. No time
at all. Now relax, the dead can't harm you.'

           
Don't look at it,
don't look at it, don't . . . Oh, Lord, what's happening to my head?

           
'No, actually. I'm lying again. That's a common myth
perpetuated by morticians. You're quite right, the dead can
indeed
harm you, in the most unexpected
ways. The dead can harm you
horribly.'

           
Laughter. Laughter all around.

By the time Macbeth walked
into the room behind the Post Office the sense of there being something deeply
wrong at this rain-beaten village -
everybody
seems to be on edge tonight -
had become so real it was starting to affect
the air; the atmosphere itself seemed thin and worn and stretched tight like
plastic film, and faces were pressed up against it trying to breathe.

           
Two faces. One chubby and female that ought to have
looked healthy and a small, male face under a brown fringe, a face out of
Wind in the Willows
or somesuch.

           
Both faces pressed up against the tight air of a small
and crowded room full of flower pictures, flower fabrics and flowers.

           
Macbeth finding it hard to introduce himself. 'I, uh …'
Harder still to explain what he was doing here. 'Mrs Castle - Lottie, right? -
thought maybe you could tell me where I could find a ... a friend of mine.'

           
'Aye,' the little guy said. 'Look, can I ask you, how
close were you to Moira, lad?' A slow, kindly voice, but Macbeth felt the damp
behind it.

           
'I guess I'd like to be closer,' he said frankly.

           
Rain from his black slicker dripping to the floral
carpet.

           
Rain making deltas on the window and small pools on the
sill.

           
Rain coming down the chimney and fizzing on the coal
fire.
           
And yet all the flowers in the
room - on the walls, in the pictures, on the woman's dress - contriving to look
parched and dead.

           
The woman said bleakly 'Since Willie spoke to Lottie
we've had a phone call.'

           
'Moira?'

           
The woman's wise eyes were heavy with a controlled kind
of sorrow.

           
A hammer inside Macbeths head beat out
no, no, no.
           
'Sit down, lad,' the little
mousy guy said, pulling a chair out from under a gate-legged mahogany dining
table. On the table was a bottle of whisky, it's seal newly broken; beside it,
two glasses.

'Well, of course I don't
believe in it, you see, Chrissie. I never have. All right, maybe it's not a
question of not believing. I mean, is there a name for a person who just simply
doesn't want to know?'

           
Chrissie warmed both hands around her coffee cup. 'For
that matter, is there a name for a man who professes to be above all that
superstitious nonsense but is more than happy to let it cure his impotence, and
then he can go back to not believing in it again?'

           
'I think "bloody hypocrite" might be one way of
putting it.' Lottie said. 'But …'

           
'But tonight... God, am I really saying this? Tonight you
saw the ghost of your husband.' Chrissie shuddered;
it really
did go all the way
up your spine
. 'Wasn't going to use that word. Never liked it.'

           
'Ghost?'

           
'What
does it mean, Lottie?
 
Was he
really there? I mean his …?'

           
'Spirit? Was his spirit there?' Lottie's voice rose,
discordant like a cracked bell. 'Yes. I think it was. And crushed. His spirit
crushed.'

           
She thrust a fist to her mouth, swallowing a sob, chewing
her knuckles.

           
'Let it come,' Chrissie said, and Lottie wept some hot,
frightened tears. 'Yes, he
was
a man
of spirit, always ... endless enthusiasm for things, what first attracted me.
But there's a negative side to enthusiasm, isn't there?'

           
'Ob ... session?'

           
Lottie sniffed. 'First there was the woman. Moira. Not
only beautiful, but young and - worst of all, worst of
all
, Chrissie - talented. The thing I couldn't give him. Support,
yes. But inspiration ... ?'

           
'You're beautiful too,' Chrissie said ineffectually.

           
'Thanks,' Lottie said. 'Was. Maybe. In the right light.
Doesn't mean a lot on its own, though, does it? Don't get me wrong, it never
...
flowered
, this thing over Moira.
They never actually
did it.
I know
that now. But I think that's worse in a way, don't you? I mean, the longing
goes on, doesn't it? The wondering what it
might
have been. Maybe I should have let him work it out, but I gave him an
ultimatum: her or me and his son, Dic. He'd have lost Dic, too. It coincided,
all this, you see, with an offer she got to join another band. He made her take
it. It was "the right thing to do".'

           
'Martyrdom,' Chrissie said.

           
'He didn't get over her exactly. He just went in search
of a new obsession and ended up reviving an old one. Which was coming back to
Bridelow. Not my idea of heaven on earth.'

           
'Not tonight anyway,' Chrissie said, looking over to the
window. It was like staring into a dark fish tank.

           
'Naturally, I encouraged him. Sent him up here at
weekends with Dic and a picnic lunch. Safe enough - I just didn't think it
would ever happen. Then they found that blasted bog body and he just went nuts
over it. Kept going to see the damn thing, like visiting a relative in hospital
or prison or somewhere. Next thing, he hears the brewery's been flogged off and
this place is on the market, and I was just carried along, like a whirlwind
picks you up and you come down somewhere else you never wanted to be.'

           
Lottie stopped, as if realising there was little more to
be said. 'And then he got ill and died.'

           
She nodded at the door to the bar. 'That gas-mantle. He
worked for hours on it. Place was a tip, plastering needed doing, but all he
was bothered about was his precious gas-mantle. Bit of atmosphere. Matt all
over: tunnel vision.'

           
'I read once ...' Chrissie hesitated. 'An article in some
magazine at the dentist's. This chap said there were certain things they came
back to. Gh ... dead people ... Christ, that sounds even worse. Anyway, things
they'd been attracted to in life.'

           
'Aye. Makes sense he'd come back to his bloody gaslight,
rather than me.'

           
'I didn't mean it that way. Sort of landmark for them to
home in on. Like a light in the fog. You could always have it taken down.'

           
'He'd go daft. He'd hold it against me for ever.'

           
'What did he look like? His old self, or what?'

           
'He looked terrible.' Lottie started to cry again. Why
can't you ever learn to button it, kid? Chrissie told herself.