The Man in the Moss (8 page)

           
Ernie laughed through his discomfort. She made it sound
like a digestive problem.

           
'Not before time,' Ma said. 'Never any talking to you
when you was headmaster. Jumped-up little devil. Knew it all - what teacher
ever don't? Still ... better late than not. Now then, Ernest Dawber, I'll try
and teach thee summat.'

           
He let Ma Wagstaff lead him away to the edge of the
forecourt, from where terraced stone cottages plodded up to the high-towered
church, a noble sentinel over the Moss.
           
'What do you see?'

           
'This a trick question, Ma?'

           
Now, with the sun gone, all
the houses had merged. You couldn't tell
any more
which ones had fresh
paintwork, which had climbing roses or new porches. Only a few front steps
stood out, the ones which had been recently donkey-stoned so they shone bright
as morning.

           
'To be honest, Ma, I can't see that much. Can't even see
colours.'

           
'What
can
you
see, then?'

           
'It's not light,' Ernie said, half-closing his eyes,
"and it's not dark. Everything's melting together.

           
'Go on.'
           
'I can't see the individual
houses. I suppose I can only see the people who live in them. Young Frank and
Susan and the little lad. Alf Beckett. Millicent Gill at the Post Office ...Gus
Bibby, Maurice and Dee at the chip shop.
 
And I suppose ... if I look a bit harder ...'

           
'Aye, you do that.'

           
'If I look harder I can see the people who lived in the
house before ...The Swains - Arthur Swain and his pigeons. Alf Beckett's
mother, forty-odd years a widow. I can bring them
all back when I've a mind. Specially at this time of day. But that's the
danger, as you get older, seeing things as they were, not as they are.'

           
'The trick' said Ma, 'is to see it all at same time. As
it was and as it is. And when I says "as it was" I don't just mean in
your lifetime or even my lifetime. I mean as far back as yon bogman's time.'

           
Ernie
felt
himself shiver. He pushed the British Museum papers deeper into his
inside pocket. Whatever secret knowledge of the bogman Ma possessed, he didn't
want to know any more.

           
Ma said, 'You stand here long enough, you can see it all
the way back, and you won't see no colours, you won't see no hard edges. Now
when you're out on t'Moss, Brid'lo don't look that welcoming, does it? All cold
stone. You know that, you've written about it enough. But it's not cold to us,
is it? Not when we're inside. No hard edges, no bright colours, never owt like
that.'
           
'No.'

           
'Only shades. Ma said, almost dreamily. 'Them's what's
kept this place the way it is. Shades of things '
           
'Shades?'

           
'Old colours all run together. No clashes. Know what I'm
telling you, Ernest?'

           
'Harmony?' Ernie said. 'Is that it? Which is not to say
there's no bickering, or bits of bad feeling. But, fundamentally, I s'pose,
Bridelow's one of those places where most of us are happy to be. Home. And
there's no defining that. Not everybody's found it. We're lucky. We've
been
lucky.'

           
'Luck?' Something was kindling behind Ma's eyes.
Eighty-five if she was a day and still didn't need glasses. '
Luck
? You don't see owt, do you?'
Ernie'd had glasses full-time since he was thirty-five. 'What's it got to do
wi' luck?'
           
'Just a figure of speech, Ma.'

           
'Balls,' said Ma. 'Luck! What this is, it's a balancing
act. Very
complicated
for t'likes of
us. Comes natural to nature.'

           
Ernie smiled. 'As it would.'

           
'Don't you mock me, Ernest Dawber.

           
'I'm sorry, Ma.' She was just a shade herself now, even
her blue beret faded to grey.

           
'Beware of bright, glaring colours,' she said. 'But most
of all, beware of black. And beware of white.'

           
'I don't know what you mean...'

           
'You will,' said the little old woman. 'You're a
teacher.' She put a hand on his arm. 'Ernest, I'm giving you a task.
           
'Oh 'eck '

           
'You've to think of it as the most important task you've
ever had in your life. You're a man of learning, Ernest. Man wi' authority.'

           
'Used to be, Ma. I'm just a pensioner now ...' Like you,
he was going to say, then he noticed how sad and serious she was looking.

           
'Get that man back.'

           
'Who?' But he knew. 'How?' he said, aghast.
           
'Like I said, Ernest. Tha's
got authority.'
           
'Not that kind of authority,
for God's sake.'

Nobody there. He swallowed.
Nobody. Not in or near the bus shelter.

           
It was on his nearside, which was no good, he might get
hurt, so he drove further along the road, reversing into someone's drive,
heading back slowly until he could see the glass-sided shelter, an
advertisement for Martini on the end panel, lit up like a cinema screen in the
headlights: a handsome man with wavy hair leaning over a girl on a sofa,
topping up her glass.

           
He was mentally measuring the distance.

           
What am I doing! What am I bloody
doing?

           
I could park it just here. Leave it. Walk away. Too far,
anyway, for her to hear the impact.

           
In his mind he saw Therese standing by the telephone
kiosk, about to phone for a taxi. In his mind she stopped. She was frowning.
She'd be thinking what a miserable, frightened little sod he was.

           
He
could
say
there
had
been somebody in the bus
shelter, two people. Get angry. Was he supposed to kill them? Was he supposed
to do that?
           
But she would know.

           
He stopped the car, the engine idling. The bus shelter
had five glass panels in a concrete frame. The glass would be fortified. He
would have to take a run at it, from about sixty yards.

           
If he didn't she would know.

           
He remembered the occasions she'd lost her temper with
him. He shivered, stabbed at the accelerator with the car in neutral, making it
roar, clutching the handbrake, a slippery grip.
       
Too much to lose. Gritting his teeth until his gums hurt.
           
Too
much to lose.

           
And you'll feel better afterwards.

           
Took his foot off. Closed his eyes, breathed rapidly, in
and out. The road was quiet now, the hedges high on either side, high as a
railway embankment.

           
Shaw backed up twenty or thirty yards, pulled into the
middle of the road. Felt his jaw trembling and, to stiffen it, retracted his
lips into a vicious snarl.

           
He threw the Saab into first gear. Realised, as the
stolen car spurted under him, that he was screaming aloud.

           
On the side of the bus shelter, the handsome man leaned
over the smiling girl on the sofa, topping up her glass from the bottle. In the
instant before the crash, the dark, beautiful girl held out the glass in a
toast to Shaw before bringing it to her lips and biting deeply into it, and
when she smiled again, her smile was full of blood.

           
You'll feel...
better.

The big lights came on in
the bar and were sluiced into the forecourt through the open door where Matt
Castle stood grinning broadly, with his tall red-haired wife. Behind them was
the boy - big lad now, early twenties, must be. Not one of Ernie's old pupils,
however; Dic had been educated in and around Manchester while his dad's band
was manhandling its gear around the pubs and clubs.

           
'Happen he
will
bring
a bit of new life,' Ernie said. 'He's a good man.'

           
'Goodness in most of us,' Ma Wagstaff said, 'is a fragile
thing, as you'll have learned, Ernest.'

           
Ernie Dawber adjusted his glasses, looked down curiously
at Ma. As the mother of Little Willie Wagstaff, long-time percussionist in Matt
Castle's Band, the old girl could be expected to be at least a bit enthusiastic
about Matt's plans.

           
Ma said, 'Look at him. See owt about him, Ernest?'
           
Matt Castle had wandered down
the steps and was still shaking hands with people and laughing a lot. He
looked, to Ernie, like a very happy man indeed, a man putting substance into a
dream.

           
Lottie Castle had remained on the step, half inside the
doorway, half her face in shadow.
           
'
She
knows,' Ma Wagstaff said.
           
'Eh?'

           
'I doubt as she can see it, but she knows, anyroad.'
           
'Ma ... ?'

           
'Look at him. Look hard. Look like you looked at
t'street.'

           
Matt Castle grinning, accepting a pint. Local hero.
           
I don't understand,1 said
Ernie Dawber. He was beginning to think he'd become incapable of understanding.
Forty-odd years a teacher and he'd been reduced to little-lad level by an woman
who'd most likely left school at fourteen.
           
Ma Wagstaff said, 'He's got
the black glow, Ernest.'
           
'What?'

           
On top of everything else she'd come out with tonight,
this jolted Ernie Dawber so hard he feared for his heart. It was just the way
she said it, like picking out a bad apple at the greengrocer's. A little old
woman in a lumpy woollen skirt and shapeless old cardigan.

           
'What are you on about?' Ernie forcing joviality. Bloody
hell, he thought, and it had all started so well. A real old Bridelow night.

           
'Moira?' Matt Castle was saying. 'Aye, I
do
think she'll come. If only for old
times' sake.' People patting him on the shoulder. He looked fit and he looked
happy. He looked like a man who could
achieve
.

           
The black glow?' Ernie whispered.
'The black glow
?
           
What had been banished from
his mind started to flicker - the images of the piper on the Moss over a period
of fifteen, to twenty years. Echoes of the pipes: gentle and plaintive on good
days, but sometimes sour and sometimes savage.
           
Black glow?' his voice
sounding miles away.

           
Ma Wagstaff looked up at him. 'I'm buggered if I'm
spelling it for thee.'

Part Three

From
Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

Bridelow Moss is a
two-miles-wide blanket of black peat. Much of its native vegetation has been
eroded and the surface peat made blacker by industrial deposits - although the
nearest smut-exuding industries are more than fifteen miles away.

                       
Bisected by two small rivers, The Moss slopes
down, more steeply than is apparent, from the foothills of the northern Peak
District almost to the edge of the village of Bridelow.

                       
In places, the peat reaches a depth of three
metres, and although there are several drainage gullies, conditions can be treacherous,
and walkers unfamiliar with the Moss are not recommended to venture upon it in
severe weather.

                       
But then, on dull wet, days in Autumn and
Winter, the gloomy and desolate appearance of the Moss would deter all but the
hardiest rambler ...