The Man in the Moss (85 page)

           
Shaw Horridge was standing with his legs apart, panting a
little.

           
'Came back pregnant. Wouldn't be the first one.
Prospective father buggered off soon as he found out. The old story, and folks
in Bridelow's always been liberal enough about that sort of thing. Except Iris
was a bit special. Direct line, see. Presented to the Mother same week she was
christened, expected, somehow, to have a daughter.'

           
'This is nonsense,' Shaw said. 'I'm going to kill you.'

           
'Hear me out first, eh?'

.
          
'I killed someone else tonight. I killed Manifold. Young
Frank. I killed him ... just moments ago.'

           
'I don't think so,' Ernie said uncertainly. The idea of
Shaw Horridge coping with Young Frank with a few drinks inside him was still a
bit laughable. Wasn't it?

           
'I did- I'll show you.'

           
'Let me finish, lad, eh? Where was I? A daughter, yes.
They expected she'd have a daughter first, that's the way it is usually. But
no, it was a boy, and a most peculiar child. White. All over.'

           
'No!'

           
'Yes! Folks said, it's retribution. She sinned. Sinned
not so much against God but against her heritage. And the child? A changeling,
they said. Know what that is, Shaw? Child of another ... species, shall we say.
A cuckoo. That was the word they used, changeling's my word, as a folklorist -
all nonsense, of course, happen just a genetic throwback. But
"cuckoo" was what they said. Not out loud, of course. Whispered it,
though, when Iris wasn't about. But then she got married to Len Wagstaff and
had three more, and the family closed ranks a bit and the things John did later
were covered up. At first. Until it wasn't possible to cover them up any more.'

           
'What things?'

           
Pranks, at first. Not the worst you say about them, but
if you were being charitable you'd call them pranks. Cruel pranks.'

           
'Perhaps they made him feel better,' Shaw said.

           
'Eh?'

           
'You do something brave, you push yourself. And you start
to feel better.'

           
'Do you?'

           
'Yes. You can do anything if you push yourself into
places you wouldn't normally go.'

           
'Oh, aye?'

           
'Look at this, for instance. How do you think I got
this?'

           
He was doing it again, letting his hands hover half an
inch from the bald part of his head.

           
'I don't understand,' Ernie said.

           
'Can't you see?' Shaw leapt about flinging switches until
the hall was blazing with lights. Wall lights, ceiling lights, lights over five
mirrors reflecting his bounding figure. 'Look.
Look!
I was completely bald at the front. Even two weeks ago, I was
bald.'

           
'Aye?'

           
'Well?' Shaw bent his head towards Ernie. It threw off
light like a steel helmet. 'Well?'

           
'Well, what?'

           
Shaw straightened up. 'Know when it began to grow again?
When I agreed to get rid of the old lady.'

           
'Your grandmother.'

           
'That's crap. You come here, you give me all this
bullshit. How stupid do you really think I am, Mr Dawber?'

           
Ernie thought very carefully before he spoke.

           
'Stupid enough,' he said, stepping away from the
hallstand, bracing himself, 'to think your hair is growing again.

The fire hissed again.
There was a visible bubbling among the coals.

           
'Have to get Alf Beckett to fit you a cowl on t'chimney,'
Willie Wagstaff said prosaically to Milly.

           
Moira moved her legs closer to the fire, feeling she
might never be truly warm again.

           
'Your brother? He's your brother?'

           
'Half-brother,' said Willie. 'But it counted for nowt.
Once he'd gone he were never spoke of again. And after that, Ma never looked
back.'

           
'And there was a new respect for Ma,' Milly Gill said.
That she was able to do it.'

           
'Do what? What did she do?'

           
'Personal banishing rite,' Milly said. 'She walked around
the village boundary three times within a day and a night. She walked barefoot,
placing stones. Calling on … elements not usually invoked. But he was a strong presence,
even then.'
           
'Be July of that year when he
come back,' Willie recalled. 'End of his second year at Cambridge. Arrived in a
fancy sports car.'

           
'Wherever he went,' Milly said, 'he could make money or
get people to give him things.'

           
'There's an owd tree,' Willie said, 'just this side of
t'Moss, 'fore you get to t'pub. Jack piled his car into that. Broke both arms.
Elsie Ball, as were landlady of The Man in them days, she dint recognize Jack
at first. Went out to help him, but he wouldn't come out of his car,
couldn't
come out. Just sat there until
the ambulance come. Ma were standing at top of street, she knew who it were.
Too far apart to see each other's faces, but I remember Elsie saying clouds
were hanging down, hanging low, like a thunderstorm were about to burst.'
           
'And then Jack went away,'
Milly said, 'and we never saw him again. He knew he'd never get back in, long
as Ma were …'

           
'Alive,' said Willie, and Moira saw the fingers of his
left hand beginning to crawl up the side of his knee.

           
'So,' Moira said, 'if he
wanted
to get back …'

           
'Why should he? He were rich. He were becoming famous. He
had everything he could wish for.'

           
'Except his heritage,' Moira said.

           
'He tried to
destroy
his heritage,' Milly insisted.

           
'No. He tried to restructure it, surely. He tried to
rebuild it around himself. It was a placid, earth-related, female religion, and
he wanted to harden it into something he could use.'

           
Milly looked at her with suspicion.

           
'I've encountered it before,' Moira said. 'No. He was
never going to walk away from that. All the time he'd be building up his
armoury of contacts inside Bridelow. Matt and Dic we know about. There are
probably others.'

           
'Shaw Horridge.' Willie's fingers were drumming hard.
'The brewery. He'd bought into Gannons. He must've done that purely to get hold
of Bridelow Brewery.'

           
Who took the comb?

           
... bloke coiled Shaw Horridge, but
that's not important right now...

           
'Yes,' Moira said.

           
Willie's fingers going like hell, both hands now. 'The
bloody
scale
of the thing! Too big
for us to see. Maybe we never wanted to see it. He'd gone. Right, Ma says,
that's it. Never mention him again and you'll never see him again. And we never
have.'

           
'Except,' said Milly, 'in Shaw.'

           
Willie looked at her. Moira watched his eyes widen.

           
'It was a Mothers' thing,' Milly said. 'Never talked
about. I think Mr Dawber knew, but that's all. Probably not many people
remember now, and I was just a child, but when Eliza McCarthy first arrived in
Bridelow it was as Jack's girlfriend. All Jack's girlfriends were from wealthy
backgrounds. Liz didn't last long, I don't suppose she was beautiful enough. It
was probably just the family link with the Duke of Westminster that interested
him.'

           
Milly pulled one of the cats on to her lap, began to
stroke it from neck to tail. 'What happened, I believe, is that they had a row
and Jack just drove away and left her in tears in the street. Which was where
Ma found her. This was before the banishing.'

           
'Aye,' Willie said, something dawning. 'She spent the
night with us. It were the year before me Dad died. He'd gone to The Man, he
were in t'darts team, and I remember lying in bed and hearing Ma and this lass
talking for hours.'

           
'Probably what you heard was Ma warning her off Jack.
Next day, when Jack didn't come back, Ma introduced Liz to Arthur Horridge and
two months later they were engaged. Well ... four days before the wedding, Liz
is hammering on Ma's door in a terrible state. She's pregnant.'

           
Milly hauled the second cat on to her lap as if she
needed reinforcement. 'Jack. Jack on the outside. He can't get into Bridelow
but he can still get to his ex-fiancée.'

           
'Bastard.' Both of Willie's hands fell away from his
knees.
           
Cathy shook her head in
distaste. 'How could she?'
           
'You didn't know him,' Milly
said. 'When I was nine years old he took me and two other little girls for a
walk on ... Oh, you don't want to hear, it was nothing by comparison with what
else he's done. But he could walk in and even if you didn't really like him
he'd get what he came for. Liz - it wasn't rape- as such, you could learn to
live with that. Anyway ... Ma had a long chat with Arthur Horridge and Shaw was
born, and he was Arthur's son and nothing more was ever said.'

           
'I can't believe all this,' Willie said. 'Can't believe
we never
thought
. We didn't think of
the bugger any more - better not to. Wrote his books under the name John
Peveril Stanage, we knew that, so it was as if the Jack Lucas we knew had gone
for good.'

           
'Pouring all his worst fantasies into his books, huh?'
Moira said.

           
'Something like that. Takes that American lad to come in
here and drop Jack's name in our laps before we put two and together.'

           
'Oh,' said Cathy. 'Mungo! He still thinks ...'
           
Moira spun so fast the towel
unwound from her hair. Cathy's hand went to her mouth but failed to stifle a
cry.
           
'They did that to you? They
cut off all your ... ?'
           
Moira let the towel fall.
           
'Oh, Moira!' Tears sprang into
Cathy's eyes.
           
Deliberately calm, Moira said,
'They needed my hair to entangle Matt's spirit. They locked me in an outhouse
in the dark. They couldn't kill me because that would have released
my spirit, defeating the object. So they kept me in this sensory vacuum,
sedated with mogadon or some shit that turns you into a comatose non-person so
that your energy, your personality, your essence can be ... stolen.'

           
Moira stood up, reached under the mantelpiece for her
stiffening jeans. 'Cathy, I ... You invoked the awful word "Mungo".'
Disgusted to feel a tiny smile pulling on the muscles at the corners of her
mouth.

           
'He still thinks you're dead,' Cathy said. 'He's over at
the Man. I'd better call him.'

           
'Uh huh.' Moira shook her head. 'I don't know how Macbeth
got here or why, and I don't have time to find out. I'm starting to see
everything. Clear as hell.'

           
Her mind burning up with it.

They stood either side of
the Beacon of the Moss, heads bowed.

           
Joel had asked, 'Shouldn't we pray?'

           
'We should meditate,' John had said.

           
Joel stood in the blueness of it and tried to concentrate
his mind, to absorb the rise and fall of Tongues from beneath, to achieve a
holy stillness. But his thoughts lumbered ape-like around the shadowed walls of
the chamber. He could not see John's face, could only sense the man's awesome
containment.

           
'It's time,' John said very quietly, raising his head.

           
Reaching up, beyond the top of the great lantern,
examined the chain by which it hung from the thick, long smoke-blackened beam.
'Come beneath it, Joel. Catch it as I release it.'