The Cold Calling

IV

Once, just after dawn, the sun had come down for Annie Davies.

This phenomenon occurred early in the last century, on Midsummer’s Day, which happened to be her birthday.

It also took place on High Knoll.

Which was fair enough, as far as Marcus was concerned. Which actually, in fact, made perfect bloody sense.

However, what was upsetting was this: had it occurred almost anywhere else around the village, Annie Davies might, by now, have been some kind of saint. And the village a little Lourdes.

This was how Marcus Bacton saw it, anyway. Hoping, as he stepped out of the castle ruins and set off across the meadow, that the Knoll had a little inspiration to spare for him. That simply being there, in the energy of dawn, might somehow resolve the pressing question of what to do about Mrs Willis, his housekeeper, his best friend, his doctor.

Who, possibly, was dying.

Who might, in the end, require the nursing home she’d always sworn she’d never enter.

But who, if it came to it, he’d carry to the bloody Knoll.

It had taken Marcus years to piece together the story of young Annie Davies and the midsummer vision. Interesting, the way the village’s collective memory had filed it away under Don’t Quite Recall.

Bastards.

‘Come on then.’ Marcus walked more quickly, afraid the sun was going to beat him to the top. Getting on for seven a.m., and there was already a blush on the hill where the mist was thinning.

‘Come on. ‘

About twenty yards away, Malcolm, the brindle and white bull terrier cross, raised his bucket head briefly and went back to whatever dead and rotting item he was sniffing. A couple of sheep watched him uneasily.

‘All right, you bastard. Get your balls blown off, see if I care.’

Problem being that the Williams boy, who leased the grazing from the Jenkins brothers, could get difficult about dogs upsetting his flock. Even Malcolm, who despised sheep even more than he despised Marcus.

Eventually, the dog grudgingly ambled over and down they went, through the meadow and up the pitch towards the Knoll, until the already reddening field lay below them like a slice of toast tossed from the mountain.

And Marcus looked down, as he always did, and tried to see it as it must have looked to Annie Davies.

Wouldn’t be able to, of course, because he was now sixty, and Annie had been thirteen — by just a few hours — on the morning of her vision, in a world still recovering from the Great War.

The unheralded marriage of Tommy Davies, a farmer well advanced in years, to the local schoolmistress, Edna Cadwallader, must have provided a year’s worth of gossip for the drama-starved inhabitants of St Mary’s.

Annie was Tommy and Edna’s only child. Born ‘prematurely’, as they used to say in those days.

Amy Jenkins (related only by marriage to the Jenkins brothers, owners of the meadow, the Knoll and another hundred acres), who kept the oldest village pub, had told Marcus that her own mother used to say it was ‘a bit of a funny family’. As schoolmistress, Edna had considered herself Village Intellectual. She was a parish councillor, too, and would spend most nights at one meeting or another, putting the community to rights. And so Annie had grown up closer to her aged father.

Marcus often imagined — as if it had really happened this way — a strange, still atmosphere on the night before the vision — Annie brewing a pot of strong tea for her dad and the two of them taking a mug each and wandering companionably down to Great Meadow, watching the hayfield turn almost white in the deep blue dusk.

Thirteen, is it now? The cooling mug must have looked like a thimble in Tommy Davies’s huge, bark-brown hands. Big age, that is, girl. Sure to be.

Annie’s father probably didn’t talk a great deal. He would have been as old as most of the other village children’s grandfathers. So when he made a pronouncement it would be charged, for Annie, with a glowing significance, like the words of an Old Testament prophet.

Thirteen. Marcus saw her grinning up at Tommy Davies, laying her mug on the grass and, with a rush of coltish energy, clambering over the wooden gate and dashing off down the track dividing Great Meadow, with the first breath of the night billowing her cotton frock almost over her head. The beginning of the parting, and Tommy too old and experienced not to accept it.

Perhaps the image of Annie had become inseparable now, for Marcus, with the last picture of his own daughter, Sally, who had died of leukaemia within months of her own thirteenth birthday. Perhaps this, in truth, was what had made him so determined to get Castle Farm: the feeling that something of Sally was here, too. That if he’d known about the vision when she was dying he would have brought her here. To the natural shrine which the Church had denied.

Soon, what seemed like all of south Herefordshire was at Marcus’s feet, the crimson line of dawn drawn tight over the misty, wooded hills, cleft only by the stocky church tower of St Mary’s.

The church was built on the site of a Celtic hermit’s cell. It was probably older than the woods and the fields. For Marcus, the hills around the Golden Valley hid the lushest, richest, least-spoiled countryside in all of southern Britain. The villages had altered hardly at all, and St Mary’s was probably not so very different from when Annie was here. In those days, it might even still have been known by its original Welsh name Llanfair-y-fynydd: St Mary’s in the Mountains.

The village itself, viewed from above, seemed almost circular, in its nest of wooded slopes. From the churchyard, you could look up and see the long, dark ridge of the mountains, but the eye would always be drawn back towards a single promontory which seemed to punch the sky like a dark, gauntleted fist.

High Knoll. Or Black Knoll, as it was called in the village and now, to Marcus’s disgust, even on the maps. When you got there, it wasn’t so stark, although the grass was brown and rough around the stones.

The burial chamber on the Knoll was far older than the church and even older than the Celtic hermit’s cell. Annie Davies would have been told (by her mother, at the village school) that it was where heathen folk once came to worship the sun. Ignorant people who thought the sun was a god.

Perhaps Annie had been dismayed. Perhaps, whenever she’d tried to imagine God, she, like Marcus, had thought at once of the sun, the brightest light in the sky. Wondering if that made her a heathen?

Perhaps, as she walked up to the big, broken table of stones, she’d decided that the prehistoric people couldn’t have been so very ignorant if they could find such a perfect place to greet the day. And anyway, Jesus hadn’t been born then, so how were they to know about the true God? They were worshipping the brightest light they knew; what was so wrong about that?

Tommy Davies, who wasn’t well educated but was doubtless very wise, might have told her that the people who built the monument were his ancestors, the first farmers here. And that having the bits of old stones up there somehow kept the land in good heart.

The burial chamber had been partially collapsed for centuries. It was unlikely that even Annie would have been able to get inside. Perhaps, that morning, she had clambered on top of the chamber, the huge capstone, and turned to watch the daily miracle of the sun trickling out of the horizon. And lifted her face to the sky.

Was that when it had happened?

About a hundred yards from the Knoll, along the steepening track of stones and baked red mud, Marcus had his first tantalizing glimpse of the top of the capstone.

Just about make it in time for the dawn. Even more than three months after midsummer, the view of the dawn from High Knoll was never a disappointment.

And then he heard voices.

What?

On the Knoll? Voices on the Knoll? At dawn? Marcus felt violated. He stiffened, snatched hold of Malcolm’s collar, clamped a hand over his muzzle.

Accepting he had no right to feel like this. Wasn’t Castle land any more, although it was Marcus’s ambition — if, for instance, there was a sudden upturn (ha!) in the fortunes of The Phenomenologist — to buy it back one day. However, the elderly, reclusive Jenkins brothers, whose father had acquired the Knoll as part of a land package in the late 1940s, seemed to accept the footpath as a right of way, for the owners of the Castle, at least. On this understanding, Marcus laboured up here at dawn twice a week, summer and winter. And in all that time he’d never met a soul, except for the intense American girl that one occasion, and at least she’d had the bloody decency to consult him first.

Because, at the Knoll, the dawn was his time. His and Annie’s and Sally’s.

There was a clump of rowan below the summit, and Marcus crept between the trees, marching Malcolm ahead of him, and waited and listened. A man’s voice was drawling in that rhythmic up and down way that told you he wasn’t really talking to anyone he could see.

‘Now, this is a fairly unexceptional chambered tomb, dating back over four thousand years. We can’t get into the chamber any more because, as you can see, it’s collapsed in the middle. Of course, what we’re looking at here are merely the bones of the structure. Originally, all this would have been concealed by tons of earth, and all you’d have been able to see was a huge mound, with an opening … just … here. Now I say it’s unexceptional … except … for one aspect. The location.’

There was silence for about half a minute. Marcus seethed.

‘How was that, Patrick? We could run some music under the bit where we open up to the dawn spectacle. Do you think? What’s that da da thing from 2001? Or is that a bit of a cliche?’

‘No, it might work. Roger … Just another thought. When I pull back, but before I open it out, if you were to stand fractionally to the left …’

‘How far? This?’

‘And back a bit. Hold it there. Spot on. What I was thinking, if we time this right, do it just as it’s breaking through, it’ll look as if the sun’s rising out of the top of your head. Nice effect. What do you think?’

‘Hmm. Yes, OK. Why not? Worth a try.’

‘Make a change,’ Marcus said loudly, coming out of the trees, ‘from it shining out of his fucking arse.’

He hauled himself up onto the small plateau of the Knoll. Where there was hardly bloody room for him. The molten orb in the east turning five faces florid as they all spun at him.

Young Fraser-Hale looked startled but otherwise unperturbed. The haughty Magda Ring said, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ and slapped her clipboard like a tambourine. The cameraman swung round, aiming his lens at Marcus like an assassin with a rifle. The sound man resentfully snatched off his headphones. And Falconer …

Falconer just smiled.

‘Marcus,’ he said.

Falconer. In his fur-trimmed motorcycle jacket and his ridiculously tight jeans. Falconer who strode the hills with his ponytail swinging, followed by a string of adoring acolytes: the old ladies he charmed, the young ones who — by all accounts — he shagged senseless.

‘One realizes, old chap,’ he said, ‘how terribly fond you are of this place, but we are working and, as you see, space is somewhat limited.’

Falconer, with his weekly television audience of an estimated six million.

Marcus with his ailing private-subscription magazine, circulation just under eight hundred and slipping.

His aversion to the man couldn’t be as simple as that, surely?

‘If I could just point out …’ the cameraman said, looking agitated, ‘that we’re going to have about four minutes, maximum, to get this shot before the sun goes behind a frigging cloud or something.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Falconer said. ‘Our friend just wandered up for a teensy snoop, and now he’s leaving. Aren’t you, Marcus? Old chap.’

Old chap. Always a slight emphasis on the old.

‘As a matter of fact, no.’ Marcus flicked back his heavy, grey hair and straightened his glasses. ‘I don’t think I am.’

Big problem was: most of the villagers seemed to love the bastard. The star-struck idiots on his damned courses taking all the rooms at the local hotels and pubs, filling up the holiday caravans on the mobile-home park; Jarman, the postmaster, claiming Falconer was the biggest boost to the local economy since they closed the bloody railway.

But look at the bloody damage he’s doing, Marcus would protest, and they’d all stare at him, mystified. And Marcus would try to explain how the damned man was destroying the ancient sanctity. Because that was his thing: to demystify, unravel, explain, according to his own limited, prosaic criteria, the essentially inexplicable. Demolishing mythology, dispelling atmosphere, stealing the energy and giving nothing back.

Except money.

Marcus delivering his side of the argument in two successive issues of The Phenomenologist: why the ludicrous University of the Earth would ultimately be a bad thing for the area. Leaving copies lying around, pinning up the article on the village noticeboard. With the exception of Amy, at the Tup, the villagers didn’t understand. They all thought he was out of his bloody tree. And jealous.

Falconer’s perpetually tanned face flexed and he flashed his white crowns. A combative, buccaneering smile, often seen on his accursed TV programme: the informed sceptic challenging the gullible, hare-brained mystic.

Marcus released the dog and straightened up: six inches shorter than Falconer, two stones heavier, ten years older. Malcolm growled happily.

‘You get hold of that bloody thing.’ The soundman backed away, protecting his privates. He wouldn’t know Malcolm was all mouth, no bite.

‘Dog’s got as much right to be here as you,’ said Marcus. ‘Probably more.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong about that,’ Falconer said smoothly.

‘That animal touches me,’ the soundman said, ‘I’ll have the police in. Have it picked up and put down and you up in court.’ Turned on the cameraman. ‘I hate the country. You never told me there’d be any of this shit. You said there was no need for personal injury insurance. I’ve got kids, Patrick.’

‘Marcus,’ Falconer said, ‘did anyone ever tell you what an offensive little man you were? You’ve been here approximately half a minute, you’ve disrupted my shoot, upset my crew …’

‘Falconer.’ Marcus stared him in the eyes. ‘You have lived here less than six bloody months. In that short time, you have offended every one of my most basic sensibilities.’

‘Sensibilities?’ Falconer shook his head pityingly. ‘God preserve us.’

Marcus advanced on him. ‘Turned the whole valley into a sodding film set. Everywhere I go, there you are doing one of your inane “pieces-to-camera” on the psychology of Neolithic person … as though the whole bloody Stone Age is your bloody backyard.’

‘Well,’ Falconer said. ‘At least my version of pre-history is based on knowledge, as distinct from wishful thinking. But I really don’t have the time to discuss the nonsense of ley lines with an old fart whose opinions are irrelevant anyway, so-’

‘Bollocks! You don’t really know any more than the rest of us. You’re just a bloody academic vampire. A leech. ‘

Marcus stopped, knowing he was losing it. Falconer was laughing.

‘Roger,’ the cameraman said. He looked about twenty-two, and petulant. ‘Just look at that sun, will you? We’re missing my shot. ‘

‘Oh dear!’ Marcus snarled. ‘You’re missing the little turd’s shot.’

Falconer stopped laughing. There was clearly a real possibility they wouldn’t be able to video him with the sun beaming out of his head. Not today, anyway. Oh bloody dear.

‘All right, old chap.’ The great man stretched a stiff arm at Marcus. ‘Run along. Out!’

‘Out?’ Marcus stood his ground. ‘Out of the district? Out of the country? Who the fuck do you think you are?’

‘All right, I’ll tell you who I am.’ Falconer’s face hardened. ‘I am the owner of Black Knoll.’

There was a moment of ghastly silence as the words hit Marcus like an anvil and all the breath went out of him. Before disbelief set in.

‘Rubbish. That’s … rubbish. Balls. You … you can’t just buy an ancient monument. Even you.’

‘Of course I can. And the land it stands on.’

‘That’s impossible.’ Marcus felt weak. Couldn’t be true. The Jenkins brothers knew how much he wanted the Knoll. Knew he’d get the money together one day.

‘Contracts were exchanged yesterday at four p.m., in Hereford.’ Falconer pausing to savour the reaction. ‘The Jenkinses are very happy indeed at the thought of getting rid of a useless, scrubby little mound without having to sell the meadow as well. If you’d like to see the paperwork, Marcus, call in at my office at Cefn-y-bedd. On your way down.’

‘But …’ Marcus couldn’t summon the breath; his chest felt tight as a bloody drum. Wait till he saw the Jenkins brothers, fucking traitorous bastards. ‘Why …?’

‘Because I like the bloody thing, Marcus. Because I want to study it in peace. Because the University of the Earth really ought to have its own ancient site, where my people can carry out their experiments uninterrupted by-’

‘Their experiments? This is a bloody shrine!’

Falconer passed a hand across his eyes, tottered theatrically. ‘Bacton, people like you astonish me. You have the credulity of small children. Anything bizarre, anything determinedly unscientific, like the fantasies of some deluded, pubescent brat back in the twenties-’

‘It’s people like you’ — Marcus brandished a finger at him — ‘who hounded that child out of the village.’

‘And one can only be thankful, Marcus, that there weren’t people like you around to canonize her.’

Marcus thought suddenly of Mrs Willis. Her recent, unprecedented tiredness, her headaches. His stomach went cold.

‘You don’t understand anything, do you? It’s a healing place. That’s why it was sited where it is. To channel solar energy.’

‘Sure, sure. Just one of the theories we’ll be putting to the test. Scientifically.’

‘With a view to disproving it. And meanwhile, what about the people who come up to draw on the energy?’ Marcus felt his lip tremble, picturing Mrs Willis making her way here in the dark, increasingly unsteady, but determined, knowing that the return journey would be so much lighter.

‘Balls,’ Falconer said. ‘I’ve never heard such complete balls.’

‘Roger …’

‘I’ll be right with you, Patrick. Marcus Bacton is leaving. And he’s not coming back. In future — and I’m making this clear now, in front of witnesses — he’ll not be welcome on this site.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’d bloody love to stop us coming here, but you know you can’t, so-’

‘Oh, I can, Marcus. It’s not a public right of way. When we install our fence …’

‘Fence? Fence?’ He’d bring Mrs Willis up here in defiance of the bastard, but how could he lift her over a fence? ‘You don’t know what you’re fucking doing …’

‘I’m fully cognisant of my legal position. Anyone wishing to visit Black Knoll will require permission which, in most cases, if we’re not working here, will be given. Between the hours of nine a.m. and six p.m.’

His narrow, allegedly handsome face flushed with triumph, Falconer waited for the significance of this to dawn, as it were, on Marcus.

‘You bastard,’ Marcus whispered. ‘You utter, crass bastard. ‘

Falconer flicked a contemptuous hand at him, walked off and went to stand by the burial chamber. ‘Too late, Patrick?’

‘Not if we’re quick,’ said the cameraman.

Marcus turned abruptly away so they wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes, his jaw quaking. Sensing his distress, Malcolm kept close to his legs as he made his way down from the Knoll.

‘He can’t,’ Marcus told the dog. ‘He fucking can’t. ‘

The rising sun full in his face.

For Annie Davies, the sun had come down and appeared to roll along the ground, between the hills, a great, glowing ball. Just rolling, in total silence. But also vibrating … shimmering.

‘And if that animal happens to shit on my land,’ Falconer called after him, ‘clean it up, would you? Old chap.’