The Man in the Moss

From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):

The oldest woman in Bridelow commands, as you would expect, considerable respect, as well as a certain affection.

Ma Wagstaff? No, I am afraid I refer to Our Sheila who displays her all above the church porch.

The so-called Sheelagh na gig (the spelling varies) is found - inexplicably - in the fabric of ancient churches throughout the British Isles: a survival of an older religion, some say, or a warning against heathen excess. Usually it is lazily dismissed as 'some sort of fertility symbol'.

The shapes and sizes vary, but the image is the same: a female shamelessly exposing her most private parts. Pornography, I am glad to say, it isn't. The faces of these ancient icons are normally grotesque in the extreme, their bodies compressed and ludicrous.

Our Sheila, however, is a merry lass with an almost discernible glint in her bulging stone eyes and a grin which is more innocent than lewd.

Do not dismiss her as a mere 'fertility symbol'. She has much to say about the true nature of Bridelow.

CHAPTER I

Round about 6.30, Chrissie had got a phone call from the police. Would she mind popping over to the Field Centre?

When she'd arrived the place was all lights. Police car and a van outside, an unmarked Rover pulling in behind her.

When the two CID men from the Rover walked across, they looked as if they'd been laughing. Now, facing her across her own desk, they were straight-faced but not exactly grim.

'I'm Detective Inspector Gary Ashton,' the tall one said. 'This is DS Hawkins' - waving a hand at the chubby one in the anorak. 'Now ... Miss White.'

'Chrissie,' she said.

'Lovely: He was a fit-looking bloke, short grey hair and a trenchcoat. Fancy that ... even with policemen, fashion goes in circles.

'If you've been trying to get hold of Dr Hall,' she said helpfully, 'he went to a funeral, but it should be well over by now.'

'Thank you. We know,' Ashton said. 'He left early, apparently, and went home. He's on his way. Now, just to get our times right, when exactly did you go home?'

Oh, sugar, Chrissie thought. 'We finish at four forty-five,' she said.

Actually she'd left at 4.15. Just before four, Alice had fallen back on the irrefutable - claiming she had one of her migraines coming on. Chrissie had stuck it for fifteen minutes on her own and then thought, sod it, and gone to fetch her coat.

'Four forty-five,' Ashton said. 'Right.' They could tell when you were lying, couldn't they? If he could, he didn't seem too concerned.

'Now,' he said. 'You're responsible for locking up, are you?'

'I do it if there's nobody else. I wouldn't say I'm responsible. There's the caretaker, he comes on at five. And then a private security firm comes round a few times at night ... that's just since he's been here. They were worried there might be a few, you know ... weirdo types, wanting to have a look. Or something. What's happened, then? Has there been a break-in?'

'So when you left, everything was locked up. What d'you do with the keys?'

'The front and back door keys we drop off at the caretaker's office at the main college building. The keys to the bogman section ... we keep those in here, I'm afraid. Is that bad? In one of the filing cabinets - but that's always locked at night, of course.'

If this chap's an inspector, she realised, it's got to be more than just a break-in.

'And the big doors at the back?'

'We never open them. Well, only when ... when the bogman arrived in a van. They brought him straight in that way.'

'Do you go round and check those doors, Chrissie, before you leave? Round the outside, I mean.'

'Do I buggery,' said Chrissie. 'I'm an office manager, not a flaming night watchman. Look, come on, what's this all about? What's happened?'

Ashton smiled. 'So you didn't see or hear anything suspicious before you left?'

'No. Not tonight.' Oops.

'What d'you mean, not tonight?'

'Well ... I thought I heard a noise in there, where ... he is ... a couple of nights ago, but it was nothing. Probably a bird on the roof.'

'You didn't raise the alarm?'

'What for? It was locked. I knew nobody could get in through those doors without making a hell of a racket, so there didn't seem ...'

'Somebody got in tonight, Miss White.'

'Oh, hell,' said Chrissie. 'They didn't damage him, did they? Roger'll go hairless.'

She was cold. The BMW beckoned.

She could, after all, simply drive away from this.

Nobody invited you, girl.

Frost on the cobbles. No one else on the street. Curtains drawn, chimneys palely smoking.

Ah, the burden of guilt and regret. All he'd done for you, all he meant to you, and the thought that you'd never see him again.

Well, you saw him.

She shivered.

Problem with this place was there was nowhere you could even get a cup of coffee ... except the pub.

She stood and stared at it from across the road. It was a large, shambling building set back from the street, with a field behind it and nothing behind that but peat. Dark sooty stone. Windows on three floors, none of the upper ones lit. Outside was a single light with an iron shade, a converted gaslamp, quite a feeble glow, just enough to light up the sign above the door: The Man I'th Moss. In black. No picture.

Didn't look like Lottie Castle's kind of place. Lottie was big sofas and art-nouveau prints.

Moira stepped lightly across the cobbles, peered through the doorway. Only a dozen or so people in the bar, Lottie not among them. Willie was there, with Eric Marsden. The big dollop of hair over Eric's forehead had gone grey but he looked no more mournful than he always had. Eric: the quiet one. In every band there was always a quiet one.

Go in then, shall I?

Why, it's Moira ...

Come to help us re-form the band?

Just one problem. We had to bury Matt.

Never mind. Have a drink, lass.

She turned away, gathering her cloak about her. Moved quietly across the forecourt to the steeply sloping village street.

There was a guy leaning against the end wall of a stone terrace, smoking a cigarette. She kept her distance, walked down the middle of the street, along the cobbles.

Nothing for you here. Go back to what you know. The fancy clubs and the small halls. You can play that scene until you're quite old, long as the voice holds out. Save up the pennies. In twenty years you can retire to a luxury caravan, like the Duchess. Sea views. All your albums collected under the coffee table.

As she came abreast of him, the guy against the wall turned and looked at her, muttered something. Sounded like 'Fucking hell'.

Then he tossed his cigarette into the road at her feet. 'And they tell me,' he said, 'that this used to be a respectable neighbourhood.'

'Who's that?' Too dark to make out his features.

'You don't know me.'

'But you know me, huh?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'But not nearly as well as my dad did.'

'Oh,' Moira said.

His voice had sounded different when she last heard it. Like high, pre-pubertal.

She sighed.

'Dic,' she said. 'You want to go somewhere and discuss all this?'

He laughed. A short laugh. Matt's laugh, A cawing.

'Well?' she said.

'I'm thinking,' he said from deep within his shadow.

''Cause I don't mind,' Moira said. 'I'm easy.'

'Yeah,' he said, 'we all knew that.'

Moira paused. 'That was your chance, Dic. I threw you that one. You gave the predictable, adolescent answer. So go fuck yourself, OK?'

She turned away, moved quickly up the street, clack, clack, clack on the cobbles. As good a way as any to do your exit.

Grabbing the chance to go out angry; it helped. On either side of her were the gateposts of the stone cottages, a black cat on one, watching her like it knew her well. Lights behind curtains, lights from an electrified gaslamp projecting from an end wall, and over them all, like another moon, the illuminated church clock. Take it all in, you won't see it again. Bye-bye, Bridelow.

'All right!' It rang harshly from the cobbles like an iron bar thrown into the street.

It didn't stop her.

'Yeah, OK!' Running feet.

She carried on walking, turned towards the lych-gate, the corpse gate, but passed it by and entered the parking area behind the church, where it was very dark.

She was taking her keys out of her bag when he caught up with her.

'I'm sorry. All right?'

'Good. You'll be able to sleep.' Fitted the key in the car door. 'Night, Dic. Give my love to your mother.'

'Look ...'

'Hey,' she said gently. 'I'm leaving, OK? You know your dad was screwing me, what can I say to that?'

'I want to talk about it.'

'Well, I'm no' talking here, it's cold and I'm no' going to the pub, so maybe you should just go away and think about it instead, huh? Call me sometime. Fix it up with my agent. I'm tired. I'm cold.'

'Where will you go?'

'And what the fuck does that have to do with you? I shall find a nice, anonymous hotel somewhere ...'

'Look,' Dic said. 'There is somewhere we can talk. Somewhere warm.'

'Cosy.' Moira got into the car. 'Goodnight.'

'Moira ...'

She started the engine, switched on the lights, wound down the window- 'By the way. Your playing, it was ... Well, you're getting there.'

'I don't want to get there,' he said without emotion. 'I just wanted to please him.'

'Aye,' Moira said.

'It never did, though.'

'No,' she said.

A dumpy, elderly man walked through the headlamp beams. He wore a long raincoat and a trilby bat, like Donald's, only in better shape. 'Good evening,' he said politely, as he passed.

The lights were on in the church, am be ring the pillars in the nave. A suitcase stood by the font.

Ernie Dawber watched the new curate manhandling a metal paraffin stove into the vestry.

'All right, lad?'

Joel Beard, alarmed, set down the stove with a clang.

'Ernie Dawber, lad. We met the other day, with Hans.'

'Ah, yes.' The curate recovered, stood up straight. He was wearing his cassock and the huge pectoral cross. 'Look, I'm sure you mean well, Mr Dawber, but I'd rather not discuss anything tonight, if you don't mind.'

'Beg your pardon?'

'The funeral, Mr Dawber. What happened at the funeral. You were about to tell me how innocuous it all was. I'm saying I'd rather not discuss it.'

'Well, I think we should discuss it, Mr Beard. Because it looks like you're in charge now.'

Joel Beard looked bewildered. He'd obviously rushed away from the graveside, dashed down to his little cell to recover and didn't yet know about Hans.

Ernie told him.

'Oh,' Joel said. 'Oh, my Lord.'

'Aye.'

'Is he going to be all right?'

'Happen,' said Ernie. 'If he gets some rest. If he doesn't spend all his time worrying what the bloody hell's going on back in Bridelow.'

Joel Beard gave him a hard look for swearing in church.

'Now look, lad,' Ernie said. 'Pull yourself together. You're not really going to kip down there?'

'I am.' Joel rested an arm on the edge of the font. 'It's quite clear to me that it's become even more important to sleep in God's pocket. You were there today, I think, Mr Dawber. You saw what went on.'

'I saw a big, soft bugger making a bloody fool of himself,' said Ernie stoutly. 'Now, come on, it's getting cold. Pick up your suitcase; you can stay in my spare room for tonight, and we'll have a bit of a chat.'

Joel Beard made no reply. He stood very call and very still, the amber lights turning his tight curls into a golden crown.

'Good night, Mr Dawber,' he said.

The double doors crashed back. Roger Hall burst in, and he was white to the edges of his beard.

Chrissie was sitting at her desk, the senior detective, Ashton, casually propping his bum against it, hands deep into his trenchcoat pockets, the detective-sergeant playing with the zip on his anorak.

Roger just stood in the doorway breathing like a trainee asthmatic. He was wearing casual gear, the polo shirt and the golfing trousers. 'All right, what's happened?' Staring all round the room and finally noticing her. 'Chrissie ... ?'

'Don't look at me like that, Dr Hall. I know less than you.' Obviously. Being the minion.

'How much did they tell you on the phone, Dr Hall? Ashton asked, corning to his feet.

'Just ... Just that ... Is this on the level? It s not a joke?'

Ashton shook his head. 'Doesn't look like it, I'm afraid sir.

Roger glared across the office at the metal door. It was shut. 'It's unbelievable.' Shaking his head. 'What happened to the so-called security patrol?'

'We'll be talking to the company, sir, have no doubts.

Meantime, we didn't like to touch anything until you got here, so it you'd be good enough to take us through ...'

Roger nodded dumbly. Chrissie was almost feeling sorry for him. His face was like a crumpled flour bag. He looked like a parent who'd just learned his child had been found on a

railway line. In fact, to him, if somebody had vandalized his beloved bogman, this was probably worse

Which is why Chrissie didn't quite feel sorry for him.

The two detectives, Ashton and the chubby one in the anorak, waited while Roger went to unlock his personal high-security cabinet. He brought out both keys. The detectives followed him to the ante-room and then all three of them went through to the inner lab.

Chrissie stayed behind, elbows on her desk, chin propped in her hands, waiting for the eruption. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry on his behalf.

'No...!' Roger's voice echoing back. 'Look ...Inspector, is it?'

'Gary Ashton, sir. Greater Manchester.'

'I'm ... I just can't believe this has happened. What I ... Look, let me do some checks. It's possible ... unlikely, but possible ... that there's a rational explanation. I've been away for a few days this week. It's conceivable, I suppose, that something was arranged and by some incredible oversight I wasn't informed.'

'You mean whoever it was forgot to inform the caretaker they'd be dropping in, sir? After dark?'

'No. You're right. Clutching at straws, I suppose. God almighty, this is ... How did they actually get in?'

'Quite professionally done, sir. The rear doors were forced, both sets, but forced by somebody who knew how, if you see what I mean.'

'It's ... unbelievable.'

Chrissie heard a clang. Roger's fist hitting the metal table.

'If you wouldn't mind, sir ... fingerprints.'

'Sorry. It's just ... if anything, any one thing, had been specifically calculated to fucking ruin me, this ..

'Ruin you, Dr Hall?'

'I... We had a lot riding on it. You don't get your hands on one of these very often.'

'How valuable would you say? I mean, I realise you can't ...'

'Invaluable. And yet nor valuable at all to most people. You could hardly stick it in your hall like a Rodin. It's beyond me, the whole thing. And yet ...'

Chrissie's head shot up out of her hands. Never!

'Well, sir, I expect you have photographs. I'll also need to know what kind of vehicle would be required, assuming it has been removed from immediate area.'

Bloody hell! Chrissie stood up. She found she was shaking.

'We'll obviously be searching the grounds pretty thoroughly. But if you wanted to get it away without damaging it ...would it need any special conditions? Refrigeration?

'It's in peat. Inspector. Peat's a preservative. That's how he survived for two thousand years.'

'Of course. Sorry. Stupid of me. Anyway ... We're clearly not looking for young tearaways here, so have you any idea, any notion at all, who in the wide world would go to so much trouble to ...'

'Steal a two-thousand-year-old corpse.'

'Old as that? Well. Wouldn't be much use for medical research then? So what are we looking for? Bit of a nutter? A rich eccentric collector? I'll be honest, Dr Hall, I've not come across anything quite like this. It's a one-off.'

'It's unbelievable,' Roger said for about the fifteenth time, and Chrissie heard him pacing the echoing empty lab.

CHAPTER II

The girl who opened the Rectory door was sipping red soup off the top of an overflowing mug. She watched both of them cautiously over the rim.

'Sorry,' Dic said. 'It's an awkward time.'

She swallowed hot soup, winced. 'No problem. I'm on my own.'

'That's what I thought. We, er, we needed somewhere to talk ... Sorry ... your dad, is he ... How is he?'

'They say it's a minor heart attack.' Tomato soup adhering to her lips. 'I'm not allowed to see him until tomorrow, he has to have rest. Ma Wagstaff says not to worry. He'll be OK.'

She sounded like this was supposed to be a reliable medical opinion. 'This is Moira Cairns,' Dic said.

'Hello,' Catherine Gruber said limply.

Moira sensed she was worried sick.

The porch light was a naked bulb. Above it, the gaping orifice, spread by stone thumbs, was deepened by the hard, unsubtle shadows it threw.

The Sheelagh na gig, lit for drama, grinning lasciviously at Joel Beard. And he was appalled to think that everyone entering the church to worship God should have to pass beneath this obscenity.

Tradition, the antiquarians said. Our heritage. Olde Englande.

Joel Beard saw beyond all this, saw it only as symbolic of the legacy of evil he had been chosen to destroy.

A few minutes ago, he'd telephoned the Archdeacon from the kiosk in front of the Post Office, giving him a carefully edited summary of the evening's events in Bridelow. Not mentioning the appalling incident at the graveside with the bottle - which the Archdeacon might have judged to be, at this stage, an over-reaction on his part.

'Well, poor Hans,' the Archdeacon had said easily and insincerely. 'I think he should have a few months off, don't you? Perhaps some sort of semi-retirement. I shall speak to the Bishop. In fact I think I'll go and see him. Meanwhile you must take over, Joel. Do what you feel is necessary.'

'I have your support?'

'My support spiritually - and ... and physically, I hope. I shall come to see you. Drop in on you. Very soon. Meanwhile, tread carefully, Joel. Will you live at the Rectory now?'

'The girl's still there, Simon. Hans's daughter. She'll have to go back to Oxford quite soon, I'd guess. But then there's Hans himself, when he leaves hospital.'

'Don't worry. We'll find him somewhere to convalesce. Meanwhile ...'

'... I shall sleep in the church. In the priest's cell.'

'All alone down there? My God, Joel, you're a brave man.'

'It's God's House!' Joel had said, even he feeling, with a rare stab of embarrassment, that this was a naive response.

And was it God's House?

And which God?

As he entered the church of St Bride under the spread thighs of the leering Sheelagh, he experienced the unpleasant illusion of being sucked into ...

No!!

'Long-haired girls,' Dic Castle said bitterly. 'Always the long, dark hair.'

Moira said, 'I can't believe this.'

'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.

But, even as it filled his dream, he knew that the tide of peat was only a metaphor for the long centuries of accumulated Godless filth in this village.

He knew also that he did have wings that could carry him far above it.

For he was an angel.

And if he remained still and held his light within him the noxious tide could never overwhelm him.

Joel dreamed on.

Although the stone room around him was cold, the black peat in the dream was warm. He remained still and the peat settled around him like cushions.

Inside his dreaming self, the light kept on burning. Its heat was intense and its flame, like the one inside the paraffin heater, became a tight, blue jet arising from a circle. It heated up the peat too.

In his dream he was naked and the peat was as warm and sensuous as woman-skin against him.

Moira waited for her by the Rectory gate.

It was bitterly cold. She imagined the walls of the village cottages tightening under the frost.

Cathy came round the side of the house, a coat around her shoulders. 'How'd you know I'd come after you?'

Moira shrugged.

'You're like old Ma Wagstaff, you are. You know that?'

'That's ...'

'The crone, yes.'

'I hope not,' Moira said. Well, dammit ... Willie's old mother? And he never said. All those years and he never said a word.

'I'm trying to understand it all,' Cathy said. 'Somebody has to work it all out before we lose it. Most people here don't bother any more. It's just history. I suppose that's been part of the problem.'

Moira realised she was just going to have to do some listening, see what came together. The church clock shone out blue-white and cold, as if it was the source of the frost.

'The old ways,' Moira said. 'Sometimes they don't seem exactly relevant. And people get scared for their kids. Yeh, you're right, they don't want to understand, most of them. But can you blame them?'

'It's not even as if it's particularly simple. Not like Buddhism or Jehovah's Witness-ism,' Cathy said. 'Not like you can hand out a pamphlet and say, "Here it is, it's all there." I mean, you can spend years and years prising up little stones all over the place trying to detect bits of patterns '

Cathy fell silent, and Moira found she was listening to the night The night was humming faintly - a tune she knew. People like me, she thought, we travel different roads, responding to the soundless songs and the invisible lights.

It's all too powerful... the heritage ... maybe you should go away and when you get back your problems will be in perspective ...go somewhere bland ... St Moritz, Tunbridge Wells ...

Bridelow?

Ah, Duchess, you old witch.

She said, 'So what is the history of this place? I mean, the relevant bits.'

'You need to talk to Mr Dawber. He's our local historian.'

'And what would he tell me?'

'Probably about the Celts driven out of the lowlands by the Romans first and then the Saxons.'

'The English Celts? From Cheshire and Lancashire?'

'And Shropshire and North Wales. It was all one in those days. They fled up here, and into the Peak District, and because the land was so crap nobody tried too hard to turn them out. And besides, they'd set up other defences.'

'Other defences?'

'Well... not like Hadrian's Wall or Offa's Dyke.'

'The kind of defences you can't see,' Moira said.

'The kind of defences most people can't see,' corrected Cathy. She looked up into the cold sky. Moira saw that all the clouds had flown, leaving a real planetarium of a night.

Cathy said, 'She'd kill me if she knew I was telling you all this.'

'Who?'

'Ma Wagstaff, of course.'

'And what makes you so sure she doesn't know?'

'Oh, God,' Cathy said. 'You are like her. I knew it as soon as I saw you at the door.'

'It's the green teeth and the pointy hat,' said Moira.

'I don't know what it is, but when you've lived around here for a good piece of your life you get so you can recognize it.'

'But your old man's the minister.'

'And a bloody good one,' Cathy snapped. 'The best.'

' Right, Moira said. 'I'd like to meet him when he's feeling better.'

'We'll see.' Cathy walked past her, out of the Rectory gates, stood in the middle of the street looking up at the church. 'It's a sensitive business, being Rector of Bridelow. How to play it. And if it's working, if it's trundling along ... I mean, things have always sorted themselves out in Bridelow. It's been a really liberal-minded, balanced sort of community. A lot of natural wisdom around, however you want to define wisdom.'

The moonlight glimmered in her fair hair, giving her a silvery distinction. Then Moira realised it wasn't the moonlight at all, the moon was negligible tonight, a wafer. It was the light from the illuminated church clock.

'They call it the Beacon of the Moss,' Cathy said.

'Huh?'

'The church clock. That's interesting, don't you think? It's not been there a century yet and already it's part of the legend. That's Bridelow for you.'

'You mean everything gets absorbed into the tradition?'

'Mmm. Now, Joel Beard ... that's the big curate with the curly hair, the one and only Joel Beard, Saint Joel. Now, Joel's really thick. He thinks he's stumbled into the Devil's backyard. He thinks he's been called by God to fight Satan in Bridelow because this is where he can do it one-to-one. In the blue corner Saint Joel, in the red corner The Evil One, wearing a glittery robe washed and ironed by Ma Wagstaff and the twelve other members of the Mothers' Union.'

'The Mothers' Union?' Moira laughed in delight.

'Thirteen members,' Cathy said. 'There've always been thirteen members. I mean, they don't dance naked in the moonlight or anything - which, bearing in mind the average age of the Mothers, is a mercy for everyone.'

'Oh, Jesus,' said Moira, 'this is wonderful.'

'It used to be rather wonderful,' Cathy said. 'But it's all started to go wrong. Even Ma's not sure why. Hey, look, have

you anywhere to stay tonight? I mean, you want to stay here? There's a spare room.'

This kid would never say she didn't want to be in the house alone.

'Thank you,' Moira said. 'I think I'd like that.'

Dic, who didn't drink much, had gone back to his father's pub and sunk four swift and joyless pints of Bridelow Black, sitting on his own at the back of the bar.

At one stage he became aware of Young Frank pulling out the stool on the other side of his table. 'Steady on, lad.' Tapping Dic's fifth pint with the side of a big thumb. 'It's not what it were, this stuff, but it'll still spoil your breakfast.'

Dic said, 'Fuck off, Frank.'

Frank got his darts out of his back pocket. 'Game of arrows?' Dic shook his head, making Frank's image sway and loom like something on a fairground ride.

'Come on, lad.' Frank's grating voice rising and fading out of the pub hubbub like a radio coming untuned. 'Life's gorra go on. You can't say you weren't expecting it. He were a good bloke, but he's better off dead than how he were, you got t'admit that.'

'Frank!' Dic clambered to his feet, sank the rest of his pint, most of it going into his shirtfront. 'Fucking leave it, will you?'

And then he was weaving and stumbling between the tables and out into the night.

He stood in the doorway a while, getting his breath together, then he strode across the forecourt and on to the street. The cobbles gleamed, frosty already, in the light of the big clock in the sky, shining like the earth from the moon in those old space pictures.

Dic began to moonwalk up the street, taking big strides, crashing into the phone box outside the post office, giggling like a daft sod. Coming up by the church, where he'd talked to Moira Cairns - there was her BMW, still parked there. Moira Cairns ... Wouldn't mind poking that sometime, give her one for his old man. Maybe she owed him one, part of his inheritance.

He wished he had his pipes with him. Give them a fucking tune. Give them a real tune. Bastards. What were they at? What were they fucking at down there? Hands in Dad's coffin, sick bastards.

Standing by the lych-gate with its cover like a picture-postcard well and a seat inside. Went in, sat down. Out of the blue light in here, anyroad. Right under the church but the sloping roof blocked it out. Dic nestled in the darkness, feeling warm. Closed his eyes and felt the bench slipping under him, like dropping down a platform lift into a velvet mineshaft. Dic threw his arms out, stretched his head back, accepting he was pissed but feeling relaxed for the first time since he didn't know ...

He giggled. There was a hand on his thigh.

It moved delicately up to his groin like a big spider.

'Feels good,' Dic said, pretty sure he'd fallen asleep on the bench. Lips on the side of his neck and his nostrils were full of the most glorious soiled and sexy perfume.

The hand sliding his zip down, easing something out.

He pulled in his arms, hands coming together around the back of a head and soft hair. Hair so long that it was brushing the tip of his cock.

'Moira,' Dic whispered.