The Man in the Moss

From Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

INTRODUCTION

This little book bids you, the visitor, a cordial welcome to Bridelow Across the Moss, a site of habitation for over two thousand years and the home of the famous Bridelow Black Beer.

Bridelow folk would never be so immodest as to describe their tiny, lonely village as unique. But unique it is, both in situation and character.

Although little more than half an hour's drive from the cities of Manchester and Sheffield, the village is huddled in isolation between the South Pennine moors and the vast peatbog known as Bridelow Moss. So tucked away, as the local saying goes, 'It's a wonder the sun knows where to come of a morning ...'

A spring morning. A hesitant sun edging over the moor out of a mist pale as milk. Only when it clears the church tower does the sun find a few patches of blue to set it off, give it a bit of confidence.

The sun hovers a while, blinking in and out of the sparse shreds of cloud before making its way down the village street, past the cottage where Ma Wagstaff lives, bluetits breakfasting from the peanuts in two mesh bags dangling from the rowan trees in the little front garden.

The cats, Bob and Jim, sitting together on Ma's front step - donkeystoned to a full-moon whiteness - observe the bluetits through narrowed green eyes but resist their instincts because Ma will be about soon.

And while Ma understands their instincts all too well, she does not appreciate blood on her step.

Milly Gill, shedding her cardigan at the Post Office door, thought the mist this morning was almost like a summer heat-haze, which wasn't bad for the second week in March.

It made Milly feel excited, somewhere deep inside her majestic bosom. It made her feel so energetic that she wanted to wander off for long walks, to fill up her reservoirs after the winter. And to go and see the Little Man. See what he had in his reservoir.

And of course it made her feel creative, too. Tonight she'd be pulling out that big sketch pad and the coloured pencils and getting to work on this year's design to be done in flowers for the dressing of the Holy Well. It was, she decided, going to reflect everything she could sense about her this morning.

Milly Gill thought, I'm forty-nine and I feel like a little girl.

This was what the promise of spring was supposed to do.

'Thank you. Mother,' Milly said aloud, with a big, innocent grin. 'And you too, sir!'

The Moss, a vast bed, hangs on to its damp duvet as usual until the sun is almost overhead. Behind temporary traffic-lights, about half a mile from the village, a Highways Authority crew is at work, widening the road which crosses the peat, a long-overdue improvement, although not everybody is in favour of improving access to the village.

It's close to midday before the foreman decides it's warm enough to strip to the waist.

This is the man who finds the chocolate corpse.

The splendour of the morning dimmed a little for the Rector when, on getting out of bed, he felt a twinge.

It was, as more often than not, in the area of his left knee. 'We really must get you a plastic one,' the doctor had said last time. 'I should think the pain's pretty awful, isn't it?'

'Oh.' The Rector flexing his creased-up Walter Matthau semi-smile. 'Could be worse.' Then the. doctor ruefully shaking his head, making a joke about the Rector being determined to join the league of Holy Martyrs.

'I was thinking of joining the squash club, actually,' the Rector had said, and they'd both laughed and wondered how he was managing to keep this up.

The answer to this was Ma Wagstaff's mixture.

Standing by the window of his study, with sunshine strewn all over the carpet, pleasant around his bare feet, the Rector balanced a brimming teaspoonful of Ma's mixture, and his eyes glazed briefly at the horror of the stuff.

It looked like green frogspawn. He knew it was going to make his throat feel nostalgic for castor oil.

The bottle, as usual, was brown and semi-opaque so he wouldn't have to see the sinister strands and tendrils waving about in there like weed on the bottom of an aquarium.

But still, it worked.

Not a 'miracle' cure, of course. Ma Wagstaff, who promised nothing, would have been shocked at any such suggestion.

'Might just ease it a bit,' she'd say gruffly, leaving the bottle on his hall table, by the phone.

Through the study window the Rector saw sun-dappled gravestones and the great Norman tower of St Bride's.

He rubbed his feet into the sunshiny carpet, raised his eyes to heaven, the spoon to his lips, and swallowed.

Out on the Moss, the foreman stands in the middle of the trench, in front of the JCB, waving his arms until the driver halts the big digger and sticks his head inquiringly round the side of the cab.

"Owd on a bit, Jason. I've found summat.'

The trench, at this point, is about five feet deep.

'If it's money,' says the JCB driver, 'just pass it up 'ere and I'll hide it under t'seat.'

'Well,' said Mr Dawber. 'as it's such a lovely day, we'd best be thinking about the spring. Now - think back to last year - what does that mean?'

Some of them had the good manners to put their hands up, but two little lads at the back just shouted it out.

'THE SPRING CROSS!'

Mr Dawber didn't make an issue of it. 'Aye,' he said. 'The Spring Cross.' And the two troublemakers at the back cheered at that because it would get them out of the classroom, into the wood and on to the moors.

'So,' said Mr Dawber. 'Who can tell me what we'll be looking for to put in the Spring Cross?'

The hands went up as fast and rigid as old-fashioned railway signals. Ernie Dawber looked around, singled out a little girl.

'Yes ... Meryl.'

'Catkins!'

'Aye, that's right, catkins. What else? Sebastian.'

'Pussy willows!'

'Ye-es. What else? Benjamin.'

'Acorns?'

They all had a good cackle at this. Benjamin was the smallest child in the class and had the air of one who found life endlessly confusing. Ernie Dawber sympathized. He'd always reckoned that the day he retired he'd be able to sit back, job well enough done, and start to understand a few basics. But everything had just got hazier.

With them all looking at him, giggling and nudging each other, Benjamin seemed to get even smaller. Mr Dawber had a little deliberation about this while the class was settling down.

'Now then ...' he said thoughtfully. 'Who can tell me when we find acorns?'

'AUTUMN!' four or five of the cleverer ones chorused scornfully.

'That's right. So, what I'm going to do - and don't forget to remind me when the times comes, lad - I'm going to put Benjamin, because he knows all about acorns ... in charge of making the Autumn Cross.'

The clever ones looked aghast, unable to find any justice in this, and Ernie Dawber smiled to see it. Corning in just a few hours a week, to teach the children about nature, at least gave him more time to consider the psychology of the job.

'Now then.' He clapped his hands to change the mood.

'What else do we need for the Spring Cross? Tom.'

'Birds' eggs.'

Mr Dawber's voice dropped an octave.

'We most certainly do not take birds' eggs to put into the Spring Cross, or for any other reason, Thomas Garside. And if it comes to my notice that any of you nave disturbed any nests there's going to be TROUBLE.'

There was silence.

'And don't anybody think I won't find out about it,' said Mr Dawber.

And they knew he would, because, one way or another, Mr Dawber found out about everything. And if it was important enough he put it in The Book of Bridelow.

The foreman tells the JCB driver to switch his engine off. His voice is shaking.

'Come down a minute, Jason. Come and take a look at this.'

The driver, a younger man, swings, loose-limbed, to the ground. His boots shudder on the surface of the Moss. 'What you got?'

'I'm not sure.' The foreman seems reluctant to go back in the trench.

The driver grinning, shambling over to the pit and balancing expertly on the rim. Can't make it out at first. Looks like a giant bar of dark chocolate.

Then, while the foreman is attempting to light a cigarette and nervously scattering matches over the peat, the driver suddenly realises what he's staring at, and, when the thought lurches into his head, it's eerily echoed by the foreman's fractured croak.

'Looks like a dead 'un to me, Jason.'

The driver falls over backwards trying not to topple into the trench.

Just Eliza Horridge and Shaw now, and the drawing room at The Hall was too big.

He was taller but slighter than his father, who used to stand, legs apart, in front of the fireplace, lighting his pipe, belching dragon's breath and making it seem as if the room had been built around him. When Arthur Horridge spoke, the walls had closed in, as if the very fabric of the building was paying attention.

'The w-w-w-worst thing about all this ...' Shaw's thin voice no more emphatic than the tinkling of the chandelier when a window was open, ' ... is that when der-der-Dad wanted to expand ter-ten years ago, the bank wouldn't back him, and now . ..'

'We'll ride it,' Liz Horridge told him firmly. 'We always have. We've got twenty-three people depending on us for an income.'

'Ter-ter-too many,' said Shaw. 'Fer-far ...'

'No!' The first time ever that she hadn't waited politely for him to finish a sentence. 'That's not something your father would have said.'

She turned away from him, glaring out of the deep Georgian-style window at the brewery's grey tower through the bare brown tree trunks. Its stonework badly needed repointing, one more job they couldn't afford.

'When sales were sagging,' Liz said, as she'd said to him several times before, 'Arthur always blamed himself, and it was our belt - the family's - that was tightened. I remember when he sold the Jag to—'

'It was der-different then!' Shaw almost shrieked, making her look at him. 'There was no competition to ser-speak of. Wh-what did they need to know about mer-mer-market forces in those days?'

'And it's all changed so quickly, has it, in the six months since your father's death?'

'It was cher-changing ... yer-years before. He just couldn't see it. He didn't w-want to ser-see it.'-

'He knew what his duty was,' Liz snapped, and her son began to wring his hands in frustration.

The sun shone through the long window, a cruel light on Shaw, the top of his forehead winking like a feeble flashlight.

If baldness was hereditary, people doubtless asked, why had\ Arthur managed to keep most of his hair until the end, while Shaw's had begun to fall out before he turned twenty?

Behind the anger, Liz felt the usual sadness for him, while acknowledging that sympathy was a poor substitute for maternal pride.

'Mother,' Shaw said determinedly, 'listen to me. We've ger-got to do it. Ser-soon. We've got to trim the workforce. Ser-ser-some of them have ger-got to go. Or else ...'

'Never,' said Liz Horridge. But she knew that such certainty was not her prerogative. Shaw was the owner of the Bridelow Brewery now. He glared mutinously at her, thin lips pressed tight together, only too aware of how much authority he lost whenever he opened them.

'Or else what?' Liz demanded. 'What happens if we don't trim the workforce?'

She looked down at herself, at the baggy jeans she wore, for which she was rather too old and a little too shapeless these days. Realising why she was wearing the jeans. Spring cleaning.

An operation which she would, for the first time, be undertaking alone, because, when Josie had gone into hospital, she hadn't taken on another cleaner for economic reasons. Thus trimming her own workforce of one.

The ber-ber-brewery's not a charity, Mother,' Shaw said pleadingly. 'Jim Ford says we could be out of ber-business inside a year.'

'Or else what?' Liz persisted.

'Or else we sell it,' Shaw said simply.

Liz laughed. 'To whom?'

'Ter-ter-to an outside ... one of the big firms.'

'That's not an option,' Liz said flatly. 'You know that. Beer's been brewed in Bridelow since time immemorial. It's part of the local heritage.'

'And still cer-could be! Sell it as a going concern. Why not?'

'And you could live with that, could you?'

He didn't answer. Liz Horridge was shaking with astonishment. She faced him like an angry mother cat, narrowing her eyes, penetrating. 'Who's responsible for this? Who's been putting these thoughts in your head?'

'Ner-nobody.' But he couldn't hold her gaze. He was wearing a well-cut beige suit over a button-down shirt and a strange leather tie. He was going out again. He'd been going out a lot lately. He had no interest in the brewery, and he wasn't even trying to hide this any longer.

'And what about the pub? Is this fancy buyer going to take that on as well?'

'Ser-somebody will.' Shaw shrugged uselessly, backing towards the door. 'Anyway, we'll talk about it later, I've got to ...'

'Where are you going?'

'I ... I'm ...' He went red and began to splutter. Pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, wiped his lips. For years she'd worried because he didn't go out enough, because he hadn't got a girlfriend (although this had hardly been surprising). Now at last, at the age of thirty-one, he was feebly groping for control of his own destiny ... and floundering about, unbalancing everything.

Liz Horridge turned away from him and walked to the other window, the one with the view of Bridelow, which summer would soon obscure. She could see the humped but still sprightly figure of Mrs Wagstaff in the distance, lugging a shopping basket across the cobbles to Gus Bibby's General Stores.

Her breast heaved and she felt tears pumping behind her eyes.

Arthur ... it's not my fault.

Mrs Wagstaff stopped in the middle of the street and - although it was too far away for Liz to be certain - seemed to stare up through the trees at the Hall ... at this very window.

As though the old girl had overheard Liz's thoughts. As though she could feel the agony.

When Liz turned around, wet-eyed, she found she was alone; Shaw had quietly left the room.

Although he'll be cool enough when the Press and the radio and TV reporters interview him in a few hours' time, the County Highways foreman is so shaken up right now that he has to be revived with whisky from the JCB driver's secret flask.

What he's discovered will come to be known as the Bridelow Bogman. Or the Man in the Moss. Important people are going to travel hundreds of miles to gaze with reverence upon its ancient face.

'And what was your reaction when you found it?' asks one of the reporters. 'What did you think it was?'

'Thought it were a sack o' spuds or summat,' the foreman says, quotably. His moment of glory. But out of his hands soon enough - so old and so exciting to the experts, like one of them Egyptian mummies, that nobody else seems to find it upsetting or horrifying, not like a real body.

But, though he'll never admit it, the foreman reckons he's never going to forget that first moment.

'And what did you think when you realised what it was?'

'Dunno, really ... thought it were maybe an owd tramp or summat.'

'Were you shocked?'

'Nah. You find all sorts in this job.'

But that night the foreman will dream about it and awake with a whimper, reaching for his warm missus. And then fall asleep and wake again, his sweat all over both of them and his mind bulging with the moment he bent down and found his hand was gripping its cold and twisted face, his thumb between what might have been its teeth.