The Secrets of Pain

15

Lol said, ‘Would Barry have to kill me with his bare hands if I put that on the fire?’

Merrily followed his gaze to the basket in the inglenook, black and ashy.

‘The big log?’

‘The only log.’

He was right. She couldn’t remember ever before seeing only one log in the inglenook at the Black Swan, famous for its apple-wood fires, smoke-sweetened air over the cobbled square. She shivered. In the beamed and panelled lounge bar, only half the wall lights were on. Enough for the eight or so customers whose sparse voices made soft echoes.

‘You might not like what Savitch is doing,’ Lol said, ‘but you really notice when one of his wealthy hunting parties leaves the village.’

‘Barry’s that dependent on them?’

Lol shrugged. He was wearing his fraying grey Gomer Parry Plant Hire sweatshirt. He had a spiral-bound notebook – his lyrics pad – and, beside it on the table, a pint she guessed was shandy, not yet half-drunk.

‘Smoking ban,’ Barry said from behind the bar. ‘Cheap supermarket booze. And now Fortress Hereford. Yeah, we are getting dependent on them. Seven fewer five-course dinners, bar takings down by a third. Put the bleedin’ log on, Laurence, I can always saw up an oak settle.’

Lol left the log alone. Merrily stared at bulky amiable Barry in the black suit and the bow tie.

‘Fortress Hereford?’

‘All farm doors locked at nightfall, shotguns loaded. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me there’s another reason we’re nearly empty.’

‘What, because of-?’

‘Having your quad bike nicked is one thing, but getting killed like Mansel Bull is not a case for Farm Watch, as we know it.’

‘It’s not Texas, either,’ Merrily said. ‘Not yet.’

‘Civilization, vicar, has a thin skin. This is still a frontier. Face west, nothing but lonely Welsh hills. Don’t take much to send us to ground. See this?’

Barry slapped down a glossy flyer showing the winding Wye seen from above. A man in a hunting coat stood with his back to the camera, a riding crop in one hand. Under the photo it said:

W ORTH FIGHTING FOR?

Under that:

C OUNTRYSIDE D EFIANCE

Lol’s eyes flickered.

‘Who are they?’

‘The woman we saw on the box – Wiseman-France – she’s dined here a time or two, with clients. Professional PR, management consultant, not sure which, but you get the idea. You know the type. Move in and tell the hicks their interests are being ignored at national level because they’re not making their voices heard with sufficient eloquence.’

‘Mmm.’ Merrily nodded. ‘Then they offer their services free to give themselves a certain status in the community. Make them feel they belong. She’s created it, has she?’

‘She ain’t created the mood, but she’s given it a name,’ Barry said. ‘Don’t have to be thousands of people behind it, just a few dozen of the right people. The thousands will follow. And the money.’

‘Savitch?’

‘Put it this way… it was one of his minions brought the flyers in. I’m told it also comes in different languages. When the shooting parties come in from Europe, America, Japan they learn that the spiritual home of hunting since the eleventh century is under threat. You ask me, Defiance is pulling donations from US hunting and gun lobbies.’

‘ This is Savitch?’

‘Probably excites him. Life on the edge can be quite sexy when you’re living behind big walls with big guys around and a game-keeper in the lodge with a rack of shotguns.’

‘Spoken by a man who knows all about life on the edge,’ Merrily said.

‘This and that.’

‘You know Syd Spicer?’

It just came out. Barry’s expression didn’t change. Lol glanced at Merrily, curious. You could hear the tunk of a pool game over in the other bar. Barry came round the bar, raked over the fire in the dog-grate, picked up the apple log and dumped it on top.

‘The last good log,’ he said. ‘’Scuse me a minute.’

Lol’s spiral-bound lyrics pad was half-filled. Merrily remembered him buying it in Hereford, maybe two weeks ago, after a rare lunch at All Saints.

‘You’re, erm, cookin’? As Danny would say.’

‘We need to get the album out before summer.’ Lol had a cautious sip of shandy. ‘It’s not just about me any more.’

Probably meaning not Danny so much as Prof Levin. Hard times for a producer with a studio and overheads, now that a band could make a perfectly professional album with digital kit in someone’s spare bedroom. She knew Lol was worried about Prof going back on the booze, if only out of boredom.

‘And, um…’ Upturning his pencil, letting it slide through his fingers to the pad. ‘I’ve had another approach.’

‘Sorry?’

‘An agency. Nu-folk stuff – reputable. They could break me into tours, have me headlining middling events next autumn, and…’ Lol leaned back. ‘There we are. Serious money.’

‘Oh.’

With downloads and burn-offs, the profits were in gigs again.

‘I said maybe I’d get back to them,’ Lol said.

‘Of course.’

‘I won’t, obviously.’

‘Lol, don’t let-’

‘It’s not just that. I mean, it’s not just you.’

Merrily felt like the stone flags were falling away beneath her chair. That what he was saying was not what he was thinking.

Lol said, ‘I don’t actually want to be rich. You know that.’

‘I do?’

‘Well… be nice, in a way, to be so loaded you could buy out Ward Savitch. But realistically…’ Lol put his hands on his knees, stared down at them. ‘I’ve been handed a second chance, right? So I want things to be different from what they might’ve been if I’d made it first time. Partly because there’s going to be less time. And also… Like, when Prof says, we need more body on this album and why doesn’t he see if Tom Storey’s available, I’m going, no, there’s actually this guy called Danny Thomas who’s an ex-subsistence farmer and isn’t quite as good as Tom Storey, but is good enough…’

‘You didn’t tell me that, either. You didn’t tell me Prof wanted to get you Tom Storey.’

Unlikely to be an idle promise, because Prof had been around a long time and knew these ageing rock gods from way back, and some of them owed him favours. Merrily felt starved. What else hadn’t he told her?

Lol said, ‘Just we’ve not had that much time to talk lately, have we?’

‘Because you’ve been at Danny’s barn night after bloody-You just didn’t want to tell me, did you?’

‘You have enough to-’

‘So we have separate problems now? We keep our problems to ourselves? We keep them apart? Now you don’t need me to bounce this stuff off because you’ve got Danny?’

‘I don’t want a row…’

‘Jesus, Lol… you never want a bloody row.’

Merrily jerked her chair back. What was the matter with her? She liked Danny Thomas. She was glad that Lol was working with a local guy. But was he turning down tours only because he thought it would be incompatible with the life of a woman tied to a parish?

‘I like it here,’ Lol said. ‘I like being a guy living in a village where one day you’re playing music, the next you’re doing… something else.’

He pulled over the lyrics pad, pencilled a circle around something, then pushed it in front of Merrily. She read:

When life’s become a bitch

Dig out another ditch

Find some recovery

Back in the JCB

Referencing the times he’d spent helping Gomer Parry. She wasn’t really taking this in. She was thinking, This is a test. It had to happen one day. The Christian thing would be to persuade him to do the tour.

She saw a man walk into the bar, carrying a black bin liner.

‘Look,’ Lol said, ‘I’ve agreed with Barry to do a few more gigs here – at the Swan.’

‘And would that be a living?’ Merrily clutched her head. ‘All right, I’m sorry…’

‘And maybe something outside in the summer, with more music. Other people.’

‘A music festival? In Ledwardine?’

‘Too big a word. We’re thinking no more than one day… and a night. Just an idea. Well, Danny’s idea. He has Glastonbury dreams. I was going to see what you thought before we took it any further, because… festivals of any kind haven’t always gone well here, have they? Anyway, it would be useful to have the album finished and mastered and out there, before it happens. If it happens.’

‘Does the album have a title yet?’

‘ A Message from the Morning.’

‘Oh God, I knew that. What’s the matter with me? Lol, look…’ Merrily reached across the table for his hand. ‘Maybe we should grab half a day. Drive over to Wales. Talk about all this. And other things.’

Lol said, ‘What’s up with Barry?’

Merrily turned her chair around. Barry was back and the man was holding up the bin liner. Barry was wiping his hands on a towel.

‘He’s not happy, Lol.’

Lol said, ‘Why were you asking him about Syd Spicer?’

‘It’s a long story.’

The guy put the bin sack on the bar.

‘For you, Barry.’

He was gangly, long-faced, jutting jaw. And not sober. Barry looked up, doing his professional beam.

‘Is this roadkill, sir, or did one of you finally learn how to shoot?’

‘Dinner.’ The guy slapped the bag on the bar. ‘My dinner for tomorrow, Barry.’

He wore a camouflage jacket, newish. He had a loose, rubbery mouth.

‘I wanna eat it,’ he said.

Merrily saw Lol look up, frown.

‘I thought he’d gone back to… wherever he came from. I thought they’d all gone.’

‘Guest of The Court?’

‘They love to find bits of lead shot in their dinner,’ Lol said. ‘Real men.’

‘Do us a favour, sir,’ Barry said, ‘Take it round the back. Not everybody likes dead game in the bar. Especially when it’s over a month out of season.’

‘It never fucking is, landlord!’

‘Then it’s probably unfit for human consumption,’ Barry said calmly. ‘Round the back, eh?’

‘I need to eat it.’

‘We’ll talk about it round the back.’

‘I can only thank God Jane’s not here,’ Merrily said.

She saw Lol wince.