The Wine of Angels

Prologue Twelfth Night

TWISTY OLD DEVIL.

Looked as if it held a grudge in every scabby branch, and if you touched it there’d be sharp, pointy bits, like thorns. And it wouldn’t give you any fruit, on principle, wassail or no wassail, because, left to rot, apple trees ...

... they grows resentful.

Merrily’s grandad had told her that once, when she was a little girl. Frightening her, because you always thought of apples as cheerful and wholesome. Oaks could be gnarled and forbidding, pines scraggy and cruel. But apple trees were essentially good-natured, weren’t they? All the same, every evening for weeks afterwards, Merrily would go down to the orchard and wish the trees a wary goodnight, assuring them they could always count on being looked after as long as she was around.

This was Merrily’s problem. Always felt responsible.

Perhaps, to get Grandad Watkins’s point, you had to see a tree as old as this one on a night this cold, the orchard glittering grimly in bilious lamplight.

Merrily shivered like a little rabbit inside her tired, old, fake Barbour, stamping her boots on the stone-hard earth in the clearing.

There’d be about thirty of them, strangers now, but people she’d have to get to know very well if she decided to go for it. They didn’t look over-friendly at the moment, all hunched up in a hand-rubbing, steam-breathing circle, like tramps around a brazier.

Except there wasn’t a brazier. Just this frosted, naked apple tree, the biggest one remaining in an orchard left to rot for years. But no ordinary apple tree – according to Mrs Caroline Cassidy, of the famous Cassidy’s Country Kitchen, this was the Apple Tree Man.

The very spirit of the orchard.

So now we all know. Merrily turned away and sighed, and the sigh recorded itself on the frigid air as a tiny white cloud. Uncle Ted, who’d excused himself because of a cold, thought it might be an interesting experience for her. To observe a cross-section of the parish. Go undercover, armed with Ted’s word-portraits of the major players. All of them at least occasional churchgoers. But wasn’t this ritual just a bit ...?

‘Barbaric,’ Miss Lucy Devenish muttered, more loudly than she needed to. ‘Utterly barbaric. Isn’t seemly. Isn’t local. Isn’t right.’

Actually pagan had been the word Merrily had in mind, but barbaric would do. According to Uncle Ted, Miss Devenish had been muttering about this for most of the past week. Been along to a meeting of the parish council to demand they get it stopped. Which, of course, was beyond the powers of the parish council to do even if they’d wanted to offend Councillor Powell, who owned the orchard. She’d also have known better than to petition the vicar. Lesson one, Uncle Ted said: keep your nose out where you can.

‘Isn’t traditional to the area,’ Miss Devenish said. ‘And so it can’t be right. Do you see my point?’

She wore a big, wide-brimmed hat and a camel-hair poncho. Looked like an old Red Indian scout, talked like a headmistress. Delightful old girl, Uncle Ted had said. May, however, be some sort of witch. Don’t be tempted to get too close. But Miss Devenish was talking to her.

‘Well ... picturesque though,’ Merrily said feebly. ‘In a Christmas card sort of way.’

Some folk were holding up hurricane lamps, throwing oily light on frosty bark, bringing up a dull lustre on the barrels of the shotguns.

Which were not very Christmas card.

Seven of them. Carried by local farmers and landowners and patrons of the Cassidy restaurant who happened to be country-sports enthusiasts or clay-shooters. Lesson seventeen: where bloodsports are concerned, sit on the fence and hope for the best.

‘Oh hell,’ said Lucy Devenish. ‘Here it comes.’

Smiling a troublemaker’s smile at the arrival of the organizer, Mr Terrence – Not Terry, If You Don’t Mind – Cassidy. Long, herringbone-tweed overcoat, Russian-style furry hat. Learned-looking, in half-glasses.

‘Right. Are we all here? Good, good.’ Mr Cassidy positioned himself under a lamp on a stick. ‘But do we all know why we’re here?’

Like a teacher addressing an infants’ class. According to Uncle Ted, who’d lived here most of his adult life, the secret of being accepted in the village was to keep your head well down for two years’ minimum. But the Cassidys clearly weren’t keeping-your-head-down people. While her husband was lecturing the poor primitive yokels about the importance of their traditions, Mrs Caroline Cassidy, all kitted-out for skiing in the Alps, was arranging plastic beermugs on a wooden picnic table beside the frost-rimed cask of cider. Occasionally flicking a glance towards Miss Devenish, who was Trouble.

Through the hoary trees behind her, Merrily could see the village lights: yellow, amber and red behind drawn curtains: very cosy, but strangely far away. By day, you would have seen the church through the naked trees. At night, the orchard was a separate place.

‘... and so, people, we revive a very ancient custom.’

Mr Cassidy had a high, nasal voice, like the wind down a drainpipe. He reminded them that next May would see the start of the first Ledwardine Festival: a summer-long smorgasbord of music, poetry, drama, houses and gardens open to the public, guided tours. A major exhibition of Our Heritage.

Lucy Devenish snorted.

Mr Cassidy raised his voice. ‘And as fine local cider was that heritage, we intend ... that it should be revived.’

Pause for gasps that didn’t come. Nice enough idea, Merrily thought, but it was never going to be any more than a gimmick. The cider trade in Herefordshire was pretty well sewn up, most growers in these parts selling their apples in bulk to Bulmers or Dunkertons. Anyway, most of the orchards hereabouts had been grubbed up during the great Victorian cider-slump.

‘We shall be recommending local cider at our own restaurant. The Black Swan, will also, I trust, promote it. But, of course, the creation of this venerable beverage depends upon obtaining a significant crop of the famous Pharisees Red. As grown for centuries, in this very orchard, by ...’

Cassidy extended an arm, like a variety-show compere.

‘... the Powell family.’

Everybody stared across at Garrod, farmer and county councillor, and his son Lloyd. And Grandad – Edgar, was it? – gripping the stock of the family shotgun with fingers like knotty little roots and staring directly at Merrily. But not seeing her, she was sure. He wasn’t here at all, wasn’t old Edgar.

Everybody else merely didn’t want to be here. Because, of course, it was pointless, it was artificial, it had been put on mainly for the Press who hadn’t bothered to turn up. And it was so ... bloody ... cold.

Merrily pulled up the hood of her fake Barbour. This wasn’t the right attitude, was it? She should be cheerful, hearty. Joining in. But this ... this facsimile of rural life as it was thought to have been lived, this ‘traditional’ gathering involving, for the most part, incomers, while the members of the old, yeoman families sat at home watching the late movies with cans of lager and the remains of a tandoori ... well, this also left her cold.

Lucy Devenish was breathing like a bull over a gate as Mr Cassidy explained how the Powells had graciously agreed to let them have last year’s crop for the festival cider.

‘However, as the apple harvest in recent years has been somewhat limited, my ever-resourceful wife proposed that we might resort to the time-honoured method of arousing the, ah, temporarily dormant fecundity of the orchard.’

‘Pompous arsehole,’ Miss Devenish growled.

‘The happy tradition of wassailing’ – Mr Cassidy, looking as happy as the night and his thin, pale face would allow – ‘dates back, presumably, to pagan times, it being necessary to petition the gods in good time for spring. I am not myself particularly moved to call upon the services of those ancient deities, but I do believe that the good wishes of neighbours – symbolically expressed here tonight – will have a strongly beneficial effect on this once-supreme orchard, and on the festival ... and, indeed, on the fortunes of our village.’

‘Do you know how long they’ve lived here?’ Miss Devenish muttered. ‘One and a half years. Our village.’

‘Gerronwithit.’ A small, wiry man in a flat cap and a muffler bit down on his cigarette. Gomer Parry, Merrily remembered. Former digger-driver and contractor. Frost had turned his little round glasses into communion wafers. ‘All bloody hot air,’ Gomer mumbled. His plump wife – pink earmuffs – nudged him in the ribs.

Merrily glimpsed a smirk on the taut, patrician face of James Bull-Davies, of Upper Hall. He was passing a chromium flask to a blonde woman next to him. Very much next to him. She had a swig and giggled as she helped him stow the flask inside his sheepskin bomber-jacket, hungrily kneading his chest through his sweater.

Hence the smirk. Merrily pretended not to notice. Lesson five: Don’t offend anyone called Bull-Davies; the church would be rubble but for them.

‘With all this talk of paganism,’ Cassidy was saying, ‘it’s a pity we don’t at present have a parish priest to balance things up, but I’m assured a number of candidates for the living are being interviewed. And, indeed, the word is that one of them may even be in the village tonight.’

Oh no. Merrily shrank behind a lesser apple tree.

‘I don’t think I should say any more than that.’

Good.

‘And so, without further ado, I call upon James and his colleagues to check their cartridges or whatever they need to do. And let the wassailing—’

‘One moment!’

Miss Lucy Devenish had swept back her poncho like a veteran warrior from the Dark Ages and marched into the centre of the clearing.

‘You really don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you? This has always been a peaceful place, a place of seclusion. It is also virtually adjacent to the churchyard and is itself a burial place ...’

‘Miss Devenish—’

‘And there is absolutely no way at all that you can justify these frightful guns.’

‘Miss Devenish, we’ve been into all this before—’

‘And I’ll prove that. I’ll prove it to you. Because, you see, I have with me’ – Miss Devenish paused dramatically and held up the large book she’d been concealing under her poncho – ‘Mrs Leather!’

Ella Leather. The Folklore of Herefordshire, published 1912.

‘This ...’ Mr Cassidy rose up in the lamplight, ‘is inexcusable.’

‘Now. According to Mrs Leather, the custom of wassailing on Twelfth Night involved lighting fires in the fields – usually wheatfields, not apple orchards, for obvious reasons, but I shall let that pass – and there is no mention at all ... of the use of firearms.’

A few people started murmuring. Miss Devenish glared defiantly at Cassidy in the lamplight, clasping the old book to her chest.

‘Now just a minute!’ Mrs Caroline Cassidy had appeared behind an impatient frown. ‘Terrence ... torch!’ She had a large book as well.

Mr Cassidy directed the flashlight beam as his wife riffled through the pages.

‘OK, right,’ Caroline trilled. ‘Collected Folk Customs of the British Isles, page one hundred and five. I quote: “It was customary for such members of the local yeomanry as possessed guns to assemble around the largest tree in the orchard, referred to as the Apple Tree Man, and to discharge their weapons into its topmost branches in the belief that this would drive away evil spirits and stimulate fertility.” There.’

‘Where?’ demanded Miss Devenish.

‘I’ve just told you, Collected Folk Customs of the British Isles, by C. Alfred Churchman—’

‘I mean where abouts in the British Isles is this nonsense supposed to have been enacted?’

‘In the West of England, of course. Are we not—?’

‘Precisely?’ Miss Devenish tilted her head under its enormous cowboy hat. ‘May one ask?’

‘Oh, this is utterly nonsensical.’ Mrs Cassidy getting increasingly shrill. ‘Everyone knew what we’d agreed.’

‘What we’d agreed? My dear Mrs Cassidy, if we had to do this, some of us might have preferred an innocent singalong over the wassail cup. As distinct from a remake of the Gunfight at the OK Corral.’

‘Oh, a singalong.’ Mrs Cassidy threw up her hands, appealing to the crowd. ‘How very spectacular.’

‘Certainly less insulting to the poor trees. Now, are you going to tell us where this dubious business with guns was last recorded, or not?’

Mrs Cassidy looked sulky and brushed at her designer ski-jacket. ‘Devonshire. But I don’t see that it matters.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’

‘Now, look here—’

‘Ladies!’ James Bull-Davies had stepped forward now, shotgun casually broken over an arm. ‘Look. Mindful as one must be of old customs, it really is awfully cold. Why don’t we proceed with the aspect we’re all agreed on and pour out this excellent cider ‘fore the damn stuff freezes over? Discuss it over a drink is what I’m suggesting.’

Recognizing the semi-military tone of the Old Squirearchy, even the Cassidys shut up. Bull-Davies bent over the cask and started filling the plastic tumblers himself. Merrily smelled the cider, sour and musty. She wondered where they’d got it from.

She found herself glancing at old Edgar Powell. His face like an old tobacco pouch and his eyes wide open, still looking her way. He wasn’t here tonight, old Edgar, wasn’t here at all.

Perhaps, wherever he was, that was a better place to be tonight.

‘Of course, we all know what all this is about,’ Miss Devenish told her in a very loud whisper. ‘These awful people – these Cassidys – they think the Powells could be terribly quaint and old-fashioned, with their ancient cider press and their old recipe, and they just want to turn them into a tourist sideshow. And Garrod Powell’s going along with it to keep the peace and just in case there’s a few quid to be made without too much work, and—’

‘Is that so bad for the village?’

‘Bad?’ Miss Devenish snorted. ‘The Cassidys’ll just turn honest cider into some horrible fizz in champagne bottles and sell it for a quite ridiculous price in their ghastly restaurant to awful people like themselves. When I was a gel, the farm labourers still used to receive gallons of Pharisee Red as part of their wages. It was the People’s drink. Do you see?’

‘My grandad used to say it was just a way of keeping them grossly underpaid and too drunk to notice,’ said Merrily.

‘Your grandad?’ Miss Devenish observing her shrewdly from under that hat, possibly putting two and two together. ‘Are you local, my dear?’

‘Sort of. My grandfather had a farm about six miles away. Mansell Lacy.’

‘Jolly good. Who was your grandfather?’

‘Charlie Watkins?’

‘Didn’t know him personally, but there are many Watkinses in the area. My God ...’ Miss Devenish was gazing over Merrily’s left shoulder. ‘Just look at that little whore with Bull-Davies. She’ll have his cock out in a minute.’

‘Huh?’

‘Alison Kinnersley. A destroyer, I suspect.’

Merrily risked a glance. Bull-Davies was talking to some of the other guys with guns. Alison Kinnersley was standing behind him, keeping her hands warm in his trouser pockets.

‘That poor boy.’

‘James Bull-Davies?’

‘Good heavens, no. Kinnersley’s boyfriend. Former boyfriend. Not the Bull. The Bulls can look after themselves. Trouble is, they want to look after everyone else. But it goes wrong. Never trust the Bulls, my dear. Remember that. Remember poor Will.’

‘Sorry?’

‘OK! Listen, everybody!’

James Bull-Davies had disentangled himself from Alison. He reached up, snapped a lump of brittle, dead branch from the Apple Tree Man and banged it on the cider cask, like a chairman’s gavel.

‘We’re going to do it. Had a brief chat with the chaps here. Seven of us brought shotguns along, and if we’re talking about old traditions, well, I rather suspect there must be one about it being bad luck to take one’s weapon home without loosing orf a single shot. Miss Devenish – apologies, but we’re going to do it.’

Miss Devenish stiffened as the shotgun men gathered in a semicircle around the tree, shuffling cartridges from their pockets.

‘Something we have to sing or something, is there, Terrence?’ boomed Bull-Davies.

‘I have it here, James. It’s a sort of chant. If you say it after me ...’

‘OK. Orf you go then. Stand back, everybody. Well back.’

There was silence, everyone waiting.

Miss Devenish said loudly, ‘Well, I’ve done all I can. If you wish to disturb the dead, go ahead.’

Her voice still rang in the hard air as she turned away. Bull-Davies shrugged as he accepted the folklore book, cleared his throat and began to read.

‘Hail to thee, old apple tree!’

‘Hail to thee, old apple tree,’ the shooters chanted, gruffly self-conscious.

‘And let thy branches fruitful be ...’

‘And let thy branches ...’

‘Going to cause offence.’ Miss Devenish had a prominent hooked nose; it twitched. ‘Can’t anyone see that? Deep offence.’

Merrily shook her head, tired of all this. It wasn’t as if they were going to shoot any animals; just blast a few pounds of shot into the air through branches that were probably mostly already dead.

‘Why did he have to break off that branch? Showing his contempt, you see. For the tree and all that dwells there.’

‘Well,’ said Merrily, ‘there’s nothing dwelling in there now, is there?’

Miss Devenish pulled the wide brim of her hat down over her ears as the gunmen chanted.

‘... armsful, hatsful, cartsful of apples ...

Huzzah!

Huzzah!

Huzzah!’

And shouldered their shotguns. Merrily thought, unnerved for a second, of a firing squad, as Miss Devenish turned away and the night went whump, whump, whump, whump-ump-ump, and the air was full of cordite farts.

Merrily was aware of a fine spray on her face. Probably particles of ice from the shocked branches, but it felt warm, like the poor old Apple Tree Man was weeping.

When the shooting stopped, there was a touch of anticlimax. Obviously the book didn’t say what you did afterwards.

‘Er ... well done, chaps,’ James Bull-Davies said halfheartedly.

A few villagers clapped in a desultory sort of way. Caroline Cassidy came out from behind a tree and sniffed.

‘We haven’t got a single picture of this, have we? As for the BBC ... I shall write and complain.’

Merrily was aware of a silence growing in the clearing, the sort of silence that was like a balloon being blown up, and up and up, until ...

The half-scream, half-retch from only yards away was more penetrating than any bang, and it came as Caroline Cassidy’s features went as flaccid as a rubber clown-mask, lips sagging, eyes staring, and she cried, ‘What’s that on your face?’

In the middle of the scream – it had come from Alison Kinnersley – Merrily had put a hand to her face and felt wetness, and now she held up her hand to the light and it was smeared dark red.

‘I say, look, get ... get back ...’ The voice of James Bull-Davies pitched schoolboy-high.

‘Bloody Nora,’ Gomer Parry said hoarsely.

Merrily saw black drips on Garrod Powell’s cap-shaded cheeks. A smear around Lloyd’s mouth like badly applied lipstick. Spots on Gomer’s glasses. Blotches on his wife’s earmuffs, hanging around her neck like headphones.

Caroline Cassidy teetered back in her thigh-boots, making an ugly snuffling noise, and Merrily saw the worst and went stiff with the shock.

Between the Powells, at the foot of the stricken old tree, what looked like a milk churn in an overcoat was pumping out dark fluid, black milk.

A scarf of cold tightened around Merrily’s throat.

‘What’s the matter?’ Terrence Cassidy’s cultured tones rising ludicrously out of the clearing, like something out of Noel Coward. ‘What’s happened? I don’t understand. For heaven’s sake, all we wanted to ...’

Gomer Parry looked up at Cassidy through his red glasses and spat out his cigarette. ‘Somebody better call the police, I reckon.’

Merrily had found a handkerchief and was numbly wiping the blood from her face. Unable to pull her gaze away from the horror inside the collar of Edgar’s overcoat, knowing that most of his head would be in the tree, hanging like some garish leftover Christmas bauble amid tinselly, frosted twigs.

She crumpled the handkerchief. Her face was still wet. It felt like some horrific baptism.

And, hearing Miss Devenish whispering, ‘I knew it, I knew it,’ she knew she would have to look up into the tree.