December (60 page)

      
He still wasn't sure how far he could
trust
the Skirrid, but it had been venerated for centuries, a
circle of churches around it had been built on its holy soil, and it had borne
a chapel dedicated to St Michael, the warrior.

      
Shelter. He would need to explain this to Tom. A Peugeot car
pulled in under the illuminated pub sign. A woman got out and looked around.
She was tall, with dark hair, not remotely like the Shelley Storey Simon
remembered from Epidemic. Couldn't be Tom, then. Simon looked away.

      
What he mustn't tell Tom, mustn't even
think
about when Tom was around ... was the candles.

      
Human fat? Please, no. Human fat altered everything.

They wouldn't of course, be
able to prove it. Such phenomena were invariably beyond physical proof.
Therefore, the
inquiry would
, most likely, be dropped.
In time.

      
So far he'd managed to avoid this Superintendent G. A. Jones.
The man had not returned. Simon had phoned Eddie Edwards and expressed
disbelief. Human fat? Ridiculous. Defies credibility. Let's bloody hope so,
Eddie had said, jittery.

      
This was another of Simon's mistakes; he'd reacted badly to
the candles in front of Eddie. He didn't have the resolve any more, didn't have
the cool he'd displayed in December 1980 when the ring of candles had appeared
in the studio. Of course, he hadn't known then about the human fat. But Tom
must've sensed it. Tom had screamed,

      
they're black!

      
Tom had been right.

      
They were black. Very black. As black as ...
      
the hair of the woman now tapping
on his car window. The tall woman from the Peugeot.
      
He wound his window down.
      
'Is it Simon?' she asked
hesitantly.

      
And, behind her, a familiar shambling figure was disentangling
itself from the Peugeot.

Dave awoke and looked
around in confusion. The furniture in the room was utterly strange.

      
A scuffed and hulking wardrobe barely fitted under the black
ceiling beams. There was a chest and a chair and a dressing-table with no mirror.
He stumbled to the window: metal kegs in a yard under a dirty bulb on a metal
bracket.

      
He didn't
know
that
view.

      
Didn't
know
this
room. Didn't remember going to sleep in it. Didn't, in fact, remember going to
sleep anywhere, only awakening. If you could call this being awake.

      
Tap, tap, up.

      
He didn't know the white-panelled door on which someone was
knocking.

      
Dave sat on the edge of the bed. This wasn't the bedsit, was
it? This wasn't Muthah Mirth. Been evicted from there. Yeh. Right. Walked out
on his contract. Let them down again. Unreliable. Drove across the Severn
Bridge and accosted a woman with a black bonnet. Walked up a crooked mountain with
John Lennon. Who wasn't really there, on account of being dead, but it was an
interesting exchange of views he and John had had. Straightened out a few
contentious points; couldn't remember what they were.

      
The only strong memory was coming down the mountain, and Moira
Cairns waiting for him. But not
really
,
obviously. She wasn't really there, any more than John Lennon was there, because
- of course - she was dead too.

      
Nobody wore the black bonnet for very long.
      
Moira was dead.

      
Dave wept at this. It had kept him going for so long, the
thought that one day, before they were too old to do anything about it, he
might see Moira again.

      
But he'd known for a couple of days that it was too late,
watching her on that long, long beach, writing
deathoak
in the sand with her guitar as she tramped towards the
final horizon, her face terminally black-veiled.

      
Dead now, then. Dead as Lennon. No more real than the view
over the yard lit by the dirty bulb.

      
It occurred to him, with no great sense of surprise, that he'd
been committed. That this was what people politely called a Rest Home. What had
happened, he'd escaped and run away up a mountain with a dead legend, but
they'd laid a trap for him and he'd walked right into it, confused by the ghostly
shape and the voice of the love of his life. And now they'd put him into another
room he didn't know, and he was naked.

      
He looked down at himself in horror. The bastards had taken
away his clothes! And the dressing-table had no mirror; without a mirror he had
no way of even confirming his own identity.

      
'Davey?'

      
Dave Kite. I'm Dave Kite. They hold benefits for me, with a
trampoline full of Hendersons and Henry the Horse dancing the waltz.

      
Bang, bang, bang.

      
'Davey!'

      
He looked at the door.
Do
they think I'm completely bloody bonkers?

      
'Piss off! Either give me my clothes back or piss off!'
      
Silence.

      
There was another door and he pushed it open and went through.
He saw a white lavatory and a wash-basin and a bath with a shower attachment
hanging over it like the dirty bulb hung over the yard.

      
He saw a chair and on it were some clothes he vaguely
recognised. He grabbed them - jockey shorts, jeans, a sweater and a jacket hung
over the back - hugged them to his chest to make sure they were real. Buried
his face in them, and breathed in the smell of earth, the smell of the grave.

      
Dave began frantically to pull on the clothes before they
could disappear. While the banging on the white door continued, getting louder.

      
And the voice went on shouting, 'Davey?' with increasing urgency.

      
'Piss off!' he screamed.

      
Maybe he'd escape again; get out of the window.

'Simon,' Tom said, standing
back to look at him under the Castle Inn sign. 'You bastard. You look exactly
the bleeding same.'

      
Simon wished he could say the same for Tom, whose hair and
moustache were almost white, whose face looked like crumpled chip-paper. The
best he could have said was that Tom's shamble was the same.

      
Instead, he said, 'How's Shelley?'

      
Best to start off being as direct as possible. Shelley not
being here was worrying him, and if there was something worrying you, Tom would
catch it like a cold.
      
'Shelley's fine,' Tom said. 'I
reckon.'
      
'So where is she?'

      
In Simon's view, Tom's biggest mistake had been not marrying
Shelley first time around instead of getting himself ensnared by the sinewy
charms of a TV disco dancer called Debbie Swann. That way, Debbie Swann would
be alive and so, probably, would Shelley, who would never in a million years have
left Tom alone at the Abbey.

      
But, then, who could say, really, how that night would have
ended? The cards had been drawn from the pack. Black cards.

      
'Bit of a problem there,' Tom admitted. 'Me and Shelley. Temporary,
I reckon. Strickly temporary. Sort itself out.' He glanced up anxiously at the
inn's whitewashed walls. 'Place looks old.'

      
'It is old,' Simon agreed. 'But that's not a problem. I
examined all our rooms. There's nothing much here. Except for anything we've
brought with us.'
      
'Yeah,' Tom said. 'Sorry. I don't
get out much. This is Meryl. She's, er...'

      
'His therapist,' said Meryl, rounding out the R. A country
girl then, Simon thought, surprised, although there was no reason why he should
be; Tom did, after all, live in the country.
      
'Yeah,' said Tom gratefully. 'Ferapist.'
      
'How do you do.' Simon reluctantly
took the woman's hand.
      
It wasn't in a glove, and her
nails, which he expected to be long, sharp and thick with varnish, turned out
to be short and practical. The handshake was firm.

      
'Wasn't for this lady,' Tom said, 'I wouldn't've come. Made me
face up to responsibilities. Ferapy.'

      
Simon looked more closely at Meryl, shrewd eyes. Not a bimbo.
But anybody could be a therapist. Simon decided there was a history to this
which would need to be uncovered before they went to the Abbey.

      
'Let's hope neither of you will have any regrets,' he said and
could have chewed off his tongue. He patted Tom's arm. 'Go in, shall we? I think
Dave and Moira are already here. And the producer. Ken Levin. Prof, as he's
known. Are you all right about him?'

      
'Never worked wiv him, Si, but I used to know people who did.
He's OK. Better than that wanker Hornby, anyway.'

      
'That's good.' Inside the pub lobby, Simon took off his
overcoat and scarf, hung them over an arm. He opened the interior door for
Meryl. 'After you. Sorry I was little short earlier on. I wasn't expecting ...
Well.'

      
Meryl smiled without looking at him and went through into the
bar. But Tom didn't move.

      
'This a joke, Simon?'

      
'Sorry?'

      
'What the fuck is that?' Bloodshot eyes wide with shock.
      
'What the fuck is what?' said
Simon.
      
'That white fing encircling your
Gregory. It's a joke, right?'
      
'It's a dog collar,' said Simon.

      
It might have been a swastika armband, the way Tom was reacting.
'That's what bleeding vicars wear!'

      
'So I'm told,' Simon said, moving into the bar. 'You still not
drinking, Tom? Coffee, is it?'

In the dimness of Room 4,
second on the right along the low passage, his face looked like a Victorian
portrait. Orphan boy, c.1886, Moira thought.

      
Someone had told her a year or two back that he was building
up a small cult following as an alternative comedian with a particularly cynical
line in impersonations of rock music icons. It had all sounded very worldly, a
touch sophisticated, and not at all like his letters.

      
His face was quite startlingly unmarked by the years. Or so it
seemed in this light. There were clear rings of pain around his eyes, but inside
the eyes themselves was this credulous innocence. No cynicism, no
sophistication. Only the innocence of long ago.

      
She was a different person, but he was alarmingly changed.

      
He stepped back a pace, gripping his arms, as if she was
exuding cold. He stood by the bed. He kept glancing at her and then looking away
and then glancing back. She thought there were tears in his eyes, but he
blinked them away.

      
'You're exactly the same.' He nodded, swallowed. 'You're how I
wanted to see you. You haven't changed.'

      
Yes I have
, she
wanted to scream at him.
I'm a totally
different person. I've been around. I've been making my own living, sorting out
my past, burying my mother. I'm mature, hard-boiled, hard-bitten. I've got
scars all over me. Can you no' see the scars?

      
Dave said. 'Thank you. You can go now.'

      
He smiled vaguely, turned and moved to the window, looking out
of it and down.
His shoulders shook, just
once.

      
Moira said, 'Davey?'

      
He ignored her, began to mess with the window, unbolting the
sash. Then something seemed to occur to him and he turned back to face her.

      
He said, 'On your way out, could you just send Lennon in one
last time?'
      
Moira froze.
      
'Oh Jesus,' she said.

III

Supernatural Junkie

After an hour or so, Prof
went up. He stood outside in the passage trying to see into the bedroom, but
Moira wasn't opening the door wide enough.
      
'Thing is, they've started asking
for you. Tom is getting restive.'