The Man in the Moss (37 page)

           
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.

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(unpublished):

Although there has never been any excavation, it is
presumed that the 'low' or mound on which St Bride's Church is built was a
barrow or tumulus dating back to the Bronze Age and may later have been a place
of Celtic worship.

                       
Similar
mounds have been found to enclose chambers, which some believe to have been
used not so much for burial purposes as for solitary meditation or initiation
into the religious mysteries. Some tribes of American Indians, I believe,
fashioned underground chambers for similar purposes.

                       
There
has been speculation mat the small cell-like room reached by a narrow stairway
from the vestry occupies the space of this original chamber. The official
explanation for this room is that it was constructed as overnight
accommodation
 
for itinerant priests who
came to preach at St Bride's and were
 
unable, because of adverse weather, to return that night across
 
the Moss. However, there are few recorded
instances of this
 
being necessary, and
when, in 1835, a visiting bishop announced his intention of spending the night
there 'to be closer to God' he
 
eventually had to be found a room at The Man I'th Moss after being
discovered naked and distressed in the snow-covered churchyard at three o'clock
in the morning!