The Man in the Moss (58 page)

           
'Shouldn't've bothered,' Willie grumbled.
           
Milly said, 'I'm your mother
now.'
           
'Don't say that.'

           
Balancing her own cup and saucer in one hand - the
Mothers were supposed to be good at balancing things - she got gracefully back
into bed with him. She was wearing an ankle-length floral nightdress tied over
the breasts with an enormous pink bow. She looked like a giant cuddly rabbit,
Willie thought, never more grateful for her than he had been this past night.

           
'I'm everybody's mother now,' Milly said miserably. 'Who
else is there? Old Sarah?'

           
'Shit,' said Willie, 'I don't want it to be you.'

           
Milly shrugged her big shoulders and still kept the cup
balanced on the saucer, 'I've lived opposite Ma for twenty years. I've studied
her ways, best I can. I've been ... well.. . almost a daughter-in-law.'

           
'I was always led to believe,' Willie said, 'that Ma was
supposed to announce her successor. "There's one as'll come after
me." And it weren't you, luv, I'm sure of that.'

           
'No,' said Milly. 'But Ma thought she'd be around for
another ten years yet. I know that for a fact. Ma thought she'd see in the
Millennium.'

           
'Who can say owt like that? Who the hell knows how long
they've got?'

           
'Ma knew.'

           
'Aye. But she were bloody wrong, though, weren't she?'
           
Milly squeezed her lips tight.

           
'Makes you wonder,' Willie said bitterly, 'if it's not a
load of old garbage, all of it, the whole caboodle. Makes you bloody wonder.'

           
'I'll not have that from you, Little Man,' Milly chided,
'even if you are in grief. That's part of the problem. That sort of talk's like
decay.'

           
'Realism, more like,' Willie said, his fingers waking up,
stretching themselves, then batting the side of his teacup in a soft chinking
rhythm.

           
'Drink your tea. You're upset. We all are. I just wish I
could get some insight about the Man.'

           
'Aye,' Willie said. 'And where's bloody Matt? Don't bear
thinking about, this lot. Makes me think I'll happen have Ma cremated.'

           
'You never will!' Milly sat up so suddenly she actually
spilled some tea.

           
'Nowt as goes in yon churchyard ever bloody stays down,'
Willie protested. 'Aye, all right. I mean, no, I'll not have her cremated,
settle down. Will you talk to Moira?'

           
'I don't know,' Milly said. 'Wasn't there talk of her
getting into bad magic some while back?'

           
'Aye, and she got out again,' Willie said. 'You met her
last night. How did she seem to you?'

           
'All right, I suppose,' Milly said grudgingly. 'But you
can't tell. I should be able to tell, I know, but ... Oh, Willie ...'
           
Her shoulders started to shake
and she collapsed against him.
           
'I'm out of mc depth. Why did
she have to die like that? Why did she leave us?'

           
'Because she had no choice,' said Willie, almost managing
to get his arm all the way around her. 'It's no good us keep getting worked up
about it. What's done is done.'

           
But his fingers didn't accept it; they set up a wild,
uncontrollable rhythm on Milly's arm, just below the shoulder.
Ma was killed... Ma was killed... Ma was...
.

           
'Stop it!' Milly sobbed, 'I know. I bloody
know
! But what can we do?'

           
'Talk to Moira,' Willie said.

           
The church clock chimed, for 10 a.m.

           
'Be late for church,' Willie said.

           
'Not going,' Milly said. 'Means nowt to me now, that
place. He's destroyed it. In one day.'
           
'Aye,' Willie said. 'And the
well.'
           
'You
what
?

           
'Him or somebody. I never told you, did I? I forgot -
what with Ma and everything. Me and Moira went up there looking for Ma, and the
well had been wrecked. Statue smashed, right bloody mess.'

           
Milly rolled away from him, mashing her face into her
pillow in anguish.

           
'I'm sorry, lass,' Willie said, 'I just forgot.'

Sunday morning and the
whole village was unaccountably silent. Moira walked to the church car park and
loaded everything into the BMW.

           
It was coming up to 10.45, which probably explained the
silence. This would be the time of the Sunday morning worship.

           
She walked across to the public notice board next to the
lych-gate.

                       
SUNDAY:

                                   
HOLY
COMMUNION 9.0.
                                   
MORNING
SERVICE 10.30
                                   
UNLESS
OTHERWISE NOTIFIED

           
Life will go on. Unless otherwise notified.

           
She no longer felt observed. She wasn't worth it any
more: a thin, bewildered Scottish woman coming up to middle age and her hair
turning white.

           
Everything was unreal. The clouds were like stone. Her
head felt as if it was set in concrete. She needed to get away, to sleep and
think and sleep.

           
And then, maybe, to find Dic, track the little shit down,
deal with this thing.

           
She'd see Willie and then leave. She didn't feel like
talking to him - or to anybody. But Willie was the other link; there were
things Willie could tell her.

           
And he was a churchgoer, or always used to be. She was
probably going to have to wait until they all came out.

           
She slipped through the lych-gate. It began to rain,
quite powerfully. The gargoyles glared down at her. She moved quietly into the
church porch, but there was no feeling of sanctuary here now. The sense of
walking into the womb had gone with the
Sheelagh
na gig
. It was merely shelter now, from the rain and nothing else.

           
Moira stopped, hearing a voice, a preacher's lilt, from
the body of the church.

           
'... Dearly beloved
brethren, the Scripture moves us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess
our manifold sins and wickedness, and that we should not dissemble nor cloak
them before the face of Almighty God...'

           
It was cold in the porch, colder than outside. She hugged
herself.

           
And there was something wrong with that voice.

           
… Wherefore I pray
and beseech you, as many as are here present, to accompany me with a pure heart
and humble voice, unto the throne of the heavenly grace, saying after me ...'

           
The door to the church was closed. She would wait for a
hymn and then go in.

           
'Almighty and most merciful father,
we have erred and strayed
from thy ways like lost sheep ...

           
'We have offended against thy holy
laws . ..
           
... and there is no health in
us. .

           
Cathy had been right. She was coming down with something,
a cold, flu. Wasn't just shock. She was shivering again.
           
Should go back to the car,
turn up the heater.

           
And then it came to her, what was wrong.

           
There should be responses. All these lines the minister
was intoning were supposed to be repeated by the congregation. He was leaving
the spaces.

           
'To the glory of
thy holy name … '

           
But nobody was filling them. Not one person in this
congregation was participating.
           
'Amen.'

           
Nobody repeated amen. He might have been talking to
himself.

           
Holy Jesus.

           
'We shall sing ... Hymn number six
hundred and three. "Round The Sacred City Gather."'

           
She waited for the organ or the harmonium or whatever.
           
That sound they always made,
like they were drawing breath for the first chord.

           
There was silence. Only that hollow gasping ambience
these places had. And then the singing began.

                       
'Round
the sacred city gather
                       
Egypt, Edam,
Babylon.
                       
All the warring
hosts of error.
                       
Sworn against her,
move as one.'

           
A strong and strident tenor. One voice.
           
This guy was singing on his
own.
           
And that was very seriously
eerie. Moira began to feel scared.

                       
'Get
thee, watchman, to thy rampart,
                       
Gird thee,
warrior, with thy sword … '

           
Trembling, she pushed gently at the swing-door, opening
it just an inch, just enough to peer in ... and let out the voice, louder.

                       
'Watch
to prayer lest while ye slumber.
                       
Stealthy foemen
enter in …'

           
She almost screamed. Let go of the door, letting it swing
back into place with an audible thunk that seemed to echo from the rafters.

           
I'm away. I'm out of here.

           
As she ran out of the porch, into the bleakly battering
rain, she could still see him, fully robed, statuesque but crazy-eyed, arms
filing out, balanced there on the steps before the altar place, singing to all
those empty pews. All those completely empty pews.

She walked back along the
cobbles, to where she could see down the street as far as The Man I'th Moss.
           
Not a soul.

           
But the silence was more sorrowful than sinister, hung
down like her confidence, somewhere around the soles of her shoes.

           
She looked along the blank windows of the cottages. The
only sign of presence was some chimney smoking cheerlessly.
           
Maybe all this had something
to do with the sudden death of Ma Wagstaff. A big death.

           
And the stealing of the
Sheelagh
, the removal of the candles, the toppling of the Autumn
Cross. Like they didn't feel welcome in the church any more, these bewildered
people who no longer knew where they stood in relation to their God or their
Goddess.

           
She turned into the alley which led to Willie's house and
she hammered on his door, her body flattened against it. Come on, Willie, come
on
.

           
Deserted. She tried, a little nervously, a couple of raps
on the front door of the curtained cottage at the top of the street where Ma Wagstaff
had lived and died. Finally, she found an old envelope in the car and wrote a
careful note, walking back down the hill to push it into Willie's letter-box.

           
Willie, I suppose we need to talk sometime about what we're
         
going to do about Mao's music on the
bog body. I don't suppose you feel any more like it than me at the moment, so
I'll get in touch in a few weeks' time. I have to go home now ...

           
Home. Where the hell was home?

           
Home is where the heart is, and I haven't got a heart, I
haven't got a soul.