The Wine of Angels

‘Efficient? You’re completely insane!’

‘She wouldn’t’ve suffered anyway,’ Lloyd said reassuringly. ‘We’d just’ve banged her ole head one more time on the tarmac. We can be humane, see, when we need to be. Ole Lucy, she was a nuisance, no question, got these funny ideas and she couldn’t leave well alone and she got Father in a right state the stuff she was comin’ out with, but’ – he shrugged – ‘she was still one of us. So when she’s in the way, when she’s gotter go, then it’s done humanely.’

He nodded and smacked the side of the truck. His clean-cut face shining in the moonlight with pride at a job well done. He straightened up, stood with his hands on his hips and contemplated Jane.

‘And then there’s you,’ he said.

‘I suppose I’m in the way, too.’

Momentarily astonished at how calm her voice sounded now there was no need to pretend any more, now that there was nowhere to run and nobody to hear her screams. She looked up at the pink moon, and it occurred to her that this could be the last moon she would ever see. She felt full of hate and terror, but hazy too. Hazey Jane cursing the night. But remote from it all, somehow, because people like Lloyd just couldn’t be, not in the modern world.

‘I can’t make up my mind, see,’ Lloyd said, ‘what you are. A fox or a lamb. Or even a badger. You ever been on a badger-dig?’

‘No! That’s disgusting—’

‘Illegal now, mind. But it goes on. It has to go on, see, else how we gonner keep ’em down? Had him near enough wiped out in these parts once, ole brock, pesky ole bugger, but the conservationists, who know best, see, from their offices in London and them places, they lets the badger back to spread tuberculosis through our herds. Badgers coming back as fast as townies in their holiday cottages, and they said we couldn’t touch ’em.’

‘That was never proved,’ Jane said, clutching at another conversational straw. ‘Tuberculosis.’

‘Never proved. Arseholes, it wasn’t. All I’m saying, badger on my land, he goes down, and if I can have a bit of fun with him before he goes, where’s the harm there? He’s dead anyway at the end. What difference is half an hour gonner make?’

‘Not badger baiting?’ Jane said faintly.

‘Aye, if you wanner call it that. Feller from up north, he brings his terriers once in a while. Ole brock, he gets dug out, we throws him to the dogs. It’s a bit of fun. It’s cheap. Nobody gets harmed, ‘cept the badger and that’s his fault for being a badger. And the dogs sometimes, but we stitch ’em up, no problem.’

‘That’s despicable.’

‘Why?’ His face puckered slightly in genuine puzzlement. ‘You don’t look at things the right way round. A savage bastard, he is, the badger when he gets going. Or if it’s a female with young. Or any kind of female. Asking for it. Daring you to do it.’ Lloyd leaned against his white truck, arms folded. ‘Asking for it,’ he repeated. He looked up at the moon. In a parody of a wheedling, posh, female voice, he said, ‘You want me, don’t you, Lloydie?’

Turned to Jane. ‘They all want you, see, women. Bit of a catch, a farmer, always was. You get stuck with the wrong one, mind, she’s hard to dislodge, so you gotter get it right. Drummed into me from early on, this was. You gotter get it right!

She didn’t know what he was saying.

‘Gotter get it ... right.’ He hacked a heel into one of the truck’s back tyres. ‘Meantimes,’ he said, ‘you does a bit of badger-baiting, kind of thing. Come along, Jane, I’ll show you the ole cider house.’

50 Deep Offence

AS EACH NAME was written down by DC Thomas, the person was allowed to go. Few had. There was, perhaps, a sense that this electric night was not yet over.

The laborious procedure at least had given Merrily time to assemble her thoughts. After Gomer had told her about Hannah Snell and the rest, they had gone back outside, Gomer to report back to Lol and find Jane.

While Merrily had made three slow circuits of the church, trembling with a fearful excitement. All the time, the thoughts assembling in her head like blocks falling together, compacting, until she found she was looking at a solid, stone staircase. Leading all the way to the top of the vicarage.

Now she was walking back into the church, where Ken Thomas was coming to the end of his list. She stopped by his table.

‘Merrily Watkins,’ she said. ‘The Vicarage, Ledwardine.’

I, Merrily Rose Watkins ...

The image, from the Installation service, of an empty church. Something crawling up the stone-flagged aisle, naked and pale and wracked and twisted.

Poor Wil. You came in the evening.

When the weight was too much to bear, you came in and you locked the door behind you and shed your hated clothing and went down on the cold stones and crawled, sobbing, on hands and knees, along the aisle and up the chancel steps until the altar was above you.

And there you showed yourself to God and you called out, ‘Is this right ...IS THIS RIGHT?

‘You all right, Vicar?’ Ken Thomas said.

‘Sorry. Miles away.’

‘Been a long night,’ Ken said. He lowered his voice. ‘Bloody disgrace, her not saying a word to you. Humiliating you like that. Should’ve told you. No excuse for it. Complain, I would.’

Merrily shook her head. ‘Thanks, anyway.’ She started to walk away then went back. ‘Ken, I don’t suppose you’ll be hanging around for a while?’

‘Well, I’m supposed to call in, but most times they’ve got a job remembering who I am these days. You rather I stayed until you locked up?’

‘I think I would. We had a bit of ... vandalism, earlier.’

‘What was that, then?’

‘Well, it’s kind of complicated. If you stick around, all will be clear. Possibly.’

She moved slowly towards the chancel, past James Bull-Davies, who was still standing on his own, while Alison watched him thoughtfully, leaning over the back pew of the northern aisle. Merrily didn’t look at James. She walked halfway along the chancel, past the choir stalls, to the spot where she’d imagined the twisted, naked thing that was Wil Williams asking, Is this right?

Is it the right thing? she’d said to Lol. That’s the only question, isn’t it, when you think about it.

And it had seemed right, to find the truth and lay it out. She could have become a lawyer, working the criminal and civil courts towards a similar end. The first courtrooms had surely been constructed in imitation of churches, down to the presence of the Bible. But in church there was only one judge; the preacher in the pulpit was merely an advocate, at worst a hell-and-damnation prosecutor ...

But is it the right thing to do?

Merrily walked up to the altar and knelt and prayed for guidance.

‘If this is wrong,’ she said aloud, ‘maybe you could just strike me down.’

Everyone else seemed to have.

Lol looked into the box of The Wine of Angels to confirm that two bottles were indeed missing. He showed Gomer the Dancing Gates story in Mrs Leather’s book.

‘It’s obvious. She thinks she can reach Colette. She thinks Lucy wants that.’

Gomer was dubious. ‘She’d go down there on her own? To the place where ole Edgar done isself in?’

Merrily had given him a key to the vicarage and he’d been in there to make sure there was no Jane. All the way to the top floor. Nothing, except for a little black cat watching him from the hallstand.