The Wine of Angels

‘It’s ridiculous. No one would get away with it.’

‘Have you heard of Hannah Snell, James?’

‘Should I have?’

‘Hannah Snell was born in Worcester about a century after Wil Williams. She made a name for herself on the London stage, singing songs and telling tales of her bizarre life which began – the bizarre part – when her husband, a Dutch sailor, disappeared. Hannah went off to try and find him. Joined the army, later the Marines. Travelled as far as India. Was obliged, on occasion, to share abed with servicemen and was also, allegedly, stripped to the waist for a flogging. During all that time, nobody seems ever to have spotted she was a woman.’

‘That’s true,’ Jim Prosser shouted. ‘A fact, that is. And she wasn’t butch, neither, apparently.’

Merrily said, ‘And there was nothing about this in the Bull journal? They must have discovered the truth about Wil after death, at least.’

‘Nothing that I could see,’ Alison said. She’d left her seat at the back and moved to the choir stalls, possibly to observe James’s reaction. ‘It concerns the death itself more than anything.’

James looked sullen again.

‘We’ll come to that,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m just trying to show that if Hannah Snell could pass herself off as a front-line fighting man for over five years, then it would certainly be possible for a young woman to get through college and become ordained and serve as a priest. Especially if she had the support of people of the order of Susannah Hopton and Thomas Traherne.’

Merrily switched off the microphone, leaned over the pulpit.

‘Look, we know hardly anything about the real Wil Williams and I doubt we’re ever going to. We presume she went to Oxford as a man – perhaps there are records, I don’t know. We can only speculate. About many things. Like why the estimable Thomas Traherne, who so loved Hereford and delighted in the countryside, should have gone so readily to London. Perhaps he too was in love and knew better than anyone why it was doomed.’

‘That’s an enchanting thought,’ said Mrs Goddard, the crippled horsewoman. ‘He never married, you know. He died at thirty-seven.’

Bull-Davies snorted. Merrily wondered whether Lol Robinson, who was also thirty-seven, knew that Traherne had died at precisely that age. She was suddenly worried about Lol. And Jane. She would have to end this soon.

‘What must it’ve been like for her, though?’ Effie Prosser said. ‘A woman alone in that big vicarage, pretending to be a man.’

Merrily thought for a moment before responding.

‘I know exactly what it was like.’

‘You’re really a man, are you, Mrs Watkins?’

‘Mr Davies,’ said Mrs Goddard, ‘I’m getting rather tired of the sound of your voice. Please go on, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t have been alone,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s the first point. Ministers in those days, I gather, were rather more up-market than they are today. So there would have been servants. Certainly other people in that house from whom she would have had to hide the truth. Can you imagine the problems that would cause? She’d have no privacy in her own house. Except ...’

Merrily no longer wanted to be in the pulpit. She wanted to be a woman, not just a minister. She came down and sat on the chancel steps, as Stefan, as Wil, had done.

‘... except in the attic. I ... feel ... that the attic was the only place where she felt free to be a woman. Even her bedchamber on the first floor would have been cleaned and tidied by a maid. So it would have to be a masculine room. When I’m on that floor, particularly, I sometimes sense a ... constriction. Perhaps I imagine that. Perhaps it’s psychological’

‘Or perhaps you are psychic,’ said Mrs Goddard brightly.

Merrily tried to look dubious.

‘I feel she went through quite a lot of pain, both emotional and physical, flattening her chest, deepening her voice, never daring to show herself in public without the bindings or corsets or whatever she wore. Unlike Traherne, she couldn’t go out in the countryside with any sense of freedom. She couldn’t even go into her beloved orchard and just be herself, without the risk of being seen.’

The images were coming to her as she spoke. She felt she was quivering with vision.

‘So she made a place for herself. A dark, secret place, where she could perhaps keep women’s clothes. Parade at night in the flimsiest, most frivolous of dresses. And weep. Silently, of course. Always silently. In the attic of the vicarage.’

I saw her. Oh my God, I saw her.

‘I ... It’s funny ...’ She looked up. ‘My daughter, Jane, was drawn to the attic from the moment she entered the house. I was thinking what a miserable, draughty-looking house it was, and Jane was dashing upstairs and claiming the attic for herself.’

She thought of the Mondrian walls which had become orchard walls. Had whoever became Wil Williams lain up there and closed her eyes and dreamed of walking out as a woman, smelling apple scents? Seeing those little golden lights among the branches and floating, like Jane on cheap cider? Had the presence – the spirit – of the orchard manifested there?

It was getting on for midnight. Gomer sat down at the base of the tree, where the moon couldn’t find his glasses.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you why I don’t like the Powells.’

Lol was getting restive. He didn’t know what to do but he wanted to be doing it. Could Gomer make it brief?

‘En’t a long story.’

Went back mainly to that day fifteen or so years ago, when Rod hired Gomer Parry Plant Hire to dig some drainage ditches. The hot day, when he’d had some of Edgar’s excellent cider, made from the Pharisees Reds. Except the cider wasn’t served up by Edgar or Rod, who were both at a cattle sale that day.

‘Jennifer, it was. Jennifer Powell. Jennifer Adair, who used to work in the kitchen at the Black Swan.’

‘Lloyd’s mother?’

‘And Rod’s missus, and a hell of a nice girl. ‘Er’d’ve been about thirty at the time and Lloyd was ten and Rod was forty and a bit more. They likes ’em younger, the Powells and they don’t marry till late.’

Cut a long story short, it was clear Jennifer Powell had been crying and if you knew her mother-in-law, Meggie Powell, it didn’t take long to work out she was the reason.

Tough wasn’t the word for Meggie Powell.

‘Built like a Hereford bull, face to match,’ said Gomer. ‘Bit less feminine, mabbe. When the 1959 flu epidemic took off half the fellers worked at the slaughterhouse there used to be, bottom of Ole Barn Lane, Meggie filled in for a fortnight. That kind o’ woman, you know? Good wife to Edgar, mind, all senses of the word. Good mother to Garrod, likewise. By which I means ... likewise.’

‘Aw, shit,’ said Lol.

‘Ar, sixty-seventh woman Edgar slept with, sure t’be. First one for Rod.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘It was normal enough then, boy, some families. Normal sex education, like. Well, not normal, but not uncommon. Teach ’em young. Teach ’em how it all works. Self-sufficiency, see. Look after your own, don’t make a mess, but if you do, make sure you clears up after yourself. And, above all, keep it quiet.’

What rural life was all about in the old days. Feller beat up his wife in the city all the neighbours knew about it. Same thing happened in the country ... well, all the neighbours knew about it too, but they kept quiet. Anybody got really out of hand, they got dealt with. One way or another.

The Powell women were chosen with care, Gomer said. There were traditions they had to observe. Had to be a special sort of woman, which was not always the prettiest ... Well, look at Meggie. By the time a Powell married, usually at thirty-five-plus, he’d sown his wild oats over a wide area and was ready to settle down and pass on his knowledge to the next generation. By Powell standards, however, Rod chose unwisely. Jennifer Adair was too prissy, too genteel and on the day, fifteen years ago, when Rod and his old man were at the cattle sale and Jennifer Powell learned, in a heart to heart with Meggie, what was going to be expected of her in relation to Lloyd in a