what looked like butterflies, but on closer inspection proved to be ...
‘Fairies!’ Jane said in surprise. They were tiny and delicate with little matchstick bodies and wings of soft red and yellow and green. Apple colours.
‘Lucy makes them. Two pounds each or three for a fiver.’
‘Oh!’ She jumped. She hadn’t seen him behind the counter. Well, until he stood up you couldn’t see anything at all behind the counter because of a pile of big green and red apple-shaped candles promising to give your living room an exquisite orchard ambience.
He peered out between the candles. He had long hair tied up in a ponytail and small, brass-rimmed, tinted glasses. He didn’t seem very tall.
‘Sorry,’ Jane said. ‘It didn’t look as if there was anybody here. Just ... apples.’
‘Pick-your-own?’ He plucked a fairy from a candle wick. ‘Spend over ten quid, we throw one of these in for nothing. They’re very lucky. Apparently.’
‘I didn’t really come in for a fairy. I was looking for a book on local history.’
‘Right,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Well, they’re around. They
She turned to look around and everything started to rustle and jingle.
‘I’m scared to touch anything. You never know what you might bring down.’
He smiled, indicating a small sign in a wooden frame between the candles on the counter. It said,
‘Cool,’ Jane said, impressed.
‘Lucy’s got a bit of a thing about these really precious gift shops that have all this delicate stuff in precarious places then make you pay through the nose when you dislodge one with your elbow. You said local history ... How local?’
‘
‘Try up there.’
He didn’t seem to want to come out from behind the counter. A Roswell-style alien face stared impassively from his black sweatshirt. She reached up to a stack of volumes between stone book-ends featuring a sort of Gothic Rottweiler with an apple in its mouth.
‘There,’ he said. ‘That one.’
Pulling down a soft-backed book, she knocked over a stack of greeting cards displaying appley watercolours.
‘Chaos, here.’ But he didn’t come round the counter to help her pick them up. ‘It’s OK. I’ll do it later.’
The book she held was not very thick.
‘I’m trying to find some information about a guy called Wil Williams.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Mmm. Right.’
‘You know who I mean?’
‘You won’t find much in there.’
‘So where
He shrugged. ‘Difficult.’
‘This is my only hope. I need it. School essay.’
‘Well ...’ His accent wasn’t local, but there was an accent there, a vaguely rural one. ‘It’s difficult.’
‘You keep on saying that.’ What was it with this guy? He seemed harmless but he was definitely weird. Almost like he was scared of her.
‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘Lucy’s not happy about the way the story’s been handled. Doesn’t think they’ve got it right. Lucy has very definite ideas about things.’
‘Look,’ Jane said. ‘I don’t need anything in any great depth. I mean, just who
‘I thought you were doing a school essay on him.’
‘I ...’ Her mind went fuzzy.
He smiled, took off his glasses. He wasn’t as young as she’d first thought. That is, he had a young face, but there were deep little lines around his eyes. He’d be more like Mum’s age, really. Pity.
‘He was the vicar.’
‘Oh, really? When?’
‘In the seventeenth century. About 1670, something like that. I’m not sure whether they actually called them vicars in those days, but that was what he was. See, Lucy’d give you the whole bit, but she takes Saturday afternoons off when she can. I don’t know that much about it. Keep meaning to find out, but at the end of the day, I don’t really think there’s much known for certain. It’s like one of those murky areas of history. All kinds of atrocities in those days, weren’t there?’
Atrocities?
‘But he was the minister of ... this church?’
He didn’t reply. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten she was here. He was staring through the window, into the mews, where Colette Cassidy still stood in her doorway and a bearded man was strolling by. The man looked at Colette’s legs.
‘This church,’ Jane said. ‘You mean the village church? Excuse me?’
‘Oh, shit.’
The shop guy folded his fingers together and squeezed hard. It was difficult to be sure in this light, but Jane thought he’d gone pale. He looked at her.
‘Look ... You on your own?’
‘Well ...’
She felt uncomfortable, found herself backing instinctively towards the door.
‘What I mean ... you’re not with that bloke out there?’
‘What?’
The bearded man was standing in the middle of the mews, about fifteen feet away. He wore jeans and a denim shirt and those dark glasses that went all the way round. He had his hands in his pockets and was gazing at the shop window. He seemed a quite ordinary tourist-type, perhaps waiting for his wife.
‘Why would you think I should know
The shop man had his glasses back on. He didn’t look cool any more. He sort of ...
‘Yeah. Right. OK. Do me a favour, er ...?’
‘Jane.’
‘Jane.’ He shook his head, in a wry you-have-to-laugh kind of way. Then the hunted look was back. ‘Jane, could I ask you to mind the store?’
‘Right,’ said little Gomer Parry through his cigarette. ‘That bit, that’s all yours, Vicar, see.’
She’d given up correcting people when they called her vicar. You couldn’t really have people calling you Priest-in-Charge anyway, could you?
Gomer was pointing to a small meadow, about two acres, Merrily reckoned, sloping gently from one end of the churchyard down to the river.
‘Now, what we done the past couple o’ years,’ Gomer said, ‘is we mowed ‘im, end of July roundabout, then we sells the bales to Powell. We could sell the ole grass standing, let Powell cut it ’isself, but bein’ as how I got the gear, where’s the point in loppin’ off the profits? Plus, Gomer Parry Agricultural and Plant Hire, we does a tidy
