The Wine of Angels

noticeboard. ‘Leave it a moment, would you, Rod?’ Child said.

Powell, tall and trim and oddly dignified, shrugged and went back to his seat between Cassidy and a moody- looking James Bull-Davies.

‘It begins with “Crying the Mare”,’ said Child. ‘You’d know all about that, Rod. They used to do that on your farm?’

‘Sure to,’ Powell said uncertainly.

‘Harvest custom. They’d leave the last of the corn standing, separating it out into four bundles, sticking up like legs. The Mare, you see? Then they’d tie these together at the top to make a single sheaf, step a few paces back and hurl their hooks and sickles at it, to try and cut off the ears of corn.’

‘Sounds rather pointless to me,’ observed Terrence Cassidy, apparently failing to recall his role as principal organizer of the infamous Twelfth Night event in which shotguns were discharged into an apple tree.

Dermot Child ignored him. ‘Be interesting to arrange a contest in one of the fields, see how many chaps can still do it.’

Somehow, Merrily couldn’t quite imagine Lloyd and Garrod Powell, plus sundry seasonal labourers, abandoning the combine harvester to waste a valuable daylight hour attempting to shave a sheaf with tossed sickles.

‘However,’ Child said, ‘this was really a preamble. On this and other occasions, the ritual would invariably conclude with mugs of cider all round. Now. This would be preceded by all the chaps gathering into a circle and intoning—’

Abruptly, he pushed back his chair, stood up, filled his lungs. And with his fingertips pressed into the tabletop, bellowed in a lugubrious bass, ‘Auld ... ciderrrrrrrrrrrrr.’

Rolling and dragging out the word on a single note, in a deep, rumbling drone, a Herefordshire mantra. Merrily was startled. How eerily primeval it seemed in the purply gloom. You felt that if several of them were doing it, the walls would start to peel and crumble.

No one spoke again until Child sat down.

‘Aye,’ Rod Powell said then, into the silence. ‘I remember.’ He moved to the switches again, and bluish fluorescent tubes began to flicker.

Merrily recalled, as the lights revealed the sickly, sixties, pink-brick interior of Ledwardine’s only real architectural embarrassment, what Gomer Parry had said about even the mercenary Powells being far from immune from superstition.

Dermot Child was patting his chest.

‘Don’t know about the rest of you, but I find that absolutely thrilling. Bunch of working men using their lungs and their throats to make contact with the earth itself. Setting up this marvellously powerful vibration ... Ciderrrrr. The very roots of music.’

‘Sort of vibration we need for this festival,’ said James Bull-Davies. ‘That’s what you’re saying?’

Bull-Davies was wearing a tan gilet over a checked shirt with a cravat. Until you actually lived in a place like this, Merrily thought, the idea of there still being a kind of uniform for local squires would strike you as a joke. But it was a fact that people like James did not wear jeans, they did not wear T-shirts, and they would never, under any circumstances, be seen in a baseball cap, even the right way round.

‘You know ...’ Child leaned across the table. ‘You’d be absolutely perfect for it, James. Your voice has the timbre.’

Cassidy scowled but said nothing. Probably not caring to emphasize his own reedy lack of timbre. Merrily wanted to giggle. James Bull-Davies caught her eye and looked away at once. Merrily stifled a sigh. How long would it take for this guy to come to terms with a woman priest? Answer: he never would; it wasn’t the thing.

‘I’m planning, you see,’ Child announced, ‘a new choral work, for which this will be the focus. Old Cider. I’m looking for voices. Local voices. I want to work with the voices. I want the composition to arise from those voices. From the earth, the red earth of Ledwardine. Any thoughts, Rod?’

‘We did have a male voice choir, Mr Child, some years back. Folded through lack of support. A few of the ole boys still around, though, sure to be.’

Child beamed. ‘Vicar?’

‘I could put the word around the church choir,’ Merrily said. ‘See if we can get a few volunteers.’

‘Good girl,’ Child reached over and patted her hand, lingering perhaps a little too long on her fingers. ‘So what’s the committee’s view on using “Old Cider” as the name of the festival. Terry?’

‘Terrence,’ Cassidy said tightly. ‘Well, we obviously can’t make a decision tonight —’

‘Who says we can’t?’

‘Look, I suggest you submit a paper on the proposal and we’ll circulate it before the next meeting.’

‘Hell fire!’ boomed Bull-Davies. ‘Only a question of a bloody title. I propose, Chairman, that we take a vote on whether to decide it here and now. In fact, not to prolong the issue, I formally propose the Ledwardine Festival be known hereafter as the Old Cider festival.’

‘Seconded,’ Child said quickly.

‘Now just a minute ...’ Terrence Cassidy’s thin face was flushed. ‘What this means is that the entire festival would effectively be promoting your as yet unwritten choral work.’

‘Or my choral work, for heaven’s sake’ – Child threw up his arms – ‘would be supporting the concept of the festival.’

‘Proposition on the table, gentlemen.’ Bull-Davies made a grimace of a smile. ‘And, ah ... lady. Chairman, my understanding of the rules of the committee game is that what you do next is ask if there are any amendments.’

Cassidy folded his arms obstinately. ‘I think we should wait until Richard Coffey arrives. His play’s going to be the thing that gets us national publicity, and he might—’

‘Chap knew it was eight p.m., didn’t he?’ Bull-Davies rumbled. ‘Can’t wait all night. Move progress.’

‘All right.’ Cassidy very red now. ‘Very well. If that’s what you want. So be it.’

Looking around for an amendment. In vain. Even to Merrily, the idea sounded simple and unpretentious, reflected the identity of the village and would look good on posters. Why waste time?

‘Old Cider’ was passed by three votes to one. Councillor Garrod Powell, as the only official local politician there, did what local politicians did best and abstained. Hostile looks were exchanged.

Oh God, Merrily thought, it’s going to be that sort of committee.

She was suddenly depressed. Was this how Alf Hayden had started out: dutifully attending all the bitchy little meetings, wondering how God wanted him to vote? Wondering, after a while, if God was really concerned one way or the other. Village life: the cradle of society, or just a shallow pond across which Jesus surely would never have bothered to walk?

Tyres crunched the cinders under the window.

‘Richard, I imagine,’ Cassidy said, as if it didn’t matter any more, as if he’d washed his hands of them all.

Merrily had hoped Coffey wouldn’t show. After what Jane had told her, she needed a bit of time to think about Wil Williams, minister of this parish 1668 to 1670. She needed to consult a few people. If James Bull-Davies was in a decisionmaking mood tonight, she might be pushed into a corner on the issue of whether the local Church should be actively involved and allow its premises to be used for the resurrection of a seventeenth-century minister apparently hounded to death by his own parishioners.

Her first dicey decision. Sitting directly beneath the No Smoking sign, Merrily ached for a cigarette.

Back at the Black Swan, Jane watched National Lottery Live on TV, alone in the tiny, half-panelled residents’ lounge, and almost began to understand why her mother had gone into the Church.

The bloody lottery. Look at them all, whooping and squealing with every number drawn. Was this what the human race had come to – naked lust for money, mob greed?