The Wine of Angels

Greed. Well, of course, Dad had been greedy. No getting around that.

Poor bloody stupid Dad.

For nearly two years, she’d kept a secret picture of the wreckage. Secret from Mum, that is. Mum having tried to shield Jane, at eleven, from the worst of it. No local papers had been allowed into the house that week.

But Dad’s car was such a horrific mess, like a screwed-up ball of newspaper, you could hardly tell it had ever been a car, that the picture had made it to a couple of the nationals. She’d cut it out, hid it under her mattress.

The picture froze her up inside, but she’d forced herself to bring it out every night before she went to bed and she’d stare at it and stare at it, knowing he was still in there when the photo was taken, like shreds of meat in a burger.

Dadburger.

With added Karen. Fragments of Dad and Karen all mixed up, intermingled: flesh around flesh, bone to bone, tissue on tissue, sinews intertwined. More together than they could ever have been in life. More intimate than Sean Barrow had ever been with Mum. Karen had him totally at the end and for ever and ever, and it would be convenient to think that this was what had driven Mum into the arms of God. Only it wasn’t that easy, it had been coming on for quite a while before that. The impenetrable paperbacks, the long walks, the tedium of evensong, the voluntary work at the Christian Youth Centre. Creepy.

‘Ah, here you are.’

A powerful whiff of musk made Jane spin round in her chair, and there, in the doorway, was the glamorous Ms Colette Cassidy in her teenage-hooker dress. Glancing at the TV, smirking.

‘Yeah, they said you were an intellectual. Want to come for a drink?’

‘More than my life’s worth,’ Jane said frankly. She hadn’t been Mum-less in a bar since the infamous running-away incident in Birmingham, since the creepy counselling session.

‘I didn’t mean here,’ Colette said. ‘We could go down the Ox.’

Jane was reluctantly impressed. The Ox was this tiny, seedy pub, flickering with gaming machines on the corner of the alleyway leading to the public toilets.

This was a test, wasn’t it?

‘Your mother isn’t going to get away from that meeting this side of eleven,’ Colette said. ‘My old man’ll see to that. Gives you a couple of hours, at least.’

‘I don’t know.’ Jane was thinking fast, too fast, feeling flustered. Street cred on the line in a big way here.

Colette tossed back her dark-brown hair like an impatient, thoroughbred pony. She had this scintillating diamond nose-stud. Could you get away with that at the Cathedral School, or was it a weekend thing? Must be a pain to keep taking it in and out. Worthwhile pain, though.

‘And if you’re worrying about word getting back to the Reverend Mummy,’ Colette said smoothly, ‘I think it’s fair to say that the clientele of the Ox aren’t known for religion.’

‘Especially on the morning after Saturday night, I suppose.’

‘You got it.’ Colette smiled her sophisticated smile, fifteen going on thirty-five.

‘It’s a bit close to the village hall.’

‘Live dangerously,’ Colette said.

Jane stood up, no option.

‘Am I late?’

Not actually sounding as if he cared one way or the other, the playwright slid his briefcase across the table, shed his jacket, spidered into a seat. A single motion. Richard Coffey was all motion.

‘Not at all’ Terrence Cassidy gathered his papers, and his dignity, to his chest.

‘Yes,’ James Bull-Davies snapped.

This was unnecessary, Merrily thought. Uncalled for. But nobody appeared to have heard him. The lord of the manor had been eclipsed. There was a powerful new energy in the meeting.

‘Er, Richard ...’ Cassidy half-rose, ‘I’d like to introduce our new vicar, Merrily Watkins.’

‘Charming name,’ Richard Coffey said.

Merrily had never seen him up close before. He was, she thought, almost shocking. Had the taut, muscular body of an ageing ballet-dancer, at the stage where staying fit was becoming painfully obsessive. His lean, pocked face vibrated with colours and textures, divided into pulsing segments like a portrait by Lucien Freud or Francis Bacon, full of life and personal history, a history, you would have to conclude – even if you hadn’t heard the stories – of sensual excess.

She was fascinated and wasn’t aware of how long she’d been staring at him until the vacuum of silence around them was popped by a discreet chairman’s cough.

‘Mustn’t waste time.’ Terrence Cassidy tapped his pen on the table. ‘You all know Richard as one of our most celebrated contemporary writers for both the stage and television. He’s now living, part of the time, at Upper Hall Lodge, and naturally we’re glad he chose our village as his weekend retreat.’

‘My feeling now is that it chose me,’ Coffey purred diffidently.

Merrily saw James Bull-Davies gazing at the ceiling. Envisaged words in a bubble above his head. Tiresome bloody poofter, something like that. He’d be seeing rather more of Coffey than any of them; Upper Hall Lodge was, of course, at the bottom of his drive and used to be occupied by generations of Bull-Davies gamekeepers.

Cassidy nodded. ‘I’m sure that’s true. And we’re all delighted at Richard’s plan to use the Ledwardine Festival to premiere a major new drama illuminating a rather ... rather unfortunate episode in our history. Unfortunate, but ... but fascinating. Ah, at the moment, apart from its general theme, I know no more than any of you about the project. Which is why I asked Richard along tonight to tell us as much as he feels able to divulge at this stage of the, ah, creative process.’

‘Thank you, Mr Chairman.’ Coffey fluidly opening his briefcase and extracting a file of papers. ‘I should, however, say from the outset that the prospect of staging a complete production, with a full cast, here in late summer, early autumn, is not really a viable one.’

‘But, I ...’ Cassidy fought for balance, the rug sliding from under him. Merrily saw Dermot Child perk up.

‘However – calm yourself, Terrence – what I do have in mind will be very much an event in itself. A re- creation, in the original setting, which I think could be absolutely electric. Will not only, I believe, lay a ghost, clear the name of a good man, but effectively solve a three-hundred-year-old mystery.’

‘Oh. Is that all?’ Bull-Davies said sourly.

Yes, it would upset him, having his village’s history mined for nuggets of controversy by the celebrated interloper who’d turned his one-time gamekeeper’s lodge into a less-than-discreet second home. Had he, Merrily wondered, seen The Crystal Dungeon, Richard Coffey’s controversial TV play about a reclusive earl’s incestuous relationship with his sister and their persecution by an evil butler?

Coffey didn’t even seem to recognize the big, tweedy person as the owner of the rundown heap at the top of the drive.

‘Anyway,’ he said smoothly, ‘I propose to outline my idea and then leave you to discuss it amongst yourselves. If it bothers any of you, I’m sure one of the other villages—’

‘No!’ Cassidy looked helpless. ‘I mean, tell us, Richard. Tell us.’

‘Wil Williams.’ Coffey slid on half-glasses, spoke with precision. A man with nothing to prove and no time to waste on dissent. ‘I take it we’re all conversant with the brief facts.’

Merrily was able to nod. Thank God for Jane.

‘Williams became rector here in the late 1660s. We don’t know how old he was when he arrived. We think late twenties. His friend and neighbouring cleric, the poet Traherne, in a letter to his brother Philip, describes Williams as fair-haired, youthful in appearance and exuding a kind of perpetual joy.’

‘Traherne.’ James Bull-Davies was scornful. ‘Chap never had a bad word for anybody. Walked around in bloody cloud-cuckoo-land half the time. Wrote as if he was on something.’

‘One could argue at some length with you there. But this is not the occasion. I think no one would deny Williams was a man who loved the area and exulted in his ministry.’