The Wine of Angels

Black Swan. The village centre, also quietly lit by uncurtained windows and the stars, looked, if not exactly smug, quite settled in its prosperity.

‘When d’you move into the vicarage, Merrily?’

‘Could be next week.’

‘Terrific. Mind you ... big old place.’

They could see, on the edge of the church close, the end gable of the vicarage and its chimneys, rising above most of the others.

‘I think I’d rather have a bungalow,’ Merrily said.

‘Oh no. God, no. That would never do. Has to be the official residence. Nice, roomy lawn for garden parties. Vicar – all right, priest-in-charge, but still an important figure in Ledwardine. Mind you, you do need a husband.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Oh yes. Decent local man. Solid foundation. The WI will have it at the top of their agenda.’

‘Bloody nerve,’ Merrily said. ‘What is this, Jane Austen?’

‘Like I told you, the framework doesn’t change. What do you expect? You’re a very lovely young woman.’

‘Oh, please. Anyway, I’m an old widow.’

‘Ah yes.’ They’d stopped at the steps of the Black Swan. ‘Which rather got you out of a hole, I gather.’

Merrily froze.

Dermot Child dropped a hand on her shoulder. ‘Sorry, my dear. Am I being indiscreet?’

Merrily gazed across the square towards the vicarage.

‘Ted Clowes is a dead man,’ she said.

Of course, it was Colette they really wanted. The squashy lips, the provocative breasts in the white frock. Colette was the nymph, the real thing. Grown up.

This was very clear to Jane, if nothing else was. She could smell their sweat, and the heat source that brought it out was Colette.

Jane was feeling more and more queasy, and strangely separated from it all. Like they were the players and she was merely the audience. And she couldn’t alter what was happening because she was just ... well, just a kid. If she spoke, nobody would hear her. Bring your mother ... give ’er some holy communion ...

Her stomach felt horribly tight and distended. Something like liquid gas welled up in her throat and she gulped it back, clinging to the church wall. The stones felt damp and gritty. Slimy. The sweat smell was a disgusting haze.

‘Come on,’ one of them said. ‘We got a few bottles. And Mark’s brought some sweeties.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Colette said.

‘Es,’ this Mark said. ‘No rubbish, mind. Got ’em in Leominster.’

Colette looked at them, hands on her white-sheathed hips, shoulders against the church wall.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, doesn’t that just about show the mentality of you seed-suckers? Like we’re all going to get hyped-up in the church porch and put on our iPods and pretend it’s a major rave. Come back when you’re older, yeah?’

‘How old you like us to be?’ said the fourth boy, who’d come along with Mark who had the pills.

‘Old enough that you don’t have to hang around with kids any more,’ Colette said.

Jane was in awe of her. The boys were quiet for a moment. She could smell the beer on them, through the hot sweat. Their senses were surely too fuddled for clever repartee; maybe they’d slink off, spit a few insults from across the street then melt into the night like foxes.

But then Dean Wall said, all the humour gone, ‘Think we’re kids, is it?’

Danny Gittoes put a hand on his arm. ‘Let it go, Dean.’

Dean shook him off. ‘Fucked if I will.’

‘Please.’ Colette smiled thinly. ‘Don’t use words till you know what they mean.’

Dean took a couple of seconds to work this out, then he gave out a kind of strangled sob.

‘Right. Got some’ing to prove, do you?’

‘Not now, Dean,’ Danny said. ‘You blown it, I reckon.’

‘Come yere ...’ Dean moved apelike towards Colette. ‘Come yere, you fuckin’ clever bitch.’ Big hands clawing for Colette’s breasts. She sprang back like a cat, reared and spat.

‘Touch me once, mucus-sac, and I’ll tear your balls off!’

‘Wooooh!’ Danny Gittoes and Mark backed off in not-quite-mock terror.

But Dean didn’t. It was personal now. It had history.

‘Cathedral fucking School fucking snob. Not puttin’ out for the likes of us, eh? You’re just a slag, Cassidy. Stand outside your shitty cafe, tongue hangin’ out. You’re panting for it, you are.’

‘Well, maybe.’ Colette didn’t blink. ‘But unless you’ve brought along one of your old man’s best carrots —’

Like a sack of potatoes falling over, Dean Wall tumbled at Colette, who was spinning and hissing, too fast for him, but there were four of them, and in a second it had become a soggy blur and although Jane thought she heard a distant man’s voice shouting, ‘What’s going on down there?’ there was no sound of footsteps behind the squeals and grunts.

And so, feeling very ill, Jane went in scratching, nails raking the back of a leather jacket.

‘Nnnnnooooo!’ she screamed.

Aware, though, before it was half out, that it was going to be rather more than a scream.

That she was being sick.

Boy, was she being sick ...

‘Oh! Oh, shit! Oh, you fuckin’ little cow!’ Dean Wall was on his feet, flailing about, dripping. He no longer stank of sweat. ‘Oh, you fuckin’ disgustin’ little ...’

Dean had his jacket off and he was shaking it, gobbets of vomit flying through the air. Then he started slapping it against the church wall, screeching outrage, Danny and Mark laughing at him from a safe distance.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jane gasped, wiping her lips on her sleeve, mouth full of sourness. ‘Oh God, I—’

Then her left hand was snatched, her arm jerked savagely out in front of her and she had to start running to avoid falling over. All she could hear behind her, as she was dragged over something shin-scrapingly hard and wooden, were curses and oaths and the sound of the leather jacket being slapped repeatedly against the church wall.

‘No escape that way, you bitches.’ From a distance.

‘Up yours, slimeball!’ Colette shrieked, triumphant.

Halfway up the steps of the Black Swan, Merrily tensed.

‘What was that?’

‘Kids, I expect.’

‘In the churchyard?’ Happened every night in Liverpool; you didn’t expect it here.

‘They don’t have many places to go,’ Dermot Child said. ‘There was a plan for a big youth centre a couple of years ago. On the derelict bowling green behind the Ox. An influential lobby of local people – i.e. newcomers – managed to get it squashed. Not in keeping, you understand.’

‘Look, I think I’d better pop down to the church and see what’s happening.’

‘Merrily, look, if you were supposed to police the place, the bishop would’ve supplied you with a tazer.’ Dermot elbowed open the double doors at the top of the steps. ‘Come and have a drink.’

‘I don’t think I will, thanks. Got a sermon to go over. Dermot—’

He raised an eyebrow. She joined him on the top step, pulled the doors closed again.

‘What did Ted say about my marriage?’

He was unembarrassed. ‘Not a great deal. Don’t be too hard on Ted. I think he had your best interests at heart. Wanted us to know you weren’t just some new-broom, feminist theologian. That you’d had a bad time. Been through the mill’

‘So what, precisely, did he say?’