The Wine of Angels

bird, long legs rigid, neck extended.

‘Been in the Ox,’ Dermot said. ‘Drinks socially in the Swan, but when he’s serious about it, he’ll go to the Ox. He’ll stand at a corner of the bar, by himself, and hell sink one after another, cheapest whisky they’ve got, until his eyes glaze. Happens two or three times a year. He isn’t an alcoholic. Just needs to do it sometimes, to keep going.’

‘Keep going?’

‘He hates it here,’ Dermot murmured out of the side of his mouth. ‘Haven’t you realized that? Hates what he is. Or what he feels he has to be. Would’ve stayed in the army, the old man hadn’t keeled over. Probably be a brigadier by now, but like poor bloody Prince Charles, he’s got to keep going.’

Bull-Davies was in the centre of the square, looking over the parked cars, peering at each one individually, like a crazed traffic warden.

‘Coffey’s play brought this on?’ Merrily wished James would just go away; whatever his problems were, they weren’t as immediate as hers.

Dermot lowered his voice. ‘I don’t know many details of the Williams affair – mostly pure legend, anyway, I’d guess. But I’d be very surprised if, among that long-ago lynch mob at the vicarage, there wasn’t a Bull or a Davies.’

Oh God. Merrily stiffened. Remember poor ...

‘Never trust the Bulls,’ she whispered.

‘Who says that?’

‘Miss Devenish. On the night of the ... wassailing. Just after she had that row with the Cassidys.’

‘Didn’t go to that thing. Couldn’t face it. Too cold. What did Miss Devenish say?’

‘ “Never trust the Bulls. Remember poor ... poor ... Wil.” Of course.’

‘Old gypsy’s warning, eh?’

‘Never thought about it from that moment to this. I suppose what happened a few minutes later rather ...’

‘Woman’s insane, of course,’ he said. ‘Never forget that.’

‘Oh?’

‘Bonkers. And embittered. Used to write children’s books, but nobody’ll publish them any more. Roald Dahl, she wasn’t.’

Enjoying himself again. Trying to work his way up to another arm around the waist. She’d have to do something, couldn’t put up with months, years of this. She could deal with it. Would deal with it. If she could just find Jane.

‘Also feels threatened,’ Dermot said. ‘Mostly by the Cassidys because they want her shop to extend their restaurant. Well, partly that and partly because Caroline feels the Devenish emporium’s cheap and tacky and not in keeping with the sophisticated image they’re after. Every so often they’ll make the old girl an offer. How she can afford to keep refusing is beyond me, because that little shop’s doing next to nothing.’

‘That’s sad.’ Merrily moved as far away from him as she could get without falling off the damned step. ‘Jane went in there today, she—’

She stopped because she didn’t want to explain why Jane had gone to the shop and also because James Bull-Davies had kicked over a litterbin.

‘Fuckers!’ he roared. ‘Bloody fuckers?’

He slipped and went down on one knee.

‘Fuckers,’ he said in a normal voice. Then laughed, picking himself up.

Evidently unaware of Merrily and Dermot Child, he leaned against the metal lamp-post beside the market cross and peered down Church Street, where the lights of a vehicle had appeared. The litterbin was still rolling along the cobbles.

‘Perhaps I should go down and talk to him,’ Merrily said. ‘This is my job, isn’t it?’

‘For what my opinion’s worth, Vicar, I’d seriously advise against it. He won’t be terribly civil, even if he recognizes you, and he won’t thank you for it in the morning.’

The vehicle stopped on the square, engine rattling. It was an old and muddy blue Land Rover. Alison Kinnersley jumped down. She wore tight jeans and a black shirt; her blonde hair shone like a brass helmet in the fake gaslight.

‘Come on then, my lord.’ She stood relaxed, legs apart, on the cobbles, the Land Rover snorting behind her like the stallion she rode around the village. ‘Let’s go home.’

Bull-Davies didn’t move from his lamp-post. ‘You whore. Who told you?’

‘Powell called.’

‘Good old saintly bloody Powell. Thought I saw his head come round the pub door.’

‘Let’s go home, Squire.’

‘Do you demand it?’ Bull-Davies grinned savagely. ‘D’you demand it, mistress?’

God, Merrily thought, she’s got him locked into some pathetic Bronte-esque sex play.

Alison seemed to shrug. Her breasts rather than her shoulders. Merrily felt Dermot Child quiver, and she shuddered and wanted to be almost anywhere else. But she also wanted to find Jane, and if Alison and James didn’t take their games home, she was going down there anyway.

‘Do it here, hey, my slinky, slinky whore?’ Bull-Davies rasped hoarsely. ‘Shag ourselves senseless on the bloody cobbles? Give the prissy bastards a show? Dent someone’s shiny Merc with your lovely arse?’

‘James, you’re pretty senseless already,’ Alison said coolly. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to get in before I leave you to sleep it off in the gutter.’

‘Whore.’ Bull-Davies detached himself from the lamppost.

‘Get in the truck, James. There’s a good boy. We have your reputation to look after.’ Alison sounding as if she knew they had an audience, of which James remained oblivious.

‘Reputation? Wassat going to be worth when that scented arse-bandit shafts me? You tell me, mistress. You bloody tell me.’

He walked unsteadily towards the Land Rover, mumbling morosely to the cobbles about the little, shirt- lifting, socialist scum, squatting at the bottom of the drive with his odious catamite.

‘You sold it, darling,’ Alison said wearily, as though they’d gone through all this many times before. ‘It isn’t yours any more.’

‘Man’s a piece of shit.’

‘Whatever. Do get in, Jamie.’

The Land Rover door was slammed. The chassis groaned, the engine spluttered and gagged and the battered vehicle was reversed, illegally, into the alley leading to Cassidy’s Country Kitchen and Ledwardine Lore.

‘Well,’ Dermot said after a moment. ‘I did warn you, didn’t I? The way it would go.’

But Merrily wasn’t listening; she was already stumbling down the steps.

Through the dirty wool of exhaust in the diesel-stinking air, she could see them bringing Jane along Church Street.

11 Pious Cow

‘AND IT’S A really terrifying situation to be in. I mean, you know, what on earth do we do? How can we – ordinary, fallible human beings – even contemplate making a decision which we know is going – whichever way we turn – to offend somebody?’

Pause. Merrily took a step back from the edge of the pulpit. She felt awful. The light sizzled harshly in the stained-glass windows, yellows and reds glaring out, florid and sickly. Something they never told you at college: you needed to be fit for this job.

‘What’s the first thing we usually do? We panic, of course. We just want to run away. That’s always the first instinct, isn’t it? Why me? What have I done to get landed with this one?’