The Wine of Angels

hairbrush. It was probably concealing a double chin; he’d put on some weight, but only the kind of weight you needed to make work-out sessions worthwhile. He looked fitter, in fact, than he had fifteen years ago when he used to remind Lol of Bluto in the old Popeye cartoons. The difference being, course, that there was never any real, lasting harm in Bluto.

‘Hey, this is cute.’ Karl stepped back on to the lawn. He wasn’t actually that big, when you saw him. Only huge in the memory. ‘This is picture postcard. How long you been here now, son?’

‘A year. Something like that.’ Lol felt numb, anaesthetized by the new acceptance that no matter where he went, how he lived, he was never going to have the balls to control his own life.

‘Quaint.’ Karl fingered the rotting trellis. ‘Sweet little cottage at the end of a country lane. Little garden, little porch. Retirement home. Lovely.’

Lol nodded. He didn’t have to rise to it, or hide. Only let Karl see him as he really was: a small, spent force, a loser. And then Karl would leave him alone.

‘But you’re writing a bit, I hear. Few lyrics for Gary Kennedy?’

Lol shrugged. ‘He sends me tapes.’

‘You can do better than that, son. Gary’s long gone.’

‘Still writes good tunes.’

‘He’s gone, son. Washed up.’ Karl prodded a cracked plantpot with his desert boot; they must be back in fashion. ‘Look, we just enjoying the lovely country air, or are you gonna invite me in to meet your lady?’

‘There is no lady,’ Lol said.

Karl grinned in disbelief. In the old days, one of his more socially dubious pastimes had been poaching women from his friends and colleagues. He’d screw them once, rarely more than that, then give them back. To varying degrees, the friends and colleagues had found this irritating, but there was no record of retaliation.

‘You’re shitting me, son. You were always so popular with ladies. That air of helplessness brings out the universal mothering instinct. Made us all very, very jealous.’

‘That was then,’ Lol said.

‘So Dennis got it wrong.’

‘There was somebody,’ Lol said. ‘She left.’

‘Ah.’ Karl peered over Lol’s shoulder into the hall. ‘So you’re on your own.’

Lol stepped back to let Karl into the cottage. It felt like holding out your wrists for the handcuffs, baring your belly for the knife.

‘I don’t want to fall out with anyone.’ Merrily nibbled a stem of grass. She was finding Miss Devenish disturbingly easy to talk to. ‘I’m the new kid on the block, trying not to put my foot in it. But something tells me I’m on the edge of a minefield.’

‘Ah,’ said Miss Devenish. ‘Methinks the Reverend Wil Williams rears his pretty head.’

‘Perhaps, under the present circumstances, we ought to avoid words like “pretty”. Who told you about it?’

‘Anyone residing within a few hundred yards of Cassidy’s restaurant this morning would have heard the appalling Terrence beating his sunken breast. But I got the full details from Colette, as no one else seemed to be talking to her after last night. Don’t agonize about it, my dear. That’s my advice, for what it’s worth.’

‘It’s my job to agonize.’ Merrily sat up, reached for her bag. ‘Would you mind if I had a cigarette?’

‘Feel free to be human.’

‘Thanks.’ Merrily gratefully extracted the Silk Cut.

‘Agonizing.’ Miss Devenish regarded her intently as she lit up. ‘The need to agonize. That’s very interesting. I wonder, would your predecessor have said the same?’

‘Alf Hayden?’

‘Faced with any moral challenge, the dreadful Hayden would simply erect the screen of buffoonery and vacuous twittering that’s sustained the Anglican clerical tradition for the past fifty years.’

Merrily laughed, the smoke softening her up, the sun warm on her face and arms. ‘You’re a cynic, Miss Devenish.’

‘So perhaps the ordination of women will be the salvation of the Church. Women listen. Women worry. Call me Lucy. Listen, my advice, for what it’s worth, is to let it happen. Let the awful Coffey have his play.’

The face was shaded by the big hat and the eyes were invisible. The hands lay placidly where the hem of the poncho met a baggy frock splattered with sunflowers.

Merrily was cautious. ‘Why do you say that? I mean, Cassidy, for one, would be glad to hear you say it, but —’

‘Good heavens, whichever way it goes, Cassidy’s screwed, isn’t he? The festival needs Coffey for artistic credibility, but it needs Bull-Davies ... well, not for money any more, obviously, but certainly for the use of land for marquees and car parking. And also, more importantly, because Bull-Davies is the voice of the county set, and those buggers still stick together – more than ever, in adversity. Cause offence in that quarter and all kinds of barriers are erected. No, I shall enjoy watching Cassidy squirm. May even poke him with the occasional twig.’

Under the shadow of the hat, the lips twisted with a happy malice.

Merrily sighed. ‘So you think the play’s going to be valid.’

‘What?’ The hat came off to reveal a steel-grey plait in a tight coil and a fierce cobalt glare. ‘Valid? I think the whole concept is absolute cock.’

‘Then I don’t understand.’

‘Frolicking in the orchard with naked youths? Utter tosh. And yet the poor man was misjudged, I’m sure of that. Friend of Traherne’s, you see. Not a poet, unfortunately, but were his perceptions any less keen for that?’

‘So what are you saying? Was Williams a witch?’

‘Was Traherne a witch?’

‘Of course he wasn’t.’

‘Really? You’re sure of that?’

This was getting silly. ‘I wouldn’t claim to know much about him, but people who do tell me he saw God in everything.’

‘Quite.’ Lucy Devenish stood up, jammed on her hat.

Merrily followed her as she stalked down the footpath, across the sloping field towards the village. ‘You still haven’t explained ...’

Lucy carried on walking, with long strides.

‘... why you think the play should go ahead in the church,’ Merrily said, out of breath now.

‘Why? For the truth, of course. Nobody cares about truth any more. Coffey doesn’t care – he just wants to mangle history for his own purposes. Cassidy doesn’t care – he sees the past as a marketing tool. Bull-Davies cares, of course, but only about his personal heritage, his reputation. His family have doubtless been distorting the truth for generations.’

‘But we don’t know what the truth is.’

‘No.’ The old girl stopped. They were on low ground now. Ledwardine had sunk into the trees so that only the steeple was visible, like a rocket waiting to be launched. ‘But when the ditchwaters are stirred, the turds often surface.’

‘Just don’t tell me,’ Karl said, ‘that you don’t miss it.’

A pigeon, disturbed, battered its way out of the hedge and flew up past the open window.

Lol was silent. Sitting in the blue chair with the cat on his knees. Being himself. A sad person.

‘Well, then?’ Karl looked around the room again, at the few cheap things in it. ‘Well?’

‘I’m doing what you said,’ Lol said desperately. ‘Not telling you I don’t miss it.’

‘Nah. You’re not being honest with yourself, son.’

Karl was leaning back in Ethel the cat’s chair, with one of the three cans of half-frozen lager Lol had found at the back of the fridge. He had his tobacco tin on the arm of the chair, the tin which had upset Dennis Clarke because it was not the drug of choice in his part of Chippenham. As he relaxed, another drug – California – had drifted into Karl’s accent.