The Wine of Angels

his own life. ‘And what are you going to tell the coroner, Gomer?’

“Pends what they ask me. All I can say is what I seen. Which is not a lot, on account my glasses got all bloodied up. But before that, I do recall as when the others put up their guns, Edgar, he just didn’t. Now make of that what you like.’

‘I suppose it’ll be a question of whether he just had a funny turn and got all confused, or ...’

‘Or he had it all worked out. Gotter say that don’t ring true to me. He wasn’t no kind of show-off, farmers en’t, as a rule. You’d think if he wanted to do away with hisself, he’d do it in the barn. Yet ... I dunno ... He weren’t daft in any respect, ole Edgar. How ‘bout Wednesday?’

‘That would be brilliant. This is above and beyond, Gomer.’

Gomer slipped his cigarette into his grin. ‘You don’t owe me nothing, Vicar, never think that. But there may be one small thing one day, just one ... How’s the kiddie, now?’

‘Oh God, does everybody know?’

‘Hell, Vicar, don’t go worryin’ about that. They all knows what that Cassidy girl’s like. Too promiscuous by half, Minnie reckons.’

‘I just hope she means precocious,’ Merrily said.

‘Aye,’ Gomer said. ‘That was prob’ly it.’

Jane stood on the first landing, looking up.

‘Hey, listen. Why don’t we just move in? Like tonight.’

Her voice echoing in the emptiness. She was still in her school uniform, the dark blue blazer, the pleated skirt. Merrily, at the foot of the stairs, felt a heart-pang of love and fear that she wouldn’t have been able to explain.

‘How can we do that? Even with Gomer’s help, it’ll be nearly the weekend before we can get all the stuff in and sorted out. Besides, with the Diocese paying for the hotel, it means we can get everything right, for once. Instead of being in the usual chaos.’

Going to be a disaster, she was thinking. You could get all their stuff, beds included, into two rooms; they’d be rattling around like two peas in a coffee tin.

‘We’ve got sleeping bags, Mum. We could spread them out in the drawing room. Get the feel of the place. Go on. It’d be fun.’

‘On those flags? Jane, you are joking.’

Jane stared down the stairs at her. ‘You don’t really want to move in at all, do you?’

‘That’s stupid,’ Merrily said uncomfortably.

All around her, doors. Above her, doors. All of them half open, to signify empty rooms. She wanted to rush from door to door, shepherding Jane before her, banging each one shut and then finally the front door, behind them, as they ran into the square and the sanctuary of the Black Swan.

‘I can tell by the way you talk about it,’ Jane said. ‘Always going on about how big it is. At the Swan it’s kind of temporary, like a holiday. In here you’ve got to face what you’re taking on. Like the full burden.’

God, the perceptiveness of this kid was frightening.

‘Come on, Mum, there’s no shame in admitting it.’

‘I just want to do it efficiently, I ...’

Did it remind her of moving from the flat into the four-bedroomed – it seemed enormous at the time – suburban villa that Sean had suddenly acquired, at an amazingly modest price, from A Client? Somewhere for her to organize, decorate. Somewhere to keep her occupied while ...

‘... I just want it all to be, you know, right,’ Merrily said.

Which, right now, seemed an impossible dream.

‘For a major-league Christian,’ Jane said, ‘you don’t half lie a lot.’

Merrily felt her face darken. The doorbell saved them both.

‘Heard you were finally taking up occupancy. Called to see if I could be of any help.’

No, you didn’t.

‘That’s kind,’ Merrily said. ‘But we’re just giving the place the once-over. We won’t be actually moving in for a couple of days yet.’

James Bull-Davies looked around the empty, dusty hall. Sniffed once, like a pointer on a heath. He’d obviously waited until Gomer Parry had gone. Damn. She’d as good as told him to leave it for a while; he was either dense or simply didn’t believe his family was obliged to bow to the wishes of anyone in Ledwardine.

‘Interesting sermon of yours, yesterday, Mrs Watkins. Wrote that after the meeting, I suppose.’

‘Didn’t write it at all,’ Merrily said brusquely. ‘Came off the top of my head, more or less. Sometimes you have to busk it.’

‘Really. Don’t recall Hayden “busking”.’

‘Perhaps he was just better at it than me,’ she said sweetly. ‘Er, I think I can cobble together a mug of tea, if you have the time. Can’t do any better than that at the moment.’

He looked down at her with suspicion. Perhaps wondering if she’d heard about him being rolling drunk in the square on Saturday night, offering to lay his concubine on the cobbles. She walked through to the kitchen, which had fitted units now but still some of the old formicaed shelves and white tiles. She wrinkled her nose. Not yet her kind of kitchen.

James Bull-Davies shuffled awkwardly in the middle of the flagged floor. She was clearly not his kind of vicar. He didn’t know what to do with her. He wasn’t even happy looking at her, preferred the ceiling.

‘Used to be two rooms, this, as I recall. When I was a boy. That section over there used to be a pantry or buttery or something.’

‘Did you come here often?’ Someone had left a tiny kettle for the Aga; Merrily filled it over the open sink, with all the pipework visible underneath. ‘I mean recently.’

‘Only when there was business to deal with. Parish business.’

Don’t offend anyone called Bull-Davies, Ted had said. The church would be rubble but for them. Strange how things changed; from what she’d heard, Upper Hall was closer to rubble these days. Not a great deal left from the old days. His divorce, presumably, had not helped. Were there children, or was that another source of pressure, the inheritance factor?

Perhaps, after the parish business had been dealt with, he’d have discussed some of his problems with Alf. As his priest, his padre. The way a man like James would never be able to do with a woman because women were mothers or aunts or sisters or you fucked them.

Merrily set the kettle on the stove. Perhaps she was wrong. ‘Sorry, there’s nowhere to sit. We’ll have to lean on the Aga.’

It occurred to her that this was the first time they’d been alone together, the squire and the parsoness he didn’t want in his village. She hoped Jane would stay out.

James Bull-Davies propped himself stiffly against one end of the big stove’s chromium bar, leaving a good two feet between them. A woman in a cassock? Perverse, surely.

Or did it secretly turn him on, like, say, the matron at his public school? Merrily suspected she would never know.

‘That sermon ...’ She squeezed the warm bar. ‘I suppose I was just stalling for time.’

‘Message seemed to be that you were going to lay the whole vexed issue before the Almighty, let him sort it out.’

‘If you want to look at it that way, yes, I suppose that’s what I’m going to do. In the end.’

‘Way I look at it,’ he said, ‘it has bugger-all to do with God. Question of honour. And responsibility.’

‘Meaning your honour, my responsibility?’

Merrily looked sideways at him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes, stared across the kitchen, his full lips in a kind of pout. A surprisingly powerful shaft of evening sunlight brutally exposed his bald patch and put a shine on his tightly shaven jaw – he’d shaved again, before coming here?

‘Why did you walk out the other night, Mr Davies? I’d’ve thought you’d have wanted to stay and confront the enemy.’

He lowered his gaze to the stained flags. ‘Perhaps I couldn’t trust myself not to smash his smug face in.’

‘Oh, I think you could. Disciplined, military chap like you.’