The Wine of Angels

the peasants.’

James Bull-Davies stood up straight and still very much the army officer.

‘We merely serve,’ he said. ‘We serve our country. We serve the countryside. Wasn’t for us, the traditional landowners, place just wouldn’t look the same, wouldn’t have the same atmosphere, the same beauty, the same harmony. We’re the stewards. The custodians. We don’t have power. We have responsibility.’

It sounded very noble. It didn’t, however, sound like the man who liked to call his mistress a slinky whore while she called him My Lord. Unless, of course, that was all down to Alison and her feminine wiles, bringing out the feudalist in him.

‘I’m an army man. Understand the army. Well-oiled machine. Puts human relations, dealing with people, into some form of order. You know who you are, what you are. Most chaps like me, when they come out, go on calling themselves Colonel, as though they still have some sort of authority, as though the commoners should salute. Look in the local phone book: Colonel this, Colonel that. Pointless. Meaningless affectation. No time for it. I’m Mr Bull-Davies, now. James, to chaps I wish I’d had in the army, knock off some of the damn pretentions.’

Like Terrence Cassidy, presumably. Merrily smiled to herself.

‘I’ve no illusions.’ James paced the kitchen. ‘Wasn’t expecting it to happen when it did, wasn’t expecting the old man to keel over for another twenty years. But no getting out of it. When the time comes, you have to shoulder the responsibility and that’s that. No arguments. And you become someone else. In the army you’re what you are. No complications. Here – no getting away from it – you’re what your family is. What your family was. You have a responsibility not only to the living – the living people, the living countryside – but also to the dead. You see where I’m heading, Mrs Watkins?’

Merrily stirred the tea in the pot. ‘Army-strength?’

‘Not too strong. Civilian now. Do you know what Cassidy said to me? Came to see me yesterday. Dithering. “But, James,” he said, “this was a long time ago.” You credit that? Man’s an arsehole. Shows the state of Britain that the rural economy’s now increasingly reliant on specimens like this – bloody caterers.’

His eyes met Merrily’s for the first time. They were pale blue and showed a surprising insecurity.

‘I’m sorry if I speak crudely. You’re ... Well. Never minced words with Hayden.’

‘My last parish was in a rundown part of Liverpool,’ Merrily said. ‘The only soldiers were squaddies back from Iraq. They tended to be the more refined parishioners.’

James barked a laugh.

‘I do understand,’ Merrily said, ‘that three centuries, in the history of a rural family like yours, is not so very long.’

‘I said to him’ – James’s lower lip jutted and curled – ‘Cassidy, I said, you’ve been here about two minutes. In the past three centuries, your family – what anyone can trace of it – has probably lived in a couple of dozen different houses in God knows how many different towns. However many generations it goes back, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, this is my family. In my village. How could I possibly condone some fatuous little pageant’ – he spat out the word like a pip – ‘which seeks to demean and ridicule my heritage? Yes, the local magistrate was Thomas Bull. Yes, he was one of the party who confronted Wil Williams. Yes, he was there when they found the body. And yes, he believed the evidence. Yes, he was convinced Williams was in league with the devil and should die for it. He was a man of his time. Homosexuality doesn’t come into it, and I won’t have his memory soiled by some sordid little queer in the name of so-called art and a few dozen visiting trendies paying London prices for fancy fodder at Cassidy’s Country bloody Kitchen.’

He came up to Merrily. The stove was hot against her bottom, but she didn’t move.

‘Went along with the wassailing fiasco last winter because that was at least an attempt at reinstating a tradition. But this festival’s in danger of going the wrong way and dragging my village along with it. Realize there’s going to be some change. Even if I disagree with it. Recognize that your presence here’s part of that change.’

‘And naturally you’re opposed to the ordination of women.’

James backed off a little. ‘There are some who say it strengthens the Church. Have my doubts about that, but there’s nothing I can do now. You’re here, and you at least seem like a reasonable sort of woman, head screwed on.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Merrily said acidly.

‘But you must understand my position, Mrs Watkins. Where my family stands. We have a role. That role, regardless of how we may feel as individuals, is to resist change. It’s what we do. We defend. And so I opposed your appointment, made no secret of it. Well, all right, that battle’s lost, it’s over. You’re here. Generally speaking, under most circumstances, you can now count on my support.’

Merrily said nothing.

‘So long,’ he said, ‘as you remain sensitive to the best interests of this village.’

‘I see. And if’ – Merrily prised herself painfully from the Aga – ‘on some significant and controversial issue, we don’t agree on what those best interests might be?’

‘I really don’t think,’ said James Bull-Davies, ‘that you would ever be so short-sighted.’

‘But say there was. Say there was an issue on which your idea of what was in the best interests of the village was in conflict with what I considered to be morally and spiritually right.’

He sighed. ‘You make it hard for me, Mrs Watkins. And perhaps for yourself.’

Merrily took a deep breath. ‘You haven’t answered my question. How would you react in a situation where we found it impossible to work out our differences?’

‘All right. Depending on the seriousness of the, er, matter under discussion, I should be obliged to use what influence I have. To get you out of the parish.’

Like your wretched ancestor did with Wil Williams? Merrily didn’t say it.

She didn’t say it.

‘Thank you for your honesty,’ she said.

He nodded to her and left before she could pour his tea.

When Jane came back with the fish and chips, she found her mother white-faced and furious, hands wrapped around the chrome bar of the Aga and twisting.

‘Mum ...?’ Jane stood in the doorway, holding the hot paper package. ‘What ...?’

‘Put them in the warming oven.’ Mum’s voice was a small, curled-up thing. ‘We’ll go and get the car.’

‘Car?’

‘And the sleeping bags, if you want.’

‘We’re staying the night?’

‘Yeah. We bloody are.’

‘Oh. What changed your mind? Something he said?’

‘We’re getting our feet under the bloody table. We’re letting the good folk of Ledwardine know we’ve arrived.’

Mum’s hands had stopped twisting on the bar. She was very, very still now.

‘No more shit.’ She’d never used that word to Jane before. ‘No more shit.’

14 Grown Women, or What?

TRUST NOBODY.

OK, not a very Christian maxim, but ...

Merrily dragged a bulging suitcase through the Black Swan’s porch and out on to the steps.

Remembering being in this very spot on Saturday night, in the frozen moments before the James Bull-Davies drama, when Dermot Child had so confidently slipped an arm around her waist, shortly after explaining to her how Cassidy and Powell, politicians both, had nominated her for the role of parish scapegoat.