The Wine of Angels

‘What happened to Nick Drake?’

Merrily sighed. ‘I don’t know if that was suicide or not.’

‘You said he killed himself.’

‘Well, he died of an overdose of antidepressants, so he must have taken them himself. Whether he actually intended to take an overdose seems to be questionable. He was just a sad, withdrawn young guy whose career wasn’t taking off, that’s all. It was before you were born, anyway.’

Before you were born. Another lifetime. Before Jane was born, Merrily had been almost a child. In a few years’ time, Jane would be older than Merrily had been then. Was probably already, in some ways, more mature. Over the congealed chips, she’d explained how James Bull-Davies had made her so angry, and Jane had said, If he’s so sensitive to the best interests of the village, what’s he doing shacking up with that woman?

What indeed? Merrily rolled on to her side.

‘Mum.’

‘What?’

‘If Dad hadn’t been killed, would he have gone to jail?’

God almighty. Dark Night of the Soul, or what?

‘I don’t know. It’s possible. He might just have been struck off. Wasn’t a criminal. As such. He was just frustrated and he could see people around him making lots of money in unorthodox ways. And they became his clients. You know all this.’

‘When did you find out?’

‘When it was too late to stop him.’

‘Why didn’t you leave him then?’

‘I expect I would have.’

‘And would you have still got into theological college?’

‘Sure.’

‘But would you still have been acceptable as a vicar?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you feel sort of ... soiled? Because we’d benefited from dirty money.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did that make you all the keener to get into the Church? To throw yourself into it?’

‘You make it sound like a canal.’

‘Did you love him? Even when you found out he was bent?’

‘You don’t stop loving people just like ...’

‘What about when you found out about his affair?’

‘I don’t know. I hated him then, I suppose. I thought I hated him. I mean, I’m not Jesus, am I?’

‘You forgiven him now?’

‘I like to think so.’

‘If he hadn’t been killed, would you have?’

‘I don’t know. Would have depended on what he did next.’

‘If he was sorry.’

‘Yeah. If he was sorry. Jane, what’s all this about?’

Jane’s thin, white arm came out of the sleeping bag. ‘I just keep going back over things. Everything seems ... not real. Like a dream. I have to keep working out how we got here. Just in case this is a dream. I don’t really like it.’

Merrily didn’t know how to respond.

‘Is it because I got drunk? Is it the cider? Does it go on affecting you for days?’

Merrily had to smile. ‘No.’ She reached out and took the small, cold hand. ‘And I’m afraid this is not a dream. Janey, love, is all this anything to do with that record? The CD you had in the car. Where’d it come from?’

‘Oh. A friend gave it to me.’

‘Right.’

Merrily closed her eyes. She was determined they weren’t going to do this again tomorrow. She’d make a deal with Roland for another couple of nights, until they had their own beds in here.

‘I told you about Lol,’ Jane said. ‘It’s his old band. He was apparently very influenced by Nick Drake.’

‘Only musically, one hopes.’

Jane didn’t reply. Merrily opened her eyes and lay on her back, gazing through the long window, pondering on this Lol, about whom Jane seemed to know a little too much. A small, yellow light, as from a candle or a child’s nightlight, shone between the thickening trees from a window across the street.

Later, much later, when she awoke to a tugging on her hand, the only light through the window was from a misty quarter moon, which turned the room grey.

Damn. Why can’t she hold out till morning?

Merrily squirmed, not half-awake, out of the warm sleeping bag into the damp air. The bedroom door was already ajar and she slid cautiously through the gap. She didn’t need to do this, of course; but she knew that Jane, for all her bravado, would not like wandering alone around the not even half-known rooms of the big, empty house.

Outside, there was the passage with doors and doors and doors, and one must be the bathroom, she couldn’t remember which, only that it was a stark, sixties bathroom with a black, plastic lavatory seat and cracked tiles everywhere.

She’d left her dressing gown at the Black Swan, and it was pre-dawn cold out here in just a short nightdress, bare feet on oak boards. Across the stairs, the landing window was an oblong of flat aluminium.

‘Jane?’

The house was absolutely still. Why can’t you creak? Have you no personality?

‘Ja-ane?’

Which one was the bathroom? She opened a door; space and silence sucked at her and she shut it quickly.

A pace along the passage and she lost the moonlight. Now, there was only the faint, green spot of a smoke-alarm on a ceiling beam and the deeper darkness of doorways. She put a hand into a recess, found a cold doorknob and then drew back.

‘Jane!’

Shouting this time, but the passage swallowed it; she could almost see the short, bright name narrowing like a light down a tunnel, vanishing in no time. She was aware of a slow panic, like a dark train coming, and she grabbed the handle and turned it and the door didn’t open; perhaps this was the bathroom and the kid had locked it. ‘Jane ...’

A sudden yielding, and she stumbled, the oak door rolling away into the vastness of a long, long bedroom, empty as an open field, and Merrily grabbed at the handle and hauled the door closed, turning away and finding herself facing another door and she opened that, and there was the lavatory with its seat up and caught in a frail moonbeam, making an apologetic O.

As in NO. No Jane ...

No, no, no, no, no ... She fled along the passage, all the doors closed and blank. She felt she’d been out here for hours, trying door after door, and in that time Jane must have finished in the bathroom and gone back to bed, so which one was the bedroom?

Which one was the bloody bedroom?

All the doors were closed, and she’d surely left the bedroom door open, hadn’t she? But maybe Jane had closed it, shut her out. Jane had shut her out. ‘Jane!!!’ she screamed, and ran wildly from door to door, all the same, all black oak and all shut.

And spun round and round and found herself facing stairs. Where was she now? Had she gone downstairs? Had she gone down to the dreadful kitchen or the drawing room with its chimney blocked; she couldn’t have.

No. These were the other stairs. The next stairs. Oh, Jesus, there were more stairs.