The Wine of Angels

of the CD. Karl was offering to kickstart Lol’s career again. And on the evidence of the album, for which Lol had written all the songs, Lol was good, Lol was brilliant. But for some reason he didn’t want to go back, and it wasn’t just a case of playing hard to get. He hadn’t even wanted to see Karl; he’d been afraid to see Karl. So why was he in this state? Why was he hiding himself away in Ledwardine? Why was he alone? Why had the cool, beautiful Alison left him for the horrible and grotesquely old James Bull- Davies?

Money and status probably. Actually, what was even more strange was how someone as sensitive as Lol had ever got involved with someone as glossy and superficial as Alison.

It all made Jane feel anxious, in a rather thrilling way. And protective, because Karl Windling was such a bully. She tried to feel the state of mind you’d have to be in to want to just end your life. Where you didn’t want to do anything else in the world ever again, or go anywhere, or love anyone. Or write another sad song.

She couldn’t imagine it. She was probably emotionally backward. Though, perhaps, in some cases, it was just kind of an impulse thing. Especially if you were already more than a bit unstable.

She wondered where Miss Devenish lived. No point in going to the shop this early. But Miss Devenish and Jane, they needed to talk.

It was going to be another warm day. She walked up to the square, school books in a canvas airline bag over one shoulder, school blazer over the other. Nearly forty-five minutes to kill before the bus was due. School: French and economics and maths, then double games. She looked up into a tide of flawless blue coming in over a smooth sandbank of early cloud. What, really, was the point of going to sodding school today when there was so much she needed to learn here in the village? Schoolwork, essays and stuff, you could always get over that with a bit of effort. Real life ... not so easy.

A snatch of one of Lol’s songs kept coming back to her.

... and it’s always on the sunny days

you feel you can’t go on.

That album was sending her signals. She just knew that the girls Karl Windling had seen in Andy’s Records in Hereford had been the friends of Colette’s who’d bought the album.

It was all fated: Jane Watkins was somehow destined to rescue the tragic Lol Robinson. The cobbles glittered in affirmation. Strange.

It wasn’t a schoolgirl crush, of course. Nothing so immature. Anyway, he was old enough to be her father. No, this was on an altogether higher level.

She’d known last night, when she’d first opened the brown-paper bag and seen the name of the band on the front of the CD. The band formed by Lol Robinson over fifteen years ago, before she was born. Or perhaps ... perhaps exactly at the time she was born.

Some kind of omen; it had to be. The name so exactly summing up the way she was feeling. Had been feeling since ... well, Saturday night.

Lol’s old band had been called – eerily – Hazey Jane.

Hardly even thinking about what she was doing, Jane wandered past the market cross and into the cool, secretive shade of Blackberry Lane, the trees overhead throbbing and pulsing with spring. Spring like she’d never felt it before.

A grey van was parked outside the church. Who could that be? The main door was still shut, so Merrily went round the back with her fat bunch of jailer’s keys.

However, the small, south-east door, leading in by the Bull Chapel, was already ajar. As she slipped inside, there was a vast discordant wail from the organ, and she jumped, alarmed. An organ in an empty church was a spooky sound.

‘See?’ Dermot Child’s voice called out. ‘It’s sticking. I’ve tried working it up and down.’

‘Hmm. May need replacing. You can’t keep on bodging these things for ever.’

Midlands accent. Obviously Mr Gerald Watts, the organ repair man from Bromsgrove. Ted had mentioned him; his phone number was in the book of essential parish contacts. And Dermot had remarked the other week that the organ would soon need some attention.

‘Problem is, Dermot, I’d have to make one to fit. Can you manage like this for a couple of weeks?’

‘Sounds like I haven’t got a choice.’

Merrily slid into the Bull Chapel. It was separated from the organ by an eighteenth-century wooden screen, so they couldn’t see each other, she and Dermot and Mr Watts, the organ man. She stood with her back to the screen, didn’t want to interrupt them.

‘So what’s the damage, Gerry? Roughly. If it’s over fifty, I’ll need to check it with the vicar.’

Sunlight fanned in through the chapel’s leaded window and pooled in the eyes of Thomas Bull. They were fully open. She hadn’t really noticed that before. It was disturbing, abnormal. His lids surely should be lowered, displaying for eternity the familiar and usually false humility of the wealthy dead.

‘All right, what I’ll do, Dermot, if it’s looking a bit heavy I’ll send a copy of the estimate to Hayden, but I’ll give you a ring first, so you’ll know.’

‘It isn’t Hayden any more.’

‘Lord, no, I’d forgotten. Saw her picture in the Hereford Times. Looked like a pretty fair swap to me, unless it was an unusually flattering photo.’

‘Didn’t do her justice, Gerry. Didn’t do her justice. Absolute little cracker. I tell you, it’s bloody hard to concentrate on your playing sometimes.’

Merrily was aware of smiling. What, in the end, could you say?

‘Must be a new experience for you,’ Mr Watts said. ‘Fancying the vicar. Least, I hope it is.’

‘It’s a funny thing, Gerry. It’s a bit like nurses. The uniform gives it an added something. She’s being very traditional – I suppose she’s a bit insecure – and she wears this long, supposedly shapeless black cassock. Only on her it’s not shapeless at all. You get bumps in all the right places. And it’s got about a hundred buttons down the front, and you imagine yourself undoing them all, very slowly, one by one. Oh God.’

Merrily’s face began to burn.

Mr Watts said, ‘What d’you reckon they wear underneath?’

‘Exactly. What do they wear underneath? You could go mad thinking about it. Could be nothing, couldn’t it? I mean, it could be nothing at all.’

‘In your dreams.’

‘In my dreams, Gerald, she’s wearing nothing but the bloody dog collar. Imagine that: white collar, pink body, brown nipples.’

Merrily wasn’t smiling any more. Her eyes found the wide-open dead eyes of Thomas Bull. He was clothed in what, for those frilly Cavalier times, must have been a rather severe jacket, with a high collar. A sword, unsheathed, was lying by his side. Thomas was carved out of local stone, worn smooth now, his eyes wide open to face his God without fear, without excuses, in the year 1696 – a quarter of a century after his pivotal role in the hounding of Wil Williams. Bull’s face was stern, but, as she watched, the angle of the sun created the illusion of a supercilious smirk on the full, beard-fringed lips.

Mr Watts said, ‘You’ll go to hell, Dermot.’

‘Yes,’ said Dermot Child. ‘And it might even be worth it. Don’t forget your cap.’

They were coming out and there wasn’t time for her to reach the door without being seen.

Lol’s cottage was really rather lonely, the last one in the lane before it narrowed into a cart track. On each side, the Powell Orchard was starting to shimmer with new blossom.

Jane walked up the path between the front lawn that needed mowing and the fence bordering the orchard, and found herself knocking on the white-painted door around which red and orange early roses grew.

There was no answer. A small black cat watched her from a fence post.

She peered through the window into the room where Lol had talked with Karl Windling. It was so sparsely furnished it gave you the impression the cottage was not really occupied. As though someone had dumped a few things there in advance of moving in.

What if I’m too late? In her mind was an image of Lol lying limply across his bed, one arm outstretched, the fingers just parted from a small brown pill bottle. A variation, she realized, of a famous