The Wine of Angels

ALMOST SULKILY, ALISON said, ‘It really isn’t complicated. I give him what he needs, he gives me what I want.’

She was sprawled in an ancient, shapeless chintzy chair, stretching out her legs, inspecting her bare toes. Finding them more interesting than Lol.

The room was lofty and colourless, with a high, tiled fireplace, and no way could he believe this was what she wanted.

None of it sounded right. He’d sat here nearly an hour and she’d talked, and it was all superficial crap. How she’d always had this fantasy of living in the country since she was a kid in Swindon and helped out at this riding school. How she’d thought that, when she and Lol got here, meaningful things to do would suggest themselves: ways of making money, finding fulfilment. But when you were living, as they had, in a little cottage with a little garden you might just as well be in some suburban villa. Whereas this, this was the real thing. Country life as it was meant to be lived.

What she was saying was profound like Hello! magazine was profound. For once, Lol couldn’t let himself accept it.

‘Hang on ...’ He moved to the corner of a sagging settee, leaned towards her. ‘You chose the cottage. You said it was perfect.’

‘So I was wrong. It was small, it was shut-in. It was worse than the city. Nothing suggested itself.’

‘Except Bull-Davies, apparently.’

Alison still didn’t look at him.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘that may not be precisely what you think, OK?’

‘What do you think I think?’

The sun was sinking below the sills of the deep Georgian windows, the room fading to dusty sepia.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I imagine you’re hurt. Wounded. You think I never really cared for you. That I just used you until someone more interesting came along.’

Took the words out of his head. It was still killing him to think she might have been this superficial all along.

‘I really didn’t want you to get hurt, Lol. I wanted you to be, you know ... angry. As in hating me. I didn’t want any of this honourable, shaking hands, let’s-still-be-friends shit.’

He stared at her.

‘I mean, that was the very last thing you needed. Aggression. You needed aggression. Bitterness. You were never bitter. I couldn’t understand that. Why were you never bitter? Dumped by your family, messed around by the system ... Where was the resentment? I wanted you to hate me, rather than ... I mean I couldn’t bear to see you just crawling away and crying into the bloody cat.’

‘How do you know I did that?’

It was not too dark to see her looking pained. He remembered how, when people started smirking at him in the shops, he thought it was because he was this really obvious townie and maybe he needed to wear a flat cap, buy a beat-up truck. Grow sideburns below the jawline.

She curled her toes at him in exasperation.

‘Somebody really should have told you. I put on a hell of a show for Miss Devenish at that Twelfth Night thing. Poor James was dreadfully embarrassed. And even she didn’t take you on one side. Jesus. Little harmless- looking guy like you and nobody has the consideration or even the bottle to tell him his woman’s screwing around.’

Lol winced. ‘Little harmless guy. Thirty-seven years old and the best I ever managed was Little Harmless Guy.’

‘And endearingly messed up. Women love men to be messed up. I really was going to sort you out. But, you know, you get a ... an opportunity ... you have to take it. I didn’t imagine it was going to come so quickly. I’m sorry.’

He felt cold. There were no visible central-heating radiators and although paper and logs were built up in the dog grate, she hadn’t attempted to light them. The message here, at least, was clear.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Alison said, ‘it was that day I went into the village and got a puncture. James was parking his Land Rover on the square. He changed the wheel for me, I said I’d buy him a drink, so we went across to the Black Swan. We talked. For ages. At one point, I said I liked riding, and he said he had horses, didn’t know why he kept them on. Just that the family always had, for hunting and things. James hates to let go of a tradition. That’s sort of admirable, isn’t it?’

‘From what I heard,’ Lol said, ‘his father seems to have kept horses so there’d always be a steady supply of stable girls.’

There was a heartbeat’s silence.

‘Where’d you hear that?’ Her voice stayed casual, he couldn’t see her expression, but he was sure he saw her toes tense.

‘A friend mentioned it.’

‘Lol, you only have one friend. What exactly did Devenish say about the old man?’

‘Does it matter? He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘Humour me.’

‘You’ll just tell bloody James.’

‘James ...’ Alison said in a measured kind of way, ‘is the last person I’ll tell.’

‘She said disregard for the finer feelings of women was a family trait. Lucy had a friend who was one of the stable girls. Patricia somebody?’

The windows lit up.

‘Shit,’ Alison said.

Land Rover lights.

‘Get your head down,’ Alison said.

Lol didn’t move. ‘But she did suggest James was different,’ he said, more out of fairness to Lucy than consideration for Bull-Davies. ‘On account of having a conscience. Like he was the first in the family to have one, and he ought to get out of this house before—’

‘What the hell’s he doing back? He said it’d be at least half-ten.’

Maybe this was meant, Lol thought. Face-to-face in a cold triangle.

‘Listen,’ Alison hissed. ‘He finds you here, he’ll kill you. Listen to me. He’ll come in the back way, so listen ... Wait in the hall until you hear his key and then leave quietly by the front door. Just pull it to behind you.’

‘And there was me,’ Lol murmured, ‘getting all hyped up for a fight’

‘Go!’ Alison was on her feet. ‘Piss off!’

He stood up, disoriented in the gloom.

‘Please.’ Alison’s eyes glowing urgently.

‘All right.’

In the hall, he stood next to a coat stand smelling of Barbour-wax and manure. He heard a key jingling in a distant lock, but he didn’t move.

‘Utterly unbelievable,’ Bull-Davies bawled.

‘Darling?’ Her voice was pitched up the social scale. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Silly bloody bitch threw up! In the damn church!’

‘Who did?’

‘Ten minutes into the service, loses her bloody lunch. I ask you, does a real priest ever lose control of himself like that? I’ve seen Hayden in that pulpit with streaming eyes, two boxes of Kleenex for Men ...’

‘James, what are you talking about?’

‘The damn vicar. Physically sick in front of half the village. Perhaps they’ll realize their mistake when we get a notice outside the church saying All Services Postponed due to Menstrual fucking Cycle.’

Lol hung on, half-fascinated. Alison was a committed feminist; if he’d said half of that she’d be into his throat.

‘Well, darling,’ Alison said soothingly, ‘you did tell them, didn’t you?’