The Wine of Angels

Lol let himself out. Stumbled down the steep drive, between the broken gateposts, the last of the sunset spread out before him like a long beach, the church spire a lighthouse without a light. Nothing left that seemed real.

They’d brought her into the vestry. She must have fainted. There was a couch in there and they’d laid her on it and someone had put a rug over her. Faces came into focus, like a surgical team around an operating table, stern and concerned and ... triumphant?

She must have passed out again and when she came round she didn’t remember whose faces those had been.

‘Stressed out, I’d say,’ Dr Kent Asprey said. ‘Overworked, neglecting herself. Mrs Watkins? Can you hear me? Merrily?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Merrily whispered. ‘I don’t know what ... Is the bishop ...?’

‘He’s out there taking charge,’ Uncle Ted said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘Where’s Jane?’

‘I’m here, Mum.’ Kid hanging back, sounding scared.

‘Oh God.’ A white, naked figure, pale as veined marble still crawled amongst her wildly flickering thoughts. ‘What have I done?’

‘You were taken ill,’ Uncle Ted said. She sensed a reserve in his voice. Not the churchwarden, now, but the old, wary lawyer.

The pale figure was inside her now, like a white worm. She tasted bile, sat up at once, clutching at her throat. Someone had removed her dog collar.

She hadn’t completed her vows.

In the church, organ chords swelled. Pause. Singing began.

Haven’t made my vows!

‘All right, Merrily,’ Dr Kent Asprey said. ‘Just relax.’

‘I’ve got to go back. I haven’t made—’

‘Someone’s going to bring you a cup of tea, and then you’re going home.’

‘No ... Please ...’ The thought of going back to the huge, empty, haunted vicarage suddenly terrified her. ‘This is my home.’

‘Just relax,’ Asprey said.

‘What am I going to do? What am I going to do?’

‘You’re going home to bed and I’m going to come and see you in the morning.’

She stared at him, all crinkly eyed and caring, the stupid, fatuous sod.

‘Just get a good night’s sleep, Merrily.’

In Ledwardine vicarage? She wanted to laugh in his face. To scream in his face. To scream and scream.

Scream herself sick.

The small shadow became detached from the hedge in Blackberry Lane. Lol thought it was a rat, until it rolled on to his shoe.

When he bent down, it produced a tiny cry.

He went down on his knees, but when he touched her she hissed and slashed at him and rolled over and tried to stand up and couldn’t. He felt wet in his fingers. Blood.

‘Oh God.’

He’d left her shut in the kitchen, with food and water and a full litter tray. Hadn’t he?

She squealed when he picked her up and when he tucked her under his jacket he could feel her trembling. When he reached the gate and heard the music, she was purring, but he knew there were two kinds of purr and one was a sign of pain.

All the lights were on in the cottage. He saw the front downstairs window had been thrown open, and the music shivered out into the lane, the late Nick Drake singing ‘Black-eyed Dog’, the death song, the stereo cranked up beyond distortion level, fracturing the already tight, brittle splinters of guitar.

He could see Karl Windling’s wide-shouldered silhouette in the chair under the open window. Facing into the room. Facing the open kitchen door.

Nick sang that there was a black-eyed dog calling at his door and it was calling for more. It called for more and it knew his name. Nick’s voice was cut up and broken by the volume. Under Lol’s jacket, Ethel, the little black cat, quaked with pain. Beyond the kitchen door there was cat-litter all over the carpet, fragments of food dish.

In a high, scared, doomed voice, Nick Drake, at twenty-six, sang that he was growing old and he wanted to go home.

There was apple blossom all over the lawn, and the white petals were huge now. The song ended and Karl Windling’s shadow filled the window for a moment before the stylus was ripped across the record with a jagged whizz of puckered vinyl.

Lol saw that the white petals on the lawn were the torn and scattered pages of a book. He bent and picked one up and held it into the light from the window.

...to love all persons in all ages, all angels, all worlds, is divine and heavenly ...To love all ...

The house invaded, the book torn down the spine, the album ruined, the cat kicked half to death. Lol’s life smashed and the fragments scattered.

And there was me, getting all hyped up for a fight.

Karl would be well-stoned by now; that was his style – a satisfying surge of violence and then a nice, fat joint to make it feel doubly all right. Lol thought, I should go straight in there – it’s my house, for Christ’s sake, my own home – and ... and ...

I wanted you to hate, Alison had said, not half an hour ago.

But Karl knew Lol Robinson from way back. Knew he didn’t fight and lacked the nerve to hate. Knew that Lol’s speciality was fear.

All the lights on, the window open. Karl Windling standing in the centre of the room now, staring directly at the window, but he couldn’t see Lol in the darkness. Karl’s bearded face unsmiling.

Lol glanced at the empty drive, wondering for a second what Karl had done to the Astra before remembering he’d parked it in the village.

Under his jacket, Ethel had gone still.

He heard his own thin whimper on the air, as he turned and walked away from his home into the darkness of Blackberry Lane.

She felt like some child molester leaving court.

As the remaining congregation sang, watched over by the bishop, Merrily Watkins was escorted from the church wrapped in the rug, surrounded by Kent Asprey and Uncle Ted and Jane and Caroline Cassidy and Councillor Garrod Powell, their bodies hiding hers.

Hiding her from the eyes of villagers who’d left the congregation before the bishop had restored order but were still bunched in the darkness, like sightseers on the scene of a fatal road accident.

‘En’t a good sign,’ an old woman whispered too loudly.

Across the square, Merrily saw the softly illuminated hanging sign of the Black Swan, a beacon of stability in what was turning into an alien world. They’d been happy there. Now she was cold and confused and frightened and she didn’t know why, and none of the people with her said a word, not even Jane; it was like a funeral procession.

They took her into the vicarage. Ted still had keys, as if he’d known she was only on probation and it might not work out.

‘I’ll make some tea.’ Caroline Cassidy looked with distaste around the grim kitchen, still partly lit by unshaded, underpowered bulbs. ‘Where’s your kettle, my dear?’

‘No,’ Jane said. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Look.’ Merrily struggled to keep her voice level. ‘You’ve done so much already and I’ve ruined it, but if you leave now you can still go ahead with your cider launch.’

‘Merrily, I wouldn’t dream—’

‘Yes, you would. You have to. Village life goes on. Anyway, I’d be less embarrassed if I thought it wasn’t all a total disaster.’