To Dream of the Dead

‘How soon before it goes down again?’ the man said, outraged. ‘We can’t afford to get stranded here.’

‘Hard to say,’ Lol told him, ‘as it’s never happened before. But as long as you can get to the bypass, you’re —’

The rest of it was mangled under the grinding clatter and rumble of the first vehicle coming through the new Church Street pond, maybe the only one that could.

Jane went cold, thinking about what the man driving it had said the other night when they were on the bridge.

‘Oh my God, Irene, I dreamed of the dead!’

‘Well, that’s you, Jane,’ Eirion said. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to dream of soft green meadows and bunny rabbits.’

‘A sign of rain.’

‘What?’

‘To dream of the dead is a sign of rain.’

‘You needed signs?’

She’d dreamed of Lucy Devenish. Lucy standing by her own grave, her poncho torn and muddied, and when Jane had tried to talk to her Lucy had just looked right through her, towards the orchard, as if it was Jane who wasn’t there. And in that moment of terrifying non-existence she’d awoken, desolate.

‘It’s like war’s been declared.’

Eirion was pointing up towards the square, where people, including Mum in her black cape, were starting to gather near the market hall, a couple of women holding kids back.

‘They’ve come out of church, that’s all,’ Jane said.

No voices trailed from the assembly. Eirion was right; this was what it must’ve been like when war was declared. They’d all known in their hearts that it was coming. And now the bell ringers were starting up, all bright and Merry Christmassy. Like the dance band on the Titanic. It should be a solemn dong, dong, dong, a warning toll wadded in cloud to freeze everybody into stillness and dread. Before they all turned as one, pointing down the street at Jane. She did this. She let it happen.

‘Well…’ Eirion looked up. ‘This is going to curtail Blore’s dig.’

‘He’ll probably just erect some huge marquee over the whole site.’

‘You want to go and see?’

‘No!’

‘Be a good time,’ Eirion said. ‘There’s nothing we can do here.’

‘It’s not my place any more. It’s his. Blore’s.’

‘You don’t think that. Not in a million years.’

‘Doesn’t matter what I think. I count for nothing. The sodding cops have got my database, Blore’s got my… my future. Squashed in his big hand.’

‘Oh, Jane, come on, let’s not…’

‘Not what?’

Eirion pushed back the hood of his yellow slicker, gripped her arms above the elbows.

‘You can’t, see. You bloody can’t.’

‘What?’

‘Let it go. Abandon it. Even Lol said that. There’s too much… emotional investment.’

‘Like, wow,’ Jane said sourly.

‘When we did those pictures in the summer, you were just… lit up. I was…’ Letting go of Jane’s arms. ‘I wanted to kick uni into touch, get a job as a gardener or something, just to keep on seeing you.’

He backed away, embarrassed now. She looked into his face, taut with adult anxieties and things he probably wasn’t sure he was ready to handle. She didn’t know what to say, shaken by his intensity and all churned up like the river man with whom she’d tried to fake a relationship.

Probably fortunate that Gwyneth came rattling alongside, her bucket pulled into her big yellow chest, GOMER PARRY PLANT HIRE in green on her flanks. Gomer leaning over to the open side of the cab, glasses gleaming.

‘Takin’ her up the square, Janey. Hold the high ground, see.’

‘Your bungalow’s not—?’

‘No, no, but I en’t takin’ no chances with this ole girl.’ Gomer beamed at Eirion. ‘’Ow’re you, boy?’

‘I’m OK, thanks, Gomer. And you’re looking—’

‘Good boy!’

Gomer raising a hand, Gwyneth clanking off towards the cobbles.

Eirion shaking his head, bemused.

‘He looks kind of… energised?’

‘He is,’ Jane said. ‘Some people go on about him being too old to be doing what he does, but they won’t be saying that now, because a JCB’s about the only vehicle that can get through deep flood water. It’s got the weight, and its exhaust pipe’s really high up.’

And Gomer Parry had the only one in the village. Jane watched the JCB crawling onto the cobbles, Gomer jumping down like somebody thirty years younger.

‘Helps to feel needed, doesn’t it?’

‘You think Coleman’s Meadow doesn’t need you, Jane?’

Jane said nothing.

‘Who’s it got left?’

‘It’s a field. That’s all it is.’

‘Come on. Please.’

‘Why? What’s the point?’

‘It’s like a pilot getting back into the cockpit after a crash.’

‘I was never in the sodding cockpit.’

‘You were. You found it. The whole set-up. You were led to it.’

‘New Age bullshit, Irene. Pure accident. Even you don’t believe it.’

‘I’m not clever enough on this issue to know one way or another, but I believe in… well, in you, anyway. The you that gets excited about… Look, if we go halfway, I’ll take a look first, OK? If the bastard’s there I’ll come back and we’ll forget it.’

‘Irene, I don’t…’

‘You do, Jane.’

Rain on his face making it look like he was in tears. The old Eirion, somehow.

‘And Lucy Devenish is dead,’ he said.

In a situation like this, Merrily thought, feudalism rose again. James Bull-Davies was too impoverished now to be much of a squire, but it was in his blood, and she was glad to see him taking control.

‘Panic’s premature — chances are it won’t get much higher.’

James, in his holed and etiolated Barbour, talking on the square to a couple of migrant mulled-winos she didn’t recognise.

‘Only village hall in the firing line so far.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s that bloody Pierce? Suggest he gets off his arse and onto his council. Uses whatever influence he’s got to get us some technical assistance.’

‘No chance o’ that.’ Gomer Parry took out his roll-up, cupped in his palm against the rain. ‘Pierce don’t give a monkey’s for the hall getting flooded. He wants a new one, with squashy courts. Part of his master plan. Ole hall sinks, supermarket gets the site, Pierce fills his pockets. You know that, boy.’

‘You may not be wrong, Gomer, but this is hardly the time for politics.’ James nodded at Gwyneth. ‘That thing fully functional?’

‘Wash your mouth out,’ Gomer said.

Merrily smiled, pulled the bottom of her cape out of a puddle and stepped under the market hall.

‘What can I do, James? How many people do you need at the village hall?’

‘Can’t do much there apart from sandbags. If they don’t work and it floods… well, it floods. Least nobody lives there. Not much you can do for the present, vicar. Couple of us will take a look at the river, work out where we can either build up the bank or create a new barrier… and then rely on the expertise of our good friend Parry.’