Cathy straightened up at the sink. 'You can't do that.'
'Huh?'
'You can't just come into Bridelow and ask questions like that straight out.'
'Oh. Really. Well, I'll be leaving then.'
'OK,' Cathy said lightly.
The avalanche of liquid peat hit him like effluent in a flooded drain and then it was swirling around him and he was like a seabird trapped in an oil-slick, his wings glued to his body. If he struggled it would tear his wings from his shoulders and enter his body and choke him. He could taste it already in his throat and his nose.
But, even as it filled his dream, he knew that the tide of peat was only a metaphor for the long centuries of accumulated Godless filth in this village.
He knew also that he did have wings that could carry him far above it.
For he was an angel.
And if he remained still and held his light within him the noxious tide could never overwhelm him.
Joel dreamed on.
Although the stone room around him was cold, the black peat in the dream was warm. He remained still and the peat settled around him like cushions.
Inside his dreaming self, the light kept on burning. Its heat was intense and its flame, like the one inside the paraffin heater, became a tight, blue jet arising from a circle. It heated up the peat too.
In his dream he was naked and the peat was as warm and sensuous as woman-skin against him. Moira waited for her by the Rectory gate.
It was bitterly cold. She imagined the walls of the village cottages tightening under the frost.
Cathy came round the side of the house, a coat around her shoulders. 'How'd you know I'd come after you?'
Moira shrugged.
'You're like old Ma Wagstaff, you are. You know that?'
'That's…'
'The crone, yes.'
'I hope not,' Moira said. Well, dammit… Willie's old mother? And he never said. All those years and he never said a word.
'I'm trying to understand it all,' Cathy said. 'Somebody has to work it all out before we lose it. Most people here don't bother any more. It's just history. I suppose that's been part of the problem.'
Moira realised she was just going to have to do some listening, see what came together. The church clock shone out blue-white and cold, as if it was the source of the frost.
'The old ways,' Moira said. 'Sometimes they don't seem exactly relevant. And people get scared for their kids. Yeh, you're right, they don't want to understand, most of them. But can you blame them?'
'It's not even as if it's particularly simple. Not like Buddhism or Jehovah's Witness-ism,' Cathy said. 'Not like you can hand out a pamphlet and say, 'Here it is, it's all there.' I mean, you can spend years and years prising up little stones all over the place trying to detect bits of patterns '
Cathy fell silent, and Moira found she was listening to the night The night was humming faintly – a tune she knew. People like me, she thought, we travel different roads, responding to the soundless songs and the invisible lights.
It's all too powerful… the heritage… maybe you should go away and when you get back your problems will be in perspective…go somewhere bland… St Moritz, Tunbridge Wells…
Bridelow?
Ah, Duchess, you old witch.
She said, 'So what is the history of this place? I mean, the relevant bits.'
'You need to talk to Mr Dawber. He's our local historian.'
'And what would he tell me?'
'Probably about the Celts driven out of the lowlands by the Romans first and then the Saxons.'
'The English Celts? From Cheshire and Lancashire?'
'And Shropshire and North Wales. It was all one in those days. They fled up here, and into the Peak District, and because the land was so crap nobody tried too hard to turn them out. And besides, they'd set up other defences.'
'Other defences?'
'Well… not like Hadrian's Wall or Offa's Dyke.'
'The kind of defences you can't see,' Moira said.
'The kind of defences most people can't see,' corrected Cathy. She looked up into the cold sky. Moira saw that all the clouds had flown, leaving a real planetarium of a night.
Cathy said, 'She'd kill me if she knew I was telling you all this.'
'Who?'
'Ma Wagstaff, of course.'
'And what makes you so sure she doesn't know?'
'Oh, God,' Cathy said. 'You are like her. I knew it as soon as I saw you at the door.'
'It's the green teeth and the pointy hat,' said Moira.
'I don't know what it is, but when you've lived around here for a good piece of your life you get so you can recognize it.'
'But your old man's the minister.'
'And a bloody good one,' Cathy snapped. 'The best.'
' Right, Moira said. 'I'd like to meet him when he's feeling better.'
'We'll see.' Cathy walked past her, out of the Rectory gates, stood in the middle of the street looking up at the church. 'It's a sensitive business, being Rector of Bridelow. How to play it. And if it's working, if it's trundling along… I mean, things have always sorted themselves out in Bridelow. It's been a really liberal-minded, balanced sort of community. A lot of natural wisdom around, however you want to define wisdom.'
The moonlight glimmered in her fair hair, giving her a silvery distinction. Then Moira realised it wasn't the moonlight at all, the moon was negligible tonight, a wafer. It was the light from the illuminated church clock.
'They call it the Beacon of the Moss,' Cathy said.
'Huh?'
'The church clock. That's interesting, don't you think? It's not been there a century yet and already it's part of the legend. That's Bridelow for you.'
'You mean everything gets absorbed into the tradition?'
'Mmm. Now, Joel Beard… that's the big curate with the curly hair, the one and only Joel Beard, Saint Joel. Now, Joel's really thick. He thinks he's stumbled into the Devil's backyard. He thinks he's been called by God to fight Satan in Bridelow because this is where he can do it one-to-one. In the blue corner Saint Joel, in the red corner The Evil One, wearing a glittery robe washed and ironed by Ma Wagstaff and the twelve other members of the Mothers' Union.'
'The Mothers' Union?' Moira laughed in delight.
'Thirteen members,' Cathy said. 'There've always been thirteen members. I mean, they don't dance naked in the moonlight or anything – which, bearing in mind the average age of the Mothers, is a mercy for everyone.'
'Oh, Jesus,' said Moira, 'this is wonderful.'
'It used to be rather wonderful,' Cathy said. 'But it's all started to go wrong. Even Ma's not sure why. Hey, look, have you anywhere to stay tonight? I mean, you want to stay here? There's a spare room.'
This kid would never say she didn't want to be in the house alone.
'Thank you,' Moira said. 'I think I'd like that.' Dic, who didn't drink much, had gone back to his father's pub and sunk four swift and joyless pints of Bridelow Black, sitting on his own at the back of the bar.
At one stage he became aware of Young Frank pulling out the stool on the other side of his table. 'Steady on, lad.' Tapping Dic's fifth pint with the side of a big thumb. 'It's not what it were, this stuff, but it'll still spoil your breakfast.'
Dic said, 'Fuck off, Frank.'
Frank got his darts out of his back pocket. 'Game of arrows?' Dic shook his head, making Frank's image sway
