doors.
She leaned her back against the doors, took a few deep breaths, and called out after a few seconds, 'OK?'
'Aye.' The porch doors opened, and there was a smallish guy in his sixties, flat cap and a boiler-suit. Big, soft moustache, like a hearth brush. 'Sorry, lass, dint know there were anybody in theer.'
He held a mallet and a masonry chisel. There were chips of grey stone and crumbly old concrete around the foot of the step-ladder.
'Storm damage?' Moira said.
'You what?'
'You repairing storm damage?'
'Summat like that.'
But then, looking up at the wall above the porch, she saw where the chippings had come from.
From the stones supporting the Exhibitionist. The Sheelagh na gig. Our Sheila.
'You're taking her down?'
'Aye.' He didn't sound too happy.
'Why?'
He gave her a level look. 'Alfred Beckett, verger, organist, dogsbody. Who are you?'
She grinned. Fuck it, she was here now, in the open, uncloaked. 'Moira. Moira Cairns. Used to work with… Matt Castle.'
The name felt different. A different, darker Matt Castle.
'Matt Castle, eh?' said Alfred Beckett. 'Right. 'Course.' He seemed to relax a little. 'How do.' He stuck out a stubby hand and Moira took it, stone dust and all. He had a firm grip; it pulled her back into what people took for the real world.
'So, Mr Beckett…' She glanced up at the ancient woman squashed into a stone plaque, fingers up her fanny. A few strokes of the chisel away from a serious loss of status.
'Aye,' Mr Beckett said, like a ragged sigh, and Moira saw he wasn't far from tears. He said he was following instructions. Didn't want to do it. Hated doing it. But he wasn't in an arguing position, was he? Vergers being a good way down the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
'And if I don't do it,' he said, 'he'll do it hisself. And he won't be as careful as me.'
'Mr Beard,' Moira said.
'Aye. He'll smash her, like…'
'Like the Autumn Cross.'
'I'll see she's all right,' Alfred Beckett said. 'I'll keep her safe until such time as…'
He sighed, fished a packet of Arrowmint chewing gum out of the top pocket of his boiler-suit. Moira accepted a segment and they stood together chewing silently for a minute or so.
Then Mr Beckett said, 'Aye. It's a bugger.'
A scrap of cement fell from Our Sheila.
Moira said, 'But isn't she – excuse me, I'm no' an expert in these matters – isn't she protected in some way?'
'No, lass, she's…'
'I meant, isn't she a feature of a listed historic building?'
'Oh,' said Alfred Beckett. 'Aye. Happen. But Mr Beard reckons she's not safe and could fall on somebody's head. Same as she's not done for the past umpteen centuries.'
'Aye,' Moira said eventually. 'It's a bugger all right.' 'Now then. Why aren't you at school?'
Benjie threw his arms around Ma's waist and burrowed his head into her pinny. He started to sob.
She pulled him into the kitchen, shut the back door. 'Now, lad. What's matter? Tell owd Ma.'
Ma Wagstaff sat her grandson on the kitchen stool. Spine still giving her gyp, she reached up for a bottle of her special licorice toffees. Never been known not to work.
When it was out, Ma said, 'The bugger.'
Benjie with his swollen eyes and his wet cheeks bulging with toffee.
'The unfeeling, spiteful bugger,' Ma said.
Biggest thing that had ever happened to Benjie, Ernest Dawber putting him in charge of the Autumn Cross – a whole afternoon, inspecting the twigs and branches, acorns, bits of old birds' nests and stuff the other kids had brought, saying what was to go into the cross, what was right for it, what wasn't good enough. Standing proudly, top of the aisle, the day Alfred Beckett had come with his ladder, and the cross, all trimmed and finished, had been hoisted into place, and everybody cheering.
Biggest thing ever happened to the lad.
'Leave him to me,' Ma said. 'I'll sort that bugger out meself, just you see if I don't.'
Benjie stared at her, wildly shaking his head, couldn't speak for the toffee.
'Gone far enough,' Ma said. 'Got to be told a few things. For his own good, if nowt else.'
'No!' Benjie blurted. 'Don't go near it, Ma.'
Ma was taken aback. 'Eh?'
'…'s getting bigger, Ma. Every day, 's getting bigger.'
'What is, lad?'
'The dragon!' The little lad started crying again, scrambling down from the stool, clutching Ma round the waist again, wailing, 'You've not to… You've not to!'
Eh?
Mystified, but determined to get to the bottom of this, Ma detached his small hands from her pinny, squatted down, with much pain, to his height. 'Now then. Summat you've not told me. Eh? Come on.' She held his shoulders, straightening him up, feeding him some strength, not that she'd much to spare these days. 'Come on. Tell owd Ma all about it.'
He stared into her face, eyes all stretched with terror. 'Bigger, Ma… 's bigger.'
'He might look big to you, Benjie,' Ma said gently. 'But he's only a man.'
'No. 's a dragon!'
'Mr Beard?'
's a dragon.' So the new curate was in combat with the Forces of Evil.
As represented by Our Sheila and the Autumn Cross.
And whatever Willie's Ma was doing inside Matt Castle's coffin.
Last night – early this morning – as the dregs of hot chocolate were rinsed from the mugs, she'd at last got it out of Cathy, what it was all about – or as much of it as Cathy knew.
'So, the coffin's on the ground and the light's been lowered, and the lid is open…'
'I didn't see it!'
'And your friend, old Mrs Wagstaff has her hands inside… and I'm wondering if maybe the old biddy has a passing interest in necrophilia…'
'That's a terrible thing to say!'
'I know… so tell me. What's going on, huh?'
'It was… I think it was… a witch bottle.'
'I thought you said she wasny a witch.'
'It's just a term. It's a very old precautionary thing. To trap an evil spirit…?'
'Matt's spirit…?'
'No… I don't know. Maybe if there was one around. In there with him.'
'In the coffin?'
'I don't know… it's no good asking me. You're going to have to talk to Ma. If she'll talk to you.' And Lottie. Today it was important to talk to Lottie, because Lottie was not part of this place, had not been returning, like Matt, to the bosom of a tradition which was older than Christianity.
… a more pure, undiluted strain… than you'll find anywhere in Western Europe…
Moira had come through the lych-gate, was standing at the top of the cobbled street, the cottages like boulders either side under a blank, unyielding sky – a sky as hard as a whitewashed wall.
… this writer… Stanton, Stanhope…
