the man to Moira, she has enough problems, I think. But if you wanted to help her, you might keep an eye open for him. If there was a problem and you were to deal with it, she need never know, need she?'
Macbeth started thinking about the knights and the Holy Grail.
And this guy… Stanton? Stansfield?
Part Seven
From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):
THE HISTORY OF BEER
Beer, of course, was brewed in Bridelow long before the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ale was the original sacred drink, made from the water of the holy spring and the blessed barley and preserved with the richly- aromatic bog myrtle from the Moss.
Nigel Pennick writes, in his book Practical Magic in the Northern Tradition:
'Cakes or bread and ale are the sacrament of country tradition. The runic word for ale – ALU – is composed of the three runes As, Lagu and Ur. The first rune has the meaning of the gods or divine power; the second water and flow, and the third primal strength. The eating of bread and drinking of ale is the mystery of the transmutation of the energy in the grain into a form where it is reborn in our physical bodies.'
It follows, therefore, that, to some local people, the sale of the Bridelow brewery and the detachment of the beer-making process from its ancient origins, would seem to be a serious sapping of the village's inherent strength, perhaps even a symbolic draining away of its lifeblood.
CHAPTER I
'She's got to be in. I can hear the kettle boiling.'
And boiling and boiling. Whistling through the house. The kettle having hysterics.
'I've got a key,' Willie said, bringing out the whole bunch of them.
A dark, damp dread was settling around Moira. She took a step back on the short path leading to Ma Wagstaff's front door. Held on to a gatepost, biting a lip.
'What the f-' The door opening a few inches, then jamming and Willie putting his shoulder to it. 'Summat caught behind here…'
'Hey, stop, Willie… Jesus.'
Through the crack in the door, she'd seen a foot, black-shod and pointing upwards. She drew Willie gently back and showed him.
'Oh, Christ,' Willie said drably.
He didn't approach the door again. He said quietly, 'Moira, do us a favour. Nip across to t'Post Office. Fetch Milly.'
'What about a doctor?'
'She wouldn't thank you for a doctor. Just get Milly. Milly Gill.' Moira didn't need to say a word. Milly Gill looked at her and lost her smile, shooed out two customers and shut up the post office. Ran ahead of Moira across the street, big floral bosom heaving.
When they got to the house, Willie had the front door wide open and tears of horror in his eyes. Milly Gill moved past him to where the old woman lay in a small, neat bundle at the bottom of the stairs, eyes like glass buttons, open mouth a breathless void, one leg crooked under her brown woollen skirt.
The body looked as weightless as a sparrow. Moira doubted she'd ever seen anything from which life was so conspicuously absent. A life which, obviously, had been so much more than the usual random mesh of electrical impulses. Even when it was moving, the little body had been the least of Ma Wagstaff.
This was a big death.
Willie Wagstaff stood in the front garden looking at his shoes, drawing long breaths. His hands hung by his sides, fingers motionless. The kettle's wild whistling ended with a gasp, and then Milly Gill came out and joined them. 'You'll need a doctor, Willie, luv.'
His head came up, eyes briefly bright, but the spark of hope fading in an instant.
'Death certificate,' Milly said softly. She took his arm. 'Come on. Post Office. I'll make us some tea.'
The street was silent, but doors were being opened, curtains tweaked aside. Shadowed faces; nobody came out – everybody sensing the death mood in the dusky air.
Moira thought bleakly, They don't die like this, people like Ma Wagstaff. Not at a time of crisis. They don't have accidents and sudden heart attacks. They know when it's over, and they go quietly and usually in their own time.
At the Post Office doorway, Milly Gill called out to the street at large, 'it's Ma Wagstaff. Nothing anybody can do.' She turned to Willie, 'No point in keeping it a secret, is there, luv?'
Moira heard Willie saying, 'I was only with her this morning.' The way people talked, facing the mindless robbery of a sudden death.
And I saw her less than an hour ago, and she was in some state, Willie… she was in some state.
'I'd guess it couldn't have been quicker,' Milly Gill said unconvincingly, leading them through the Post Office into a flowery little sitting room behind. 'She's still warm, poor old luv. Maybe she had a seizure or something, going downstairs. Sit yourselves down, I'll put kettle on and phone for t'doctor.'
'This is Moira Cairns,' said Willie.
'How d'you do. Plug that fire in, Willie, it's freezing.'
Scrabbling down by the hearth, Willie looked up at Moira through his mousy fringe, fishing out a weak smile that was almost apologetic.
'I should go,' Moira said. 'Last thing you need is me.'
Willie got to his feet, nervously straightening his pullover, 'I wouldn't say that. No.'
She thought, Poor Willie. Who's he got left? No mother, no Matt, no job maybe, no direction. Only fingers drumming at the air.
'Is there only you… No brothers, sisters…?'
'Two sisters,' Willie said. 'There's always more girls. By tradition, like.'
Moira sat on the end of a settee with bright, floral loose-covers. The carpet had a bluebell design and there were paintings and sketches of wild flowers on the walls.
'Ah,' Willie said, 'she had to go sometime. She were eighty… I forget. Getting on, though. Least she dint suffer, that's the main thing '
Oh, but she did, Willie… She couldn't look at him, her worried eyes following a single black beam across the ceiling.
Two bunches of sage were hanging from it, the soft, musty scent favouring the atmosphere. Homely.
'No hurry,' Milly Gill was saying in another room, on the phone to the doctor. 'If there's sick people in t'surgery, you see to them first. See to the living.'
When she came back into the sitting room, there were two cats around her ankles.
'Bob and Jim.' Willie's eyes were damp. 'Little buggers. Didn't see um come.'
Moira said, 'Your ma's cats?'
Willie smiled. 'Not any more. Cats'll always find a home. These buggers knew where to come. They'll not be the only ones.'
'This lady's with the Mothers' Union, right?'
Willie said, 'You know about that, eh?'
'I knew about this one when she first come in,' said Milly Gill. 'We'll have to have a talk sometime, luv.'
Her watchful, grey eyes said she also knew that women like Ma Wagstaff did not fall downstairs after having
