Not just an expression of intent, Danny thought, it was like he knew it for a fact — that he would die at The Nant.
Above them, the wishy-washy moonlight shone damply on Stanner Rocks, and Jeremy never spoke another word, except for ‘goodnight’ — not much more than a clicking of the tongue — when he dropped Danny at his top gate.
Part Two
‘My friend was still looking at the coat of arms and I walked to the archway here and just looked across at the blue curtain. There was an image… it wasn’t even a shape… I can only describe it as when motes hang in sunbeams. But it was the image of a bull and he was giving out the feeling of being angry… he was pawing at the ground but he was in the air. The inside of his nostrils — this was one of the most vivid things — were very, very red, like a racehorse when it’s just stopped running. And it was wet, it was dripping moisture or something on to the ground. It was as though it was hanging in sort of strings… As we walked to the middle aisle it started to fade… I’m a hard-headed business person. But I can’t deny it, I’ve seen it — I’ve experienced it.’
The ladies who prepare the flowers in the church did say on two separate occasions that the floral arrangement had taken the shape of a bull’s head.
14
Word to the Wise
So Danny went after Sebbie Three Farms.
The wisdom of this… well, that was in question. Jeremy phoned early Sunday morning, to see how Danny was feeling, to repeat his offer of picking up the tab for Greta’s Justy and to tell Danny to leave well alone on account of Sebbie Dacre couldn’t be counted on to behave like any kind of rational human being.
Danny said he’d bear that in mind.
Hour or so later, Greta bathed his head again and said, ‘Leave it, you year me, Danny Thomas? You can patch him up, the little car. Leave it till tomorrow at least.’
‘Longer we leaves it, harder it’s gonner be.’
‘You are
‘Take Gomer with me?’ Danny stared at her. ‘You totally cracked, woman?
‘En’t as wild as he used to be,’ Gret said. ‘He’s an ole man now. Look, you promise me—’
‘I promise.’ Danny went out, shaking his head at the idea that age could mellow somebody like Gomer Parry. But then, Gret had never seen Gomer at the controls of his JCB, that big gash of a smile around his ciggy, hell’s own light in his glasses.
The sky was near-enough the colour of a shotgun barrel, and the cold air ripped at Danny’s head wound like barbed wire as he crossed the yard to the Land Rover.
Well, no way was he gonner forget this. Couldn’t live with himself. Couldn’t afford another car for Greta if this one got written off.
He was on his way to Jeremy’s to see if he could somehow tow the Justy home when, as it happened, he seen Sebbie Dacre in person, turning right at Walton towards Radnor Forest. Sebbie was in his mustard-coloured Range Rover, and he was on his own.
Seemed like fate.
Last in the handshaking line outside the church porch after morning service was Alice Meek, in Sunday best. Not many people wore Sunday best any more; they came to church in fleeces and jeans.
The big man with Alice wore jeans and a shiny leather jacket.
‘This yere is Dexter Harris, vicar. My nephew from the tyre place? With the asthma? Didn’t seem right just bringing him along tonight, for the Healing Service.’
Merrily shook hands limply with Dexter and then stood there, shivering in the cold, weak sunshine of the first day of December. When, for God’s sake, had her loose prayer meeting, her meditative interlude, her quiet time before the start of the working week, become
‘I told him there wasn’t nothing to be scared of. Don’t wanner bring on an attack, do we?’
Alice cackled, confident that this wouldn’t happen. Not on a Sunday, not at the church of the healing vicar.
Merrily looked up at Dexter Harris. He was a big, heavy man, shaven-headed, balding or both. He had a lower lip that jutted like a spout from a jug. He looked about thirty-five. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here, but few people argued with Alice.
Down by the lychgate she could see Ted Clowes, retired solicitor, senior churchwarden, her mother’s brother and the village’s most reliable opponent of Deliverance, faith healing and anything else that was, in his narrow view, spiritually off-the-wall and fiscally unpromising. If Ted was waiting for her by the lychgate, it was with the intention of following her home to bend her ear on neglect of crucial parish issues.
Oh well.
‘How would you feel about a cup of tea, Dexter?’ Merrily suggested. ‘In fact, there might even be a can or two of Stella in the fridge.’
Mr Sebastian Dacre JP.
Danny Thomas and Sebbie Dacre, they was about the same age and had known one another, to a point, since they was boys. But Danny was at the local schools and Sebbie was a boarder at the Cathedral School in Hereford and riding to hounds at twelve and screeching around Kington in a Triumph Spitfire at eighteen. And Sebbie’s ole man used to have close to a thousand wide acres while Danny’s dad had just under forty-three acres of hillside with soil skin-deep over the rock.
And Danny was Danny Thomas, the Rock ’n’ Roll farmer as was, and Sebbie was Mr Sebastian Dacre JP, Master of the Middle Marches, local organizer for The Countryside Alliance. It was like that.
Sebbie was clearly headed for the Eagle at New Radnor. Nice pub, situated just perfect in the middle of this nice quiet village — big wide street, widest in Radnorshire, sure to be, overlooked by a lot of houses and cottages and a shop and the Eagle. Danny was reminded of the streets in old Western movies, which were always very wide and quiet and just right for a shoot-out, two fellers approaching each other real slow from opposite ends.
Greta was wrong. Best to handle this on his own: Danny the negotiator, Danny the diplomat. He wanted something out of this to repair the Justy. Also it was very much time to put the arm on Sebbie to keep his muscle off Jeremy Berrows’s ground. Boy looked like he’d enough to worry about right now, without lying awake at night listening for tyres creeping up the track.
Most of all, though, Danny wanted to know what was behind it. Why was Sebbie Three Farms employing these three hard-bastard shooters from South Wales?
