Remains of an Altar

Merrily sat on the edge of the tomb, looked up into her face, meagrely lit by the candles inside the church.

‘What don’t I know about you, Mrs Aird?’

‘Oh dear, is it that obvious?’

‘I did think of ringing Ingrid Sollars, but there hasn’t been much time.’

‘Oh well,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘Ingrid doesn’t know anything really. I don’t make a point of telling people my family history. Not round here, especially. There’s still quite a bit of strong feeling in certain quarters.’

She glanced up at the Angel of the Agony, whose face, even by diffused candlelight, reflected none of the compassion that you might expect.

‘Oh,’ Merrily said. ‘I see … I think.’

‘He was my grandfather.’

‘Joseph Longworth.’

‘I don’t remember him. He died when I was very young. I didn’t even know where he was buried for a long time. It was quite a shock when I first came here.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘He left some money, in trust for Wychehill Church. The interest to be handed over as a lump sum every ten years, as directed by the principal trustee. Which at present is me, as the eldest in the family. He wanted the money to perpetuate the church’s connection with Elgar.’

‘Ah…’

‘What I was told was that Elgar’s music was not very popular by the time my grandfather discovered it in the 1920s. He became, you know, besotted with it. He thought it was the greatest music ever made in England. He wanted to help. And to make up, in a small way, for all the damage done by the quarrying. And I suppose he’s been proved right, hasn’t he, about the music?’

‘Somebody said he created Wychehill Church as … almost an altar to Elgar?’

‘Well, I came to tend it,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘I’m the first of our family – including my grandfather – ever to live in Wychehill, and it’s all been very strange. Very strange indeed. I used to be afraid to stand here, especially after dark.’

‘You came – twenty-five years ago?’

‘Twenty-four. When my husband retired. He was some years older than me. You didn’t have to wait long for a house to come on the market here. It’s always been like that. It was a very unhappy place when we came. I made it my business to try to cheer people up. It was a … a vocation, you might say. It made me feel content here. I felt my grandfather – this will sound silly…’

‘Probably not to me.’

‘I felt he was helping me. So when Mr Loste came and established his choir…’

‘Good way to … perpetuate Elgar’s music?’

‘I made a donation, from the fund. Towards the choir and hiring musicians sometimes.’

‘You gave Tim money?’

‘Anonymously. Through my solicitor. I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t want that woman … I heard she … is it true?’

‘I’m afraid it is.’

‘Dear God.’ Mrs Aird sank down on to the tomb. ‘What’s happening here, Mrs Watkins?’

Merrily told her, without mentioning names, that the people responsible were no longer a threat. That there was nobody out there any more to be afraid of.

She wondered if that was true and if the divide which had opened up all those years ago, like a fissure in the rocks, between Longworth and the Devereaux family, Old Wychehill and Upper Wychehill, might in some way be closed. What would happen to Old Wychehill now? In theory, it was Hugo’s. But what would happen to Hugo?

‘As soon as I handed over the money,’ Mrs Aird said, ‘I knew it was wrong, somehow, and I didn’t know why. I had terrible dreams. One night…’ She hugged her arms. ‘I saw him.’ She looked up. ‘Him.’

‘The angel?’

‘I was watching the sunset and just after the sun had gone down, he was there in my garden. Don’t think I’m mad—’

‘No.’

‘And the next day the lorry crashed into the church wall. It was probably a coincidence, but that’s not what you think, is it, at the time?’

‘Did you … see him again?’

‘No.’

‘And the light the lorry driver said he saw … ?’

‘He thought it was the sun, but it was too early. Perhaps it was like the policeman said, he was overtired. But I thought of the ball of light that my grandfather’s supposed to have seen. And then Mr Loste … and then Hannah. I didn’t know what to believe. It was getting too much for me. And then I talked to Ingrid and…’ Mrs Aird let her arms drop and turned to Merrily. ‘How much of it was lies? Do you know?’

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t. Sometimes you never do. Sometimes you just have to push on regardless and hope you get … some…’

Help? She looked up. Something had happened.

She saw, through the steep, plain-glass window, a very small glow, as if only one candle was left alight. And the choir had faltered, voices trailing like ribbon. She stood up.

The last candle didn’t go out, but the choir stayed silent. Merrily heard the church door opening, and Lol came out, and she walked over to him. He looked anxious.

‘He … the conductor was this guy, Dan. He’d stepped in at the last minute because the usual guy couldn’t make it. And he just … he stopped it. He said he had to sit down. Suddenly felt cold … and weak. And then he got up again and went round blowing out the candles. It was … weird. Who’s that?’

Merrily turned and saw Mrs Aird walking back along the drive towards the road. There was darkness there. The cracked lantern at the entrance had gone out.

Cold inside with dread, she took out her mobile and opened it up, its screen flaring orange and white, and called the hospital in Worcester where Tim Loste had been taken.

64

Helium

It was unearthly seeing Elgar like this. Disorientating.

In his striped casual jacket and his hat with the brim raffishly upturned at the sides. And was that a cigarette, for heaven’s sake, between his fingers?

He wasn’t exactly smiling, but you felt that, under that Wild West marshal’s moustache, he was on the edge of one, standing on the track with his arms spread as if emphasizing its width. Yes, it had to be a cigarette – that was smoke in the air

You spent all week searching for him in the Malverns, and here he was in Ledwardine.

Something mischievous and yet rueful about that near-smile. The main difference between Watkins and Elgar, at this stage of their lives, was that Elgar was more or less played out in his sixties, while Watkins was only just beginning his greatest work, crackling with vision.

Maybe Elgar, in Ledwardine, was returning a favour – for getting Longworth off his back? No, don’t get fanciful.

‘Whenever I think I’m getting somewhere.’ Jane lowered her face into her hands. ‘Just when I think I’m breaking through, I screw up. It’s like there’s something inside me, something demonic—’

‘Stop right there, flower.’

Jane looked up. Annoyance turning to something between hopelessness and an unhealthy kind of repentance.

Anyway, it was almost pitiful.

‘I was going to say, “Don’t call me ‘flower’ like I’m seven years old.” But yeah, call