Remains of an Altar

age on every bend. She’d refused to let him drive. He held on to the sides of his seat.

‘There’ll be a way out. Spicer doesn’t want that.’

‘No, Laurence,’ Merrily said, ‘What he doesn’t want is to have to do it himself.’

And she was probably right. One thing you learned, being close to a vicar, was that other vicars could be scheming bastards.

‘Whatever happens, he’s going to want to keep it discreet. They’re very publicity-shy, the ex-SAS. And that’s likely to be the main reason he’s switched the meeting from Wednesday night to tomorrow. He doesn’t want TV crews from America.’

A single light up ahead was dim and bleary. Merrily braked.

‘If it gets out,’ Lol said.

‘You don’t really think … ?’

‘Big figure, Elgar, worldwide.’

They passed the vintage motor-scooter. It was on the correct side of the road. Merrily drove slowly in silence for a while. A lorry overtook the Volvo. Lol caught her glance.

‘We’ve never discussed this, Lol, but I got the feeling in there that you knew rather more about Elgar than I did.’

‘Depends how much you know.’

‘Well … bugger-all, really. That’s what makes this so much worse.’

Jane stumbled, panting, into the cobbled market square with its hanging aroma of apple-wood smoke from the fire the Black Swan kept lit for the tourists on all but the warmest summer nights.

She looked around. Nobody about. No lights in the vicarage. No lights in Lol’s cottage, which used to be Lucy’s. Maybe he and Mum had locked the dog collar in the glove compartment and stopped to do it on the back seat in a lay-by.

Jane grinned. God, what was she turning into?

Whatever, at least those guys from the council hadn’t found out her full name. All she had to do was keep clear of Lyndon Pierce for a while and she could ride this out.

Which of course would be the coward’s way out.

It was about 10.15 p.m., the deep red veins of evening yielding to the cooling blue of early night. Jane moved between the lumpen 4x4s of the Black Swan’s clientele and slipped under the eaves of the oak-pillared market hall.

Thinking about the winter after Lucy died, when she’d seriously embraced some kind of goddess-worship, lying about her age to join this women’s esoteric group, The Pod, in Hereford. Wondering now why she’d more or less abandoned paganism which, on nights like this, seemed a kind of healthy spiritual response to nature and the environment.

A better relationship developing between her and Mum probably had something to do with it. Mum becoming more liberal as she became more secure in her own job. And then there was Eirion. Meeting Eirion, falling in … love, probably.

Which was looking like a dead end.

Jane moved out of the shadow of the market hall and across the cobbled square, walking towards the church until the top of Cole Hill came into view, smoky and seductive in the dusk. The hill of the shamans.

Eirion. She badly wanted to see him, but it was pointless. Within three months he’d be at university. Emma Rees at school – not a particular mate, but you had to feel sorry for her – had been engaged to some bloke, and he’d gone to college in Gloucester (that close) and within about a month it was Dear Emma … a bloody text message!

Jane didn’t do texting any more. Texting was for kids and adults with emotional dyslexia.

She took out her mobile, switched it on and watched it lighting up. Brought up the Abergavenny number from the phone book. This would be a small test, right?

Jane drew in a long, ragged breath and pressed the little green-phone sign, listening to it ringing. Decided no and was about to hit the little red-phone button when…

‘Jane Watkins.’ Eirion said in her ear. ‘I know the name from somewhere. Hang on … Yes! Didn’t we used to go out together at one time?’

Eirion’s phone had, of course, flashed up the caller’s number. So good to hear his stupid Welsh voice. Actually, not good at all.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t rung. It’s been … it’s like…’

‘Thought I was being phased out, I did.’ Eirion exaggerating the accent. ‘In view of my imminent departure to some distant seat of learning. Strange how we become paranoid, isn’t it?’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Would’ve slashed my wrists in the bath,’ Eirion said, ‘except I’ve only got an electric razor.’

‘You could always have plugged it in, dropped it in the bath and electrocuted yourself. Lateral thinking, Irene.’ Jane smiling, in spite of it all. ‘Look, what would it cost to set up a website?’

‘Shit,’ Eirion said. ‘Any thoughts of you still wanting me for my body…’

‘It was never about your body, fatso.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Anyway, how soon could you organize it?’ Jane said.

Feeling that sense of what have I got to lose? urgency. Thinking of the council pygmies trashing the reputation of the great Alfred Watkins: lot of nonsense … New Age cranks…

Jane Watkins standing on the market square in ancient Ledwardine feeling the lines of energy, the ancestral spirit, glowing and pulsing all around her, rippling through her in the numinous dusk.

‘It was when Simon St John was laying down the cello parts for Alien,’ Lol said, ‘and I said I’d like something pastoral but moody. So Simon starts playing this lovely, sorrowful tune. And there it was. Hills … real hills. Texture. Dull day. Low cloud. And some diffuse, underlying emotion. Elgar’s Cello Concerto.’

‘Wow,’ Merrily said.

No particular reason for Lol not to know about Elgar. His own dead muse, Nick Drake, had, after all, been inspired by the likes of Delius and Ravel.

But Elgar had always seemed so Establishment. Hadn’t he been made Master of the King’s Musick? Hadn’t he composed all these marches and patriotic anthems? Hadn’t he written Pomp and Circumstance, whose very title…

‘Misunderstood,’ Lol said. ‘Most of his life people were getting him wrong. Even his appearance … Looked like an army officer. Or a country squire. Misleading.’

‘You mean you like Elgar?’

‘Son of a piano tuner with a shop in Worcester. Self-taught. Lived for nine years in Hereford where he employed his daughter’s white rabbit as a consultant because his wife wouldn’t let him have a dog. Kept trying to invent things. Had a home laboratory. Seems to have blown it up, once. What’s not to like?’

Merrily drove a little faster. You slept with someone – albeit rarely for a whole night – and you thought you knew everything about him.

‘And even when he was famous,’ Lol said, ‘he was often mentally, emotionally and spiritually … totally messed up.’

She glanced at him, sitting there with his hands on his knees, watching the dark, burnished landscape. How much common ground was there in the creative landscapes of classical composers and guys who cobbled together, albeit sometimes brilliantly, four-minute songs on their guitars?

‘He smoke?’

Thinking about Hannah and the strong tobacco.

‘Lifelong,’ Lol said.

‘What about women? Did he … like women?’