Remains of an Altar

machine.

‘If that’s Mrs Watkins,’ a woman said, ‘Mr Khan said to tell you he’ll be at the Royal Oak for the rest of the day. He says if you can spare the time he’d like to see you.’

38 Local Democracy

Jane had found Redmarley D’Abitot church on the OS map, ringing it in pencil.

‘This is interesting. Look…’

‘One second…’

Lol peered around the curtain. Mid-afternoon, and the tourists were out on Church Street, the camera-hung carousel with its tape-loop of soundbite conversations. Only today, some of the visitors would be media and they knew, from the Guardian, what Jane Watkins looked like.

‘Go on…’

He polished his glasses on his T-shirt, put them back on to examine the map folded on the desk. Redmarley, on the other side of the M50 motorway, just over the Gloucestershire border, was almost due south of the Malvern range.

‘I know I’m obsessed with leys at the moment,’ Jane said. ‘But it’s almost like there is one, going up from Redmarley, interlinking the three counties, the full length of the Malverns. See?’

Jane had drawn in the line. It wasn’t connecting ancient sites as much as hilltops. Lol counted five: Midsummer Hill, Hangman’s Hill, Pinnacle Hill, Perseverance Hill, North Hill.

‘And look at this…’

She’d also marked the two major Iron Age hill forts, Herefordshire Beacon and Worcestershire Beacon. But the line didn’t go through the middle of either – it skirted the first to the right and the second to the left.

‘That’s not a problem, it’s how it seems to work,’ Jane said. ‘Alfred Watkins noticed that leys almost always cut along the edge of a hill fort rather than through the middle. If you look on the map, it’s the same with Cole Hill – although when you’re actually on the line it looks as if you’re looking directly towards the summit.’

‘What does that mean?’ Lol said. ‘Cutting to the sides.’

‘Simple. Iron Age people lived in the middle of those hill forts. There were huts and things. You don’t want powerful spiritual energy in your actual home, do you? You’d go slowly insane with the intensity of it. So you live to the side of the ley. Churches built on sites of ritual worship are something else, obviously.’

‘Being places you actually go to for a spiritual buzz?’

‘Uh-huh. So Redmarley Church is right on the line. Now, the other church where they had a choir going, Little Malvern Priory, that’s not on the great north–south ley. It is on a ley, though, another one that’s cutting left to right, across the north–south line. Now here’s Wychehill…’

‘Where the two lines cross.’

‘Cool, huh?’

‘You may be on to something here,’ Lol said. ‘I just wish I knew what.’

‘We’re looking at a whole range of holy hills. That would make this a massively important area, geopsychically.’

She looked up at Lol and sighed softly.

‘You know, I love this. It reinforces your sense of … I dunno … Like, you just put your pencil on the map, and it’s like the choir guy said, you’re suddenly at the centre of something immense. Almost like you’re making a personal connection with…’ Jane shook her head rapidly ‘… bollocks.’

‘Maybe all great ideas start off as bollocks,’ Lol said. ‘It’s the way—’

‘Oh hell, who’s this?’

Jane snatched a quick glance around the curtain and then moved away from the window, her head down. Someone was knocking on the front door.

‘Go upstairs,’ Lol said.

‘Mr Robinson, is it? Sorry to bother you, but I understood you might know where the vicar is.’

He was wearing a suit and a wine-coloured tie which – first thing Lol noticed – matched his plump lips. Swaying a little, rattling small change and keys in his pockets. It seemed so not his generation, rattling your keys. He couldn’t be more than thirty.

‘Sorry,’ Lol said. ‘I’m not really sure where she is. Her work takes her all over the diocese.’

‘Daughter with her, do you know?’

‘Wouldn’t imagine so. It’s, um, Mr Pierce, isn’t it?’

‘Lyndon Pierce, that’s right.’ Gelled hair glinting in the sunlight like the roof of a black cab. ‘Sure we must’ve met sometime or other. Been trying to get around to see all the newcomers to the village, one by one.’

‘I’ve been here a few years now, actually,’ Lol said. ‘You probably didn’t notice me. Is there … anything I can do? Any message I can pass on?’

‘That’s very possible, Mr Robinson, yes.’

Lyndon Pierce’s local accent seemed to have acquired a transatlantic roll. He glanced meaningfully over his shoulder at a Japanese dad photographing his family on the edge of the square.

‘You want to come in?’ Lol said.

‘Thank you.’ Pierce rubbed his hands. ‘Won’t keep you a minute, Mr Robinson, but there are some things that I think Mrs Watkins should know about, if you happen to be in … contact with her.’

Letting him into the living room, Lol felt unexpectedly nervous. The guy represented aspects of life he’d avoided: never needed to consult a local councillor, never earned enough to need an accountant.

Pierce was standing on the hearthrug, taking in the orange ceiling that Jane had recommended, the crystals that Jane had positioned in the window, the Boswell guitar. No doubt thinking, neo- hippie.

‘Lot of people’re looking for Mrs Watkins today, Mr Robinson. And … Jane, of course. Girl seems to have started something she’ll likely live to regret. Her mother, too, mabbe.’

He must have figured, from the contents of the room, that the chances of ever getting the occupant’s vote were remote enough for him to skip the niceties.

‘Unfortunate, but people do tend to blame the parents for the behaviour of the child, don’t they, Mr Robinson?’

‘You’d call Jane a child?’

The door to the hall and the stairs was not quite closed. Please don’t let her be behind it.

‘Likely not to her face.’ Lyndon Pierce laughed. ‘Look, all right, Mr Robinson, I’ll come directly to the point. We got quite a serious problem yere. I was phoned up a few hours ago by Gerry Murray – owner of Coleman’s Meadow? Not a happy man, as you can imagine. I went to check out the situation for myself and then I gave him my suggestion, which was to get the police in.’

Lol blinked. ‘To arrest Jane?’

‘I’m sure a lot of folk would think that wasn’t a bad idea, actually, Laurence.’

Using Laurence now, in the power-trip way of young policemen when they pulled you over for speeding.

‘I’m sorry, Lyndon,’ Lol said. ‘I don’t get out much. Something’s happening in Coleman’s Meadow?’

Pierce sniffed. ‘All look the same to me – green activists, animal liberationists, ragbag of scruffs from God knows where. They say it’s a demonstration … we might consider it threatening behaviour.’

‘You mean … there’s a protest?’ Lol was fighting a smile. ‘About the ley line?’