The Man in the Moss (17 page)

           
'I'm really only going down there,' Roger said, 'to make
sure we get all the stomach returned. Don't want them trying to pinch him back,
bit by bit.'
           
Shut up! Just shut up about that fucking thing!
           
'Don't worry about it, Roger.
Just drive carefully.'
           
As the Volvo slid away past
the Exit Southbound sign, two commercial traveller types came out to their twin
Cavaliers and gave her the once-over. Chrissie found herself smiling almost
warmly at the younger one. It would be two years in January since her divorce.

           
She got into her Golf. She looked at her face in the
driving-mirror and decided it could probably take a couple more years of this
sort of thing before she ought to start looking for
something ... well, perhaps
semi
-permanent.

           
Sadly, Roger's marriage was now in no danger whatsoever.
Not from her, anyway.

           
All the trouble he'd gone to to deceive his wife. Was
that for her? Was that really all for her? And then he couldn't do it. Because
of 'tension'.

           
She imagined him driving like the clappers to London,
where he was supposed to have spent the night, and then driving determinedly
back with the bogman's peaty giblets in a metal samples case.

           
There was his real love. And there was more to it

           
Alter the way he'd been talking last night, she'd half
expected to wake up in the early hours to find him all wet and clammy and
moaning in his sleep about lumps of the stuff in the bed.

           
But that hadn't happened either. Indeed, the only thing
to remind her of soft, clammy peat was the consistency of Roger's dick.

           
Chrissie got out of the motel compound by the service
entrance and drove to work.
           
Not to worry.

Later that morning, little
Willie Wagstaff went to see his mother in her end-of-terrace cottage across
from the post office.

           
'Need to find a job now, then,' the old girl said sternly
before he'd even managed to clear himself a space on the settee. Ma was
practical; no time for sentiment. Dead was dead. Matt Castle was dead; no
living for Willie playing the drums on his own.

           
'Can't do owt yet,' Willie said. "Sides, there's no
work about.'

           
'Always work,' said Ma, 'for them as has a mind to find
it.'

           
Willie grinned. Rather than see him relax for a while, Ma
would have him commuting to Huddersfield or Chorlton-cum- Hardy to clean
lavatories or sweep the streets.

           
'Devil makes work for idle hands,' she said. Her as ought
to know - half the village reckoned she'd been in league with the bugger for
years.

           
'Aye, well, I've been over to see Lottie this morning.'
           
'Oh aye? Relieved, was she?
Looking better?'
           
'Ma!'

           
'Grief's one thing, our Willie, hypocrisy's summat else.
She's done her grieving, that one.'

           
'I've to tell you ...' Willie's fingers were off ... dum,
dum de-dum, side of his knees.

           
Ma's eyes narrowed. Her hair was tied up in a bun with
half a knitting-needle shoved up it.

           
'Er ...' Dum, dum, dum-di-di, dum-di-di...
           
'Gerrit out!' Ma squawked.

           
'No messing about,' Willie mumbled quickly. 'Lottie says,
none of that.'

           
'What's that mean?' Making him say it.
           
'Well, like ... well,
naturally he'll be buried in t'churchyard. First one. First one since ...' His
fingers finding a different, more complicated rhythm. 'What I'm saying, Ma, is,
do we have to ... ? Does it have to be Matt?'

           
Ma scowled. She had a face like an over-ripe quince. She
wore an old brown knee-length cardigan over a blue boiler-suit, her working
clothes. The two cats, one black, one white, sat side-by-side on the hearth,
still as china. Bob and Jim. Willie reckoned they must be the fourth or fifth
generation of Ma's cats called Bob and Jim, and all females.

           
Willie liked his mother's cottage. Nothing changed.
Bottles of stuff everywhere. On the table an evil-looking root was rotting
inside a glass jar, producing a fluid as thick as Castrol.
           
Comfrey - known as knitbone.
And if it didn't knit your bones at least it'd stop your back gate from
squeaking.

           
'Rector come round,' Ma told him. 'Said was I sure I'd
given him right stuff for his arthritis.'

           
'Bloody hell,' said Willie. 'Chancing his arm there.'
           
'No, he were right,' said Ma
surprisingly. 'It's not working. Never happened before, that hasn't. Never not
worked, that arthritis mixture. Leastways, it's always done summat.'

           
She reached down to the hearth, picked up an old brown
medicine bottle with a cork in it; Ma didn't believe in screw tops.
'Full-strength too. Last summer's.'

           
Willy smiled slyly. 'Losing thi touch, Ma?'
           
'Now, don't you say that!' His
mother pointing a forefinger stiff as a clothes-peg. Think what you want, but
don't you go saying it. It's not lucky.'
           
'Aye. I'm sorry.'
           
'Still...' She squinted into
the bottle then put it back on the hearth behind Bob or Jim. 'You're not
altogether wrong, for once.'

           
'Nay.' Willie shook his head. 'Shouldn't've said it. Just
come out, like.'

           
'I'm not what I was.'

           
'Well, what d'you expect? You're eighty ... three? Six?'
           
'
That's
not what I'm saying, son.'
           
Ma's brown eyes were calm. She
still didn't need glasses, and her eyes did wonderful things. In Manchester, of
a Saturday, all dolled up, she could still summon a waitress in the café
 
with them eyes, even when the waitress had
her back turned. And Willie had once seen this right vicious-looking
street-gang part clean down the middle to let her through; Ma had sent the eyes
in first.

           
But now the eyes were oddly calm. Accepting. Worrying,
that. Never been what you might call an accepter, hadn't Ma.

           
'None of us is what we was this time last year,' Ma said.
           
'Ever since yon bogman were
took ...'

           
'Oh, no, Willie stood up. 'Not again. You start on about
that bogman and I'm off.'

           
'Don't be so daft. You know I'm right, our Willie. Look
at yer fingers, drummin' away, plonk, plonk. Always was a giveaway, yer
fingers.'

           
'Nay,' Willie said uncomfortably, wishing he hadn't come.
           
'I'm telling you, we're not
protected same as we was.' Ma Wagstaff stopped rocking. 'Sit down. Get your bum
back on that couch a minute.'

           
Willie sat. He was suddenly aware of how dim it was in
the parlour, despite all the sunlight, and how small it was. And how little and
wizened Ma appeared. It was like looking at an old sepia photo from Victorian
times. Hard to imagine this was the fiery-eyed old woman who'd blowtorched a
path through a bunch of Moss Side yobboes.

           
'We've bin protected in this village,' Ma said. 'You know
that.'

           
'I suppose so.'

           
'We're very old-established, y'see. Very old-established
indeed.'

           
Well, this was true. And the family itself was
old-established in Bridelow, at least on Ma's side. Dad had come from Oldham to
work at the brewery, but Ma and her ma and her ma's ma ... well, that was how
it seemed to go back, through the women.

           
'But we've let it go,' Ma said.

           
Willy remembered how upset she'd been when her
grand-daughter, his sister's lass, had gone to college in London. Manchester or
Sheffield would've been acceptable, but London

 
...It's
too far ... ties'll be broken. She'll not come back, that one ...

           
He said, 'Let it go?'

           
Ma Wagstaff leaned back in the rocking-chair, closing her
eyes. 'Aye,' she said sadly. 'You say as you don't want to hear this, Willie,
but you're goin' t'ave to, sooner or later. You're like all the rest of um. If
it's up on t'moor, or out on t'Moss, it's nowt to do wi' us. Can't do us no
harm. Well, it can now, see, I'm telling thee.'

           
All eight of Willie's fingers started working on his
knees.

           
Ma said, 'They're looking for openings. Looking for
cracks in t'wall. Been gathering out there for years, hundreds of years.'

           
'What you on about, Ma?' .
           
'Different uns, like,' Ma
said. 'Not
same
uns, obviously.
           
'Yobboes,' Willie said
dismissively, realising what she meant. 'Bloody hooligans. Always been yobboes
and hooligans out there maulin' wi' them owd circles. Means nowt. Except to
farmers, like. Bit of a bugger for farmers.'

           
'Eh ...' Ma was scornful. 'Farmers loses more sheep to
foxes. That's not what I'm saying.'

           
Her eyes popped open, giving him a shock because there
was no peace in them now, no acceptance. All of a sudden they looked just like
the little white marbles Willie had collected as a lad, shot through with the
same veins of pure, bright red.

           
She stabbed a finger at him again. 'I can tell um,
y'know. Couldn't always ... Aye. Less said about
that...
'

           
Willie's own fingers stumbled out of rhythm, the tips
gone numb. 'Now, don't upset yourself.'

           
'But there's one now,' Ma said, one hand clutching an arm
of the rocking-chair like a parrot's claw on a perch. 'Comes and goes, like an
infection. Looking for an opening ...'

           
'Shurrup, Ma, will you. Whatever it is, Lottie doesn't
want...'

           
'Listen,' Ma said without hesitation. 'You tell that
Lottie to come and see me. Tell her to come tomorrow, I'm a bit busy now. Tell
her I'll talk to her about it. Just like we talked to Matt. Matt knew what had
to happen. Matt were chuffed as a butty.'

           
'Aye.' Matt and his mate, the bogman. Together at last.

           
'Only we've got to protect the lad,' Ma said.

           
'I don't like any of this. Ma. Lottie'll go spare.'
           
'Well, look.' Ma was on her
feet, sprightly as a ten-year-old, moving bottles on the shelf. 'Give her
this.'
           
'What is it?'
           
Daft question.

           
'Aye.' Accepting the little brown bottle. 'All right,
then, I'll give it her. Tell her it'll calm her down. Make her feel better. But
I'll not tell you're going ahead with ...' Willie gave his knee a couple of
climactic thumps. 'No way.'

           
He didn't tell Ma what Lottie had said about them
finishing Matt's bogman song-cycle. Because, when it came down to it, he didn't
like the thought of that himself. And he had a pretty good idea how Ma would
react.

           
I warned him not to meddle with stuff he knows nowt
about, she'd say. And I don't expect to have to warn me own son.

           
So, in a way, Willie was hoping Lottie would have
forgotten about the whole thing by the time the funeral was over.

           
A funeral which, if she'd any sense, she'd be attending
with a very thick veil over her eyes.

CHAPTER
VII

The man with two Dobermans
prowling the inside of the wire mesh perimeter fence was clearly too old to be
a security guard. His appallingly stained trousers were held up by a dressing-gown
cord with dirty gold tassels; a thinner golden cord was draped around the crown
of his tattered trilby.

           
However, the dogs looked menacing enough, and when the
man flung open the metal gate, they sprang.