The Man in the Moss (20 page)

           
She lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed. 'Earl Grey.
Never mind. You should take a rest, Moira. Unravel yourself.'

           
'Maybe I'd rather not see what's inside of me.'

           
The Duchess stirred the tea in the pot, making it
stronger, making the Earl Grey's rich perfume waft out. 'Maybe you should get
away, and when you get back your problems will be in perspective. Go somewhere
bland. St Moritz, Barbados ...'

           
'Jesus, Mammy, how much money you think I'm making?'

           
'Well, England then. Tunbridge Wells or somewhere.'

           
'Tunbridge
Wells
?'

           
'You know what I mean.'

           
'Yeah. You're telling me it's something I'm not gonna get
away from no matter where I go.'
           
'Am I?'

           
'You said there was damage to repair. You think I damaged
Matt Castle?'
           
'Do
you
?'

           
'I don't kn ... No! No, I don't see how I could have.'

           
'That's all right, then,' said the Duchess. She smiled.

           
Moira felt profoundly uneasy. 'Mammy, how was he when he
died? Can you tell me that?'

           
'Moira, you're a grown woman. You know this man's essence
has not returned to the source. I can say no more than that.'

           
Moira felt the weight of her bag on her knees, the bag
with the comb in it. The bag felt twice as heavy as before, like a sack of
stolen bullion.

           
She said in a rush, 'Mammy, somebody was after the comb.
I had to fight for it.'

           
'Yes. That happens. The comb represents a commitment.
Sometimes you have to decide whether or not you want to renew it.'

           
'So it was this struggle which caused ... See, I'm
confused. I feel exhausted, but I feel I made it through to a new level, a new
plateau. But that usually means something heavy's on the way. Well, doesn't
it?'

           
The Duchess blinked. 'How is your father?' she said
brightly. 'Docs he speak of me often?'

She said goodbye to Donald
at the gate and patted the Dobermans. Her old BMW was parked about fifty yards
away near a derelict petrol station. Parked behind it was a car which had not
been there before, a grey Metro with a hire-firm sticker on the rear window.

           
Leaning against the Metro was a man wearing a dinner
jacket over a black t-shirt. On the t-shirt it said in red, I ♥
Govan.
 
The remains of a thistle hung out
of one lapel of the jacket.

           
His face fumbled a grin.
           
'Uh, hi,' he said.

           
Moira was furious.

           
'You followed me! You
fucking
followed me!'

           
'Listen ... Moira ... See, this has been ... Like, this
was the most bizarre, dramatic,
momentous
night of my life, you know?'

           
'So? You've
 
had a
sheltered life. Is that supposed ... ?'
           
'I can't walk away from this.
Am I supposed to like, push it aside, maybe introduce it as an anecdote over
dinner with my associates?'

           
Moira stood with her key in the door of the BMW. She
wanted to say, OK, while you're here maybe you can tell me something about a
tall, pale man with white hair.

           
Instead, she said, 'Macbeth, you shouldn't believe
everything a woman tells you when she's in shock.'

           
'I ... Goddammit, I
saw
.
And I tried to sleep on it and I couldn't, so this morning ...' Mungo Macbeth
looked sheepish and spread his hands ...

           
She gave him a cursory glance intended to wither, fade
him out.
           
'I figured maybe you could use
some help,' he said.

           
OK,' she said. 'You see those gates? Behind those gates
is a guy with two huge and ferocious dogs. The dogs'll do anything the guy says
... And the guy - he'll do anything I say. You got the message?'

           
'Couldn't we go someplace? Get a bite to eat?'
           
'No, we could not.' Moira
opened the driver's door of the BMW and got in, wound down the window. 'You
think I need a strong male shoulder to lean on, that it? Or maybe a bedpost?'

           
Macbeth said helplessly, 'I just think ... I just think
you're an amazing person.'

           
'Macbeth ..." She sighed. 'Just go away, huh?'
           
He nodded, expressionless,
turned back to his hire car. He looked like he might cry.
           
This was ridiculous.

           
'Hey, Macbeth . .
   
Moira leaned back out of the window, nodded at his T-shirt. 'You ever
actually been to Govan?'

           
'Aw, hell ...' Macbeth shrugged. 'I cruised most of those
Western Isles. Just don't recall which is which.'

           
Moira found a grin, or the grin found her. Hurriedly, she
put the car into gear, drove away, and when she looked back there was only a
bus, a long way behind.

From
Dawber's Book of Bridelow.

THE BREWERY

Fine beers have been brewed
in the Bridelow area since time immemorial, the most famous being the
almost-black Bridelow Bitter.

                       
This, or something similar, was first
produced commercially, on an relatively small scale, by Elsie Berry and her
sons in the late seventeenth century, using a species of aromatic bog-myrtle as
a preservative. The Berry family began by providing ale for the Bridelow pub.
The Man I'th Moss, but demand grew swiftly in communities up to fifteen miles
away.

                       
The Bridelow Brewery as we know it today was
founded in the early nineteenth century by Thomas Horridge, a businessman from
Chesterfield who bought out the Berry Family and whose enterprise was to
provide employment for many generations of Bridelow folk. He at once began work
on the construction of the first proper road across the Moss to facilitate the
movement of his brewery wagons.

                       
Descendants of Thomas Horridge continued to
develop the industry, and the family became Bridelow's greatest benefactors,
building the village hall, enabling major repairs to be carried out to the
ancient church and continuing to facilitate new housing as recently as the
1950s.

                       
However ...

CHAPTER VIII

In the bar at The Man I'th
Moss, lunchtime, Young Frank Manifold said, in disgust, 'Bloody gnat's piss!'

           
And angrily pushed his glass away.
           
'I'll have draught Bass next
time,' Young Frank said. Never thought I'd be saying that in this pub.
Never
.'

           
'Eh, tha's just bitter, lad.' said Frank Manifold Snr,
who preferred Scotch anyway. 'Tha's a right to feel bitter, mind, I'm not
saying tha's not... Know what they've done, now, Ernie? Only paid off our
drivers and replaced um wi' their own blokes.'

           
'Ken and Peter?'

           
'Paid off! Cut down lorries from five to two - bigger
uns, like. Needed experienced HGV drivers,
they
reckoned. Makes you spit.'

           
Ernie, who also was on whisky, had a sip out of Young
Frank's beer glass. 'Lad's right, I'm afraid,' he said. 'It's gone off.'

           
'Well, thank you!' Young Frank said devoutly. 'Thank you
very much, Mr Dawber.'

           
'Only just don't go shouting it around the place,' Ernie
muttered. 'Lottie's got to sell the stuff and she's enough problems.'

           
'No, she doesn't,' said Young Frank, back-row smart-arse
in Ernie's top class fourteen years ago. 'Doesn't have to sell it at all no
more. Free house, int it?'

           
Lottie wasn't here this lunchtime. Stan Burrows, who'd
also been made redundant from the brewery, was minding the bar. Stan said, 'I
heard as how Gannons was kicking up, claiming they'd been sabotaged, not given
proper recipe, like. Threatening legal action, what I heard.'

           
'Balls,' said Young Frank, glaring at his discarded
glass. 'They don't give a shit.'

           
Ernie Dawber, on his usual stool at the end of the bar,
by the telephone, pondered this. The way he saw it, there was no way the
Horridge family could have got away with not providing Gannons with the correct
recipe. And why should they want to, with Shaw Horridge on the Board?

           
Yet it was a fact. Since the brewery had been taken over,
the stuff had been slowly shedding its distinctive flavour.
           
Surprising, because it was
well known that Gannons, whose bestselling product was a fizzy lager with a
German name produced down Matlock way, had been anxious for some time to
acquire their own genuine, old-established Real Ale - and would therefore be
expected to treat Bridelow beer with more than a modicum of respect.

           
Ernie decided he'd better go up to the Hall one night and
have a bit of a chat with Shaw Horridge or his mother. Bridelow Black Bitter
had a reputation. Even if the brewery was in new hands, even if there'd been
this swingeing 'rationalization', which meant firing half the lads, it was
still Bridelow beer.
           
Gnat's piss! By 'eck, he'd
never thought to hear that.

When his daughter rang from
Oxford, in the early afternoon, the Rector barely made it to the phone in time.

           
'Were you in the garden?' Catherine asked him
suspiciously, and Hans didn't deny it. It had taken him almost a minute to
hobble from the kitchen to the study.

           
Pointless, however, trying to conceal anything from
Cathy. 'How's the knee?' she demanded at once and with a certain menace.

           
'Oh,' Hans said, as airily as he could manage with
clenched teeth. 'Could be worse, you know.'

           
'I've no doubt that it could, Pop. But worse than what is
what
I'd like to know.'

           
Hans tried to keep from screaming out loud as he fell
into the window chair, pulling the phone on to his knees.

           
Cathy said, 'I don't suppose you'd even tell me if you'd
had to have a Zimmer frame screwed into the back of the pulpit.'

           
The still-aggressive sun, having gouged chunks out of the
church wall, began to attack the study window, and when the Rector twisted away
from it, his left knee felt like a slab of volcanic rock with a core of molten
lava.

           
'Well, actually,' he said, abandoning pretence with a
sigh, 'it couldn't be a
lot
worse.'

           
'That's it,' his daughter said. 'I'm on my way. Pop.
Expect me for supper.'

           
'No, no, no. Your studies ... whatever they are.'

           
Cathy said crisply, 'In a post-graduate situation, as I
keep explaining, you get a fair bit of leeway. I'm coming up.'

           
'No. Listen. You don't understand.' Raising his voice,
trying to shout down the pain as much as her. 'I'm getting a lot of help. The
Mothers' Union ... terribly kind, and ... look, when I need you, I promise I'll
be in touch. You know I will.'

           
He swallowed a great slab of breath and bit his tongue,
jamming his palm over the mouthpiece just in time. Change the subject. Talk
about something else. 'Erm, Matt Castle ... Poor Matt died on Sunday night.'

           
'Oh, no.'

           
'It was a mercy, Catherine.'

           
'Yes, I suppose it would be. Did ... ?'