The Man in the Moss (3 page)

Part One

From
Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

INTRODUCTION

                       
This little book bids you, the visitor, a
cordial welcome to
 
Bridelow Across the
Moss, a site of habitation for over two thousand years and the home of the
famous Bridelow Black Beer.

                       
Bridelow folk would never be so immodest as
to describe their tiny, lonely village as unique. But unique it is, both in situation
and character.

                       
Although little more than half an hour's
drive from the cities of Manchester and Sheffield, the village is huddled in isolation
between the South Pennine moors and the vast peatbog known as Bridelow Moss. So
tucked away, as the local saying goes, 'It's a wonder the sun knows where to come
of a morning ...'

A spring morning. A
hesitant sun edging over the
moor
out of a mist pale as milk. Only when it clears
the church tower does the sun find a few patches of blue to set it off, give it
a bit of confidence.

           
The sun hovers a while, blinking in and out of the sparse
shreds of cloud before making its way down the village street, past the cottage
where Ma Wagstaff lives,
bluetits
breakfasting from the peanuts in two mesh
bags dangling from the rowan trees in the little front garden.

           
The cats, Bob and Jim, sitting together on Ma's front
step - donkeystoned to a full-moon whiteness - observe the bluetits through
narrowed green eyes but resist their instincts because Ma will be about soon.

           
And while Ma understands their instincts all too well,
she does not appreciate blood on her step.

Milly Gill, shedding her
cardigan at the Post Office door, thought the mist this morning was almost like
a summer heat-haze, which wasn't bad for the second week in March.

           
It made Milly feel excited, somewhere deep inside her
majestic bosom. It made her feel so energetic that she wanted to wander off for
long walks, to fill up her reservoirs after the winter. And to go and see the
Little Man. See what he had in
his
reservoir.

           
And of course it made her feel creative, too. Tonight
she'd be pulling out that big sketch pad and the coloured pencils and getting
to work on this year's design to be done in flowers for the dressing of the
Holy Well. It was, she decided, going to reflect everything she could sense
about her this morning.

           
Milly Gill thought, I'm forty-nine and I feel like a
little girl.

           
This was what the promise of spring was supposed to do.

           
'Thank you. Mother,' Milly said aloud, with a big,
innocent grin. 'And you too, sir!'

           
The Moss, a vast bed, hangs on to its damp duvet as usual
until the sun is almost overhead. Behind temporary traffic-lights, about half a
mile from the village, a Highways Authority crew is at work, widening the road
which crosses the peat, a long-overdue improvement, although not everybody is
in favour of improving access to the village.

           
It's close to midday before the foreman decides it's warm
enough to strip to the waist.

           
This is the man who finds the chocolate corpse.

The splendour of the
morning dimmed a little for the Rector when, on getting out of bed, he felt a
twinge.

           
It was, as more often than not, in the area of his left
knee. 'We really must get you a plastic one,' the doctor had said last time. 'I
should think the pain's pretty awful, isn't it?'

           
'Oh.' The Rector flexing his creased-up Walter Matthau
semi-smile. 'Could be worse.' Then the. doctor ruefully shaking his head,
making a joke about the Rector being determined to join the league of Holy
Martyrs.

           
'I was thinking of joining the squash club, actually,'
the Rector had said, and they'd both laughed and wondered how he was managing
to keep this up.

           
The answer to this was Ma Wagstaff's mixture.

           
Standing by the window of his study, with sunshine strewn
all over the carpet, pleasant around his bare feet, the Rector balanced a
brimming teaspoonful of Ma's mixture, and his eyes glazed briefly at the horror
of the stuff.

           
It looked like green frogspawn. He knew it was going to
make his throat feel nostalgic for castor oil.

           
The bottle, as usual, was brown and semi-opaque so he
wouldn't have to see the sinister strands and tendrils waving about in there
like weed on the bottom of an aquarium.
           
But still, it worked.

           
Not a 'miracle' cure, of course. Ma Wagstaff, who
promised nothing, would have been shocked at any such suggestion.
           
'Might just ease it a bit,'
she'd say gruffly, leaving the bottle on his hall table, by the phone.

           
Through the study window the Rector saw sun-dappled
gravestones and the great Norman tower of St Bride's.

           
He rubbed his feet into the sunshiny carpet, raised his
eyes to heaven, the spoon to his lips, and swallowed.

Out on the Moss, the
foreman stands in the middle of the trench, in front of the JCB, waving his
arms until the driver halts the big digger and sticks his head inquiringly
round the side of the cab.

           
"Owd on a bit, Jason. I've found summat.'

           
The trench, at this point, is about five feet deep.

           
'If it's money,' says the JCB driver, 'just pass it up
'ere and I'll hide it under t'seat.'

'Well,' said Mr Dawber. 'as
it's such a lovely day, we'd best be thinking about the spring. Now - think
back to last year - what does
that
mean?'

           
Some of them had the good manners to put their hands up,
but two little lads at the back just shouted it out.

           
'THE SPRING CROSS!'

           
Mr Dawber didn't make an issue of it. 'Aye,' he said.
'The Spring Cross.' And the two troublemakers at the back cheered at that
because it would get them out of the classroom, into the wood and on to the
moors.

           
'So,' said Mr Dawber. 'Who can tell me what we'll be looking
for to put in the Spring Cross?'

           
The hands went up as fast and rigid as old-fashioned
railway signals. Ernie Dawber looked around, singled out a little girl.
           
'Yes ... Meryl.'
           
'Catkins!'

           
'Aye, that's right, catkins. What else? Sebastian.'
           
'Pussy willows!'
           
'Ye-es. What else? Benjamin.'
           
'Acorns?'

           
They all had a good cackle at this. Benjamin was the
smallest child in the class and had the air of one who found life endlessly
confusing. Ernie Dawber sympathized. He'd always reckoned that the day he
retired he'd be able to sit back, job well enough done, and start to understand
a few basics. But everything had just got hazier.

           
With them all looking at him, giggling and nudging each
other, Benjamin seemed to get even smaller. Mr Dawber had a little deliberation
about this while the class was settling down.

           
'Now then ...' he said thoughtfully. 'Who can tell me
when we find acorns?'

           
'AUTUMN!' four or five of the cleverer ones chorused
scornfully.

           
'That's right. So, what I'm going to do - and don't forget
to remind me when the times comes, lad - I'm going to put Benjamin, because he
knows all about acorns ... in charge of making the
Autumn
Cross.'

           
The clever ones looked aghast, unable to find any justice
in this, and Ernie Dawber smiled to see it. Corning in just a few hours a week,
to teach the children about nature, at least gave him more time to consider the
psychology of the job.

           
'Now then.' He clapped his hands to change the mood.
           
'What else do we need for the
Spring Cross? Tom.'

           
'Birds' eggs.'

           
Mr Dawber's voice dropped an octave.

           
'We most certainly do
not
take birds' eggs to put into the Spring Cross, or for any other reason, Thomas
Garside. And if it comes to my notice that any of you nave disturbed any nests
there's going to be TROUBLE.'

           
There was silence.

           
'And don't anybody think I won't find out about it,' said
Mr Dawber.

           
And they knew he would, because, one way or another, Mr
Dawber found out about
everything
.
And if it was important enough he put it in
The
Book of Bridelow
.

The foreman tells the JCB
driver to switch his engine off. His voice is shaking.

           
'Come down a minute, Jason. Come and take a look at
this.'

The driver, a younger man,
swings, loose-limbed, to the ground. His boots shudder on the surface of the
Moss. 'What you got?'

           
'I'm not sure.' The foreman seems reluctant to go back in
the trench.

           
The driver grinning, shambling over to the pit and
balancing expertly on the rim. Can't make it out at first. Looks like a giant
bar of dark chocolate.

           
Then, while the foreman is attempting to light a
cigarette and nervously scattering matches over the peat, the driver suddenly
realises what he's staring at, and, when the thought lurches into his head,
it's eerily echoed by the foreman's fractured croak.

           
'Looks like a dead 'un to me, Jason.'

           
The driver falls over backwards trying not to topple into
the trench.

Just Eliza Horridge and
Shaw now, and the drawing room at The Hall was too big.