The Man in the Moss (33 page)

           
When they heard the warble of the ambulance, Hans grabbed
hold of Ernie's wrist and began to talk. 'I've buggered things, Ernie.'

           
'Don't be daft. Don't worry about Joel. This time next
week he'll think it was all a bad dream.'
           
The Rector's dry face
puckered.

           
'Don't think so? Oh, aye. Folk do, y'know. Things heal
quick in Brid'lo. The thing about it ... and I've been thinking about this a
lot - and writing it down. Started a book - don't say owt about it, God's sake
- Dawber's
secret Book of Bridelow.
Not
for publication, like, Ma Wagstaff'd have a fit ... just to bring all the
strands together, reason it out for meself...'

           
'No, look ...' Hans blinked hard.

           
'No, the thing about Bridelow ... it's so
prosaic
. Know what I mean? Not
sensational. No dressing up ... or dressing down, for that matter. Nowt to make
a picture spread in the
News of the World
.
Joel? Nobody'd believe him, would they? You think about it.'

           
He patted the Rector's hand. 'No, better still,
don't
think about it. Get yourself a bit
of a rest.
I'll
handle things.
Brid'lo born, Brid'lo bred. Leave it to Uncle Ernie.'

           
This had been his forte as a headmaster. Getting the kids
to trust him. Even when he hadn't the foggiest idea what he was doing.

           
As the ambulance men crunched up the path, Hans said,
'Shurrup, you old fool and listen. It's Joel.'
           
'Like I said, we'll handle
him.'

           
'No. You don't understand. Know where he's ... where he's
going to spend the night. Do you?'

           
'Back in Sheffield if he's got any sense.'

           
'No. He's ... made up a bed. Little cellar under the
church. Ernie ... Don't let him. Not now. Not after this.'

           
'Oh,' said Ernie. 'By 'eck. You spent a night down there
once, didn't you?'

CHAPTER
VII

GLASGOW

She told him that not only
had she never eaten here, she'd never even been inside the joint before. And
he, having stayed in better hotels most of his life, felt - as usual - like an
over privileged asshole.

           
She had the grouse, first time for that too. (Didn't
Scots eat grouse on a regular basis, like Eskimos and seal meat?) He joined
her, a new experience for him also. The grouse wasn't so great, as well as
which, it looked like a real bird, which made him feel guilty.

           
Afterwards, looking up from the sweet trolley, she said,
'I suppose you'll be wanting your pound of flesh, then.'

           
'Aw, come on, Fiona. I can buy a girl dinner without the
question of flesh coming into it.'

           
'I should be so lucky.' She smiled enticingly. 'I was
referring to Moira. You'll want to know about Moira.'

           
'Well,' he said, 'yeah. But only if this isn't gonna get
you into any kind of, uh ...'

           
'Shit?' said Fiona. 'I don't think so. I see all Mr
Kaufmann's receipts, he never comes here. Anyway, it's nice to live dangerously
for a change. I bet you live your whole life dangerously.'

           
'Me?' For one and a half years after leaving college he'd
been a trainee assistant director. The very next day he was an executive
producer. Mom's company. 'Uh, well, not so's you'd notice.'

           
'You do
look
kind of dangerous, Mungo.'
           
'Looks can be deceptive.' Last
thing he planned was to seduce this one.

           
'Irish,' she said. 'You look Irish, somehow.'
           
'So people keep telling me.'

           
'Mungo,' she said. 'Aw, hey, that's really incredible.
Mungo Macbeth.'

           
'Of the Manhattan Macbeths. My Mom's real proud of that.'
Giving her the condensed autobiography. 'From being a small kid, I learned how
the actual King Macbeth was really a good guy whose name was unjustly blackened
by this English hack playwright.'

           
'That's true, actually,' Fiona said. 'He wisny a bad
guy.'
           
'I'm told they also used to
play pipe-band records to me in my cradle,' Macbeth said, screwing up his nose.
'But that made me cry, so they hired this genuine Scottish nanny, used to sing
me Gaelic lullabies. That part I remember. That was great. That was how I got
into the music'

           
'My dad used to sing me Tom Jones,' Fiona said glumly.'
"The Green Green Grass of Home".
Not
so great.'

           
'
My
dad never
got to sing me anything,' Macbeth said. 'He didn't last that long. He was kind
of jettisoned by my mother's family before I was born.
They
are the Macbeths. My dad's name was Smith. I mean, Smith?
Forget it. So, anyhow, this trip came up, she said. Go ... go feel the true
power of your Celtic heritage.'
           
'You feeling it?'

           
'I'm feeling a jerk is what I'm feeling. I won't say she
was expecting a delegation from the clan Macbeth to turn out for me at the
airport in full Highland costume, but you get the general picture.'

           
'Out of interest, have you actually seen anybody in a
kilt since you got here? Apart from at the Earl's do?'

           
'Nope.'

           
'So what'll you tell her when you get home? Hey, would it
be OK for me to have the profiteroles?'

           
'And just a coffee for me,' he said to the waiter. 'Make
that two - I'll wait. What do I tell Mom? I'll say I had a peculiarly Celtic
experience. I'll say it was too deep and personal to talk about.'

           
'Oh, wow,' Fiona said, rolling her big eyes. Problem was
that tonight she didn't look eighteen any more. She was in a tight red dress -
well, some of her was in it. Macbeth thought hard about Moira Cairns to take
his mind off this comparatively minor but far from discountable temptation.

           
'I'll tell her I met a real witch,' he said. 'One of the
weird sisters.'

           
'Aw, she's no' a witch,' Fiona said scornfully.
           
'No? What is she?'

           
'She's what my granny used to call
fey
. OK, maybe a bit more than that. Like, one day she was very
annoyed with Mr Kaufmann ... I mean she's usually
quite
annoyed with him but this was something ... Anyway, here they
are, raging away at each other, and she's about to storm out the door and then
she just turns round, like she's gonny say something else, only she canny find
the words. And
then
... one of the
damn filing cabinets starts to shake and ... I'm no' kidd'n' here ... all four
drawers come shoot'n' out at once. Really incredible. Awesome silence
afterwards.'

           
'Coulda been an earth tremor.'

           
'That was what Mr Kaufmann said. But he still went all
white, y'know? I mean, that filing cabinet was locked, I'm certain it was.'

           
'I can sympathize.' Macbeth shuddered, his mind making a
white skull out of the tureen on an adjacent table. 'Listen, Fiona, I'm a
little shaky on Moira's early career. She was at college in Manchester which is
where she joined this local band, right?'

           
'Matt Castle's band. Matt Castle just died.'

           
'Oh, shit, really?' Remembering something mindlessly
insulting he'd said about Matt Castle just after they met. What a shithead. A
wonder she spoke to him at all after that.

           
The waiter brought Fiona's profiteroles. 'Hey, great,'
Fiona said. 'So then she was approached about joining this rock band. Offered a
lot of money, big money even for the time, to make two albums.'

           
'The Philosopher's Stone,' Macbeth said. 'But they only
made one album.'

           
'Right. She split before they could get around to the
second one. But, see, the word is that the reason they wanted her, apart from
her voice, was that ... You remember Max Goff, who owned Epidemic Records?'

           
'He was murdered, year or so ago. Some psychopath kid
with a grudge.'

           
'Right,' Fiona said.

           
'I didn't know she was with his outfit. It was CBS put
out the album in the States.'

           
'Well, the word
is,
Mungo .. .' Fiona leaned conspiratorially across the table, '... that the real
reason Max Goff wanted her in the band was he'd heard she was psychic. He was
very into all that. Like, he already had a couple of guys signed to Epidemic
who were also psychics and he wanted to put them all together in a band, see
what happened. Of course Moira didny know this, she thought the guy just liked
the way she sang, right?'

           
'And what happened? I mean, that first album, that was
terrific. I wore mine out.'

           
'Aye, but it all got very heavy, with drugs and stuff,
and Moira broke her contract, came back to Scotland, went solo. Signed up with
Mr Kaufmann, who's... well, he's no' exactly part of the rock scene.'

           
'I wondered about that.'

           
'The other singers on Mr Kaufmann's books are, like,
mostly, y'know, nightclub or operatic or kind of Jimmy Shand type of outfits.'

           
'Who?'

           
Fiona dug into a profiterole; cream spurted. 'See, Moira
made it clear she wisny gonny have anything to do with the rock scene ever
again. And that's how it's been. She just does traditional folk concerts and
selected cabaret-type dates. Really boring. Hell of a waste.'

           
'It's very intriguing. What do you think happened?'

           
Fiona shrugged. 'Most likely she just got in with a bad
crowd. I used to think, well, maybe she was doing drugs in a big way. Heroin or
something. And realised it was, like, a one- way street, y'know?'

           
'But you don't think that now?'

           
She shook her head. 'I know her better now. She's too
strong. She widny touch drugs - not the kind that might get any kind of hold on
her, anyway. I think it's more likely she just rejected the psychic stuff, the
way they were fooling about, Max Goff and these guys. She knows what it can do,
right? Like, if one person can shoot all the drawers out of a filing cabinet,
what's gonny happen wi' four or five of them ... ?'

           
'This is fascinating, Fiona.' The kid was smarter than
he'd figured. 'You're saying maybe she came back to Scotland to, kind of, put
herself in psychic quarantine. Maybe scared of what she could do.'

           
'I'm only guessing,' Fiona said, 'but how come she'll no
play any of the old songs any more? I think she wants to put all that stuff
behind her. But can you do that? Being psychic, I mean, it's no' like a jumper
you can take back to Marks and Spencer. Drink your coffee, Mungo, 's gonny get
cold.'

           
He drank his coffee, not tasting it. He'd been fooling
himself that this thing about Moira was purely ... well, more than physical ...
romantic, maybe. She was beautiful and intelligent, and he loved her music from
way back. But maybe it went deeper. Maybe this was a woman who he'd
instinctively known had been closer to ... what? The meaning of things?
           
Things that having money and
influence and famous friends couldn't let you into?

           
Time of life, he thought, staring absently into Fiona's
cleavage. Or maybe I really do have Celtic roots.

           
'Mungo,' she said. 'Can I ask you something?'

           
'Go ahead.' He could guess.

           
'All this stuff about a miniseries ...'

           
'Kaufmann told you about that?'

           
'I keep my ear to the ground.'

           
Or the door. He grinned. 'Yeah?'

           
'Was that on the level?'