The Man in the Moss (41 page)

           
'Ah.'
Cathy's eyes cast down over the steaming mug of chocolate. 'You saw that.'

           
'Don't
get me wrong, I'm not normally an intrusive person, but Matt meant a lot to
me.'

           
'Dic
obviously thinks so.'

           
'Oh.
You heard that. I wondered if maybe you had one of those pianos that plays
itself.'

           
'Those
pianos don't play bum notes.' Cathy looked offended. 'No, I didn't have my ear
to the door. Dic and I went for a drink the other night. I drove, he got a bit
pissed. He said his father ...'

           
'The
boy's way off. There was nothing more complicated than friendship between me
and Matt. He never ...'

           
He
never touched me.

           
Moira
stumbled and fell into a dusty pew. Sat staring into the vaulted ceiling where
the cross had been, but seeing nothing.

           
He
never touched me.

           
That
was true. Never a friendly kiss. Never a celebratory hug when a gig had gone
down well or the first album had gone into profit.
Never touched me sexually. He never came near.

           
But
he looked.

           
Often
she'd feel his moody gaze and turn and catch his eyes, and she'd smile and he
wouldn't, and then he'd look away.

           
She
bent painfully over the prayer-book shelf.

           
Clink
. From outside, the sound of a chisel on stone.

           
I
was thinking, if we'd slept together, just once, to kind of get it over, bring
down that final barrier ...

           
No.
Wouldn't have got anything over. Would have started something bad. You knew
that really, just as you really knew what was going on inside Matt Castle and
chose to ignore it. Just a crush; he'll get over it. He didn't. He couldn't. He
made you leave the band, before ...

           
The
clinking from outside was coming harder. Maybe they were demolishing the joint
entirely.

           
Too
choked to think about this any more, stomach tight and painful, Moira stood up,
made her way slowly down the aisle to the doors. But when she grasped the
ring-handles, the doors wouldn't open.

           
'Owd
on! You'll have me off.' Sound of someone creaking his way down a wooden ladder
up against the doors.

           
She
leaned her back against the doors, took a few deep breaths, and called out
after a few seconds, 'OK?'

           
'Aye.'
The porch doors opened, and there was a smallish guy in his sixties, flat cap
and a boiler-suit. Big, soft moustache, like a hearth brush. 'Sorry, lass, dint
know there were anybody in theer.'

           
He
held a mallet and a masonry chisel. There were chips of grey stone and crumbly
old concrete around the foot of the step-ladder.

           
'Storm
damage?' Moira said.
           
'You what?'

           
'You
repairing storm damage?'
           
'Summat like that.'

           
But
then, looking up at the wall above the porch, she saw where the chippings had
come from.

           
From
the stones supporting the Exhibitionist. The
Sheelagh na gig
. Our Sheila.

           
'You're
taking her down?'

           
'Aye.'
He didn't sound too happy.

           
'Why?'

           
He
gave her a level look. 'Alfred Beckett, verger, organist, dogsbody. Who are
you?'

           
She
grinned. Fuck it, she was here now, in the open, uncloaked. 'Moira. Moira
Cairns. Used to work with ... Matt Castle.'

           
The
name felt different. A different, darker Matt Castle.

           
'Matt
Castle, eh?' said Alfred Beckett. 'Right. 'Course.' He seemed to relax a
little. 'How do.' He stuck out a stubby hand and Moira took it, stone dust and
all. He had a firm grip; it pulled her back into what people took for the real
world.

           
'So,
Mr Beckett ...' She glanced up at the ancient woman squashed into a stone
plaque, fingers up her fanny. A few strokes of the chisel away from a serious
loss of status.

           
'Aye,'
Mr Beckett said, like a ragged sigh, and Moira saw he wasn't far from tears. He
said he was following instructions. Didn't
want
to do it.
Hated
doing it. But he
wasn't in an arguing position, was he? Vergers being a good way down the
ecclesiastical hierarchy.

           
'And
if I don't do it,' he said, '
he'll
do
it hisself. And he won't be as careful as me.'
           
'Mr Beard,' Moira said.
           
'Aye. He'll smash her, like
...'
           
'Like the Autumn Cross.'

           
'I'll
see she's all right,' Alfred Beckett said. 'I'll keep her safe until such time
as ...'

           
He
sighed, fished a packet of Arrowmint chewing gum out of the top pocket of his
boiler-suit. Moira accepted a segment and they stood together chewing silently
for a minute or so.

           
Then
Mr Beckett said, 'Aye. It's a bugger.'

           
A
scrap of cement fell from Our Sheila.

           
Moira
said, 'But isn't she - excuse me, I'm no' an expert in these matters - isn't
she protected in some way?'

           
'No,
lass, she's ...'

           
'I
meant, isn't she a feature of a listed historic building?'

           
'Oh,'
said Alfred Beckett. 'Aye. Happen. But Mr Beard reckons she's not safe and
could fall on somebody's head. Same as she's not done for the past umpteen
centuries.'

           
'Aye,'
Moira said eventually. 'It's a bugger all right.'

'Now then. Why aren't you at school?'

           
Benjie
threw his arms around Ma's waist and burrowed his head into her pinny. He
started to sob.

           
She
pulled him into the kitchen, shut the back door. 'Now, lad. What's matter? Tell
owd Ma.'

           
Ma
Wagstaff sat her grandson on the kitchen stool. Spine still giving her gyp, she
reached up for a bottle of her special licorice toffees. Never been known not
to work.

           
When
it was out, Ma said, 'The bugger.'

           
Benjie
with his swollen eyes and his wet cheeks bulging with toffee.

           
'The
unfeeling, spiteful bugger,' Ma said.

           
Biggest
thing that had ever happened to Benjie, Ernest Dawber putting him in charge of
the Autumn Cross - a whole afternoon, inspecting the twigs and branches,
acorns, bits of old birds' nests and stuff the other kids had brought, saying
what was to go into the cross, what was right for it, what wasn't good enough.
Standing proudly, top of the aisle, the day Alfred Beckett had come with his
ladder, and the cross, all trimmed and finished, had been hoisted into place,
and everybody cheering.

           
Biggest
thing ever happened to the lad.
           
'Leave him to me,' Ma said.
'I'll sort that bugger out meself, just you see if I don't.'

           
Benjie
stared at her, wildly shaking his head, couldn't speak for the toffee.

           
'Gone
far enough,' Ma said. 'Got to be told a few things. For his own good, if nowt
else.'

           
'No!'
Benjie blurted. 'Don't go near it, Ma.'
           
Ma was taken aback. 'Eh?'

           
'...'s
getting bigger, Ma. Every day, 's getting bigger.'
           
'What is, lad?'

           
'The
dragon!' The little lad started crying again, scrambling down from the stool,
clutching Ma round the waist again, wailing, 'You've not to ... You've
not
to!'

           
Eh
?

           
Mystified,
but determined to get to the bottom of this, Ma detached his small hands from
her pinny, squatted down, with much pain, to his height. 'Now then. Summat
you've not told me. Eh? Come on.' She held his shoulders, straightening him up,
feeding him some strength, not that she'd much to spare these days. 'Come on.
Tell owd Ma all about it.'

           
He
stared into her face, eyes all stretched with terror. 'Bigger, Ma ... 's
bigger
.'

           
'He
might look big to you, Benjie,' Ma said gently. 'But he's only a man.'
           
'No. 's a dragon!'
           
'Mr Beard?'
           
"s a
dragon
.'

So the new curate was in combat with the Forces of
Evil.

           
As
represented by Our Sheila and the Autumn Cross.

           
And
whatever Willie's Ma was doing inside Matt Castle's coffin.

           
Last
night - early this morning - as the dregs of hot chocolate were rinsed from the
mugs, she'd at last got it out of Cathy, what it was all about - or as much of
it as Cathy knew.

           
'So,
the coffin's on the ground and the light's been lowered, and the lid is open
...'

           
'I
didn't see it!'

           
'And
your friend, old Mrs Wagstaff has her hands inside ... and I'm wondering if
maybe the old biddy has a passing interest in necrophilia ...'

           
'That's
a terrible thing to say!'

           
'I
know ... so tell me. What's going on, huh?'

           
'It
was ... I think it was ... a witch bottle.'

           
'I
thought you said she wasny a witch.'

           
'It's
just a term. It's a very old precautionary thing. To trap an evil spirit ... ?'

           
'Matt's
spirit ... ?'

           
'No
... I don't know. Maybe if there was one around. In there with him.'
           
'In the coffin?'

           
'I
don't know ... it's no good asking me. You're going to have to talk to Ma. If
she'll talk to you.'

And Lottie. Today it was important to talk to Lottie,
because Lottie was not part of this place, had not been returning, like Matt,
to the bosom of a tradition which was older than Christianity.

           
... a more pure, undiluted strain ... than
you'll find anywhere in Western Europe ...

           
Moira
had come through the lych-gate, was standing at the top of the cobbled street,
the cottages like boulders either side under a blank, unyielding sky - a sky as
hard as a whitewashed wall.

           
... this writer ... Stanton, Stanhope ...

           
...
he's on his feet, and is he mad... this guy's face is ...

           
this
guy's face is ...
           
this guy's face is ...
           
White.

CHAPTER VI

           
The
plump woman in the village Post Office looked like a chief Girl Guide, whatever
they called them now. Also, although she wore no wedding ring, she struck Moira
as a member of the Mothers' Union.

           
'I
wonder, um, could you help me? I'm looking for Willie Wagstaff.' She'd
forgotten to ask Cathy where Willie lived, and Cathy had set out to drive
fifteen miles to the hospital to visit her dad.

           
'Willie?
Have you been to his house?'
           
Moira smiled. 'Well, no, that
s ...'