The Man in the Moss (47 page)

Eventually, kneeling
messily in the rain, Moira pulled her shoe out of the bog.

           
The shoe was full of water; she shook it out and put it
on. By this time the old woman had hobbled to the edge of the Moss, where there
was a gate leading into a field, beyond which was the pub and, further up, the
hill on which the church sat.

           
The dead tree was still. It looked hard, heavy, almost
stone-like. Too dense to move in the wind, even if there'd been one. But it
moved for me, she thought, limping back to the car. And it moved for Ma
Wagstaff.

           
Such things were almost invariably subjective. Like, how
often did two people see a ghost, at the same time, together? Ghosts and
related phenomena were one-to-one. You saw it and the person with you said,
hey, what's wrong with you, what are you staring at, why've you gone so pale?

           
But the tree moved for Ma Wagstaff. And it moved, no
question, for me ...

           
She climbed behind the wheel and sank into the seat,
drained. The cassette tape had ended. She slipped it out of the tape deck.

           
Ma Wagstaff
understands, the old bitch. She says to me, 'We can help you help him. But you
must purify yourself ...'

           
I am not getting this. Matt. What were you into, you and
Ma?

           
And then ...
whuppp.

           
Moira reeled back in the seat as something hit the
windscreen. Like a big bird, covering the sky, darkening the car, it flapped
there, wriggling and beating at the glass.

           
'Holy Jesus.'

           
It was snagged in the wipers, but it wasn't a bird ...
only a dark blue woolly shawl. Ma Wagstaff's shawl, snatched from her by the
devil-tree. Blown across the Moss. Blown hard, directly at the car, like it had
been aimed.

           
Moira began to pant, closing her eyes tight, squeezing on
the steering-wheel until it creaked.

           
When she opened her eyes the shawl had gone, and the
vertical rain showed there was still no wind.

           
OK. Move.

           
She switched on the engine; slammed the BMW into reverse,
pulled it back on to the causeway, pointing it at Bridelow. The sky was dirty
now, but she wondered if it would still be white through the eyeholes in the
thing of wood on the Moss.

           
Ma said. You've got to purify
yourself. But there's a kind of purity in intensity of feeling, isn't that
right? Pure black light
.

           
Right. Get off my back, Matt. You're sicker than I
figured. Just get the
hell
off my
back.

           
Moira drove erratically into the village street, bumping
carelessly along the cobbles and over the kerb. Nobody about. No sign of the
old woman. The cottages featureless and damp, in a huddle.

           
Pure black light.

           
Black light? White light? What is this shit? Wished she
could call the Duchess, but the Duchess wasn't on the phone. The Duchess wants
to contact anybody, she doesn't mess with phones.

           
Moira sat in her car at the bottom of the street, ploughing
her fingers through her hair. Exposed. And scared?
           
Oh, yes.

           
And maybe half-deranged. Couldn't properly express in
words what she was doing here. Like she'd been sucked into the smoking
fireplace that night at the Earl's Castle and gone up the chimney and been spit
out cold on Bridelow Moss.

           
Now everything was pointing at Ma Wagstaff, but Ma
Wagstaff had run away.

           
She left the car in the street, squelched to the Post
Office, peat water oozing out of her shoes.

           
'Willie's not in,' she panted at the big, flowery
Girl-Guide postmistress. 'Where would I find his mother's place?'

Weak as a kitten, Ma felt.
Weak as a day-old kitten, its eyes not open yet. Weak and blind.
           
Help me, Mother.

           
Ma followed the river back, gratefully leaving the Moss
behind. There was a crack starting in her walking stick where the black tree
had snapped off the metal tip. Soon the stick wouldn't support even a skinny,
spidery owd thing like her, and what would she do then?

           
It got her to the churchyard, God alone knew how, and she
propped her old bones up against a stone cross. Looked up at the church porch,
and it hit her like an elbow in the ribs.

           
Desecrated!

           
Oh, Mother. Oh, Jesus!

           
Over the door ... a mess of crumbling old cement.
           
That
vandal.

           
The Goths and the Vandals and the Angles and the Saxons
and the Romans and the so-called Christians. All them raiders Bridelow had
fought off over the long centuries. And the buggers still at the door with
their battleaxes.

           
Inside the church, little Benjie's Autumn Cross all smashed.
And the vile thing growing out on the Moss, waving Ma's lost shawl like a
banner. And the seeping sickness within that saps health and takes jobs. And
now Our Sheila smitten from the wall, thrown away like she was nowt more than
one of them dirty magazines.

           
Grinding, in pain, the few teeth she'd got left to grind,
Ma Wagstaff staggered through the graveyard, up to the top end, where Matt
Castle lay, the earth still loose on him, covered by wreaths, already bashed
about by the weather, petals everywhere.

           
The witch bottle lay in her coat pocket. Dead.

           
Moving like an owd crab on a pebble beach, Ma staggered
by Matt's grave without stopping. The earth loose around him - not buried
proper, not yet. Still air holes in the soil. Poor bugger might as well be lying
stretched out on top.

           
The rain had stopped, but the clouds still bulged like
cheeks full of spit. Ma stumbled out on to the moor, through the top wicket
gate, between two tattered gorse bushes.

           
This was not the real moor; this was still Bridelow. Until
you got over the rocks.

           
Below the rocks was the holy well, the spring, water
bubbling bright as lemonade into a natural-hewn stone dish. The well they
dressed with flowers in the springtime to honour the Mother and the water. Long
before she reached it, Ma could hear it singing.

           
A rock leaned over the spring, like a mantelpiece over a
hearth, above it the moor, which was not Bridelow.

           
Carved out of the stone, a hollow, with a little shelf.

           
On the shelf a statue.

           
'Mother,' Ma said breathlessly.

           
The statue was plaster. She wore a robe once painted
blue, now chipped and faded. Her eyes were uplifted to the sky beyond the shelf
of rock, her hands turned palms-down to bless the water trickling from the rock
below her feet.

           
'Oh, Mother.' Ma dropped her stick. She'd made it home.

           
She fell down upon the stone, the edge of her woollen
skirt in the rock pool; began to cry, words bubbling out of her like the water
from the rock. 'I've brought thee nowt ... Forgive me, Mother. Not properly
dressed. Dint know I were coming, see.'

           
She sat up, crossed herself, closed her eyes, all hot and
teary. Cupped her hands into the pool and brought the spring water to her eyes.
And when they were touched by the water, she saw at last, through her eyelids,
a warm, bright light.

           
Ma lifted up her hands into the light, and felt them
touch the hem of the radiant blue robe of the Mother, the material that felt
like a fine and silken rain.

           
She began to mumble, the old words dropping into place,
words in English, words in Latin, words in an olden-day language that was
neither Welsh nor Gaelic, words from the Bible, power-words and humble-words.
Words to soak up the light and bring it into her blood. Come into me, Mother,
give me light and give me strength, give me the holy power to face your enemies
and to withstand ...

           
The shadow fell across her.

           
The bright blue gauze dissolved. Ma's eyes opened into
pain.

           
The curate stood astride the sacred spring. Big and
stupid as a Victorian stone angel.

           
'So,' he said. 'This is it, is it?'

           
He kicked a pebble into the pool. 'It's even more tawdry
than I expected, Mrs Wagstaff.'

           
'Go away,' Ma said quietly, looking down into the pool.
'What's it to do wi' you? Go on. Clear off. Come back when you're older.'

           
'What's it to do
with me?'
He stood there thick and hard as granite. 'You can ask that?
Where did you get this?' With a hand like a spade, he plucked the Mother from
her stone hollow. 'One of these Catholic shops, I suppose. Or was it taken from
a church? Hmm?'

           
He held the statue at arm's length. 'Hardly a work of
art, Mrs Wagstaff. But hardly deserving of this kind of grubby sacrilege.'

           
Ma was on her feet, blinding pain ripping through every
sinew. 'You put that
back!
That's
sacred, that is! Put it back
now!
Call yourself a minister of God? You're nobbut a thick bloody vandal wi' no
more brains than pig shit!'

           
'And you,' he said, tucking the statue under an arm, 'are
a poor, misguided old woman who ought to be in a Home, where you can be watched
over until you die.'

           
Ma Wagstaff tried to stand with dignity and couldn't.

           
Joel Beard bent his face to hers. 'You're a throwback,
Mrs Wagstaff. A remnant. My inclination as a human being is to feel very sorry
for you, but my faith won't allow me to do that.'

           
Behind his eyes she saw a cold furnace.

           
'Thou shall not
suffer a witch to live!'

           
The statue hefted above his head like a club. Ma cowered.

           
'Oh, no ...'He lowered the statue to chest-height. 'Don't
cringe, Mrs Wagstaff. I wouldn't hurt you physically. I'm a servant of God. I
merely remind you of the strong line the Bible takes on your particular ...
sub-species.'

           
Joel Beard put out a contemptuous hand to help her up.
She looked at the hand and its fingers became a bundle of twisted twigs bound
roughly together, and the connection was made with the thing on the Moss, two
opposing terminals, the black and the white, each as dangerous and Ma stranded
in the middle.

           
'Gerraway from me!' She shrank back, feeling that if she
touched his hand she'd be burned alive.

           
'What are you afraid of, Mrs Wagstaff?'

           
'I'm afraid of denseness,' Ma said. 'Kind of denseness as
rips down a child's offering, smashes it on t'stones ...'

           
'But ... but it was evil,' he said reasonably. 'Can't you
people see that? Primitive. Heathen. It insulted the true Cross.'

           
Ma Wagstaff shook her head. 'Tha knows nowt. Tha's big
and arrogant, and tha knows nowt. Tha's not fit to wipe Hans Gruber's arse.'

           
Joel Beard raised the statue of the Mother far above his
head. His face severe. His golden curls tight as stone.

           
'All right, then,' he said. 'Be your own salvation, Mrs
Wagstaff.'

           
Ma grabbed at the air, eyes widening in horror. She began
to whimper. Joel smashed the Mother down on the rocks and her head broke
easily, pounded to plaster-dust

           
Ma Wagstaff cried out. The cry of the defeated, the
gutted, the desolate.

           
Gone. Nowt left. Gone to dust.

           
Beating the plaster from his hands and his green hiking
jacket, Joel Beard strode away across the dirty-yellow moorgrass. Fragments
floated in the centre of the pool until the springwater scattered them, making
widening circles over the Mother's headless body.