Shirley’s forefinger quivering, before she turned and went scuttling
down the aisle, pushing past Gomer to get to the door, and Edna Huws hit the opening chords.
Gomer shambled up the aisle as Merrily came down from the pulpit. They met at the bottom of the chancel steps.
‘Quick word, vicar,’ Gomer said under some ragged, nervy singing. ‘Only I needs to get back, see.’
In the old days, the bells would have been rung.
Clanging down the valley, peeling through the rain, to be echoed by the bells of Weobley and Dilwyn and Pembridge and Eardisland. A chain of warning, ley lines of alarm spearing across the county.
Merrily went back into the pulpit. Let them finish. Stay calm. James Bull-Davies had seen Gomer. He was looking watchful, not singing. An Army man.
In the old days, the Bulls would have known what to do.
Shirley West’s outburst . . . in a couple of minutes even that would be forgotten.
Merrily let the old carol soak away into the sandstone.
‘Erm . . . something you should all know.’
There needed to be a prayer, but would anyone bother to stay for it?
J
ANE STOOD NEAR
the top of Church Street, on the edge of the cobbles, and watched him coming out.
There was this huge, almost peaceful sense of . . . relief? Beyond the amplified drumming of the rain on the hood of her parka, everything was awesomely silent.
An almost religious hush. A transformation.
It was as if he’d known this had always belonged to him and now, having repossessed it, was turning it into a different place: a drowned dreamscape, an alternative village, Ledwardine-on-Sea.
The village-hall car park was like a harbour, litter bins three-parts submerged like lobster pots. A couple of guys were dumping sandbags around the hall’s entrance, Uncle Ted in fisherman’s waders quietly directing operations, the swollen scene doused in shades of grey and brown.
Jane, at first, was stunned and then dismayed.
It had all happened within a couple of hours . . . on the first morning when self-pity had sapped her will to go down at first light and talk to the river.
Even last night with Eirion had just been an excuse to get out of the house; there’d been no contact. Guilt – it was ridiculous but it was there. She’d released something huge, by default. Broken off contact, and now he was out.
Like he’d come looking for her.
She said to Eirion, ‘I suppose you’ve seen all this before?’
‘Common enough in the Valleys, Jane.’
‘Not here.’
OK, it wasn’t exactly a tsunami, and the water hadn’t reached any houses yet, and you could still just about see where the river ended
and the flooding began. But it was scary. You could smell it, too, she was sure you could smell it. Something dank. The river had always looked clean; this wasn’t.
No traffic noise – that explained the hush. No motorists attempting to leave the village, from the south anyway. Well, they couldn’t. Across the street Lol had appeared in his doorway, casual, hands in the pockets of his jeans. Raising a hand to Jane and Eirion as an elderly guy Jane didn’t recognise started bawling at him through the rain.
‘Anybody informed the authorities?’
‘Probably, but they could be overstretched,’ Lol said. ‘If it’s happening here, it’s happening all over the county.’
‘But it’s not
supposed
to happen here.’ The man was struggling with an umbrella. ‘We were formally assured it
never
happened here. We’ve come down for Christmas, brought everything . . . wine, turkey . . .’
One of the second-homers, who’d pushed up house prices. Jane’s sympathy dissipating.
‘How soon before it goes down again?’ the man said, outraged. ‘We can’t afford to get stranded here.’
‘Hard to say,’ Lol told him, ‘as it’s never happened before. But as long as you can get to the bypass, you’re—’
The rest of it was mangled under the grinding clatter and rumble of the first vehicle coming through the new Church Street pond, maybe the only one that could.
Jane went cold, thinking about what the man driving it had said the other night when they were on the bridge.
‘Oh my God, Irene, I dreamed of the dead!’
‘Well, that’s you, Jane,’ Eirion said. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to dream of soft green meadows and bunny rabbits.’
‘A sign of rain.’
‘What?’
‘To dream of the dead is a sign of rain.’
‘You needed
signs
?’
She’d dreamed of Lucy Devenish. Lucy standing by her own grave, her poncho torn and muddied, and when Jane had tried to talk to her Lucy had just looked right through her, towards the orchard, as if it was Jane who wasn’t there. And in that moment of terrifying non-existence she’d awoken, desolate.
‘It’s like war’s been declared.’
Eirion was pointing up towards the square, where people, including Mum in her black cape, were starting to gather near the market hall, a couple of women holding kids back.
‘They’ve come out of church, that’s all,’ Jane said.
No voices trailed from the assembly. Eirion was right; this was what it must’ve been like when war was declared. They’d all known in their hearts that it was coming. And now the bell ringers were starting up, all bright and Merry Christmassy. Like the dance band on the
Titanic
. It should be a solemn
dong, dong
,
dong
, a warning toll wadded in cloud to freeze everybody into stillness and dread. Before they all turned as one, pointing down the street at Jane.
She did this. She let it happen
.
‘Well . . .’ Eirion looked up. ‘This is going to curtail Blore’s dig.’
‘He’ll probably just erect some huge marquee over the whole site.’
‘You want to go and see?’
‘
No!
’
‘Be a good time,’ Eirion said. ‘There’s nothing we can do here.’
‘It’s not my place any more. It’s his. Blore’s.’
‘You don’t think that. Not in a million years.’
‘Doesn’t matter what I think. I count for nothing. The sodding cops have got my database, Blore’s got my . . . my future. Squashed in his big hand.’
‘Oh, Jane, come on, let’s not . . .’
‘Not what?’
Eirion pushed back the hood of his yellow slicker, gripped her arms above the elbows.
‘You can’t, see. You bloody can’t.’
‘
What?
’
‘Let it go. Abandon it. Even Lol said that. There’s too much . . . emotional investment.’
‘Like, wow,’ Jane said sourly.
‘When we did those pictures in the summer, you were just . . . lit up. I was . . .’ Letting go of Jane’s arms. ‘I wanted to kick uni into touch, get a job as a gardener or something, just to keep on seeing you.’
He backed away, embarrassed now. She looked into his face, taut
with adult anxieties and things he probably wasn’t sure he was ready to handle. She didn’t know what to say, shaken by his intensity and all churned up like the river man with whom she’d tried to fake a relationship.
Probably fortunate that Gwyneth came rattling alongside, her bucket pulled into her big yellow chest, GOMER PARRY PLANT HIRE in green on her flanks. Gomer leaning over to the open side of the cab, glasses gleaming.
‘Takin’ her up the square, Janey. Hold the high ground, see.’
‘Your bungalow’s not—?’
‘No, no, but I en’t takin’ no chances with this ole girl.’ Gomer beamed at Eirion. ‘’Ow’re you, boy?’
‘I’m OK, thanks, Gomer. And
you
’re looking—’
‘Good boy!’
Gomer raising a hand, Gwyneth clanking off towards the cobbles.
Eirion shaking his head, bemused.
‘He looks kind of . . . energised?’
‘He is,’ Jane said. ‘Some people go on about him being too old to be doing what he does, but they won’t be saying that now, because a JCB’s about the only vehicle that can get through deep flood water. It’s got the weight, and its exhaust pipe’s really high up.’
And Gomer Parry had the only one in the village. Jane watched the JCB crawling onto the cobbles, Gomer jumping down like somebody thirty years younger.
‘Helps to feel needed, doesn’t it?’
‘You think Coleman’s Meadow doesn’t need
you
, Jane?’
Jane said nothing.
‘Who’s it got left?’
‘It’s a field. That’s all it is.’
‘Come on. Please.’
‘Why? What’s the point?’
‘It’s like a pilot getting back into the cockpit after a crash.’
‘I was never
in
the sodding cockpit.’
‘You were. You found it. The whole set-up. You were led to it.’
‘New Age bullshit, Irene. Pure accident. Even you don’t believe it.’
‘I’m not clever enough on this issue to know one way or another,
but I believe in . . . well, in you, anyway. The you that gets excited about . . . Look, if we go halfway, I’ll take a look first, OK? If the bastard’s there I’ll come back and we’ll forget it.’
‘Irene, I don’t . . .’
‘You
do
, Jane.’
Rain on his face making it look like he was in tears. The old Eirion, somehow.
‘And Lucy Devenish is dead,’ he said.
In a situation like this, Merrily thought, feudalism rose again. James Bull-Davies was too impoverished now to be much of a squire, but it was in his blood, and she was glad to see him taking control.
‘Panic’s premature – chances are it won’t get much higher.’
James, in his holed and etiolated Barbour, talking on the square to a couple of migrant mulled-winos she didn’t recognise.
‘Only village hall in the firing line so far.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s that bloody Pierce? Suggest he gets off his arse and onto his council. Uses whatever influence he’s got to get us some technical assistance.’
‘No chance o’ that.’ Gomer Parry took out his roll-up, cupped in his palm against the rain. ‘Pierce don’t give a monkey’s for the hall getting flooded. He wants a new one, with squashy courts. Part of his master plan. Ole hall sinks, supermarket gets the site, Pierce fills his pockets.
You
know that, boy.’
‘You may not be wrong, Gomer, but this is hardly the time for politics.’ James nodded at Gwyneth. ‘That thing fully functional?’
‘Wash your mouth out,’ Gomer said.
Merrily smiled, pulled the bottom of her cape out of a puddle and stepped under the market hall.
‘What can
I
do, James? How many people do you need at the village hall?’
‘Can’t do much there apart from sandbags. If they don’t work and it floods . . . well, it floods. Least nobody lives there. Not much you can do for the present, vicar. Couple of us will take a look at the river, work out where we can either build up the bank or create a new barrier . . . and then rely on the expertise of our good friend Parry.’
‘Well, just let me know.’
‘Will do.’
She’d need to be prepared. If anyone was made temporarily homeless, there were spare bedrooms at the vicarage, just need to get more beds from somewhere.
And
she’d need to get over to Knights Frome and pick up the Boswell. Get across the county without a boat.
‘Mrs Watkins?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry . . .?’
She turned to find a woman standing next to her under the canopy of furrowed oak.
Fulsome red hair against turquoise Gore-Tex and a metal-framed case.
Oh God, not now
.
‘My name’s Leonora Winterson.’
‘Oh . . . yes.’
‘I think you met my husband?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Well.’ Mrs Winterson gazed down Church Street. ‘This is all looking a bit critical, isn’t it?’
‘Well, not exactly
critical
yet . . .’
‘Nothing’s safe any more, Mrs Watkins. Not even a place like this. All these people moving in looking for Olde England, and Olde England’s getting washed away before their eyes. Soon be no more stable than Bangladesh, but I suppose we all have to grab what we can while we can. And I think I . . .’ Stooke’s wife pushed her hair back from her pale face ‘. . . need to grab
you
.’
‘Me?’
Mrs Winterson pushed the strap of her camera bag higher up her shoulder, looking down at the cobbles, like smooth brown stones on the bed of a shallow stream.
‘Is there somewhere private we could go?’
‘Well, I need to be available, in case . . .’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘What about the church?’ Merrily said.
Mrs Winterson almost laughed.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
T
HE STONE EFFIGY
wore the high-necked jacket of a puritan, had a sword unsheathed by his side. And that feature every tourist seemed to notice.
‘Who is he?’ Mrs Winterson asked. ‘And why do his eyes appear to be open? That’s not . . . normal. Is it?’
Her own eyes were grey-green and quick with nervous energy. Merrily stepped down into the chapel.
‘His name’s Thomas Bull. One of the post-feudal lords of the manor who’d have to shell out periodically to stop this church falling down. You probably saw one of his descendants organising things on the square just now.’
‘Oh, the . . . bossy one. James?’
‘A lot less wealthy than his ancestor. But a better man.’
‘It’s awfully gloomy in here,’ Mrs Winterson said.
‘But it
is
private.’
The Bull Chapel was one step down from the chancel, behind the organ pipes. It had one leaded window that looked frosty even in summer. ‘And all mod cons.’
Merrily pulled two folding wooden chairs from a stack wedged between the tomb and the chapel wall. She opened them out. ‘Not long after we moved here, someone told me that, when the tomb was sculpted, the eyes – as with most effigies – were shut. But, because of the iniquities he’d perpetrated in his lifetime, Tom Bull was unable to rest. One day, the vicar’s wife walked in, looking for her husband, and the eyes were . . . as they are now. It was said that particular vicar’s wife never came in here again.’