December (85 page)

      
The new Aelwyn is a man with dreams but no illusions. The new
Aelwyn is a hard bastard in a hard land.
      
And I'm staying with him. I'm staying with
him this time. Until the end.

      
'Let's try it again.' Prof's voice in the cans, sounding a bit
dismayed.

'Left, he has. Twenty
minutes ago.'

      
'Left?'

      
'Gone to the pub. Always goes to the pub on a Thursday, he does,'
Eddie's wife tells Meryl. 'Who shall I say?'

      
'It's all right. I'll call him again.'
      
Meryl puts the phone down.

      
He's gone. He's gone alone. The old devil has lied to them. He's
keeping it for himself. Doesn't want his style cramped by a handicapped child
and a mad woman.

      
'And are you?' Meryl rushes out of the study to confront herself
in a mirror in the hall. 'Are you mad?'

      
'Are you
mad
?'

      
In the glass she sees not the old smouldering allure in the mysterious,
dark-eyed one who looks beyond the horizon, but plain, perplexed apprehension
in the unpainted eyes of an ordinary middle-aged woman.

      
And she longs to be back with Martin, for whom the only unknown
forces are market forces. With whom she can safely be a believer in Other
Spheres, a confidante of ghosts, and it doesn't matter, because she's the only
one, an exotic eccentric in a world of businessmen and socialites.

      
Out here, on the very edge of reality, you can entertain the silliest
romantic fantasy and find someone desperate enough to believe you. And in no
time at all you find yourself determined to make it happen.

      
Like taking a consignment of holy earth from the Skirrid to sanctify
the Abbey.

      
And Meryl thinks, yes, possibly I am mad. Possibly I parted company
with reality the minute that child appeared at the door with her strange,
magnified eyes.

      
Or,
more
possibly,
the night I slept with Tom Storey. The night I persuaded him, because it seemed
so exciting, to return to confront his 'destiny'.

      
What have I
done
?

      
I haven't even tried to ring Shelley. I could be accused of kidnapping.
Because I wanted it to be a mystery, I've never tried too hard to find out how
Vanessa came to be here.

      
What have I turned
into
?

      
Slightly hysterically, Meryl hurtles back into the living-room,
manufacturing a warm smile, to find Vanessa looking into the fire. Vanessa has
a sorrowful fascination with fire.

      
'Vanessa.' Meryl kneels down on the carpet next to her. 'I want
to talk to you.' The fire is burning low and red. 'Vanessa, who brought you
here?'

      
'Weasel,' Vanessa says at once, turning to look at Meryl, 'in his
van.'

      
'And where's the van now?'

      
'In the shed.'
      
'Where's the shed?'
      
'At the farm.'
      
'I see. Which farm is this?'
      
Vanessa looks blank,
      
'Is it near here?'

      
Vanessa just looks at Meryl, her mouth half-open.
      
'Where's Weasel then?'
      
'In the van.'

      
'But you said the van was at the farm.'

      
'Yes.'

      
'Vanessa ...' Meryl hesitates. 'Why didn't you stay with Weasel?'

      
Vanessa thinks about this. 'He wouldn't talk to me '

      
'Had you fallen out? Had an argument?'

      
Vanessa shakes her head.

      
'Then why wouldn't he talk to you?'

      
Vanessa looks mixed up. 'I think he was poorly.'

      
'Ill?'

      
Vanessa blinks hard behind her glasses.
      
'Vanessa, was Weasel ill?'

      
Oh no. There's a sick man somewhere in a van, been lying there
for days. Or even ...

      
'Vanessa, is Weasel ... is he ...?'

      
Vanessa stands up. Her convent school blazer is hanging, freshly-pressed
now, from a coat hanger behind the door.
      
Vanessa reaches up for it, takes it
off the hanger, puts it on and methodically buttons it up.

      
'Can we go and find Daddy, now?'

She doesn't even remember
the road any more. She's never been down it at night. Nobody from the village
goes down this road at night, except for Dai Salmon, the poacher. And never in December,
even him.

      
She wishes she weren't so alone. Perhaps Vanessa. Who already
feels - because of the Abbey - like Isabel's little sister.
      
The little miracle child, born like
a phoenix from the flames.

      
Flames.

      
Shortly before they parted tonight, Isabel felt herself drawn towards
Vanessa's magnified eyes and experienced the momentary illusion of gazing into
the intense, gassy core of a furious fire.

      
Which, all right, was probably only a reflection in her specs of
the fire in the vicarage hearth. She can only have imagined the rest, see, the
muffled roaring.

      
debs, debsie, debs ...

      
And the heat on a winter's night, the terrible sensuality of
it. like the fl ...

      
No
! Why're you doing
this to yourself, you daft bitch? Turn back while you can. Jesus Christ, you
don't think for one minute you're going to wheel yourself in there and
twenty-one years will drop away, and you and the gay vicar will fly away
together?

      
She stops the chair. She feels so heartbroken and angry with herself
she actually turns it around.

      
To find that the view to the rear is exactly the same as the view
to the front: damp, filthy freezing mist and the imprints of hostile winter
trees.

      
Oh Simon, what have we
become? What has this place done to us?

      
There aren't many aspects of me, Isabel concludes in despair that
I don't hate and despise.

'Strewth,' Prof mutters,
adjusting Dave's voice level as the meter hits the red again. He doesn't know
what the
hell
to make of this.

      
Not exactly what he expected after the way they were when they
got back from the canteen: good mates, optimistic, ready to hit this thing
head-on. Confident, at last, of what it was about.

      
Whatever's happening to Dave, he can tell Simon wasn't expecting
it either. Simon was making a valiant attempt to follow it, contribute the odd
fiddle-lick, but he's given up. Not as if there's even a tempo, as such, any more.

      
If Simon was in charge of last night's session, this is Dave's
moment. But it's not the same, no message here of the triumph of art over evil.
Simon's a classically trained, string-quartet man; Dave's a self-taught
guitarist who can't even sing a tune unless he's imitating somebody else.

      
God only knows who he's imitating here.

      
And Prof has no choice any more; he has to go with it.

      
This is the fourth take, each one more extreme than the last.
Five minutes into Take Three you'd swear the bugger was singing in a
foreign language
. This was just before
Prof stopped recording and went out on the studio floor to try and talk some
sense.

      
'Look, Dave, come on, I'm gonna have problems mixing this. I'm
all for
avant garde
, long as I
understand it.'

      
Dave just grinning sheepishly, like even he doesn't know what
it's about, and Simon saying, 'Let it go, eh. Prof. If it turns out to be a
solo, where's the problem?'

      
OK, so this is a man of many voices; this is a guy who can
give you a Simon that might fool Garfunkel. He
could
be faking it.

      
And as this strange, rough Aelwyn treks bitterly through the
snow, some bastard's turned the heating off, for authenticity.

      
Thanks.

Gwyn is buying.

      
Eddie, resigned to losing half an hour, says, 'I thought you
fellows weren't supposed …'

      
'… To drink on duty. Everybody says that.' On the wonky,
scuffed table Gwyn Arthur Jones deposits a whisky and dry ginger for Eddie and
a half of Welsh for himself. 'Uniform men, that is. And lower ranks.'

      
Gwyn Arthur drinks cautiously. 'Besides,' he says. 'I'm not on
duty.'

      
'You mean anything I say will
not
be taken down?'

      
'It's what you don't say, Eddie, that will get you hanged.'

      
There are only half a dozen people in the bar tonight. Gwyn Arthur
briefly eyes a scratched plastic container of cold meat pies and then seems to
lose interest.

      
'That candle,' he says. 'Case closed.'

      
'Oh?' Eddie waits.

      
'Lack of evidence.'

      
'You mean the forensic boys couldn't turn up anything else?'
      
'No.' Gwyn Arthur finishes his
beer, puts his glass down and stares sourly into the dregs, 'I mean we've lost
the fucking candle.'

      
Only his desire not to prolong this session prevents a smile from
creasing Eddie's features.

      
'Forensic have no valid explanation for the disappearance. We've
suggested they fingerprint their own bell jars, or whatever such specimens are
preserved in.'

      
'Somebody's taken it?'

      
'Let's just say it's gone. As if it had never existed. The lab
assistant says she'll go to court to swear everything was locked up and still
locked up the following morning, et cetera, et cetera. So. Don't suppose you've
any others? No, don't tell me, I don't want to go through this again.'
      
'Go through what again?'

      
'Whatever it is you're going through, my friend.' Gwyn Arthur
slowly raises his eyes. 'Like a cat on hot bricks, you are.'
      
'Nonsense,' Eddie says, squirming a
little.
What's the time now? Oh hell...

      
'If there's anything that inflames my curiosity beyond normal tolerance
levels,' Gwyn says, 'it's the sight of a respectable citizen with something on
his mind he desperately wants to unload but knows he daren't.'
      
'D ... daren't?'

'Let me get you another
drink,' Gwyn says, 'I can't recall seeing a man so obviously in need of
something to calm his nerves ...'

      
Gwyn Arthur stands, moves behind Eddie's chair and plants a firm
and rather menacing hand on his shoulder.

      
'... and to lubricate his conscience, prior to unburdening himself
at great length.'

The path is already slick
with frost and every blade of grass is white and hoary. It seems so much colder
than usual, for early December.

      
Or maybe it's just here, in this forgotten valley.

      
'Aren't you cold, in just that blazer?'

      
Meryl has tried in vain to persuade Vanessa to wear something
warmer. How will her guardian angel recognise her anyway in the foggy dark? she
asks the child, ludicrously.

      
Meryl has pulled on a thick, padded coat over her blouse and
slacks and is still cold. She waves the vicarage torch in front of them and the
beam bounces off a barrier of fog. In the village it was mist; out here it's
fog.

      
'Is this the right path? Do
you
know?'

      
For the first couple of hundred yards she was carrying over
her shoulder one of the black plastic sacks of Skirrid soil but she's abandoned
it now. It's just too heavy and cumbersome.
      
To leave the holy earth on the
footpaths would have seemed such a pointed rejection of the legend that she
took a couple of gloved handfuls of earth and filled the side-pockets of her
coat before hiding the sack behind a tree.