The Wine of Angels (16 page)

‘Perhaps she’s just popped out for a walk.’

Merrily shook her head. ‘We have this agreement that she never goes out alone at night without I know precisely where and when.’

‘But this is Ledwardine, Merrily.’

‘That’s a pretty stupid thing to say. Didn’t a teenage girl go missing from Kingsland last year? Oh, look, I’m sorry, I’m just getting ...’

‘No, no.’ Dermot put down his glass. ‘You’re right, of course. No one can be too careful these days. Let’s go and find her.’

‘Sorry. Hysterical mother. It’s just that she knows I have to get to bed at a reasonable time on a Saturday night. She’s rarely
intentionally
thoughtless, if you see what—’

‘ We’ll
find
her.’ He took her left hand in both of his, pressed it. ‘Hold on to that malt for me, would you, Roland?’

‘I’ll be closing in twenty minutes, Mr Child.’

‘You drink it then.’ Dermot was on his feet. ‘Come along, Merrily.’ Steering her into the oak-panelled passageway. ‘Now, have you checked the residents’ lounge?’

‘And the public bar. And the snooker room. She’s definitely not in the building.’

‘Can’t be far away. Not into badger-spotting or anything like that, I take it.’ Hustling her out into the porch.

‘Nor bats, nor owls. I don’t
think..

Down in the square, a couple got into a Range Rover and four youths played drunken football with a beer can on the cobbles. Dermot said, ‘She have a boyfriend?’

‘No one since we came here. Been a couple in the past. Nothing too intense. As far as you can ever tell.’

‘Must be a difficult age.’

‘Every age is a difficult age.’

‘Including yours? Sorry!’ Dermot clapped a hand to his head. ‘I’m sorry, Merrily. And please believe me, I didn’t mean to pry earlier. We just want you to be happy here. We know how lucky we are to have you. Old Alf ... I mean, he’d just been going through the motions for years. Just being there. Church is like the Royal Family. Needs more to survive these days than just being there. Needs motion.’

‘Motion?’ From the double-doorway of the porch, Merrily was scouring the square.
Please, Jane ...
‘Don’t know about motion. Sometimes I think I’m struggling just to stay upright.’

‘You’re doing fine,’ Dermot Child whispered. ‘You have absolutely nothing to worry about.’

And she felt his arm around her waist.

‘We’ll keep you on your feet,’ he said.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t freeze. She was the vicar. He was the organist.

He was the best organist in the county, the presumptuous little bastard. She contemplated moving towards him, looking deep into his eyes. Then bringing up her right knee and turning his balls to paste.

Instead, she said, ‘Who’s that, Dermot?’ And walked steadily out on to the steps.

Dermot followed her but didn’t touch her again. ‘Wouldn’t you know it?’ he said.

James Bull-Davies walked out of Church Street on to the square. He walked almost delicately, like a wading bird, long legs rigid, neck extended.

‘Been in the Ox,’ Dermot said. ‘Drinks socially in the Swan, but when he’s serious about it, he’ll go to the Ox. He’ll stand at a corner of the bar, by himself, and hell sink one after another, cheapest whisky they’ve got, until his eyes glaze. Happens two or three times a year. He isn’t an alcoholic. Just needs to do it sometimes, to keep going.’

‘Keep going?’

‘He hates it here,’ Dermot murmured out of the side of his mouth. ‘Haven’t you realized that? Hates what he is. Or what he feels he has to be. Would’ve stayed in the army, the old man hadn’t keeled over. Probably be a brigadier by now, but like poor bloody Prince Charles, he’s got to keep going.’

Bull-Davies was in the centre of the square, looking over the parked cars, peering at each one individually, like a crazed traffic warden.

‘Coffey’s play brought this on?’ Merrily wished James would just go away; whatever his problems were, they weren’t as immediate as hers.

Dermot lowered his voice. ‘I don’t know many details of the Williams affair – mostly pure legend, anyway, I’d guess. But I’d be very surprised if, among that long-ago lynch mob at the vicarage, there wasn’t a Bull or a Davies.’

Oh God. Merrily stiffened.
Remember poor ...

‘Never trust the Bulls,’ she whispered.

‘Who says that?’

‘Miss Devenish. On the night of the ... wassailing. Just after she had that row with the Cassidys.’

‘Didn’t go to that thing. Couldn’t face it. Too cold. What did Miss Devenish say?’

‘ “Never trust the Bulls. Remember poor ... poor ... Wil.” Of course.’

‘Old gypsy’s warning, eh?’

‘Never thought about it from that moment to this. I suppose what happened a few minutes later rather ...’

‘Woman’s insane, of course,’ he said. ‘Never forget that.’

‘Oh?’

‘Bonkers. And embittered. Used to write children’s books, but nobody’ll publish them any more. Roald Dahl, she wasn’t.’

Enjoying himself again. Trying to work his way up to another arm around the waist. She’d have to do something, couldn’t put up with months, years of this. She could deal with it. Would deal with it. If she could
just find Jane.

‘Also feels threatened,’ Dermot said. ‘Mostly by the Cassidys because they want her shop to extend their restaurant. Well, partly that and partly because Caroline feels the Devenish emporium’s cheap and tacky and not in keeping with the sophisticated image they’re after. Every so often they’ll make the old girl an offer. How she can afford to keep refusing is beyond me, because that little shop’s doing next to nothing.’

‘That’s sad.’ Merrily moved as far away from him as she could get without falling off the damned step. ‘Jane went in there today, she—’

She stopped because she didn’t want to explain why Jane had gone to the shop and also because James Bull-Davies had kicked over a litterbin.

‘Fuckers!’ he roared. ‘Bloody
fuckers?
’

He slipped and went down on one knee.

‘Fuckers,’ he said in a normal voice. Then laughed, picking himself up.

Evidently unaware of Merrily and Dermot Child, he leaned against the metal lamp-post beside the market cross and peered down Church Street, where the lights of a vehicle had appeared. The litterbin was still rolling along the cobbles.

‘Perhaps I should go down and talk to him,’ Merrily said. ‘This is my job, isn’t it?’

‘For what my opinion’s worth, Vicar, I’d seriously advise against it. He won’t be terribly civil, even if he recognizes you, and he won’t thank you for it in the morning.’

The vehicle stopped on the square, engine rattling. It was an old and muddy blue Land Rover. Alison Kinnersley jumped down. She wore tight jeans and a black shirt; her blonde hair shone like a brass helmet in the fake gaslight.

‘Come on then, my lord.’ She stood relaxed, legs apart, on the cobbles, the Land Rover snorting behind her like the stallion she rode around the village. ‘Let’s go home.’

Bull-Davies didn’t move from his lamp-post. ‘You whore. Who told you?’

‘Powell called.’

‘Good old saintly bloody Powell. Thought I saw his head come round the pub door.’

‘Let’s go home, Squire.’

‘Do you demand it?’ Bull-Davies grinned savagely. ‘D’you demand it, mistress?’

God, Merrily thought, she’s got him locked into some pathetic Brontë-esque sex play.

Alison seemed to shrug. Her breasts rather than her shoulders. Merrily felt Dermot Child quiver, and she shuddered and wanted to be almost anywhere else. But she also wanted to find Jane, and if Alison and James didn’t take their games home, she was going down there anyway.

‘Do it here, hey, my slinky, slinky whore?’ Bull-Davies rasped hoarsely. ‘Shag ourselves senseless on the bloody cobbles? Give the prissy bastards a show? Dent someone’s shiny Merc with your lovely arse?’

‘James, you’re pretty senseless already,’ Alison said coolly. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to get in before I leave you to sleep it off in the gutter.’

‘Whore.’ Bull-Davies detached himself from the lamppost.

‘Get in the truck, James. There’s a good boy. We have your reputation to look after.’ Alison sounding as if she knew they had an audience, of which James remained oblivious.

‘Reputation? Wassat going to be worth when that scented arse-bandit shafts me? You tell me, mistress. You bloody tell me.’

He walked unsteadily towards the Land Rover, mumbling morosely to the cobbles about the little, shirt-lifting, socialist scum, squatting at the bottom of the drive with his odious catamite.

‘You sold it, darling,’ Alison said wearily, as though they’d gone through all this many times before. ‘It isn’t yours any more.’

‘Man’s a piece of shit.’

‘Whatever. Do get in, Jamie.’

The Land Rover door was slammed. The chassis groaned, the engine spluttered and gagged and the battered vehicle was reversed, illegally, into the alley leading to Cassidy’s Country Kitchen and Ledwardine Lore.

‘Well,’ Dermot said after a moment. ‘I did warn you, didn’t I? The way it would go.’

But Merrily wasn’t listening; she was already stumbling down the steps.

Through the dirty wool of exhaust in the diesel-stinking air, she could see them bringing Jane along Church Street.

11

Pious Cow

‘A
ND IT’S A
really terrifying situation to be in. I mean, you know, what on earth do we do? How can
we
– ordinary, fallible human beings – even
contemplate
making a decision which we know is going – whichever way we turn – to offend somebody?’

Pause. Merrily took a step back from the edge of the pulpit. She felt awful. The light sizzled harshly in the stained-glass windows, yellows and reds glaring out, florid and sickly. Something they never told you at college: you needed to be fit for this job.

‘What’s the first thing we usually do? We panic, of course. We just want to run away. That’s always the first instinct, isn’t it? Why me? What have
I
done to get landed with this one?’

You always asked them questions. You were conversational about it. Just having a chat. OK, I’m up here, you’re down there, but we’re all in the same boat really. Sometimes, you found yourself hoping one of them would stand up, join in, help you out a bit.
Yeah, I take your point, Vicar, but the way I see it ...
God knew, she could use some help from the punters: maybe she should hold a parish referendum: Wil Williams – Yes or No?

Coward’s way out. She swallowed. Her mouth felt like a sandpit. It was a warm, sunny, good-to-be-alive morning. She felt cold in her stomach. She hadn’t eaten, hardly slept.

‘But you know, in your heart of hearts, that running away isn’t the answer to anything ... ever. Sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to it.’

Pitching her voice at the rafters; she knew what they meant about the warm acoustic. She’d never needed it more.

Packed house, of course. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? Sod’s Law. They were all here this morning. The twenty or so regulars, including Councillor Garrod Powell and his son Lloyd, both of them sober, dark-suited, expressionless, deeply
local.
Plus the occasionals – a resentful-looking Gomer Parry with his comfortable wife, Minnie. And Miss Lucy Devenish, who, according to Ted, would often walk out if the hymns were tuneless or the sermon insufficiently compelling.

Also the
very
occasionals, like Terrence and Caroline Cassidy (‘Sunday’s
such
a busy day, now – lunches
and
dinners, which effectively rules out both services, but we do often pop in during the week for a few minutes of
quiet time
’).

In addition, the never-seen-here-befores: Richard Coffey in a light brown velvet suit, with his wafery friend Stefan Alder, flop-haired and sulky-eyed, in jeans.

And the totally unexpected-under-the-circumstances: James Bull-Davies, frozen-faced and solitary in the old family pew. Well. Merrily leaned over the pulpit, hands clasped. This one’s for you ...
Jamie.

‘So what
do
you do? The pressure’s building up. You’re starting to feel a bit beleaguered.’

Two messages had been on the answering machine she’d fixed up in the room; must have come in while she was out there trying to locate Jane. Terrence Cassidy: ‘Perhaps we could arrange a small chat, Merrily. Would you call me?’ Councillor Garrod Powell: ‘A word or two might be in order, Vicar, if you can spare the time. I’ll be in church as usual tomorrow.’

Bull-Davies wasn’t looking at her. He had his arms folded and his legs stretched out as far as they would go in the confining space between pews. He faced the door which led to the belfry. Just about the last place he’d want to go if the inside of his head was in the condition it deserved to be after last night.

‘Rule One: don’t give in to pressure. Rule Two: collect all the information you can get, listen to all the arguments, seek out independent people who might have an opinion or a point of view you hadn’t thought about. Try to step back and see it from a different angle.’