The Wine of Angels (40 page)

‘How you doin’? Sweatin’? Yeah!’

A few cheers. Dean Wall’s familiar whoop.

‘All right!’ Dr Samedi raised the white loud hailer up over his head. A signal, obviously. Because, at that moment, the perfectly preserved medieval market square of rural Ledwardine just ... well, just erupted.

The black thing, like a small coffin, had proclaimed itself, in the way it knew best, as a huge ghetto-blaster with about eight speakers. It was sitting on the roof of the van now, pumping tumultuous drum and bass into the square at this unbelievable volume, and Colette Cassidy was bouncing up and down beside the van and screaming, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes
!’

A circle of people rapidly formed around her, everybody moving in a way it was hard not to when the big, black beat was everywhere and loud enough to pop up all the cobbles on the square. Oh my God, Jane thought, they’ll hear this in the centre of Hereford.

‘Welcome, ma friends ...’

Dr Samedi’s phoney West Indian drawl had been processed by the primitive megaphone into a deep and eerie croak.

‘
Wel-come ... to ... de ... carn-i-valf

The ceiling light was blurred and swirling.

She was waking up. She’d been asleep. Dreamed it all. Again. Oh my God.

It was not
possible.
Hadn’t she heated her hands on the Aga, gripped the poker until it hurt, bashed her knee so hard the pain had given her a headache? Proving beyond all doubt that she was awake?

The light above her was in a warm, orange shade. Jane’s shade. Taken with her from Birmingham to Liverpool to Ledwardine ...

To the third floor.

She was in Jane’s bedroom, in the Apartment. Lying on Jane’s bed. She didn’t remember coming here. Why would she come in here, lie down on Jane’s bed? Fear streaked through her and she struggled to sit up and looked into a blank, grey, oval face with dark slits for eyes.

Merrily screamed and squirmed away. Hurled herself back against the headboard, slamming it into the wall behind.

‘It’s OK!’

The grey face was printed on a jumper, a sweatshirt. Over it was a real face behind glasses. The real face looked scared.

‘No ... look ... hey ...’ he said. ‘I’m harmless.’

She looked down, registering that she was fully dressed, the bed unrumpled.

‘Mrs Watkins ... I’m really, really sorry.’

‘Christ.’

‘I thought you might need a cup of tea ...’

One of her cups coming at her, on one of her saucers. She didn’t move.

‘What are you doing? What are you doing in ...’

Aware that, even in her fear, she couldn’t say, What are you doing in my house? It wasn’t. It was the vicarage. It was huge and alien and maybe this man lived here, too, in some derelict attic room, coming and going by the forgotten back stairs. Part of the mad, sporadic nightmare. Oh God, get me out of here.

‘I’m a kind of ... friend of Jane’s.’ He was very untogether; big, unsteady eyes behind the glasses. Like a scared version of the alien on his sweater.

‘Where is she?’

‘She went to a party. See, what happened, we met in the street, I needed to take a look at my cat, and she just like brought me up here, you know? Jane says, you know, Bring her inside, we’ll have a look at her. Obviously I didn’t realize she meant ... her room. Believe me, there is no way I’d’ve come up here.’

‘Cat,’ Merrily said.

‘Somebody gave her a kicking. We brought her up here and then she got away. We must’ve touched her in the wrong place. I’m sorry. I don’t
do
things like this.’

She accepted the tea with numb relief. ‘You’ve got an injured cat somewhere in the house? Wandering around, making bumping noises maybe.’

‘Probably.’

Merrily could hear heavy music coming through the trees from the square, insistent as a road drill. This wasn’t going to endear the Cassidys to their neighbours. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ she said. ‘I need a cigarette.’

It wasn’t long before they started coming out of their homes, gathering in small groups. You could see pyjama bottoms sticking out of trouser turn-ups, one woman in an actual hairnet. Big torches, walking sticks.

‘Who’s in charge here?’ a man shouted. Not a local voice. A sort of retired colonel voice.

The music was turned up even higher. Maybe fifty people dancing. Someone grabbed hold of Jane’s arm, tried to pull her into the crush of quivering bodies.

It was Colette. ‘Aw, come on, Janey. Get your shit together. Stuff the Reverend Mumsy. Like
she’s
in any position to complain.’

‘You’re disturbing the peace!’ The man’s voice rose again. ‘This is noise pollution. If you don’t turn that racket off and go away now, at once, I’m going to call the police! Do you hear me?’

Jane let herself be dragged in, knowing they were all on borrowed time. If Barry hadn’t rung the police already, quite a few people were surely doing it right now; you looked up and you could see small, furious faces peering out of dark windows, could imagine outraged fingers stiffly prodding out 999. Anticipating it, Mark and his friend had already disappeared from the Marches Media doorway. But whatever they’d been selling was taking effect: all around her, open mouths and too-bright eyes.

‘We comin’ out,’ rapped Dr Samedi. ‘We comin’ back. We gonna turn, gonna turn de whole sky
black.
’ But he no longer sounded in control.

A boy pushed past Jane, having come out of the antique shop doorway, zipping up his jeans. ‘Did you
see
that?’ a woman yelped. ‘That yob’s just urinated in there!’

‘You hear me?’ the man shouted. ‘I’m calling the police!’

‘Oh, do fuck off, grandad!’ replied a girl with an equally posh voice, and there were wild peals of laughter and somebody turned the music up even higher, so that even Dr Samedi was drowned out.

But they were on borrowed time and Jane wasn’t unhappy about that because she needed to get back and find out about Lol. Lol who’d come over very weird when she’d taken him up the back stairs and he’d found himself in her room. Backing off, shaking his head, saying this was a mistake. His agitation picked up by Ethel, the cat, squirming out of his arms and disappearing into the bowels of the vicarage.

Lol was in trouble. He couldn’t go home because Karl was in there and Lol, for reasons Jane still couldn’t quite put together, was scared of Karl. And was also – for reasons even more obscure – scared
other.
He’d seemed relieved to pack her off to the party, to hide out there alone in the part of the house where Mum was banned. He wouldn’t be there when she got home, he said. He’d wait until Ethel reappeared and then he’d go. She’d left him her secret key to lock the small back door behind him; he’d leave it, he said, with Lucy.

But what if Karl was still in the cottage when he got back? Where would Lol go then?

One idea had occurred to Jane. Maybe she could get a few of the guys from the party – rugby-player types – to go over to Lol’s place and force that bastard out of there. But the state they were in now, how could you even explain to them what was needed? By the time they made it to Blackberry Lane they’d have forgotten why they were going.

Chaos. Nothing more unstable than well-brought-up kids on the loose in some place they and their parents weren’t known.

The music stopped.

The silence was deafening. Beyond the hollow roaring in her ears, Jane heard the sound of car engines.

‘OK.’ Colette’s voice over the loud hailer. ‘Listen up. It’s probably the filth, yeah? We’re moving on. Don’t worry, no cars required. Follow me ... or Janey. Where’s Janey? She knows.’

It wasn’t the police. The car that turned on to the edge of the square was a Volvo like Mum’s, only about ten years younger. Both front doors opened at once.

The Cassidys.

‘Janey,’ Colette called out. ‘OK?’ And then the loud hailer was silent.

Jane didn’t move. What was Colette saying to her?
She knows.
What? She slipped back under the market cross as Terrence Cassidy appeared on the cobbles, panting. ‘Colette! Where are you? Please—’ and was almost pulled off his feet by the stampede from the square.

‘Colette!’

Mrs Cassidy was less circumspect. ‘The unutterable little
bitch.
I
knew
something like this would—’

‘Colette,’ Terrence implored. ‘Where are you. Why are you
doing
this to us?’

‘It’s ‘cause you’re such a wanker, mate,’ Dean Wall confided chattily over his shoulder and cackled and followed the others.

The music had resumed, from the top of Church Street, booming off into the churchyard. Jane’s shoulder brushed against a poster tacked to one of the pillars of the market cross, bold black and yellow lettering inside a big red apple,
LEDWAR-DINE SUMMER FESTIVAL: OFFICIAL OPENING, SATURDAY, MAY 23. MARKET SQUARE
2.00 p.m.
BE
THERE!

‘Bloody hell!’

Jane found Dr Samedi next to her, the loud hailer dangling limply from his hand. Back in Midlands mode.

‘Can y’ believe it? She’s buggered off with my flamin’ box. Bloody rich kids. I hate bloody rich kids, I do. Gimme ghetto any day of the week.’

‘Sorry, Jeff. She’s hard to stop when she gets going.’

‘That don’t help me, does it?’

And suddenly, Jane knew where Colette was taking them.

‘Oh no.’ She looked around for help, but the Cassidys had rushed into their restaurant, presumably to assess the damage and take it out on Barry. Even the locals were melting away – wherever the mob was heading, it was at least out of their earshot, away from their backyards, so what did they care?

‘Thing is,’ Dr Samedi was moaning, ‘I don’t know if my insurance covers this.’

Jane saw a tall figure strolling towards the churchyard.

‘Lloyd!’

Lloyd Powell turned and waited for her under the fake gaslight, Jane found herself clutching at his sleeve.

‘You’ve got to stop them.’

‘I think we’ll wait for the police, don’t you, Miss Watkins?’

‘No!’ You could never tell with people like Lloyd whether they called you Miss out of politeness or because they were laughing at you. ‘They’re going to the orchard. You can stop them. It’s your land. You can go in there and turn them out.’

‘On my own?’

He
was
laughing at her. Everybody knew the Powells didn’t really care about their orchard.

But they should. They
should.

‘Please. It’s not safe. It’s not respectful. You’ve got to get them out. Please, Lloyd.’

‘Hey.’ He put his big, rugged hands on her shoulders, peered at her from under his Paul Weller fringe. ‘Don’t get into a state about this. They’re just daft kids.’

‘Please.’ She was crying now.

‘All right,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’ll go and see what I can do.’ He smiled wryly, hunching his shoulders. ‘You wanner come?’

‘Oh no,’ Jane said. ‘I couldn’t.’

She stood on the edge of the cobbles, hopelessly confused, awfully apprehensive for reasons she couldn’t explain.

26

The Mondrian Walls

‘B
LEEDING FROM THE
mouth,’ Merrily said.

Lol Robinson held Ethel on the kitchen table. ‘That means internal injuries?’

He looked shattered. They’d found the little black cat cowering into the side of the Aga.

‘Who did this?’

He didn’t reply, which meant he knew. In the hall Merrily found an old quilted body-warmer she’d kept for gardening.

‘You know what to do with this?’

‘I’ve never actually had a cat before.’

‘You wrap her up tight, so there’s just her head sticking out. So there’s plenty between you and the claws?’

‘Er ... right’

‘Never mind. Just grab her by the scruff and don’t let go. No ... You have to
be firm,
Lol.’

‘I’m not really a firm person,’ Lol said.

Merrily rolled up the sleeves of her sweater. She opened out the jacket, swept it swiftly around the cat. She tucked the ends around Ethel’s claws.

‘Anybody I might know? Anybody whose soiled soul I should be praying for?’

‘Any spare prayers,’ he said quietly, ‘I would hang on to them.’

‘No prayers are wasted.’ Handing him a bundle with a small black head sticking out. ‘Hold her very tightly. God, these lights are crap.’

He glanced up at her.

‘Yeah, I know, some people would call that taking the Lord’s name in vain.’ Trying to prise the jaws apart. ‘No,
tight,
Lol, you’ve got a leg coming out. The way I see it, it helps keep the holy names in circulation. Especially when used in times of stress.’

Ethel’s mouth snapped open; Merrily gritted her teeth, slipped a forefinger inside.

‘Not entirely sure whether I should’ve used it in the same sentence as
crap,
mind ... See there? Lost a tooth. Possibly a couple. Where the blood’s coming from.’