‘Wanker’s land surrounds us. Had the first one put in place after Stewart refused to sell him the kiln.’
‘Can he do that?’ Stock’s fury made sudden sense.
‘Done it, hasn’t he? Yeah, sure he can. Country landowners can throw up whatever kind of monstrosity they want, long as it’s an agricultural building and they can show a need for it. Need. Jesus. You know what those barns are used for? Nothing. They’re empty – great, echoing, empty shells.’
‘He did it just to—’
‘Steal the light.’ Stock was sweating, but he seemed sober now. ‘It’s about stealing the light. You see, this was particularly cruel – though whether Lake was subtle enough to realize that is anybody’s guess – because the old boy was a photographer.’
‘Light being his medium.’
‘Yeah.’ Stock took out his tin to roll a smoke. ‘He loved light. Course, Lake wasn’t trying to force him to sell. He just needed some extra storage facilities for hay and sundry fodder at the extremity of his estate. That’s what he tells you. The cunt.’
‘Didn’t… Stewart make any kind of protest?’
‘Didn’t live long enough, thanks to his good friends, the gypos – those lithe and slippery gypo boys, dear, oh dear. But, yeah, he did make a last, meaningful gesture.’
The path forked – Lol thought this was probably the point at which he’d lost his way the other night – and Stock went to the left and climbed over a stile.
The kiln house was in front of them now. It was built of red brick and was smaller than it had looked by night, and now the full horror of the barn sandwich became apparent. The actual kiln tower, with just one window, was at the front, but most of the other windows seemed to be on the sides, permanently shadowed by industrial metal.
Lol climbed over the stile and found Stock standing on the edge of the field, lighting his roll-up.
‘If you hadn’t guessed, Uncle Stewart’s final gesture was Gerard Stock. Stephie was Stewart’s’ –he coughed out smoke, – ‘favourite niece. Always close to her after her parents split. How’s she repay him? Marries Gerard Stock. Steph’s sweet eighteen, this guy’s twenny years older, smokes a lot of dope, gets both of them busted one time, dear oh dear. And, oh yeah, the clincher: one night Stephie falls downstairs and loses her baby and there’s some internal messiness so there aren’t gonna be any more babies. And this is all Gerard Stock’s fault, naturally. And Stephie, once beloved, gets sliced out of Stewart’s will. We thought.’
They both looked up at the kiln house.
‘Now why,’ said Stock, ‘would the dear old turd-burglar let his beloved home fall into the hands of a man he couldn’t stand the fucking sight of? You’re right. He didn’t bequeath his house to Gerard Stock. He bequeathed Gerard Stock to Adam Lake.’
Stock coughed, then laughed. The sun was sinking fast, and the side of the kiln house facing the nearest barn was already almost black in its shadow.
‘When Lake finds out who inherited, we get a letter from his agent, making an offer. We refuse. That’s when the second barn goes up.’ He nodded at the house. ‘There you go – power’s back on.’
Lights had appeared in two of the windows in the shadowed wall. None of them seemed to be very big windows, Lol noticed, and the Stocks wouldn’t even be allowed to enlarge them because the kiln house would be on the historic-buildings list. Living there couldn’t be easy; it would look like deepest winter all year round.
‘You have to keep lights on all day?’
‘Some. Yeah, we live like moles, but it’s a liddle better than the trailer.’
‘What, even though—?’ Lol broke off. He couldn’t say it.
Stock could. ‘Even though we have our dining table resting on the flagstones where the nice gypsy boys spread Uncle Stewart’s brains?’
He burst out laughing again, but it was shallower this time and soon tailed off. The light that Lol remembered from the other night came on palely below the conical roof of the kiln.
‘Spooky.’ Stock’s cigarette lit up in his rosebud lips, like a spark from the setting sun. He stood with his legs apart, looking like some kind of psychotic troll. ‘It’s a spooky place. You believe in ghosts, Lol?’
Lol thought of the naked woman in the naked hop-yard who, for one icy moment—
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I suppose I do.’
‘I don’t.’ Stock squeezed out his cigarette between finger and thumb and winced. ‘But something needs dealing with.’
8
Mercury Retrograde
LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, the vicarage seemed more still and vast than Merrily had ever known it. One woman, seven bedrooms. Even the kitchen was as quiet as a crypt.
Wearing Jane’s old Radiohead T-shirt, she sat down at the table, took out the lumpy old penny from a hip pocket of her jeans, and stared at the blurred woman with the trident. Some broads had all the backbone.
In the dawn-lit chancel, she’d blessed the coin on the altar – and then been unable to go through with the rest, spending the next half-hour on her knees, concluding that she was not a natural psychic and could never imagine herself approaching a state of grace.
And then it had been time to go home and finish the last bits of Jane’s packing and help carry her bags out to the boot of Eirion’s stepmother’s silver BMW, where Eirion stowed it as carefully as if it was the kid’s trousseau and kept looking over his shoulder at Jane, as if to make sure she was still there, his guileless face breaking into the kind of smile that told you everything you didn’t really want to know.
Merrily caught herself thinking he was the sort of guy Jane ought to meet in about ten years’ time, when she’d… been around?
God, it was always so hard. Sometimes you wished they could have some kind of life-experience cell implanted in their brains as soon as they hit puberty.
Jane was being practical, methodical, counting off on her fingers all the things she needed to take – and avoiding Eirion’s eyes, Merrily noticed. Eirion she thought she could understand; Jane was more complex. Jane, she suspected, would always be complex.
Last night, the power hadn’t gone off. They hadn’t managed a proper talk, but what was she supposed to have said, anyway: Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do? At about three and a half years older than Jane, she’d been pregnant.
‘You will be OK, won’t you, Mum?’ The kid wore a high-necked lemon-and-white striped top and white jeans. She’d looked about nine.
‘Yes, flower, I’ll avoid junk food, I won’t drink to excess, I’ll observe speed limits and I’ll try to be home before midnight.’ The kid was still looking too serious; her mood clearly did not match Eirion’s. ‘And, erm… I expect you’ll ring occasionally from Pembrokeshire?’
‘Course.’
‘Got enough money?’
‘I won’t flash the plastic unless things get really tight, if that’s—’
‘Whatever,’ Merrily said. ‘Do you want to take the mobile?’
They still only had one between them.
‘Your need’s far greater than mine. Besides, it’s supposed to be a holiday.’ Jane picked up Ethel, the black cat, and nuzzled her. ‘A whole month. She won’t remember me.’
‘Of course she will.’
‘Anyway, I can borrow Irene’s phone.’
‘Ring any time. Any time at all.’
‘It’s all in.’ Eirion had closed the boot and stood with his back to the car, his baseball cap hanging from both hands at waist level, obviously trying to control his smile, contain a youthful glee that might be viewed as uncool.
‘Off you go, then, flower.’ Merrily accepted Ethel, popping her down on the lawn, where she lifted a paw and began to lick it, unconcerned. Cats.