He felt nothing.
Because ... Jesus...
'Did you go on the peat today?' she asked him in a very small voice, the snow falling between them. 'Did you go on the peat with the pipes? Did you let the damn peat absorb it?'
And then the projector stuttered and stalled again, images shivering on the screen of the night, and she saw him suddenly all in white. Maybe just an illusion of the snow. He was very still and framed in white. It wasn't nice. The white was frilled around him, like the musty lace handkerchiefs in the top dresser drawer at her gran's house.
And a whiff of soiled perfume.
Death?
For the first time, there was a real menace to him. Too transient to tell whether it was around him or from him. Her throat swelled. She coughed and the tears came, the wrong kind of tears. She felt the snow forming on the top of her own head; it was almost warm. Maybe she looked like that too, shrouded in white.
Matt held out his right hand and she gripped it like a lifeline, but the hand was deathly cold. She told herself, Cold hands, warm heart, yeah? And tried to pull him closer - but all the time wanting to keep him away and hating herself for that.
He dropped her hand and then put both of his on her shoulders. His arms were rigid, like girders, but she felt they were trembling, his whole body quivering with some titanic tension, something strong holding out against something potentially stronger, like a steel suspension bridge in a hurricane.
Then he said, 'Going to show me?' Voice colder than the snow.
She wanted to squirm away; she made herself remain still, trying to find his eyes. No. Please. Don't spoil this. I'll buy it. You're a selfless, self sacrificing guy. I don't want to know any more.
'This famous comb,' he said with a smile that was faintly unpleasant.
'It's no' famous,' she said quickly, almost snapping.
His brown eyes were steady. Hey, come on ...this is Matt Castle. What's he gonna do, steal it off you, snatch it out your hand and drive away?
Keep it safe. Never take it out for show ... Never treat it as a trinket or a wee souvenir. You understand, child?
No, see, all it is. He wants a link. A special moment, something between us and no one else.
You owe him. You owe him that.
You owe him nothing.
She stopped searching his eyes, didn't want to know what they might have to tell her about Matt Castle, the kindly father figure, that Matt Castle who'd said, Take your chance, grab it while you can, lass. Never mind us. We're owd men.
Dumbly, Moira laid the guitar case on the pavement in the snow and - hands shaking with the cold and the nerves - flipped up the chromium catch.
It was like opening someone's coffin.
Only the guitar lay in state. In a panic, she felt beneath the machine-heads for the velvet pouch which held the ancient metal comb.
I have to. I owe him, Mammy. I'm sorry, but I owe him.
Part One
the spring cross
From Dawber's Book of Bridelow:
INTRODUCTION
This little book bids you, the visitor, a cordial welcome to Bridelow Across the Moss, a site of habitation for over two thousand years and the home of the famous Bridelow Black Beer.
Bridelow folk would never be so immodest as to describe their tiny, lonely village as unique. But unique it is, both in situation and character.
Although little more than half an hour's drive from the cities of Manchester and Sheffield, the village is huddled in isolation between the South Pennine moors and the vast peatbog known as Bridelow Moss. So tucked away, as the local saying goes, 'It's a wonder the sun knows where to come of a morning ...'
A spring morning. A hesitant sun edging over the moor out of a mist pale as milk. Only when it clears the church tower does the sun find a few patches of blue to set it off, give it a bit of confidence.
The sun hovers a while, blinking in and out of the sparse shreds of cloud before making its way down the village street, past the cottage where Ma Wagstaff lives, bluetits breakfasting from the peanuts in two mesh bags dangling from the rowan trees in the little front garden.
The cats, Bob and Jim, sitting together on Ma's front step - donkeystoned to a full-moon whiteness - observe the bluetits through narrowed green eyes but resist their instincts because Ma will be about soon.
And while Ma understands their instincts all too well, she does not appreciate blood on her step.
Milly Gill, shedding her cardigan at the Post Office door, thought the mist this morning was almost like a summer heat-haze, which wasn't bad for the second week in March.
It made Milly feel excited, somewhere deep inside her majestic bosom. It made her feel so energetic that she wanted to wander off for long walks, to fill up her reservoirs after the winter. And to go and see the Little Man. See what he had in his reservoir.
And of course it made her feel creative, too. Tonight she'd be pulling out that big sketch pad and the coloured pencils and getting to work on this year's design to be done in flowers for the dressing of the Holy Well. It was, she decided, going to reflect everything she could sense about her this morning.
Milly Gill thought, I'm forty-nine and I feel like a little girl.
This was what the promise of spring was supposed to do.
'Thank you. Mother,' Milly said aloud, with a big, innocent grin. 'And you too, sir!'
The Moss, a vast bed, hangs on to its damp duvet as usual until the sun is almost overhead. Behind temporary traffic-lights, about half a mile from the village, a Highways Authority crew is at work, widening the road which crosses the peat, a long-overdue improvement, although not everybody is in favour of improving access to the village.
It's close to midday before the foreman decides it's warm enough to strip to the waist.
This is the man who finds the chocolate corpse.
The splendour of the morning dimmed a little for the Rector when, on getting out of bed, he felt a twinge.
It was, as more often than not, in the area of his left knee. 'We really must get you a plastic one,' the doctor had said last time. 'I should think the pain's pretty awful, isn't it?'
'Oh.' The Rector flexing his creased-up Walter Matthau semi-smile. 'Could be worse.' Then the. doctor ruefully shaking his head, making a joke about the Rector being determined to join the league of Holy Martyrs.
'I was thinking of joining the squash club, actually,' the Rector had said, and they'd both laughed and wondered how he was managing to keep this up.