Danny became aware of Jeremy Berrows up on the bank.
Danny said. ‘It’s his farm, it is.’
‘Oh.’
He watched the woman approaching Jeremy. She was very thin and her bare arms were tanned. She was real sexy, in fact, in a more managed way, like a rock chick of the old school.
‘Hi, I’m, er... I’m Nat,’ she said. ‘Natalie. That’s Clancy.’
The girl nodded and said nothing.
Jeremy didn’t move at all, but he wasn’t still either. He was so much a part of this land that he seemed suspended in the air currents, and his sparse, fluffy hair was dusted by the sun. When the woman moved towards Jeremy, leaving the girl by the van, Danny would swear he saw a hell of a shiver go through the boy, as if there was a sudden stiff breeze, come out of nowhere, that no one else could feel.
Danny felt an apprehension.
For over a week, the blue van stayed in the bottom field.
Then it wasn’t there any more.
About a month after this, Gwilym Bufton, the feed dealer and gossipy bastard from Hundred House, told Danny Thomas that he’d seen a blue van parked up in Jeremy Berrows’s yard, hidden behind the old dairy. Like it was meant to be hidden.
By September, people were starting to talk.
In October, Danny saw Jeremy Berrows one lunchtime in the Eagle at New Radnor, sitting at a table in the shadows with the woman with dark brown hair. Jeremy nodded and said, ‘How’re you?’ in a nervous kind of voice, and Danny didn’t push it. The woman smiled at Danny, and it was a nice smile, no question, and she was a lovely-looking woman, no question about that either, but her eyes were watchful. Danny supposed he could understand that, the way people were talking.
Next thing he heard about the van was that it had been sold – bit of irony here – to the naturalists working up at Stanner, to use as a mobile site HQ and for overnight accommodation. Serious burning of boats here, in Danny’s view. Then he hears the woman’s gone to work for the latest London fantasists to take over the ruinous Stanner Hall Hotel. Manager, no less.
A few days later, Greta said, when they were watching telly, during the adverts, ‘Rhoda Morson – you know, Mary’s mother? Well, I was talking to her, in the paper shop, see, and her says, “Oh, he’s just doing it to make Mary jealous.” ’
‘You what?’
‘Her. Well, Rhoda Morson was mad as hell, sure t’ be, when Mary blew it with Jeremy and lost the farm. Getting his own back now, that’s what she reckons. Rubbing it in.’
‘That’s what her reckons, is it?’ Danny said. Lost the farm. Bloody hell, it was all they ever thought about – bringing another bloody farm into the family. Where was love in the equation, or was that a sixties thing?
Greta looked at him, thoughtful. ‘You could find out.’
‘Eh?’
‘How permanent it is.’
‘Why’d I wanner do that? En’t my affair.’
‘Ah, but is it?’ Greta said. ‘Is it just an affair? Or has that tart got her big feet firmly under the table? The girl’s going to school over at Moorfield now, ’cording to Lynne in the hairdresser’s. Now that’s got the ring of permanent about it, isn’t it?’
Danny yawned and watched a car commercial he liked because it had a soundtrack of ‘Travellin’ in Style’ by Free. He’d never had an actual car, only second-hand trucks. He didn’t mention to Greta about the van being sold; if she hadn’t heard, he wasn’t going to give her more gossip to spread across the valley.
‘You knows Jeremy Berrows better than most,’ she said. ‘You could find out.’
‘I prob’ly could, Gret,’ Danny said. ‘If I gave a shit.’
And the matter was never raised again, because that was the night of the terrible fire that wrecked Gomer Parry’s plant-hire depot down the valley, killing Gomer’s nephew, Fat Nev. Bit of a shock for everybody in Radnor Valley, that was, and Danny spent a lot of time helping poor old Gomer salvage what could be salvaged and restore what could be restored. Rebuilding the perimeter fence to keep out the scavengers and dealing with the particular area of the site that he realized Gomer couldn’t bear to go near.
And out of the blackened ruins of Gomer’s business came the glimmering of a new future for Danny. It wasn’t, admittedly, the career in music he’d always dreamed of, but it would mean whole days out of the valley. New places, new people. And he was a good ole boy, Gomer Parry.
For a while, Danny Thomas was so excited that, like the great David Crosby, he almost cut his hair.
He never saw much of Jeremy Berrows again until the winter, when the trees were all rusty and the skulls of Stanner Rocks gleamed with damp like cold sweat, and the traditional stability of the border country was very much called into question.
Traditional stability: that was a bloody joke.
Part One
It occurred to a man who was cycling home to Kington late at night – he’d been working at the munitions factory during the War. Near Hergest Court he saw this enormous hound which he’d never seen before and never saw again. The hound had huge eyes – that’s what impressed him most, the size of its eyes. The hound didn’t attack him, and he just kept cycling and I would imagine he cycled very fast. He had a feeling that there was something that just wasn’t real about it.
1
Without the Song
NORMALLY, SHE WOULDN’T think of fogging the air around non-smoking parishioners, especially so soon after a service. Tonight was different. Tonight, Merrily needed not only this cigarette but what it was saying about her.
The cigarette said, This woman is human. This woman is weak. Also, given the alleged findings on secondary smoking, this woman is selfish and inconsiderate. This is a serial sinner.
Only it wasn’t getting through. Brenda Prosser’s eyes were glowing almost golden now. Twice she’d tried to sit down at the kitchen table and been pushed back to her feet by the electricity inside her. She had to hold on to the back of the chair to stop her hands trembling, and then the joy would make her mouth go slack and she’d shake her head, smiling helplessly.
‘Gone.’ Maybe the fourth time she’d said that – Brenda relishing the hard finality in the word: gone, gone, gone.
‘Just like it never was there, vicar,’ Big Jim Prosser said. His light grey suit was soaked and blackened across the shoulders. He stood with his back to the old Aga in the vicarage kitchen, and the Aga rumbled sourly.
And Merrily smoked and wondered how she should be responding. But the inner screen was blank. Just like Ann-Marie’s scan.
‘This is a miracle, sure t’be,’ Jim said.
Oh Christ. Any word but that.
‘And, see, like I kept saying to Jim, hardly the first one, is it?’ Rain was still bubbled on Brenda’s forehead like the remains of a born-again baptism. ‘Not the first since you brought back the Evensong.’
‘Without the song.’ Merrily sat down, then abruptly stood up again and went to fill the kettle for tea. A dense curtain of rain swished across the dark window over the sink, as though it had been hosed.
They could have waited for her in the church porch, Brenda and Jim. But when the congregation was filing out, umbrellas going up, there they’d been, standing among the wet tombs and the headstones, both of them bareheaded, as though they were unaware of the sometimes-sleety rain. Like they were in some parallel dimension where it wasn’t cold and it wasn’t raining at all.