Spicer stepped back, shaking his head. Merrily walked down towards the road, feeling in her left-hand hip pocket for her keys, aware that he wasn’t following her. At the bottom of the drive, she realized the car keys weren’t in her pocket.
Must have left them in the ignition. She’d only got out to look at the sapling.
She stopped at the side of the road, looked from side to side. Couldn’t take it in at first. She turned on Spicer, bewildered. He shrugged.
‘I meant to tell you. That was why I came in. Only it got … superseded.’
‘Someone’s nicked my car.’
‘Yeah. I saw you drive past. About twenty minutes later, the car comes back the other way, couple of kids in it. I didn’t figure you’d have asked them to go down the shop and get you some cigarettes.’
She leaned against the railings. Closing her eyes.
‘A gift is a gift,’ Spicer said. ‘Sadly, for what it’s worth, I reckon you’ve just become the first genuine victim of the notorious criminal element frequenting the Royal Oak.’
Suddenly, without preamble, like a baby, Tim was howling. Crashing back and flinging himself face down into the rotting hay and straw, beating his fists into the broken bales. Lol ran past him into the open, saw how long the grass was and the nettles. Saw that the chances of finding the phone before the morning were remote, and even then…
Better to take off fast, get away, run back to the centre of the hamlet, wait there for Merrily. Bang on someone’s door and ask to use the phone. He started to walk away.
‘Don’t … go.’ Sour whisky-breath on the air. Tim Loste standing very close behind him. ‘Think I need help.’
It was as if throwing the phone out of the barn had expelled what remained of his energy. Blown out his candle. He went back and sat down meekly on his bale, looking at the baked mud floor, then up at Lol in the lamplight.
‘I remember Dan. Dan’s got a beard. Tall as me. Bald.’
Lol stood in the open mouth of the barn, considering the options. He could probably walk out of here now and keep walking and Tim wouldn’t necessarily follow him. But what would that achieve?
‘You’re not Dan, are you?’ Tim said.
‘I’m Lol.’
‘Kind of name’s that?’
‘Short for Laurence.’
‘Lol.’ Loste sounding it like a bass note.
‘And who are you?’ Lol asked him.
‘Me?’ Tim Loste leaned back into the hay. ‘I’m the chap who’s come here to see God.’
55
Build a Cathedral
Mustn’t push it. Move yourself into deep shadow, introduce the subject of Edward Elgar and watch it forming in the milky lamplight … what your old boss, Dick Lydon, the Hereford psychotherapist, would have called an elaborate fantasy structure.
Except maybe it wasn’t.
There was clearly something wrong with Tim Loste. No question there, except what was it? There was whisky breath, but this wasn’t normal intoxication. For long periods, his thoughts would appear fluid. Usually when he was interested in the subject under discussion.
Elgar. Anyone who didn’t understand what Elgar was about, Tim had no time for them. Fortunately, he hadn’t had to mix with many people like that. The only child of orchestral musicians, he’d grown up in Sussex, not far from Brinkwells, Elgar’s house when the composer was living down south.
The place where he’d met Algernon Blackwood, writer of ghost stories and sometime-magician.
Lol came back to sit on the bale. He said he knew about Brinkwells.
‘Ah…’ Tim beaming whitely in the lamplight. ‘So not like most of the airy-fairy types who come out here.’
‘Friend of Dan’s,’ Lol reminded him.
‘Dan … ?’
‘Finest tenor in Much Cowarne?’
‘Good old Dan.’ Tim’s eyes were cloudy again. ‘Often meet people here, all times of the day and night. Disappointing. Wispy types. Never want to talk about Elgar.’
‘Brinkwells,’ Lol said. ‘You were at Brinkwells.’
‘I was drawn to it from an early age. Six? Maybe earlier. Had a nanny, for when the parents were on tour. Used to take me to Brinkwells until I could go on my own – just the fields around there, you know? Better when I could go alone. We’d go for walks, and he’d be pointing out things. Look at this, young ’un.’
‘Your nanny was a bloke?’
‘Not the nanny, old cock.’
Tim leaned forward, hands on knees, his big face uptilted, summoning memories. Or the ones he’d fabricated earlier?
‘Used to wait for him. Or he’d wait for me. There were some old trees – bit like this. You could stand by the trees and he’d be there. He loved those trees. There was a legend that they were supposed to have been monks who got bewitched. When Blackwood came to visit, he took him to see the trees.’
‘Were they oaks?’
‘Suppose they must’ve been. What do you make of these, young ’un, he’d say. Can you see the monks?’
Lol wondered how much of this Tim had blocked in, years later. It wasn’t unusual for an only child to have a famous imaginary companion. Even one who must, even at the time, have been dead for over forty years.
‘He loved all trees, didn’t he?’ Lol said.
‘I’ll say.’
‘What about the Whiteleafed Oak?’
‘Well, of course. This was his favourite walk. This was where Caractacus was formed. And then Gerontius. Everything leading up to Gerontius. But he kept jolly quiet about Whiteleafed Oak. People do. It’s a place of powerful initiation.’
‘Elgar said that?’
‘Did he?’
‘No, I mean was that Elgar or … Winnie Sparke?’
Tim looked away.
‘That lamp getting fainter, do you think, Dan? Need to bring some new batteries. Should we switch it off?’
‘You keep the lamp here?’
‘Under the hay. With this.’ Tim tugged out a stiff-backed folder covered in brown leather and opened it up on his knees. ‘Don’t always need light here, though, if there’s a moon.’
‘You come here a lot?’
Lol leaned into the light so that he could see what was on the pages. Tim closed the book quickly. It was musical manuscript. A score.
Tim leaned over and switched off the lamp, inflating himself into this hulking shadow against the chalk-dust night.
‘Tim…’ Lol hesitated. ‘Do you think Elgar knew about the idea of the perpetual choirs?’
Tim looked for him.
‘Who did you say you were?’
‘Friend of Dan’s.’
‘Yes, but … were you in my choir once?’
‘Dan talks about you. You made a big impression. He told me about the night you divided them into three and sent some of them to Little Malvern Priory and some to Redmarley D’Abitot.’
‘Hmm, yes.’ Tim seemed to relax. ‘Redmarley – that was terribly significant, you see. Elgar’s mother’s family came from there. His mother carried the strand. A countrywoman. My mother – bit of a townie, didn’t like me to go out without a mac or walk on the wet grass. But Elgar’s mother encouraged her offspring to go out in all weathers, so that they were always at home with nature whatever the conditions. So they were, you know, part of it. Yes, Ann Elgar’s family were actually from Redmarley.’