‘It’s not blowing over, Danny.’
‘Hard to blow an ole Volvo off the road.’
It had been mid-afternoon, after the first Severe Weather Warning, when Merrily had come across to Lol’s house, looking unsettled and facing an hour’s drive to the mountains the other side of Brecon. This was Huw Owen, inevitably. For reasons Huw hadn’t disclosed and Merrily couldn’t fathom, he’d wanted her to talk to his students at the grim, disused Nonconformist chapel up in the Beacons where he taught ordained priests how to mess with the unmentionable.
‘I’ll give Huw a call, anyway.’ Lol had his mobile out. ‘Make sure she…’
‘Makes you feel better, boy,’ Danny said, ‘do it.’
In Huw Owen’s rectory, thirty-plus miles away, the phone rang out. Maybe they’d already left for the chapel, which probably didn’t even have a phone. Huw liked to awaken in his students a sense of isolation and vulnerability. Lol killed the signal.
‘Nothing.’
But Danny Thomas was listening to something else, his long grey hair pushed back behind one ear. He caught Lol’s eye, lifting a cautionary forefinger. Lol heard a drawly voice from Off.
‘… what I said, George, I said the old totty-meter’s flickering into the fucking red.’
Then liquid laughter. Lol turned towards the bar. Kids, you’d think, but they weren’t. About five of them, late twenties to early forties, talking in low voices, but their London accents lifted them out of the background mush.
‘ Clean off the fucking dial, George. I mean, will you just look at that…’
‘… he on about? ’
‘ His fanny-meter’s gone off.’
‘ Ask the barman for a Kleenex.’
‘ Not kidding, George. I’m in love.’
‘ You’re rat-arsed.’
‘ I think… I think I feel a wager coming on…’
None of them spoke for a few seconds. Apple logs shifted on the hearth. Danny looked at Lol. Red mud was still flaked in his heavy-metal hair. He’d been here in the village all day, working with Gomer on extra flood defences down by the river.
A wager. Lol could imagine florid men, squires and their sons, in three-cornered hats, with lavish waistcoats and long bendy pipes, under these same beams on Jacobean nights when the Black Swan was young.
‘ How much? ’
‘ Hundred? Two? ’
‘ You’re not scaring me, George. I’ll go three.’
‘ Bloody confident tonight, Cornel.’
‘ He’s bladdered. He won’t -’
‘ All right. Listen. I’ll persuade her into the paddock for nothing, and then… why don’t we say three-fifty if I get her upstairs? However -’
‘ Yeah, but that doesn’t prove -’
‘ However… any tricks, any remarks from you bastards that might put her off, and you pay up anyway. Deal? ’
‘ That’s -’
‘ Deal? ’
‘ Don’t fall for it George.’ Mild Scots accent. ‘ He’ll probably offer to split it with her if she plays along.’
‘ He won’t, Alec, because we’ll be listening to every word.’
At some stage, probably when money came into it, the banter had shed its forced humour. At the other end of the bar, Jane was handing Barry a ten-pound note, leaning forward, exposing a widening band of pink skin just below the small of her back.
As the daylight faded, their cars would arrive on the square like Viking longships floating into a natural harbour, the top-of-the-range Beemer, the Porsche Boxter, the Mercedes 4-by-4.
Barry the manager, like half the village, was in two minds about them. They had – nobody could argue about this – seen the Swan through a bleak winter of recession, and yet…
Like they own the place. That old cliche. You heard it a lot around Ledwardine but it was only half right, Lol thought. You didn’t need to own a playground.
Only one man in Ledwardine actually seemed interested in owning the village. Lol had never actually met Ward Savitch, but you couldn’t fail to be aware of his presence, usually on Sunday mornings. Used to be church bells, now it was shotgun echoes.
The new hunter-gatherers. Paying guests of Savitch, who’d bought the old Kibble place, known as The Court, a farmhouse with fifty acres. Savitch was everywhere now, grabbing marginal land – woods and rough country, like he was reclaiming his heritage. In fact, he was building himself one. Came out of London just ahead of the big recession, with all his millions in a handcart. Now the fifty acres had more than doubled, holiday chalets had gone up. Shooting and paintballing weekends, for those who could afford them. Some were corporate jollies, designed to freshen up tired executives – Savitch clearly exploiting his old contacts.
Not many posh cars outside tonight, though. A couple of these guys were staying here at the Swan – overspill – and the others had come down from The Court on foot, intent on serious drinking. Some of them still in their designer camouflage trousers bought from one of the few retail chains in the county that were no longer on nodding terms with the Official Receiver.
‘Day’s shooting supervised by Kenny Mostyn and the kids from Hardkit and they think they’re fighting fit,’ Barry had said one night when it was quiet. ‘Well… fit enough to take on a five-course champagne dinner and a few gallons of Stella.’
Barry knew about fighting and fitness. Retired from the SAS at forty, still went running in the Black Mountains most weekends. He was on the portly side these days, but only portly like a bouncer.
‘But – what can I say? – it keeps the lights on. Most of these guys, it’s just about getting pissed and bringing me pheasants they’ve shot. Who loses?’
‘Apart from the pheasants?’ Lol had said.
Glad that Jane hadn’t been there.
But not as much as he wished she wasn’t here now.
Keeping an eye on Jane… this was getting increasingly delicate.
She’d been Lol’s friend before he even knew her mother, back when she was just an insecure kid, in a new place, and he was a part-time recluse in a cottage down Blackberry Lane. But Jane was eighteen now, approaching her last term at school, finding herself some space. Wasn’t as though Lol was her dad or even a dad figure. Not exactly a dad-figure kind of person.
Jane had said she was just popping to the loo, would get the drinks on her way back. But Lol had noticed she hadn’t actually gone to the loo. Directly to the bar. Purposeful.
He pushed his chair back so he could see her talking to the lanky young guy with the deep chin and the big lips. Because of all the voices raised against the rattle and hiss of the weather, you couldn’t hear what was being said as the guy bent down to her, like he was offering her a lollipop.
‘Stay calm, boy,’ Danny said. ‘This is the Swan on a Friday night. She can just walk away.’
But she hadn’t. She seemed to be listening, solemnly, then smiling right up into the big-jawed face. Wearing that close-fitting white top, half-unzipped, over very tight jeans. The small band of pale flesh and the navel.
‘… hand it to Cornel,’ one of the older bankers-or-whatever murmured to another. ‘ Eyes in her knickers already.’
Lol looked helplessly at Danny. You could see the three lagers Jane had bought sitting on the bar top behind her left elbow, giving her a good excuse to prove she was not here on her own.
Jane could walk away from this any time she wanted.
But no, she went on talking to this Cornel.
Very much a woman, and smiling up at him.
‘Oh God,’ Lol said. ‘What do I do about this?’
3
The Grey Monk was still there, in the ladies’ lavatory, his face fogged and his arms spread wide.
A deja vu moment and it made Merrily feel unsteady. The wind was whining in the rafters, buzzing in the ill-fitting glass of the leaded window, whipping into the thorn trees around the chapel. All the different rhythms of the wind.
Had this ever been a friendly place? Its stone looked like prison stone. It stood mournful as an old war memorial in a shallow hollow on the yellowed slopes where the SAS used to train. Nearer to God? All it felt nearer to was death.