Lol explained how Alfred Watkins had collected bits from the Bible which seemed to support the idea of ley lines. He was thinking it would be quite good to use them with a kind of monastic echo. Resonant.
‘Just trying to connect, Danny. You were born here, I’m just… don’t know.’
Passing through?
‘Just ’cause you lives yere, it don’t necessarily mean you connects.’ Danny squatted down in the straw between a vintage Marshall amp and Jimi the sheepdog. ‘Did once, mind. Had what you might call a spiritual experience where I seen the poetic truth of ley lines. Looked at the veins in my wrist and seen the arteries of the countryside. Magic, that was.’
‘I thought it was acid.’
‘Well, aye, it was, but a vision’s a vision, ennit? Bloody hell, what a long time ago that was. I was only a kid. Thirteen, fourteen?’
‘You were dropping acid at thirteen?’
‘Very progressive area, Radnorshire, in the ole days, boy. ’Sides, nobody knowed, back then, what it could do to your brain.’
‘Radnorshire?’
Danny grinned. Then, abruptly, his face was solemn.
‘Seen much of young Jane, past day or so?’
‘Uh… not really.’
‘That business in the Swan, where she poured that feller’s beer… Got a bit overshadowed, that did, when the word come in about Mansel Bull.’
‘An ill wind.’
‘Never seen her like that before. Serious. The changes round yere – gettin’ to her. Savitch.’
‘Getting to all of us, one way or another.’
‘Only, Gomer and me, we got a problem,’ Danny said.
Fiona said, ‘No commiserations. Sympathy cards, I won’t even open. Don’t want to be treated like an invalid. When you’ve lived with a vicar, you know all the bereavement rituals. ’
Merrily thought naked grief was easier to handle.
‘You’re not still on your own, are you?’
‘Emily’s on the way up to Hereford, with her boyfriend. And I have things to organize. Better than thinking. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk last night, and I’m grateful for what you did. And what you might have done if we… if we’d been in time. You will take the funeral?’
‘Well, if you… I don’t do quickies, Fiona.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Well, it doesn’t mean endless eulogies. But there are things I need to understand. Whatever he wouldn’t tell me, it’s not going to rebound on him now. Which… is one reason I’ve just been over to Allensmore. To talk to Byron Jones’s ex-wife.’
‘That was quick.’
‘When you were talking about the books that Syd was reading, back in the Cathedral, I don’t recall you mentioned Byron Jones. So when I found that book, with the others…’
‘I was certainly surprised to see a copy of that book on the desk.’ A pause. ‘OK, the last time I saw one was when we were at Wychehill. A parcel arrived one day with a copy of Caradog inside. Newly published.’
‘This was when they were still friends?’
‘I thought they were. A short time afterwards, I opened the wood stove, because it seemed to be nearly out and… you know how you can tell something used to be a book, for just a second, before the ashes collapse?’
‘Syd burned the book? Without even reading it?’
‘He never explained. Though he now seems to have acquired another copy. They were good friends, once. Byron was a bit older than Sam. He came out of the army first, but they stayed in touch.’
‘Was Syd in Byron’s local-history group?’
‘His what?’
‘Liz says Byron was in – or might even have set up – a society to study the history around Stirling Lines. Romano-British history. The inference being that this was where he got much of the background for his fiction.’
‘I know nothing about that. Though it’s hardly something you’d need to keep secret.’
‘Liz said Byron despised Christianity.’
‘Not sure if he despised it quite so much before Sam got into it. Sam was hyper at that time. His ground-to-air missile period.’
Merrily shifted in her seat, looked over towards Peterchurch’s Norman church with its fibreglass steeple. It was called The St. Peter’s Centre now, and it had a cafe and a library. Was this what Uncle Ted had in mind for Ledwardine? Which reminded her there was a parish council meeting tonight to discuss it. Bugger.
She said, ‘You do know about Syd going to visit Byron at Liz’s place?’
‘When was this?’
‘Liz said two or three years after Byron left the Regiment. Possibly around the time Caradog was published. Would that have been after the burning of the book?’
‘I didn’t know that Sam had ever visited Byron,’ Fiona said. ‘Or imagined he’d want to. What did Liz say about it?’
Merrily told her. Everything, including the shotgun, which provoked a short, sour laugh.
‘Perhaps he felt he needed it as protection. Turning the other cheek was the one Christian premise I always felt Sam could never quite swallow.’
‘You’ve met Liz?’
‘One or twice. At funerals. Walking – metaphorically – half a pace behind Byron. They’re often the ones who get hurt in the end. Wholesale philandering goes with the territory. Like Vikings.’
‘But not Sam.’
‘Sam was a misfit who didn’t know what he wanted or where he wanted to be. The army straightened him out for a while, religion messed him up again.’
‘Did he ever mention Brinsop?’
‘Who?’
‘It’s a hamlet near Credenhill. Where Byron lives. Where, according to Liz, he seems to think it’s very important for him to live. Syd ever mention it?’
‘No. And if you were thinking of going to visit him I’d urge you not to. Some of these guys, there’s another side to them which is great in warfare but, in ordinary life, relatively… antisocial.’
‘Fiona… do you have any idea what all this is about? You must’ve given me those books for a reason.’
‘Knee-jerk reaction. Probably a mistake. I don’t know anything about deliverance, and Wordsworth – no idea what that’s about either. Merrily, I have to go. Have people to see… solicitors… and whoever you see to register a death. I’m sorry.’
Danny pulled down a squared bale of straw and sat on it.
‘Likely you don’t know much about cockfighting. Well, me neither. Us ole hippies, we never done that stuff. Foreign to our nature. But it went on.’
‘Round here?’
‘Part o’ country life. Country folks was cruel, too.’ Danny reached over and turned off the amp. ‘Gomer found a dead gamecock in the vicar’s shed. Turns out young Jane put it there. Told Gomer a feller dumped the sack in a bin on the square. Feller was this Cornel.’
‘Oh…’ Lol closed his eyes ‘… God.’
‘You en’t lookin’ as surprised as I figured you might be.’
‘No.’
Lol pulled the Boswell across his knees and told Danny about what he and Merrily had watched in the Swan, the night before last.
‘Only we got the impression from Barry that it was a pheasant.’
‘He still stayin’ at the Swan, this Cornel?’
‘I think he just comes in for meals now. I don’t know where he’s staying. How did Jane know it was a fighting cock?’
‘Her didn’t. Gomer knowed straight off.’
‘Gomer’s on the case?’
‘En’t nothin’ Gomer wouldn’t do for Jane, is there? Jeez, why they gotter-’ Danny pulled off his baseball cap, sent it spinning to the straw. ‘Cockfights! They tells us we’re in recession, so we gotter degrade ourselves by stagin’ cockfights for the freakin’ tourists?’
‘Who?’
‘Who d’you think?’
‘You really think Savitch would risk his reputation by supporting something illegal and… universally condemned?’
‘Gomer phoned around. Farmers, dealers. Drew a blank. Wherever it’s happenin’ it en’t at no farms round yere. Gotter be some bastard from Off. Now… where was the ole Ledwardine cockpit?’
Lol shook his head.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Danny said. ‘Up by the top bridge, where the river come through in the floods? Used to be a pub there, knocked down seventy, eighty year ago. You can still see the outline, they reckons. Like a depression, middle of a copse, now. Cockpit was back o’ that pub.’