Phil Rickman
To Dream of the Dead
The relocation bible
LEDWARDINE
Once known as The Village in the Orchard, this community may have begun as simply that. The old centre of the village is still partly enclosed by the remains of an apple orchard dating back at least to medieval times, as do some of its black and white timber-framed houses. Earlier settlement is suggested by recent archaeological discoveries at the foot of Cole Hill, whose Iron Age fortifications are a reminder of a turbulent past. Today, Ledwardine (Jewel of The New Cotswolds — Daily Telegraph) is serene and inviting. The cobbled village square, with its small, open market-hall supported by oak pillars, is enlivened by a variety of retail outlets, including bookshop, gallery and delicatessen, as well as the 15th-century Black Swan Inn, noted for its fine food.
FACILITIES: the village, although largely self-sufficient, is a mere ten-minute drive from the nearest town of Leominster and no more than twenty-five minutes from the progressive cathedral city of Hereford, now undergoing extensive commercial renewal. Several highly reputable private schools are within easy reach.
STAR-RATING and rising!
WE SAY: buy now, while prices are competitive and this area is still relatively obscure.
WEDNESDAY
Betty said she prayed
today For the sky to blow away
1
The Grotto
Watching the wooden horses bobbing on their golden carousel, Bliss had become aware of darkness like a hole behind the spinning lights.
High Town on a damp midwinter evening, fogged faces around the fast-food outlets. Bliss was waving cheerfully to his kids on the painted horses. Doing the dad thing. His kids not exactly waving back, just minimally hingeing their fingers, sarcastic little sods.
Kirsty’s kids. Hereford kids, somehow fathered by Francis Bliss from Knowsley, Merseyside. His kids had Hereford accents. His kids’ little mates thought he talked weird, laughing at him behind their hands, trying to imitate him, this joke Scouser.
Joke Scouser in Hereford. On two or three Wednesday evenings before Christmas — a tradition now in the city — shops would open until nine p.m. Bliss and Kirsty and the kids had been three years running; must be a tradition for them, too.
So why were the festive lights ice-blue? Why no carol singers, no buskers, no exotic folkies in hairy blankets playing ‘Silent Night’ on the Andean pipes?
Maybe the council’s Ethnic Advisory Directorate had advised against, in deference to Hereford’s handful of Muslims.
‘They’re coming round again,’ Kirsty said. ‘Wave.’
Bliss waved at the carousel. It was like a birthday cake at a frigging funeral tea. Beyond it, too many shopfronts dulled by low-powered security lighting. Car-friendly superstores coining it on the perimeter while the old town-centre family firms starved to death. Now the council was creating this massive new retail mall on the northern fringe, swallowing the old cattle market, answering no obvious need except to turn Old Hereford into something indistinguishable from the rest of the shit cities in landfill Britain.
Watching the random seepage of shoppers — going nowhere, buying not much — Bliss felt lonely. Kirsty had moved away from the carousel, gloved hands turning up the collar of her new sheepskin jacket.
‘All right, Frank, what’s the matter with you?’
He sighed, never able to tell her just how much he hated that. Growing up, it was always Frannie, Francis on Sundays, but Kirsty had to call him Frank.
‘I don’t understand you any more,’ Kirsty said. ‘One night for me and the children. Just one night…’
‘For the children?’ Bliss staring at his wife. ‘Kairsty, they’re only doing it for our sake. They’d rather be at home, plugged into their frigging computers.’
‘Yes,’ Kirsty said grimly. ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Don’t think it gives me any pleasure.’
‘What does give you pleasure, Frank?’
Kirsty turning away — not an answer she could face. Bliss breathing in hard and shutting his eyes, the carousel crooning through its speakers about letting it snow, when it so obviously wasn’t going to snow, not tonight and definitely not for Christmas; what it was going to do was rain and rain, and nobody ever sang let it frigging rain.
Bliss spun round instinctively at the sound of a ricocheting tin.
Lager can. It rolled out in front of the Ann Summers store, which seemed to be closed. It had bounced off a bloke wearing an ape suit and an ape mask and a sandwich board pleading DON’T LET DRINK MAKE A MONKEY OUT OF YOU.
Three young lads, early teens, were jetting fizzy beer at the feller in the ape suit. Two community support officers moseying over, a young woman and a stocky man with a delta of cheek veins.
‘Fuck me,’ one of the kids said. ‘Who sent for the traffic warden?’
‘… your language, boy.’ The senior plastic plod visibly clenching up — you had to feel sorry for them. ‘How old are you?’
The boy went right up to him, thin head on an exaggerated tilt, teeth like a shark’s, embryo of a moustache.
‘And how old are you, grandad?’
‘You throw that tin?’
‘What you gonner do, run me over with your Zimmer, is it?’
Bliss purred like a cat, deep in his throat, Kirsty muttering, ‘You’re off duty, Frank.’
The three kids had formed a rough semicircle now, in front of a blacked-out shopfront with a poster on the door: SAVE THE SERPENT.
‘You can’t arrest us,’ another of them said to the support guy. ‘You got no powers of arrest. You can’t fucking touch us, ole man, you’re just—’
‘However…’ In this crazy blaze of… well, it might not be actual pleasure but it was certainly relief, Bliss had found himself at the centre of the action ‘… I can.’
As if he was frigging Spiderman just landed from the roof. Or a magician, his ID appearing like the ace of spades in his left hand. He could hear Kirsty backing off, heels clacking like a skidding horse.
‘What’s more…’ Committed now, Bliss advanced on the biggest kid, the old accent kicking in like nicotine ‘… I also happen to have a key to the notoriously vomit-stained cell we fascist cops like to call Santa’s Grotto.’
Bliss smiling fondly at the kid, and the kid sneering but saying nothing.
‘Fancy a few hours in the Grotto, do we, sonny? Sniffing icky sicky, while we wait for our old fellers to drag their arses out the pub and come and fetch us? Or maybe they won’t bother till morning. I wouldn’t.’
A movement then, from one of the others in the shadow of a darkened doorway — hand dipping into a pocket down his leg. Knife?
Jesus… careful.
Kids. Frigging little scallies. Grown men were easier these days, these three too young and maybe too pissed to understand that sticking a cop bought you zero sanctuary.
Difficult. Bliss didn’t move, snatching a quick glance at the plastic plod who’d got his arms spread like a goalie, which meant that if knifeboy went for him now the old feller would catch it full in the chest. Mother of God, who trained these buggers?
The hand came out of the pocket, the fear-switch in Bliss’s trip-box giving a little tremble. Best to stay friendly.
‘Up to you, son. B-and-B in the grotto, is it?’