The fool
LATE AFTERNOON. LOL ran across the forecourt through the last light and the half-frozen rain, to the half-open front door. Nora Mills, waiting for him under the great beam, wore a clinical white coat and a sombre expression that seemed to be saying she hoped he knew what he was doing.
At least she wasn’t carrying a shotgun.
‘You’re early.’
‘Is that bad?’
He’d awoken early again, feeling dizzy when he was out of bed, the winter song rumbling in his head; he didn’t like it now, wished he’d never started it. No time to go to the doc’s, even if he could get an appointment. He’d just sat down at the desk and scribbled a couple of new lines: the wind is prowling in the east, to raise the devil, scorn the priest.
The scuffed interior door swung open before him to the ashy logs in the hearth and Kilpeck Church, in Tom Keating’s painting, blossoming like a clump of bright poppies. Nora didn’t follow him in. Sir Lionel Darvill looked up over reading glasses.
‘You’re early.’
‘I’ll go for a walk and come back if you like.’
‘You’re on your own?’
‘People were beginning to talk.’
‘Not the girl, Robinson.’ Testily. ‘Her mother.’
‘She’ll be here on Monday. She needs to square it with the Archdeacon. And it’s a very busy time of year for a vicar.’
‘And she thinks I’ll interfere with her service.’
‘You mean you don’t have form for that?’
Darvill snorted.
‘It’s not her church.’
Wasn’t his either, except in his head. The church, the remains of the castle, the disappeared village: all part of the extended Maryfields, the Maryfields of his mind.
‘You didn’t arrive early by accident,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know? And sit down.’
‘Thank you.’
Enclosed in the Chesterfield, knowing he had to get this right, Lol struggled to collect his thoughts. He’d spent most of the morning dredging what he could about the green man from the Net and Jane’s bookshelves. He’d read about the fool who danced with the morris men and sometimes against them. In the morris world, the Man of Leaves was the fool, who thought he was the king and could, for a moment in the dance, be the king. He’d get to that, but first…
‘Aidan Lloyd. You had him exhumed.’
Unloaded. He leaned back.
Darvill didn’t react at all.
‘You put the Border morris kit on his body,’ Lol said, ‘and the green mask over his face.’
Darvill’s eyelids lowered for a moment, tightened. Then he relaxed.
‘Of course. Brewer told Merrily Watkins that nonsense. In the so-called sanctity of his deliverance.’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. He didn’t need to, anyway. She and Jane saw something happening in the churchyard, and the next day it was obvious someone had tampered with the grave. So we – that’s me and a very trustworthy friend – we dug it up again. At night.’
Darvill’s upper body lengthened in the chair, his head rising.
‘Did you now?’
‘I’m afraid we did.’
‘Not being deliberately insulting here, Robinson, but I wouldn’t have thought you were capable of that.’
Lol shrugged.
‘Can’t say you’re a real man till you’ve stared death in the face. By lamplight. With a shovel in your hand.’
Darvill leaned forward.
‘Prove it to me.’
‘How?’
‘Tell me what you found.’
‘Yes. OK.’ Lol’s hands were clasped, shaking. ‘It looked like they couldn’t get him back into the coffin… with the bells around his legs. So they put the bells on top, loose. The bells… rattled… jingled, when we took the lid off. The mask… that was also loose. It had holly and mistletoe. From your orchard? And yew, I think. Yew from Kilpeck churchyard?’
‘Yew for immortality.’
‘Of course.’
‘All right,’ Darvill said. ‘I believe you.’ He looked suddenly happy. ‘How did you feel?’
‘Sick. It was awful. The worst thing I’ve ever done.’
‘The final taboo.’
‘Probably.’
‘The darkest part of a rite of passage.’
‘Don’t…’ Lol pulled back into the leather sofa. ‘Don’t tell me that, Lionel.’
‘You said it yourself. “Can’t say you’re a real man…”’
‘That was a joke. That was me trying to make light of it.’
‘Make light.’ Darvill’s eyes sparkling. ‘Yes. I bet you did. I bet you can remember every moment of it. Vividly.’
‘More or less. Going to haunt me for a long time.’
‘Shocked into consciousness.’
‘I have dreams I can’t remember, and I don’t feel good when I wake up.’
‘It isn’t easy.’
‘Oh, for—’
‘No wonder it didn’t work for poor Brewer.’ Darvill was excited. ‘No wonder he was fucked up and had to be unfucked. Wasn’t meant for him. Such a balanced man. Admirable guy, grounded, normal – wife, kids, steady income from doing something always going to be needed in the countryside. No need of a wooden mask. Not enough of—’
‘No. Do not—’
‘What?’
‘Don’t say it. Not enough of a misfit. Insufficiently deranged. Like Aidan Lloyd.’
‘The Man of Leaves is an archetype. He was the making of Aidan.’
‘No.’ Lol gripped the deep arm of the Chesterfield, his last attempt to reach for reality. ‘You were the making of Aidan. You cured his asthma. You introduced him to cannabis. You broke him through to something. The Man of Leaves was just—’
‘Enough. Don’t dare try to talk yourself out of this.’ Darvill spun his chair round, rolled towards the door which opened for him. ‘It’s time.’
He never seemed to change. The short, stiff white hair, the suntan that lasted all winter, the face that was creased but always smiley. Like a poster-boy American GI from the 1950s, but his accent wasn’t that far west of Hereford.
‘Now, Merrily, if I’m intruding on something, you just tell me, girl. Kick me off the premises. It’s just I was passing, and I thought, I surely oughta talk to Merrily about this, it’d be only polite, look, but if this en’t convenient—’
‘No, it— Come in, Charlie. Kettle’s on.’
But he was already in. Behind him, night had fallen. He’d arrived within a few minutes of Raji Khan driving away, as if he’d been waiting. Thank God he hadn’t recognized the car with its personalized registration, SUF 1. If he didn’t already know, he wouldn’t have picked up on that anyway.
‘Coffee for me, Merrily. Splash of milk, two sugars. Gotta keep the energy levels up, else folks’ll be thinking the ole boy’s on the slide.’
‘Not me, Charlie.’
He followed her from the hall into the kitchen, holding the door open over her shoulder. The only thing about Charlie Howe that creaked was his latest cream leather jacket. His current girlfriend was rumoured to be similar in age to his daughter, Annie, in whom he’d always declared a fierce pride: youngest head of CID in the history of Hereford policing.
Merrily heard a door closing at the bottom of the kitchen: Jane slipping away into the inner hall and up the back stairs to her apartment. Jane had a low bullshit threshold these days.
‘About this poor boy, Aidan Lloyd, it is, Merrily.’
‘Wondered if it might be.’
‘Excellent idea of yours, to hold a memorial service.’
‘Erm…’
‘These things slip by, look. That’s the way of it in the country. Don’t make waves. Country folks tend to accept fate like a slap in the face, turn the other cheek.’
‘But they don’t forget.’
‘True. But what they didn’t know in the first place they en’t had a chance to forget. And in the country there’s always things as don’t get known about.’
‘Well, yes…’
‘I was a copper nigh on forty years, and it never ceased to… to interest me… how really quite serious crimes happened in quiet places and nobody knew – or, if they did, they let them go by, on account of it wasn’t neighbourly to make waves.’
‘So I’m told.’
Seemed a little disingenuous this, coming from Charlie, rumoured to have turned his head away from one or two quite sickening crimes. She plugged in the percolator.
‘Charlie, is there by any chance something I don’t know about Aidan’s death and you do?’
‘Well now, Merrily…’ He lounged in the cane chair, hands behind his head, relaxed, more than a little smug. ‘A few people do have ideas about how that boy died.’
‘Like riding a quad bike under the influence of drugs? I’ve heard that. But I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s probably not true. He used cannabis, but words like stoner could be a serious exaggeration. Gossip, eh?’
‘Gossip’s a useful tool,’ Charlie said, ‘to some folks.’
‘You plant the same idea in different places and then two people who’ve heard it from different sources meet, and suddenly it’s fact?’
‘Exactly. Thank you, Merrily, I wondered what you might think of that. Likely we’re on the same side, then.’
‘I’m not sure which side you’re talking about. What I’m just a bit worried about is you using Aidan’s memorial service as a platform for your… I don’t like to say political ambitions because I realize you’ve always aspired to nothing more than having the people of West Mercia sleeping safely in their beds, but…’
She registered that Charlie Howe was no longer smiling and stopped.
‘Things as didn’t get known about,’ he said, ‘well, that was normal. Country folk took care of their own problems. What you didn’t know about, you didn’t worry about. But when it all gets polluted from outside…’
‘I’m also a bit worried about what you might want to say about migrants, like the guy who hit Aidan?’
‘An illegal. Paid to get hisself smuggled in. Deeply repentant. Don’t get me wrong, Merrily, I’m all for migrant workers. They’re hard working, cheerful and cheap, and how else would we get the fruit picked? No, there won’t be any racist remarks from me. Not in my political interests, is it?’
‘I suppose not. Did you know Aidan?’
‘I know the family. In fact I’ve just today been talking to his mother. Her second husband serves with me on the council. Archie Baxter. Wrong party, mind, but I wouldn’t hold that against him.’
She was guessing that the official line would be the vicar of Ledwardine inviting County Councillor Howe to deliver his eulogy as a friend of the family. A low annoyance began muttering inside her like an idling motor. But, like an idling motor, it wouldn’t be taking her anywhere tonight.
‘So this eulogy, Charlie…’
‘A eulogy for all the victims of poor policing in rural areas. A promise of better.’
‘If you’re elected.’
‘When I’m elected, yes.’
They were on him as soon as he was in there. No introductions, no preamble, no examples. Within a couple of minutes, he was in the black and white rag jacket, the line of bells buckled onto his calves and his face was wet with what smelled like sharp cider before the burnt cork was applied, and they gave him a stick, thick as a broom handle, shorter than a baseball bat – Sally, this is – willow. Don’t hold back – as the musicians started up and they were dancing and he was dancing.
He felt a small pulse of fear, expanding into awe, when he took in the vastness of the barn, a cathedral barn, hard earth floor with scatters of straw and huge timbers lofted into shadows beyond the hanging lights, the whole place resounding with squeeze box, fiddle and drum played by two men and a woman, so that he could dance with the men who’d danced with the dead.
He was aware of Darvill directing the dance from his chair under the glassed-in barn bay, his voice raw border now.
‘Back-step, swing-step, heel-and-toe…’
Nothing complicated. Two rows of four, an alley of dancers. For today, he was part of the side. He didn’t recognize the dance, only the tune, from somewhere in his past, but it got under your feet fast enough and the dance seemed slower than the music. He was getting it all wrong but it didn’t seem to matter; he was moving, his legs were moving the way they had all those years ago, only it didn’t seem like years, it seemed like he’d never stopped. Basics are everything, Darvill had said. Start to analyse and it’ll go away.
After a while – this was disconcerting – it felt like his natural state was to be in the air and his feet had to find the ground,
‘… and turn… two taps… strike!’
At the first clash of sticks, he was shocked by the violence of the impact, vibration up both arms as he took in a black face, the gash of a grin.
‘You’ll be all right, mate. We’ll see you don’t get any fingers smashed.’
His name was Alec. He was a racehorse trainer. There was also George the carpenter and Jed the cheesemaker. There was a cider maker and Darvill’s farm manager and a shepherd and Bob Rumsey, the academic who’d got into a morris-fuelled fight outside the pub. Bob had a grey beard of the size you only found on veteran imams and members of ZZ Top.
They were having a break. There was cider you didn’t have to put on your face for the burnt cork. Eight men with black faces and top hats.
‘You better have a hat,’ Bob Rumsey said, ‘though you won’t need one on the night. Just the mask, and you don’t get that till you’re ready.’
And then he was pushed behind a bale-wall and out through a small door into darkness, the smell of hay and manure and the sounds of shifting cattle.
‘Looks like we couldn’t find a hat after all,’ Bob Rumsey said.
Then there was another voice, kept low.
‘Garry Brewer, this is, Lol.’
‘Oh, right. So you’re not…’
‘Not dancing. I’ll be back in the side, I will, when they put the mask on you. Just felt I oughter have a word, see, after what Mrs Watkins done.’
‘Right.’
‘Don’t take this as a warning, more a cautionary word, and don’t you say nothing out there. Thing is, Lionel, his heart’s in the right place, but he’s busking it, you know what I’m saying? His dad, it come out of knowledge and experience. Li, it’s out of a chair and a sense of time running short and mabbe some guilt and regret.’
‘Over what?’
‘If I really knew, boy, I’d tell you. I’m just saying don’t see him as any kind of guru, that’s all. And remember that when they puts the mask on you – and they won’t do that till the night – it can be a bit of shock to the system.’
‘In what way?’
‘Look… I grew up, like most of the village boys, rejecting all this. It was offensive. Superstition. Like we were yokels. All the customs that gets brought back, it’s always some buggers from Off, thinks they knows more about it than you do.’
‘Darvill’s not from Off.’
Sound of a breath expelled.
‘Lol, I… I dunno how to put this, but fellers like Lionel, they’re allus gonner be from Off. Listen, you better go back in, else he’ll be after you. Go on. You en’t got that much to worry about.’ Brewer patted him on the shoulder. ‘At least you din’t dig nobody up.’