The Wine of Angels (33 page)

‘It could have been this one,’ Stefan said. ‘Well, I mean, obviously not this particular tree, but its ancestor. I was talking to your Mr Parry, and he said this particular spot could well have been orchard in Wil’s time. You notice how all the graves at this end are relatively modern, showing where they had to extend the churchyard.’

It was true. There was even a grave of black marble, put in before the conservationists got them banned.

‘Couldn’t be this particular tree, though, could it?’ Merrily said. ‘According to the legend, no actual apples would ever grow over the place where he lay.’

Whereas the tree in the hedge was heavily talcumed with blossom.

‘They would say that, though, wouldn’t they? All these stories are supposed to have an eerie postscript.’ Stefan plucked off a sprig. ‘I remember the first time I came here I’d read an account of it and I’d thought, you know, Poor sod. There was no emotional involvement at that stage, not until I actually came here. I just thought what a bloody shame. I mean, even if he
was
a witch ... damaging an apple crop? Really!’

‘Perhaps, if it had gone to court, it would’ve been thrown out. That was happening, increasingly. It’s my understanding that, by 1670, people were getting a bit wise to all these witchcraft accusations. You had a neighbour you couldn’t get on with, you’d just accuse him of making your prize bull impotent or something.’

‘You’re right. There had to be more. They wanted him dead, otherwise what was the point?’

‘They wanted him dead because he was gay?’

‘Thomas Bull wanted him dead. And James Bull-Davies knows that.’

His eyes, the colour of his jeans, were shining with a very innocent kind of fervour. He looked on the edge of tears. He looked too frail and vulnerable to be living with someone as coldly manipulative as Richard Coffey. But that was none of her business.

They walked to the churchyard wall – yes, this part was newer, some of the stone wasn’t even local – and stood leaning against it, looking back at the church whose stones, if they could speak, would be able to answer all their questions.

‘Let’s look at it objectively,’ Merrily said. ‘You’re saying, I think, that because Bull was a puritan he’d be absolutely shattered to discover his parish priest was homosexual. Now I can’t quite remember what percentage of today’s Anglican ministers are gay, but it’s a substantial one, and if they all got fired a few hundred churches would have to close overnight. Now, how different was it then, in a country area where people’s attitude to all matters sexual would have been ... well ... tolerant. Down-to-earth, shall we say?’

‘Look, I don’t know ...’ He fingered his fringe. ‘I don’t know where
you
stand. As a woman.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Merrily said, ‘I think gays have always been drawn to the priesthood because it’s something they do rather well. It being a job that often calls for feminine qualities. I suppose, as we weren’t allowed in for so long, gay men have helped to hold it all together. They’ve given the Church a breadth of compassion without which it might not even have survived. That make any sense?’

Stefan Alder stepped back, striking an unselfconsciously camp pose, with one hand on a hip. She was sure she’d seen him before, not just in the village. Must have been on television, maybe a victim in
The Bill
or a casualty in
Casualty.

‘That’s beautiful’ He smiled radiantly and handed her the sprig of apple blossom. ‘That’s a really beautiful thing to say, you know? I feel I can trust you now, I really do.’

‘Oh, well ... It was just Richard seemed to think I was prejudiced in some way. And I’m not. That’s all’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look, I want to explain to you ... At first – I mean, he’s committed to it, it’s his project – but at first, Richard was only doing this for me. He wasn’t especially struck by the story, or the village. We were having a few days’ break and Richard was half-looking for a holiday cottage, and we spent a night at the Black Swan. After dinner, he was tired, and he had a headache, so he went up to bed and I sat in the lounge with some coffee, idly reading some local guidebooks. It seemed odd, coming across a mention of Ledwardine Church and looking up and seeing the steeple through the lounge window. And then I saw a brief mention of Wil ... I mean, I’d read the story but I hadn’t remembered the name of the village and it was such a shock realizing I was sitting just a short walk away from where he ... died. The next thing I knew, I was just sort of ... here.’

He looked very ethereal against the apple trees which themselves, with their heavy blossom, were like the ghosts of trees. It was a cloudy morning, a fine spring drizzle beginning.

‘It’s incredible in autumn, isn’t it?’ Stefan said. ‘The air around Hereford is so full of apple scent. It seems in the evening as if the whole county’s heavy and drunk on it. And even though this orchard was looking rather sad and neglected, I felt the way it was, back then. Huge and bountiful. The absolute core of the county. The very centre of what Traherne called the Orb.’

Merrily remembered, with an unsettling feeling, what Gomer Parry had said about the Apple Tree Man. So gnarled and barren-looking in the ice, now full of thrusting buds.

‘I just knew that Wil, even if he’d had the power, would never destroy an orchard,’ Stefan said. ‘Not the biggest orchard in Hereford. It would be like poisoning the country. More than that, it ... I mean, he was a friend of Traherne. Nature was an aspect of God. It would have been blasphemy. He wasn’t a witch at all. I suddenly felt very,
very
close to him. He was in the air, in the scent, the whole apple-aura of this place. And then ...’

He was close to whispering. Merrily was still holding the sprig of blossom he’d given her. She was aware of being set up, dropped into a little cameo scene, but the snowy numinescence had settled on her senses; she was softened.

‘I could suddenly see him. I could see that poor, persecuted boy hanging here. All alone. All alone among the apple trees. It was spring then, like today. I could see the blossom which had fallen on his hair like stars ...’

There were big, theatrical tears in his eyes now, but it didn’t seem like a performance; she didn’t feel, somehow, that he was that good an actor. Did he really think he’d seen Wil hanging here or was he describing an exercise in imagination? Perhaps it didn’t matter.

‘Merrily, it was the most spiritual moment of my life. I just knew I’d been brought here. Just me. But why me? Who was I? Was I him? Had I been him in a previous life? No.’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t fall in love with yourself, do you? Not like that.’

God. She didn’t know how she felt about this at all.

‘I just knew in that moment what Wil was. Why
I
had to be here. To be near to him. To convey the truth about him. That it could be the most important thing I would ever do. I couldn’t sleep, I was tortured. I awoke early, walked all around the village – there was nothing for sale. Not a single For Sale sign. And then I saw the lodge, empty and derelict-looking and I just knew that whatever it cost ...’

He stopped speaking, looking for some reaction.

Merrily said, ‘Did Richard know why you were so anxious to live here?’

‘Oh yes,’ Stefan said. ‘If you’ve seen some of Richard’s plays you’ll know he’s fascinated by obsession. I suppose, at that time, I’d become sort of ... his. Obsession. So he bought the lodge.’

At a price. Merrily could hear James Bull-Davies.
Made him pay. Made him
pay.

‘I have to play him,’ Stefan Alder said very quietly. ‘I have to feel him inside me – in the purest sense. I mean, I have to
be
Wil. I have to
be Wil here.
You do understand that, don’t you, Merrily?’

After they parted, Merrily walked around the churchyard for some time, alone.

Decision time?

Well, he was a nice guy, an honest guy. But he was in love with a dead man, with a ghost, and there’d been a certain madness in those tear-glazed eyes.

Coffey? He was in love with Stefan. He’d bought a house in the village because of it. But he hated the vendor, Bull-Davies; he had a score to settle there and he would use Stefan’s desire.

Coffey and Bull-Davies were both, in their separate ways, powerful and influential men. Stefan Alder was neither and so was vulnerable. But he was also the catalyst.

Merrily sighed and thought back to her famous Wil Williams sermon.

Collect all the information you can get, listen to all the arguments.

Yes, done that.

Seek out independent people who might have an opinion or a point of view you hadn’t thought about.

Nobody here is entirely independent. Not Lucy Devenish, nor Alison Kinnersley. They each have their own hidden agenda.

So why not put it all on Him? That’s what He’s there for. Go into a quiet place ...

‘Yes. I’m here.’

In a cushion of soft, white petals.

Put that question. Tell Him it’s urgent. Tell Him you’d like an answer as quickly as possible.

‘I wouldn’t mind an answer now, actually. If that’s all right with You.’

She looked up to where the church steeple was fingering Heaven. Focusing on the gilded weathercock on top of the steeple as if it could point her in the right direction.

Perhaps only the weathercock had changed since Williams’s day. The steeples and towers were still the tallest structures in the countryside. The churches were powerful places.

Merrily bit her lip. Was this the answer? Freedom of expression was one thing, multiple obsession and the taint of necrophilia something else?

You let obsession into a church at your peril?

When she went back into the building, the theatricals had gone, replaced by Uncle Ted, Caroline Cassidy and her restaurant manager, Barry Bloom. They were setting up tables in the space behind the pews.

‘I really don’t know about this,’ Ted was saying. ‘It
is
a church.’

‘Oh, but the very name of the cider, Ted!’ Caroline sang. ‘And if as many people as you say turn up, they’ll get about half a paper cupful each. Ah, Merrily! Merrily will decide.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ Merrily said without thinking. ‘What is it this time?’

Ted and Caroline both stared at her. Oh God.

‘Sorry. I’m a bit on edge. Big night.’

‘Coffee, Vicar?’ Barry Bloom said. He was squat, wide-shouldered, frizz-haired. Ex-SAS, it was rumoured, like, for some reason, quite a few people in the catering business around Hereford. Barry already had a coffee machine set up next to the font.

‘Oh, thanks. Caffeine. Wonderful’ She hadn’t had any breakfast, wasn’t likely to get any lunch. She was dying for a smoke, but maybe not. ‘So, what’s the problem?’

‘Well, as you know,’ Caroline said, ‘the Ledwardine festival officially opens on Saturday.’

‘Does it? God.’ Wrapping her hands around the hot, polystyrene coffee cup. This meant she’d be expected to announce her decision about the play.

Caroline said, ‘The idea is we open in a small way, with a ceremony in the square in the afternoon – Terrence has hired a town-crier. We’ll hold some of the lesser events and exhibitions in the first weeks, and then gradually build up to the major concerts and the pi— and whatever else we arrange. But, you see, my dear, we wanted, before the opening, to introduce our new cider, produced by the Powells to their old recipe – with a little help from Barry, of course ...’

‘I just organized the bottles,’ Barry said. ‘I gather they had to get in some extra apples to supplement the Pharisees Reds. The orchard wasn’t over-productive last year. Hadn’t been pruned hardly in years. Be a good crop this year, though, by the looks of it.’

‘We have an absolutely terrific label,’ Caroline said, ‘designed by the young man at Marches Media on his computers. It has a drawing of the church on it – Alfred approved that, before he left.’

‘How many bottles?’ Merrily asked.

‘How many, Barry, three hundred?’

‘Nearer five.’

‘It’s going to be frightfully exclusive and rather expensive. Proper champagne bottles, naturally. There was a time when good cider was valued higher than champagne, and this is an
awfully
good cider, isn’t it, Barry?
Not
the kind of beverage likely to be on sale to the village louts at the Ox. So we wondered if we might use the occasion of your induction ...’

‘Installation.’

‘Makes you sound rather like a household appliance, my dear.’ Caroline squeezed Merrily’s arm. ‘No, we wondered if we might uncork the first bottle at your reception.’

‘And give everyone a drink?’

‘Perhaps just a teensy one. The cider, you see – this was Dermot Child’s idea – will have an ecclesiastical connection, because the church was itself once in the very centre of the orchard, wasn’t it? And the name we chose – I gather this originated from—’

‘Lucy Devenish,’ said Barry.

‘Quite.’ Caroline tossed him a disapproving glance. ‘I
was
going to say the poet Traherne.’

‘The poet Traherne, via Miss Devenish,’ Barry said stolidly. ‘Being as none of us were that conversant with his work. It comes from a prayer Traherne’s supposed to have written with a woman over at Kington, but nobody’s quite certain about that.’