The Wine of Angels by Phil Rickman Page B

half-head of old Edgar Powell hanging like a left-over Christmas bauble on the Apple Tree Man. ‘I hate that bloody orchard.’
    Funny thing, though, Gomer Parry had said ... You wanner see the buds on ‘im now.
    So the orchard used to belong to the Church, although it was not, of course, holy ground. And yet close. The First Unhallowed Ground, Gomer had called it. Suicides were invariably buried in unhallowed ground.
    ‘He knew they’d be coming for him,’ Jane said. ‘And he couldn’t face it. The trial, the abuse and everything. Poor, sensitive soul. He was only about twenty-five.’
    Obviously, Terrence Cassidy had said, it’s not something the village nowadays is particularly proud of. Although I suppose it has its tourist possibilities, in a lurid sort of way.
    ‘So they buried him where he died – in the orchard. With only an apple tree to mark his grave. And, as apple trees don’t live very long, nobody knows where it is now.’
    Merrily recalled what Gomer had had to say about the reasons the Powells had never grubbed up their unproductive orchard.
    ... the bones t’other side, them’s the ones you don’t wanner be diggin’ up, you get my meaning.
    Unless you were a distinguished playwright, for whom no bones could be buried too deep.
    She watched Jane’s gaze travelling around the church with a new interest. The first time, in fact, that the kid had displayed any interest. It would have a history now, a mystery, a romance. In that age-blackened pulpit had stood the doomed Wil Williams, serious totty, with the sunlight in his strawberry-blond hair.
    ‘Heavy stuff, huh?’ Jane said, well satisfied.
    Nothing unhealthy about this. Wil Williams was as remote and unreachable as the lead singer of some boy band in Sugar magazine. Merrily remembered the stage when she would fall in love with the ludicrous heroes of fantasy novels, princes with magic swords. It was a phase. A safe phase which wouldn’t last long. Not long enough. Real boys, real men would be in the picture all too soon.
    ‘Sure,’ Merrily said. ‘Heavy stuff.’
    And felt a pang of impending loss. The sandstone walls still had an old-gold glaze in the lamplight but, when she stood up, she was sensing an end to the honeymoon period.
    ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Thanks, flower.’

 
    7
     
    Dirty Video
     
    ‘I BEG YOUR PARDON ,’ Terrence Cassidy said, irritated.
    ‘ Old Cider! ’ Dermot Child, the musician, thumped the table. ‘That’s what we should call it!’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘The entire event. The festival. Old Ciderrrrrr ! Resonates.’
    Everything Dermot Child said seemed to resonate. He was a plump friar of a man, who, without being obviously Irish, Scottish or Welsh – indeed, his accent was closer to Oxford – vibrated with an emotional fervour you could only describe as Celtic. Merrily quite liked him.
    In the absence of the parish secretary, who was also the treasurer of the Women’s Institute (as distinct from the Women’s Group, formed by newcomers) and was attending some sort of WI convention, she’d agreed to take the minutes of this hastily called meeting. She wrote down, Old Cider?
    ‘Explain, shall I ... Mr Chairman?’ Child leaned over onto an elbow, making a determined fist, as if prepared to arm-wrestle Cassidy into submission.
    ‘Please do,’ Cassidy said, resignation soaked in acid. It was, after all, his festival, Merrily thought. His idea, his concept. Eccentrics like Child should content themselves with being occasionally amusing.
    Merrily smiled. Child caught her eye, winked. Outside, a small motorcycle was being expertly skidded on the cinders under the open window. Councillor Garrod Powell moved swiftly to the door. ‘Give it a rest, Kirk,’ they heard him shout mildly. ‘Else 111 be round to see your dad, boy.’
    It was getting rather dim in the village hall, screened from the sunset by two huge oaks. On the way back to his chair, Councillor Powell lifted a hand over the