'And then Jack went away,' Milly said, 'and we never saw him again. He knew he'd never get back in, long as Ma were …'
'Alive,' said Willie, and Moira saw the fingers of his left hand beginning to crawl up the side of his knee.
'So,' Moira said, 'if he wanted to get back …'
'Why should he? He were rich. He were becoming famous. He had everything he could wish for.'
'Except his heritage,' Moira said.
'He tried to destroy his heritage,' Milly insisted.
'No. He tried to restructure it, surely. He tried to rebuild it around himself. It was a placid, earth-related, female religion, and he wanted to harden it into something he could use.'
Milly looked at her with suspicion.
'I've encountered it before,' Moira said. 'No. He was never going to walk away from that. All the time he'd be building up his armoury of contacts inside Bridelow. Matt and Dic we know about. There are probably others.'
'Shaw Horridge.' Willie's fingers were drumming hard. 'The brewery. He'd bought into Gannons. He must've done that purely to get hold of Bridelow Brewery.'
Who took the comb?
... bloke coiled Shaw Horridge, but that's not important right now...
'Yes,' Moira said.
Willie's fingers going like hell, both hands now. 'The bloody scale of the thing! Too big for us to see. Maybe we never wanted to see it. He'd gone. Right, Ma says, that's it. Never mention him again and you'll never see him again. And we never have.'
'Except,' said Milly, 'in Shaw.'
Willie looked at her. Moira watched his eyes widen.
'It was a Mothers' thing,' Milly said. 'Never talked about. I think Mr Dawber knew, but that's all. Probably not many people remember now, and I was just a child, but when Eliza McCarthy first arrived in Bridelow it was as Jack's girlfriend. All Jack's girlfriends were from wealthy backgrounds. Liz didn't last long, I don't suppose she was beautiful enough. It was probably just the family link with the Duke of Westminster that interested him.'
Milly pulled one of the cats on to her lap, began to stroke it from neck to tail. 'What happened, I believe, is that they had a row and Jack just drove away and left her in tears in the street. Which was where Ma found her. This was before the banishing.'
'Aye,' Willie said, something dawning. 'She spent the night with us. It were the year before me Dad died. He'd gone to The Man, he were in t'darts team, and I remember lying in bed and hearing Ma and this lass talking for hours.'
'Probably what you heard was Ma warning her off Jack. Next day, when Jack didn't come back, Ma introduced Liz to Arthur Horridge and two months later they were engaged. Well ... four days before the wedding, Liz is hammering on Ma's door in a terrible state. She's pregnant.'
Milly hauled the second cat on to her lap as if she needed reinforcement. 'Jack. Jack on the outside. He can't get into Bridelow but he can still get to his ex-fiancée.'
'Bastard.' Both of Willie's hands fell away from his knees.
Cathy shook her head in distaste. 'How could she?'
'You didn't know him,' Milly said. 'When I was nine years old he took me and two other little girls for a walk on ... Oh, you don't want to hear, it was nothing by comparison with what else he's done. But he could walk in and even if you didn't really like him he'd get what he came for. Liz - it wasn't rape- as such, you could learn to live with that. Anyway ... Ma had a long chat with Arthur Horridge and Shaw was born, and he was Arthur's son and nothing more was ever said.'
'I can't believe all this,' Willie said. 'Can't believe we never thought. We didn't think of the bugger any more - better not to. Wrote his books under the name John Peveril Stanage, we knew that, so it was as if the Jack Lucas we knew had gone for good.'
'Pouring all his worst fantasies into his books, huh?' Moira said.
'Something like that. Takes that American lad to come in here and drop Jack's name in our laps before we put two and together.'
'Oh,' said Cathy. 'Mungo! He still thinks ...'
Moira spun so fast the towel unwound from her hair. Cathy's hand went to her mouth but failed to stifle a cry.
'They did that to you? They cut off all your ... ?'
Moira let the towel fall.
'Oh, Moira!' Tears sprang into Cathy's eyes.
Deliberately calm, Moira said, 'They needed my hair to entangle Matt's spirit. They locked me in an outhouse in the dark. They couldn't kill me because that would have released
my spirit, defeating the object. So they kept me in this sensory vacuum, sedated with mogadon or some shit that turns you into a comatose non-person so that your energy, your personality, your essence can be ... stolen.'
Moira stood up, reached under the mantelpiece for her stiffening jeans. 'Cathy, I ... You invoked the awful word "Mungo".' Disgusted to feel a tiny smile pulling on the muscles at the corners of her mouth.
'He still thinks you're dead,' Cathy said. 'He's over at the Man. I'd better call him.'
'Uh huh.' Moira shook her head. 'I don't know how Macbeth got here or why, and I don't have time to find out. I'm starting to see everything. Clear as hell.'
Her mind burning up with it.
They stood either side of the Beacon of the Moss, heads bowed.
Joel had asked, 'Shouldn't we pray?'
'We should meditate,' John had said.
Joel stood in the blueness of it and tried to concentrate his mind, to absorb the rise and fall of Tongues from beneath, to achieve a holy stillness. But his thoughts lumbered ape-like around the shadowed walls of the chamber. He could not see John's face, could only sense the man's awesome containment.
'It's time,' John said very quietly, raising his head.
Reaching up, beyond the top of the great lantern, examined the chain by which it hung from the thick, long smoke-blackened beam. 'Come beneath it, Joel. Catch it as I release it.'
And while Joel crouched, arms full of light, John reached up and unhooked the chain.
The lamp was unexpectedly heavy. Joel stumbled but held it, pulling down several feet of electric flex which had coiled between the beam and the wall. The lamp did not go out.
'Good,' John said. 'Now lower it to the floor.'
They both stood back. The pointed top of the lantern was now on a level now with Joel's groin.