The Man in the Moss

            Oh, please ...

            'With that lonely grey strand,' Macbeth said. 'Like a vein of onyx. Or something. I recognized it soon as you came into the room tonight. See, I don't know much about Celtic history, but rock music and folk ... I mean, I really do have those albums.'

            'Would that you didn't,' Moira said quietly. Then she shook her hair. 'Sorry. Stupid. Forget it.'

            Standing on the edge of the terrace overlooking a floodlit lawn, he cupped both palms around his face. 'I am such an asshole.'

            No way she could disagree.

            Macbeth hung his head. 'See, I ... Aw, Jesus, I'm in this party of seriously intellectual Celtic people, and, like ... what do I know? What's my contribution gonna be? What do I know? - I know a song. So I go - showing off my atom of knowledge - I go, how about you play The Comb Song? Just came out. Dumb, huh?'

            She looked hard into his dark blue eyes. 'So it was you asked for the song.'

            'Yeah, it just came to me to ask for that song. Then someone else took it up. It was confusing. I coulda bit off my tongue when it came clear you didn't want to do that number. I'm sorry.' He sat down on the paved area, legs hanging over the side of the terrace. He rubbed his eyes. 'All those stag heads. Like it was orchestrated.'

            'You think it was somehow down to the song? Hence I'm a witch? You connect that with me?'

            'Uh ...' Macbeth looked very confused. 'I'm sorry. Whole

thing scared the shit out of me. You feel the atmosphere in there? Before it happened?'

            Headlight beams sliced through the trees along the drive. The ambulance probably. Maybe two. Maybe a whole fleet, seeing this was the Earl's place.

            'Cold,' Macbeth said. 'Bone-freezing cold. I mean ... shit ... it isn't even cold out here... now.'

            Moira had said, 'Can you excuse me? I need to make a phone call.'

She didn't know how old the comb was. Maybe a few hundred years old, maybe over a thousand. She'd never wanted to take it to an expert, a valuer; its value was not that kind.

            The comb was of some heavy, greyish metal. It was not very ornate and half its teeth were missing, but when she ran it through her hair it was like something was excavating deep furrows in her soul.

            The Duchess weighed the comb in fingers that sprayed red and green and blue fire from the stones in her rings, eleven of them.

            'My,' the Duchess said, 'you really are in a quandary, aren't you?'

            'Else why would I have come.'

            'And someone ... You've not told me everything ... I can sense a death.'

            'Yes,' Moira whispered, feeling, as usual, not so much an acolyte at the feet of a guru, more like a sin-soaked Catholic at confession.

            'Whose?'

            'Matt Castle.'

            'Who is he?'

            'You know ... He was the guy whose band I joined when I left the university in Manchester. Must be ... a long time ... seventeen years ago.'

            'This was before ... ?'

            'Yes.'

            The Duchess passed the comb from one hand to the other and back again. 'There's guilt here. Remorse.'

            'Well, I ...I've always felt bad about leaving the band when I did. And also ... three, four months ago, he wrote to me. He wanted me to do some songs with him. He was back living in his old village, which is that same place they found the ancient body in the peat. Maybe you heard about that.'

            'A little.' The Duchess's forefinger stroking the rim of the comb.

            'Matt was seriously hung up on this thing,' Moira said, 'the whole idea of it. This was the first time ... I mean, when we split, his attitude was, like, OK, that's it, nice while it lasted

but it's the end of an era. So, although we've spoken several times on the phone, it's fifteen years last January since I saw him.  Um ... last year it came out he'd been to the hospital, for tests, but when I called him a week or so later he said it was OK, all negative, no problem. So ... Goes quiet, we exchange Christmas cards and things, as usual. Then, suddenly - this'd be three, four, months ago - he writes, wanting to get me involved in this song-cycle he's working on, maybe an album. To be called The Man in the Moss.'

            'And you would have nothing to do with it?'

            'I... Yeh, I don't like to bugger about with this stuff any more. I get scared ... scared what effect I'm gonna have, you know? I'm pretty timid these days.'

            'So you told him no.'

            'So I ... No, I couldn't turn it down flat. This is the guy got me started. I owe him. So I just wrote back, said I was really sorry but I was tied up, had commitments till the autumn. Said I was honoured, all this crap, and I'd be in touch. Hoping, obviously, that he'd find somebody else.'

            She paused. Her voice dropped. 'He died last night. About the same time all this ...'

            The Duchess passed the comb back to Moira. 'I don't like the feel of it. It's cold.'

            The comb is icy, brittle, oh ...

            Her mother was glaring at her, making her wish she hadn't come. There was always a period of this before the tea and the biscuits and the Duchess saying, How is your father? Does he ever speak of me? And she'd smile and shake her head, for her

daddy still didn't know, after all these years, that she'd even met this woman.

            The Duchess said, 'That trouble you got into, with the rock and roll group. You dabbled. I said to you never to dabble. I said when you were ready to follow a spiritual path you should come to me. It was why I gave you the comb.'

            'Yes, Mammy, I know that.' She'd always call her Mammy deliberately in a vain effort to demystify the woman. 'I'm doing my best to avoid it. That's why ...'

            'The comb has not forgiven you,' the Duchess said severely. 'You have some damage to repair.'

            'Aye, I know.' Moira said. 'I know that too.'

She'd returned from the phone floating like a ghost through a battlefield, blood and bandages everywhere - well, maybe not so much blood, maybe not any. Maybe the blood was in her head.

            'You all right, Miss Cairns? You weren't hit?'

            'I'm fine. Your ... I'm fine'

            'You're very pale. Have a brandy.

            'No. No, thank you.'

            All this solicitousness. Scared stiff some of his Celtic brethren would sue the piss out of him. She was impatient with him. Him and his precious guests and his precious trophies and his reputation. What did it matter? Nobody was dying.

            Yes, Moira. Yes, he is. I'm sorry ... No, not long. I'll know more in the morning. Perhaps you could call back then.