The Man in the Moss

            And Moira Cairns staying with young Cathy, in the Rectory, at the very heart of the village.

            He looked down at the graves. Why had she come so secretively? And why hadn't she gone away again? He'd seen her walking down from the church this morning. Strikingly good-looking lass. Probably in her late thirties, looking it, because of that white strand in her hair, like the light through a crack in the door of a darkened room.

            But what did they know about her?

            'Nowt,' Ernie said aloud to the silent graves.

            Should he say owt to the Mothers? He wasn't a stirrer, he wasn't a gossip, he'd always known more than he passed on, just as Dawber's Book of Bridelow was only ever a fraction of what the Dawbers knew about Bridelow.

            Who'd take over the Book from him? No more Dawbers left in Bridelow. Happen it really was the end of an era. Happen the Bridelow to come wouldn't have the distinction that warranted a book of its own. Ernest Dawber, last of the village scribes. Chronicler of the Fall.

            Alf Beckett's arrival had saved him. If Alf hadn't turned up, one of them, or all of them, would surely have sensed he had worries and sorrows of his own.

            By 'eck, he'd been scared, had Alf Beckett. So scared, as he'd told them, that he could hardly keep his spade level when the time came to shovel the soil back on Matt Castle's coffin.

            After finding no trace of the bogman.

            'They didn't find it?' Milly Gill up on her feet in a flash, for all her weight. Alf shaking his head dumbly.

            'What's it mean, Milly?' Frank's wife, Ethel, dazed.

            'I don't know.' Milly's voice hoarse, 'I don't understand.'

            'But it's good, isn't it?' the youngest of them, Susan, said. 'We dint want um to find it.'

            'Of course it's not good,' Milly said. 'You don't suddenly get a miracle like that in the middle of a lot of bad. It's not the way of things. What frightens me: if he's not there, where in God's name is he?'

            She broke off for a sip of tea. 'I'm sorry, Mr Dawber. I should've told you earlier. It were finding Ma. Knocked me back. Strange, though, isn't it? Everything's so terribly strange all of a sudden.'

            When they'd gone, Ernie had telephoned the Hall himself. No answer. He'd go up there tomorrow, a visit long overdue.

            'It must be deliberate, you know, all this,' Milly had said. 'An attack. Village is under attack.'

            'Eh?'

            'Like I said, things go in waves, Mr Dawber. Good times, bad times. We're used to that.'

            'Aye ...'

            Ma had said, What this is ... it's a balancing act.

            'But this is an attack,' Milly said.

            Ernie had been flummoxed for a minute. 'You mean the curate? Joel Beard?'

            'Well, he's part of it. We let them disturb the Man in the Moss. We didn't do right by him. Now we've no protection. All sorts are coming in. Unsuitable people. Aye - people like

him.'

            'All my sources tell me,' Ernie said, 'that Joel's ambitions are being fuelled by the new Archdeacon, who fancies him summat rotten.'

            'Joel Beard's gay?'

            'Not as I know of, but the Archdeacon certainly is.' Ernie noticed old Sarah looking mystified. 'No, Joel Beard's incorruptible, I'm afraid. Whatever he's doing, he thinks he's doing it for the good of mankind.'

            'They'll all be coming in soon,' Milly said despondently. 'Look at all them strangers at the brewery. Three of ours sacked, one of theirs brought in. Rationalization, they call it. We don't see it till it's happened. Sometimes I think all we see is ...'

            'Shades of things. Aye.' Then Ernie had fallen silent, thinking of a woman in a black cloak at Matt's funeral. Moira Cairns, former singer with Matt Castle's Band.

            Alf said, 'That bloke, Hall, he wouldn't accept it at first. Said he were convinced it were theer and if he had to dig all night he'd get it out.'

            'Aye,' Milly said grimly. 'Happen somebody told him. Somebody wanted that grave dug up so we'd know there was nowt down there, apart from Matt. Oh, Christ. Oh, Mother, I don't like this.'

            Alf sat down on the footstool Ernie would rest his feet on while thinking. 'This Hall, he even wanted to open Matt's coffin. Thought happen bogman were in theer.'

            'God in heaven,' said Ernie.

            'Joel Beard - he started kickin' up then. Wouldn't let um go near. Said they 'ad no permission except for t'take coffin out, like.'

            'Quite right too,' Ernie said.

            'Alf,' Milly said anxiously. 'The bottle. You did get the bottle in?'

            'No.'

            Milly Gill closed her eyes and clasped her hands together in anguish.

            'Couldn't do it,' Alf said. 'Seemed no point.'

            Milly said angrily, 'Did you even try?'

            'Oh, aye.' Alf's hands had been dangling between his legs as he squatted on the stool. Ernie saw that both hands were shaking. 'I got lid off, no problem. Nobody were watching, thank Christ.'

            They were all looking at him now. Alf Beckett, soaked to the skin, moustache gone limp, eyes so far back in his head that they weren't catching any light from Ernie's green-shaded desk lamp.

            'Weren't theer!' Alf suddenly squealed. 'Matt weren't theer! Nowt in t'coffin but bloody soil!'

            There'd been a silence you could've shovelled into buckets.

            Ernie could still hear it now, as he stood looking over the graveyard, glittering with rain and the blue light of the Beacon of the Moss.

            'And worms,' Alf had said finally, shaking on the little wooden footstool, staring at the floor. 'Handfuls of big, long worms.'

            At the window, Ernie Dawber sighed very deeply.

Moira awoke with this awful sense of doom set around her like a block of ice.

            She was hot and she was cold. She was sweating.

            And she was whimpering, 'Mammy. Oh, mammy, please ... don't let them.'

            She'd dreamed a version of the truth. She was a little girl again, living with her daddy and her gran in the almost posh Glasgow suburb, catching the bus to school. Gran's warning shrilling in her ears, '... and you just be sure and keep away from the old railway, you hear?'

            On account of the gypsies were back. The gypsies who still came every autumn to the old railway, caravans in a circle like covered wagons in a Western when the Indians were hostile.

            Corning home from school, getting off the bus, the two dark skinned gypsy boys hanging round. 'Hey, you ... Moira, is it? The Duchess wants tae see ye ...'

            'You leave me alone ... Get lost, huh.'

            'We're no gonny hurt ye . .