The Fever of the World by Phil Rickman

Author:Phil Rickman [Rickman, Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

27

Burial at sea

SHE LOOKED DOWNRIVER, towards a distant frill of rapids and then up at the steamy sky and the crag that reared behind the village like a chimney stack, taller than any church steeple and… oh bugger.

…this was the wrong place. This was surely Symonds Yat East and didn’t have an obvious church. The minor road from Goodrich, where she’d been a few days ago, crossed a single-track metal-caged bridge that put Merrily in mind of some rural part of the USA. But this was British rich folks’ country: pricey farmhouses projecting from the wooded hills rising in green tiers from a river racing towards weirs and cliffs and heart-stopping moments of pure spectacle. The river drew you into all that quite gently, the road diving into the trees, and a tight bend, and then the riverside village was below her under an emboldened summery sun.

This was the place where English sightseeing was born in the eighteenth century, according to Sophie.

In hospital with the virus? Which, you kept hearing – oh God – tended to have lethal designs on people of Mrs Hill’s age. The doctors were convinced she needed to be within signing-in distance of Intensive Care.

There was a pub, the Saracen’s Head, then a car park next to a place where you could hire canoes, and the hand-ferrie where you could cross the water in a flat-bottomed boat with the help of a pulley and a wire.

It was all here, only this was Symonds Yat East and if you were in a car, it was probably a dead-end. And it didn’t have a church. Hell, she knew that. She needed Symonds Yat West, which was, as she recalled, a whole lot different.

Merrily slowed the Freelander to stalling-point.

Reversing into a cramped parking area, she sent it crawling back up to the bridge and then – no option, this time – onto the A40, the rumbling river of metal that brought tourists here at speed from the motorway network, dragged urban commerce through once-tranquil countryside and sliced the parish of Whitchurch brutally in two. The dual carriageway had also introduced urban ways. Merrily remembered reading about armed robbers holding up the High Noon services – with a name like that, you could be accused of inviting it – before burning rubber on the A40 and not getting caught.

If you didn’t have a boat, a couple of minutes in the blast of traffic seemed to be the way into Symonds Yat West, where cultures continued to collide and Siân Callaghan-Clarke had said she’d be waiting.

‘The church of St Dubricius at Whitchurch. Do you know it?’

‘Erm… no.’

‘It’ll only take you a few minutes to get there.’

Merrily slowed. In the West, she saw an ancient inn and then a holiday caravan park, now entering its last weeks of out-of-season silence before this village was turned into Herefordshire’s little Blackpool with its riverside bar and an amusement hall rattling with rides and gaming machines and rows of neon lights singeing the sky. As

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.