‘Almost.’
‘She is completely unable to harm you in any way when you are inside the Beating and it is secure. Even outside She can only act by proxy and within the limitations of what is available to Her. And even then, She is only ever seen by Trustees or those closest to them. The ordinary residents of Haleswell have no idea of Her existence because She’s simply not interested in them. If we were continually being inundated with hordes of flesh-eating rats attacking people at random do you think there would even be a village?’
‘Yes, I suppose you’d think people would have noticed that. But what I still don’t understand is why the Trust continues to exist at all. You mentioned those times when She got in and managed to kill everyone – why didn’t the powers that be just leave it alone then? Why put new people in the same position of danger? If Hester isn’t interested in just any old bugger then surely She would have just – I don’t know – stopped? Disappeared? Been at rest, like you say?’
‘Let me see how good your detective skills are.’ Joyce led her to where a large mahogany honour board hung on a wall, its columns of gold letters listing the names of past vicars of St Sebastian’s church. ‘Notice anything unusual?’
It took Trish a few minutes of scanning up and down the list of names and dates before she thought she knew what Joyce was hinting at. ‘Why was there no vicar between 1843 and 1851?’ she asked.
‘Because in 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act was introduced, which allowed small rural parishes like Haleswell to amalgamate with their neighbours into a poor law union run by a board of guardians. This gave the old Haleswell Parish Council the perfect opportunity to do exactly what you suggested: abandon their posts and give Hester no target. The de Lindesay family had died out half a century before, so there was no complication there. But they couldn’t simply resign en masse, of course, so they allowed their roles to fall vacant by natural attrition and old age over many years. Edward Bould was vicar at the time, and when he died in 1843, nine years after the law came into effect, the bishop simply didn’t send a replacement. The last member of the old parish council lived on after him for another eight years, and when he died in 1851 Haleswell came completely under the control of the Solihull Poor Law Union’s Board of Guardians. They were in charge now. They were responsible.’
‘Oh no,’ breathed Trish, realising.
Joyce nodded. ‘And they didn’t have any boundary of blessed parish stones to protect them. They were all killed within a few days of each other. Instead of removing Hester’s prey, they had simply been replaced by some further up the food chain, so to speak. Hester does not care who is responsible, only that someone is. That was why the Trust was created and why it is maintained – to keep Her malice localised and focussed on those best placed to defend against Her.’
‘So how did you get this gig? Did you inherit it like Nash or were you tricked into it too?’
Joyce sat back down at the central reading table and fiddled with the switch of the desk lamp in front of her. ‘I was a twin, you know,’ she said eventually, without looking up. ‘Her name was Claire. We grew up in the Lake District, near Ambleside, and I wanted to be a vet when I grew up.’ The reverend’s voice was becoming thick with old grief; Trish didn’t know where this was going, but couldn’t offend her by interrupting. ‘Claire was the eldest by four minutes, and being the first one into the world she was the first into everything – first to dive into a pool, first to lose a tooth, first in line for ice creams. The only thing where I came ahead of her was in science at school, but there was never any animosity or competition between us because that was just the way it was.
‘So anyway, we were twelve and walking back from school one day along one of those narrow lanes they have up there – you know the kind with high banks on either side – and I heard a lamb bleating from somewhere up to my right. Well, it sounded like it was in distress and being the animal lover that I was I had to go up to see what was wrong, and I found that the silly little idiot had gone and got its head caught in a section of wire fence along the top. Claire was still down on the road, eager to get home, and she called up to me, “Get a move on, slowcoach!” Those were the last words I ever heard her say, alive or dead. As I got the lamb’s head free and it ran off to be with its mother I heard the sound of the car’s engine, and then the brakes screaming, and then the thud. A tourist, driving much too fast and completely unable to stop. And that was how my sister Claire died.’
Trish sat down opposite and laid her hand on Joyce’s. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.
The corners of Joyce’s mouth curled up slightly, and she blinked back tears. ‘That wasn’t the last I saw of her, though,’ she continued. ‘The first time she came to me was during my school exams. I’d been revising so hard the night before that I’d forgotten to set my alarm, and I would have slept right through it and probably been late except that I was woken by someone shaking me and saying, “Get a move on, slowcoach!” Well I woke up, and in that moment when your eyes are all gummy and blurry I swear I saw Claire standing beside my bed. Of course when I blinked she was gone, but it had definitely been her.
‘She came to see me several more times over the years, always whenever I was under stress or slacking off and needed a boot up my backside, and for a long time I thought she was looking out for me. But then it started to change.
‘I remember when I’d just learned to drive and I was still a bit unsure about pulling out into a junction, she was there on the back seat behind me, whispering, “Get a move on, slowcoach!” and I, trusting my big sister, moved out into the junction and nearly got flattened by a lorry. It all came to a head when I was at college, and there was a party where I’d had rather too much to drink and I found myself in the upstairs bathroom of a strange house looking at a pile of pills in my hand and a bottle of vodka by the sink, and Claire’s reflection was behind me in the medicine cabinet mirror. “Get a move on, slowcoach!” she said, and I knew that she wasn’t trying to help me at all, she was trying to make me catch up with her like she’d always done when we were children. She was waiting for me to join her.
‘For a long time I thought I was going mad, and so did quite a lot of other people. I was medicated, hypnotised, analysed, and none of it did any good – Claire was still there – until I thought well, I literally have nothing to lose, and tried talking to a priest. Let me say right from the outset that what he did was not an exorcism. There is a ministry in the diocese called the Diocesan Deliverance Team that specialises in helping people who believe that they are suffering from spiritual assault. Their first port of call is to exhaust all possible rational explanations, so they do a lot of liaison with medical and psychiatric agencies before they even begin to consider that something truly supernatural is happening. I was offered counselling and prayer…’ She shrugged. ‘And it worked. Claire left me, and at the same time I found my faith and my vocation. I quit college, got myself ordained, and began looking around for a flock to serve. That was when my Deliverance counsellor mentioned to me that there was a parish called Haleswell that came with its own set of “unique challenges”, as he put it, but which he thought my particular experience might make me well suited for.’
‘So they know?’ said Trish, not quite able to believe the implications of it. ‘The Church knows about Hester?’
‘Of course they do. How could they not?’
‘And they maintain the Trust if, when, it… breaks down.’
Joyce nodded. ‘We come to the Trust in a variety of ways,’ she said. ‘Some, like Nash, are born to it. Some, like you, are manipulated into it, I’m sorry to say. And some crazy idiots like me,’ she added with a wry smile, ‘actually volunteered for this gig.’
24
THE BEATING OF THE BOUNDS
‘LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,’ SAID KRISH. ‘THEY’RE going to pick you up, hold you upside down, and smack your head against a rock.’
‘When you put it like that you make it sound like something a normal
person wouldn’t want to do,’ said Toby.
‘I think we’ve pretty much established that you’re not normal,’ said Maya.
They threaded their way through the Rogation Sunday festival crowds, checking out the stalls and eating hot dogs, even though it was still barely mid-morning. Toby had thought the day itself would be little more than a bunch of old people wandering around town singing hymns like a party of roving geriatric Jehovah’s Witnesses, but could not have been more wrong. It was more like a carnival. He hadn’t appreciated what a big occasion it was and how many visitors it would attract, but when he considered that Haleswell’s Beating of the Bounds was a tradition almost unbroken for centuries, it made sense.
PIC260519-4-through-12: The green park at the centre of Haleswell village is crammed and bustling with fairground rides, sideshows, food stands and craft stalls – so many that they overspill out into the surrounding roads, which have been closed to traffic while marshals in hi-vis tabards with walkie-talkies direct visitors foolish enough to travel by car towards parking on nearby school playgrounds. There is candyfloss and popcorn, hook-a-duck and whack-a-mole. There is a beer-and-pie marquee, but also street-food vendors serving out of trailers that look like miniature Caribbean beach huts or Parisian bistros on wheels, selling everything from gourmet burgers to stone-baked vegan pizzas. Music thumps from speakers. Historical re-enactment clubs give demonstrations, like the Thegns of Mercia in full Anglo-Saxon chain mail who duel on the grass, the sun flashing on their blades. In the ornate green and gold bandstand by the pond, the Haleswell Village Brass Band plays show tunes for families sitting on picnic blankets, and small children run around with coloured paper pennants streaming behind them.
None of it was enough to help him ignore the presence of Hester Attlowe, unseen and unheard behind everything.
She hadn’t shown Herself since appearing with Her small army that night, and he didn’t know whether to be reassured by this or freaked out even more. If everything that the reverend had said was true, it didn’t seem likely that Hester had been intimidated by their defiance, and in a way he might actually have preferred it if Her fellow pitchfork-wielding revenants had turned up below his window every night; he might have got used to that. As it was, Her prolonged absence made him nervous. It gave the impression that She was waiting, biding Her time, and as the Beating processed around one stone after another he found himself examining the crowds, dreading but hoping to see a feral and unflinching stare amongst the smiling and laughing faces. A turn of shoulder, a lift of hair, a flash of eye; any could be Her.
It was like when he took a picture and used a filter that maxed out the contrast or oversaturated the colour: it was a bit too bright and happy. The laughter was a bit screechy, a bit too in earnest, and when anybody shrieked he jumped as if cut. The smells of hot dogs, popcorn, doughnuts, cooking oil, axle grease and diesel fumes roiled thickly in his guts if he stood too long in one spot. The axis of the world teetered on the balance point of tipping over into sensory overload and it was only by making it stand still in the frame of his phone’s camera that he was able to make sense of it.
The day itself had started with a church service at St Sebastian’s, but Toby had been offered a trade: he wouldn’t have to attend the service itself if he agreed to be bumped – a part of the Beating which involved a village youth being upended and having his head bumped against one of the parish stones. According to Rev. Dobson it was a holdover from a time when the young folk needed to be taught the boundaries of their home, but agreed that it seemed a bit too drastic for this to be true. Toby had shrugged and agreed; if it helped keep Hester away from his mum, he’d do it. His life couldn’t get much weirder.
In the two weeks since the Day of the Rat, as he called it to himself, his mum started going to services again, even though it was Church of England rather than Catholic – not that he was all that clear about the difference, but at least St Sebastian’s had the advantage that it was safely inside a zone where the vengeful dead couldn’t get at you. It was amazing how quickly you could adapt to insane circumstances and treat them as normal life, he thought. All the same, neither he nor his dad had been converted into happy-clappers for Jesus because of what they’d seen. As far as Toby was concerned, accepting the existence of ghosts didn’t necessarily open the gates for everything else. He knew from his biology teacher, Mrs Ascough, that a fish had been discovered that everybody had thought extinct for millions of years, but that didn’t mean that there was a Loch Ness monster too, did it? Besides, he thought that his mum quite liked worshipping on her own.
She had tried to get him to help with the preparations for Rogation Sunday, but when he started calling it ‘Rogue Nation Sunday’ and whistling the Mission: Impossible theme tune every time the reverend came around to their house to sort out the arrangements, she told him the best thing he could do would be to just keep out of everybody’s way, which suited him fine.
To his knowledge it was the first time she’d ever organised anything resembling a proper event with people and food and drinks, and she was going at this like it was an episode of Bake-Off crossed with the invasion of a small country. When they’d lived in the flat his parents’ social life had revolved around the Golden Cross down the road – his birthday parties had been celebrated at the kind of family pub where the mums and dads could get a free drink with a burger for under a tenner and the kids could get wired up on sugar and spend the afternoon flinging themselves around a soft-play arena. For the Beating she’d plundered napkins, disposable plates and glasses from their nearest Waitrose supermarket (and get this, had actually dressed up to do it, declaring that she wasn’t going to be sneered at by the Yummy Mummy brigade for doing her shopping in sweat pants and a hoodie), and actually gone and baked things, but behind the frenzy of activity he thought he detected the same kind of twitchiness in her. Hester had done this. Like a low-level electric current fizzing constantly through their nerves, Hester had made it impossible for any of them to simply enjoy what should be enjoyable, even when She wasn’t there.
The service ended and the congregation emerged to set out on the Beating, each carrying a long, thin stick of hazel, and led by Rev. Dobson and Richard Nash, though the majesty of the chief executive’s golden chain regalia was undermined a bit by the fading black eye that Toby’s dad had given him. The remainder of the Trustees followed, including his parents, and he caught up with them, while Krish and Maya and their families joined the large crowd of revellers who followed the procession as it made its way out of the carnival and through the streets of Haleswell towards the first of the seven parish stones.
At the edge of the Rec was the parish marker known as the Sunrise Stone, protected from vandals by an enclosure of high, spiked railings and a heavy padlock. It and the stone at the cottage were the two oldest, believed to be the only ones to have survived from the time of the Black Death. Nash unlocked the cage and Rev. Dobson moved inside to bless it.
‘We are at the most easterly point of our parish. Here, Lord, we pray for all those who live and work in this district. We especially remember all those who live in overcrowded homes, those living in hostels and on the streets. Those who commute daily into our neighbourhood for work and for those who cannot work. Let us pray for those who have recently been elected to positions of power over the life of this place, that they may use their power wisely and for the common good. Amen.’ She drew a cross on the stone in water from the holy well of Saint Sebastian and stepped aside as the procession moved past, each tapping the stone with their hazel stick several times and repeating the amen.
This procession moved on through residential streets, down alleyways, across parks, and over busy roads to repeat the blessing, with variations on the prayers and offerings, at each of the other stones. If the amen that followed each blessing was said more earnestly by the Trustees and their families, only they noticed. If the fairground music struck a discordant note or the laughter of children faltered into tears, only they
heard. There was something familiar about the whole process, even though Toby had never seen it before, and it was when he looked at his dad that he realised it was just like watching him lock up before bedtime, going around each window and door in turn, checking the locks and making sure that everything was safe for the night.
We’re not locking the dead out, he thought. We’re shutting ourselves in.
On the war memorial by the library, the Red Stone was set in the other side of the column from the honour roll, and a wreath of remembrance poppies was laid.
In the White Hart pub, the Ale Stone was part of the hearth of a large open fireplace, and instead of holy water the reverend used a thimbleful of beer while the bulk of the procession waited on the pavement outside.
The Horse Stone was in the wall above the doorway of an Oxfam charity shop which had once been a coaching inn, where a handful of straw was used to draw the cross.
In a wall next to a red postbox where a post office used to be, there were gaps around the Epistle Stone into which members of the procession stuffed folded-up banknotes (which were discreetly removed to add to the church collection later).
Cemented into the pavement of an otherwise ordinary suburban street was the Bumping Stone, which Toby regarded warily.
‘Come on, you!’ grinned Sean Trevorrow, the Trust’s director of housing and community, appearing beside him. On the other side was Alan Pankowicz, the bush-bearded landlord of the White Hart, who was another non-executive Trustee like his mum because of the stone he guarded in his pub. He was aware of other people standing close behind, and then his dad was in front of him, looking embarrassed.
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