by Phil Rickman
The sky was the colour of a cemetery. In contrast, a small yellow sports car, parked half up on the grass verge, looked indecently lurid.
‘Hazel, what does she mean by lies?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve told you, this is not my Amy. I don’t know how she can say these things about God.’
But she looked away as she spoke, and Merrily thought perhaps she did know… knew something, anyway.
‘What’s she been like at school?’
‘Well behaved, always well behaved. Her teachers have nothing but praise for her.’
‘Do you know her teachers?’
‘Most of them. We’ve always made it our business to know them. As good parents.’
‘What about her friends?’
‘She’s…’ A sigh. ‘She’s never had many friends. She’s very conscientious, she studies hard. She’s always felt she had to, because… well, she’s bright, but she’s no genius. Because she’s adopted, I think she feels she has to make it up to us. Make us proud, do you see? Good children, children who study hard, they aren’t always very popular at school these days, are they?’
‘Has she been bullied, do you think? Picked on?’
But after that one small confidence, Mrs Shelbone had tightened up again. ‘Look, Reverend Watkins, this isn’t what I expected at all. I think she needs an infusion of God’s love, not all sorts of questions.’
Merrily sighed. ‘I’ll be honest with you. I’m not really sure how to handle this. Can’t take it any further without talking to her, and if I go in there, it’s likely to cause a scene, isn’t it? The last thing I want is to upset her any more. I mean… I suppose I could start by taking off the dog collar.’
Mrs Shelbone’s brown eyes hardened. ‘What’s the point of that? You’re a priest. Aren’t you?’
Merrily stared hopelessly at the close-mown lawn, at the well-weeded flowerbeds. Demonic evil was something you could sense, like a disgusting smell – sometimes precisely that. The only identifiable odour in this house had been floor-cleaner wafting from the kitchen. All she’d sensed in there were confusion, distress… and perhaps something else she couldn’t yet isolate. But it wasn’t evil.
In the end, all she had – the only universally accepted symptom of spiritual or diabolic possession – was the mother’s suggestion of a sudden, startling clairvoyance.
‘You said she knew things. Things she couldn’t have known.’
‘I’m sorry I said that, now.’ A nervous glance back at the house, as though a chair might come crashing through the window. ‘It’s nothing I can prove.’
‘What things?’
‘This isn’t the time, Mrs Watkins.’
‘What kind of… intrusion do you think might be affecting her?’
‘Isn’t that for you to find out? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to—’
‘Help me,’ Merrily said.
Amy’s mother stared over the low hedge, across the lane. ‘The spirit of a dead person.’
Merrily didn’t blink. ‘Specifically?’
There was a movement at the window of a room to the left of the door. The child stood there, not six feet away. She wore a white, sleeveless top. Her fair hair hung limply to her shoulders. She looked maybe twelve. She looked stiff and waxen. The room behind her was all featureless dark, like the background to a portrait. It’s so cold now. There’s a sense of cold. The cold you can feel in your bones.
Merrily tried to attract Amy’s gaze, but the kid was looking beyond her.
She turned. Nothing. Nothing had changed in the lane. There was nobody about; even the yellow sports car was pulling away.
It began to rain – big, warm, slow drops. When she looked back at the bungalow, the girl had vanished.
Hazel Shelbone walked back to the door. ‘My husband will be home presently. I don’t really want him to know you’ve been here. He’s under enough pressure.’
‘I’ll take advice,’ Merrily promised. ‘I’ll be back. I’ll leave you my number but I’ll call you tomorrow, anyway, if that’s all right.’
‘Just pray for her,’ Mrs Shelbone said limply. ‘I expect you can do that, at least.’
No thunder, yet, but the rain was hard and relentless, clanking on the bonnet of the old Volvo like nuts and bolts, turning the windscreen into bubblewrap. Both wipers needed new blades. After a few miles, Merrily was forced into the forecourt of a derelict petrol station where she sat and smoked a Silk Cut rapidly, filling up the car with smoke because she couldn’t open the window in this downpour.
Nothing was ever straightforward, nothing ever textbook.
In the car, behind the streaming windows, she prayed for Amy Shelbone. She prayed for communication to be reopened between Amy and her mother. She prayed for any psychic blockage or interference to be removed. She prayed for the healing of whatever kind of wound had been opened up, by the puncturing of what the kid now evidently believed to be the central lie of her upbringing.
She prayed, all too vaguely, for a whole bunch of whatevers.
With hindsight, if she couldn’t work with Amy, it ought to have been her mother. With extra-hindsight, she and Hazel Shelbone ought to have prayed together before they left the church. Except at that stage, Merrily hadn’t been convinced. She’d needed to see Amy.
And, having seen Amy, having heard her, she still wasn’t convinced.
She could perhaps have persuaded Mrs Shelbone to let her stay until Amy’s dad got home. Perhaps the three of them could have returned to the church this evening and, with Dennis Beckett’s permission, conducted a small Eucharist. Just in case.
In case what?
Six p.m., and she was back in the scullery/office, with the window open and the dregs of the rain dripping from the ivy on the wall. A Silk Cut smouldered in the ashtray. Jane was not yet back from Hereford.
Merrily felt like a cartoon person flattened in the road, watching a departing steamroller.
The phone was life support.
‘It’s the old dilemma,’ she said. ‘Don’t know whether I’m making too much of it, or not enough.’
‘When do we ever?’ said the Rev. Huw Owen. ‘You should know that by now.’
‘Did I tell you? Bernie wants me to set up a deliverance group.’
‘Never liked committees, focus-group crap. But in this case – traps everywhere, folk always looking for some poor bugger to blame when it all goes down the toilet. Do it, I would. Just don’t co-opt a social worker.’
She could picture him in his study in the Brecon Beacons, his legs stretched out, his ancient trainers wearing another hole in the rug. The old wolfhound, her Deliverance mentor, technical adviser to half the exorcists in Wales and the West Midlands.
‘Tell me that last bit again, lass. You asked the mother what she reckoned had got into the girl. And she said…’
‘The spirit of a dead person,’ Merrily said. ‘That was what she said.’
‘Anybody in particular?’
‘That’s what I asked her next, but she didn’t reply. Then she started to backtrack on what she’d said earlier about Amy telling them things she couldn’t possibly have known without—’
‘If they don’t cooperate, you’re buggered.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Basically, you want to know whether they need you or a child-psychiatrist.’
‘Mmm.’
Huw was silent for about a minute. She knew he was still there because she could hear his trainer tapping the fender. No matter how hot it was, he always kept a small fire going. Not that it could ever get over-hot in a rectory well above the snowline.
Outside a late sun was blearily pushing aside the blankets of cloud.
‘Got a favourite coin?’ Huw said at last.
Merrily’s heart sank.
‘Well?’ said Huw.
‘When you told us about this on the first course, I thought you were kidding. Then I read Martin Israel on exorcism, but I still think—’
‘Stop shaking your
head, lass. I’ve done it a few times. It’s always worked – far as I could tell. It either tells you what you already knew or it tells you to think again. And once you start thinking again, you find some new angle you hadn’t noticed and that’s the way ahead.’
‘I wouldn’t have the bottle.’
‘Aye, you would. Take an owd coin and bless it and explain to God what you’re doing. I use this old half-crown. Not legal tender any more, therefore not filthy lucre. I keep it in the bottom of a candleholder on the altar.’
Merrily imagined some hapless parishioner wandering in and witnessing the Rev. Owen apparently settling some vexed spiritual issue on the toss of a coin. It could overturn your entire belief-structure.
‘Course, it’s nowt to do with the coin,’ Huw said.
‘Any more than the Tarot is to do with the cards.’
‘Don’t go fundamentalist on me, lass.’
Merrily laughed.
‘Look at Israel – a scientist, a distinguished pathologist. And they made him exorcist for the City of London. What d’you want? Oh aye, I know what you want. You want summat foolproof. You want a solution on a plate.’
‘A second opinion would do.’
‘If you don’t like the cold, come out of the mortuary.’
‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘Any time,’ said Huw.
Merrily sighed.
‘Look, luv, give yourself some credit, eh? I’d’ve kicked you out of the bloody ring meself if I didn’t think you were a contender.’
‘You tried.’
‘That were only before you got your little feet under t’table. Listen, trust your feelings and your common sense. If you want a second opinion, ask Him, not me. Like the song says, make a deal with God.’
‘You’re a complete bastard, Huw.’
Then she remembered that he actually was: born in a little bwthyn halfway up Pen-y-fan and then his mother escaped to Sheffield where he was raised, after a fashion.
‘Sorry,’ Merrily said.
Huw laughed.
At least Jane looked happier when she came into the kitchen. She’d been saving up the money she’d earned working two Saturdays a month at the Eight-till-Late shop, and she was loaded with parcels: clothes for the holiday. No alluring night-wear, Merrily hoped – though, from what she’d heard about Eirion’s father’s extended family, nocturnal recreational opportunities were likely to be seriously limited.
A small carrier bag landed in her lap.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a top. It’s for you. You never get yourself any new clothes.’
‘Gosh, flower… that’s very…’ Merrily pulled it out of the bag. It was pale orange, cotton, very skimpy. ‘It’s going to be, er, how can I put this… slightly low-cut, isn’t it?’
‘Won’t go with the dog collar, if that’s what you mean,’ Jane said smugly.
‘Well… thank you.’ Merrily put the top back in its bag. ‘Thank you very much. It was very thoughtful.’
‘If you don’t wear it, I’ll be seriously offended,’ Jane said. ‘It’s going to be a long, hot summer.’
‘That’s what we always say, and it never is.’
‘Yeah.’ Jane sat down, stretched her bare arms. ‘I expect Lol’ll be taking a summer break from his course about now. You do remember Lol?’
‘Ye-es.’
‘The greatest living writer of gentle, lo-fi, reflective songs and also a cool, sensitive person in himself.’
‘Yes, flower, I think I remember.’
‘No, all I was thinking was, if you found me an inhibiting presence, this would be a good opportunity—’
‘Thank you, flower, for considering my emotional welfare.’
‘Any time,’ Jane said. ‘Oh, that Amy Shelbone – I remembered – she does go to our school.’
‘I know.’
‘I suddenly realized who you meant. Kind of old-fashioned. Always tidy. Bit of a pain, basically.’
Merrily nodded. ‘Mm-mm.’
‘So, is there, like, anything I can help you with?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Merrily said, ‘at this stage.’
‘Because, like—’
‘Sure,’ Merrily said. ‘What time’s Eirion picking you up?’
‘Half-nine.’
‘You looking forward to this?’
‘Sure,’ Jane said.
With the kid upstairs, Merrily went into the hall and ran a hand along the top of the tallest bookcase. It was still there, in all the dust, where she’d popped it hurriedly after they’d found it under the bath when they were having – the year’s big luxury – a new shower installed.
It was thick and misshapen, the head of the monarch obscured but Britannia distinct on the other side, also the date: 1797 – over a century after the death of Wil Williams the martyr, Ledwardine’s most famous vicar.
Feeling faintly ridiculous, she slipped the coin into a pocket of her denim skirt.
7
Stealing the Light
IN THE EARLY evening, a sinister, ochre light flared over the Frome Valley before the storm crashed in, driving like a ramraider down the western flank of the Malverns.
Although there wasn’t much thunder, every light on the mixing board went out at 7.02 p.m., leaving only Prof Levin incandescent.
‘Some farmer guy comes on to me in the post office in Bishop’s Frome: “Ah, you want to get yourself a little petrol generator, Mr Levin.” These hayseeds! You imagine recording music with a bloody generator grinding away out there?’
‘But think of the amazing effects,’ Lol said innocently. ‘The lights flicker… the tape stutters. Elemental scratching?’
‘Fah! You’re just being flippant because you got a new toy.’
‘It’s your toy. I’m just minding it.’ Lol had been trying to identify the different fragments of tree involved in the Boswell guitar. Here in the studio, its range and depth were incredible.
‘He’s getting it back,’ Prof said. ‘I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but he’s getting it back. They pulled a fast one on me. I said to Sally, “Help the boy if you can. Inspire him.” That’s all I said. So they palm you off with this ridiculous, overpriced—’ He pulled up the master switch so that everything wouldn’t happen at once if the power ever returned.
‘Still… you at least know where you are now, geographically, I would guess.’
‘Well,’ said Lol, ‘I know why Knight’s Frome’s all in pieces.’
Prof sniffed. ‘The Great Lake,’ he said.
‘Conrad Lake?’
‘A moral tale.’ Prof went back to his swivel chair, behind the board. ‘The Fall of the Emperor of Frome – that’s what they called Conrad, behind his back at first, but they say he grew to like it. She told you how the gods turned against him? His problems with the wilt?’
‘Actually, it wasn’t the wilt as such. It seems that Verticillium Wilt only—’
‘Verticillium! That’s the word.’
‘Only really hit these parts in the seventies. It started in Kent, and took a long time, decades, to reach Herefordshire. But there were other scourges before that: red spiders, aphids, white mould. He got them all, like the Seven Plagues of Egypt.’
They were both talking in epic terms, Lol realized, because it had seemed epic: the bountiful legacy of four generations of hop-masters wiped out in about seven years. Conrad Lake was, in effect, the last – and for a while the biggest and wealthiest – hop-master in Herefordshire. His poles and frames had surrounded Knight’s Frome like a great creosoted barrier. Looking like Belsen, Sally Boswell had said disdainfully, like Auschwitz. The estate was big enough when he inherited it, and twice as big when the first disaster struck.
Lol recalled the portrait photograph of Conrad Lake in the third and smallest room at the hop museum, his smile submerged in a heavy moustache. A difficult, greedy and obsessive man, Sally had said, referred to by the locals, behind his back, as the Emperor of Frome. Twice married and both
wives had left him, the second taking his infant son. They never divorced; the boy, Adam, was raised by his mother and grandparents in Warwickshire – never again saw his father, who stayed in Knight’s Frome and fought all through the 1970s against the aphids, the red spiders and the white mould. And against the banks, who kept squeezing him, forcing him to sell off his estate piece by piece.
‘Big drama,’ said Prof laconically.
The land had then been bought by various farmers, most of them from outside Knight’s Frome, which explained why there was no real community any more, why so many of the scattered houses were now owned by incomers like Prof. A few of the old hop-yards had been reinstated, but demand was no longer so great, with so many breweries importing cheaper hops from Germany and the USA. Most of it was grazed now. A pity, in a way, Sally Boswell had said, because the deep river loam in the valleys of the Frome and the Lugg was so perfect for hops. And yet, in a way, not a pity at all; it was no accident that the third room in the museum was the darkest, a sober coda to the song of the hop.
But not everyone, it seemed, believed it was over. Least of all Adam Lake, son of the Emperor.
Though the storm had passed and the evening fields were left steaming under a bashful sun, the power failed to return, and Prof announced in disgust that he was going to bed.
‘You give me a call when it’s dark, Laurence… if we’ve got the bleeding juice back. I always work better after dark, as you know.’
Lol watched him stumping across the yard to the cottage, then went back and sat for a while in the studio, trying the River Frome song again on the Boswell, and then, because he felt bad about deserting it, on his faithful old Washburn.
But the song still lacked direction, and after a while he gave up and went out into the luminous, storm-washed evening. As the trees dripped and the air glistened with birdsong, Lol made his first real foray into what remained of the community of Knight’s Frome.
A soggy rug of slurry unrolled from a farm entrance towards the edge of what passed for the centre of the hamlet. Big old trees, oak and sycamore and horse chestnut, were still dripping onto the roofs of stone and timber-framed cottages that sprouted like wild mushrooms. A humpback bridge straddled the Frome, and on the other side of it was the church, sunken and settled as an old barn, and next to it the white-painted vicarage where Simon St John lived.