by Phil Rickman
Merrily dialled Huw’s number again. This time it was the machine. Well, it was Sunday and he had a bunch of isolated churches.
‘I’m not in. If it’s owt important you’d best leave a message.’
‘Huw, it’s me,’ Merrily said. ‘I have a problem.’
She put the phone down and before she could take her hand away, it rang.
‘Gorra favour to ask, Merrily.’
‘Frannie. A favour. That’s not like you.’
‘Ho ho. Listen, that nursing sister at the hospital, your mate, what was her name? Belfast woman, indiscreet.’
‘I’d be more inclined to see her as a woman of conscience with a fairly flexible loyalty to the Hereford health authority. Eileen Cullen.’
‘Could you get her to find out something for me? Nothing contentious. Just I don’t want to be connected with it.’
‘But it’s OK if I’m connected with it?’
‘Nothing contentious, Merrily.’
‘Your drug thing pan out?’
‘Better than expected, as it happens. Yes, indeed. I just need a bit of information that your friend should be able to provide very quickly.’
‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’
Silence.
‘All right, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll try and get hold of Eileen Cullen, explain what an essentially decent person you are, underneath, and give her your number. That way you can tell her what you want and she can decide if it agrees with her conscience’
Bliss thought about it. Merrily could hear traffic noise.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Do that. Give her the mobile. If I don’t hear from her in an hour, I’ll call you back.’
‘It’s that urgent?’
‘My whole life is urgent, Merrily.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In the car. The car’s me office now. A privacy issue.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeh, I’m rediscovering me faith.’
In the pause, she heard an angry car horn.
‘When I was a little lad,’ Bliss said, ‘I had a hard time separating God from Santa Claus. Our priest, Father Flanagan, used to come round on Friday nights with his bets for me dad to put on for him. And this particular Friday – I was a cocky little twat – I said, Father. I’ve decided I’ll not be coming to church on Sunday, and he goes, Why is that, Francis? And I say, Because I’ve just turned nine, Father, and I’m too old to believe in God. And Father Flanagan’s creased up laughing. One day, Francis, he says, when you least expect it, you’ll look up, and there above you you’ll see what is unmistakably His face. And when that happens . . . when that happens . . . you’ll remember this moment.’
‘And you were suitably chastened?’
‘No, it was a bit of an anticlimax. I thought he was gonna tell me something interesting.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘I don’t drink.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Anyway,’ Bliss said, ‘I looked up, and it wasn’t the big feller, it was a face called Steve Furneaux. But I finally saw what Father Flanagan was on about. There is a God.’
‘And is he on your side?’
‘I frigging hope so, Merrily, because no other bastard is.’
A few minutes later Jane and Eirion came back and Merrily cobbled together a seriously late lunch of cheese omelettes and hot mince pies – not good enough, but nobody seemed hungry, the combination of darkness and flood making Ledwardine seem, for the first time, like a perilous place to be. And she kept thinking of Father Ellis and the dark brew of piety and perversity that had poisoned a valley.
Jane was more animated now, but in an agitated way. Her eyes flickering as she ate. There was a thin streak of red mud down her face that looked disturbingly like a knife wound.
They listened to the flood update on Radio H & W. Roads all over the county were being closed, even major roads, east–west routes particularly affected. Merrily had to collect a guitar and was apprehensive. There were few places in the county further east than Knights Frome.
‘We’ll come,’ Jane said. ‘Eirion would love to see Al Boswell’s workshop, wouldn’t you, Irene?’
‘I would, Jane, but I told Lol we’d go round to his place tonight, see what he wants us to do for this back-projection at his concert. And the recordings?’
‘I’d forgotten. Mum, listen, it’s not safe out there. Can’t you like go tomorrow?’
‘Christmas Eve? Not a chance.’
‘Or we’ll go tomorrow.’
‘No, I need to try. If it looks bad I’ll turn back.’
‘It’s just that if I’m going to be an orphan, I’d prefer it didn’t happen at Christmas. That would be just so Dickens. Do I have time for a quick shower? I feel . . .’ Jane flapped her arms ‘. . . yucky.’
‘If there’s enough hot water.’
When she’d gone up, Merrily drew the curtains, and then – superstitiously – drew them back.
‘How is she, Eirion? Really?’
‘We, er . . . we went to Coleman’s Meadow. I persuaded her it was the thing to do.’
‘Good.’
‘Good and . . . not so good. We met Neil Cooper – the archaeologist from the council? Not a happy man.’
Eirion didn’t look too happy either. Since she’d seen him last, he seemed to have grown up, lost the puppy fat, turned the big corner. She listened to his story about Bill Blore’s private memos to the Council – the authority he’d publicly slagged off. It didn’t actually strike her as all that curious.
‘Maybe it’s part of his contract for the excavation. The Council don’t trust Blore, and they got into a potentially difficult situation with the Dinedor Serpent, so everything he finds, every step he takes, he has to report back.’
‘And he’d’ve agreed to that?’
‘What choice would he have? And anyway, in my experience, the high-profile maverick image is usually a façade. You often find that so-called rebels, when you meet them, tend to be disappointingly orthodox.’
Merrily was thinking of Mathew Stooke. Eirion sighed.
‘The older I get, Mrs Watkins, the more disillusioned I become. By the time I’m thirty, the world’s going to look like a grey waste-land full of zombies who believe in nothing. In fact, I can see it already. All these teenage suicides, is that any wonder?’
‘Hey, come on, Eirion, this is how Jane talks when she’s down. I rely on you to lift her out of it.’
‘Sorry.’
Eirion pushed back his chair, went over to the window. It was like looking into an aquarium with no lights.
‘It doesn’t end,’ he said. ‘She’s become obsessed now with finding whatever Blore’s discovered. What it’s done to Cooper, that’s made her angry, but also . . . hopeful, you know? That there’s still some mystery to be uncovered there? And she thinks if she can let it out before Blore does it might somehow clear her name, turn it all around. She . . . doesn’t give up.’
‘You noticed.’
‘Dragging me all round the boundaries of the site and halfway up Cole Hill, trying to make out the alignment through the rain, trying to see something new. It was . . . seemed a bit pointless. Sad.’
‘You know what we need to do?’ Merrily said, as the phone started ringing in the scullery. ‘Somehow we need to persuade Blore either to ditch the interview with Jane or record it again, rather more kindly.’
‘How do you propose to do that?’
‘Haven’t the faintest idea, Eirion.’
Huw’s Yorkshire voice, flat and scuffed as an old rag rug, sometimes reassuring, not always.
‘Never seemed like much to me, Stooke. Doesn’t claim to be a boffin, doesn’t refer constantly to Darwinian theory. Doesn’t seem to specialise in owt.’
‘Except derision,’ Merrily said. ‘He specialises in scorn.’
‘A man of the age,’ Huw said.
There was a pause. Merrily thought she could hear the ubiquitous rain bombar
ding Huw’s gaunt rectory in the Brecon Beacons, the crackle of his log fire.
‘So Stooke’s missus wants you to get this West woman off their backs.’
‘Essentially, yes.’
‘You told them she’s not a member of your church.’
‘But she is. She comes every week. But she goes to the other place twice a week.’
‘A serial worshipper.’
‘She’s quite clever about it. Never really mentions the Church of the Lord of the Light in Ledwardine. No posters in the post office. A devout Anglican of the old school. My church is her church.’
‘But she slags you off. She walked out of your service.’
‘She would see that as defending the village’s religious tradition against a dangerous subversive influence.’
‘Kind of support she got?’
‘Not a lot. Some people think she’s a joke, some feel sorry for her because she’s a lone voice. And, of course, her opposition to the raising of the heathen stones makes her a gift to Lyndon Pierce and the pro-expansion lobby.’
Impregnable, in a way, when you thought about it. Exactly the way she looked behind the big metal cross and the reinforced glass in the post office.
‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘I’m looking at this website, as we speak. Thelordofthelight.com. You think this is Ellis again, from the States?’
‘I honestly don’t know, Huw. It carries his mark. It’s not unintelligent, and it’s plausible enough. And it would explain Shirley’s attitude. Ellis has very good reason to hate me.’
‘It has been predicted that, close to the Endtime, Satan will incarnate’, Huw quoted. ‘He will have neither horns nor tail.’
‘That’s cows in the clear, then.’
Huw laughed.
‘You read the rest, though,’ Merrily said, ‘what it’s almost saying is that Satan is the secular society. The moral void.’
‘A persuasive argument in many ways. Where do you stand?’
‘Personally, I don’t have that much of a problem with unbelievers, unless they try to bully other people into unbelief. But then, I have the same problem with people who try to bully people into belief. Like Ellis.’
‘Can’t bully an atheist into faith any more.’
‘But you can make their lives unpleasant. The Stookes are getting what I suppose you’d call ominous mail and anonymous letters, arguably from the same source, basically reminding them of the various names of their . . . satanic master.’
‘If Stooke looks different and they’re living under a false name,’ Huw said, ‘how did Shirley find out about them?’
‘She’s the postmistress. They haven’t completely changed their identity – he won’t do that. So his real name still appears on official documents . . . and on cheques. Silly mistake by Leonora. They were late paying an electricity bill because they were contesting it, and in the end she took the final demand to pay it at the post office . . . paid with a cheque, with, of course, the name Stooke on it. Not realising at the time what kind of woman was handling the transaction.’
‘Shirley must’ve seen that as a little gift from God.’
‘Oh yes. Leonora remembers her looking up with this awful still smile she has – pious going on sinister. Thank you, she says, handing over the receipt, Mrs Stooke.’
‘So how did it go from there?’
‘Quite subtly, for Shirley. Or maybe she was being restrained. Say she told someone at the Lord of the Light, and they passed the information up the line to Ellis or whoever – if not Ellis there has to be somebody like him – and the word comes back to play it quietly. Not to out him, because then he becomes public property . . . a target for fundamentalists everywhere.’
‘Aye, and they wouldn’t have him to themselves any more. Their private demon for the Endgame. Think they’re the chosen ones.’
‘Hard to credit the mentality.’
‘It’s all too bloody easy. These folk are fantasists of the first order. Owt unexpected happens, it’s the hand of God. That’s all they’ve done so far, is it, threatening letters?’
‘Well . . . seems Shirley quite often takes an evening stroll from the orchard to Coleman’s Meadow. Taking a good look at Cole Barn from the public footpath. They see her holding out her arms, apparently calling on God to . . . who knows? Ties in with what she said at the parish meeting last week – a deep evil in Coleman’s Meadow and evil returns to it.’
‘Still just one woman, Merrily.’
‘Maybe not. They look out of the window around nightfall and quite often there’s a man there, at the top of the field, watching the house. And considering how comparatively remote that place is . . .’
‘Shirley living with anybody?’
‘Don’t know. But it’s only ten minutes to Leominster. Probably some members of the church living even closer than that. When I say watching the house, I don’t mean furtively creeping from tree to tree, which would be worrying – I mean standing there in the open, not moving.’
‘I’m wondering why she came to you if they’ve got a Special Branch man on the end of a phone.’
‘That occurred to me, too. She said – as she’d said earlier – that Stooke refuses to be intimidated by religious cranks. And doesn’t trust the security services, which I’d guess is normal enough left-wing journalistic paranoia. And, anyway, what could he do? She’s not a terrorist. Basically . . . I think Leonora just wants to know if Shirley’s mental. I said there was no record of her ever harming anyone. I could’ve said more but Shirley, strictly speaking, is a member of my, erm, flock and the Stookes, well . . .’
‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘I’m going to sit on t’fence here, lass. I’d say talk to them both, but don’t get too involved. If Ellis is out there in spiritual cyberspace, he won’t just have the Stookes in his cross-hairs.’
‘Me?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Sorry . . . I was just thinking about something Leonora said. I may have to talk to them again, before I talk to Shirley. Which probably means tonight.’
This could be a long night.
‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘You’ve consulted me. I’m noting this in my diary on the evening of the 23rd of December at 4.44 p.m. precisely. Consider your compact little bum formally covered.’
41
Dark Ones
THE HEAT WAS like urban heat. Penthouse-apartment heat. Or like when you walked into one of those department stores with powerful blow-heaters over the doors, and it made you feel almost faint.
‘Coffee?’ Stooke said.
‘Oh . . . please.’
Aware of a small tremor under her voice. Nerves, for heaven’s sake. Merrily hadn’t expected nerves.
She walked ahead of him towards a stone fireplace, floor to ceiling, with a cast-iron wood-burning stove, logs stacked in stone recesses either side, the room so bright she was blinking.
So what had she expected – coldness, absence of light, a sense of void?
Certainly not nerves. She hadn’t expected nerves. Perhaps she should have prayed for strength before leaving the car.
Perhaps she was pathetic.
‘Lenni’s washing her hair. Gets rather messed up in this weather. She’ll be down in a few minutes.’
‘I’m sorry, I tried to phone, but you’re—’
‘Ex-directory. Of course. She should’ve given you the number. Probably just slipped her mind. Things do. Not a problem. We weren’t going anywhere.’
Stooke took Merrily’s dripping Barbour and extended an arm towards a long cream-leather sofa. She sat at the end furthest from the stove, its glass doors shimmering a fierce furnace red, which still wouldn’t account for the temperature in a room this size.
All the lights were on. Circular halogen lights, like little bright planets, sunk into the plasterboard between new oak beams. Bracketed spotlights on the walls, all fully lit. No dark corners, no secrets, no mystery. Maybe a message here for the religious. Mystery wastes everyone’s time, Stooke had said in Cole
man’s Meadow.
‘I’m afraid it’s rather too damn warm in here at the moment,’ he admitted, ‘but if one tries to turn something off it can go suddenly quite chilly.’
From where she sat she could count one, two, three . . . four big radiators.
‘Temperature fluctuates hugely,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the absence of insulation. I’m not used to places like this. The countryside’s so demanding of effort. Townie to the core, I’m afraid.’ His face creased into a lopsided smile. ‘Merrily, I’m so sorry about the deception. Winterson . . . Stooke. It was beyond my—’
‘Don’t worry about it. Life can be complicated.’
‘Yes. Excuse me a moment, I’ll fetch some coffee.’
He strolled away through an open doorway, not looking back. Merrily leaned her head back into the sofa. You could see why someone might choose to rent Cole Barn. This room had been converted in broad strokes: the big fireplace, the stone flags, the rough beams of light oak. A room you could move into in about an hour, one size fits all.
The Stookes’ additions had been fairly minimal: this sofa and a plush swivel chair, a steel-framed desk, two dense cream rugs and enough utility shelves to hold a few hundred books. She tried to make out titles on spines, but she was too far away.
It was another world. A world of unlimited oil, while she and Jane were shivering over candles, like Scrooge’s clerk.
‘Merrily!’
Leonora, confident and graceful in a cream towelling robe, towel around her hair. Merrily stood up.
‘I’m sorry to just appear like this, but I couldn’t—’
‘No, I heard. My fault entirely.’
‘I won’t take up very much of your evening. Just wanted to check out a few things. Something you said in the church about Elliot infiltrating a fundamentalist cult. Something’s connected.’
‘Sit down . . . please.’ Leonora sank into the swivel chair. Her feet were bare. ‘That wasn’t really a serious possibility. I doubt he could stand mixing with people like that for more than an hour or two. Especially if they’re all like our friend in the post office.’