The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  She had a cigarette half out of the packet when Dexter blandly shook his head, making wiping motions with his hands, his lower lip projecting like an outlet pipe. She pushed the cigarette back into the packet, wondering how he survived in the clubs. Putting the Silk Cut packet out of reach. We suffer, Jeavons had said.

  An hour passed. It was growing dark.

  Dexter was talking about the collapse of his engagement two years ago – how it had really knocked him sideways to learn that his girlfriend, Farah, had been seeing another bloke for months, apparently weighing up which of them was the best bet and then deciding, for some weird reason of her own, that it wasn’t Dexter.

  Bitch. Made you stop trusting women, Dexter said. Made you want to start scoring a few points of your own. Dexter had hit the clubs. Shagger Harris, the foreman started calling him, down the tyre depot. Dexter grinned, looking down at the Bible on Merrily’s desk.

  If we take the time to absorb what people are telling us about themselves, directly and indirectly, and we are in a suitable state of relaxation – a contemplative state – then the clues they come together and a feeling – or a word – sometimes drops into our minds.

  ‘How old are you, Dexter?’

  ‘Me? Twenny-nine, now. Soon be thirty. Yeah, I know I look younger.’

  ‘Nobody special since Farah? Just casual stuff?’

  ‘Just casual sex,’ Dexter said.

  ‘Doesn’t the asthma...?’ Merrily broke off, embarrassed.

  Dexter wasn’t. ‘Naw, they reckons it’s stress brings it on, look. Well, I only gets stressed-out when I en’t having no luck. Most times I can go all night, know what I mean? Don’t get no problems that way.’ He smiled at her. ‘Funny thing, that, ennit?’

  Merrily leaned back. ‘You don’t really think this is going to help you, do you?’

  Dexter sniffed. ‘Like I say, if it keeps the old woman quiet, it’s something. No offence meant. I’m not much of a believer. Can’t help that, can I?’

  ‘No. If you try and force yourself to believe, that only causes... stress.’

  ‘Doctor says I’ve gotter avoid that. People gives me stress, I don’t bother with ’em no more.’

  ‘Do you remember the first one?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘The first asthma attack you ever had.’

  He shook his head. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Do you remember how old you were? Or has it always been a problem?’

  ‘’Bout twelve, thirteen.’ He didn’t look at her. She felt a tightening of the air between them. ‘Do it matter?’

  ‘I was just wondering what might’ve brought it on. If there was a particular... emotional problem that might’ve caused it. I mean, I don’t know what Alice told you, but I’m not any kind of medical expert. I’m just looking for... maybe something we can focus on in our prayers.’

  ‘Prayers?’ He looked at her now. ‘Strange, a nice-looking woman like you being a vicar and going on about prayers and that.’ He looked down at her breasts. ‘You must’ve been quite young when you had your daughter.’

  ‘What do you think about when you’re having an asthma attack?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What goes through your mind?’

  ‘Sorter question’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know, it just came into my head. Nobody ask you that before? The doctors?’

  ‘Why would they?’

  ‘I’d just like to know what it’s like.’

  He stared at her defiantly. ‘It’s like you’re drinking a glass of milk, and it turns into fuckin’ concrete halfway down your throat. That’s what it’s like.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sounded like an image that went way back. A childhood image.

  ‘Don’t you get me going,’ Dexter said. ‘If I starts thinkin’ about it, I’ll get stressed.’

  He wasn’t much more than a big silhouette now – wide shoulders, a pointed head. It was dark enough to put on the lamp. She reached out automatically, then paused, with a finger on the button of the Anglepoise.

  ‘And I don’t want people talkin’ about me in the church,’ Dexter said. ‘She said you was just gonner... I dunno, just do the healin’.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be like that, Dexter – people talking about you. It’s just, you know, to give me some guidance. Everything you tell me is totally confidential. Just between the two of us.’

  ‘Nothing to tell.’

  ‘Have you really not been in a church since your christening? No weddings? Funerals?’

  He didn’t reply. In the silence, she thought his breath had coarsened. She tapped the Anglepoise button, still didn’t press it down. The directional light might make this seem too much like an old-style police interrogation. She thought of the basement interview rooms, opposite the cells at Hereford police headquarters, the ventilator grilles high on the walls, no windows. You didn’t need to be asthmatic to feel you couldn’t breathe down there.

  ‘You ever been in bother with the police, Dexter?’

  It just came out, on the back of the thought.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry if that was—’

  ‘I fuckin’ knew it.’ Dexter was pushing back the chair.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ With difficulty, she didn’t move. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

  a feeling – or a word – sometimes drops into our minds.

  Dexter was on his feet, a terrifying rattle in his breath.

  ‘It was out of order,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I dunno...’ Dexter moved clumsily to the door. ‘Dunno what she’s been tellin’ you, that ole bat.’ He had his inhaler out. ‘But fuck this for a game of soldiers.’

  When Eirion tried to ease Jane back onto the bed, she just couldn’t go for it. Not with Mum two floors below, doing what she was doing. Doing the business, doing the priest bit, whatever she perceived that was today.

  ‘I really worry about her now.’ Jane sat on the edge of the bed, with her elbows on her knees.

  ‘It’s probably reciprocated tenfold,’ Eirion said.

  ‘I’m serious. The Jenny Box thing, that whole affair, it really messed her up – this woman in desperate need of support, sitting on awful secrets, and Mum not being there for her when it came to a head.’

  ‘She couldn’t know, though, Jane, could she?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, she still feels responsible. Male priests can be aloof from it all – if they can get a few bums on pews then they feel they still have a role and a bit of status. Women, everything that goes wrong they take it as their fault.’

  ‘Isn’t that slightly sexist?’ Eirion said.

  ‘And with Mum you’ve got this constant self-questioning – all this, “Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing to try and fill His bloody sandals?” ’

  Eirion came and sat close to Jane, bending forward to peer into her face.

  ‘I’m not upset,’ Jane said, ‘just in case you were thinking I might be in need of a groin to cry on.’

  ‘So what is she doing?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Down there, with this bloke.’

  ‘I think she’s been invited to cure whatever it is that’s causing him to keep sucking his inhaler.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘OK.’ Jane let him take her hand. ‘It started with Ann-Marie Herdman. It’s all round the village that Ann-Marie Herdman was cured of something very nasty – that she may or may not have had – after Mum prayed for her. Now, if it had been a regular prayer for the sick, in the course of a normal service, nobody would’ve said a word. But because it was at one of the mysterious new Sunday-night sessions where there are weird things like – woooh – meditation... then it must be... you know?’

  ‘She’s teaching meditation now?’

  ‘In a simplistic Christian way. Nothing esoteric. I didn’t realize how far it had got until I went down the shop a couple of hours ago for some stuff for sandwiches, and there were these two wome
n talking about it to Brenda, who’s Ann-Marie’s mum. I mean, I knew about Ann-Marie, but I thought it was just another NHS cock-up. I didn’t realize Mum was in the frame as... God, I can’t bear it. And if I can’t bear it, how does she feel?’

  ‘They’re saying she has healing skills?’

  ‘It’s the way people are, that’s all. Always desperate for evidence of miracles. It’s like when all these idiots form queues to worship a potato with the face of Jesus. One of the women said Alice Meek had brought her nephew in to have the vicar pray for him to be healed, and I’m imagining some little kid, and I’m thinking, Oh God, this is terrible, that’s all she needs. Then Mum turns up with this big jerk with the inhaler who keeps leering at me and accidentally rubbing his leg against mine under the table. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so... not funny.’

  ‘So what exactly is she doing?’

  ‘If she’s got any sense, Irene, she’s explaining to him that she’s unfortunately become the focus for a load of superstitious bollocks put about by old women with nothing better to occupy their minds. And then maybe suggest to this guy – Dexter, for heaven’s sake – that they say a quick prayer together but don’t expect to be throwing his inhaler into the river just yet.’

  Eirion thought about this. He was Welsh; a large number of them still took religion seriously. ‘But she’s a priest,’ he said.

  ‘Er... yes.’

  ‘Don’t you see? She has to acknowledge at least the possibility of miracles. She has to accept that God can do it, and that she could be a channel for it. She can’t just walk away from it if anybody thinks there’s a small chance. You know?’

  Jane sighed. ‘It’s a fine line.’

  ‘It’s not that fine, Jane.’

  ‘The big joke...’ Jane stared at the Mondrian walls – big plaster squares in the timber framing that she’d painted in primary colours. ‘The big joke is that women think getting ordained was some huge coup for their sex. The fact is, it’s the crappiest job there is, and it’s getting worse all the time, as society gets more and more secular and cynical. It’s obvious that the ordination of women was actually a subtle conspiracy by the male clergy, desperately searching for fall guys as everything around them collapses into some like... pre-Armageddon bleakness.’

  ‘I thought you were over that.’ Eirion stood up and walked to the window. It had started snowing: not much, but it always looked worse from up here, especially at dusk, white on grey.

  ‘I have the occasional relapse,’ Jane said.

  Eirion sighed. ‘So, do you want to know how to work this video camera, or what?’

  Maybe Merrily should have realized that something was spinning out of control. Maybe, if she hadn’t been thinking about Dexter Harris, she would have been curious about the extra cars on the village square. She didn’t even notice them.

  It was becoming unexpectedly cold – she was aware of that. She saw snowflakes clustered like moths around the fake gas-lamps on the square. As soon as she slid into church, wearing Jane’s old duffel coat over jeans, her black cashmere sweater and her smallest pectoral cross, she made sure that the heating was on full – checking that Uncle Ted hadn’t crept in and turned it down.

  He hadn’t, for once, but she still felt a need to do more and lugged the little cast-iron Calor-gas stove out of the vestry, wheeling it to the bottom of the chancel steps. It wouldn’t make much difference, temperature-wise, but a glimpse of real, orange flames kind of warmed the soul.

  She felt domestic about the church tonight, wanting to turn the House of God into a big kitchen.

  How she felt about Dexter Harris – that was different. The fact that he was so charmless and unresponsive somehow made it more important to try and help him. The fact that he didn’t want to be helped made it complicated: if there was something in his past that had caused or advanced the asthma, did she have any right, let alone responsibility, to try and find out about it?

  Responsibility: where did it begin and where did it end?

  Sitting alone in the choir stalls, she cleared Dexter from her mind, closed her eyes and became aware of her breathing, allowing it to regulate itself. A short meditation had become an essential preliminary to the Sunday-evening session. When she sat down here, twenty minutes before the start, she would usually have no real idea at all what form it would be taking. But when she stood up again, that no longer mattered.

  It was the sounds of movement that brought her out of it. Too much movement. She knew her church; she knew her congregations and the sounds of them, familiar coughs and whispers.

  When she came back into the body of the church, standing next to the faintly hissing gas stove, it was like she was in some other parish, staring out at faces she didn’t recognize: a woman with a baby, two teenage girls. And in the aisles, two wheelchairs, one occupied by a boy of about eleven and the other by a woman in her fifties with a tartan rug over her knees.

  There was a shuffling quiet in the church, everybody looking at Merrily, in her black sweater and her jeans, and she felt small, bewildered, desperate.

  Fraudulent.

  It was snowing so hard that Eirion had to leave. Jane had been hoping he wouldn’t notice until it was too late, so he’d have to spend the night, but he’d borrowed his stepmother’s car again, needed to get it back to Abergavenny.

  Jane stood at the front door, cuddling Ethel the cat and watching through the bare trees as he drove away, red lights reflected in the half-inch of unsullied snow on Church Street. Much of what he’d told her about the camera she was sure she hadn’t really taken in, but she’d made notes. She ought to practise with the gear before she went back to Stanner. In normal circumstances she could ask Mum to help, perhaps record an interview with her, with the external mike plugged in. Except that, because of the nature of what she might be shooting up at Stanner, it wasn’t wise even to mention it.

  Christianity was a minefield. You could talk about spirituality but not spiritualism, open yourself to spiritual healing but never spirit healing. If she told Mum about the White Company, she’d be letting herself in for one of those long, serious talks, ending with the usual warnings: Well, it’s up to you, you’re intelligent and old enough to make up your own mind about what you get involved in, but...

  The rest unsaid, the word ‘betrayal’ never passing between them.

  The phone was ringing. Normally, she’d let the machine grab it, but she felt like talking to somebody. She stepped back inside and shut the front door, putting Ethel down and dashing through the kitchen into the scullery to snatch up the receiver.

  ‘Ledwardine Vicarage.’

  ‘Mrs Watkins?’ Female voice.

  ‘No, she’s in church. Can I help?’

  ‘Oh... no... It’s all right, I’ll call back.’

  ‘Can I give her a message?’

  ‘No, it’s all right, really.’

  The caller hung up, just as Jane recognized the voice. Was sure she’d recognized the voice.

  She dialled 1471.

  ‘You were called at seven-fourteen today. The caller withheld—’

  Jane hung up. Two chairs were pulled away from the desk, as if Mum and Dexter had left in a hurry. Jane sat down in one.

  Talk about betrayal...

  Danny tried to listen to some music, but The Foo Fighters made his headache worse. It was the first time this had happened; normally, the heavier the music the more it relaxed him. In the end he watched telly with Greta, listening to Heartbeat with his eyes shut, identifying the sixties numbers on the soundtrack until he fell asleep.

  And Greta woke him again, with the cordless phone.

  ‘No,’ Danny mumbled. ‘Please, God.’

  ‘Gwilym Bufton, it is. I told him you wasn’t well, but he said you’d want to hear this.’

  ‘Gwilym?’ Danny struggled to a sitting position. First time he’d had a call from the feed dealer since he’d given up livestock, which Gwilym saw as an act of treachery.

  ‘’Ow’re you,
boy?’

  ‘Half dead.’

  ‘That’s good. Looks like we’re in for some snow, ennit?’

  ‘Sure t’ be.’

  ‘Not a problem for you n’more. In fact, it’ll be contract work with the council, you and Gomer. Got your plough fitted?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Good business, Gomer’s.’

  Danny waited, his head throbbing. Bloody trouble with Border folk, took for ever to get to the point. For ever later, Gwilym gets there.

  ‘What you been doing to Sebbie, then?’

  ‘What have I been doing—?’

  ‘You and the Berrows boy.’

  ‘What’s he saying we done?’

  ‘En’t said a thing. Havin’ a go at him, though, wasn’t you? Not a happy man in the pub afterwards.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘Just wonderin’ what else you might’ve yeard.’

  ‘Like?’ This needed care; Sebbie was a valued client of Gwilym’s.

  ‘Worried man, Danny.’

  ‘Din’t look worried to me.’

  ‘Well, he don’t, do he? All bluff and bluster. You remember Zelda? Zelda Morgan, from the Min of Ag, as was?’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’

  ‘Sebbie been giving Zelda one for quite a while,’ Gwilym said. ‘Her lives in hope, poor cow. Distant relative of my good lady, see.’

  ‘I’d make it even more distant, her becomes Mrs Dacre.’

  Gwilym laughed, just a bit. ‘He don’t sleep much.’

  ‘Zelda’s complainin’?’

  ‘Zelda’s bothered, Danny. Wakes in the night, there’s Sebbie, bollock-naked at the window. Shaking. Shaking like with the cold. And it is cold in Sebbie’s bedroom, but it never bothers him as a rule.’

  ‘Mabbe not as much as the price of heating-oil.’

  As well as feed, Gwilym was the agent for an oil depot in Hereford.

  ‘So he’s going – this is Sebbie – he’s going – “Look, look...” Drags Zelda out of bed, points down the valley, over Berrows’s ground. “See it, see it?” ’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Her don’t know. He won’t say. And Zelda don’t see nothing. Moonlit fields, that’s all. Couple nights later, wakes her up again. “You hear that? You hear that?” Her can’t year nothing, ’cept for Sebbie bleating like a ewe in labour. This is confidential, Danny.’