by Phil Rickman
‘It never occurred to you she’d find out one day?’
‘Why?’ Denny croaked. ‘Why should she? All those years ago, how many people remember anyway? It was over. And how could I ever have imagined, in any kind of worst-case scenario, that she was gonna rent this place – the same fucking barn? What kind of impossible nightmare coincidence is that? I was amazed it’s still here. Like who’d want to live at a house with that abattoir right next door?’
‘Somebody obviously tried hard to keep the barn out of view.’ Lol thought of the wall of fast-growing Leylandii. Planted there, presumably, by the people who’d bought Dyn Farm from Harry Moon, or by the owners after that. Out of sight, out of mind, out of nightmares. ‘And the Purefoys were incomers. How would they know?’
‘Stupid gits.’
‘You…’ Lol hesitated. ‘You didn’t think of telling her before she moved in?’
‘And what do you think that would’ve achieved, Laurence? You think that would’ve put her off?’ Denny produced wild, synthetic laughter. ‘Her?’
Poor bloody Denny, who wanted to burn away his own last image of Harry Moon like cauterizing a stump – terrified of what might happen if he came up here and it all crashed back on him.
So he’d simply stayed away, paying Dick to look out for his sister, and both of them laying it on Lol. Wanting Lol to get close, move in with her. Lol imagined what Merrily would say about this – a situation so unbelievably flawed and precarious that only men could have allowed it to develop.
And in a way that was right. But Lol could see Denny’s skewed logic: why he’d gone to Dick Lyden instead of a real psychiatrist, and to Dick rather than Ruth. A guy he knew from the pub – a mate, nothing formal. Someone he could talk to, without having to tell all. He’s an idiot, Moon had said.
‘That paper,’ Denny said. ‘That copy of the Times – it never even came into our house. You know anything about this – how she got hold of it?’
Lol shook his head. ‘First time I’ve seen it. I don’t know… Did somebody give it to her? Was she going back through the old newspaper files, part of her research, and came across it that way?’
‘And just laid it out there on the table, where the Purefoy woman found it? Had it all worked out, didn’t she? So bloody happy to join the father she couldn’t even remember.’ Denny began to cry. ‘Happy? You think she was happy?’
Some psychologist, Lol thought… maybe even Dick in his paper for Psychology Today… might draw a flawed parallel with the Heaven’s Gate mass-suicides, all those people in San Diego who came to believe they could hitch a ride on the Hale Bopp comet.
‘I never understood her,’ Lol said.
And always just a little repelled.
‘All down to me,’ Denny said, his voice flat and dry like cardboard. ‘It’s all going down to me. She suddenly learns I lied to her all those years ago; that’s what they’re gonna say. And that fucking sword – and the bath. You know where that bath is, don’t you?’ He sprang up, fists clenched at his sides. ‘That was exactly where the mangers were. For winter feed and water.’
Exactly? Lol felt cold inside.
‘That stone trough… it was where the bath is now, I’d swear to it. They probably used the same holes for the fucking pipes. And the sword – that fucking sword, man! I want to scream. It is not possible.’
‘She said she dug it up.’
‘Where?’
‘Just outside. Somebody had been trying to dig a pond and given up and she saw this thing sticking out where the ground had been excavated. Unless she knew all the time about what your father really did, there’s no way she would have just found this thing and made that connection.’
‘Nooo!’ Denny leapt up, threw his cigarette on to the hearth. ‘You don’t understand, do you? The police… after the inquest, they asked if we wanted it back: the fucking family heirloom. The thing he’d specially sharpened on the old scythe stone, so it’d go through f… flesh… and veins, without much sawing.’
Lol thought about the blackened relic. She must have sharpened that too. Must have honed the edge, testing it on her thumb maybe – rehearsing. You didn’t slash your wrists sideways, you cut upwards into the vein – a fellow patient in the psychiatric hospital had told Lol that. And warm water to prevent muscle cramps and stop the blood clotting. Dreamy, otherworldly, unstable Moon hadn’t done a thing wrong.
‘Police said what did we wanna do with it – this valuable antique. So I took it. Ma was in no state at the time, never would be again, so I took it. Ma signs for it, never knew what she was signing for. I was sixteen by then – big man taking charge. I knew what to do with it. I wrapped it up in some newspaper, stuffed it in my bike bag – brought it up here, back to the old farm. Come up on the bike early one morning, and buried the fucker.’
‘You buried it?’
‘And then, many years later, my poor little mental sister comes along and digs it up – the same blade.’ Denny hissed, ‘It defies fucking belief.’
‘You don’t know that.’ Lol leapt up aghast. ‘You can’t possibly know that.’
‘Don’t know it? It was on our wall for… I dunno, for centuries. That’s why I knew Kathy wasn’t talking total crap about us being in this direct line to the old Celtic village. My grandad, when I was little, he told me that artefact’d been in the family for two thousand years. Sounds balls, don’t it? What family’s been two thousand years in the same spot?’
‘Where did you bury it?’
‘In the shit.’ A short, bitter laugh. ‘There was this kind of slurry pit in front of here in those days. I dug down to the bottom of it. I put the sword in the shit.’
It all fitted so well. Perhaps the Purefoys or their predecessors had found the old pit, thought it was the site of a pond, so dug down – and when no water came up, they abandoned it. It all fitted so horribly well.
‘You tell the police it was the same sword?’
‘They never asked. They knew she’d dug up all this stuff. Far as they’re concerned she was just obsessed with Dad’s suicide. They’re not connecting it beyond an obsession. If you were the police, would you wanner know all this shit about the ancestors? Would you want a hint of anything…’ Denny drew breath and bit his lower lip. ‘Anything paranormal?’
‘You think that?’
‘Sometimes,’ Denny said, ‘it’s the least complicated option.’
‘She said it was telling her things,’ Lol said. ‘She wouldn’t even let me touch it. She said she didn’t want the flow blocked by anyone else’s vibrations.’
‘Madness,’ Denny said. ‘Let’s just call it madness.’
Lol stood up and moved to the window, looked down into Capuchin Lane, snow now in rags against the house walls after a day of shoppers’ shoes. ‘She just wanted to think she was in… almost physical contact with her ancestors.’
‘She’s with the primitive fuckers now,’ Denny said sourly.
27
Protect Her This Night
THE DAY AFTER tomorrow it would be December. Amidst frozen fields, the Church of St Cosmas and St Damien, a small candleshimmer behind its leaded windows, looked peaceful in a humble-stable-at-Bethlehem way. Or so she told herself.
Another attempt to dispel the fear.
Always make time to prepare, Huw would say. All the time she’d made, she’d blown.
An hour fending off Ted Clowes, who saw himself as her lay-supervisor, who was always credited with getting Merrily the Ledwardine living – to ease the worries of her mother, his sister in Cheltenham who was convinced that it was only a matter of time before any female curate in Liverpool was found raped and battered in the churchyard.
Ted would also dump her without a qualm if anything began reflecting badly on himself.
‘I think,’ he’d told her before they finally parted tonight, ‘that this parish is beginning to realize precisely where it stands with you, Merrily.’
And she knew that this time he’d cause trouble. Perhaps
a discreet call to the Archdeacon, a question at the parish council which would be recorded in the minutes.
It had left her less than an hour to see to the blessing and bottling of the water and to explain to Jane where she was going and why Jane, who would be more than a bit interested, could not come. The truth was, if there was anything in there, she didn’t want Jane exposed to it. Kids her age were easy prey. It might even have been kids Jane’s age who were behind the desecration.
But Jane seemed unconcerned, said that was OK, as she was going out anyway, to see a movie in Hereford with Rowenna.
Hardly for the first time, as she parked the Volvo at the side of the track next to a Suzuki four-wheel drive and a muddied Mondeo, Merrily wondered why Jane did not have a boyfriend.
She went round the boot to fetch her case, containing the Bibles, the prayer books, the rites of blessing and lesser exorcism that she’d hand-copied on to cards, and the holy water. She was freezing. She’d changed into her vestments before leaving, so now she put on her cowled clerical cloak of heavyweight loden, but it did nothing for the cold inside.
Lights shone from the cottages. The church, however, was in darkness, no candlelight visible from this side.
She saw figures waiting for her at the edge of the churchyard.
‘DS Bliss.’ He shone a torch upwards to his own ginger-topped face. ‘Franny Bliss.’ Merseyside accent. ‘I’m a Catholic. You all right with that, Vicar?’
‘That’s… fine. I’m Merrily.’
‘I know. Seen your piccy in the local rag. This big yobbo’s PC Dave Jones. Nonconformist, him. What was that bloody chapel of yours again, Dave?’
‘Pisgah, sarge. Pisgah Chapel.’ PC Jones was in plain clothes: dark anorak and a flat cap. ‘Not been back in years, mind.’
‘I just love to hear him say it,’ Bliss said. ‘Now, just so’s you know, Merrily, we’ve gor another lad hanging out by the farm. We don’t talk about him – many years lapsed. That’s why he gets to stay in the cold. Anyway, we’re the best the DCI could put together in the time. Where do you want us?’
‘I don’t know how you want to handle it.’ Merrily stood on the parapet surrounding the churchyard, looking out at the bare fields gleaming silver under a sizable moon. The wind plucked at her cloak. ‘This could be a wild-goose chase for you.’
‘Like most of our nights, that is,’ said bulky Dave.
Merrily gathered the cloak around her. She was scared – and had been since changing into her priestly things. Under her cloak, the cassock had begun to feel clammy, the surplice stiff.
‘For a start, who else knows about this?’ Franny Bliss asked.
‘Well, I told Major Weston, and made a courtesy call to my colleague at Dilwyn. Left a message on his machine, anyway. I also rang the farm here and got the numbers of about half a dozen people living in the area, giving them the opportunity to come along if they felt strongly about it.’
‘Or if they fancied watching an exorcism?’
Merrily sighed. ‘Unfortunately, yes. But I said the number allowed inside the church would be limited. And definitely no children.’
‘Would it be all right if we talked to a few of the locals? In areas like this, people hear things.’
‘Afterwards, though.’
‘We’ll ask them to hang on. And we’ll pay particular attention to anyone who doesn’t want to. I do feel quite strongly about it meself. It’s only wilful damage, but if they can do this, they’re capable of a lot of other stuff carrying stiffer sentences, you know what I mean?’
‘I had a chat with Inspector Howe.’
‘And your Bishop’s had a chat with our Divisional Super. It’s about community relations at the highest level.’
‘Ah, I’m sorry about that.’ The Bishop had been hard to pin down, and tonight’s ceremony had, in the end, been cleared with him on his mobile via Sophie.
‘Not that we wouldn’t be here anyway,’ Franny Bliss said, ‘but maybe not three of us. Still, get these lads, and even if we don’t get a line on the body in the Wye, we might get something else.’
‘Might get possessed, sarge,’ PC Jones said heavily.
‘Merrily’ll protect us, Dave. Won’t yer, Merrily?’
There was nothing essentially wrong with Christianity, Patricia said. It promoted a useful, if simplistic, moral code. But it was an import. When it was introduced, it was revolutionary and brash and sometimes brutal and crass. It trampled over ancient wisdom.
Jane saw Rowenna’s glance. None of the rest of the group knew her mother was a vicar. They thought she was a teacher. And they thought Jane was eighteen and working as a secretary.
Blinds were down over the window. A small brass oil lamp burned on a high table. Seven of them sat in a vague semicircle around Patricia, on mats and dark-coloured pillows. There was a faint scent, musty-sweet, perhaps from the oil in the lamp. It was mysterious but also cosy.
‘And Christianity has always been used as a prop for prejudices,’ Patricia continued, ‘creating the myth of the clovenhoofed devil and demonizing black cats, which were tortured and slaughtered in their hundreds.’
Jane thought about Ethel and seethed.
‘So many of these things are forgotten now,’
Patricia said. Patricia had the look of someone much older than she possibly could be, someone who’d been soaking up wisdom for like centuries. She was the elder of the circle and the others deferred to her. Jane wasn’t sure how many others there were in the group. They came from a wide area on both sides of the Welsh border. All women: a couple of old-hippy types – long skirts and braided hair – but mainly the kind you thought of as school-teacherish. Thank heavens none of their own teachers were here.
She and Rowenna were the youngest. The women called themselves ‘the Pod’, after the café itself.
Patricia was saying: ‘It’s the basis of many of our exercises that human beings are the central nervous system of the Earth. Thus we can receive impulses and also send them out. We can effect changes with our minds, and this is a responsibility not to be taken lightly.’
That was the definition of magic, wasn’t it? Effecting change with the mind – Mum’s lot would say that only God could effect changes. Which, from where Jane was sitting, was bollocks basically – all this Serving the Will of God stuff. Like the wholesale slaughter of black cats? The Spanish Inquisition?
But was the Pod a pagan thing? Because, OK, she was entitled to find her own spiritual path, but it would be better if it was like parallel to Mum’s. She wasn’t particularly looking for confrontation and heavy-duty domestic strife.
She just wished someone would explain simple things like that.
‘It’s about consciousness.’ Patricia looked suddenly at Jane, as if she’d picked up her thoughts, her uncertainty.
Jane shivered. She was a little scared of Patricia, with her smoky-grey dress and her tight, parchment-coloured hair. She wanted to ask exactly what Patricia meant by ‘consciousness’. But this was only their second meeting, and she didn’t want to seem stupid. The nature of consciousness was something on which she’d be expected to meditate – she was establishing a special corner for that in her sitting-room/study, next to a big yellow rectangle on one of the Mondrian walls. She’d bought a little incense-burner but hadn’t used it yet.
It was all a little bit frightening – therefore, naturally, wonderful.
Jane glanced up. Patricia was looking directly at her. In the gloom, Patricia’s eyes burned like tiny torchbulbs.
Jane gulped, suddenly panicked. Christ, she’d been rumbled. They’d found out that her mother was an Anglican priest. They thought she was some sort of Church spy. She looked across at Rowenna, but Rowenna was staring away into the darkness. The others were gazing placidly down into their laps. She didn’t really know any of them; Angela, the tarot lady, had not been present at either of the meetings.
Jane had expected all kinds of questions before she was admitted to the circle, but it hadn�
�t been like that. It was only when you got here and experienced the electric atmosphere – as if this little room was the entrance to an endless tunnel – that you instinctively wanted to keep quiet about yourself. At least, you did if your old lady was a vicar.
‘Don’t worry, Jane,’ Patricia said suddenly. ‘We’re here to help you.’ The woman smiled thinly.
The wind whined in the rafters and the flame of the oil lamp shrank back, as though it was cowering.
Cool!
The church was now lit by two oil lamps supported on brackets, three candles and a hurricane lantern on the central pulpit. It looked deceptively cosy. Huw Owen was there with a curlyhaired, jutting-jawed, youngish minister, who backed away from Merrily in her cloak, as if she was a vampire, throwing up his hands in mock defence.
‘Mrs Watkins, I beg forgiveness.’
‘From me?’
‘I’m Jeffrey Kimball, from Dilwyn. Major Weston approached me this morning, to perform the necessary, and I’m afraid I threw a tantrum and gave him your home number, which I looked up in the telephone book. It was pure pique on my part after that memorandum from the Bishop on the subject of Deliverance, and I’m sorry to have taken it out on you.’
‘I can understand your—’
‘To be quite honest, Mrs Watkins, I tend to object to more or less anything this particular bishop does. I do so hate blatantly political appointments of any kind. Absolutely everyone thought Hereford should have gone to Tom Armstrong – a canon at the Cathedral for five years before he went to Reading as Dean… Immensely able man… and they used a very minor heart problem as an excuse to give it to Hunter. I make no secret of my feelings, and I realize you—’
‘Happen you can save that till after, lad,’ Huw Owen said.
‘Oh.’ The Rev. Kimball let his arms fall to his sides. ‘Yes, of course. I should have thought.’