Midwinter of the Spirit mw-2

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Grip like a monkey-wrench, my dear. Thought I’d never get fooled again. You understand now why we wanted a male priest?’

  Surely, what you wanted, Merrily thought, was a male nurse. ‘Look, Nurse… I’m sorry?’

  ‘Nurse Protheroe. Sandra.’

  ‘Sandra, this is a dying man, OK? He knows he’s dying. He’s afraid. He’s looking for… comfort, I suppose. That doesn’t make him possessed by evil. I don’t know what his background is. I mean…’

  ‘Farm-labourer and slaughterman. Been in a few times before, he has. When he wasn’t so bad – not so seriously ill, that is.’

  ‘Farm-labourer? So his idea of comfort might be a bit… rough and ready?’

  Sandra snorted. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s more than that, girl. You’re not getting this, are you? I’ve dealt with that type more times than you’ve done weddings and funerals – rough as an old boar and ready for anything they can get. But Mr Joy, he’s different. Mr Joy’s an abuser, a destroyer – do you know what I mean? He likes causing pain and death to animals, and he likes doing it to women, too. Hurting them and humiliating them. Degrading them.’

  ‘Yes. That might very well be true. But it doesn’t—’

  ‘That smell… that’s not natural, not even in a hospital. That’s his smell. That’s the smell of all the things he’s done and all the things he’d still like to do. We even put Nil-odour under his bed one night.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Undertaker’s fluid. They put it in coffins sometimes, so it’s less offensive for the relatives.’

  ‘You put undertaker’s deodorant under a dying patient’s bed?’

  ‘It didn’t work. You can’t remove the smell of evil with chemicals. You spend a night in here with that man, you can’t sleep when you goes home. You keep waking up with that…’ Protheroe hugged herself. ‘As for young Tessa – white, that girl was. This was after his wife come in this afternoon.’

  ‘Sandra, look…’ Merrily moved to the door. This wasn’t how state-registered nurses were supposed to behave. She needed to talk to the duty doctor. ‘You say I don’t get this. You’re dead right, I don’t get this at all. All right, he might not be a very nice man, he may not smell very good, but that’s no excuse to make his last hours a total misery. I mean, what does his wife say about all this?’

  ‘Mrs Joy don’t talk,’ said Sandra. ‘Being as how you’re a priest, I’ll tell you about Mrs Joy, shall I?’

  ‘If you think it’ll help.’

  Sandra exhaled a sour laugh. ‘About twenty years younger than him, she is, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her, state she’s in, the poor miserable cow. No, not a cow, a rabbit… a poor frightened little wretch. We left them alone for about half an hour, as you do at times like this. Then Dr Taylor comes on his rounds and he has to see Mr Joy, obviously, and Tess goes in to ask Mrs Joy will she come out for a couple of minutes, and—’

  Footsteps outside. Sandra stopped talking, looking at the door. The footsteps passed. Sandra lowered her voice.

  ‘The chair’s pushed right up next to the bed, see? That chair you were just sitting on?’

  ‘Yes.’ Merrily found her hands were clasped in front of her, rubbing together. She wanted to wash them, but not in front of Sandra Protheroe. ‘Go on.’

  ‘So Mrs Joy’s standing on that chair, leaning over the bed. She’s holding her dress right up above her waist. She’s got her knickers round her ankles.’

  Merrily closed her eyes for a moment.

  ‘And Denzil’s just lying there with his tubes up his nose and all the spittle down his chin, wheezing and rattling with glee, and his little eyes eating her up. But that’s not the worst thing, see.’

  She swallowed, backed up against a sink, looking down at her shoes and shaking her head.

  ‘The worse thing is her face. What Tessa said was that woman’s face was completely blank. No expression at all – like a zombie. She’s just looking at the wall, and her face’s absolutely blank. She knows Tessa’s there, but she don’t get down. Showing no embarrassment at all, though God knows she must have been as full up with shame and humiliation as it’s possible to be. But she just stands there staring at the wall. Because he hadn’t told her she could get down.’

  Merrily’s mouth was dry.

  ‘This is a dying man,’ Sandra said. ‘And he knows it and she knows it, and she’s still terrified of him. In his younger days, see, he thought he was God’s gift. A woman who knows the family, she told me about all the women and girls he’d had, and the way he abused them but they kept coming back. He charmed them back, he did. Not by his looks, not by his manners, he just charmed them. And then he got older and he got sick and he got married, and he controls the wife by fear. And he’s lying there delighting in Tessa seeing the poor little woman giving him an eyeful of what he owns. If that’s not evil then I don’t know what evil is.’

  What is evil? Huw Owen had said. It’s the question you’re never going to answer. But when you’re in the same room with it, you’ll know.

  Merrily said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what I can do.’

  ‘Protection. She wants protection.’

  The door had opened. Sister Cullen was standing there, the darkness behind her.

  ‘She’s right, he’s a bad man with a black charm. But he’s just a man, and that’s where it ends as far as I’m concerned. I’m from Derry, so I’ve seen what religion does to people, and I want none of it. But this is one patient where I’m more concerned about his nurses.’

  ‘It’s getting stronger the nearer he comes to death,’ Sandra said. ‘Tell her.’

  ‘Sandra’s convinced the smell’s getting worse.’

  ‘And if you don’t do something, when he dies this ward’s going to be polluted for ever. And I’m not coming back tomorrow. I’m out.’

  ‘Let me get this right.’ Merrily looked from one to the other, the believer and the atheist, but both essentially of the same mind. ‘You’ve called me out in the middle of the night, not because you want comfort for a distressed terminal patient but because… you want protection from him?’

  Cullen said with resignation, ‘If there’s anything you think you can do about it, feel free, but I’d strongly advise you not to touch the evil bastard again.’

  ‘Sister…’ The young nurse Tessa in the doorway. She was crying. ‘Can you come, please?’

  11

  Scritch-scratch

  MERRILY THOUGHT OF the almost-poetic abstraction of imprints and visitors and weepers and breathers.

  She thought about the hitchhiker – the disembodied spirit which took over someone’s body for a period, usually for some specific if illogical purpose, and then went away.

  She considered probably the worst of them all – Huw had discussed this in detail over the last two days of the Deliverance course – the squatter.

  And then thought about the pathetic, stinking, wheezing, nasal-cathetered reality of Denzil Joy, who fitted into none of the slick categories which Charlie Headland had said reminded him of the fictionalized world of espionage. What was Denzil Joy other than an unpleasant man coming to the end of his run? Was he, indeed, any of her business?

  There were several tests you had to implement before a subject could reasonably be considered possessed by an external, demonic evil – most importantly, the psychiatric assessment. Now, how could anyone assess a man apparently in the last hours of his life, a person unable to speak? It was an impossible situation.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sister,’ Tessa said. ‘It was just that his breathing sort of altered and I thought he was starting to… go.’

  All four of them stood watching Denzil from outside the door.

  ‘Gone, has he?’ An old man warbling from the ward. ‘What’s happening over there?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Francis,’ Eileen Cullen hissed. ‘Go to sleep now, will you.’

  Merrily took a closer look at Denzil Joy, his face hal
f-lit by the lamp on a table just outside the door. Black hair over shallow forehead, small, sucking mouth. His frame thin and wiry, with bony arms. Grip like a monkey-wrench, my dear.

  ‘Does he never say anything? Never ask for anything? Doesn’t he talk to you?’

  ‘Doesn’t like talking to women,’ Cullen said. ‘Prefers to communicate with us in other ways.’

  Sandra instinctively massaged her bruised wrist. ‘I reckon he didn’t do this on his own. That’s what I think now.’

  Merrily turned to her. ‘You’re a Christian, Sandra?’

  ‘I attend St Peter’s,’ Sandra declared piously. ‘Well, not every week – sometimes shifts don’t allow, obviously. But one week in every three – at least that.’

  ‘And you don’t believe, Eileen.’

  ‘I’m aware of evil,’ she snapped. ‘Of course I am. I just think there’s quite enough of it on this earth to be going on with.’

  ‘Tessa?’

  ‘I’m scared.’ In her uniform, no make-up, Tessa looked about Jane’s age, although she surely must be several years older. She had quite a posh accent. ‘I thought he was Cheyne-Stoking. I didn’t want to be alone with him when he died.’

  Merrily glanced at Cullen, who beckoned her away from the door.

  ‘She means the kind of sporadic breathing that tells you they’re on their way out.’

  Merrily nodded, remembering other bedsides.

  ‘The smell’s gone, Eileen. At least it’s not what it was.’

  ‘I don’t know, he seems to be able to turn it on and off at will. That’s what gets to Protheroe – him controlling his smell. Particularly when a woman gets close. There’s a psychological solution, if you ask me.’

  ‘He’s kind of drawing energy through sexual arousal?’

  ‘I can’t imagine there’s any physical arousal, and I don’t feel inclined to check. I’ve about had it with this one.’ Cullen wiped her brow with the side of a fist. ‘See, earlier on, Sandra was threatening to walk out. That’s when I called you. She knows if I took any disciplinary action over this there’d be unfavourable publicity of the kind nobody wants. I’m going through the motions, so I am, and I’d be happy if you could just do the same.’

  ‘Primarily, we need to consider what’s best for him.’

  ‘I just think he’s an evil bastard, you know? I wish he’d just die, then we could get him portered the hell out of here.’

  Merrily sighed. No putting this off any longer. ‘I’ll go in and say a few prayers for him.’

  ‘That’s it? I thought you were an exorcist of some kind?’

  ‘Some kind,’ Merrily said.

  ‘I bind unto myself the Name,

  ‘The strong Name of the Trinity.

  ‘By invocation of the same,

  ‘The Three in One and One in Three.’

  She was back in the sluice-room, alone this time, murmuring St Patrick’s Breastplate to the pale grey walls. A window was open; she heard a siren coming closer – police, or an ambulance bringing someone into Casualty. The normal world out there – and here she was in a former lunatic asylum, getting into Dark Age armour. Relying on her God to pull her out of this, if it should turn out to be misguided.

  Don’t ever fall into the trap of thinking it’s you that’s doing it, Huw had stressed. You’re never any more than the medium, the vessel. We don’t want any of this Van Helsing crap, wielding the crucifix like it’s a battle-axe. Always preferred a titchy little cross, meself. Lets you know where you stand in the great scheme of things.

  She wore her own cross under her jumper, and it too was pretty small.

  What she could do was limited, anyway. She wasn’t allowed to perform an exorcism – and quite right, too – without the permission of the Bishop. Knowing Mick Hunter, he’d call for a written report, spend at least two days considering the ethics of it and how he’d look if it leaked out.

  Merrily stepped out on to the ward, where most of the patients slept noisily on, shuffling and muttering. Few people got a peaceful night in a hospital. The silent digital wall-clock said 4.25.

  ‘I’d better come in with you,’ the night sister said.

  ‘Perhaps not, Eileen.’

  Whenever possible, have other Christians with you as back-up – or witnesses in case there’s any shit flying round afterwards in the media. Or, put it this way, if you’re having people with you, make sure you know where they’ve been.

  ‘Because I’m not a bloody Bible-basher? Jesus! All right… Nurse Protheroe, what about you? You started all this.’

  Sandra shrank away. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Superstition,’ Cullen said, with contempt. ‘I can never accept that in a professional. Well, there has to be a staff nurse in there. This is a hospital, in case anybody’s forgotten.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Tessa said.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sandra whispered harshly.

  Merrily thought of Jane. She wouldn’t want the kid within a mile of this. She thought: My God, this is some kind of awful first. Four women gathering like a bunch of witches to plot against a dying man. This ever gets out, we’ll look ridiculous or dangerously paranoid. Or cold conspirators – heartless, vindictive. Are we?

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right on my own. I’m not going to be doing anything dramatic – no holy water. You can all watch through the window if you like.’

  ‘No,’ said Cullen.

  ‘I teach Sunday school,’ Tessa offered solemnly, and they all looked at her. ‘I can handle it as long as I’m not alone in there.’

  ‘All right, then.’ Eileen Cullen shrugged, perhaps still wanting to shame Sandra Protheroe into it, but Sandra didn’t react. ‘Just as long as you realize it’s not an instruction. And you make sure and stay well back from the Reverend, you hear? Any trouble, you come and get me. You know what I mean by trouble?’

  ‘I think so.’ Tessa nodded. She bit her upper lip, plucked a stray ash-blonde hair from her forehead.

  Merrily put a hand on Tessa’s shoulder, leaned in to look for her eyes. ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘It’s best, isn’t it?’

  ‘All right. Do you want to come in here a minute.’

  The sluice-room as temporary chapel. Merrily faced the girl over the rubbish sacks full of swabs and bandages soaked with bodily fluids and God-knows-what.

  ‘Tessa, I… How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘OK, look… I just want to say I’m not too sure about any of this. Whatever Mr Joy’s done in his time, it’s not my job to judge him. We’re just going in to pray with him and try to bring him some peace. To calm down whatever sick yearnings he’s harbouring so that he can end his life in some kind of grace. I mean, probably none of this will be necessary, but when I’ve started, I’ve got rules to follow, so I’d like to… close our eyes a moment. Our Father…’

  She said the Lord’s Prayer softly, Tessa joining in, then placed her hands either side of the girl’s bowed head.

  ‘Jesus… surround her and hold her… safe from the forces of evil.’

  It again entered her head that this was all a crazy, hysterical over-reaction; there were no forces of evil, no Je—

  She kicked out mentally, sent the thought spinning away. She opened the door.

  ‘Come on.’

  * * *

  Denzil Joy’s terrible breathing was through the mouth: liquid, strangulated, the sound of an old-fashioned hot-water geyser filling up. In the side ward, with the door closed, it seemed all around them, underscored by that hum you couldn’t seem to escape in hospital wards, and the throaty chortle of the overhead heating pipes.

  The green oxygen tubes were clipped together behind his head, which was supported by three pillows. There were scabs of mucus where the tubes fitted into his nostrils.

  ‘You want me to do anything?’ Tessa asked.

  ‘Just grab a chair from somewhere.’

  ‘I’d rather stand. Is that OK?’

 
; ‘However you feel comfortable.’

  Merrily sat in the vinyl-covered chair on which the wretched Mrs Joy was said to have stood. Its seat was sunken in the middle.

  OK. She pushed up a sleeve of her black jumper, reached over in the half-light and took Denzil’s hand, instantly screwing up her eyes because it was undeniably vile, like picking up a cold turd.

  Stop it!

  Sliding her hand away from his fingers with their long yellow nails, and up to his bony wrist, holding it gently, calming her breathing.

  ‘Denzil…’ She cleared her throat. ‘I don’t know if you can hear me. My name’s Merrily. I’m… er, the Vicar of Ledwardine. I’m just doing the rounds – as we vicars do.’

  If he was even half awake, he wouldn’t be aware of what time it was, how unlikely it was that a vicar would be doing the rounds. At all costs she mustn’t alarm him.

  ‘I wanted to say a few prayers with you, if that’s OK.’

  His breathing didn’t alter. His eyes remained three-quarters closed. He seemed unaware of her. She looked down at his thin, furtive face, the spittle bubbling around his mouth. And she pleaded with God to send her some pity. Nobody should die an object of fear and hatred and revulsion.

  ‘He’s very, very weak,’ Tessa murmured in her ear. ‘I don’t know how he’s holding on.’

  Merrily nodded. ‘Almighty God, our Heavenly Father,’ she said softly. ‘We know, all of us, that we’ve done bad things and neglected to do good things we might’ve done.’

  She felt Denzil’s wrist turn under her hand: other than the breathing, the first sign of life. The wrist turned so that the palm was upwards, the position of supplication, as though he was responding, holding out his hand for forgiveness.

  ‘For the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Your Son, we beg You to forgive us, close the book on the past. Calm our souls.’