by Phil Rickman
After her last, luxurious bath, Merrily lay down on the bed and tore open the letter. Looked like an invitation, a mixed blessing for vicars.
It was a card. A funeral card, with a black border. It said,
WIL WILLIAMS
WAS THE DEVIL’S MINISTER.
LET HIM LIE. BE WARNED.
Merrily let it fall to the floor.
She should take it to the police. It was a threat, wasn’t it?
And what would the police do? Fingerprint it? Then fingerprint the entire village?
She sat up and looked again at the card. The message had been printed on a slip of paper, which had been pasted inside the black rectangle. Anyone with access to a computer could have done it. And anyone could have access to a computer; for a very small fee you could use the one in Marches Media.
Waste of time. Some crank. On impulse, she took the card to the window, set light to it with her Zippo and let the air take the ashes.
Crank, maybe, but someone had spent some time on it. Another indication that something in this Wil Williams business went very deep in Ledwardine. Alison Kinnersley and Lucy Devenish both thought Coffey’s play would open up the can of worms and that would be no bad thing. But here was proof that Bull-Davies was clearly not alone in wanting to keep the lid on.
She shut the window and went back and lay on the bed, her whole body shaking with anger and what she suspected, after last night, was nervous exhaustion.
16
Like Lace
THIS WAS A secret place, an old place.
To begin with, it existed only as warmth and a sense-sapping humidity. Then she was aware of lustrous, wet stone walls on every side, like some Middle Eastern dungeon. But the atmosphere was dense and dark and syrupy with a sour-sweet aroma, fruitier and earthier than wine: a heavy drenching of deepest rural England.
His face went in and out of focus, sweat rippling down his cheeks like wax down a candle. His eyes were sly, his hands were busy. The lower half of him was lost in steam but it was moving. Squirming.
She, however, was lying helplessly still in what felt like damp hay. She couldn’t move at all; her muscles were heavy and sagging, like balloons full of water. She kept trying to concentrate, make out details, but her vision was all fuzzy and her self-control just drifted away into the thick, cloying, musted air.
She didn’t know where this was; it might be underground, at England’s core, it was hot enough. Above her, no sun, only oaken rafters, pickled in centuries of juice.
Hot enough to be hell. And his face ...
His mad, moist face had split into a wide grin, the way a crisp apple splits. But it was rotten inside, oozing brown pulp, and the pips dropped from his stained teeth and, behind, she saw his fat buttocks rising out of the vapour, glossy orbs, rosy apples.
He took in a slow, wheezing breath. Eyes popping in his friar’s face as his buttocks tensed, and she realized, with terror tightening inside, that he was fully on top of her.
And she was wearing the tattered remnants of the black cassock, ripped down the front and stained with stinking apple pulp. And her collar was tightening like a shackle, like a stiff, white noose.
White collar. He began to gasp. Pink body. Brown nipples. Absolute little cracker.
There was the squeak and grind of an ancient mechanism, the sense of an enormous, waiting weight, before a lunge and a squeezing and a second of silence like a crack in the universe until – accompanied by a long, liquid gush – Dermot Child snarled out, his enormous voice echoing through caverns of time as her own throat constricted.
‘Auld ... ciderrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ...’
Bastards!
Merrily hurled clothes, unfolded, into the open suitcase. The cassock last, but the lid wouldn’t close, and in a rage she seized the cassock and tore it down the back and threw it into the bin liner with the rubbish.
Look at the time, look at the time. Four-fifteen! She’d slept for nearly five hours. God almighty.
Calm down.
She sat on a corner of the bed, settled her breathing, gave herself a good talking-to. Alf Hayden would have chuckled and let it all pass over him – Child, Bull-Davies and his mistress, the funeral card. Nothing would intrude into Alf s placid dreams.
But would any of it have happened to Alf? Merrily didn’t somehow think it would.
When she’d awakened – the dream-Child’s ghastly orgasmic cry biting into her brain like an alarm clock – she’d stripped at once in front of the bathroom washbasin, throwing angry handfuls of cold tap water at herself and then drinking half a pint of tepid spring water from a plastic bottle and brushing her teeth with a violence that made her gums bleed.
Just calm down. Jane’ll be getting off the bus in about ten minutes; you can’t let her see you like this.
In the bedroom, she dressed in the quietly secular black jumper and skirt, slotted her clerical collar under her dark-brown curls. Pink skin, brown nipples, white—
Stop it!
Before the open window overlooking the mellowed, red-cobbled village square, she knelt to pray. Pressing her palms flat together, sandwiching the heat between them. Stilling her mind, entering the inner temple, before whispering into the Silence.
O God, I know you’re testing me. As you will, no doubt, test all women who dare to don the cloth ...
Stop. You’re sounding resentful. You’re whingeing.
She knelt in silence for several minutes, waiting for the right tone, the right level. Waiting for the calm. But, to her anguish, her senses began to fill up with the pulpy essence of the foetid cider cellar, the organist’s sweating face. Sweat and rotting apples; how was she ever going to bring herself to talk to that bloody man again?
You pompous cow. He’s just a normal guy. If you’re not responsible for your dreams, Dermot Child certainly isn’t!
Sure. Reluctantly, she stood up. The odd thing was, she’d never seen a cider mill at work, only the static exhibits at the Bulmer’s Museum in Hereford. She’d never smelt the powerful aroma, although she’d read about it. Never experienced the moment when the press came down on the cloth-rolled pulp and the first juice burst out like—
A bus juddered to a stop on the edge of the square; through the open window she heard chattering and laughter.
Jane’s bus.
Merrily stood the suitcase in the centre of the room together with the bin liner and three cardboard wine boxes from Sainsbury’s to put the rest of the stuff in. She dashed into the bathroom, started to drag a comb through her tangled hair, but it snagged and she gave up and ran out of the Woolhope Suite, down the stairs and into the square, to grab hold of Jane before she tramped back to an empty vicarage.
And what have you been doing today, Mum? Well, I slept most of it, actually, flower, then I had a pornographic dream.
Help!
The kids on the square were separating slowly, school shirts and blouses pulled out of waistbands, gestures of slovenly cool. No sign of Jane. One of the older boys spotted Merrily and nudged his mate and they smiled slyly, and Merrily thought, Jesus, is there no end to this?
When she walked up to them, retrieving her breath, the tall, thin one went gratifyingly red. Merrily didn’t smile at him.
‘You seen Jane Watkins anywhere?’
‘Yeah,’ the other boy said. ‘I seen her a few times. Nice-looking. Bit like you.’ Smothering a giggle with his hand, cocky little sod.
‘And do you know,’ Merrily said patiently, ‘where she is?’
‘Hang on,’ the tall one said, ‘I never seen her on the bus. You see her, Dean?’
‘She weren’t on the bus. She weren’t on the bus this morning neither, I’m pretty sure.’
Merrily frowned.
‘No, honestly.’ Dean was overweight and beady-eyed. ‘There’s six of us gets on at this stop, right? And she’s always there when I gets yere. Last minute, me. Matter of pride. Jane wasn’t there, Vicar.’ He grinned in her face. ‘Swear to God.’
‘Th
anks,’ Merrily said tightly.
‘Looks like ’er bunked off, dunnit? Naughty, naughty.’
The square swam before her. She couldn’t believe it. Not for one minute. Whatever she said about school, most of it disparaging, Jane did not bunk off. Jane had never missed a day except through illness and family tragedy. The youth was lying. Why was he lying to her?
Dean nonchalantly pulled from his schoolbag a can of Woodpecker cider, ripped off the tab. Merrily was sure she could smell it. Sweat and apples. She turned away in disgust. The kids were separating, going off in different directions. Maybe Jane had missed the bus. But if she wasn’t there this morning?
Merrily went cold. She turned round and round, the square blurring into the Black Swan, the Country Kitchen alleyway, the Late Shop, Church Street, the vicarage behind its trees. Not again. Jane, please God, not again, don’t do this to me.
Calm down. It’s broad daylight. She’s fifteen years old, she’s smart, she’s been around. She’s probably at the vicarage. Up in her Apartment with a tape-measure.
I’ll kill her.
In his last, morose months, Nick Drake, aged twenty-six, would get into his car and drive and drive until he ran out of petrol, because he hadn’t the confidence to stop at a garage. Often, his father would have to travel about seventy miles to bring him home.
When he was not out in his car, Nick would sit with his guitar in his room at his parents’ home and play the same chord sequence over and over again, like some sad mantra. There had been a time, not so many years ago, when all this had made terrifying sense to Lol.
He sat on the chair arm with the dented Washburn on his knee. His fingers found A-minor and then F and then E-minor, stroking the strings with nails ruined by a winter of collecting and chopping logs for the stove. Conceding that Nick’s chord-sequence, even in those faded days, was probably a good deal more complex. Never could work out his tunings.
On the table was a letter which had arrived this morning from the record company, TMM. It was pleased to inform Lol Robinson that the compilers of a new mass-market collection, to be called Acoustic Echoes, would be interested in including his song ‘Dandelion Dreams’ from the third and last Hazey Jane album.
Money for nothing. Backed by TV-advertising, these compilation albums sold by the vanload and also generated new interest in your old records. This was the fourth in two years to include one of his songs; it was how he lived. And it was a living; it paid the mortgage on the cottage, it put food on Lol’s table and Ethel’s dish. It was enough. Wasn’t it?
He struck the doleful E-minor. He wanted to write again, sure he did, but when you lost it you lost it. You were supposed to be more inspired when you were unhappy, when your woman had gone and left you all alone. How come he could just about cobble lyrics together for Gary Kennedy’s adequate tunes and that was it?
The phone rang. It would be Karl. Karl had rung twice since the weekend. The second time, he’d said, I’m going to come and see you again. I’ve got some ideas for songs. As if Lol had never said, No way, no I’m not doing it, I can’t do it. Got some ideas for songs, Karl had said, voice absolutely bland, no hint of menace. I’m going to come and see you again.
He put down the guitar, picked up the phone.
‘Lol? It’s, er, it’s Dennis. Dennis Clarke.’
‘Hello,’ Lol said, relieved. ‘How are you doing? Thanks for the album.’
‘No, er, no problem.’ Dennis coughed. ‘So you saw Karl, then.’
‘He came over.’
‘Yeah,’ Dennis said. ‘Right. He came back to see me again. We had a talk.’
‘He tell you about this gig he did with this band in America and all the girls afterwards and how he could’ve gone on all night despite being twice their age?’
‘No,’ Dennis said. ‘Gillian was there. He told me about how much money we could make if we did another album.’
‘And were you impressed?’
Dennis went quiet.
Lol said, ‘Was Gillian impressed?’
‘Lol, OK, look, I ... Well, I said ... I said yes. I said I would.’
‘Would what?’
‘Do another album.’
This time Lol went quiet.
‘It’s just a record, Lol. It won’t mean touring. I mean ... I can fit it in. Karl says they’ll organize a studio at Chipping Camden or somewhere, so I travel up, come home at night. Gillian’s ... Gill says she doesn’t mind.’
‘What about your wrist?’
‘Elbow. I suppose, if I take a couple of pain-killers ...’
‘Right,’ Lol said. ‘Well, good luck. I’ll look out for it.’
‘No, hang on. I mean ... I mean, you have to be in the band, obviously.’
‘That’s funny, Dennis, because I told Karl I wasn’t going to do it.’
‘Lol, you’ve got to do it.’
‘Oh. I see,’ Lol said. ‘He kind of threatened you, did he? What was it, plain violence, or something Gillian doesn’t know about? I have to say, it was the violence used to work with me. But that was nearly twenty years ago. Not now, I don’t think. What he did finally was worse.’
‘Lol, listen—’
‘He says, Dennis, you persuade that little bastard, or—?’
‘No! No, he didn’t! It was nothing like that.’
Lol felt sorry for him. He felt sorry for himself too, but maybe Dennis, the safe, Chippenham accountant, was more vulnerable right now.
‘Dennis, if he ever asks, I’ll tell him you did your best.’
‘Lol, for Christ’s sake ...’ He sensed Dennis was near to tears. ‘Oh, come on, man, you know it’s you he needs. You know he can’t write a fucking song to save his life.’
‘Dennis.’ Lol was surprised how firm his own voice sounded. ‘Just tell him to leave me alone. Tell him not to come near me.’
Outside the window, there was white blossom on the apple trees. Why did white blossom depress him so much? Maybe the memory of white flowers on his mother’s coffin. His father turning his back on Lol at the graveside. On a luminously still May afternoon much like this one.
‘I won’t tell him that,’ Dennis said. ‘Not yet. Jesus Christ, it’s only an album, Lol. Just the one.’
‘Vicar!’
She turned impatiently at the vicarage gate. ‘Oh. Gomer. Oh dear, I’m sorry, I’m—’
‘You got some addresses for me, Vicar?’ He was wearing a dark suit and a black tie with what had to be a twenty-year-old knot.
‘Sorry?’
‘In Cheltenham. Figured I’d set off early, like.’
‘Oh. Of course. I’m really sorry, Gomer, things have been ... Would you mind if I were to call you with the stuff tonight? It’s just—’
‘Whenever you like, Vicar. The ole inquest’s over and done now.’
‘Oh.’ She’d have to ask. ‘How did it go?’
‘Death’ – Gomer snatched out his cigarette in disgust – ‘by misadventure.’
‘Accident, then. Councillor Powell must be pleased.’
‘Ah. Bloody ole whitewash, Vicar. Bull-Davies, he give evidence of how he couldn’t get no sense out of Edgar all night and how he was a bit worried about the ole feller havin’ charge of a shotgun and how he wishes he’d taken some action when he had the chance. Well, load of ole sheepshit, sure t’be, ‘scuse my language. But you puts a Bull-Davies in the witness box they all thinks it’s bloody gospel. Something botherin’ you, Vicar?’
‘Sorry, I was just looking out for Jane. So you think he really did kill himself deliberately?’
‘Ah ...’ Gomer rubbed at his glasses, as though this would clarify things. ‘Call me a cynic, but it was the way they was all tryin’ to convince the whats-his-name, the judge ...’
‘Coroner.’
‘Aye. The way they was all bangin’ on about Edgar not bein’ his ole self, acting confused-like all day, like. Doc Asprey – wouldn’t trust that young bugger to the end o’ the yard – he says Edgar had a bit o’ trouble comin in
the arteries as could give ‘im funny turns. Well, see, I could understand Rod not wantin’ his ole feller buried the wrong side o’ the churchyard—’
‘We don’t actually do that any more, Gomer.’
‘I was speaking metaphysically, Vicar. It’s still the stigma, see. You don’t want a reputation as a suicide family. So you could understand Rod perjurin’ his bollocks off, but Bull-Davies ... Big guns, Vicar. Big guns. Course, the Bulls, they been relyin’ on the Powells for generations.’
‘You think Edgar wasn’t actually confused? I wasn’t really taking much notice.’
‘He weren’t confused in the Ox earlier on, is all I can say. And he weren’t drunk neither, though he’d had a few, all paid for by other folk as usual. Crafty ole bugger, Edgar Powell. I been thinkin’ a lot about this, see – got plenty bloody time to think nowadays, more’s the pity – and I reckon, whether he done isself by accident or deliberate, summat put the wind up Edgar that night. If you gets time to think back on it, Vicar, I’d be interested in your opinion. As an outsider like.’
‘I think I was just trying to keep warm at the time. But perhaps we could discuss it tomorrow over a cup of—’
‘I’m delayin’ you, Vicar.’ Gomer threw up his hands. ‘Gettin’ an ole woman, see. What bloody retirement does for you. Useless bastard of a thing retirement, ’scuse my language
It was only when she was halfway up the vicarage drive that Merrily realized Jane couldn’t possibly be inside. Because she hadn’t yet got a key.
She looked up in despair at the beautiful, old, oak-framed pile, the oldest three-storey house in Ledwardine, and felt it repelling her. The highest, smallest windows seemed remote; even the trees didn’t reach them. The unwindowed oak door looked like the door of some old jail.