by Phil Rickman
‘You’re right. There had to be more. They wanted him dead, otherwise what was the point?’
‘They wanted him dead because he was gay?’
‘Thomas Bull wanted him dead. And James Bull-Davies knows that.’
His eyes, the colour of his jeans, were shining with a very innocent kind of fervour. He looked on the edge of tears. He looked too frail and vulnerable to be living with someone as coldly manipulative as Richard Coffey. But that was none of her business.
They walked to the churchyard wall – yes, this part was newer, some of the stone wasn’t even local – and stood leaning against it, looking back at the church whose stones, if they could speak, would be able to answer all their questions.
‘Let’s look at it objectively,’ Merrily said. ‘You’re saying, I think, that because Bull was a puritan he’d be absolutely shattered to discover his parish priest was homosexual. Now I can’t quite remember what percentage of today’s Anglican ministers are gay, but it’s a substantial one, and if they all got fired a few hundred churches would have to close overnight. Now, how different was it then, in a country area where people’s attitude to all matters sexual would have been ... well ... tolerant. Down-to-earth, shall we say?’
‘Look, I don’t know ...’ He fingered his fringe. ‘I don’t know where you stand. As a woman.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ Merrily said, ‘I think gays have always been drawn to the priesthood because it’s something they do rather well. It being a job that often calls for feminine qualities. I suppose, as we weren’t allowed in for so long, gay men have helped to hold it all together. They’ve given the Church a breadth of compassion without which it might not even have survived. That make any sense?’
Stefan Alder stepped back, striking an unselfconsciously camp pose, with one hand on a hip. She was sure she’d seen him before, not just in the village. Must have been on television, maybe a victim in The Bill or a casualty in Casualty.
‘That’s beautiful’ He smiled radiantly and handed her the sprig of apple blossom. ‘That’s a really beautiful thing to say, you know? I feel I can trust you now, I really do.’
‘Oh, well ... It was just Richard seemed to think I was prejudiced in some way. And I’m not. That’s all’
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look, I want to explain to you ... At first – I mean, he’s committed to it, it’s his project – but at first, Richard was only doing this for me. He wasn’t especially struck by the story, or the village. We were having a few days’ break and Richard was half-looking for a holiday cottage, and we spent a night at the Black Swan. After dinner, he was tired, and he had a headache, so he went up to bed and I sat in the lounge with some coffee, idly reading some local guidebooks. It seemed odd, coming across a mention of Ledwardine Church and looking up and seeing the steeple through the lounge window. And then I saw a brief mention of Wil ... I mean, I’d read the story but I hadn’t remembered the name of the village and it was such a shock realizing I was sitting just a short walk away from where he ... died. The next thing I knew, I was just sort of ... here.’
He looked very ethereal against the apple trees which themselves, with their heavy blossom, were like the ghosts of trees. It was a cloudy morning, a fine spring drizzle beginning.
‘It’s incredible in autumn, isn’t it?’ Stefan said. ‘The air around Hereford is so full of apple scent. It seems in the evening as if the whole county’s heavy and drunk on it. And even though this orchard was looking rather sad and neglected, I felt the way it was, back then. Huge and bountiful. The absolute core of the county. The very centre of what Traherne called the Orb.’
Merrily remembered, with an unsettling feeling, what Gomer Parry had said about the Apple Tree Man. So gnarled and barren-looking in the ice, now full of thrusting buds.
‘I just knew that Wil, even if he’d had the power, would never destroy an orchard,’ Stefan said. ‘Not the biggest orchard in Hereford. It would be like poisoning the country. More than that, it ... I mean, he was a friend of Traherne. Nature was an aspect of God. It would have been blasphemy. He wasn’t a witch at all. I suddenly felt very, very close to him. He was in the air, in the scent, the whole apple-aura of this place. And then ...’
He was close to whispering. Merrily was still holding the sprig of blossom he’d given her. She was aware of being set up, dropped into a little cameo scene, but the snowy numinescence had settled on her senses; she was softened.
‘I could suddenly see him. I could see that poor, persecuted boy hanging here. All alone. All alone among the apple trees. It was spring then, like today. I could see the blossom which had fallen on his hair like stars ...’
There were big, theatrical tears in his eyes now, but it didn’t seem like a performance; she didn’t feel, somehow, that he was that good an actor. Did he really think he’d seen Wil hanging here or was he describing an exercise in imagination? Perhaps it didn’t matter.
‘Merrily, it was the most spiritual moment of my life. I just knew I’d been brought here. Just me. But why me? Who was I? Was I him? Had I been him in a previous life? No.’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t fall in love with yourself, do you? Not like that.’
God. She didn’t know how she felt about this at all.
‘I just knew in that moment what Wil was. Why I had to be here. To be near to him. To convey the truth about him. That it could be the most important thing I would ever do. I couldn’t sleep, I was tortured. I awoke early, walked all around the village – there was nothing for sale. Not a single For Sale sign. And then I saw the lodge, empty and derelict-looking and I just knew that whatever it cost ...’
He stopped speaking, looking for some reaction.
Merrily said, ‘Did Richard know why you were so anxious to live here?’
‘Oh yes,’ Stefan said. ‘If you’ve seen some of Richard’s plays you’ll know he’s fascinated by obsession. I suppose, at that time, I’d become sort of ... his. Obsession. So he bought the lodge.’
At a price. Merrily could hear James Bull-Davies. Made him pay. Made him pay.
‘I have to play him,’ Stefan Alder said very quietly. ‘I have to feel him inside me – in the purest sense. I mean, I have to be Wil. I have to be Wil here. You do understand that, don’t you, Merrily?’
After they parted, Merrily walked around the churchyard for some time, alone.
Decision time?
Well, he was a nice guy, an honest guy. But he was in love with a dead man, with a ghost, and there’d been a certain madness in those tear-glazed eyes.
Coffey? He was in love with Stefan. He’d bought a house in the village because of it. But he hated the vendor, Bull-Davies; he had a score to settle there and he would use Stefan’s desire.
Coffey and Bull-Davies were both, in their separate ways, powerful and influential men. Stefan Alder was neither and so was vulnerable. But he was also the catalyst.
Merrily sighed and thought back to her famous Wil Williams sermon.
Collect all the information you can get, listen to all the arguments.
Yes, done that.
Seek out independent people who might have an opinion or a point of view you hadn’t thought about.
Nobody here is entirely independent. Not Lucy Devenish, nor Alison Kinnersley. They each have their own hidden agenda.
So why not put it all on Him? That’s what He’s there for. Go into a quiet place ...
‘Yes. I’m here.’
In a cushion of soft, white petals.
Put that question. Tell Him it’s urgent. Tell Him you’d like an answer as quickly as possible.
‘I wouldn’t mind an answer now, actually. If that’s all right with You.’
She looked up to where the church steeple was fingering Heaven. Focusing on the gilded weathercock on top of the steeple as if it could point her in the right direction.
Perhaps only the weathercock had changed since Williams’s day. The steeples and towers were still the tallest structures in the countryside. The
churches were powerful places.
Merrily bit her lip. Was this the answer? Freedom of expression was one thing, multiple obsession and the taint of necrophilia something else?
You let obsession into a church at your peril?
When she went back into the building, the theatricals had gone, replaced by Uncle Ted, Caroline Cassidy and her restaurant manager, Barry Bloom. They were setting up tables in the space behind the pews.
‘I really don’t know about this,’ Ted was saying. ‘It is a church.’
‘Oh, but the very name of the cider, Ted!’ Caroline sang. ‘And if as many people as you say turn up, they’ll get about half a paper cupful each. Ah, Merrily! Merrily will decide.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ Merrily said without thinking. ‘What is it this time?’
Ted and Caroline both stared at her. Oh God.
‘Sorry. I’m a bit on edge. Big night.’
‘Coffee, Vicar?’ Barry Bloom said. He was squat, wide-shouldered, frizz-haired. Ex-SAS, it was rumoured, like, for some reason, quite a few people in the catering business around Hereford. Barry already had a coffee machine set up next to the font.
‘Oh, thanks. Caffeine. Wonderful’ She hadn’t had any breakfast, wasn’t likely to get any lunch. She was dying for a smoke, but maybe not. ‘So, what’s the problem?’
‘Well, as you know,’ Caroline said, ‘the Ledwardine festival officially opens on Saturday.’
‘Does it? God.’ Wrapping her hands around the hot, polystyrene coffee cup. This meant she’d be expected to announce her decision about the play.
Caroline said, ‘The idea is we open in a small way, with a ceremony in the square in the afternoon – Terrence has hired a town-crier. We’ll hold some of the lesser events and exhibitions in the first weeks, and then gradually build up to the major concerts and the pi— and whatever else we arrange. But, you see, my dear, we wanted, before the opening, to introduce our new cider, produced by the Powells to their old recipe – with a little help from Barry, of course ...’
‘I just organized the bottles,’ Barry said. ‘I gather they had to get in some extra apples to supplement the Pharisees Reds. The orchard wasn’t over-productive last year. Hadn’t been pruned hardly in years. Be a good crop this year, though, by the looks of it.’
‘We have an absolutely terrific label,’ Caroline said, ‘designed by the young man at Marches Media on his computers. It has a drawing of the church on it – Alfred approved that, before he left.’
‘How many bottles?’ Merrily asked.
‘How many, Barry, three hundred?’
‘Nearer five.’
‘It’s going to be frightfully exclusive and rather expensive. Proper champagne bottles, naturally. There was a time when good cider was valued higher than champagne, and this is an awfully good cider, isn’t it, Barry? Not the kind of beverage likely to be on sale to the village louts at the Ox. So we wondered if we might use the occasion of your induction ...’
‘Installation.’
‘Makes you sound rather like a household appliance, my dear.’ Caroline squeezed Merrily’s arm. ‘No, we wondered if we might uncork the first bottle at your reception.’
‘And give everyone a drink?’
‘Perhaps just a teensy one. The cider, you see – this was Dermot Child’s idea – will have an ecclesiastical connection, because the church was itself once in the very centre of the orchard, wasn’t it? And the name we chose – I gather this originated from—’
‘Lucy Devenish,’ said Barry.
‘Quite.’ Caroline tossed him a disapproving glance. ‘I was going to say the poet Traherne.’
‘The poet Traherne, via Miss Devenish,’ Barry said stolidly. ‘Being as none of us were that conversant with his work. It comes from a prayer Traherne’s supposed to have written with a woman over at Kington, but nobody’s quite certain about that.’
‘Well,’ Merrily said. ‘It sounds fair enough to me. As you’ve probably gathered, I’m trying to make the church less formal, more accessible, and while it might be a bit early to set up an actual bar, with beer pumps and optics and things—’
Caroline tittered shrilly.
‘—I can’t see any problem over a few glasses of cider. Do you want me to kind of bless the stuff or something?’
Caroline looked thrilled. ‘Would that be in order?’
‘I don’t know, really. Ted?’
Didn’t know why she was asking him. She was, after all, entirely on her own.
‘Merrily,’ Ted said, ‘in his time, Alf Hayden blessed everything from tractors to the microwave oven in the village hall.’
Didn’t seem to be a problem, then, even if the mention of Dermot Child in connection with cider had sent a bad ripple down her spine.
‘OK then,’ she said. ‘What’s it called?’
‘The cider?’ Barry Bloom said. ‘The Wine of Angels. You like that?’
‘That’s Traherne?’
‘The line goes “Tears are the Wine of Angels and the Delight of God, which falling from ...” what is it, Mrs Cassidy? The whole verse is printed on a label on the back.’
‘Something about them being sweet, precious and wholesome.’
‘That’s the bit. “Sweet, precious and wholesome ... and delicious indeed.” And then there’s a bit of a duff line about them being the best water works to quench the Devil’s Fires, but we’ve stopped it before that. Sweet, precious and wholesome and delicious indeed. You couldn’t get an ad agency to do a better one than that, could you, Vicar?’
‘But, I mean, he wasn’t actually talking about cider, he was talking about tears.’
‘Well ...’ Barry spread his hands. ‘If it ends in tears, at least we can all get drunk.’
Leaving the church, Merrily met James Bull-Davies coming in.
‘Ah. Mrs Watkins.’
As if the meeting was a surprise.
It was the first time they’d been face-to-face since the exchange in the vicarage kitchen.
‘Look.’ Bull-Davies shuffled slightly. ‘Glad I caught you. Fact of the matter is ... bit of a pig the other night. Tried to pressure you. Wrong of me. Want to apologize.’
Merrily said nothing. She walked out of the porch. He followed her into the churchyard.
‘Gets on top of one, the old family heritage thing. Narrows the outlook. Can’t focus. Sorry.’
‘So.’ Merrily stopped before the first grave, turned to look up at him. ‘You’ve had a think about it.’
His eyes narrowed.
‘And perhaps come to the conclusion that the idea of your family’s stature being toppled by a polemical play with an axe to grind about gay rights is something of an overreaction?’
His long face began to redden. He had not, of course, concluded any such thing.
‘Anyway,’ Merrily said, ‘on the question of the church being used, I’ve come to a decision, and I’ll probably slip it in when I say a few words at the reception tonight, OK?’
The silence lasted all of three seconds. Merrily didn’t move.
‘You have made a decision,’ Bull-Davies said heavily.
‘Yeah. Just this afternoon, actually.’
He scowled. ‘Heard you’d been talking to the actor. Alder.’
‘Sure. We had a chat.’
She wondered how he knew, who his informant was. Or perhaps he’d seen them himself.
‘Suppose he won you over. Cried on your shoulder.’
‘We had a private conversation.’
‘I don’t cry myself,’ James Bull-Davies said.
‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘real men don’t, do they?’
‘You’re mocking me.’
Merrily thought about him in the vicarage kitchen. You make it hard for me, Mrs Watkins. And perhaps for yourself. She thought of the funeral card delivered to the Black Swan – Wil Williams was the Devil’s Minister. She thought her decision was the right decision, but, by God, some people were making it bloody hard and all her human reactions were sti
ll urging her to go the other way.
But she had to say something. So she thought what Jane would say and said that.
‘You know, James, you really are a sad bastard.’
He blinked.
‘I gave it a lot of thought. And the only decision that seemed ethically and spiritually right, in the end, was to offer Richard Coffey and Stefan Alder the village hall for their play. If that’s all right with the parish council’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘I’m not going to explain how I decided. But I can say it had nothing to do with anything you said about the need to protect your illustrious family. And in fact ...’
She went right up to him. Looked up, a full foot, into his narrow, autocrat’s face.
‘... if you ever ... ever ... try to put the arm on me again, over anything – anything at all – I’ll ... I’ll have your balls.’
She stepped back. There was no reaction on James Bull-Davies’s face, but his back stiffened and she saw his feet come instinctively together. His eyes were focused over her right shoulder.
‘Understood,’ he said.
22
I, Merrily ...
THE FIRST PERSON Jane saw when she got off the school bus was Colette, wearing her leather jacket and a black chiffon scarf. She was with a black guy, maybe in his thirties, unloading some gear from a dirty white Transit van.
Unfortunately, Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes and a couple of their mates had spotted them too.
I’m telling you, it is,’ Danny Gittoes said. ‘I seen him in Shrewsbury. He looks different, nat’rally, with all the stuff on.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Dean said. ‘Mr Cosmopolitan. You hear that, men? Gittoes’s been to Shrewsbury. Hang on, I’ll find out. I’ll ask the slag.’
It was a dull afternoon, a slow drizzle starting. Dean Wall waddled across the square to Colette, Jane following at an angle.