The Cure of Souls

by Phil Rickman

  But this woman looked promising. She was about the right age – mid-fifties. With her dark green linen skirt and her grey-brown hair loosely permed, you had the impression she didn’t care overmuch if she did resemble her mother at that same age.

  Merrily switched off the engine, wound down the window and waited for the woman to reach the green. Late afternoon had brought on the first overcast sky of the week, dense with white heat. Droplets of birdsong were sprinkled over the distant buzz of invisible traffic on the main road above the village.

  The woman had stopped to check something in her basket. Wearily, Merrily levered herself out of the car, leaned against the door. She was wearing a blue cotton jacket, a white silk scarf over her dog collar in case the Shelbones didn’t want the neigh-bours knowing they were having visits from strange clergy. She hadn’t bought any new summer clothes last year, and there’d be no need for any this year either. She wasn’t planning to go anywhere. This would be the first summer she’d stayed behind while Jane went off on holiday – joining another family in a big farmhouse in Pembrokeshire where there was sea and surfing.

  Not that the kid seemed especially excited. She just slumped around, sluggish and grumpy. Maybe it was the weight of the exams and the weather. Or some unknown burden? Something they needed to discuss? Perhaps there’d be a violent thunderstorm tonight, with the electricity cut off, as it usually was: a time for candlelight confidences to be swapped across the kitchen table, maybe their last chance for a meaningful discussion before Jane went away for a month, leaving Merrily alone in the seven-bedroom vicarage.

  The woman was now crossing the road towards the green. Merrily stepped away from the car.

  ‘Mrs Shelbone?’

  ‘Good afternoon.’ She looked neither surprised nor curious – in a village this size a stranger would swiftly have rounded up a dozen people who could have pointed her out.

  ‘I had a call from Canon Beckett, this morning,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m Merrily Watkins. I rang—’

  ‘I know. It wasn’t convenient to talk to you then. I’m sorry.’ Mrs Shelbone spoke briskly, local accent. ‘I was intending to call you back tonight when we could speak freely.’

  Dennis must have told her to expect a call from the Deliverance Consultant, but the girl, Amy, had been in the house, Merrily guessed, at the time she rang. She suddenly felt wrong-footed, because this woman already knew exactly who she was and what she was doing here, and now she was getting that familiar, dismayed look that said: You’re the wrong sex, you’re too young, you’re too small.

  She slipped a hand defensively to her scarf. Mrs Hazel Shelbone shifted her shopping basket from one hand to the other. In the basket were two tins of polish and some yellow dusters, neatly folded. No apples, no eggs.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ Mrs Shelbone said, ‘this isn’t really a good place to leave your car. I should take it a little way down that lane over there. Perhaps we could meet in the church in about five minutes?’ She produced a smile that was wry and resigned. ‘The scene of the crime, as it were.’

  In the long church porch with its glassless, iron-barred Gothic windows, Merrily took a few long breaths, whispered a rather feverish prayer.

  Jane had once asked, insouciantly, So when do they issue you with the black medical bag and the rubber apron for the green bile?

  The truth was that Merrily had never exorcized a person. Deliverance Consultant might be an unsatisfactory title, but it was a more accurate job description than Diocesan Exorcist. Heavy spiritual cleansing had never been more than an infrequent last resort.

  Tell me if it’s real, Merrily mumbled to God. Don’t let me get this wrong.

  It was only a few steps down from the porch, but the body of the church had a subterranean feel – a cool, grey cavern. Hazel Shelbone was alone there, waiting in a front pew, a few yards from the pulpit and the entrance to the chancel where her daughter had – in the phraseology of Dennis Beckett’s grandson – tossed her cookies.

  She half rose. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Watkins, if I was abrupt. It’s been very difficult.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I… would like you to understand about me from the outset. I am a Christian. And a mother.’ She said this almost defiantly, her wide face shining in the white light from the leaded windows.

  Merrily nodded. ‘Me, too.’

  ‘You’ve got children?’

  ‘Just the one. A girl. Sixteen.’

  Mrs Shelbone’s brown eyes widened. ‘A child bride, were you?’

  ‘Sort of. My husband was killed in a car accident. Long time ago.’

  The body of the church seemed fairly colourless. There was no stained glass in the nave, but behind the altar was a crucifixion window with blood-red predominant.

  ‘And you remarried?’

  ‘No, I…’

  ‘Found the Church instead.’ A deep nod of understanding from Mrs Shelbone. ‘It’s important to know where your destiny lies, isn’t it? I knew from a very early age that I was destined to be a mother, that this was to be my task in life. My occupation. Do you see?’

  Merrily smiled. Hazel Shelbone’s expression rebuked her.

  ‘But we couldn’t have children, Mrs Watkins! Couldn’t have them. Imagine that. It was enough to shatter my faith. How terribly cruel of God, I thought.’

  ‘So—’

  ‘But after a while I began to understand. He intended for me to be a reservoir, do you see? A reservoir of maternal love for little children who were starved of it. When I came to that understanding it was a moment of great joy.’

  ‘So you—’

  ‘Foster parents we were, for a number of years. And then we took on Amy as an infant, and God, in his wisdom, decided that she was to stay and become our daughter. We had a big, decrepit old house, up in Leominster in those days, with lots of bedrooms, so we sold that and we moved out here. This was when Amy was five and we knew she was going to be staying.’

  ‘I didn’t realize she was adopted.’ Merrily was wondering what basic difference this might make. As a foster parent, Hazel Shelbone would probably already have had considerable experience of kids from dysfunctional families, kids with emotional problems. She wouldn’t easily be fooled by them. ‘What does your husband do?’

  ‘David’s a listed-buildings officer with the Hereford Council. He looks after the old places, makes sure nobody knocks them down or tampers with them. They offered him early retirement last year, but he said he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.’ Her eyes grew anxious. ‘I wish he’d taken it, now. He’s not been in the best of health recently, and now…’

  She looked ahead, through the opening in the oak screen, towards the altar, and then suddenly turned, leaning urgently sideways in the pew, towards Merrily.

  ‘We never pushed the Church on her. We never forced religion on any of our children. We just made sure they knew that God was waiting for them, if and when they were ready. There’s a great difference between indoctrination and bringing up children in a home which is full of God’s love.’

  Merrily nodded again. ‘That’s sensible.’

  ‘And Amy responded better than anyone could have wished. A daughter to be proud of – respected her parents, her teachers and her God.’ Hazel Shelbone paused, looking Merrily straight in the eyes. ‘You understand I’m only talking like this to you now because you’re a woman of God. I don’t make a practice of scattering the Lord’s name willy-nilly on barren ground. The Social Services people one has to deal with in fostering and adoption, many of those people are very left-wing and atheistic, and they’ll automatically take against you if they think you’re some sort of religious fanatic. Well, we’re far from fanatics, Mrs Watkins. We just maintain a Christian household. Which you always think will… will…’

  She bit her lip.

  ‘Will be a protection to them?’ Merrily said softly.

  Hazel Shelbone leaned back and breathed in deeply as if accepting an infusion of strength from God for what she was about
to say. ‘Sometimes, when I come home and she’s been alone in the house… it seems so cold. There’s a sense of cold. The sort of cold you can feel in your bones.’

  Merrily said nothing. Once something started gnawing at your mind, it could produce its own phenomena.

  ‘Last Sunday, when she was… sick, and we took her from here, I don’t think she even realized where she was. Her eyes were absolutely vacant, as though her mind had gone off somewhere else. Vacant and cold. Like a doll’s eyes. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was only when we got her home that she began to cry, and even then it was like tears of… defiance. I’d never seen that before, not in Amy. We’ve had other children, for short periods, who were resentful and troublesome, but not Amy. Amy became our own.’

  Merrily asked carefully, ‘Have you consulted a doctor?’

  Hazel Shelbone blinked. ‘You mean a psychiatrist?’

  ‘Well, not—’

  ‘We are a Christian household, Mrs Watkins. We seek Christian solutions.’

  ‘Well, yes, I understand that, but—’

  ‘You may say we’ve become complacent in our middle years, having a daughter who was always conscientious with her school work, who’d been going happily to church from the age of seven… and was, by the way, confirmed into the Church in March this year by Bishop Dunmore. A girl who even’ – she looked at Merrily, whose silk scarf had come loose, revealing the dog collar – ‘who even talked of one day becoming a minister.’

  Merrily thought of Jane who once, in a heated moment, had said she’d rather clean public lavatories.

  ‘She always kept her Bible on her bedside table – until it went missing and I found it wedged under the wardrobe in the spare room. The Holy Bible wedged there, face down, like some old telephone directory! This was the child who always wanted to be assured, before the light went out, that Jesus was watching over her. Now she doesn’t want go to church any more, she looks down at her feet every time she has to even pass the church…’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Five weeks? Six weeks? The first time she wouldn’t go, she claimed she was feeling ill, with a bad stomach. Well, she’s always been truthful, never tried to get a day off school, so of course I sent her back to bed at once. The second time… Oh, it was some essay she had to write for school – she’s always been very assiduous about her school work, as I say. Very well, her dad said, you must decide what’s most important, and she promised she would go to evensong that night instead, on her own. And, sure enough, she got changed and off she went. But I know she didn’t turn up. I know that.’

  Her voice had become loud enough to cause an echo, and Merrily glanced quickly around to make sure they were still alone.

  ‘Another time, she made the excuse of having a particularly severe period pain. But when she gave me the same excuse again last Sunday, I counted up the days and I can tell you there’s nothing wrong with my arithmetic. “Oh no,” I said, “up you get, my girl. Now!” And I made her come with us to the early Eucharist.’

  ‘Did she make a fuss?’

  ‘She was sulky. Distant. That glazed look.’

  ‘Has she got a boyfriend?’

  ‘What does that—? No. She hasn’t got a boyfriend. But she’s only fourteen.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ What could be better guaranteed to undermine the piety of a starchy fourteen-year-old girl than a sudden, blinding crush on some cool, mean kid who despised religion? ‘For instance… where did she really go, do you think, when she claimed she was off to evensong?’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Mrs Watkins! And yes, I’ve had her to the doctor this week, and no, he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. But… well, I can tell you there certainly has been illness in the house as a result of all this. David’s had migraines again, and my… Anyway, everything has seemed under a cloud. Unhealthy. A darkness, even in the height of summer. And you may say this is subjective, but I know that it isn’t. The child’s become a receptacle for evil.’

  Hazel Shelbone stood up, her back against a stone pillar by the pew’s end. Defensive, Merrily thought. If she’s so certain, then there’s something else.

  Mrs Shelbone walked into the chancel and faced the altar.

  ‘I come here, and I polish and polish the bit of rail where she was sick, and I pray for her to be redeemed, and I get down on my knees and ask God what our family could have done to deserve this.’

  Merrily went to join her. ‘You seriously believe Amy is possessed by evil.’

  ‘By an evil spirit.’

  ‘And you want her to be exorcized.’

  ‘I feel it’s not something we can ignore.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s… it’s not something we undertake without a lot of… There’s a procedure, OK? I’m afraid it would involve bringing in a psychiatrist, initially.’

  Hazel Shelbone didn’t turn around. Her whole body had stiffened.

  ‘We need to be sure.’ Merrily put a hand on her arm. ‘What might at first appear to you or me to be demonic possession could be some form of mental breakdown.’

  ‘Reverend Watkins…’ Hazel Shelbone stared up at the crucified Jesus in the window above the altar. ‘We’ve had our share of problem children, David and I. We’ve had children from broken homes… children whose parents have been admitted to psychiatric institutions… disturbed children, a child who ran away after smashing up our living room. There’s really not a lot anyone can tell me about child psychology.’

  ‘We have to be sure,’ Merrily said, and took a step back as the big woman spun round at her.

  ‘Is this what it’s come to? Has the Church become a branch of the Social Services now? Do I have to sign forms? Mrs Watkins, it’s quite simple – I would like the darkness to be driven out, so that God may be readmitted into the heart of my daughter. Is that too much to ask of a priest?’

  ‘No. No, it shouldn’t be.’

  ‘Then?’

  Then, Merrily needed advice. This sounded like a simple and sudden adolescent rejection of parental values, but you could never be sure. Before taking this any further, she needed at least to talk to Huw Owen over in Wales. Who, of course, would warn her not to leave the village without praying for and – if possible – with this girl.

  ‘Mrs Shelbone,’ Merrily said softly, ‘is there something you haven’t told me?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ It came back too quickly.

  ‘It’s just that for you to want to put your daughter through the stress of a spiritual cleansing—’

  ‘She knows things,’ Hazel Shelbone mumbled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She knows things she shouldn’t know. Things she couldn’t know.’

  ‘Like… what?’

  Mrs Shelbone bowed her head once, and moved away from the altar. ‘She will look into my eyes sometimes and tell me things she could not possibly know.’

  She started to walk quickly back towards the nave, where her homely shopping basket sat on the raised wooden floor at the foot of the front pew.

  ‘All right.’ Merrily moved behind her. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘At home, I assume, in her room. She spends most of her time in her room. I’d better go now. Her father will be home in an hour.’

  ‘Why don’t we both go and have a chat with her?’ Merrily suggested.

  5

  Al and Sally

  LIKE A FINE-boned girl, he thought: pale and graceful and slim-hipped.

  Lol was suddenly besotted. Since coming into the museum he’d been aware of little else. His gaze kept returning to this shadowed alcove, overhung with tumbling bines.

  The man standing by the counter covered with books and leaflets was watching him, smiling. He wore a white linen jacket, of Edwardian length, and looked about sixty-five. He had long white hair and a pointed chin, goblinesque, and there were tiny gold rings in both his ears. He gestured towards the alcove. ‘Go ahead.’

  Lol mov
ed closer but didn’t touch.

  Mother-of-pearl was inlaid around the soundhole but the softwood top was otherwise plain, with a dull sheen but no lacquer, no polish. There was an orange line of yew in the neck. She was like one of those old parlour instruments from the late nineteenth century.

  A holy relic. What was it doing here?

  Lol said reverently. ‘She’s a Boswell.’

  ‘Mother of God!’ The man with long white hair strode out from behind the counter. ‘She’s a guitar!’ Carelessly plucking the instrument from its stand, handing it to Lol. ‘Go on, take her. But no plectrum, if you don’t mind. I’d hate to need a scratchboard.’

  ‘I’m no good with a plec, anyway.’ Lol accepted the guitar, one hand under its sleek butt.

  ‘Quite right, lad.’ The man clapped his hands, two rings tinking. ‘Plectrums, thumb-picks – condoms for the fingers. Why would God have given us nails?’ His sharp rural accent, with flat northern vowels, was unplaceable, the kind sometimes affected by traditional folk singers.

  The guitar was unexpectedly lightweight.

  ‘Yours?’

  The man smiled. Check out the back room, Prof had said earlier, winking. Back room?

  ‘Ah, you’re embarrassed,’ the goblin man said. ‘All right. I’ll leave you alone with her for a while.’ From behind the counter, he pulled a wooden stool for Lol to sit on. ‘I’ll give you just one tip – don’t be too delicate with her. She won’t repay you.’ He wagged a finger. ‘Remember now, Lol, she’s not sacred. She’s only a guitar.’

  Lol looked up at him, unsure whether he’d fallen on his feet or into a trap.

  ‘The Prof.’ The goblin smiled – a couple of gold teeth on show. ‘The Prof said you’d be around sooner or later.’ He unlatched the door. ‘I shall be back in about ten minutes. Enjoy!’

  The Hop Museum was set back from the main road to Bromyard, about fifty yards from the turning to Knight’s Frome. Like Prof’s place, it was the remains of farm buildings, but in this case with a few acres around it. There were two ponies and a donkey in the field in front, and a pond with ducks. Also, a gypsy caravan in green and gold.