by Phil Rickman
He’s found a possible mate, Betty thought warily. A guy who, on a slow day, he can walk out of the shop and trade insults with.
‘You knew he wasn’t called Shiva, didn’t you?’
‘Who, me? A naive cripple from a land where they play baseball and chequers instead of chess?’
They were walking along Castle Street, the main shopping thoroughfare in Hay. Betty saw food shops, fashion shops, an antiques’ shop and an outdoor pursuits shop selling canoes. A chemist and a jeweller’s which had a long-established look about it.
Robin, meanwhile – he gave Betty a commentary on all this as they walked – saw streets laid out like the fingers of a grey glove below the castle. A marketplace that sloped away from its curtain wall. A small statue with a crown high up on the gable end of a bookstore. A little structure with stone pillars like a Greek temple. Everything crowded, intimate. Once a walled town, most of the walls gone now, but still a town that was all old, just different periods of old.
And a handful of bookshops, of course, though possibly fewer than either of them remembered.
And one Betty didn’t remember.
‘Hey.’ Robin started to cross the narrow street, calling back over his shoulder. ‘Lemme just check this out.’
It was, at first glance, another bookshop, but it had more than books in the window. Behind the guides to the town and the castle were posters and certificates. One said Hay Order of Chivalry beside a picture of a man on a horse. A small flask was labelled Royal Tipple. There was also a picture of Henry VIII with no beard, a different face and glasses.
A red robe hung in the window. It had a fleece trim, like the one around the rim of the crown, which seemed to be made of thin, bevelled copper with a scattering of what looked like glass scabs. Robin pointed at the orb below the crown.
‘That’s gotta be out of a toilet! Am I right?’
‘It’s an old ballcock, Robin.’
Betty glanced up at the sign. The shop was called The King of Hay. In the centre of the window was the King’s autobiography.
Richard Booth, My Kingdom of Books.
The man on the book cover wore the robe and the tin crown and carried the orb made out of a cistern component. Books were piled around him. In the background you could see part of the castle and the foothills of the Black Mountains.
‘I’m going in,’ Robin said.
‘No…’
Betty was grabbing for his arm, but it was too late. She stood uneasily in the open doorway, listening to him talking to a woman and a bulky man of mature years who occasionally grunted. Robin was nodding at the crown.
‘It really safe to leave that in the window? All those jewels?’
‘Hmph,’ the bulky man said. ‘Could be right. Might not be easy to find another poodle collar.’
His laugh was the kind of laugh you rarely heard any more. It’s a guffaw, Betty thought, as Robin took down a copy of My Kingdom of Books.
‘This second-hand?’
‘Bugger off,’ the bulky man said.
Robin came out grinning, cradling the book he’d bought at full price, and the future was spinning in Betty’s inner vision and not all of it – she’d have to admit this – was optimistic.
4
Needs
BEREAVEMENT APPARITIONS WERE the most common and least-alarming of all reported paranormal phenomena. The recently dead husband pottering translucently in his greenhouse, the much-loved cat on the stairs.
Seldom scary. The cats you were inclined to leave alone. They seemed happy enough and didn’t leave gutted mice on the doormat.
Close relatives seeing the ghosts of known people… this was usually comforting, one of the mechanisms of mourning. You would try and explain it, you’d offer comforting prayers. Then you’d do what you could to help it all fade into a warm memory.
More complicated were the guilt-trips, remorse externalized. Perhaps the dead person had been neglected, unvisited or even abused. Usually, the person reporting the sightings was in need of counselling.
Merrily had spoken to other Deliverance ministers who thought virtually all bereavement apparitions were down to psychological projection.
Understandable, but a bit patronizing.
‘You don’t disbelieve me, then,’ Sylvia Merchant said. ‘You don’t think I’m deranged.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘In which case – two questions here – do you believe I actually saw what I’ve described to you? And do you believe that what I saw was the spirit of Alys Nott?’
What was this?
Merrily tried to sit up straight; the chair wouldn’t let her. It was as if it was pointing her at the depression in the pillow on the empty pale-green bed. A dent which, obviously, might have been made by Sylvia Merchant, reverently lying on her companion’s bed. As anyone might do, at some time, in these circumstances.
‘Well… as we met for the first time less than half an hour ago,’ Merrily said, ‘and I can tell you’re not looking for platitudes, it would probably be irresponsible for me to give you an unequivocal answer. The truth is I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps,’ Ms Merchant said softly, ‘you would want to consult a psychiatrist before forming an opinion?’
This was well out of the box. You listened, you comforted, you explained. You didn’t expect to have to explain yourself before you started. The way this was going, she’d be quietly asked for a written estimate.
‘In a case of apparent demonic possession, I’d be obliged to consult a psychiatrist. Otherwise, I’d be unlikely to go near one.’ Time to turn it round. ‘What do you think you saw?’
‘But I know what I saw. I know who I saw.’ Said in a calm, explanatory way, no stridency. ‘It was not a dream. It was not an hallucination. It was not some by-product of sleep-paralysis. I am not a stupid woman.’
Merrily nodded.
‘Has it happened since? Anywhere else.’
‘It’s happened twice more. No, three times.’
‘Is there a pattern?’
‘No. Once was in town. I saw her reflection, very clearly, in the window of a restaurant we used to frequent. The third and fourth times were like the first. In the bed.’
When they kept coming back… that was when an unease set in. As an indication of survival, once was enough, maybe twice to make it less easy to dismiss as imagination. But the third time…
‘How clearly did you see her, Ms Merchant?’
Never once had she said, ‘Call me Sylvia’.
‘As clearly as I see you.’
‘And – sorry if this seems a ridiculous question – but was the duvet disturbed? As it would be if someone was lying under it?’
‘I think I’d have noticed if it wasn’t. If it was just a smiling, disembodied head, that would be the stuff of trashy horror films, wouldn’t it?’
‘Mmm… possibly. When you say—’
‘And I feel her presence. That’s most of the time, wherever I am.’
‘That’s… not unusual.’
‘The visual manifestation…’ Sylvia Merchant was still, unblinking ‘… that is clearly harder for her to achieve.’
An expert. Oh dear. It was never a good thing when, instead of feeling sympathy, hand-holding, looking for ways to make it seem less like a haunting, more like a reassurance, you were continually made aware of the surreal nature of the job.
‘Erm… when you said her eyes were without light…’
Did you mean she looked as if she was dead?
Ms Merchant waited. Merrily drew breath.
‘Ms Merchant… why did you want me to come today?’
‘Because I’m a Christian. Because we’re both Christians. Because we’re members of the Hereford Cathedral congregation.’
‘Well, yes…’
‘And because I would expect someone in your position to have had considerable experience of the earthbound dead.’
Merrily stared at her.
You don’t really want me at all, do
you? You want a bloody medium.
‘Ms Merchant, you’re… clearly familiar with a certain terminology.’
‘I’ve read widely. I’ve been head teacher at schools where Christian worship was observed. Something now frowned on. My attitude to this was, I suspect, one reason I was offered early retirement.’
‘Mmm. The way things have been going for quite a while. Look, can I…? You keep referring to Alys in the present tense. As if you’re not sure she’s gone.’
‘Of course she isn’t gone.’ Faint lines of disapproval were deepening either side of Sylvia Merchant’s mouth. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to convey to you.’
‘You… obviously don’t want her to be gone.’
‘She needs me. As I’ve needed her. On a number of levels. She very quickly became the best secretary, the best assistant I’d ever had. And then the best friend.’
Apart from the traffic, silence. Ms Merchant had reached a point beyond which she saw no reason to continue.
‘She died quite suddenly,’ Merrily said.
‘Very suddenly and unexpectedly. Didn’t want to go. Robbed of nearly half a life. She didn’t – and doesn’t – want to go.’
‘I’m sorry, but… it’s not easy for you to know that, is it?’
‘I do know. It’s entirely clear to me.’
‘Although you must also recognize, from your reading, that it’s not… natural.’
‘And how do you know that, Mrs Watkins?’
God. Never before, in a bereavement situation, had she faced a theological inquisition.
All she could give was the stock answer.
‘All religions take the view that the spirit, after death, moves on. Wants – and needs – to move on. Sometimes… there might be problems of withdrawal. For example – and I’m not qualified to express an opinion on this – but if Alys thinks your life will be unliveable without her, she might be held back. It could be up to you to help her.’
‘I intend to help her.’
‘And… I can help you to do that. If you like.’
‘And what would you advise?’
‘Well… there are situations – and this is far more common with parents who’ve lost children – where the child’s room is preserved as a shrine. Which is understandable, but not, long term, a good idea. The shrine should be… in the parent’s mind. Where the nature of it will usually be changed by time. Whereas the bedroom shrine will only come to resemble a museum.’
‘The bed.’
Sylvia Merchant was on her feet. She was very tall.
Merrily said, ‘An empty bed… waking up to an empty bed… keeping an empty bed in the same room…’
‘You’re saying I should get rid of Ms Nott’s bed?’
‘I can help you… if you like… to move it into another room?’
‘Why would I want that?’
‘She didn’t die in it, did she? She died in hospital. You could sell the bed. Or give it away. There are places always looking for good furniture.’
‘It is not an empty bed,’ Ms Merchant said.
Merrily said nothing. The shadow fronds of a willow tree in the garden wavered on the lemon wall above the beds. She felt constricted in the typist’s chair. Had the chair always been here, or had it been brought up after Alys Nott’s death?
‘I don’t understand, Sylvia. Why did you want me to come? Why me?’
‘Because I’m a Christian. Because we’re both Christians. Because there was no one to pray for her when she died. I’d like you to pray for her now.’
‘I’m sorry. Of course I will.’
Prayers. She could do that. No formal ritual at this stage. You could devise your own, as mild or as explicit as you felt necessary. The prayers would be for peace. And afterwards you might leave written prayers behind. Simple lines which could be uttered like a mantra. And then there might be further visits. Aftercare. And, gradually, the atmosphere would change.
Or it should.
‘Here?’ Merrily said. ‘Now?’
‘If you wish.’
‘Do you think I could alter the positioning of this chair?’
Sylvia Merchant smiled.
‘It won’t. That’s the position Ms Nott had it for years.’
‘Right.’
For a moment, Merrily found it hard to draw breath and sprang up, too quickly, from the chair.
A moment later, the chair creaked.
God.
Sylvia Merchant’s eyes were alight.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘we are all here. The three of us.’
5
Fix it
THAT EVENING, ROBIN read the book, Betty read the tarot.
Outside, kids were yelling and neighbours mowing their tidy, right-angled lawns, the ones that hadn’t been turned into extra parking space for their goddamn people-carriers.
This bungalow – Robin despised it – was attached to another one and built on an estate near Kington, fifteen or so miles from Hay. Pink-brick suburbia made all the worse for having empty hills tantalizingly on the horizon.
After supper, the sky reddening, they lit a fire in the small woodstove they’d installed to save on oil, and Betty sat on the rug near the legs of Robin’s chair and felt the excitement around him like ground mist.
‘See, this guy… a legitimate hero.’
‘Another one?’
‘This is the real thing,’ Robin said. ‘This matters.’
He hadn’t been sure if the man he’d talked to in the King of Hay shop – older than the man on the front of the book – had actually been the King of Hay and hadn’t dared ask. Robin was strangely shy with people he thought he might admire. But now he was halfway into the autobiography and sure on both counts.
‘I just didn’t know the half of this. You hear about the King, you think it’s a pisstake. Which, OK it was. Until it became majorly serious.’
He stared into the stove, the flames still yellow. Robin saw the stove as an essential energy source, like all the books on their shelves, soon to be turned into a different kind of energy.
Betty thought the King of Hay had just looked like some overweight, ageing bloke, detecting no obvious charisma, but…
‘OK… tell me.’
Richard Booth – later Richard Coeur de Livres – had grown up at Cusop, the strung-out village just on the English side of Hay. Back in the early 1960s, when Hay was a run-down farmers’ town, sinking into an economic ditch, he’d bought the old town fire station for seven-hundred pounds, opening an antique shop there.
‘But his business took off,’ Robin said. ‘Like really took off… when he switched to second-hand books.’
Booth loved books and books seemed to love Booth, and it was a slow explosion. In the years that followed, he opened bookstore after bookstore, building the town an international reputation as the place where you could find a book on anything you wanted, without paying through the nose.
Other book dealers moved in, and Booth bought the castle – part medieval, part mansion house, Jacobean through to Victorian – which also got filled up with books. Pretty soon, Hay had became a unique town with a whole new economic basis, a level of self-sufficiency unknown, not only in these parts, but anywhere in the UK.
‘Books had become like the currency of Hay.’
‘Well, yes,’ Betty said. ‘That’s nice, but—’
‘Nice? It was magic! And not in a pretentious way, because he wasn’t some nose-in-air, asshole-scholar type. At one stage, the books that nobody wanted, he even sold them as fuel… for burning?’
‘Would Mr Oliver be happy about that, you think?’
‘Oliver didn’t fit. Kapoor said that. Oliver was too Establishment. Booth’s Hay was outside all of that. He’d kick-started the economy of a town that was stagnating, and it was pulling visitors again – book tourists. OK, in a small way at first. Calls it trickle-tourism. The town doesn’t get swamped, it just builds steadily. But then the big guys get interested – the national chains, th
e Welsh development agencies, the Wales Tourist Board. Offering the kind of big money grants which your average entrepreneurs just grab and run with, milk the agencies for all they can get then move on when the grants dry up. But that…’
Robin was on the edge of his chair cushion, his hair in spikes.
‘…was precisely what Booth did not do. Sees these agency guys with their chequebooks and their government support and their big shit-eating smiles, and he’s like, FUCK OFF!’
Betty grinned. It was at times like this that Robin was able to forget his smashed pelvis, his wonky spine. She laid her head against his knees as he described how, as part of a battle to keep the town entirely local, beat off the national chains and the government agencies, Richard Booth and his supporters had decided that Hay, this ancient once-walled town which sat right on the border of Wales and England, should declare itself independent of both.
And that he should be its king.
Sure, it had started out as a kind of joke. There were Hay passports and HAY car-plates, and King Richard was bestowing honours on supporters, giving them Hay titles. Attracting the kind of free worldwide publicity that his powerful enemies on the tourist and development boards would’ve had to pay out millions for.
A sharp elbow in the ribs of the Establishment. A defiant finger in the face of the organized politics.
‘Guy’s a goddamn genius.’
Building on the fame, a father and son team from a neigh-bouring village, Norman and Peter Florence, had started a small festival of literature which, at first, Richard Booth opposed on the basis that it was promoting new rather than second-hand books. But within a few years – because things happened here – it was pulling in the best part of a hundred thousand people to hear the world’s greatest writers and thinkers. Finally winning Booth’s blessing around the time Bill Clinton had arrived in a smoke-glassed limo to address the world from a huge marquee in the grounds of Hay Castle, calling the festival the Woodstock of the Mind.
And when the crowds went home and the tents came down, it was still this small, once-walled medieval town that sold cattle feed and local honey between the second-hand books.