by Phil Rickman
Fay said, 'I grew up in old vicarages and rectories, in little villages with thatched houses. And Oxford for a time.'
'Deprived childhood, huh?'
'There's more than one kind,' Fay said. 'Not many ley-lines where you came from, I suppose.'
'You just had to work harder to find them," Powys said, stiffening as Fay clipped the hedge to avoid an oncoming lorry.
'Bloody loony.'
Could she, he wondered, really be referring to the innocent lorry driver?
'How long has he known Jean Wendle?'
'Who?'
'Your dad. He was sitting next to Jean Wendle. In church.'
After a moment. Fay trod on the brakes. The Fiesta was almost in the middle of the road The driver of a BMW behind hem blasted his horn and revved in righteous rage.
'What?'
She didn't seem to notice the middle-aged, suit-and-tie-clad BMW driver thrusting up two furious fingers as he roared past.
'Jean Wendle,' Powys said. 'The healer.'
Fay gripped the wheel tightly with both hands, threw her head back and moaned.
'Oh God, Joe. That was Jean Wendle?'
'It was.'
Fay unclipped her seat-belt.
'Would you mind taking over, before I kill us both? I think I've made the most awful fool of myself.'
Alex had given Murray Beech the usual can of Heineken, and this time Murray had snapped it open and drunk silently and gratefully.
'You heard my sermon,' Murray said. They were in the living-room at the back of the house in Bell Street. The vicar was slumped in an armchair. He looked worn out.
'And you heard my daughter, I suppose,' Alex said.
'What was the matter with her?'
'You tell me, old boy.' Alex had once been chaplain to a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts; Murray reminded him of the new arrivals, lank-haired, grey-skinned, eyes like mud.
'What did you think of my sermon?'
'Good try,' Alex said. 'Full marks for effort. Couple of Brownie points, perhaps, from the town council. Then again, perhaps not. What d'you want me to say? You and I both know that this fellow Goff's congregation's going to be a bloody sight more dedicated than yours.'
'Sour grapes, eh?'
'You said it, old chap.'
'I don't know what to do,' Murray said, desolate.
Alex sighed.
'I could be good at this job,' Murray said. 'Anywhere else, I could be really good. I'm a good organizer, a good administrator. I like organizing things, running the parish affairs, setting up discussion groups, counselling sessions. I've got ideas. I can get things done.'
'Archdeacon material, if ever I saw it.'
'Don't laugh at me, Alex.'
'Sorry.'
'You see, I did what I thought was right in the context of my position in Crybbe. The sermon, I mean. I expected people to come up to me outside. You know… Well said, Vicar, all this. I thought I was echoing their own thoughts. I know they don't like what's happening at the Court.'
'How d'you know that?'
'Not from listening to them talk, that's for certain. They don't even seem to talk to each other. No chit-chit, no street-corner gossip. Do you think that's natural? Nobody said a word to me today. I was standing there holding out a hand, thanks for coming, nice to see you, hope you're feeling better now, the usual patter. And some of them were taking my hand limply, as if I was offering them a sandwich at the fete. Then they'd nod and trudge off without a word. No reaction in church either except for Fay's outburst and the boy, Warren Preece, who was staring at me with the most astonishing malevolence in his eyes.'
'Which boy's that?'
'Warren Preece? The Mayor's grandson, the younger brother of the chap who drowned in the river. Looking at me as if he blamed me for his brother's death.'
'Doesn't make much sense, Murray.'
'Didn't to me, either. I tried to ignore it. Perhaps it was nothing to do with his brother. He's a friend of the girl, Tessa Byford. You remember I asked you about exorcism.'
'Oh. Yes. How did that go?'
'You haven't heard anything, then?'
'Nothing at all, old chap. Didn't it go well?'
'You're sure you haven't heard anything? You wouldn't be trying to save my feelings?'
'Sod off, Murray, I'm a Christian.'
Murray said. 'That girl's seriously disturbed. Tessa Byford. The Old Police House. I think I'm talking about evil, Alex. I think I was in the presence of evil. I think she invited me in to flourish something m my face. As if to say, this is what you're up against, now what are you going to do?'
'And what did you do?'
'I ran away,' Murray said starkly. 'I got the hell out of there, and I haven't been back, and I'm scared stiff of meeting her in the street or a shop because I think I'd run away again.'
'Oh dear,' Alex said.
Murray leaned his head back into the chair and closed and opened his eyes twice, flexing his jaw.
Alex said, 'I seem to remember asking you what you thought were the world s greatest evils.'
'I expect I said inequality, the Tory government or something. Now I'd have to say I've seen real evil and it was in the eyes of a schoolgirl. And now, I don't know, in a boy of eighteen or nineteen. What does that say about me?'
'Perhaps it says you've grown up,' Alex said. 'Or that you've been watching those X-rated videos again. I don't know either. I've been fudging the bloody issue for years, and now I'm too old and clapped out to do anything about it. Perhaps, you know, this is one of those places where we meet it head-on.'
'Crybbe?'
'Just thinking of something Wendy said. May look like a haemorrhoid in the arsehole of the world, but the quiet places are often the real battlegrounds. Some of these New Age johnnies are actually not so far off-beam when you talk to them. You come across Wendy?'
Murray loosed blank.
'Strict Presbyterian upbringing,' Alex said. 'No nonsense. Yet she apparently cures people of cancer and shingles and things with the help of an egg-shaped oriental blob called Dr Chi. Now, I ask you… But it's all terminology, isn't it. Dr Chi, Jesus Christ, Allah, ET… There's a positive and a negative and whatever all this energy is, well, perhaps we can colour it with our hearts. Pass me another beer, Murray, I don't think I'm helping you at all.'
'I thought you weren't supposed to drink.'
'Sod that,' said Alex. 'Look at me. Do I seem sick? Do I seem irrational?'
'Far from it. In fact, if you don't mind my saying so, I've never known you so lucid.'
'Well, there you are, you see. Dr Chi. Little Chink's a bloody wonder. And there's you trying to drive his intermediary out of town. We think we're so smart. Murray, but we're just pupils in a spiritual kindergarten.'
'I think I'm cracking up,' Murray said.
'Perhaps you need to consult old Dr Chi as well. I can arrange an appointment.'
Murray stood up very quickly and headed for the door. 'Don't joke about this, Alex. Just don't joke.'
'Was I?' Alex asked him innocently. 'Was I joking do you think?'
CHAPTER VII
'But…'
Well, she couldn't say she hadn't been warned.
The vet, an elderly, stooping man in a cardigan, said there'd been quite a concentration of shotgun pellets in the dog's rear end.
'Fairly close range, you see. Must have been. If he'd moved a bit faster, the shot would have missed him altogether. I got some of them out, and some will work to the surface in time. But he'll always-be carrying a few around. Like an old soldier.'
Arnold was lying on a folded blanket, his huge ears fully extended. His tail bobbed when Fay and Joe appeared. His left haunch had been shaved to the base of the tail. The skin was vivid pink, the stitching bright blue.
'But he's only got three legs,' Fay said.
'I did try to save it, Mrs Morrison, but so much bone was smashed it would have been enormously complicated and left him in a lot of pain, probably for life. It's qu
ite unusual for the damage to be so concentrated. But then, dogs that are shot are usually killed.'
'He's a survivor,' Fay said.
Arnold was not feeling sorry for himself, this was clear. He thumped his tail against his folded brown blanket and tried to get up. Fell down again, but he tried. Fay rushed to pat him to stop him trying again.
'Never discourage him from standing up,' the vet said. 'He'll be walking soon, after a fashion. Managed a few steps m the garden this morning. Falls over a lot, but he gets up again. He's young enough to handle it with aplomb, I think. Be cocking his stump against lampposts in no time. Need a lot of attention and careful supervision when he's outside, for a while. But he'll be fine. Some people can't cope with it, you know. They have the dog put down. It's kinder, they say. Kinder to them, they mean.'
With a stab of shame. Fay found herself thinking then about her father.
'And there's one thing,' the vet said. 'He won't be considered much of a danger to sheep now. I can't see this particular farmer coming after him again.'
'Most unlikely,' Powys agreed.
There must have been twenty or thirty people around the Court this afternoon, pulling things down, turning out buildings like drawers. And this was a Sunday; every one of them, no doubt, on double-time. Money- no object.
The Crybbe project seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Everything was happening unbelievably quickly, three or four months' work done inside a week. As if Max knew he had to seize the place, stage a coup before bureaucracy could be cranked into action against him.
And it was happening all around Rachel, as if she wasn't there. Had Max ordered her to stay behind here just to make this point?
Max's own energy seemed to be pumped entirely into his project, as if he didn't have an empire to run. Even from London, directing people and money to Crybbe.
Because, unknown to its hundreds of employees, this was now the spiritual centre of the Epidemic Group. Crybbe. The Court.
The Tump.
She'd caught sight of a specimen of his proposed new logo: a big green mound with trees on it. In Max's vision, all the power of Epidemic – the recording companies, the publishing houses, the high-street shops – would emanate from the Tump.
On a wall in the stable there was a map of the town with every building marked. The ones owned by Epidemic and now inhabited – or soon to be – by alternative people had been shaded red. She'd counted them; there were thirty-five properties, far more than Max was publicly admitting. Far more than even she had known about.
She tried to imagine the town as the alternative capital of Britain, with thousands of people flooding in to take part in seminars, follow the ley-lines with picnic lunches, consult mystics and healers. People in search of a spiritual recharge or a miracle cure.
A kind of New Age Lourdes.
Crybbe?
Rachel shook her head and wandered across the courtyard, head down, hands deep in the pockets of her Barbour. Couldn't wait to get rid of this greasy bloody Barbour for good.
She arrived at the burgeoning rubbish pile, which would soon consist of the entire non-Tudor contents of the Court. Leftovers from four centuries. Reminders of the times when the Court's other incarnations had been a private school (failed), a hotel (failed), even a billet, she'd been told, for American servicemen during World War II.
It was a shame; a lot of the stuff they were throwing out would be quite useful to some people and some of it valuable. A darkwood table, scratched but serviceable. A wardrobe which was probably Victorian and would sell, cleaned up, for several hundred quid in any antique shop. Peanuts to Max.
Money to burn. Hardly New Age What happened to recycling?
The pile was over twelve feet high. Filthy carpets which, unrolled, would probably turn out to be Indian. A rocking-chair. A couple of chests, one thick with varnish, the other newer, bound with green-painted metal strips, black lettering across its lid; you couldn't make out what it said.
Rachel looked hard at the second chest. Where had she seen it before?
Good Lord! She ran to the chest and pulled up its lid. They couldn't do this…
But they had.
Exposed to full daylight, Tiddles, the mummified cat, looked forlorn, a wisp of a thing, his eye-sockets full of dust, one of his sabre-teeth broken, probably in transit to the heap.
Tiddles, the guardian. Evicted.
She looked up at the Court, its lower windows mainly boarded up, the upper ones too small to give any indication of what was going on inside.
One thing she knew. Tiddles might not be Tudor – seventeenth century, somebody had suggested – but he was part of that place. He would have to go back.
Goes round FOUR times.
The earth force (assume it exists) rising up through the soles of your feet, a kind of liquid light. Up into your legs and then, into the body itself, the solar plexus, the first major energy centre. Feel it forming into a pulsing ball of warm, white light, while the chant goes on, the rhythmic clapping…
And he goes round FIVE times.
'Powys. I need to tell you…'
'Sorry?'
'Are you OK, Powys?'
'Yes, sorry, I was…'
Powys driving Fay's Fiesta through a delirium of damp trees, their foliage burgeoning over the road. Fay sitting in the passenger seat with Arnold on the blanket on her knee, fondling the dog's disproportionately large ears.
'Powys, I need to tell you why I went berserk in church.'
He said nothing. She seemed a good deal more relaxed now; something had obviously resolved itself.
'Have you ever seen a ghost?'
He shook his head. 'Terrible admission, isn't it? My belief in ghosts is founded entirely on hearsay.'
'Who exactly is Jean Wendle?'
'She's a spiritual healer. One of the more convincing ones. Nice woman. Used to be a lawyer. Barrister. Or an advocate, as they say in Scotland. Very high-octane. Then she found she could heal people, so she gave up the law to devote her life to it. They were about to make her a judge at the time. It caused… uproar in legal circles.'
'Oh!'
'You remember now?'
'Yes. It was in the papers, wasn't it? How long's she been in Crybbe?'
'As I understand it,' he said, 'she was one of the first of Goff's big-name signings. Rachel says Max wanted to put her into this old rectory he's bought, a couple of miles outside town. But she insisted on being at the heart of things, so she's living in a town house on the square.'
'I didn't know she knew my father.'
'Jean gets to know everybody. Unobtrusively.'
'She was sitting so still,' Fay said. 'In church. So very still.'
'She slows her breathing sometimes. She's a bit uncanny. She… intuits things. Absorbs atmospheres and interprets what's really going on. I'm impressed by Jean, Scares me a bit too, I must admit.'
'Scared me,' Fay said, 'in church. I thought I was seeing Dad's late wife.' She paused. 'Again,' she said.
They were coming into Crybbe. Powys slowed for the 10 m.p.h. speed limit.
'You said… late wife?'
'She was called Grace Legge The house we live in was hers. She died last year. I saw her last week.'
'Bloody hell, Fay."
'I'd never seen one before. You know how it is – you've read about ghosts, you've seen the films, you've interviewed people who swear they've seen one. But you don't…quite… believe they exist.'
'Except in people's minds,' he said.
'Yes.' Fay ran her fingers deep into Arnold's warm fur. 'I don't recommend the experience. You know what they say – about the flesh creeping? The spine feeling chilled? Grace was ghastly, dead. What's the time?'
'Ten past five.'
'We haven't eaten,' Fay remembered. 'No wonder I'm shooting my mouth off. Light-headed. You coming in for something, Powys? Omelette? Sandwich? I'm afraid Dad'll be there', so forget everything I said about Grace.'
'Thanks, but I ought to find Rachel
.'
Powys pulled up at the bottom of Bell Street, took out the keys and passed them to Fay.
Arnold tried to stand up on Fay's knee. 'Hang on,' Powys said. He went round to open Fay's door and she handed Arnold to him while she got out and shook off the dog hairs.
As Powys handed Arnold back, as gently as he could, Fay looked him hard in the eyes. Serious, almost severe.
'If you've got any sense, Joe Powys,' she said, 'you'll piss off out of Crybbe pronto and take Rachel with you. She's gold. She's the only person I know around here who's got her act together. Come on, Arnie, I'm afraid we're home.'
'What about you? Strikes me you need to get out more urgently than any of us.'
'Why? Because I'm losing my marbles like Dad?'
And like me? he wondered, walking down the street towards the river.
And immediately twelve years fell away and he was going around the stone again.
Round and round. Mesmeric. Tribal.
Widdershins, widdershins… against the sun, against nature…
… And he goes round SEVEN times…
Powys stood on the bridge and threw up his hands, warding it off, wiping it away, but the atmosphere was thick with it. He could feel Memory's helicopter beating the air above his head with great sweeping, buffeting strokes. It had never been so powerful. He was standing upright on the bridge, but his mind was ducking and crouching, cowering. He looked around for somewhere to run to, but it was all around him.
…EIGHT times…
Fluidity of movement, breathing changing rhythm. Something else breathing for you, running beside you… widdershins, widdershins… and doing your breathing.
… NINE…
Can't stop. Can't stop.
Out of your hands now.
Widdershins, widdershins.
… TEN…