by Phil Rickman
‘You said it was a while before Tommy Davies did what he did,’ said Cindy.
‘Well.’ Amy lowered her voice. ‘He’ve snatched that strap off Edna and he’ve nailed it to the side of the barn. If that leather ever comes off its nail, Tommy says, he’s going to use the strap on Edna till her arse is blue.’
Cindy smiled and helped himself to another vol-auvent.
‘Well, nobody ever spoke to Edna Cadwallader like that before. A headmistress commanded respect, see. So the strap never came off the nail, but Edna never spoke to Tommy again for the rest of his life. The farmhouse was divided into two. They say you can still feel the change in the atmosphere to this day when you walk from Tommy’s half into Edna’s half.’
‘Well, well,’ Cindy said. No need to guess which half Mrs Willis’s Healing Room was in. Or was it? Perhaps she’d healed the house too.
‘And the two halves … well, that happened in the village as well. Those who supported Tommy … and the so-called God-fearing half who were on Edna’s side. Or didn’t dare not to be. It was like a feud. A silent feud. A … what’s the word?’
‘Schism?’
‘Prob’ly, aye. Family against family. Hard to credit, but this is a tiny little village.’ Amy looked up. ‘Are you trying to threaten me, Ruthie Walters?’
‘Get out of it, woman,’ an old man in a flat cap said. ‘It was somethin’ an’ nothin’.’
‘Oh, there was a truce,’ Amy told Cindy. ‘And the terms were that the whole thing was forgotten. So, to this day, nobody mentions Annie Davies’s vision.’
‘Weren’t her fault, though,’ the old man said.
‘That’s why there was such a turn-out this afternoon,’ Amy said. ‘No hard feelings, Annie.’
‘Now, you can say that, Fred,’ Ruthie Walters said. ‘But whatever powers that old woman had, I’m telling you, it wasn’t Christian.’
‘Course it was Christian, woman. Look at Lettie Pritchard’s shingles. You go an’ ask her if it wasn’t Christian to have her shingles took from her, her as sung in the church choir for forty-five year.’
‘See,’ Amy said. ‘Can of worms.’
‘No!’ Marcus said. ‘Whatever it is … no! I’m going to get pissed in my study and then I’m going to bed. The only person I want to speak to is a bloody decent estate agent, and as that’s probably a contradiction in terms it doesn’t arise.’
Maiden blocked his way to the study. ‘I just think you should speak to this person. Big Mysteries are involved.’
‘I’m sure,’ Marcus said sourly.
‘Her name’s Grayle Underhill. She’s from New York. She-’
‘York?’
‘New York.’
‘A bloody American. Had a bloody American woman on the phone last week. Insane. Gabbled.’
‘That was me, Mr Bacton.’ Grayle Underhill came out of the study, carrying a tumbler with an inch of Scotch, looking very small inside the borrowed sweatshirt. ‘I called you about my sister. In the dreaming experiment? At Black Knoll?’
‘High Knoll.’ Marcus glared at her. ‘Is that my fucking whisky?’
When Marcus Bacton pulled out this leather-bound photo album, Grayle got cold feet.
‘Listen, say I … Just say I do recognize her. I could be lying. How would you know I’m not lying?’
‘I’ll know if you’re lying,’ Marcus said. ‘Thirty years of interrogating bastard schoolboys. World’s most adroit liar, the schoolboy.’
It was nearly six p.m., going dark early. In the lamplight, Marcus’s study was like something out of The Wind in the Willows. Flames in the glass-fronted woodstove. Shadows leaping up columns of books and everything misshapen and kind of organic, as if the furniture had grown out of the thick walls.
She took the album onto her knees. Part of her didn’t want to do this.
‘OK.’ She opened the album.
‘Fortunately’ — Marcus poured himself more whisky — ‘the pictures aren’t captioned or anything, and there are a lot of little kids in there, as you’ll see.’
‘I’m kinda scared to look.’
‘Where did you get this?’ said the guy with the eyepatch Marcus called Maiden.
‘Mrs Willis’s. To be honest, I pinched it in case any of the relatives tried to claim it. It’s all we have, you see. The only picture.’
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Grayle said. ‘All these years of writing about people claiming they saw ghosts. I just can’t believe I saw … Did you ever? Mr Bacton?’
‘Sore point,’ Maiden said.
‘I mean, I read hundreds of books, interviewed all these psychics and mediums. I knew if ever I saw a ghost, no way was I gonna be scared because of course a ghost is just a trick of the atmosphere, a memory imprint. Like, you see an old movie on TV and it’s Errol Flynn and you know he’s dead, you don’t go, Waaaah! That’s a dead guy! Because although I personally cannot imagine how a plastic box can bring a dead guy into my apartment, I know there are people who can, so that’s all right. And so I think … I think I lost the point. Am I burbling here? Am I gabbling? ‘
Turning the stiff card pages, peering back down a sepia century. Past men in wing collars, ladies in droopy hats. Men in baggy pants tied up with string, standing under haystacks. A line-up of small children.
Both of them watching her. Marcus with his soft bow tie and his glasses on the end of his nose. The comical dog called Malcolm watching too, through misaligned eyes. Everything completely still except for her hands turning the pages.
‘If you don’t find her,’ Marcus said, ‘it doesn’t invalidate your experience. If any of this was simple …’
But she could tell his tone was forced; Marcus was trying to keep emotion out of his voice. And Grayle was scared to look into the eyes of the children in the album. Although she knew, anyway, that the eyes were unlikely to help her, on account of none of them would be either wet with tears or flat and dead.
Lights shone in the window. Car sounds outside. Maiden stood up.
‘Probably bloody Lewis back,’ Marcus said. ‘Don’t let her in.’
And just then Grayle turned over a page and her hands sprang back from the album.
‘Red BMW. Oh my God, it’s … Oh, Christ.’
‘Oh God,’ Grayle said.
‘Underhill …?’ Marcus leaning urgently towards her.
‘Oh Jesus. I can’t believe this. This is, like …’
Marcus staring hard at her, searching her face for any sign that she was lying.
XXIX
Below them, St Mary’s was a smudge on the bronze evening sky. How could he possibly have forgotten about this?
‘I can’t believe you’re living in a place like this,’ the blonde said.
Not having rushed out to embrace him or anything like that. Or left the car at all. Hardly looked at him, in fact, as the red BMW spurted dirt getting them out of the farmyard.
‘Well, I like places like this,’ Bobby Maiden said. ‘Quiet, lonely places.’
‘Very weird.’ She relaxed, checked her speed. ‘Wouldn’t want to get stopped by your little Welsh colleagues.’
‘We’re still in England.’
‘Not for long. Always safer to go abroad, I tend to think.’ She pulled up at the junction outside the pub. ‘I’m confused now. How do I get back on the main road?’
‘Just carry on through the village, turn left, keep going. This is possibly a naive question, but what’s with the blond wig?’
‘You don’t like it? A bit Marilyn, maybe? Nah. Maybe not. Truth of it is, I’ve been tailed, Bobby.’
‘You sure?’
‘Of course I’m bloody sure.’
‘Who?’
‘Well, it didn’t have a blue light, but …’
‘Bastards.’
‘Pa would’ve gone berserk. Straight to Riggs. That would never do. So I didn’t tell him. Anyway, you start taking this seriously, you lose your bloody marbles.’
‘Too late,’ Maiden sa
id.
‘For you maybe. Nothing wrong with me, sunshine.’ Emma Curtis drove slowly down into the village. ‘Gawd, you forget there are still places like this. That a Black Cat cigarette sign over the shop? This is not my car either, by the way. Hired. Mate of Vic’s. A gem, that guy. Takes an almost paternal interest.’
‘Good,’ Maiden said.
A silence. Nightfall nuzzled the high hedges on either side.
Em put the headlights on. ‘It’s not good, actually, is it, Bobby?’
‘Shows they’re worried, not sure which way to jump. What’s Tony’s position?’
‘Saying nothing. But I suspect, in the blackness of his heart of hearts, even he wants you popped now.’
‘Popped? ‘
‘Killed, then. Killed. All right?’
‘Absolutely fine.’
‘You know what I really wish? I wish he’d retire to Spain like any normal … businessman. He’s looking old. Not well.’
‘That an option? Some contingency plan there?’
‘Not for me to say, Bobby.’
‘You can say what you like to me, love, I’m out of it now.’
‘Or perhaps,’ Em said, ‘just biding your time until you can come back with enough to screw down Riggs and Pa in the same coffin and cover yourself with commendations?’
‘You’d like that?’
‘Riggs? Sure. Stake through the heart, whatever. Pa — retirement, don’t you think? I mean, he hasn’t done anything really bad. ‘
‘What? ‘
‘Well, he hasn’t!’
‘So, you’ll tell the junkies, then. And the dead junkies’ parents. And the small-timers who were fitted up to get them out of the picture. How they all seriously misjudged Father Tony of Calcutta Street. Em, you ever think maybe your old man lies to you a lot?’
She trod on the brakes so hard the BMW stalled and a Land Rover coming up behind had to swerve into the hedge.
‘All right.’ Hands flying off the wheel. ‘No more. Change of subject.’
‘You want us to be ordinary people?’
‘We can do that, can’t we? One night?’
He saw her face in the headlights of the Land Rover behind.
In the silly blonde wig.
‘Course we can,’ Maiden said.
Almost believing it.
Confirmation.
Even the goddamn dress was the same, with the print flowers. Looked faded, worn-not blue, sepia in the picture, obviously, but it was the goddamn same dress. The hair wasn’t in plaits, but it looked like the same hair, and the eyes …
The eyes weren’t dead, but they weren’t laughing either. Weren’t laughing, even then.
Grayle felt as if she’d been attached to some kind of emotional vacuum pump.
‘Listen,’ she said earnestly, straw-clutching. ‘This could be a delusion. Like that explanation they have for deja vu? Like, you see something and your mind does this kind of double take so that the first image, even though it happened only a fraction of a second ago, it’s become part of your memory and you recall it like it was years ago or maybe in another life. Yeah?’
Looking hopelessly at Marcus and Cindy the Shaman who’d kind of filtered into the room soon after Maiden left.
‘I mean, listen, I’m ready to go with that,’ Grayle said. ‘I don’t want you to believe me when I’m not too sure I believe myself, is what I’m saying.’
Marcus and Cindy looking at each other without a word.
‘Hey, come on,’ Grayle said. ‘Help me out here, guys.’
The eyes of Annie Davies gazed solemnly out of a photograph over three-quarters of a century old. In the background was the church of St Mary, looking not much different from today.
A slow, icy shiver went right up Grayle’s spine. A classic shiver, just as they were supposed to, just like in all the stories.
Marcus said, ‘Do you know why they had her picture taken with the church in the background? For the same reason they sent her there every day for most of a year, to pray. For forgiveness. For her own soul. Can you imagine that? The indignity of it? Like a juvenile felon checking in with the probation officer. For the crime of seeing the Virgin Mary at a heathen burial place.’
He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.
‘It’s true enough,’ Cindy said. ‘Just been quizzing them in the pub, I have. Still two sides in that village. Hard to credit. When I was about to leave, a very old woman caught hold of my sleeve.’
‘I know,’ Marcus said. ‘Funny eye.’
‘That’s the one. Funny eye. You know what she said? She said, You want to ask yourself why it happened on her thirteenth birthday …’
‘Bloody hell. People still saying that? You know, she never went to church again. A more Christian woman never walked this earth. But her holy place was High Knoll. The child in her, the healer in her, belongs to High Knoll.’
‘It makes me wonder,’ Cindy said.
‘Wonder what?’
‘What time did you see this, Grayle? Do you remember?’
‘Well, I … I’d been to the centre, left there maybe around three. Three-thirty? I can’t say for sure.’
‘Half past three.’ Cindy smiled thinly. ‘As her coffin was being lowered into the earth.’
‘What?’ Grayle jerked like her chair was wired up. ‘You’re saying the woman who was buried today was-’
‘She’s gone back,’ Marcus said breathlessly. ‘Might be planted in the churchyard, but her spirit’s up there. Liberated. And even bloody Falconer’s taken down his fence.’
Grayle felt like her whole body was made of ice. ‘You’re saying-’
‘And she’s young again. That’s the point, isn’t it?’
‘Oh gee.’ Grayle stood up, backed off. The crazy world of Holy Grayle was coming alive all around her, too much, too quickly; she couldn’t handle this. ‘Listen, I’m kind of overtired. Could I get a ride back to the inn?’
‘Wait.’ Cindy moved to block the door, tall and straight. ‘Young and free, Grayle? The apparition …’
Apparition. Jesus.
‘Did she seem young and free to you?’
Grayle stared at Cindy, wanting out of here and fast, but Marcus’s whisky had made her unsteady.
‘Give it to us unexpurgated,’ Cindy said. ‘What did you feel when you saw this … child?’
Grayle held on to the back of her chair. The room swam out of focus.
‘OK.’ She breathed in, breathed out. ‘There was no sense of freedom … no free spirit. Deep sorrow, real despair.’
Marcus looked sick.
‘What I saw, it … she … she was like … how can I tell you … drained? Like a dried flower? Like a leaf at the end of the fall, you know, when all the richness of the colours have gone, and there’s only the little stem things? Like the skeleton? And it isn’t pretty any more? I’m sorry. It’s what I saw. I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you,’ Cindy said. ‘Thank you, Grayle.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Marcus was on his feet, looking as unsteady as Grayle felt. ‘I don’t understand. What the hell are you saying?’
‘You should have listened,’ Cindy said. ‘You never listened. To the local people who said the Knoll was a dark place.’
The camp Welsh accent all but vanished.
‘The darkest evil will always gather round the perimeter of a holy place,’ Cindy said. ‘Sometimes someone lets it in.’
The lights were on in Abergavenny, under half an hour from St Mary’s, as they passed through the town. Then there were long, dark hills against the evening sky like oil tankers anchored in a steel-grey bay.
‘You must feel in a kind of limbo, down here, Bobby.’
‘No more here than anywhere.’
Big hills — mountains, the Brecon Beacons maybe — were in all the windows now, sponging up what remained of the light.
‘You could go abroad. Nah, forget that. What about the press? Not the Elham Messenger. Does the News of the World still
do that kind of story?’
‘Not got the tits for it,’ Maiden said.
A bilingual sign came up on the left: Hotel/Gwesty.
Em ran the BMW into a gravel drive lit by small floodlights in the lawns to either side. She parked in a stone courtyard enclosed on three sides by what seemed to be a very old and opulent country house. Wrought-iron lamps at the entrance. Golden light spilling from deep-sunk windows.
‘Collen Hall,’ Em breathed out. ‘Thank Christ it’s still here. Would have been a real drag if it had been turned into a home for rural battered wives or something.’
‘You’ve stayed here before, obviously.’
‘Just the once,’ Em said.
‘With Mr Curtis?’
‘Would I do that to you? Or me, come to that. No, this was with Mr and Mrs Parker, actually. I was eighteen. We’d been to my cousin’s wedding in Swansea, stopped overnight on the way back to London. I remember they had this gorgeous Italian waiter.’
‘Both of them had him?’
‘I’ll rephrase that. An attractive Italian waiter was employed here at the time. None of us had him. Pa said he was probably a poof. Anybody good-looking, Pa always says that. And that’s definitely the last time he gets mentioned tonight, if that’s all right with you, Bobby?’
‘Whatever you want.’
‘You know what I want.’
With a lovely smile, Em stepped out into the courtyard.
‘I won’t have it,’ Marcus shouted. ‘I’m not fucking having it. I don’t want your loony speculation. I don’t want conjecture. Do you understand me, Lewis?’
‘And do you want her spirit to rest, or to walk in torment?’
‘Look …’ Unease was crawling all over Grayle. ‘We’re getting carried away. I don’t need this … this Gothic stuff. Not tonight.’ Edging along the wall towards the door. ‘Would it be OK if I just left it here? If you could like tell me the way back to the inn, I’ll walk-’
Cindy said, ‘You’ve come all this way, my love. You mustn’t be frightened now. For your sister’s sake.’
‘My sister? What are you saying?’
‘I … Perhaps your sister can help us throw some light on a … complex situation.’