by Phil Rickman
Murmured assent. The people who came here on a Sunday evening were, by and large, not the ones who came to the family service in the morning. This was post-watershed.
‘OK, then,’ Merrily said. ‘Do you think we should try listening tonight? Without filtering, without questioning or intellectualising? Without any attempts at interpretation.’
Someone said, yeah, they should go for it, and Merrily moved her wooden chair a little forward, into the candlelight.
‘First, we need to go into the contemplative state, opening ourselves up. So …’ laying her hands, palms down, on her knees ‘… if we start with the relaxation exercise, beginning at the feet. Becoming aware of our feet. Curling our toes …’
The scraping of a pew.
‘Merrily … I want to ask …’
Merrily looked up.
‘Shirley.’
‘Is this in the Bible?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Does the Bible tell us we should be opening ourselves up to … messages?’
‘Well … I think you’ll find it’s all over the Bible in one way or another. But when you say messages, I’m not sure we’re talking about the same—’
‘Messages from beyond? Is that in the Bible?’
‘I could find you some examples, Shirley, but this wasn’t really intended to be a Bible-study session as much as—’
‘Only, it’s what the spiritualists do, isn’t it? Go into a trance and wait for something to come through. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you’re trying to do something different here, Merrily, to bring some of these people into the fold, but I’m an old-fashioned Christian, and I keep asking myself, is the church the right place for it?’
Merrily sighed, her breath fluttering a candle flame.
‘Shirley, I take your point, but there’s a subtle difference between spirituality and spiritualism — spiritism. What I’m— No, actually the difference is not that subtle at all, it’s something entirely—’
‘How do we know that what’s coming through is from God? That it’s not a dead person?’
Merrily’s face was tilted into the candlelight, and now Lol saw the furrows and the strain.
‘Or something evil,’ this Shirley said.
Restive murmurs from around the circle. A groan. Lol just sighed. A fundamentalist — all she needed.
‘Because when we approach it like this,’ Merrily said, ‘in this context, it’s coming out of prayer and it’s an act of faith. Shirley, if you could bear with me …’
‘It’s just that, in the dark, with a ring of candles, it doesn’t feel right to me. I don’t like opening myself up. How do we know there isn’t somebody here who’s brought something evil in with them?’
This time, when Merrily looked up, Lol was shocked at the pallor of her face.
19
Sound Like Jane
When it was over, Merrily held the snuffer over the last candle and then guided Lol through the darkness towards the south door.
‘Didn’t handle that too well, did I?’
Moving them both swiftly down the nave. She could find her way blindfold around this sandstone cavern — had even actually done that once, when she was new here; it had seemed necessary, having an intimate, tactile knowledge of the body of the church, her own sacred space, to which it had seemed desperately important tonight to get back.
Bad mistake. She felt sick. Better she hadn’t made it in time than have to watch the so-called ground-breaking meditation service crumbling away into a pointless debate about the validity of replacing the traditional Evensong, hymns and all, with quiet and contemplation. More like a bloody parish meeting.
‘I wouldn’t care, Shirley doesn’t normally come on a Sunday night. I mean, if she prefers the formality of a structured service, well, fine …’
‘Who is she?’
‘Shirley? I think I mentioned her. Currently my most enthusiastic parishioner.’
‘Oh. Yes, you did.’
Lol bumped into the prayer-book rack; there was the slap of a book landing on flags.
‘Leave it, I’ll find it in the morning. Why are we talking in the dark? How did the gig go? Oh hell, I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten where …’
‘Newtown. Theatr Hafren. It was good. Almost full. The local record shop was selling albums in the foyer. They sold out.’
‘That’s fantastic. Come back to the vic? Have some supper with us?’
Lol didn’t move. She could see his outline, head bowed.
He said, ‘When she said that about … someone bringing evil into the church …’
‘Lol …’ God, what was she supposed to say? ‘Look, this is uncharitable, but I sometimes think Shirley actually comes to too many services.’
‘You thought she meant you, didn’t you?’
Merrily’s fingers found the stone bowl of the font, pressing into its whorls and furrows.
‘You’ve been talking to Jane, right?’
‘Well, she came over just now. A bit worried. Told me about M. R. James and the woman who was saying she’d seen one of his ghosts. And the dovecote. And this Mrs Mornington …?’
‘Wood.’ Merrily straightened up. ‘Morningwood.’
‘And how you came out of the house, white-faced, and wouldn’t talk about it.’ Lol was standing next to her now. ‘Pretty much the way you’re not talking about it now.’
Merrily leaned against the firmness of the font. She looked back along the nave, vaguely moonlit now. Like a straight path through woodland.
But there was no green man at Ledwardine.
‘All right. I may have … I saw something that wasn’t supposed to be there.’
‘Inside the house? The Duchy of Cornwall house.’
‘It just looked ordinary. It felt ordinary. Until I decided, for some reason, to have a look inside the inglenook. It’s quite a high inglenook. Someone like me can stand upright in it, and quite a lot of space all round. Like a small, black room.’
Her mind was already tightening. She’d hoped it might melt away in the meditation. But the meditation had never happened, and maybe that was just as well. Maybe she had brought something back and if they’d gone into the meditation it would’ve been contaminated. Maybe Shirley— Oh, for God’s sake …
‘Go on.’ Merrily felt Lol’s hand on her arm. ‘The small black room behind the inglenook.’
‘There was a feeling of not being alone. I’m not talking about God or anything.’
‘You’re saying you actually felt something was with you inside this inglenook?’
‘Something watching me. It’s all a bit subjective. A feeling I’d been getting at Garway generally. It has a very peculiar atmosphere, I can’t explain it. Even the church seems to have eyes. Ancient landmark, sentient landscape … Oh God, listen to me, I’m starting to sound like Jane.’
Lol was silent. There were cooling clangs from the heating, which had switched itself off.
‘You know the green man?’ Merrily said. ‘Like you get in country churches? Stone face looking through foliage?’
‘Mouthful of leaves and stuff.’
‘Maybe an ancient fertility symbol. Several in Herefordshire. The one in Garway Church is moulded into the chancel arch, and … there’s also this one inside the oak lintel over the fireplace in the Master House. Almost identical, I’d guess, but I’d need to check. I just looked up, there it was.’
‘That’s what you thought was watching you?’
‘At the back, so only visible from inside the inglenook. You don’t see him unless you enter his …’
‘A secret green man.’
‘And not in a church. I don’t know of any ancient ones that aren’t in churches, though maybe there are. And hidden away. Why?’
‘This green man is what scared you? Why you’d turned white?’
‘I haven’t been feeling too great lately.’ She pulled away from the font, couldn’t deal with this now. ‘Let’s go.’
Outside, a wind had a
risen, chattering amongst dead chrysanths in a grave-pot. Merrily pulled the church keys from her shoulder bag. The Master House key poked out, and she thrust it back.
Lol said, ‘You now think something actually happened to this Fuchsia at the house?’
‘I’d convinced myself she was pulling some kind of scam. The face of crushed linen, all that. I was coming round to thinking there was some entirely prosaic reason for Felix changing his mind, wanting out of the job. I was ready to confront her about it.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’
‘Confront her. But maybe with a bit more … sensitivity. That is, I still think there’s a lot she hasn’t told me, but I’m no longer ruling out the possibility of something else.’
‘What are you going to tell Jane?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You sure you’ve told me everything?’
‘Lol, I’m going to ring them now, OK?’
Fumbling out the phone and putting the number in the frame.
They stood under the lych-gate, opposite the square, orange and green lights making lanterns of the leaded windows of the Black Swan.
Lol said, ‘Why don’t you call them in the morning?’
‘They might leave early.’ The ringing stopped. ‘Hold on, he’s—’
The voice in the phone said hello.
‘Felix,’ Merrily said. ‘I’ve been trying to get you all day. Listen, I really need to talk to you. Both of you. Tomorrow morning if possible. Even tonight, if you’re up for that. Take me about twenty minutes to get there.’
There was no reply, something quizzical about the silence.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s Merrily Watkins.’
‘Yeh. I thought it was.’
Oh shit.
‘Frannie, I’m sorry, I must’ve put the wrong number in. More haste, less—’
‘Who did you think you were calling, Merrily?’
‘Just … just a guy I’ve been trying to …’
‘Felix, you said,’ Bliss said. ‘That would be Felix Barlow.’
‘How did you …’ Something jerked inside her chest. ‘Frannie …?’
‘Twenty minutes, then,’ Bliss said. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
20
Supposed to be Sheep
There was the usual small, sordid fairground under a frantic night sky, fallen leaves panic-dancing in the intersecting headlight beams from three cars and a dark blue van, all pointing at the caravan, engines growling. Flapping and crackling from the plastic screen they’d erected inside the tapes, to keep out the rising wind. A rich smell of churned mud.
The West Mercia Police travelling show.
‘Fuchsia.’ Merrily felt insubstantial, blown around like the leaves. ‘Where is she? Please, can someone—?’
Nearly a dozen men and women, cops and crime-scene technos like worker ants in the grass, none of them answering her, all of them hyper: never let anybody tell you these guys didn’t get a wild buzz from violent death.
‘This is the feller?’ Bliss was in a white coverall, what he liked to call a Durex suit. Flicking occasional questions at her like pellets. ‘You’re sure about that?’
All the motion only emphasizing the stillness of the big man in a heap, dumped like manure below the caravan’s open door. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
‘Yes.’
Was she sure? Under the hardened mud and the congealed fluids, his head was a different shape. Mouth half-open, dried blood caked around his nose, both eyes soot-black. Merrily forcing herself to keep looking at him, aware of Bliss watching her closely.
‘This is the builder you were telling me about, right? Doing up the farmhouse for Charlie’s outfit?’
‘Yes.’
One of Felix’s feet was twisted into the gap between two of the metal steps. A hand clawed the mud, poor guy trying to seize the earth one last time.
‘A decent man, Frannie. Kind. Trying to do the best thing.’
‘Really,’ Bliss said.
‘Do you know where Fuchsia is?’
Bliss said, ‘Tell me again — why were you ringing him tonight, Merrily?’
‘I was trying to arrange a meeting.’
‘Sounded like an emergency to me,’ Bliss said. ‘Sunday night, very heavy day for the clergy, and there you were, prepared to drop everything and come rushing out here in the dark?’
‘Yes.’
‘What conclusions am I to draw from this?’
‘I was …’ Merrily sighed. ‘How long have you got?’
‘Till Billy Grace gets here.’
‘The pathologist.’
‘Which I hope is gonna be before flamin’ daylight.’
Two crime-scene women were moving around Felix’s body with evidence bags. Emotions uncoupled, not seeing a person, not looking for history much beyond the final act.
‘Who found him, Frannie?’
‘Dog-walker. Where would the police be without dog-walkers, eh?’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘That’s for Billy Grace to find out.’
‘Well, he didn’t …’ Merrily spun at him, furious ‘… just fall off the sodding step, did he?’
Segments of smoky cloud on fast-forward across the three-quarter moon. Bliss’s eyebrows going up.
‘My, we are fractious tonight, Merrily.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s interesting that you’re so emotionally involved.’
‘Interesting?’
‘Significant, even.’
Bliss had his head on one side, red hair shaved close to the skull these days, to disguise erosion. Merrily looked away, over towards the edge of the field where Lol was parked, forbidden by some jobsworth copper even to get out of the truck.
‘You need …’ steadying her voice ‘… to find Fuchsia. The house I told you about …’ How trivial and foolish this was going to sound. ‘It was Fuchsia, who had the problem.’
‘This is Fuchsia Mary Linden. The assistant.’
‘And girlfriend. I keep asking if anyone’s looking for her, and nobody— At first, I thought she was being, you know, disingenuous. I’m now more inclined to believe there’s something to what she’s saying, and I wanted to tell them that. Talk it all over again.’
Bliss scratched his nose, obscuring a reluctant half-smile.
‘I’m loath, as ever, to go into the details of your frankly unenviable job, Merrily, but … you’re saying you were feeling a bit guilty?’
‘I … yeah.’
‘When did you last talk to Mr Barlow?’
‘Last night. On the phone.’
‘And the girl?’
‘Not since last week. When I met them here.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘She’s … unusual.’
‘Unusual. Yeh, that explains everything. I’ll be sure to put that in my report.’
‘Whimsical? Imaginative? In a childlike way. And beautiful, of course. And about twenty years younger than Felix. That what you were looking for?’
‘This word whimsical,’ Bliss said. ‘Would that translate, for the rest of us, as three sheets to the wind?’
‘What are you asking?’
Bliss didn’t reply.
‘You have got people out looking for her?’
‘We’ve gorra couple of people out there, yeh.’
‘You’re sure she’s not … somewhere close?’
An image of Fuchsia crouching, big eyed, between tree-roots in the woods.
‘Sure as we can be,’ Bliss said.
‘You actually think she did this, don’t you?’
‘Can’t deny that the domestic solution would save us a lorra graft.’
‘What was he hit with?’
‘Could be one of his own tools. I’m never one to pre-empt the slab, Merrily, but when the head’s swollen up like that, battered out of shape, you’re looking at multiple skull fractures. And, no, you wouldn’t generally get that falling off the steps into a field. The kil
ler must’ve been … very, very angry.’
A fourth vehicle had appeared next to the dark blue van. A cop shouted across to Bliss.
‘Dr Grace, boss.’
‘Must be a bad telly night.’ Bliss turned to Merrily. ‘You ever think, on these occasions, that our fates might be entwined, Reverend?’
‘Every time there’s one of those occasions, Frannie, I just … Look, when you find Fuchsia, will you let me know?’
‘If I can,’ Bliss said. ‘And we’ll probably need to talk about this at length, maybe tomorrow. Thanks for dropping by, Merrily.’
‘Yeah.’
Walking back across the field, hands jammed into the pockets of her fleece, Merrily looked behind her once and saw, on the very edge of the headlights, the gaping maw of the bay in the barn that Felix had been renovating for Fuchsia. To bring her stability.
‘Shit.’ She wanted to scream it into the wind. ‘Shit, shit, shit …’
Jane’s mobile played the riff from Lol’s ‘Sunny Days’ and she tightened her lips and ignored it. Wouldn’t be Mum; she’d call the landline.
Ethel, the black cat, prowled the scullery desk. The mobile stopped. Jane clicked on the email address from the Ghosts and Scholars website, put in the message she’d drafted, read it through one last time.
Dear Ms Pardoe
Sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you might be able to help me. After reading on your website about M. R. James’s unexplained ‘strange experience’ at Garway Church, on the Welsh Border, I wondered if you could throw any more light on it.
I live in Herefordshire and went with my mother to Garway today and, to me, the mystical influence of the Knights Templar could still be felt very strongly there after all these centuries. M. R. James’s story ‘Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, my Lad’ has a Templar preceptory in it, and we were wondering if the story could have come out of whatever M. R. James experienced at Garway.
Like me, you were also intrigued by the medieval dovecote with 666 dove holes. Do have any ideas why this might have been?