The Fabric of Sin mw-9

by Phil Rickman

  Anything you can tell me would be very gratefully received.

  Perhaps we might be able to help with your own researches too, one day.

  Yours sincerely,

  Jane Watkins

  Seemed OK. Didn’t give too much away.

  Jane sent it.

  Feeling a lot less excited than she had when she’d composed it. Since then, Mum had been back with Lol — Mum looking totally like death, this time — and then they’d both gone out to this place at Monkland. Mum apologetic, as usual — could Jane get herself something to eat? Jesus, what about her? Like, when was she going to eat? Mum was clearly losing weight. She looked like a small bird after a long winter.

  Jane picked up Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, one of two books she’d brought down from her apartment. She put it down again. ‘Oh, Whistle’ was actually quite a bleak story, full of solitude. The guy didn’t die or anything, but the effects of what he’d seen would be hanging over him for the rest of his life.

  She saw — the image still as vivid in her head as if it had been on the computer screen — Mum walking out of that derelict farmhouse into the early dusk. Walking with her shoulders stiffened and her spine kind of pulled in, like she knew there was something very close behind her. Her face like yellowing paper.

  Never seen her quite like that before. Never. And it was unnerving because, in one way, she needed Mum to be basically sceptical — as resistant to the paranormal, despite her job, as Jane was to the strictures of the Church.

  Mum as a buffer against her wildest ideas. Giving Jane the freedom to explore because there was always that framework of stability. Maybe she was really afraid of growing up into a world where a mature and intelligent woman was visibly and seismically shaken by the irrational, trying to conceal her fear from a kid … who was no longer a kid.

  Jane turned, with a reluctance she recognised as unusual, to the second book on the desk. Ella Leather’s The Folklore of Herefordshire. In the index, under Garway, she’d found the line about nine witches and also a page reference for The watch after death.

  On page 120, Mrs Leather listed the places where:

  It was customary, until a few years ago, for the household to sit up all night when a death had occurred. They did not sit in the same room as the corpse, but elsewhere, the idea being that the spirit of the dead person was still in and about the house, and the people said, ‘it was for the last time, it was the last night’; so no one went to bed. But at Orcop and Garway, the watch is still kept, so Martha S— who lived on Garway Hill, assured me. ‘Only if it was somebody you cared about,’ she added, ‘not for strangers.’

  So, as for bringing comparative strangers into the same room as the body … The Newtons had obviously bent the rules in their own best interests, picking up on what came next. Maybe they’d even read this very account, published for the first time in 1912.

  … Usually, among the country folk, a light is kept burning in the room where a corpse lies every night until burial; a pewter plate of salt is placed on the body; according to Martha S—, the candle should be stuck in the middle of the salt, heaped up in the centre of the plate.

  Seriously creepy. Jane shut the book. It was too quiet in here. Picking up the mobile, she got up and walked to the scullery window, looking out at darkness and a wall, pressing one on the keypad.

  You have three new messages. To listen to your messages …

  She hesitated, staring into the little square of light, before pressing one again.

  First new message, received at thirteen forty-three today.

  ‘Jane, it’s … Oh, shit, you know who it is. For God’s sake, I’ve left about seventeen messages …’

  Five actually.

  ‘… I know there’s nothing wrong with the phone, which means something wrong with YOU. I even tried ringing the landline, thinking I’d ask your mum — yeah, yeah, I know how much you’d hate that, but I’m a bit beyond caring. Only it’s always the bloody answering machine.

  ‘I mean, have I done something? Have I done something I didn’t know about? Has somebody told you I’ve done something? Just— You don’t even have to ring me back. Just leave a message. I’ll close down the phone for the rest of the night so you don’t risk speaking to me. Just leave a message, Jane. I mean, Christ, we’ve been, like, together for two years? That’s longer than a lot of marr— Oh … fuck it!’

  Jane stared into the phone for a long time before switching it off.

  The builder was dead, his girlfriend missing.

  Most of this Lol had already put together out of fragments of chat heard from the open window of the truck, watching the shadowy scurryings around the screened-off caravan. Guessing what was coming when Merrily returned. Just not sure — as a failed psychotherapist and a derivative songwriter finding a little success a little too late — how best to handle it.

  ‘Maybe you need a good manager.’ She was rubbing her eyes wearily. ‘A tour-organizer. Whatever the word is.’

  ‘I really don’t think so.’

  ‘Or just a roadie to carry the spare guitar.’

  ‘You’re tired.’ Lol started the engine, flicked on the headlamps. ‘You haven’t eaten since lunch. Or, as it’s Sunday, knowing you, maybe even breakfast.’

  ‘It’s still Sunday?’ As they bumped into the lane Merrily loosened her seat belt, as if there was pressure in her chest. She hadn’t yet reached for a cigarette. ‘Couple of weeks ago … I lay awake counting up all the people who’ve suffered in some unnecessary way, or died — unnaturally — in spite of all my prayers and entreaties and …’

  ‘It’s supposed to be sheep, Merrily,’ Lol said gently. ‘I suppose counting corpses will eventually get you to sleep, but the dreams are going to be altogether less pastoral.’

  ‘She had the blessing, Lol. The full bit. Holy water. Oil.’

  ‘We could drive into Hereford now, and you could go round administering blessings at random to people in the street, but some of them would still get into a street fight, cause a road accident or something.’

  ‘So what’s the point? What’s the point of any of it?’

  Lol was silent, pulling on to the main road, speeding up as Merrily stared out of the side window. On the way here, she’d told him about the ritual in the little, disused church, the girl suggesting something was coming — Merrily’s discussions with Huw Owen leading to her discovery of the fictional origins of that line.

  This constant tension between her faith and an equally-necessary scepticism must drive her half-crazy at times. Like now. Her face was still turned away from him, watching the night.

  ‘You keep thinking, what if the Church is actually reaching the end of its useful life? And every day it gets harder to answer that persistent, nagging question: If there is a God, why does he allow so much suffering? Well, my children, the truth — the bottom-line, heartfelt truth — is, I’m buggered if I know.’

  ‘You’re thinking—’ Lol braked hard for a badger ambling across the road. ‘You’re thinking of that guy … Michael Taylor, that his name?’

  The Yorkshireman who, back in the 1970s, told his local priest he was possessed by evil spirits and then, having been subjected to a night-long exorcism, went home and murdered his wife. In the most horrific way possible with bare hands.

  Merrily shook her head, probably meaning she hadn’t been thinking about the guy for a whole half-minute

  ‘It was a blessing, not an exorcism,’ Lol said. ‘There was no question of possession, was there?’

  ‘I did at least two things wrong. One, I didn’t involve Felix.’

  ‘In the blessing? Would he have even wanted to be involved?’

  ‘Two, I had a chance to go to the house yesterday, and I didn’t. I decided it was probably bullshit.’

  ‘But you had every reason to think that. You talked to Huw Owen and he—’

  ‘I was careless. Cynical.’

  Traffic was sparse, this area still managing to stay a decade or so behind
the rest of the country. High in the cab, Lol saw, in a dip on the left, the lights of the perfectly-formed-around-the-green, black and white village of Dilwyn. He tried again.

  ‘Even if you’d gone to the house yesterday, there’s no certainty you’d have felt any reaction. That isn’t how it works, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know how it works. Nobody knows how it works.’

  ‘Maybe the woman didn’t kill him,’ Lol said. ‘They don’t know it was her, do they?’

  ‘They know something. I’m fairly sure there’s something Bliss wasn’t revealing. It’s how they operate. Never tell anybody anything unless it serves a purpose.’

  ‘When they find her, you need to talk to her. Bliss would arrange that, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘She didn’t want to talk last night. And why did she go back to Garway? Why did she go back after the blessing? Evidently, he didn’t want to tell me that.’

  ‘Merrily …’

  ‘Should’ve thought.’

  ‘Please,’ Lol said. ‘Just …’

  He slowed for the sign that said LEDWARDINE 3, trying to shut out the whingey voice of the fundamentalist woman, Shirley West.

  How do we know there isn’t somebody here who’s brought something evil in with them?

  The road curved towards the village, the hump of Cole Hill forming under the half-clouded moon and the steeple rising out of nowhere like an ancient rocket petrified on its pad.

  Crises of faith, Merrily would say, when she wasn’t in the middle of one, were part of the deal; they could only strengthen your faith, in the end.

  Until, Lol thought, you had one too many.

  He parked easily on the square. The diners had left and the lights of the Black Swan had dimmed. There was nobody about. He turned to Merrily, not touching her.

  ‘You, um … want me to come in with you?’

  21

  Lesser Creatures and Birds

  In the early light, Merrily let Lol out by the vicarage back door, so that he could use the garden gate to slip, unseen, into the churchyard. Creeping between shadowed headstones and out the other side into the old orchard which had once enclosed the village like a nest around eggs.

  The secret ways of Ledwardine.

  Merrily, in her bathrobe, watching from the landing window as Lol emerged from the alley by the new bistro, onto the square. Vanishing into Jim Prosser’s shop — called Eight Till Late but usually open by seven — and coming out with a morning paper.

  There was no real need for this game any more; everybody must know by now. Yet she had the feeling that it was expected, a matter of decorum, a village thing.

  No sex, anyway, just needed warmth. Whatever gets you through the night and the recurrent images of wide-eyed, big-eyed Fuchsia: ‘Will you bless me?’

  ‘You look like the Lady of Shallot or something,’ Jane said.

  Appearing at the top of the stairs, already dressed for school, face shining, hair brushed.

  ‘Wasn’t she last heard of lying in a barge or something?’ Merrily said. ‘Kind of … dead?’

  ‘Before that, she was a seriously messed-up person.’

  Messed-up? Right.

  ‘Erm …’ Jane had waited up last night, knew the worst. She was leaning against the stair-rail with her blazer over an arm ‘… I’ve just been listening to the news on Hereford and Worcester. They said a man’s body had been found near his caravan at Monkland, and the cops were treating it as suspicious.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘They didn’t mention a woman.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Mum …’ Jane came down to the landing. ‘Look, I’m not stupid. I can put the pieces together.’

  ‘If not always in the right holes.’

  ‘Are you OK? I’m serious.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking maybe I should take a hairdressing course, open a little salon in Lol’s front room.’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘Do something useful.’

  ‘You need a holiday.’

  ‘Mmm. I’ve been thinking about Garway Hill. Nice views.’

  ‘So do it,’ Jane said. ‘I mean it. If you want to go over there and deal with whatever needs dealing with, I’ll stay here with whichever loopy, militant-lesbian cleric they want to dump on the parish.’

  ‘Jane, I was just—’

  ‘And I’ll help however I can. Checking stuff on the net, ringing people, whatever you need. I … well, I just wanted to say that. Any religious differences don’t come into it. I want to help. No ulterior motive, I swear it.’

  ‘I never thought there was, flower, but—’

  ‘I looked up some stuff in Mrs Leather last night. Left the page refs on your desk.’

  ‘Thank you. Maybe I’ll get a chance to read them when you’ve gone to school.’

  Merrily set off downstairs, Jane right behind.

  ‘I bet you didn’t sleep much last night, did you? And not because Lol was here.’

  ‘Yeah, well, thanks for your concern, however …’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum, your guy’s had his head smashed in. That must be—’

  ‘Something I wish I hadn’t had to see, yes.’

  ‘And, like, not the only thing? I saw your face when you came out of that house.’

  This wasn’t going to go away, was it?

  ‘Look … I’ve told you. I’d seen something that was in the wrong place. The green man — we don’t know what it means, but it’s an odd, symbolic, medieval thing, and it isn’t usually, if ever, found in houses. So it was unexpected, just a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Bit more than that, if you ask me.’

  ‘The jury …’ Merrily stopped on the stairs ‘… is still out, all right?’

  ‘There are some things you just don’t want to face up to. You’re a priest but you’re afraid to confront the reality of, like, metaphysical evil. Even when it’s possibly caused violent death. I’m just putting two and two together.’

  ‘And making thirteen. Violent death, in my limited experience, is caused by people.’

  ‘Sure, but what causes the people to cause the violence?’

  ‘Let’s just get some breakfast, or you’ll be late.’

  Merrily carried on to the bottom on the stairs, listening out for the bleep of the answering machine, but all she could hear was Ethel crunching dried food, rocking the bowl on the stone flag.

  ‘Oh, the other thing,’ Jane said, ‘I emailed the M. R. James site last night, while you were out. About the dovecote and the Templars? So like if something comes in for me don’t feel you have to wait till I get home. Just open it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Jane looked at her. That look got shrewder every year; all you could do was stare back and hope you came through.

  ‘Breakfast,’ Merrily said.

  ‘I’ll make it,’ Jane said. ‘And I’ll make yours, too, and I’m not going to school until I’ve watched you eat it.’

  No overnight messages on the machine and no early calls. Local people had come to accept that Monday was a vicar’s day off, usually the only one. By the time Merrily had read Mrs Leather’s account of the watch after death, the computer’s in-box was showing what looked like an actual email amongst the spam.

  Dear Jane,

  Thanks for your mail. Garway is certainly the most mysterious and intriguing place I’ve ever visited in my quest for MRJ. I’m afraid I can’t throw any particular light on the dovecote mystery apart from pointing out, as you probably already know, that, before the suppression of the order, the Knights Templar were accused of denying Christ, rejecting the Mass and the sacrament and spitting on the cross. These charges may have been fabricated, but the possibility of the order becoming corrupt in later years cannot be ruled out.

  The dovecote, as it stands today, seems to have been largely rebuilt by the Knights Hospitaller, who succeeded the Templars at Garway, but I don’t know of any satanic scandal attaching to them.

  Re. your question about ‘Whistle�
�, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. Whatever happened to MRJ at Garway seems to have occurred in 1917, a good thirteen years after the publication of the story (it was probably written in 1903). He may have visited Garway before Ghost Stories of an Antiquary came out in 1904, but there is no record of it that I know of. He doesn’t seem to have found any reason to come to Herefordshire until the widow of his friend James McBryde moved there with her young daughter in 1906.

  So that was that. Merrily sat back, unsure if she was disappointed or relieved that, despite the Templar connection and the Globe Inn coincidence, ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ could hardly have been inspired by whatever happened to M. R. James at Garway Church nearly fourteen years later.

  Remiss of her not to have checked those dates herself.

  And Fuchsia, the face of crumpled linen, it had all turned around again: more evidence that whatever had happened to Fuchsia had happened inside Fuchsia’s head, whether creatively or otherwise. It was not unlikely that Fuchsia had even made those same connections with ‘Whistle’.

  Time to talk to Huw Owen again. As she glanced at the big black phone, it rang.

  ‘You in, Merrily?’ Bliss said.

  ‘What’s it sound like?’

  ‘You’re not still ratty …’

  ‘Make that confused and upset.’

  ‘Will you still be in in half an hour or so?’

  ‘Have you found her?’

  ‘I’ll have another bloke with me,’ Bliss said.

  Background buzz suggesting the CID room rather than the car park. His tone — and the fact that he was ringing on the landline — suggesting she might need to exercise caution.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You’ll like him,’ Bliss said. ‘He’ll make you laugh.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me whether—’

  The line went dead. Merrily sat holding the empty phone, staring blankly at the rest of the message on the screen.

  Incidentally, if you didn’t know this, Gwendolen McBryde’s daughter was also called Jane, and MRJ was very fond of her. This may well have been because Jane, something of an artist like both her parents, was fascinated by the supernatural and creepy things generally. So when MRJ says ‘we’ caused offence at Garway, he may well be referring to the, by then, teenage Jane and possibly her mother as well as himself. It occurs to me that you might like to read Michael Cox’s biography of MRJ, relevant pages of which I’ve attached.