by Phil Rickman
‘You didn’t try to contact her parents?’
‘So she could go back and get fiddled with again? Not a chance, darling. She asked us not to, anyway, and she was sixteen or seventeen, we knew that. Besides, I was going to London, had a job lined up with a distant relative, theatrical agent. She filled the space.’
Mrs Morningwood took the photo back, put it in the album, left the album on the desk and went back to the hob.
‘House was only half as big then. I suppose she was here nearly a year. My mother found her a post as housekeeper — not live-in. Farmer called Eric Davies whose wife’d walked out because she couldn’t stand the isolation and Eric’s refusal to take a day off. Go on — read the rest.’
I’m writing this now because theres times when I still think I can get rid of it if I want to. Like Oh its not that bad it’s only your body and look at the money your getting.
‘I take it this is not about Eric Davies.’
‘Hardly. That came later. We exchanged letters for about a year. Most of them more coherent, I have to say, than this one. She was actually an intelligent girl, resourceful. Adaptable.’
‘So this is referring to the Master House, is it?’
Mrs Morningwood chose a wooden block from the log basket, wedged it into the fire and talked about the Master House commune. Two or three couples there originally, but there was always room for more bodies in the five bedrooms and outbuildings. Then two of the women left and one of the men. Eric Davies, meanwhile, had been made aware of gossip — he was in line for chairman, or president or something, of the local branch of the NFU and someone had discreetly pointed out that perhaps Mary Roberts was not good for his image, middle-aged farmer with a little darkie on the premises several hours a day.
Merrily said, ‘Mary Roberts?’
‘I don’t know where she got the name Linden from. Perhaps she thought it sounded pretty.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Merrily said. ‘You’re absolutely sure about this?’
‘Soon as I saw the girl with the builder. Look at the photo again. Look at the eyes.’
The eyes were blurred in the picture, but the size and the separation … well, maybe.
‘If I had one of her a couple of years later, even you would be in no doubt. Fuchsia, the first time I saw her and Barlow, they weren’t here to work, just look around, so not in overalls. She was even wearing the same kind of clothes as Mary had. Highly coloured. As if she’d seen some old photos of her mother and gone out of her way to recreate the image. Barlow was asking about the house and I tried to help him — rambling on in a state of slight numbness, trying not to keep staring at the girl. Hell of a shock, Watkins. Like seeing a ghost.’
‘Did you say anything?’
‘No. I needed to know if she knew. Needed to get her alone. The name, you … that was the clincher. Mary’s few possessions included a decrepit, much-thumbed paperback copy of Titus Groan. Mervyn Peake? Leading female character?’
‘Fuchsia.’
‘Pretty conclusive.’
‘And did she know?’
‘Never got her alone to ask. Barlow came back alone some days later telling me she’d been troubled by something in the house. Wouldn’t go into details.’
‘You didn’t tell him you may have known Fuchsia’s mother?’
‘Of course I didn’t.’
Mrs Morningwood bit her lip.
‘You’d better tell me the rest,’ Merrily said.
When you dont go to bed no more because they come to you in your sleep thats pretty bad isnt it. And when you wake up it’s like your body is not yours no more, it’s their’s. They can make your arms and legs move about and make you see what nobody should have to see. Well thats when you think you must be getting close to the end of this sick life and thank God for that.
‘I’d actually wanted her to come to London with me,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘I was working for a magazine by this time, making better money — in the process of moving to a flat in Clapham. But, for reasons I didn’t know about at the time, she declined. I … didn’t make proper arrangements for the forwarding mail so may have missed a couple of letters from her. And then that one arrived … five months after it was posted.’
‘That does not sound good. At all.’
‘I phoned my mother straight away, and of course it had all gone wrong — Mary had been staying away for several nights at a time, and then a whole week. Having taken up, it emerged, with one of the Master House people. And taken various drugs, obviously. Possibly, judging from the letter, LSD or mescaline.’
You wouldn’t recognise me now. Youd walk past me in the street, I probably look like some old bag out the gutter. I went into Hereford once, into the shops but I could sense like a shadow behind me all the time and once it touched me and run its fingers down my back and I turned round and I screamed GET AWAY GET AWAY FROM ME and people did get away they all crossed the road thinking I was drunk or doped up and that was awful. I really need normal people not to hate me like your mum does now.
‘And your mother hadn’t told you any of this?’
‘There was … a distance between us at the time.’
Mrs Morningwood was smoking again, the room clouded, Roscoe prowling.
‘“Thinking I was doped up”,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s saying fairly categorically here that she was neither drunk nor stoned.’
‘Then what?’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘How would you explain the rest of it?’
I went into the Cathedral but it didnt feel right, it was too big and quiet and I had to keep walking round to be near people because I dont like being on my own in a big empty place and then I found I was standing in front of the old map. You know the one called something in Latin and these disgusting things were grinning out at me and the shadow was leaning over me like when the sun suddenly goes in and you feel cold
‘The old map.’ Merrily looked up. ‘The Mappa Mundi?’
‘Displayed in the cathedral in those days.’
‘Yes.’
Hereford’s only world-class treasure. Medieval map of the world, now on view, along with the historic chained library, in a recently constructed building of their own in the cathedral grounds. Merrily had seen it a few times, never really had time to study it. Remembered the bizarre drawings around the primitive topography — a bear, a mermaid, a griffon, a unicorn. Didn’t remember any of them as grinning or obviously disgusting, but …
and I mustve screamed out or something because there was this man in black clothes and he said I’ve been watching you he said I can see your in trouble let me help you and I screamed at him GET AWAY GET AWAY GET AWAY YOUR EVIL.
I think it was just that he was in black clothes I thought he must be evil. He gave me a card to get in touch with him but I never have, whats the use.
One of the cathedral canons? Might even have been Dobbs, the exorcist.
‘She must’ve been looking a bit deranged to get that kind of approach.’
‘Evidently.’ Mrs Morningwood nodded. ‘What does it suggest to you?’
‘Extreme paranoia? Which obviously could be linked to drug use. Did the police find any acid? If she was still tripping, she might look at the Mappa Mundi, with all these mythical beasts, and it becomes like a nest of monsters or something.’
‘I’ve never seen an inventory of what they found.’
‘I could probably get some background. There’s a cop I know—’
‘No!’
Mrs Morningwood backing away, well out of the pool of light, leaving Merrily blinking.
‘Sorry?’
‘What’s the point of involving the police? They’re not going to find her now, are they? Not going to be remotely interested.’
‘Find her? I thought she was—’
‘I don’t know she’s dead. I simply never heard of her again. Nobody I know ever did. We even tracked down her mother in Birmingham. Not interested. Didn’t seem to care. Nobody cared. Except me, because I could’ve saved her. Cou
ld’ve got her out of there.’
‘But somebody obviously did …’
Mrs Morningwood’s face was grim amongst the shadows.
‘Mary came back to my mother, apparently unwell. Stayed for four days. Quiet, penitent. And … my mother would awake in the morning to hear her throwing up. Coming to the obvious conclusion. Which she put to Mary. When she got up the next morning, Mary had gone. For good.’
‘Didn’t leave a note or anything?’
‘Only this one. Which took weeks to find me. I came back at once, but of course it was all too late.’
I expect you guessed I’m writing to ask a favour. You were always so strong Muriel and I cant go back on my own.
You see I’ve got a baby now.
30
Directionality
Not that Jane was fooled or anything. This woman was a former barrister. Barristers defended people they knew were guilty and prosecuted people they guessed were innocent. You didn’t need to watch much TV to know that.
You didn’t trust barristers, you paid them. And if someone else was paying, you’d mean less than nothing to them. They’d take you apart with merciless precision and discard the bits.
OK, Siân was a priest now, but you could still sense this kind of — to borrow a stupid word from one of those hi-gloss US forensic shows — directionality. Focus. Everything she said was coming from somewhere down in the small print of her personal agenda.
Like, when Jane was showing her round the vicarage, entering the nest of rooms around the back stairs, Siân going, ‘It’s awfully large, isn’t it? For just the two of you.’
Translating as, Even in its present condition, we could flog this place for well over half a million and put you in a bungalow.
With no attics and no apartment.
‘Well, you know, I used to think that, too,’ Jane had said, ‘but that was before we had to take people in. Like deliverance cases? People who think they’re mad? Need a big house for that, so nobody can hear the screams.’
Knowing as soon as it was out that, if she’d been in the witness box, Siân would have dismantled her. Having studied all the cases in her capacity as Deliverance Coordinator, she’d know this was not even loosely true. Well, except for …
‘Like, Dexter Harris?’ Jane pointing at the blackened oak beam where a door had once hung at the bottom of the stairs. ‘That was where he … you know …’
‘Yes, I heard about that. Regrettable.’
‘Mum had to do the necessary, for quite a few nights afterwards, to make sure there was no, like, detritus?’
‘Yes, I’m sure she would have felt that was necessary.’
Like, Your mother is a superstitious idiot.
It really hadn’t been easy last night, having to watch what you said all the time, looking for the loaded questions. Now, with dusk and rain seeping in, Jane, in her old parka, airline bag over a shoulder, was standing between the oak pillars of the market hall, looking across at the vicarage, psyching herself up before going home. Except it wasn’t really home at all, right now, was it?
After school, she’d slipped into Leominster in the vain hope that Woolies might have any CD by Sufjan Stevens who, she’d just discovered, was sufficiently like Lol to be interesting. Catching the last bus back to Ledwardine, predictably Sufjanless, she’d realized this had been just an excuse to shorten the evening.
The hardest bit of all was when Mum rang and Jane, taking it from the privacy of her apartment, had been like, Oh, no, fine, she’s really quite nice. We had a long chat about how she’d wanted to be a barrister from the age of about eight.
Mum trying hard to conceal her dismay, Jane going, Hey, Mum, it’s not my fault she wasn’t being a bitch. Knowing that if she’d come out with the truth, Mum would be on edge the whole time, imagining this cataclysmic row exploding, Jane screaming at Siân. Mum imagined her daughter was still fifteen or something and had no subtlety. But Jane was changing. She had to.
During the lunch hour, she’d called the vicarage from the school library stockroom, borrowing Kayleigh Evans’s mobile in case Siân checked. Getting the answering machine and deepening her voice, sounding posh, she’d asked for the time of the wonderfully inspiring meditation service and would it really be all right if someone from outside the parish attended, she’d heard it was always so packed.
A few more calls like that, carefully spaced, would do no harm at all. Maybe a toned-down Scottish accent next time. Go careful, though, because this woman was …
… oops, coming out.
Jane stiffened. It was strange, almost surreal, watching another woman cleric emerging from the vicarage drive. Siân had on a dark belted coat, unbuttoned, over her cassock, the dog collar luminous and her pewter hair gleaming in the lights from the square. Walking purposefully, with directionality, up towards the church through sporadic rain.
On the edge of the square, Siân was ambushed by Brenda Prosser from the Eight till Late. Nobody else was about, so Jane could hear most of what they were saying.
‘Yes, I am indeed,’ Siân said. ‘We couldn’t leave Ledwardine without a priest for a whole week, could we?’
‘Well, you know, I hadn’t seen her since church on Sunday,’ Brenda said, ‘and I thought she might be ill or something. She works a bit too hard, I think, sometimes.’
Well, thank you, Brenda.
‘Merrily is very conscientious,’ Siân said. ‘Now, I know you’re at the shop, Mrs Prosser, and I fully intend—’
‘Oh, quite a few years now, Mrs Clarke. Came over from Mid-Wales, we did, when my husband was made—’
‘Only— I hope you don’t think I’m being terribly rude, but I did arrange to meet someone at the church at six o’clock, and I’ve just realized I’m going to be late.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry—’
‘No, it’s not your—’
Meet someone? Hadn’t taken her long to get her feet under the table, had it? And why not meet whoever it was at the vicarage?
Unsettling as the situation may appear, trust your instincts, listen to your inner voice and by next week’s climactic conjunction of—
Jane’s horoscope in the Sunday Times.
Right. Sod this.
Pulling up the hood of her parka, transferring the airline bag to her left shoulder, she came out from behind the pillar, walking directly towards Siân and Brenda. And then, drawing the fur trim across her face, she was gliding anonymously past them towards the end of the square. Crossing the street, slipping under the lych-gate and running through the spitting rain down to the church, calculating that the lower door would be unlocked because Tuesday night was choir practice.
It always felt better sidling in by the smaller door. OK, she might be coming around to accepting the sense and the structure and the basic morality of Christianity, but she couldn’t imagine ever going the whole way, not even when she was old and scared; it lacked thrills, wasn’t sexy.
And yet its buildings were, somehow. The church yawned around her, that sudden sense of live air you never quite got used to. The secondary lights were on, high in the rafters.
Jane didn’t move until she was sure that all the pews were empty. Then padding down the aisle, listening for footsteps, voices. Sliding into the Bull Chapel. Always a good place to hide; if anyone came in, you could slide around the wooden screen to where the organ was and then out through the chancel.
The effigy on the tomb of Thomas Bull, long-dead squire figure, had a naked sandstone sword by its side and, instead of the eyelids being humbly lowered, the eyes were wide open, part of this self-satisfied half-smile.
Lowering herself into the only pew, Jane smiled back: Don’t smirk at me, pal, your family counts for zilch these days.
Siân’s meeting, she was thinking maybe Uncle Ted. Retired solicitor — maybe he’d even worked with Siân?
Ted in senior churchwarden mode was a hypocritical old sod, suspicious of Mum’s deliverance role, for ever whingeing that she should be devoting
all her energies to the parish. Ted would love that the village was getting increasingly upper-middle-class, and given the choice between ancient stones and executive homes in Coleman’s Meadow …
He’d sell you down the river. Jane patted Tom Bull’s eroded cheek, hoping his bones were twisting and tangling up in fury. Turn this chapel into a wine bar.
She jumped as the main doors creaked, and they came in together, the famous acoustics soon making it clear that this wasn’t Uncle Ted.
31
No Smoke
There wasn’t much doubt at all, any more, was there?
‘Let me try to understand this,’ Merrily said. ‘Mary was writing to you from Tepee City.’
‘Yes.’
Mrs Morningwood was squatting on the floor now, arms around the dog, face in deep shadow, Roscoe panting. Merrily picked up the letter.
‘She wanted to meet you back at Garway. She wanted you to go with her to the Master House — because you’re the strong one. And yet you read this … and it doesn’t seem right.’
It’s in my dreams, Muriel. I thought I’d got away but I cant. When I was having the baby it was terrible, the dreams I was having then I cant tell you. Rachel who was looking after me said it was just the hormones and they got Rick who was a priest to pray with me and it was all right for a while but then it started again after the baby was born.
‘She’s had a very bad time at the Master House and yet she wants to go back?
‘She needs to deal with it,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘And now it’s different. Now she isn’t the only one affected.’
The baby cries too much. The baby cries day and night. I cant get no sleep and when I do the dreams start.
The baby cries whenever shes WITH ME. Thats not how it should be! It really frightens me! Please help me Muriel! Theres nobody else I can go to to do what I need to do.
‘You agreed to meet her? You replied saying you’d—’
‘I didn’t waste time replying, I came back. Drove across to West Wales, found this rather pathetic community, boiling their drinking water from the ditches. She’d left. Nobody knew where she’d gone. They weren’t terribly helpful.’