The Fabric of Sin mw-9

by Phil Rickman

  ‘The OTO? That was something to do with Templars, wasn’t it? Ordo Templi Orientis?’

  Stourport eyeing him balefully now, sitting up in the chair.

  ‘Somebody’s been talking, have they?’

  ‘I was just thinking Crowley … Templars …’

  ‘Crowley was into them, yeah.’

  ‘And Mat Phobe was into Crowley?’

  Stourport said. ‘You want a drink?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’m working tonight.’

  ‘All the more reason, my dear.’

  ‘Not when you’re your own roadie.’

  ‘Jeez, you poor, sad bleeder. Why do you bother?’

  Lol shrugged. Stourport was quiet for a while, looking up at the cherubs with their trumpets. Then he got up and went over to a Chinese lacquer cabinet with dragons on it, came back with a heavy glass and a squat bottle of tequila.

  ‘All right.’ He sat down again. ‘But don’t take any of this as gospel — I was only half there.’

  It was clear that the rambling reminiscence was over. Hayter was being monitored by Stourport now, and there was more care, less free-flow as he talked about Mat Phobe telling them how the Order of the Poor Knights had been officially stamped out, its churches closed, its assets seized, its leaders burned.

  How, in spite of this, it had never really gone away. The Templars had gone underground under different names, their secrets passed on through Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry and some of the magical orders which had manifested in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yeah, including the OTO.

  ‘He said he could show us,’ Stourport said. ‘He said we’d never look back. That was when Pierre split. He’d had a bad experience. We got up one morning and he was flailing around, saying we were all evil and we were laying ourselves open to eternal damnation — he’d been brought up as a Catholic and it taints you for life.’

  ‘What had you done?’

  Stourport shook his head. Lol thought about the girl called Cola French, who had worked in a bookshop.

  ‘The OTO was into sex magic.’

  Cola French had said, You use the build-up to an orgasm to channel and focus energy for a particular purpose and then … boom.

  ‘With women,’ Lol said, ‘or men. Or on your own.’

  ‘Two out of three was good enough for me. Mat said we could employ supernatural … this sounds like utter shit now, but you have to remember the chemicals we were absorbing. He said we could follow a path to enlightenment. Focus our will-power, strengthened by sexual tension. Like, for instance, the Templars had this girdle kind of thing they wore in bed as an aid to chastity. He showed us how to use something similar, only this was to prolong an orgasm.’ Hayter smiled ruefully. ‘A guy who thinks he can show you how to come for ever, you’ll follow him anywhere.’

  ‘What was his background?’

  ‘Never knew. Narcotics make you incurious. He was just there, you know? And, yeah, we might have plumbed what some people may consider the depths of depravity, except it didn’t seem like depravity at the time. Me, I was up to here with peace and lerve and ready to get steeped in the dirty stuff.’

  ‘I’m not really getting this,’ Lol said. ‘How it ties in to the location … the Master House. How was this leading you to whatever you wanted to find?’

  Lord Stourport sipped his tequila. Sun flooded one of the vast Gothic windows.

  ‘You call something up and you ask it. A spirit, a demon. You do a ritual to invoke whatever you think can tell you what you want to know. I remember there was a blood sacrifice once — Mat sent Mickey Sharpe to steal a cockerel from one of the farms. I didn’t care too much for that, fucking blood was everywhere. That was when Siggi split. I think Mat was glad. Siggi was getting a little flaky.’

  ‘So that was just the two of you left? You and Mat Phobe. Two men?’

  ‘Oh, none of that stuff, old boy. Anyway, other people were there by then. Mickey had discovered a source of …’ he smiled ‘… Farm girls.’

  Lol said, ‘A source?’

  ‘Country girls who knew their way around. Country girls are undervalued, as if they’re naive or something compared to your hard-nosed city chicks. Not the case. Bulls and cows, rams and ewes, they’ve lived with it since they could walk. Not easily shocked, is what I’m saying. We were not corrupting innocents.’

  ‘Who was this? You, Mat … this Mickey?’

  ‘I remember Mickey thought that, given the circumstances, he ought to be paid more. I remember that.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Paid him, of course. After all, we were paying the girls.’

  ‘Paying them to …?’

  ‘Go a little further. And keep their mouths shut … well …’ Hayter chuckled. ‘Some of the time. No problems there, like I said. They’d never seen that kind of money before. I want to stress this: no corruption of innocents.’

  ‘You make it sound like they were … working girls.’

  ‘And that wouldn’t happen in the sticks, would it?’ Stourport put his glass down on the edge of the stone fireplace. ‘Don’t knock it, Robinson, it has its uses.’

  So they were paying local girls to take part in ceremonial magic involving sexual practices — the kind of practices you wouldn’t get your own girlfriend into no matter what she’d taken.

  He said, ‘How could you be sure they wouldn’t talk about it?’

  ‘Put it this way: they never did. You wouldn’t want to, would you? Not if you’d been paid more for a couple of nights than you’d normally earn in a month. And like I said, country girls … and none of it was illegal, they weren’t under age. I was more worried about the men. I didn’t want any more men, but Mat … there was one guy Mat was keen to involve. I thought he was a pain in the arse. Fortunately, he didn’t live in.’

  ‘Local guy?’

  ‘Oh yeah. His family used to own the house. Had a name that was ridiculously Welsh. He didn’t sound Welsh. Mat soft-pedalled him for a while, until it was clear he was up for it. He didn’t smoke so we gave him pills and got one of the girls to bake hash brownies, which loosened him up a lot. We got him talking about the house and what had happened there … I remember one night, him saying to me, “You think you’re a nob … I’m royalty, man.” He was a pompous shit. Bloody Welsh and their upside-down inferiority complex. Didn’t even sound Welsh.’

  ‘What did he mean, royalty?’

  ‘Oh … his family was descended from the Welsh princes, all this bollocks. But Mat was interested. He constructed some kind of ritual this bloke had to be at the centre of. Some necromantic thing, to put him in touch with his ancestors. We taped it. Candles and incense and a magic circle and a tape recorder. He went into some sort of trance, and all this balls came out in Welsh. He swore he couldn’t speak Welsh. Actually quite shattered, I remember, when we played it back to him.’

  ‘This was in the house?’

  ‘This was in the main room, yeah. Maybe you need to talk to him. Wish I could remember his name. William something-unpronounce-ably-Welsh? Tell your lady to talk to him, if he’s still alive. Make the bastard squirm.’

  ‘So did you ever manage to contact his ancestors?’

  ‘I don’t know. I had to go back to London to meet my father who I did not want coming down to Garway. Get out the suit, drive up to London. Would’ve stayed in London, if I’d had any sense, but I was keen to get back. Still had the hots for one of the girls, who’d been away and come back.’

  ‘One of the farm girls?’

  ‘Nah.’ Stourport sniffed. ‘The farm girls, they were … they didn’t … they weren’t bothered. They weren’t fazed. They just accepted it. And the money, of course. No, this was actually a black girl. Strange as it may seem, I’d never had a black girl. At the time.’

  ‘Such sheltered lives people had, back then,’ Lol said. Stourport scowled.

  ‘Wasn’t to be, anyway. I’d been back from London one … no, maybe two nights, when the Herefordshire Consta
bulary paid us an early-morning call.’

  ‘I think I heard about that.’

  ‘Pulled me and the faithful Mickey. Bastard Hereford magistrates sent me to jail. Served nine weeks. A nightmare. Mat and the Welsh guy got away … and the black girl. She was the only woman there at the time. I didn’t think about this then, but maybe it was a blessing for her, she was getting quite frail. Didn’t have the stamina of the other slappers.’

  ‘They used her in rituals? Sex rituals?’

  ‘Robinson, watch my lips and remember this: all I did at the Master House was pay for the drugs and expend some testosterone. The so-called magic passed over my head. I didn’t believe in it, then, and I don’t believe in it now. It was libidinal spice.’

  ‘So you never found the gold. Or whatever it was.’

  ‘Need you ask?’

  ‘What happened to the tapes?’

  ‘Mat took them, I suppose. If I should come across one, I’ll let you know. Or anything else that occurs to me. Just write down your phone number on there.’

  Hayter picked up a folded copy of The Independent from beside his chair, tossed it at Lol, who wrote down his mobile number. The chances of Hayter getting back to him were about as likely as Alien going platinum. He looked up.

  ‘So the girl—?’

  ‘She was black. It was a novelty. She was … succulent.’

  There was a coldness in the room and it seemed to gather in Lol’s spine and he sat back against a cushion. Stourport finished his drink and didn’t pour another.

  ‘Don’t expect me to go any further than that — not that any of it’s spectacularly obscene in comparison with some of my later escapades. Most of which have been extremely well chronicled, as you know.’

  ‘What happened to them? The ones that got away.’

  ‘Dunno. I was in the slammer. A nightmare. You couldn’t even get decent dope in British prisons back then.’

  ‘You didn’t hear from Mat?’

  ‘No. Dead, now. Somebody told me he’d gone out to the Middle East or somewhere and he’d died or been killed. I wasn’t sorry. He was a cold bastard.’

  ‘What about Mary?’

  ‘Dunno where she went. I was in the pokey, like I said. When I came out, just about the last place I was likely to go near was the Master House. In fact—’

  Lord Stourport broke off, slowly put his glass back on the hearth and looked out from under his shelf of white hair, levelling at Lol a steady gaze that went on for a long time. All the time it took for Lol to realize that he’d said the name Mary and Jimmy Hayter had only ever mentioned a nameless black girl.

  41

  Time of No Reply

  On the back of the stone, it said:

  NOW WE RISE

  AND WE ARE EVERYWHERE.

  ‘Where are you now?’ Merrily was asking in Lol’s ear.

  ‘In a churchyard. Under an oak tree. Tried to call earlier but your phone was busy. All the time.’

  On the grave, in front of the stone, strewn like the fallen petals of plastic flowers, Lol had counted fourteen plectrums.

  Above them, on the small, grey memorial, a blunted plectrum of stone in the grass, the names of MOLLY DRAKE and RODNEY DRAKE and their dates.

  At the top, the name of the son who had predeceased them both. His dates: 1948–1974.

  ‘Churchyard, where?’

  ‘Um, Tanworth. Tanworth in Arden. In Warwickshire.’

  Pause.

  ‘Lol, that’s …’

  ‘Nick’s village.’

  ‘Oh God, Lol.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ His glasses had misted; he took them off. ‘It was on the way. I saw the signpost. Had to stop, obviously, never having been. Maybe — you know — avoiding it.’

  ‘Of course you had to stop.’ Slightly awkward pause. ‘What do you … I mean, what’s it like. You know, the …?’

  ‘Very quiet and modest, really. Not unhappy. Listen, there are things I need to tell you. Lord Stourport.’

  ‘You saw him? I tried to reach you.’

  ‘Um … you won’t find this edifying.’

  Lol put his glasses back on, took out a folded tour-schedule, full of the notes he’d scribbled in the truck, back near the burger van, and told her what he’d learned from Jimmy Hayter.

  Standing next to the grave of Nick Drake and his parents, decent, prosperous residents of this increasingly wealthy village, while the sun was hiding in the oak tree, making an autumn bonfire amongst the turning leaves.

  Merrily made notes on the sermon pad.

  She wrote down the names:

  PIERRE MARKHAM

  MICKEY SHARPE

  SIGGI—?

  MAT PHOBE?

  DE MOLAY — TREASURE?

  With a kind of mental shiver, she wrote down,

  CROWLEY

  OTO

  And then,

  GROTTO OF DREAMS???

  And, in rapid sucession,

  BLOOD SACRIFICE … COUNTRY GIRLS.

  … PAID

  Underlining this, remembering Mary’s letter: it’s only your body and look at the money you’re getting.

  Because he was safely out of there, in the sanctuary of the Tanworth churchyard, at the shrine of his first tragic hero, she was able to smile at the way Lol had blown it, dropping Mary’s name when Stourport had referred only to a black girl.

  She wrote,

  FRAIL.

  And then, finally,

  SYCHARTH????

  Amid the distaste, an unexpected fizz of excitement as Merrily put down her pen.

  ‘Lol, did Lord Stourport miss something when he was in London, do you think?’

  ‘I can’t help wondering if he even went to London,’ Lol said. ‘Or if, whatever happened towards the end, he was effectively dissociating himself from it. Giving himself an alibi. And the way he was stressing that he was only in it for the sex, wasn’t really involved in the ritual magic.’

  ‘Was that true, do you think, or just a blokey thing to say?’

  ‘Well, it was blokey, but … the sex, the magic, I don’t think you can divide them. I think he did get off on all that. You sensed a kind of pride. After a while, he was enjoying talking about it — his decadent youth, before he had the responsibility of property and a title dumped on him. I think he’d do it again tomorrow if there was another Mat Phobe around to set it up.’

  ‘But he never went into detail?’

  ‘No. You’d probably be looking at whatever rituals Crowley did in that context.’

  ‘Templars. He was always intrigued by the Templars.’

  Thinking of the time, while she was waiting for the first deliverance course at Huw Owen’s chapel in the Beacons, when she’d been reading heavily about magic, and Crowley in particular. All the books came back to Crowley, his attempts to raise spiritual and demonic entities, representing various energies — sexual arousal going hand-round-cock with higher consciousness. His ambition to become godlike.

  In a seedy kind of way.

  She remembered once making the mistake of reading in bed about how, at his abbey in Sicily, Crowley had supervised a ritual which involved a woman having sex with a goat, culminating in Crowley cutting the goat’s throat so that the blood washed over the woman.

  It was about the magical energy of blood. Crowley liked to call them Scarlet Women, and that was how they’d end up, the sick bastard.

  ‘The Welsh guy,’ Lol said. ‘He must’ve been there at the end.’

  ‘Yes. That’s your big discovery, Lol, and I’m truly grateful for this. I need to talk to the guy, don’t I? If it’s who I think it is.’

  Was she going to talk to Sycharth, in defiance of the Bishop?

  Oh yes. Oh God, yes.

  Lol said, ‘You foresee him reacting with the same kind of half-suppressed glee as Jimmy Hayter?’

  ‘Not exactly. He’s a big businessman in Hereford now. He owns the Centurion on Roman Road.’

  ‘Do not go on your own.’

  ‘What�
��s he going to do, sacrifice me?’

  ‘You need a witness.’

  ‘I just want to invite him to a small service.’

  God, was she still going to do that? A deliverance swansong?

  ‘You’re not going today, are you?’ Lol said.

  ‘I’ll call him, make an appointment.’

  ‘Get Sophie to do it. Makes it seem more official.’

  Merrily said nothing. It would take too long to explain.

  ‘You’re OK, aren’t you?’ Lol said. ‘I mean, you’re feeling all right?’

  ‘I’m feeling surprisingly well. Surprisingly well. What time will you be home?

  ‘Gig’s at nine.’

  ‘Decent gig?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Do this one for Nick,’ Merrily said. ‘You know what I mean? And when you get in, come round. I don’t care what time.’

  ‘Well, then.’ Lol knelt down next to the grave. ‘Made it at last.’

  Two blokes in the same business, one who went down, one who — having begun his career by shamelessly copying the other — had somehow come through.

  This was silly. Embarrassing. Futile. Not only did he not know what to say, he wasn’t even sure who he was addressing. He was now over a decade older than Nick had been when he’d died alone in his bedroom in a big house in this village, from an overdose of antidepressants.

  Having already overdosed on cannabis and commercial failure. The house was called Far Leys, and apparently was quite easy to find, but Lol had decided that he wasn’t going to.

  If Nick Drake was alive now he’d be nearly sixty. What would he sound like now?

  Now we rise and we are everywhere.

  Could hear him breathily singing those words on the summery ‘From the Morning’, the last song on the last album released in his lifetime.

  Like a prophecy.

  The last one. His songs had always been full of dark prescience, if you wanted to hear it — as if he’d seen the design of his short life laid out in symbols. He was the fruit tree that would only flourish when his body was in the ground, when the pink moon had taken his life after the years of the black-eyed dog howling at his door, asking for more, giving nothing.