by Phil Rickman
Pause. Merrily took a step back from the edge of the pulpit. She felt awful. The light sizzled harshly in the stained-glass windows, yellows and reds glaring out, florid and sickly. Something they never told you at college: you needed to be fit for this job.
‘What’s the first thing we usually do? We panic, of course. We just want to run away. That’s always the first instinct, isn’t it? Why me? What have I done to get landed with this one?’
You always asked them questions. You were conversational about it. Just having a chat. OK, I’m up here, you’re down there, but we’re all in the same boat really. Sometimes, you found yourself hoping one of them would stand up, join in, help you out a bit. Yeah, I take your point, Vicar, but the way I see it ... God knew, she could use some help from the punters: maybe she should hold a parish referendum: Wil Williams – Yes or No?
Coward’s way out. She swallowed. Her mouth felt like a sandpit. It was a warm, sunny, good-to-be-alive morning. She felt cold in her stomach. She hadn’t eaten, hardly slept.
‘But you know, in your heart of hearts, that running away isn’t the answer to anything ... ever. Sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to it.’
Pitching her voice at the rafters; she knew what they meant about the warm acoustic. She’d never needed it more.
Packed house, of course. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? Sod’s Law. They were all here this morning. The twenty or so regulars, including Councillor Garrod Powell and his son Lloyd, both of them sober, dark-suited, expressionless, deeply local. Plus the occasionals – a resentful-looking Gomer Parry with his comfortable wife, Minnie. And Miss Lucy Devenish, who, according to Ted, would often walk out if the hymns were tuneless or the sermon insufficiently compelling.
Also the very occasionals, like Terrence and Caroline Cassidy (‘Sunday’s such a busy day, now – lunches and dinners, which effectively rules out both services, but we do often pop in during the week for a few minutes of quiet time’).
In addition, the never-seen-here-befores: Richard Coffey in a light brown velvet suit, with his wafery friend Stefan Alder, flop-haired and sulky-eyed, in jeans.
And the totally unexpected-under-the-circumstances: James Bull-Davies, frozen-faced and solitary in the old family pew. Well. Merrily leaned over the pulpit, hands clasped. This one’s for you ... Jamie.
‘So what do you do? The pressure’s building up. You’re starting to feel a bit beleaguered.’
Two messages had been on the answering machine she’d fixed up in the room; must have come in while she was out there trying to locate Jane. Terrence Cassidy: ‘Perhaps we could arrange a small chat, Merrily. Would you call me?’ Councillor Garrod Powell: ‘A word or two might be in order, Vicar, if you can spare the time. I’ll be in church as usual tomorrow.’
Bull-Davies wasn’t looking at her. He had his arms folded and his legs stretched out as far as they would go in the confining space between pews. He faced the door which led to the belfry. Just about the last place he’d want to go if the inside of his head was in the condition it deserved to be after last night.
‘Rule One: don’t give in to pressure. Rule Two: collect all the information you can get, listen to all the arguments, seek out independent people who might have an opinion or a point of view you hadn’t thought about. Try to step back and see it from a different angle.’
Dermot Child, thankfully, was out of view from the pulpit. He’d be smiling to himself on the organ-stool, half-concealed from the congregation, the only one of them who knew just how little time she must have had to put this one together.
‘And then ...’ Merrily said. ‘Well, you know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? You’re thinking what else can she say, in her position?’
She focused on Miss Devenish, who fearlessly met her eyes.
‘Because of what I am, I’m going to tell you there’s only one place you can go for help. But I’m also saying it because, to me, it makes perfect sense. You could take your dilemma to the United Nations, the House of Lords, the European Court of Human Rights, wherever ... and all you’d wind up with is a whole stack of reports and lists of precedents and Green Papers and White Papers. Bumph, in other words. Take you a couple of months to wade through it, and you’d be no wiser at all, just a whole lot more confused. And the decision would still be yours.’
Miss Devenish smiled, the old witch doctor’s face crinkling, the side of the mouth tilting wryly up to the eagle nose.
‘So why not put it all on Him. That’s what He’s there for. The best advice it’s possible to get. And absolutely free. Go into a quiet place ... the middle of a field, your bathroom – or come in here, if you like. Sit down, you don’t have to kneel, or you can walk about if you want to. However you feel relaxed. But put that question. Tell Him it’s urgent. Tell Him you’d like an answer as quickly as possible.’
Merrily gathered her props together: Bible, Prayer Book, clipboard, felt-tip pen.
‘And I’m prepared to guarantee,’ she said crisply, ‘that you’ll get one.’
Outside, when it was all over, nobody mentioned the sermon. To most of them it would have been routine stuff. But, during the ritual shaking of hands by the porch, there were discreet approaches from those who ought to know what it was about.
Councillor Garrod Powell mumbled, ‘Got my message, did you, Vicar?’
James Bull-Davies coughed. ‘Need to talk, Mrs Watkins. Problem is, never know where to find you.’
Caroline Cassidy, dark-suited and pearled, turned imploring eyes on Merrily, took both her hands, whispered, ‘I’m so, so sorry about what happened last night. Girls of that age ... We must talk this over, as parents. Soon.’
Merrily put them all off. Explaining that it would be a bit chaotic this week because they were moving, at last, into the vicarage. So if whatever it was could possibly wait, she’d be delighted to offer them coffee there – once she had a table to put the cups on.
Buying time.
But not from Miss Devenish, thoughtful enough to make sure she was the last to emerge from the church. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and her summer poncho, Aztec zigzags.
‘So what are you doing this afternoon?’ Merrily murmured.
‘Go for a walk, shall we, Mrs Watkins?’
‘Whatever suits you.’
‘Two stiles on the edge of the churchyard, yes? Not the orchard one, the other one. Three o’clock?’
‘Fine,’ Merrily said. It would give her a couple of hours for that long, meaningful mother-daughter discussion.
‘Oh, and don’t bring the child, will you?’ Miss Devenish said. From behind her, Richard Coffey honoured Merrily with a distant smile and a minimal nod.
Jane looked up.
‘I was just a bit tired.’
‘You bloody well deserve it. And the headache. And the nausea.’
Jane rose abruptly from the corner of the bed, staring angrily out of the window at the sun-splashed square.
‘Did I say I had a headache? Did I say I felt sick?’
‘You threw up enough last night. I could smell it.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Jane,’ Merrily said, ‘do me the courtesy of not trying to bluff it out.’
It wasn’t meant to be like this. Returning from morning service, Merrily had made a point of changing out of her cassock, dispensing with the collar, putting on jeans. It was going to be one-to-one. Mother and daughter. Friends, even. The long, meaningful chat dealing frankly with important, practical subjects.
Like (i) cider. A few facts: it was unexpectedly cheap, went down very easily but was also usually over seven per cent proof, which was approximately twice the alcohol content of beer. Bottom line: cider gets you pissed before you know it.
And like (ii) Colette Cassidy: a difficult, spoiled girl, with a weak father and a neurotic mother. Appeared sophisticated – probably been wearing make-up since the age often – but it was all superficial. According to Ted, who had a friend who taught at the
Hereford Cathedral School, Colette’s worldliness was not balanced by any great intellect.
So the message to Jane, who only yesterday had loftily professed herself more mature than her contemporaries at the high school, was: don’t think you can learn anything from Colette Cassidy. Be your own woman.
And don’t get pissed again.
She’d left Jane to sleep through the morning undisturbed, asking Roland, the manager, to hold off the chambermaid until tomorrow because the poor kid was ill. No, nothing to worry about, just a mild stomach upset.
And what should have been a shattering hangover.
So where was the damned hangover?
Christ, she needed Jane to feel bloody awful for the whole of Sunday. It was part of the lesson: you got drunk, you went through hell next day, you were chastened. Time-honoured pattern.
The great, wonderful pang of anger and relief last night, when she’d discovered what had happened. When Jane had appeared in Church Street, supported by Miss Devenish and a smallish, long-haired guy she hadn’t seen before, with the guilty party, Colette Cassidy, trailing sullenly behind. All right, it wasn’t convenient, it had lost Merrily most of a night’s sleep, but it was one of those things which had to happen one day. God – her first time with excess alcohol had been much worse; it had involved boys, and she’d been lucky not to ...
Anyway. Calm yourself, woman. People react differently, that’s all.
She turned back to the bed. ‘What about some lunch?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Jane said tonelessly.
Well, fair enough. Merrily could remember a whole day of hugging the pillow, between Paracetamols.
But it wasn’t like that, was it? The kid was lying on her bed quite relaxed, almost serene in her white nightdress. Which she must have changed into this morning, because she’d gone to bed in that old Pulp T-shirt.
‘Cup of tea?’ Merrily offered desperately.
‘No, thanks. I might get myself one later.’
‘Jane ...’ She sat down again on a corner of the bed. ‘I’m sorry to labour the point, but you’re sure there were no men ... no boys ... with you?’
‘I told you, we got rid of them.’
‘They didn’t follow you? They weren’t around when you ... lost consciousness?’
‘Oh, Mother ...’ Jane closed her eyes. ‘Your generation thinks everything has to do with sex. I had too much to drink, I went to sleep—’
‘You passed out!’
‘Yeah, all right. But when I woke up I felt ... well, good, actually. Yeah, good. But nobody touched me. They couldn’t ... get near.’
Jane looked faintly puzzled, then it passed.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about this, but I’m really OK.’
Merrily breathed in, counted slowly, lips tight. One ... two ... three ... four ... five.
‘I have to go out again,’ she said.
Jane stood at the window, watching bloody Mum cross the bloody square, heading towards the bloody church, where bloody else, the pious cow?
She walked experimentally around the room. She didn’t fall down. Legs felt like her own legs again. She felt good. She hadn’t been bluffing, hadn’t been taking the piss. She’d had a good night’s sleep.
She shrugged.
She had a swift shower, towelled her hair and got dressed.
She still felt fine.
She padded down the oak staircase and out into the square without, thank God, meeting anyone who might accuse her of having a drink problem. The only problem was she couldn’t recall very much of what had happened. The last she remembered with any clarity was being on the right track for losing her virginity to bloody Dean Wall or one of his spotty mates in the church porch.
Colette had got them out of that, although she couldn’t quite remember how.
Good old Colette.
Jane slipped into the cobbled alley. Cassidy’s Country Kitchen was closed after the Sunday lunch crowd. There was no sign of Colette. Jane wandered down to Ledwardine Lore, which was also closed. She stood at the window, looking in at all the apple curios. It seemed like months since she’d gone in there and the very odd but quite nice Lol Robinson had asked her to mind the store because of the guy he wanted to avoid. Weird. And then there was the story of Wil Williams who’d hanged himself and was buried in the orchard.
The orchard! Jane pressed her forehead into the cool glass, Colette’s voice drawling in her head.
Old Edgar Powell, the headless farmer. All aglow and hovering about nine inches off the ground.
Oh God, yes. She remembered running away from the Wall gang and then she was lying in some grass under branches and
... gappy old grin. Eyes like grey holes ... these very branches ... Look up, Janey ....
Colette was taunting her, just like she’d taunted the boys. Colette’s voice harsh and sly. Sassy, superior Colette.
Look up.
And had she? Had she looked up, with Colette and then Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes and somebody called Mark coming out of the bushes to stand around and laugh themselves sick?
Good old Colette? Bollocks.
Feeling really hot and embarrassed now, she glared resentfully at the shuttered facade of Cassidy’s Country Kitchen, seriously bloody glad now that Colette wasn’t there. In fact, she never, never, never wanted to see that bitch again.
She turned and ran out of the alley and into the square and stood there panting, confusion giving way to a sense of being horribly stupid and, worst of all, really, really young.
Luckily it was Sunday. Soporific Sunday afternoon, and nobody to laugh at her humiliation. Even the Black Swan closed its bars on Sunday afternoons, and there were only a couple of cars parked on the square. Jane stood in the middle of the road, at the top of Church Street, staring at her shadow on the cobbles.
Wondering how she could ever have felt at home here.
The yellow Toyota sports car came out of nowhere – well, in fact, out of Great Barn Street, which linked Church Street to the B-road to Hereford – and had to swerve to avoid splattering Jane all over the market cross.
Brakes went on, a window glided down. ‘Tired of life, are we, darlin’?’
Jane sniffed, put on a smile. ‘Sorry.’
‘Ah ...’ She saw a beard enclosing a very white smile. ‘It’s you again.’
It was the man from the shop. The man who was not dealing drugs, who accidentally crushed fairies and frightened Lol. Yellow Toyota – of course.
He said, ‘So you don’t know anyone called Lol Robinson, huh?’
‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Well, I do now. I just didn’t know his name at the time. I’m quite new around here. I know who he is now.’
‘I described him to you, sweetheart, and it still meant nothing. How do you ...? Oh, never mind. Would I be chancing my arm if I were to ask you where Blackberry Lane is?’
‘It’s up there. See that funny little building in the square? Just go up the side, to the left, and it’s this really narrow little lane. You’ll have to go a lot slower than you did when you came round that corner or you’ll wind up under a tractor or something.’
‘Thanks.’
The window went up; Jane watched the car move off. She hadn’t really wanted to help him, but he would have found out anyway. She supposed Lol lived up there, and now he’d get a nasty surprise.
He had a breakdown. Actually, he used to be a sort of pop star, way back. Well, very minor. I mean, like, tiny.
She’d forgotten that. And Colette saying Lol was megasad. And ... and ...
And she’d seen him again. She’d been in his arms. Carried in his arms. Oh God, he’d brought her home last night!
And now she’d shopped him to this bastard.
The Reverend Mum was right, as usual. She’d got pissed and left a trail of disaster. She had a lot of apologizing to do.
12
Sympathetic Magic
A WISPY BREEZE plucking at her poncho, Miss Devenish climbed, without mu
ch effort, to the top of the knoll. With her back to the sun, the big hat pulled down, she loomed over Merrily like some ancient warrior chieftain.
‘You’re never alone in the countryside, Mrs Watkins. It’s the most intimate place. The poet Traherne knew that. When he walked out here, Traherne knew he was inside the mind of God.’
Below them, nearly a mile away down the long, wooded valley, the village of Ledwardine lay like an antique sundial in an old and luxuriant garden.
‘The core of the apple,’ Miss Devenish said. ‘The orb. Traherne was always talking about orbs and spheres. Understanding that he was at the very centre of creation.’
‘Suppose he’d lived in some filthy city.’ Merrily looked down on the lushness of it all. ‘Or a desert somewhere.’
‘Wouldn’t have mattered. The man was a natural visionary. He instinctively picked up the pattern, the design. Before Wordsworth, before Blake, he stood here and he saw.’
Merrily sat down on the edge of the green knoll, her legs dangling over a mini-cliff of rich, red soil. ‘How do you know he stood precisely here?’
‘I don’t.’ Miss Devenish smiled enigmatically. ‘And yet I do. He would’ve walked here with his friend Williams, to see the best view of the village.’
Because of the hedges, freshly greened, you couldn’t see the roads; you couldn’t see the cars and vans and tractors, only hear their buzzing.
‘So much country,’ Merrily mused. ‘Even inside the village.’
‘Still, thank God, an organic community. In spite of the best efforts of those who’d turn it into a museum full of horse-brasses and warming pans. And supposedly authentic ceremonies’ – darkness entered Miss Devenish’s voice – ‘which belong elsewhere.’
Merrily looked towards the church. The sandstone steeple stood proud, like the gnomon of the sundial, but the graves were all hidden by trees and bushes. The churchyard, more egg-shaped than circular, was partly enclosed by the orchard which, from here, had a deceptive density. Had the church once been entirely surrounded by apple trees?
‘Indeed. The heart, Mrs Watkins. And the blood it pumped was cider.’