by Phil Rickman
‘So? Something wrong with that? I mean, you won’t, will you? Because you’re the vicar. You have to take it on the chin.’ Jane pushed her tea away. ‘And in the eye.’
‘Look, when I first heard about it, I reacted just like you. Well, almost. It took Sophie to explain why that could only make things worse.’
‘Sophie exists to smooth things over. Sophie’s like human cold-cream.’
‘Whoever started the rumour wants us to react badly and, in the process, tell everybody who hasn’t already heard it. Thus doing their job for them. I think that makes sense.’
‘Doing nothing makes sense? Letting people think that Lol’s unstable again? You know where they’ll take it next, don’t you? They’ll think back to what happened last Christmas, and, like, where that used to be good — what a hero, saved Alice’s life — they’ll be like, yeah, but there was violence involved. OK, he never laid a finger… or did he?’
‘Don’t let your imagination—’
‘Mum, this is a bloody village.’
‘Jane, will you just…’ Merrily bit down on it. ‘What are you planning to do tomorrow?’
‘Go round the square, knock on a few doors, hold a kitchen knife to a few people’s throats. Dunno, really.’
Merrily thought about this. Contemplated the lesser of two potential evils. It would be unwise to leave Jane alone here, on a Saturday with the village crowded with locals and tourists and the whole day to consume.
‘You fancy coming over to Ludlow?’
‘Why would I?’
‘Meet a mad woman?’ Merrily said. ‘Make like a pagan?’
She could see the flaring of excitement in Jane’s eyes and how subtly it was extinguished.
‘Yeah, OK,’ Jane said.
Jane decided she didn’t want to do the clubs in Hereford tonight. Too expensive, even if Eirion was still living off the loot from his eighteenth birthday, and too loud to talk. And, naturally, she wanted to be home not-too-late and up early, nice and fresh, for the siege of The Weir House.
Belladonna. Oh boy… Couldn’t believe Mum was involving her to this extent. This was a major rites-of-passage situation. Not to mention a seminal event in Christian — pagan relations.
Between them, they would really nail this mad bitch to the wall.
So, in the end, she and Eirion ended up doing the old snog-walk through the white lights of Left Bank Village, down to the Wye, which some of the sad planning anoraks at Hereford Council were determined to see as like the Seine, only narrower and with just the one café.
She told Eirion about Operation Belladonna — how she was holding her breath in case Mum changed her mind. After which, it seemed legit to discuss the domestic-violence outrage.
‘The trouble is, Mum and Lol, they’re both so totally naive.’ Jane watched the white lights in the water, like a submerged birthday cake. ‘Plus the rock-bottom self-esteem problem. They won’t fight.’
‘Which means you have to fight on their behalf?’ Eirion said. ‘I’m sorry, Jane, but we’ve been through this before, and it doesn’t mean that. When you think of all the trouble you’ve caused in the past by acting first and thinking… well, not thinking at all.’
‘Ah, that old Welsh caution… as you cowards like to call it.’
‘It’s how we survived centuries of English imperialism.’
‘Nah.’ She searched his broad face, what she could see of it. ‘You’re too sophisticated to believe that crap.’
‘However,’ Eirion said, ‘from my humble Welsh perspective, I do tend to think that Lol is becoming less easy to damage. You only have to listen to the new music. The very fact that the music is now dealing with some of the bad things that people have done to him… like he’s absorbing it in a creative way.’
‘However, you’re a pretentious git sometimes, Irene.’
‘I’m right, though. I think he’ll absorb this, too.’
‘He’s emotionally vulnerable,’ Jane said stubbornly.
‘Well, so am I.’ Eirion going all pathetic. ‘And I have to carry the Welsh chip on my shoulder. And do you have sympathy for me?’ He slid his stubby Celtic fingers down her waist to the top of her thigh. ‘Lighten up, Jane. Your mother’s right, you’ll only make it worse. That’s why she’s taking you to Ludlow.’
‘Well, I prefer to think she needs an occult consultant with a pagan perspective.’
‘And you’re fascinated.’
‘Not by Belladonna. She was always crap. Now she’s crap and passé.’
‘She’s surely part of your mum’s essential history. Doesn’t that interest you at all?’
‘Goth frocks and fuck-me shoes? I don’t think so.’
‘I bet your mum looked—’
‘Don’t go there, Irene.’ Jane brandished a menacing finger. ‘Just… don’t.’
Eirion grinned.
‘Besides,’ Jane said, ‘if I’m generously putting my years of intensive pagan studies at the disposal of the bloody Church of England, even though it doesn’t deserve it… Where are we going?’
‘Isn’t there a nice, quiet bench somewhere along here where we can watch the play of light upon the river?’
‘And feel the play of hands inside the bra?’
Eirion moaned softly. Then this shout came from somewhere, like a stone skimming over the water.
‘Lewis!’
‘Oh no.’ Eirion stopped. ‘Who’s this?’
Two guys were strolling crookedly along the bank from the direction of the bridge.
Jane sighed. This was always a problem. On a Friday night, most of Eirion’s sad, rich mates from the Cathedral School seemed to hit Hereford in force. So much for the quiet bench.
They slunk over. One was about Eirion’s size, the other taller, kind of droopy and languid-looking, hair flopping over his eyes. They stood there gawping at Jane, total inane tossers clutching long cans of lager.
‘Hey, hey,’ the tall one said. ‘This must be the vicar’s daughter.’
‘She was only a vicar’s daughter…’ The other one struck this ridiculous pose, then swayed and stumbled. He steadied himself. ‘Der… she was only a vicar’s daughter, but she… Shit, I can’t think of one, what’s the matter with me tonight?’
‘You’re pissed,’ Eirion said. ‘Bugger off.’
‘I can’t be pissed, Lewis, it’s not ten o’clock yet.’
‘Well, go and get on with it,’ Eirion said. ‘You’ve only a couple of hours before it’s time to start vomiting in the gutter.’
Neither of them moved.
‘So,’ the shorter one said, ‘you two just sloping off for a shag?’
‘Don’t let us stop you,’ the tall, languid one said. ‘We’ve not had a good laugh all night, have we, Darwin?’
Darwin? Was that his first name? Jane looked at them and mouthed the word at Eirion.
‘Well, come on,’ Darwin said. ‘There’s a bush over there. Kit off, girlie, chop, chop.’
A fine rain was in the air, like the mist from an aerosol.
‘Oh dear.’ Jane looked at the two guys. ‘How embarrassing, Eirion. You didn’t tell me this was a gay meeting-place…’
‘Jane.’ Eirion gripped her wrist. ‘Don’t start.’
‘Little bitch,’ the tall one said, kind of surprised. He leaned forward, lager slurping out of his can, and one of the floodlights from somewhere splashed on his face, and Jane blinked.
Darwin spread his arms. ‘Hang on… hang on… it’s coming.’
‘That was quick,’ Eirion said, ‘and I never even saw you slide your hand in your pocket. Come on, Jane, let’s…’
‘She was only a vicar’s daughter,’ Darwin said. ‘She was only a vicar’s daughter, but he pulled out his dick and said… pulpit!’
They were both still laughing, while Eirion was dragging Jane away, along the bank and back up into the crowds and the lights of Left Bank Village, straight through and out into Bridge Street.
‘Never,’ he said, panting, ‘ge
t into a scene like that so close to a river.’
Jane looked behind. Nobody following them. They started to walk up the hill towards King Street which led to the Cathedral. Eirion was saying something; Jane didn’t hear over the putter of a kerb-crawling taxi and the sound of her own thoughts. It couldn’t be.
It was, though.
‘Irene…’ Tugging on his hand to stop him.
‘What?’
‘The taller guy. How come you know him?’
‘Because I go to school with him, Jane.’
‘He’s like… one of the students?’
‘Well, he’s not the bloody Head, is he?’
‘Irene, that’s… I mean.’ Jane backed into the doorway of a darkened shop. ‘Oh God…’
He moved in next to her. ‘You all right?’
‘What’s his actual name?’
‘The streak of piss? J.D. Fyneham. He’s in my media-studies group.’
‘Media studies, huh?’ Jane said.
‘It’s a fairly new thing. There’s only a few of us serious about it, the rest are just skiving off.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Fyneham? Obsessive. Also, reckons he knows it all on account of his dad was a journalist, and he’s had tips from all his dad’s mates. Refuses to write for the school magazine, because it’s so unprofessional.’
‘Um… how long’s he been writing for Q magazine?’
‘In his dreams.’
‘No, Irene, listen… he’s the guy who interviewed Lol.’
Silence.
‘What are you saying, Jane…?’
‘Irene, I’m not kidding. I saw him with Lol. On the square. Taking his picture. It was definitely him, no question… That… I mean, that’s not very likely, is it?’
‘J.D. fucking Fyneham?’
‘Gave his name as Jack Fine, Lol said.’
Eirion stood on the kerb. The lights here weren’t terrific, but his face looked, like, black with rage. Eirion stepped back onto the pavement, turned back towards Bridge Street.
‘Right…’
‘No!’ Jane grabbed his arm. ‘Let’s… let’s think about this…’
As Lol didn’t have a table yet, they’d spread the notes out on the kitchen unit, from ‘vicerage’ to ‘your a sick man’.
‘Same writing,’ Merrily said. ‘No question. If it isn’t connected, it’s a bit of a coincidence.’
She was relieved that, without having left the house all day, Lol seemed to know more about this than she did, thanks to Gomer Parry. You could always count on Gomer — the crucial disc in the spine of the village since Lucy Devenish died. The fact that Gomer had been round, taken the initiative, made her feel a little better.
‘Or the writer simply reacts to events,’ Lol said. ‘An opportunist.’
‘Do you have any idea who it might conceivably be?’
Lol shook his head. ‘You?’
‘Well… yes.’
‘You do?’
‘Not the notes, but certainly the rumours. It’s a bit obvious, but… Siân Callaghan-Clarke knew everything, OK? I can see only one direct route from Ledwardine to Siân, and it goes through Saltash. Therefore it has to go via the surgery. Because, every week, Saltash goes jogging with Kent Asprey.’
‘Asprey told him?’
‘Breeding ground for germs and gossip, that surgery. Asprey would have been one of the first to know.’
‘I don’t get it. Does Asprey have anything against either of us?’
‘He’d pass it on to Saltash without thinking. A doctor thing.’
‘We can take it neither of them wrote these, then,’ Lol said.
‘Huh? Oh… too legible.’
‘Grammar too correct, also.’
They stood there in Lol’s kitchen, smiling at one another like fools, making light of it. Yeah, trivial, really, something and nothing.
But even though the power was connected now, the place was full of shadows. It was as if some great cosmic force — to which Merrily refused to put a name — had decided that she and Lol… this unlikely liaison was never going to be allowed to work out.
Unsurprisingly, the confrontation by the river and its aftermath had stripped the night of what passed for romance in Hereford, and Jane got taken home well before midnight.
Eirion — normally well balanced and philosophical to the point where you wanted to shake him — was seriously pissed off. She knew he’d been quietly committed for some time to building a career in the media, and the idea that a guy at school his age already had one… Driving back to Ledwardine, Eirion had conceded that it was just about conceivable that this Fyneham had contributed snippets, maybe even the odd concert review to Q. But an interview? A freaking interview?
She hadn’t seen him like this before — saying how he was going to crack this wide open, and he wasn’t going to wait till Monday, because if this bastard was scamming Lol…
Well, right. Enough shit had happened to Lol, and so J.D. Fyneham was on borrowed time with Jane. too. But she wouldn’t get in Eirion’s way on this; she’d go to Ludlow tomorrow with Mum, do the dutiful-daughter thing.
It was good to find, when she let herself into the vicarage, that Mum was still at Lol’s. She put the kettle on, went up to the apartment, raided her shelves for any books that might mention Ludlow and brought them down to the scullery, where she sat with Ethel and switched on the computer.
J. Watkins, pagan-consultant. She could very much live with that.
However, paganism-wise, apart from the siting of the church, there didn’t seem to be much happening in Ludlow itself… although there were more suggestions that the wider area had been significant in the Bronze Age. Over twenty prehistoric burial mounds had been found at Bromfield, a mile or two north of the town — the Bromfield Necropolis. Cool term.
She checked out the church tumulus again, downloading more detail.
The Irish saints whose remains were found inside the mound were identified as Cochel, Fercher and Ona, who had come to live in the area. However, holy relics were much prized in those days…
Et cetera, et cetera…
Mum had come in, was leaning over her shoulder.
‘It’s OK, I’m quite willing to accept they were more likely to have been the remains of three guys with big beards and horns on their helmets.’
Jane looked up. ‘You sound happier.’
‘We rationalized the situation.’
‘Lol’s OK with it?’
‘Yeah, Lol’s… more OK than I expected.’
Jane smiled and nodded. Best not to tell Mum about J.D. Fyneham until it was confirmed one way or the other. She pointed at the screen, which showed an aerial photo of Ludlow with the church and the castle vying for prominence and the church probably winning, even though the castle had much more ground and the church was crowded by streets on three sides.
‘I think we should maybe check out the church, before we see her,’ Jane said. ‘OK?’
‘But before that we should pop into our own church.’
Jane looked over her shoulder. ‘Why?’
‘I’m not making a big thing of this. I’d just like us to do St Pat’s breastplate and the Lord’s Prayer… if that’s OK?’
‘You think we need spiritual protection?’
‘There’s nothing lost.’
‘OK.’ Jane shrugged. ‘I’ve never been a chauvinistic pagan. But, like, you really think this achingly sad, faded, 1980s icon is a source of satanic evil?’
‘I’ll be honest — I don’t know. We don’t know what she’s collected over the years.’
‘No gold discs, that’s for sure,’ Jane said. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’
She thought of the last time they’d done something like this, before the Boy Bishop ceremony in Hereford Cathedral, back when Mick Hunter was Bishop and Mum was a novice exorcist. It had followed one of the biggest rows they’d ever had, and it seemed like half a lifetime ago, and it was good to think how much more adult they both were ab
out this kind of thing now.
‘Look,’ Mum said, ‘it’s not that I feel particularly insecure about assuming a role which admittedly is in… explicit denial of my Christianity… if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Didn’t say a thing.’
‘OK…’ Mum put a hand to her forehead. ‘I’m probably lying. Of course I feel insecure. And I really don’t know if it’s a good thing to have you along or not.’
‘I can watch your back,’ Jane said. ‘You know me.’
Mum rolled her eyes and winced at the pain this evidently caused. The swelling had gone down now, but it was still conspicuously a black eye.
The phone rang. They both stared at it.
‘Might be Lol?’ Jane said.
They carried on staring at it, because this was late for any kind of call, until the machine cut in. Then there was a man’s voice Jane didn’t recognize, a Northern kind of voice.
‘Mary… if you’re still up… Shit… I got a problem here. With Bell. I didn’t know who to—’
Mum picked up.
‘Jon?’
Jane could hear a sound of apparent relief, then a lot of gabbled talk, Mum listening, the computer screen turning her face mauve.
‘What about the police?’ Mum said. And then she said, ‘Isn’t there a cottage hospital?’ And then, after about half a minute, she said, ‘All right, I’ll come over,’ and put the phone down and stood there for a moment with her lips set into a tight line.
‘What?’ Jane said.
Mum let out a breath. ‘Jon Scole, the ghost-walk guy. She turned up on his doorstep, about half an hour ago. He’s got a flat over his shop, and there’s an alleyway and some steps, and she was on her hands and knees…’
‘Belladonna?’
‘She was doing her… walk, and they were waiting for her, where The Linney goes down towards St Leonards and the river. Dark, narrow, secluded…’
‘Who were?’
‘Seems to have been girls — women. They were waiting for her, and they started hurling abuse. And then they… they just beat her up.’
‘The women did?’
‘And she won’t have the police brought in, and her stepdaughter’s away for the weekend, and Jon Scole doesn’t know what to do.’
‘We’re going over there?’
‘Looks like I’m going,’ Mum said.