by Phil Rickman
‘You make it sound political. She doesn’t think like that. She offended you just by being there.’
‘Yes,’ Siân said. ‘I suppose she did.’
‘So when you were approached by the Dean, whose good friend Saltash had decided he should make his skills available to the Church—’
‘No. The approach came from Nigel himself.’
‘What did he tell you just now?’
‘He didn’t have to tell me anything. He’d walked out on a disturbed child. That was enough. Whatever Merrily may think of me, I’m still a Christian. Of sorts.’ She looked down at her hands, crossed on her abdomen. ‘So I’ve come back. And I don’t quite know what to do about this, Mr Robinson.’
‘You’re asking me? A recovering psychiatric patient? An abuser of women?’
Siân was silent.
‘They can’t find Merrily,’ Lol said. ‘And they think my name’s Longbeach and I’m qualified to dispel spirits. They’re now telling the girl that I’ll do it.’
‘Do what, exactly?’
‘I was thinking about an exorcism of place. Seems appropriate. Doesn’t target anything in particular. Lightens things. Takes away the tension and produces a feeling of calm. Psychology rather than superstition. Also it’s the only one I’ve ever watched.’
Siân looked into the pool of darkness in front of them. ‘Is that what Merrily would do?’
Lol shrugged.
‘I couldn’t,’ Siân said.
Lol didn’t say anything.
‘I’m not sure I’d know where to start.’
‘If you were planning to reform it, you must have done some research with the Deliverance handbook.’
‘It appalled me. It’s fundamentally medieval.’
‘This is a medieval town. We’re in a medieval castle.’
‘I don’t carry a copy, anyway.’
‘As I understand it,’ Lol said, ‘it’s only a set of guidelines, that book.’
‘One can hardly make it up.’
‘You don’t have to make it all up.’
‘Yes, I do realize that elements such as the Lord’s Prayer are mainstays of all Deliverance… ritual.’
‘Ritual,’ Lol said. ‘I quite like you when you talk dirty.’
Siân said, ‘I want to say… that I wouldn’t insult either of you with an apology, but sometimes one’s own gullibility results in the most… indefensible behaviour.’
‘You can get holy water from the church or somewhere,’ Lol said. ‘I was with Merrily at a hop-kiln in the Frome Valley, where something unpleasant had happened. A lot of the routine stayed with me. Good memory for verse and things. Something you develop in my line of work, otherwise you’re liable to dry up in the middle of a gig.’
‘Of course,’ Siân said. ‘What’s your first name? I did know…’
‘Lol. Laurence. Like the poor guy they named the church after. Someone once told me what happened to him, but it’s slipped my mind.’
‘He was roasted on a gridiron over a slow fire.’
‘Yes, now I remember,’ Lol said.
Tinted by the last of an invisible sun, clouds hung like a sandbank over the round tower that sat in the Inner Bailey like a great turreted cake.
‘For God’s sake,’ Siân said, ‘let’s not either of us be bloody stupid. Just have one last attempt to find Merrily.’
Leaving the church’s main door unlocked, Merrily entered through the huge stone porch and found the lights, the acoustics of the great church giving out a sigh as she went in. Entering a church alone at night was disturbing some secret alchemical process and, increasingly, she’d thought that Jane was probably right about this being at least partly connected with the site itself.
Partly a pagan thing, but it was all mixed up in those days.
She knelt in front of the altar in the chapel of St John the Evangelist, took off her fleece to expose the pectoral cross and prayed for the wisdom to see this through, to drop the curtain before the final act in an insane tragedy.
Prayed that a very cursory knowledge of forensic pathology acquired over two extraordinary years had not led her to the wrong conclusion about the death of Jonathan Scole.
Prayed for the courage to go up the tower and face the mad woman of Ludlow.
She had to. No one else would know how to approach it. If the police went up — as, surely, before long, the police would — it would all be horrifyingly over before the first of them put a boot on the parapet.
How long had Belladonna been here? Had she been behind that door when Merrily came in with George Lackland? Had she listened to George’s account of events leading up to their fevered coupling under the weathercock?
Merrily pulled on her fleece, opened the tower door into total darkness.
Obviously, there would be lights here — most likely bulkhead lights at intervals all the way to the top. But if she switched them on she’d be advertising herself.
Not good.
Only one solution. She padded into the nave, came back flicking her Zippo to light a tea-lantern from the gift shop and found she was no longer alone.
‘What are you doing?’ Lol said.
47
Point of Transition
The cluster of candles on a small tray on the floor lit up her face like some Renaissance Madonna’s over a glowing crib.
She was sitting with her back to the wall directly below one of the corner stone pinnacles, its conical, notched prong sharp against the last amber in the west.
The pole bearing the weathercock sprouted from the apex of a leaded pyramid that occupied most of this small platform in the sky, a duckboarded walkway around it. It felt isolated, scary if you didn’t like heights, which Lol didn’t, but the gathering of candlelight against the glistening backcloth of new night made it weirdly intimate.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Belladonna said.
She was wearing a long blue stockman’s coat, hanging open over something light-coloured.
Two hundreds steps did something unprecedented to the backs of your calves. Lol set the lantern down on the deck and sat down behind it, the two of them facing one another across the width of the tower.
‘If you wanted to be alone,’ he said, ‘you shouldn’t have gone walking around the battlements with your candles when everyone knows the church is closed.’
‘I’m not alone.’
‘You… been up here long?’
‘Stopped counting the chimes a while ago. Came in with the tourists, decided not to leave. I asked you a question.’
‘Lol. Lol Robinson,’ Lol said.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘We almost met once, at a festival. You wouldn’t remember. It wasn’t Glastonbury or anything…’
‘I’m not in the mood for reminiscence,’ Bell said. ‘Go away.’
The half-dozen stubby candles on the tray had probably been taken from the votive table in the church. In their glow, her face looked moist and quietly radiant. She hadn’t changed much, really. The lines seemed to have added movement, vibrancy. Lol felt an electric curiosity and the need to exercise it, as if the Saltash episode had freed him up for this. Do something.
Whatever she’d done, he didn’t want her to be insane.
‘You shouldn’t be alone,’ he said. ‘Not now.’
‘I’m not alone, I told you that.’
‘But they can’t talk to you.’
‘I can talk to them.’
‘They don’t listen,’ Lol said. ‘They don’t care.’
Merrily had said, She’ll be in a bad way. There’s only one reason she’s gone up there. If the police go up to try and bring her down, she won’t even wait for them to reach the top. Can you get that over to them?
‘Is she with you?’ Bell said. ‘Your girlfriend.’
‘No. She’s in the castle.’
‘Has she done it yet?’
Did she mean Sam? He didn’t reply.
‘It’s a gesture,’ Bell said. ‘A mea
ningless gesture. She’s wasting her time. What’s here’s too powerful.’
He realized that she must mean the exorcism. Maybe she didn’t know about Sam.
He saw that each of the stone pinnacles was tipped with a tiny cross. ‘But this is the centre of it, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘This is the soul of the town. The point of…’
‘Transition.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean by that. Would it… would you mind if I stood up? I think I can feel a bit of a cramp coming on.’
‘As long as you don’t come near me,’ Belladonna said.
‘Sure.’
Tell them to keep right away from her, Merrily had said. She might still have the knife.
This was after he’d reminded her that he couldn’t stand heights. She’d been worried about walking away from this. He’d told her he’d stay in the church and try and explain to the police if they showed up. Holding one another for a few seconds and then she’d walked away, kept looking back.
There was, of course, no reason the police would think Bell or anyone was up here, now the tray of candles was in the shadow of the walls.
Lol looked over the battlements once before turning away. Lights were coming on all around the church. When he turned his head, it was like a Catherine wheel, dizzying. He caught a thin, sharp smell from somewhere.
‘One hundred and thirty-five feet,’ Bell said. ‘I watched the police cars converging on Jonathan’s shop. Did you find him?’
‘Merrily and the Mayor. After the ironmonger told them his shop hadn’t been open all day.’
‘Garrulous old fool.’
‘She… what can I say about this?’
‘Rage gives you unlimited strength,’ Bell said.
He guessed she’d raised her voice to deal with the tremor, but it was there.
‘What had he done to you?’
‘I don’t have to answer your questions.’
‘No.’ He looked over the town to where arrows of pale pink were enfolded in a cloud bank over Clee Hill in the east. ‘I was talking to a couple of people about you. Tom Storey?’
‘How is he?’
‘Still working. Still a bit scary.’
Bell laughed. ‘He was always scared of me.’ She turned to look up at Lol. ‘Why aren’t you? What do you want?’
‘I’m just scared of what you might do. That is what you meant by the point of transition, isn’t it?’
She didn’t reply. He felt the hours she’d been up here had been spent coming down from something, some wild and terrifying trip she couldn’t quite believe she’d made.
‘You knew about Scole’s parents, I suppose. How they died?’
A pause, then she sighed.
‘You mean his adoptive parents? Or his parents?’
He stared at her. She was watching a distant plane, barely audible, crossing a clear patch of night sky like a firefly.
‘Jonathan’s father was a man called Eric Bryers,’ she said.
Lol gripped one of the battlements.
‘Bloody junkie tracked him down,’ Bell said. ‘Vindictive little smackhead bastard.’
‘But…’
He watched the plane disappear into cloud, emerge the other side. There were two versions of this story. Moira Cairns had told him the baby had died. It was Tom who’d maintained she’d given up the child for adoption on learning she had a recording contract.
But Tom was neurotic — his version had been the least likely.
‘Scole was your son?’
‘Eric tracked him down a couple of years ago, not long before he died.’ Bell pulled her coat across her knees and gazed into the mesh of candlelight. ‘The revelation rather altered Jonathan’s view of himself. Or, I suppose, he would have said it confirmed what he’d always felt. His adoptive parents were working the clock round in their seedy little greasy spoon and just wanted a son who’d take over the business — perhaps buy another greasy spoon — so they could retire to Morecambe or some other windswept purgatory. Sent him to college to learn business studies. All desperately short of glamour. He hated it. Thought he’d been born for better.’
‘Especially when he found out who his mother was, I imagine,’ Lol said. ‘And what his mother had… denied him.’
‘Oh yes, he hated me. And presumably Eric filled him up with bile before he… did what he did.’
‘Jumped from a high building.’
‘You ever work with Eric, Lol?’
‘Never.’
‘I saw him last when he came back to play bass on my determinedly faithful version of “Gloomy Sunday”. I was told he carried a copy with him everywhere, like a form of temptation.’ Bell laughed, far back in her throat. ‘Like a secret agent with a poison capsule. But, of course, that’s the sort of person Eric was. Jonathan wouldn’t have known that.’
‘Not a lot to discover on the Internet about Eric, I suppose. Not like you. That would’ve been a serious voyage of discovery.’
Cuttings everywhere, Merrily had said, face twisting at the images in her head. Papers, fanzines, website printouts… scattered over his body like some kind of sick confetti.
‘Oh yes,’ Bell said. ‘He’d compiled quite a dossier on the woman who’d deprived him of a life in various mansions… the California coast… the company of rock stars… unlimited lines of coke, strings of delicious girlfriends. Leaving him with a dreary business-studies course and a future serving burgers to fucking truck drivers.’
‘And then he followed you here…’
‘He’d attempted, indirectly, to contact me before he came here. An approach was made, through some agency, to my solicitor from someone claiming to be my son. I told her it was a try-on because my son was dead. Anyway, I refused to meet him. What was the point? I gave birth to him, that was all.’
‘And gave him away for a career.’
‘Lol…’ For the first time her face registered pain. ‘I gave him away because I didn’t expect to see him grow up. The one certainty in my life had always been premature death. What he didn’t know was that I’d made financial provision for him. My will’s always included a substantial bequest to my surviving son.’
‘It wasn’t money he wanted, though, was it? He had money. Like you said, he just wanted to be part of your life.’
‘Well, I didn’t want him. Certainly not after meeting him. He was crass, he was—’
‘Probably the greatest living authority on you. He got to the heart of all your obsessions. Putting himself in a situation where your paths were bound to cross. Buying into the ghost-walk.’
‘No! No, he—’ There was a small breeze like a puff of breath. Bell looked up, smiled faintly. ‘Here’s someone…’
Lol blinked.
‘Listen,’ Bell said, ‘he never told me who he was and I… even when I suspected, I said nothing. There was no future in it. Every time I saw him I saw Eric. Besides, I hardly wanted a murderer—’
‘You really think he was?’ Hadn’t seemed like a murderer to Merrily. Not even a murderer by proxy. He’s… driven. A lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm… likeable. ‘Rather than just a victim of rumours?’
‘He was…’ Bell came to her feet and teetered forward as though she was on stage, a little stoned and about to grasp a mike stand. ‘He was a despicable murderer. He destroyed the most important thing in my life.’
Lol didn’t move. Bell’s voice dropped to a hiss.
‘That boy wouldn’t fall off the Keep. He knew every stone of that castle. He was as sure-footed as a goat. And the suicide theory — that he was afraid to go back to the bullies in Hereford — that’s shit, too. His mother must have told him about our arrangement. His mistake was to tell Jonathan.’
Bell plunged her hands into the pockets of her long coat and wafted it tightly across her, turning away and making the candle flames shiver as if the tower itself was shaking.
Lol thought of what he’d learned from Merrily and what he’d read. It made sense: Jonathan Scole watching Bell form an
increasingly intimate relationship with the history boy — whom he had introduced to her, whom he’d made a part of his ghost-walk just to get close to the mother who’d rejected him. Rejected him twice, and now…
… Now the final insult: the adoption of a son.
Lol thought about Andy Mumford and his Plascarreg theories. If this was true, then Mumford was sailing dangerously close to the wrong wind.
‘Bell…’
She turned towards him, strands of white-gold hair across one cheek.
‘When exactly did you come to this conclusion?’ Lol asked.
‘I don’t know. Been staring me in the face for… It came to a head last night. I fell. I was walking… in the churchyard, among the yews, and I fell. Hit my head on a root. I was half stunned and suddenly bitterly angry. Everything was falling apart, on this night of all— I decided on impulse to go to his flat and confront him and… and he was drunk. I told him I’d been attacked in the street. He thought… the crass bastard thought I wanted to sleep with him — so like his miserable father. He said he was going to phone your… Mary. So I walked out.’
‘And then Merrily came.’
‘Found me singing under the castle. It’s the only way I stay sane on nights like this. Singing to Marion. Singing “Wee Willie Winkie” to… Anyway, he must have followed us back. He saw me put the… the mandolin case in the yew tree. And then he came back with a crowbar or something and he forced his way in and he took it.’
She bent down and moved the tray of candles to one side. Not much left of some of them now, flames shrinking down into half an inch of hollowing wax. And Lol saw that the tray had not been on the floor itself but on a small black musical-instrument case, which she lifted now and cradled in her arms.
The mandolin case.
She took it to the battlements. It was almost dark now.
‘You’ll have to go soon,’ Bell said. ‘I can’t let the candles burn away.’
‘Bell… it makes no sense.’
‘It’s all the sense there’s ever been,’ she said. ‘I’ve always had what I regarded as a temporary life. All I’m looking for in death is a kind of permanence.’
She was on her feet, the heavy coat hanging open to reveal a long, cream-coloured dress, soiled now with large, conspicuous stains, their colours indeterminate in the candlelight. Standing close to the wall and hugging the mandolin case to her breast, she began singing, in a tremulous little-girl voice.