by Phil Rickman
17
Detestable to the Lord
When she was about two, maybe three, someone had given Jane this vintage nursery-rhyme book, made out of thick cloth, with serrated edges to the pages. On the front was a watercolour picture of a little girl in an apron who had the saddest face Jane had ever seen. Both the little girl and the book itself used to make her feel deeply upset, and she remembered being convinced it had been owned by a child who had been so unhappy that she’d just died of it.
This was one of her earliest memories, and it faded up when she and Clancy padded into Stanner Hall and saw Amber Foley standing at the top of the kitchen steps, wearing a vinyl apron with a watercolour-type picture on it of a cottage on a hill. Amber hadn’t heard them come in, and she was staring across at the closed door of the residents’ lounge. Her hair was pulled back and her skin looked like thin white eggshell about to crack.
Jane thought of life-threatening misery and a voice on the phone. She swallowed. Amber saw Clan and jumped, then blinked and smiled — weak sun reflected in a stagnant pond.
‘Oh, Clancy… I’ve sorted out a table for you in the kitchen to do your homework. Your mum says—’ Becoming aware of Jane, Amber looked bewildered. Like, if this is Jane it must be Friday.
‘I left some things, Amber, on Saturday. School books.’
‘Oh, Jane, we could’ve got Natalie to send them with Clan—’
Amber looked hard at her, obviously aware that Jane would have known this. One of the wall-lamp bulbs had blown, and unfamiliar shadows made the lobby look dull and brownish and semi-derelict. Good location, crap place to live. How often had Amber stood alone here, wondering how she’d ever got herself into this? And realizing, of course, that she hadn’t; Ben had.
Amber flicked a glance at Clancy, who said, ‘I’d better get on with it. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jane,’ and meekly walked past Amber and down the steps to the kitchen. Doesn’t want to know, Jane thought. If there’s something bad or contentious going down, she just doesn’t want to know about it. We have absolutely nothing in common.
When they could hear the kid’s footsteps on the kitchen flags, Jane nodded at the closed door of the residents’ lounge.
‘The White Company, right?’
‘Ben’s in there with them. And Natalie. He’d be better off married to Nat, don’t you think?’
‘No, that’s ridiculous.’
‘You know what they’re doing, don’t you?’ Amber said.
‘Well, yeah, I… You’ve got a problem with it?’
Amber straightened up and flattened a bulge in her apron. ‘You knew they were coming, didn’t you? That’s why you’re here.’
‘Well, no, actually.’
‘You couldn’t keep away.’
‘No, it—’ Oh hell, no point in letting this fester. ‘OK, if you want the absolute truth, Amber, the real reason I came is because I happened to pick up the phone last night. When you tried to call my mum?’
There was the jittery sound of polite laughter from behind the lounge door.
‘And when you recognized my voice,’ Jane said, ‘you got off the line as quick as you could. Only I’m quite good with voices.’
‘Jane, I—’
‘So if it’s something about me, I’d like to know, OK? Because I haven’t told her anything about all this, and it could get me in a lot of bother.’
Amber’s doll’s cheeks were colouring.
Jane sighed. ‘I suppose Ben told you what she did. Like, apart from being just a vicar?’
Amber nodded, losing what might have been a grateful smile inside a grimace.
‘Only, I didn’t know you were religious,’ Jane said.
‘I’m not. Not really. Just neurotic.’
Jane gestured at the lounge door. ‘About that?’
There was the sound of more merriment, Ben’s peal obvious.
‘None of this worries him in the slightest,’ Amber said. ‘He loves it, for the drama. He doesn’t believe in it for one minute, though obviously he won’t tell them that — he’ll be hamming it up in there for all he’s worth. It’s how guys like him and Antony persuade people to do things on camera that are going to get them ridiculed in thousands of homes. Because they don’t laugh. At the time.’
Jane’s eyebrows went up. ‘They’re not doing it now, are they — trying for Conan Doyle?’
‘I don’t know. I just think people like that are irresponsible, and the point is: it’s not their house, is it? It’s ours, God help us.’ Amber moved away from the vicinity of the lounge towards the reception area. ‘Look, I know it’s money, much needed. I know it’s part of Ben’s Great Scheme. But getting cranks like that involved — that’s the pits.’
‘You rang Mum for, like, support? Did you get through to her in the end?’
Amber swallowed a breath. ‘When Ben told me what your mother did, it seemed a bit too coincidental — like a sign. We neurotics, you know? No, I didn’t try again. Not after you answered the phone.’
‘Well…’ Jane raised her gaze to the flaking frieze around the walls. ‘If you’d wanted support you’d have got it, no problem. Why didn’t you just ask me? I could’ve told you exactly what she’d say. Like, at some point she’d drag out a slab of the Old Testament. “Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practises divination or sorcery or witchcraft or pisses about with spells…” blah, blah… “Or who is a medium or spiritist or consults with the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.” ’
‘That seems fairly unequivocal to me,’ Amber said. ‘Of course, I’m only a cook…’
‘Amber, for heaven’s sake, it’s Old Testament. You can find bits of the OT that suggest blokes are entitled to strangle their wives for being unfaithful. It was political — anything paranormal, the priests of Jehovah had to keep it to themselves, or bang goes the power base. But trying to contact poor old Arthur… I mean, come on.’
‘I just—’ Amber folded her arms. ‘Like I said, I’m not particularly religious. And, God knows, I’m certainly not psychic, although I don’t entirely doubt that other people can perceive things that are beyond me.’
‘Well, I have pagan instincts,’ Jane said with relish, ‘and I believe there’s masses in this area to be sensed by anyone with the balls to…’
She let the sentence trail, realizing how smug and insulting it must have sounded.
‘Well—’ An uncharacteristic anger glowed momentarily like filaments in Amber’s eyes. ‘For all your pagan instincts, Jane, you couldn’t get out of that room quick enough, could you?’
‘Room?’
‘The tower room. I didn’t particularly want to put you in that one, because we’d had a couple of people already who— But Ben said, Oh, don’t worry about young Jane. Far too down-to-earth. Jane’ll be fine.’
‘So you… know about that.’ She’d had the impression that Ben had not told Amber, who was negative enough about this place already.
‘And wish I didn’t,’ Amber said. ‘Ben laughs. He says every hotel has a room like that, and some people would even pay extra to sleep in it. If you remember, what you told us at the time was that you weren’t used to sleeping in a big room.’
‘Well, I—’
‘Only I happened to recall you telling me when you first came how you’d turned a huge attic at Ledwardine vicarage into your apartment and painted some big coloured squares on the walls — like some famous abstract artist?’
‘Mondrian.’ Oh God, she couldn’t even keep track of her own lies. ‘All right, I had a bad night. I felt… not very well. I mean, I never know when it’s my imagination. I’m sorry, Amber.’
‘Of course, I didn’t actually know at the time that it was Hattie Chancery’s room,’ Amber said.
Jane flung a glance into the well of the hall, where the staircase twisted out of sight. There were certain phrases you could feel like fingers up your spine — what Ben would call a frisson — and this w
as one: Hattie Chancery’s Room. The possessive. Present-tense. Oh God.
‘The Chancerys were the family who built this place, right?’
‘I think their name was originally Chance, but they altered it to sound more distinguished. Incomers from the Black Country. Industrial wealth, delusions of grandeur. Most of the big Victorian homes in this area seem to have been built by rich Midlanders, who wanted their own castles. The names are usually a giveaway. Big houses around here tend to be called “court”, from the Welsh. But they called this Stanner Hall to—’
‘Yeah, right. So Hattie Chancery was the one who killed her husband?’
‘So you knew.’
‘Not then.’
‘Because Ben only told me about this yesterday. He’d known for some time, but…’ Amber’s voice was brittle. ‘He thought the little woman might be frightened.’
‘But it wasn’t in that room, was it?’
‘Not the murder. That was in the grounds, I think. It isn’t talked about much. Probably overshadowed by the War at the time, and she was mentally ill, apparently.’
‘A madwoman?’
‘No, Jane, I think we’d all prefer mentally ill.’
‘So, like, what did people see in the room?’
‘Oh… one man said he saw the shape of a woman against the window and smelt— Look I’m not going into this now, all right?’
‘But that’s the reason you’re unhappy about the White Company, right?’
‘I just don’t think this is a happy place. But then, I’m only a cook.’
‘What did he smell, this guy?’
‘Alcohol… beer, I think.’
‘You thought maybe Mum could do something about this?’
‘Jane, look, it was just a knee-jerk thing. I was angry, all right?’
‘She’d just warn you not to let the White Company in. And you’d go along with that, but Ben—’
‘Shhh!’
Amber was looking over Jane’s shoulder. Jane turned and saw the lounge door opening, and Ben gliding out, his hair sheened back, his slim, black Edwardian jacket hanging loose. His Holmes kit. He’d worn part of the Holmes kit to welcome the White Company. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
‘Amber, where’s—? Jane!’ Ben looked fit, she thought, and energized, and showed no particular surprise that she was here on a Monday, only satisfaction that she was. ‘Jane, you wouldn’t by any chance have brought along that little Handycam Largo gave you to humiliate me?’
‘Well, actually—’
‘In which case, fetch it, darling.’ Ben clapped his hands. ‘Fetch it at once. We’ve got Alistair here, the medium, and we’re testing various rooms to work out which is the best place to try and contact, ah…’
‘And where are you proposing to go next?’ Amber said.
‘Amber, it’s a positive thing,’ Ben said casually.
‘Oh no,’ Amber said.
‘Amber—’
‘Understand this, Ben.’ Something passed swiftly, like the shadow of a small bird, across Amber’s white doll’s face. ‘Those people will not go into my fucking kitchen.’
‘Maybe I could just describe these events to you without any comment,’ Merrily said. ‘And then perhaps you could just tell me what you think.’ Her ear was aching from phone use.
‘So formal,’ Canon Jeavons said.
‘I’ve been talking to a cop. It’s all forms and recorded interviews with them, now. All about covering yourself, and isn’t the Church going the same way?’
‘Oh happy day,’ Jeavons said. ‘All right, go ahead, Merrilee. Lay it on me.’
Inside her head the chorus started up.
Forgive me, this guy sounds like a nutter.
My advice, for what it’s worth, is to avoid this man and all he stands for.
If anyone’s on the edge of a crisis, Jeavons has been known to tip them over.
There was no harm in listening to what he had to say. The fact was, if she’d never met Jeavons she wouldn’t have dug into Dexter’s history, and she wouldn’t have uncovered what might be the underlying cause of his condition.
‘It’s about three boys from the Belmont area of Hereford.’ The brief, bleak notes in the sermon book lay in the lamplight pooled next to the Bible. ‘Two of them are brothers — Darrin and Roland Hook, aged thirteen and nine. Dexter Harris is their cousin. This is seventeen years ago, and he’s twelve.’
Seventeen years ago. The year Jane was born. The year she quit university and married Sean. They said she could come back and get her degree, but she’d had a feeling at the time that this wouldn’t happen. Law: it had never felt right — why on earth was she reading law? Parental pressure, at the time, and the influence of Uncle Ted, family solicitor. It’s a good degree to have, Merrily. Whatever you decide to do with your life, it will always be there for you.
Wasted years.
‘Belmont’s an expanding suburb south of the city, close to open country. Less so now, since they built the all-night Tesco and the drive-in McDonald’s and hundreds more houses and the Barnfield Trading estate, but you get the idea. You keep going and you’re on the open road down to Abergavenny.’
She was seeing it as she talked: this widened country lane above the Golden Valley, which always seemed so aptly named on summer evenings with harvested fields aglow as if lit from underneath.
This had all happened on a warm evening in August, approaching dusk. The three kids were exploring a half-finished building site, where some of the houses were already lived in. Darrin had a plan.
Gorra wire coat-hanger down his pants, Bliss had told her. So it wasn’t an impulse thing, and he chose well, just like a pro: new house with high fences. People have gone out, leaving their second car in the drive. A gift.
Darrin had learned the techniques from a boy at school — how to force the window and then apply the coat-hanger to the pop-up locks. Then the hot-wire bit. The only drawback was that Darrin didn’t know how to drive.
Which was where Dexter came in. ‘Taller than the others,’ Merrily told Jeavons. ‘An unusually big boy for twelve, so he could reach the pedals, no problem. Dozens of drivers must have seen this Fiesta weaving about, but there weren’t many mobile phones in those days, so it was a while before the police got on to them. Not that you could miss them by now, because it was getting dark and Dexter hadn’t thought about lights.’
‘Already I’m sensing no happy ending,’ Jeavons said.
‘The police picked up the trail on the hill down to Allensmore, when they were picking up speed. Dexter subsequently told the police that he’d been afraid to brake. He was once on his bike and went over the handlebars, and he had the idea that if he did it now he and Darrin would go through the windscreen — certainly a possibility as neither had a seat belt on. By now the police are behind them, siren going. Not too close — volatile situation, car full of kids.’
Dexter’s well hyped-up now, Frannie Bliss said, the traffic lads blasting away behind them, blue lights going. He’s gorra do something. Decides the best thing is to get off the big road, dump the car and run like buggery. Sees this turning up ahead, on the other side, into this narrow little country lane, bus shelter on the corner. Decides to go for it. Just like that. No indication. Big lorry coming towards them, but Dexter reckons he’s got plenty of time. An experienced motorist now — driven all of six miles on his own.
Stupid little gobshite spins the wheel, sends the Fiesta whizzing across the road. Amazingly, he doesn’t turn it over, but it’s well out of control, as you’d expect, and naturally he’s missing the turning, heading straight for the hedge. Now even at this point, if he’d left well alone, the car would just’ve gone through the hedge into the field where, as long as it avoided trees, it’d just be a cuts-and-bruises job.
Unfortunately, Dexter panics, stands on the brakes and the Fiesta stalls on the kerb, directly in the path of the oncoming lorry. Haulage vehicle. Melvyn doesn’t recall the exact tonnage, which is rare for Melvyn, but th
e driver was a Mr Evans, from Newport, carrying steel, and afterwards Mr Evans gives up his job, telling the coroner that he’ll never drive a lorry again as long as he lives.
‘The lorry had collided with the rear half of the Fiesta,’ Merrily said, ‘flattening it into the bus shelter, which collapsed. Both front doors sprang open, so Dexter and Darrin both walked away. Darrin had a broken arm, Dexter was mildly concussed. Roland, however…’
Think of the forgotten sardine in the tin, Bliss had said brutally, after the tin’s been trodden on.
‘His parents were told it was instantaneous,’ Merrily said, ‘meaning he didn’t suffer. Which, as far as physical pain goes, may be true but disregards the state of helpless terror he’d have been in for several minutes before the crash.’
‘Yes,’ Jeavons said softly.
‘Probably the last thing Dexter would’ve heard before the impact was the final screams of his nine-year-old cousin. How much of the carnage he saw in the back of the car, we don’t know.’
‘What happen to Dexter?’
‘Not much. First offence. Appeared in court as a juvenile and therefore wasn’t named. Pleaded guilty to charges related to taking and driving away and causing death by dangerous driving. No previous convictions. Said very little in court apart from to apologize and burst into tears. The view of the court seems to have been that having to live with this for the rest of his life was a bigger punishment than anything the justice system could inflict.’
‘Not always a good decision,’ Jeavons said. ‘Incarceration puts a time limit on it. Life goes on.’
‘Certainly split the family. There was an awful scene at the funeral — Roland’s mother screaming that Dexter was a murderer who should be in jail. Maybe forgetting that Darrin was the instigator, the one who’d learned how to break into cars. But Darrin couldn’t drive, so it was Dexter who killed Roland.’
‘His grandma mention any of this?’
‘His auntie. Alice. Not a word, but it probably explains why Dexter’s never been near a church since. His parents apparently felt compelled to move to the other side of Hereford, and he went to a different school.’