Midwinter of the Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Listen to me: it were playing with us, then. It’s saying, I’m here. I’m awake. You asked me what I believe. I believe there’s an active squatter in there.’

  ‘Suppose it was subjective… Suppose… the c… candles… Suppose that was one of us?’

  ‘Then it was acting through one of us. You’ll need extra prayers tonight, you know what I mean?’

  ‘But what do we do, Huw?’

  ‘A negative presence in the Cathedral itself? We might well be looking at a major exorcism, which in a great cathedral would require several of us, probably including – God forbid – the Bishop himself. Meanwhile, my advice to you, for what it’s worth, is not to go in there alone.’

  ‘Huw, I—’

  ‘Not by night nor day. Not alone.’

  Her forehead throbbed. She thought of what Mick Hunter had said that seemingly long-ago afternoon in the Green Dragon. I NEVER want to hear of a so-called major exorcism. It’s crude, primitive and almost certainly ineffective.

  She wished, at that moment, that Huw had taken the advice of the Dean’s Chapter, and left the Bishop’s pussycat well out of this. She felt she would never have the nerve to light a candle again.

  ‘You know what you’ve got to do now, don’t you, Merrily?’

  ‘Go and talk to Mick.’

  He put his big hand on her shoulder. ‘He likes you. You’re his favourite appointee. Tell him what’s squatting in his Cathedral. Tell him what’s got to happen.’

  45

  All There Is

  FOR THE FIRST time, it looked like a real palace. There were many lights on, hanging evenly and elegantly in the foggy night. Several cars were parked tightly up against the deep Georgian windows.

  Merrily hesitated.

  Well, of course she did.

  She remembered the end of day three of the Deliverance course in the Brecon Beacons – the lights in the chapel going off, the video machine burning out. Odd how all these power fluctuations seemed to occur around Huw.

  First law of Deliverance: always carry plenty of fuse wire.

  She’d wanted him to come with her to the Palace. Got to be joking, lass. A lowly rural rector from the Church in Wales creeps on to Hunter’s patch and diagnoses a demonic presence in the man’s own Cathedral? That would get me a big row, and a stiff complaint to the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon. And certainly no action. That would be the worst of it – no action at all. Best he doesn’t know about me. That way, if he doesn’t get involved, happen I can organize something on the quiet. Be a bit of a risk, mind, but it’s a critical situation.

  She’d wanted Huw to come and stay the night at Ledwardine vicarage, but he’d said he had to think. First put some mountains between himself and Hereford, then think and meditate – and pray.

  She’d watched him walk away under the darkened Santas, into the fog, winding his scarf around his neck. And she wondered…

  Fourth one in two years, Huw had said as she’d looked into the scorched mouth of the ruined video. It’s a right difficult place, this.

  And It were playing with us, he’d said just now, as the serial snuffing of votive candles threw shiver after shiver into her, convincing Merrily, without a second thought, of his claim that there was a squatter in the Cathedral.

  She stood cold and doubt-haunted on the lawn before the Palace, her shopping bag full of supporting documents lying on the grass by her feet. The night seemed as heavy as Huw’s greatcoat around her.

  Suppose it was him? What, after all, was a priest but a licensed magician?

  And where did this squatter story have its origins? Dobbs, perhaps – the man who had made a point of never once speaking to her directly; who had sent her that single cryptic note; who had made her a little present of Denzil Joy. A man, too, with whom Huw had spent long hours. Had they talked about Merrily? Huw hadn’t said – but how could they have avoided it?

  She looked up to where the sky began, below the tops of the chimney stacks.

  Help me!

  She was only aware that she must have shouted it aloud into the unyielding night when the white door opened, and there, against the falling light was…

  ‘Merrily? Is that you?’

  The Bishop himself, in tuxedo and a bow-tie of dark purple.

  ‘Merrily!’

  ‘I…’ She started forward. ‘Can I see you, Bishop?’

  ‘Mick,’ he reminded her softly. ‘Come in, Merrily.’

  She felt the pressure of his hand between her shoulder blades, and found herself in the chandeliered splendour of the Great Hall. Doric pilasters, a domed ceiling at the far end, like God’s conservatory. She was blinded for a moment, disoriented.

  The Bishop blurred past her to a table, pulling out two velvetbacked chairs.

  ‘No,’ she said, her nerve gone. ‘This is terrible. I’m interrupting something. Could I come back early tomorow, perhaps? Oh, God, tomorrow’s Sunday…’

  ‘Merrily, relax. It’s a perfect, timely interruption of a terminally tedious dinner party with some oleaginous oafs from the City Council and their dreary wives. Val will sparkle all over them until I return. Sit. You look terribly cold. A drink?’

  ‘No, please…’ She sat down, feeling like a tramp next to the Bishop, with his poise and his elegance. ‘I just need your help, Mick.’

  He listened without a word. Twenty minutes and no interruptions.

  She talked and talked – except when she dried up.

  Or fumbled in her bag for Mrs Leather – a book of local folklore: collected nonsenses.

  Or for the report by the late Mr Havergal on the opening of the Cantilupe tomb in the mid-nineteenth century, an eyewitness description of which it had been considered imprudent to publish.

  Or for her cigarette packet, which she gripped for maybe ten seconds, as though the nicotine might be absorbed through her stimulated sweat glands and made to flow up her arm, before she let it drop back into her bag.

  It was an impromtu sermon given before an expert audience. A dissertation combining medieval theology with the elements of some Hollywood fantasy-melodrama. An exercise in semicontrolled hysteria.

  ‘I can’t… won’t… ask you to believe the unbelievable. But I’m trying to do the job that you asked me to do… although… it’s… led in directions I could never have imagined it would. Not so soon, anyway. Probably not ever, if I’m honest. But it’s a job where you have to rely on instinct, where you never know what is truth and what’s…’

  Tests. Lies. Disinformation.

  ‘And I’m reporting back to you in confidence, because those are the rules. And you’re probably thinking what’s the silly bitch doing disturbing me at home on a Saturday night, with dinner guests and…’

  Looking up at him, wanting some help, but getting no reaction.

  ‘You must wonder: is she overtired? Has she gone bonkers? The bottom line’ – looking up at the twinkling chandelier, half wishing it would fall and smash into ten thousand crystal shards; that something would happen to make him afraid – ‘is that I believe we should do this cleansing. And that you should be there. And the Dean, too. And as many canons as you feel you can trust.’

  The Bishop’s expression did not alter. He neither nodded nor shook his head.

  ‘It could be carried out in total secrecy, late at night or, better still, early in the morning, at four or five o’clock. It would take less than a couple of hours. It’s… Consider it a precaution. If nothing happens, then either it was successful or it wasn’t necessary. I don’t care if people say later that it wasn’t necessary. It doesn’t matter that…’

  A door opened and Val Hunter stood there in black, dramatic. ‘Michael?’

  ‘Five minutes.’ He lifted one hand.

  With a single, long breath down her nostrils, Val went away without even a glance at Merrily.

  The Bishop waited until his wife’s footsteps had receded, then he spoke. ‘Have you finished, Merrily?’

  She nodded, dispirited.

&
nbsp; ‘Who was it?’ he said. ‘Come on, it’s either Dobbs, or the Dean – or, more likely, Owen. Who put you up to this?’

  All three, she thought miserably. ‘Circumstances,’ she said at last. ‘A lot of individually meaningless circumstances.’

  He gave a small sigh. ‘But I’d rather you didn’t list them.’

  ‘All I can say is I believe my suggestion is valid. We can’t afford to take any risk.’

  ‘Risk of what?’

  ‘Of the Cathedral being contaminated.’

  ‘Tell me, Merrily, who would conduct this major exorcism?’

  ‘That would be your decision.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘of course.’ He shifted position, looking out through the long windows to the floodlight beams across the lawns, turned to milk chocolate by the fog. ‘May I list once again your items of evidence? From the felling of Thomas Dobbs in the North Transept, to the apparently supernatural extinguishing of two votive candles.’

  ‘I never said any of that was evidence.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. You were merely reporting to me. The decision must be mine – on the advice of my female exorcist, the appointment of whom I was strongly advised against.’

  ‘At the time, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘You didn’t? You really didn’t? Oh come, Merrily…’

  ‘Silly of me. Arrogant, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Bishop said, ‘that’s certainly how it’s going to look when someone leaks to the media that, within weeks of your appointment, you advised me to have my cathedral formally exorcized.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If you want to go the whole hog, why not have the ceremony conducted entirely by – and in the presence only of – women priests? Obviously, that wouldn’t offend me, being a radical.’

  ‘Mick, you know there’s nothing political—’

  ‘Nothing political? Are you quite serious? Tell me, Merrily, do you want to become the subject of a hate campaign in the diocese, as well as receiving an unflattering profile in the Observer and any number of politely vitriolic letters to the Church Times? Do you want to move, quite quickly, to a new and challenging ministry on the other side of the country?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And do you want to damage me?’

  Silence. A dismal, head-shaking silence.

  Merrily said, ‘So you’d like me to resign?’

  Mick Hunter grinned, teeth as white as the Doric pilaster behind him. ‘Certainly not. I’d far prefer you to go home, have a good night’s sleep, and forget this ill-advised visit ever occurred. It isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me, and it won’t be the last time it happens to you. Let it serve to remind you that people like us will always have opponents, enemies, within the Church.’

  ‘Mick, don’t you think this is far too complicated and too… bizarre to be a set-up?’

  ‘Oh, Merrily, I can see your experience of being set up is really rather limited. My advice, if you’re approached again by the source of this insane proposal, is that you tell him you questioned the wisdom of informing me and decided against it.’

  ‘Making it my decision to say no to an exorcism.’

  ‘It’s a responsible role you now have, Merrily. Learning discrimination is part of it. Or you could go ahead with it, without informing me – which would, of course, were I or anyone else to find out, be very much a matter for resignation. But I don’t think you’d do that, because you don’t really believe any of this idiocy any more than I do. Do you, Merrily?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She put her face in her hands, pulling the skin tight. ‘I don’t know.’

  Mick stood up and helped her to her feet. ‘Get some sleep, eh? It’s been a difficult week.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘How can I know?’

  ‘Of course you don’t know.’ He put an arm around her shoulders, peered down into her face, then said, as if talking to a child, ‘That’s what they’re counting on, Merrily, hmm? Look, if I don’t go back and be pleasant to the awful councillors, Val will… be very unhappy.’

  At the door, she sought out and held his famous blue eyes.

  ‘Will you at least think about it?’

  ‘I’ve already forgotten about it, Merrily,’ he said. ‘Good night. God bless.’

  The fog seemed to be lifting, but the grass was already stiff with frost. The Cathedral was developing a hard edge. She crossed the green and walked into Church Street. The door in the alleyway beside the shop called John Barleycorn was opening as she reached it.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello, flower.’

  Jane stood outside in the alley, no coat on, her dark hair pushed back behind her ears. Face upturned, she was shivering a little.

  ‘I lied.’

  They stood about five feet apart. Merrily thought: We all lie. Especially to ourselves.

  ‘I don’t have anywhere else to sleep,’ Jane said. ‘I don’t actually know many people at all. I, uh, don’t even know the people I thought I knew. So… like… the only friends I have are Lol and you. I… I hope…’ She began to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m really, really, really…’

  Merrily’s eyes filled up.

  ‘I think there must be a whole load of things,’ Jane snuffled, ‘that I haven’t even realized I did, yet. Like all the time I was doing this stuff – selling you up the river. I told the bitch everything. I told her about everything. And when I said that to you about selling my—’

  ‘You didn’t,’ Merrily said very firmly. ‘I didn’t hear you say anything, flower.’

  As they clung together on the already slippery cobbles, she thought: This is all that matters, isn’t it? This is all there is.

  46

  The Turning

  SHE WAS LIKE an elderly bushbaby in some ankle-length mohair thing in dark brown. She was waiting for him in the residents’ lounge, where they were now alone – all the others at church, she said, ‘bargaining for an afterlife’. She did not want to know anything about him.

  ‘Waste of time at my age, Robinson; it’s all forgotten by lunchtime.’

  Lol didn’t think so. Her eyes were diamond-bright behind round glasses a bit like his own.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I prefer to make up my own mind.’ And she peered at him, eyes unfocusing. ‘Oh, what a confused boy you are. So confused, aren’t you? And blocked, too. There’s a blockage in your life. I should like to study you at length, but you haven’t the time, have you? Not today. You’re in a frightful hurry.’

  Lol nodded, bemused.

  ‘Slow down,’ she said. ‘Think things out, or you’ll land in trouble. Especially dealing with the Purefoys. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Presumably Sorrel Podmore had given her the background over the phone. Which was good: it saved time.

  She’d collected all the cushions from the other chairs and had them piled up around her. She was like a tiny, exotic dowager.

  ‘What do you know about the Purefoys?’

  ‘Virtually nothing.’

  ‘That’s a good place from which to start. It’s a very, very unpretty story.’

  Jane had stood at the bedroom window for a long time, still feeling – in spite of everything – an urge to salute the Eternal Spiritual Sun.

  Without this and the other exercises, without the Pod, there was a large spiritual hole in her life. She wasn’t sure she was ready for Mum’s God. Although part of her wanted to go to morning service, if only to show penitence and solidarity, another part of her felt it would be an empty gesture – hypocrisy.

  And, anyway, she was, like, burning up with anger, and if the Eternal Spiritual Sun – wherever the bastard was these days – could add fuel to that, this was OK by Mystic Jane.

  While Mum was conducting her morning service, Jane pulled on the humble duffel and walked into still-frozen Ledwardine, across the market square where, at close to midday, the cobbles were still white and lethal. She moved quickly, did not slip
, fury making her surefooted. Rage at what they were trying to do to Mum – and what they’d already done.

  They? Who? Who, apart from Rowenna?

  With whom there was unfinished business.

  Jane walked down to the unfashionable end of the village, where long-untreated timbers sagged and the black and white buildings looked grey with neglect.

  She and Mum had sat up until nearly two a.m., hunched over this big, comfort fire of coal sweetened with apple logs. Like old times together, except it wasn’t – because Mum was dead worried, and you could understand it. She’d talked – frankly, maybe for the first time – about the dilemmas constantly thrown up by Deliverance. The need to believe and also disbelieve; and the knowledge that you were completely on your own – especially with a self-serving, hypocritical bastard of a bishop like Mick Hunter.

  But she wasn’t alone now, oh no.

  Jane stopped outside the Ox. The pulsing oranges and greens of gaming machines through the windows were brighter than the pub sign outside. This was as near as Ledwardine came to Las Vegas.

  Jane went in. She was pretty sure they would be here. They’d been coming here since they were about thirteen, and they’d be coming till they were old and bald and never had a life.

  There was just one bar: not big, but already half full. Most of the men in there were under thirty, most of the women under twenty, dregs of the Saturday-night crowd. Though the pub was old and timbered, the lighting was garish. A jukebox was playing Pearl Jam. It was loud enough, but the voice from halfway down the room was louder.

  ‘WATKINS!’

  Right.

  Wall and Gittoes were at a table by the jukebox, hugging pints of cider. Jane strolled over to the fat, swollen-mouthed slimeball and the bony, spotty loser who had once, she recalled, expressed a wish to have unholy communion with her mother.

  ‘I want to talk to you, Danny – outside.’

  Danny Gittoes looked up slowly and blinked. ‘I’m drinking. And it’s cold out there.’

  Jane took a chance. She’d gone to sleep thinking about this and she’d woken up thinking about it. If she was wrong, well… she just didn’t bloody deserve to be wrong.