Midwinter of the Spirit mw-2

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Oh no.’ Jane carefully folded the paper. Her eyes glowed like a cat’s. ‘I don’t think so. I’m going to hunt down this scumbag, and when I find out—’

  ‘I think,’ Merrily said, more sharply than she intended, ‘that you’re missing the point. You went to this so-called psychic fair without even mentioning it.’

  ‘Why? Would you have wanted to come along?’

  ‘Maybe I would, actually.’

  ‘Yeah, like some kind of dawn raid by the soul police.’

  ‘I accept’ – Merrily kept her temper, which would have gone out of the window long ago if they’d been having this discussion last night – ‘that most of the self-styled New Age people at these events’ – selecting her words like picking apples from an iffy market stall and finding they were all rotten – ‘are perfectly nice, well-meaning…’

  ‘… deluded idiots!’

  ‘Jane—’

  ‘I can’t believe this!’ Jane leapt up. ‘Some shrivelled-up, pofaced old fart sends you a poison-pen letter and you secrete it away in your bag and save it up, probably sneaking the occasional peep to stoke up your holier-than-every-bastard-formiles-around righteous indignation—’

  ‘Sit down, flower.’

  ‘No! I thought you were behaving funny. You’re bloody terrified, aren’t you? It’s not, like: How dare this old fart point the finger at my daughter? Oh, no, you’re crapping yourself in case this gets back to Michael and you get, like, decommissioned from the soul police! Jesus, you are one sad person, Mother.’

  ‘Jane…’ Merrily steadied herself on the Aga rail. ‘Would you come back and sit down? Then we can talk about this like… adults?’

  ‘You mean like priest and sinner. I don’t think so, Merrily. I’m going upstairs to my apartment. I’m going to light some candles on my altar and probably offer a couple of meaningful prayers to my goddess. Then I’m going out. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.’

  ‘Light a couple of candles? I see.’

  ‘Maybe four. They say it’s always so much more effective,’ Jane said, ‘coming from a vicarage.’

  ‘Really?’

  Jane turned away and opened the door to the hall.

  ‘That’s what they say at the Pod, is it?’ Merrily said.

  * * *

  The phone rang in the kitchen just then, and half a second later in the scullery-office. And it went on and on, and Merrily didn’t dare answer it because she knew Jane would be out of the room before she reached the receiver.

  ‘You’d better get that. It might be Annie Howe,’ Jane said, and Merrily could see she was trembling with rage. ‘She must… she must’ve already taught you everything she knows. About spying on people, undercover investigations… The soul police will never look back – you fucking nosy bitch.’

  ‘Right! That’s it!’ Merrily bounced off the stove and into the middle of the room. ‘You think you’re incredibly cool and clever and in control of your own destiny, and all this crap. The truth is you’re either a complete hypocrite or you’re unbelievably naive, and has it never entered your head that the only reason this little… sect is interested in you is because of me and what I—’

  ‘Me! Me, me, me!’ Jane screeched. ‘You are so arrogant. You are soooo disgustingly ambitious that you can’t see the truth, which is that nobody gives a shit for your Church or the pygmies strutting around the Cathedral Close, not realizing what a total joke they are. Your congregations are like laughable. In twenty years you’ll all be preaching to each other. You don’t matter any more. You haven’t mattered for years. I’m just like embarrassed to tell anybody what you do, you know that? You embarrass me to death, so just get off my back!’

  The phone stopped. ‘Get out,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Jane smiled. ‘I may be away some time.’

  ‘Whatever you like. In fact, maybe you could go and stay at Rowenna’s for a few days. I’m sure there are lots of spare bedrooms in Colonel Napier’s mansion.’

  Jane paused in the doorway. ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Only that you may not know as much about your very best friend as you thought you did.’

  ‘You’ve been investigating her too? You’ve been checking up on Rowenna?’

  Tears spurted into Jane’s eyes, and Merrily took a step towards her. ‘Flower, please—’

  ‘You keep away from me. You keep away. You don’t care how low you sink, do you, to protect your piddling little reputation?’

  ‘Get a life, Jane.’

  Jane’s smile was horribly twisted. ‘Oh, I will. I will certainly get a life.’ She was whispering now. ‘You see, there’s no way I could ever trust you again, and if you can’t trust somebody, what’s the point? I don’t have to stay at Rowenna’s. There are loads of places I can live. I know lots of people now – like really good people.’

  ‘That would be really stupid. You’re sixteen years old.’

  ‘That’s right, at least you can count.’

  ‘And these are not good people.’

  ‘What the fuck would you know, Merrily?’ Jane prodded a finger at the air between them. ‘I’ll tell you something. I’d rather sell my soul to the Devil than spend one more night in this mausoleum.’

  ‘All right,’ Merrily said. ‘Stop right there. I don’t care what you say about me, but don’t ever say that. Just don’t… ever… say it.’

  Jane shrugged. ‘Like… come and get me, Satan?’

  She tossed back her hair, which wasn’t really long enough to toss, and went out into the hall and Merrily heard her snatching her coat from the peg and then the creak and judder of the front door.

  Merrily stood in the centre of the kitchen. After a while, she was aware of Ethel, the black cat, mewing pitifully at her feet. She picked up the cat, and saw that the mist outside was thickening.

  The phone rang again.

  She’d been hoping the first call would be from Huw. But now she hoped it was Lol. She needed to tell somebody.

  ‘Merrily? It’s Barry Ambrose.’

  ‘Oh… Hello, Barry.’ She sat down at her desk in the scullery-office, hoping, just at this moment, that he was calling to say he hadn’t found out a thing.

  ‘I found out about that girl, Merrily.’

  ‘Rowenna?’

  ‘I hope she’s not too close to you, that’s all,’ Barry said.

  PART FOUR

  SQUATTER

  40

  Dark Hand

  THE FOG WAS worse in Leominster, which was why the bus was late, the driver explained. Fog, just when you thought you’d got rid of it!

  Then again, if the bus hadn’t been late, Jane would have missed it – thanks to the Reverend Bloody Watkins.

  She slumped down near the back and felt sick. That was it, wasn’t it? That was really it. There was no way she could go back there tonight. Outside the bus windows, the hills had disappeared, the view of fields extended about fifty yards, and then all you saw were a few tree-skeletons.

  Why had she done this to herself? Why hadn’t she just sat it out, mumbled a few apologies about going to the psychic fair and… but that wouldn’t have worked, would it? Mum knew about the Pod. How the hell did she find that out? Was the Pod leaky? Had it been infiltrated by Christians?

  This was just like so totally unfair. Jane felt sad and shabby in her old school duffel coat – hadn’t even had a chance to find something else. If you’re storming out, you had to do it, like, now! You couldn’t blow the whole effect by going up to your apartment to change into your tight black sweater and your nicer jeans, or collect your new fleece coat.

  Ironic, really. This morning, doing her salute to the Eternal Spiritual Sun, she’d thought: What is this really achieving? And thinking of the women in the Pod, how basically sad most of them looked. And yet the fact that they were so sad completely discredited Mum’s crap about them only being interested in Jane because her mother was this big-time Church of England exorcist.

  This was all so mega-stupid.
If the bitch hadn’t been so totally offensive, the two of them could have sorted this out. That remark about Jane having no boyfriend, that was just, like, well out of order. Boyfriend like who? Dean Wall? Danny Gittoes? The really humiliating aspect of this was that Mum herself – not long out of leather pants and tops made out of heavy-duty pond-liner – had been pregnant at nineteen, so presumably had been putting it about for years by then.

  Life was such a pile of shit.

  When they crawled into the bus station behind Tesco, Jane didn’t want to get off. She had her money with her, but she didn’t feel like shopping. Especially while walking around with Rowenna in all her designer items, and Jane in her dark-blue school duffel. What was she going to buy Rowenna, anyway, that wouldn’t cause mutual embarrassment?

  She made her way out of the bus station and across the car park, hoping there was nobody from school around – which was too much to hope for on a Saturday close to Christmas. Everybody came into Hereford on Saturday mornings – where else was there to go?

  The fog was cold and she didn’t even have her scarf. Tonight it would probably be freezing fog. Suppose Rowenna couldn’t organize her a room, what would happen then? It was a lie, natch, that Jane knew loads of people; she didn’t know anyone in the Pod well enough to beg a bed. Worst-case scenario, some shop doorway in the Maylords Orchard precinct? Or did they have iron gates on that? And then at two a.m. some dopehead comes along and rapes you.

  OK, if it came to it, she probably had enough money to get a room in a hotel. Not the Green Dragon obviously, maybe something between that and the pubs where the junkies went to score. Funny how homely old Hereford took on this new and dangerous aspect when you were alone, and destined to stay alone, possibly for ever.

  She turned down where the car park dog-legged and the path led through evergreen bushes to the archway under the buildings and into Widemarsh Street… and then Rowenna laughed lightly and said, ‘Why don’t we do it here? We’d be hidden by the fog. That would be pretty cool.’

  Huh?

  Jane stopped. There were cars parked fairly tightly here, with thick laurel bushes just behind them.

  You could tell there were two people in the bushes, standing up, locked together. Jane backed up to the edge of the main car park. Vehicles were coming up out of the tunnel from the underground part, and one of them hooted at her to get out of the way. So she moved to the edge of the undergrowth and flattened herself against the wall.

  They probably would never spot her from the bushes, as she couldn’t see them properly either. She wouldn’t have known it was Rowenna but for the voice. She could see the guy better, because he was pretty tall, and from here it looked like most of his tongue was down Rowenna’s throat.

  ‘Don’t you think this has appalled me too?’ Dick Lyden was raking his thick, grey hair. ‘I can only offer you my profoundest apologies and assure you that it won’t happen—’

  ‘It fucking has happened,’ Denny snarled, his back to the door of Lol’s flat, as if Dick might make a break for it. ‘It’s done. It exists. If I hadn’t been listening to the words – which I usually don’t – I’d be down as producing it!’

  ‘Denny, don’t do this to me,’ Dick pleaded.

  ‘Don’t do it to you?’

  Lol was sitting on the window ledge. He had no meaningful contribution to make to this.

  ‘How old is your boy?’ Dick said to Denny.

  ‘Eleven – and a half.’

  ‘I’d like to think you didn’t have this to come, Denny, but at some stage in his adolescent years you’ll wonder what kind of monster you’ve foisted on the world – as well as trying to think what you did to become the object of his undying hatred.’

  Sensing that Dick was actually close to tears, Lol said, ‘Did you find out how he came to write that song?’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Dick escaped gratefully into anger, ‘an artist… an artist gathers his inspiration wherever he may find it. Art is above pity. Art bows to no taboos. You know the kind of balls they spout at that age. I don’t… I don’t actually know what’s the matter with him lately. He’s become remote, he’s arrogant, he sneers, he does small spiteful things. A complete bastard, in fact.’

  Lol said, ‘That’s your professional assessment then?’ and Denny finally smiled. ‘The point is,’ Lol continued, ‘that the song isn’t going to be heard any more, because Eirion Lewis says he’ll refuse to play it. He’s not a bad kid, it seems.’ He glanced apologetically at Dick. ‘A bit older than James, so perhaps he’s come through the bastard phase.’

  ‘In the final analysis,’ Dick said, ‘this is my fault. Ruth and I discuss cases, and quite often the boy’s pottering about with his Walkman on and one thinks he’s not interested. Little swine was probably making notes. It’s a… I suppose a diverting tale, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a family tragedy,’ Denny growled.

  ‘Denny, I have learned a lesson.’

  ‘But the crows, man – how the fuck’d he know about the crows?’

  ‘It’s an old Celtic harbinger of death,’ Lol said quickly, because he’d never actually told Denny about the crow.

  Denny looked dazed for a second, then shook himself like he was trying to shed clinging shreds of the past. He moved away from the door, his earring swinging less menacingly. ‘All right, I’ll let them back in, so long as Lol turns the knobs.’

  Dick looked at Lol.

  ‘OK,’ Lol said. Puzzled about what Denny had meant – how the fuck’d he know about the crows? – and still wondering how James could have been so crazy as to sing that song blatantly in Denny’s face. Like the boy needed to see how far he could go, how much he could get away with, how badly he could hurt.

  ‘Thanks,’ Dick said humbly. ‘Thank you both. You know I… This is going to sound a bit cranky coming from a shrink, but I am a Christian sort of shrink, and I feel that becoming Boy Bishop will somehow help to straighten the lad out.’

  ‘What is this Boy Bishop balls, anyway?’ Denny said. ‘You hear about it, read bits in the Times, but I never take much notice.’

  ‘More people ought to take notice or we’ll lose it, like so many other things. It’s a unique example of the Church affirming Christ’s compassion for the lowly.’

  ‘But it’s always a kid from the Cathedral School,’ Denny pointed out. ‘How lowly is that?’

  ‘It’s symbolic – dates back to medieval times. The boy is Bishop until Christmas, but doesn’t do much. Gives a token sermon on his enthronement, makes the odd public appearance – used to be taken on a tour of churches in the county, but I think they’ve dropped that. It also illustrates the principle of the humble being exalted. It’s about the humble and the meek… something like that.’

  ‘The humble and the meek?’ Lol said. ‘That’s why they chose James?’

  ‘All right, I know, I know. I suppose they chose James because he was a leading chorister. And he’s a big lad, so the robes will fit. And, of course, he, ah, rather looks the part.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Denny shrugged, ‘it’s basically balls, isn’t it?’

  ‘I see it as a rite of passage,’ Dick persisted. ‘I don’t think you can do something like that without experiencing a man’s responsibility.’

  Lol thought this was not the best time to talk about a man’s responsibility in front of Denny.

  But Denny didn’t react. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Tell the kid I can maybe do the studio Monday. I’ll feel better tonight when the funeral’s over.’

  When Dick had gone, he said to Lol, ‘I’m still looking for somebody else to blame for Kathy. He just got in the way.’

  Lol nodded.

  ‘I’m closing this shop, by the way,’ Denny said.

  ‘This afternoon – for the funeral, Viv said.’

  ‘For good. We close at lunchtime, we don’t open again.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘I’m shifting the records to the other place tomorrow. And big Viv, too. Extending the shop space into
a store-room. If you’re selling hi-fi, it makes sense to have a record department on the premises. This one was never big enough to take all the stock you need to really get the punters in. It was just… Kathy’s shop. I don’t ever want to come here again.’

  ‘And this flat?’

  ‘It won’t affect you unless I can’t manage to let the shop on its own, in which case I’ll maybe sell the whole building. Sorry to spring it on you, mate, but nothing’s permanent. You’re not a permanent sort of guy anyway, are you?’

  Lol forced a smile.

  ‘See you at the crem then,’ Denny added. ‘There won’t be a meal or nothing afterwards. Won’t be enough people – plus I’m not into that shit.’

  ‘Denny,’ Lol said, ‘when you said to Dick, how did he know about the crows, what did you mean?’

  ‘Leave it.’ Denny opened the door. ‘Like you said, it was nothing, a coincidence. Just the way some things cause you to remember other things. Some memory pops up, and you put it all together wrong.’

  ‘What memory?’

  ‘You don’t let go of things, do you, Lol?’

  ‘Some things won’t let go of me. It’s guilt, probably.’

  ‘You didn’t like her, did you?’ Denny said.

  ‘I liked her more towards the end.’

  ‘You wouldn’t fuck her because you didn’t like her. That’s the truth, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s kind of honourable, I suppose.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Tell me about the crows.’

  Denny came back in, shut the door. ‘When she was a kid, they used to put her in her pushchair in the farmyard, to watch the chicks and stuff, yeah? And the crows would come. Crows’d come right up to her. They’d land on the yard and come strutting up to the pushchair. Or they’d fly low and sit on the roof, just over the back door. Sit there like vultures when Kathy was there. Only when she was there.’

  Lol thrust his hands in the pockets of his jeans and stiffened his shoulders against the shiver he felt. ‘How long did this go on?’