by Phil Rickman
‘Fair enough,’ Merrily said.
‘And he said we should enjoy the world. Get a buzz out of it. Get high on nature. Like, God wanted us to be happy.’
‘Like have parties and things?’
‘You know,’ Jane said, ‘you kind of make me sick sometimes. You’re so smug.’
Merrily said nothing. Oh, dear. One of those moods.
And yet – thinking about it – she hadn’t been at all sullen or sulky of late. Just distant, more self-contained. As if there was something going on inside her. Which, of course, there would be at her age, all kinds of volatile chemicals sloshing about.
A boy?
Possibly. But why would she hide that? She’d never hidden it in the past. No, this was something to do with Miss Devenish. Twice Jane had disappeared, twice she’d turned up with Lucy Devenish.
But I rather like Lucy Devenish.
Merrily lit a cigarette. Should she go and talk to the old girl?
Jane went up to her apartment to work on her Mondrian walls. This apparently involved painting the irregular rectangles between the oak beams in blue, black, red and white. The Listed Buildings inspector would probably come out in the same colours if he ever saw it. Still, as even Merrily wasn’t allowed to see it ...
What the hell ... Sometimes kids should be allowed – even encouraged – to behave bizarrely. Merrily finished her cigarette then went to put some supper together.
When Jane came down to eat, she dropped the big one.
‘I’ll probably go to church tomorrow.’
‘Sorry?’ Merrily turned from the Aga, dropping a slice of hot focaccia in shock. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I think you heard.’
‘All right, flower,’ Merrily said calmly, ‘you go and lie down, I’ll call the doctor.’
‘Very funny.’
Jane walked over to the kitchen window. There was a sunset blush on the lawn. Merrily gazed out, a little bewildered, unsure how to handle this development. She’d made a point of never exerting any pressure to get the kid into a service. Admittedly, it would be politic for the minister’s daughter to be present at her mother’s official installation ceremony with the bishop next Friday, and to persuade Jane to come, she’d planned a small deal – after the service, she could go on to Colette Cassidy’s birthday party, no restrictions.
It looked as if no deal would be needed. Who was the influence? Thomas Traherne? Miss Devenish, more like. She should be delighted, but somehow she felt rather offended.
She took in a big breath. ‘Jane.’
‘Huh?’
‘What happened the day you didn’t go to school?’
Jane looked at her, almost through her. The dark blue eyes were completely blank. She’d seen eyes like that on kids a year or two older than Jane, up in Liverpool; they were usually on drugs.
Merrily tried not to panic. ‘Tell me what happened, Jane.’
‘She told you,’ Jane said almost wildly. ‘Lucy told you.’
‘I want to hear it from you.’
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘You haven’t told me anything not to believe.’
A shadow seemed to pass between them. She remembered how, as a small child, Jane would conceal small things – an old tennis ball, once, that she’d found in the garden – for fear they would be taken away from her if her mother found out. At the age of ten, she’d got hold of a thick paperback by Jilly Cooper, hiding it under a panel in the floor of her wardrobe like it was real hard porn.
‘You’re all the same.’ The kid’s face suddenly crumpled like a tissue. ‘You think you know everything.’
‘What ...’ Merrily moved towards her. ‘What’s wrong, flower?’
‘You ...’ Jane backed away, something inflamed about her eyes. ‘You stand up there in your pulpit, Mrs sodding Holier-than-thou, and you drivel on about the Virgin Birth and the Holy bloody Ghost, the same stuff, over and over and over again, and—’
‘Jane? What’s all this about?’
‘What’s the fucking use? I don’t think I’ll bother with any supper. I’ll just go to bed.’
‘You’re not making a word of sense, do you know that? What’s brought this on? Can we talk about it?’
Jane just stamped past her, gripping the copy of Traherne.
It must be ... what? Three a.m.?
The alarm clock ticking, very loud in the big bedroom with hardly any furniture. The clock – an old-fashioned one with twin bells, none of your cell-battery bleepers in this house – set for five-thirty because there was Holy Communion at eight. Only about half a dozen people last week, mainly pensioners, including Uncle Ted out of familial loyalty.
She thought about Jane, then, and her mind flooded with anxiety. Once again, the kid had a secret she was afraid might be taken away from her. This time it would not be so innocuous.
She drifted away again, with the ticking of the alarm clock. A night breeze ruffled the trees. And the sounds overhead. Footsteps. Very soft. Bare feet, slithering.
Merrily was icily awake.
The room – one pine wardrobe, one small table, one bed – was grey-washed by the moon behind clouds like smoke. She lifted up an arm, and that also was grey, as though her skin was transparent and her body was filled with moon gases which made it very light, and so she didn’t even remember getting out of bed and moving to the door. I’m dreaming, she told herself. This is a dream. But she didn’t wake up.
Outside were the doors, concealing mournful, derelict rooms that would never be filled. Rooms where even the memories were stale. She was alone on the first floor of Ledwardine Vicarage. A bathroom, a toilet and four bedrooms, only one slept in. She was alone on this level, while Jane paced overhead, angrily painting her walls by night. Was this part of her secret? Was the secret simply that she had to have secrets, a private life?
Merrily shivered; it would soon be summer and the night-house was November-cold.
The nighthouse. A different place, a colder place.
The noises overhead had stopped. Well, all right, if Jane wanted to paint in the night, that was up to her. It was the weekend; she could keep her own hours in her own apartment. Merrily, on the other hand, needed her sleep if she was going to be up and bathed and breakfasted in time for Holy Communion.
She found herself standing by the stairs, a hand on the oak rail, a foot on the first step to the third storey. She looked up quickly and thought she saw a light glowing, and then she turned away, took a step back. It was Jane’s storey, Jane’s apartment, none of her business. But in the moment she turned away, she felt an aching sense of impending loss.
She would go back to bed, try for two more hours’ sleep. She turned to her door and realized she didn’t know which it was.
She trembled, hugged herself, arms bubbled with goose-bumps. Doors. Moonlight turning their brass knobs into silver balls. She lunged at the nearest, grabbed it, turned it. Stumbled in with her eyes closed, slammed the door behind her. In dreams, you could make as much noise as you liked. When I open my eyes, I’ll awaken in my own bed. It will be nearly morning.
Cold moonlight soaked an empty room, a room she hardly recognized, been inside it no more than a couple of times. A long, narrow room, uncarpeted, its floorboards black and bumpy and ending in a long and leaded window, unseasonally running with condensation.
A figure stood by the window, its back to her.
‘Jane? What are you doing down here?’
There was a vibration in the room, running like a mouse along the floorboard from the window to where she stood; she could feel it through the soles of her bare feet, and it ran up the backs of her legs, under her nightdress to her spine.
It wasn’t Jane.
She backed up to the door, her fingers feeling behind her for the knob and gripping it and turning it. The brass knob turned and turned again, but the door did not open.
Merrily turned it harder and faster, in a panic now. The figure at the window began to shift, a
nd she saw the head in profile and the face was a man’s.
The knob loosened, began to spin in the lock until it just came out in her hand in the very instant that the figure turned from the window to face her, and it needed no moon, it carried its own pale light.
‘Oh, please,’ Merrily whispered. ‘Please, not here.’
Sean glided towards her. He could not speak for the blood in his mouth.
Jane didn’t make it to church after all. There was no explanation. After the morning service, two parishioners commented on there being only two hymns, and Uncle Ted had told Merrily she wasn’t looking at all well. It must have been a wearing few weeks, getting used to everything and now moving into a new house. She ought to think about having a few days away. Perhaps after her installation service, when she felt more secure, more bound to the parish.
Merrily asked, in a steady voice, if her predecessor, Alf Hayden, would be at the service. There were some things she wanted to ask him. About the vicarage.
‘Ah, yes,’ Ted said. ‘Alf.’
No, he said, Alf would not be coming, as he was rather unwilling to embarrass his successor at this difficult time.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘This is difficult,’ Ted said. ‘Alf s received a letter signed by a number of parishioners urging him to use his influence to keep Richard Coffey’s play out of the village.’
She was dismayed. ‘Why’ve they written to him?’
Ted cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘Well, they, ah ... because they don’t feel they know you well enough yet to approach you on such a ... contentious issue.’
‘And because they think that as a trendy woman priest, I’m bound to support it! Is that right? Which of my parishioners are we talking about here, Ted?’
‘It’s causing considerable anxiety in certain areas,’ Ted said. ‘It’s only a few people, of course.’
‘But influential people, right? I suppose they know the bishop’s supporting Coffey?’
‘I shall attempt to acquaint the bishop with the way local opinion seems to be moving,’ Ted said, ‘during a dinner party to which I understand we are both invited.’
Merrily was beginning to be aware of the levels of local society she was unlikely to penetrate. Even if she wanted to. She found she was shaking with anger. It was marginally more acceptable than fear.
When she got home, Jane wasn’t there. This was no surprise.
She searched her conscience, as a parent. Then, as a parent, she walked up two flights to Jane’s apartment. Stood outside the doors on the third floor.
Went into Jane’s bedroom, where she found the bed neatly made and clothes neatly on hangers in the wardrobe. The copy of the collected poems of Thomas Traherne was on the floor beside the bed, opened spine-up. She turned it over. It was open to a poem entitled ‘The Vision’, which began,
Flight is but the preparative: the sight
Is deep and infinite.
She put the book down where she’d found it, went out and closed the door. The next door was to the so-called sitting-room/study, where Jane had been painting the Mondrian walls.
It was locked. She turned away, not entirely surprised, and went down the stairs to the first floor. A weak sun sent halfhearted beams through the landing window and through the oak balusters.
Merrily went into her own room to change into a skirt and jumper. The thought struck her that Jane, on the third floor, had risen above her. As if the third floor represented something Merrily couldn’t reach. She was on the halfway floor with her anxieties and trepidations, her earthly ties, her clinging past, her sick dreams of Sean.
She came out of the bedroom and, instead of going directly to the stairs, turned left, trying to remember which had been the door in her dream. The passage didn’t look the same at all. She opened a door at random, into a square, bare room with two small, irregular windows. Would they ever be familiar, these rooms? She tried another. The bathroom, of course. God, this was so stupid. You couldn’t control your dreams, but you must never give into them, let yourself be ruled by a runaway subconscious. Angrily, almost absently, she threw open another door.
Found herself in a long, narrow room with black bumpy floorboards and a long, leaded window.
It all came back at her then. The vague, sun-stroked morning was kicked aside by jagged memories of the night. She couldn’t stand it. With a tiny cry, she sprang back out of the room, pulling the door behind her.
As it slammed shut, she heard the handle fall out on the other side.
20
Hysterical Women
MUCH OF THE time, over the next week, Jane was fine.
She’d do nice things, like get up early, have Merrily’s breakfast made. Bring her a mug of tea when she was working on the admin stuff or her piece for the parish mag. Be pleasant to the parishioners and church wardens. Be sympathetic when Merrily got letters like,
Dear Mrs Watkins,
As you may have noticed, my wife is an excellent singer who used to perform regularly at concerts. Sadly, the village concert as we used to know it is no longer a part of community life and as church is her only opportunity to exercise her undoubted vocal talents in public, both my wife and I have been dismayed by the recent unexplained reduction in the number of hymns at our Sunday services. I trust this is only a temporary aberration and that we can expect a return to the three or four hymns we were used to during the ministry of the Reverend Hayden ...
‘Don’t back down,’ Jane said, efficiently clearing away the breakfast things. ‘From what I’ve heard, old Hayden only had lots of hymns so there’d be less for him to do. His sermons were notoriously crap, apparently.’
‘And who’ve you heard that from, flower?’
‘Oh, you know ... people.’
‘Miss Devenish?’
‘People.’
‘I see. Jane, what do you think of modern hymns?’
‘They’re still hymns, aren’t they? People don’t actually think about them. It’s like being at primary school. Like that alternative prayer book. It’s not really alternative at all, is it? You might as well stick to the old one, it’s more ...’
‘Resonant?’
‘Yeah. How far have you got with that idea for getting the punters to talk back?’
‘I’m kind of working up to it. I don’t know. Maybe I’d just be doing an Alf Hayden because I’m insecure about preaching and can’t accept that my views can be more significant than theirs.’
‘But you’re the middleman, Mum. God speaks through you.’
‘You don’t have to be sarcastic’
‘I’m not sure I was,’ Jane said.
Merrily had not told her about the six letters she’d received, four of them anonymous, urging her to not on any account allow the church to be used for the performance of a play variously described as ‘blasphemous’, ‘satanic’, ‘obscene’ and, most amusingly, ‘typical of a man who writes plays for Channel Four’.
On Wednesday, her mother phoned from Cheltenham to say she’d developed flu and seemed unlikely to make it to this induction service or whatever it was called.
Oh, sure. Nothing to do with her finding the idea of Merrily being a priest a little embarrassing. I just don’t understand. We’ve never had one of those in the family before. I mean, you never showed any interest in religion as a child.
She’d never been able to talk in any kind of depth to her mother, and she never saw her father, who’d moved to Canada after the divorce. Oh yes, had a few of those in the family, haven’t we, Mummy?
‘I gather Ted will be involved in this installation business,’ her mother said. ‘I suppose he’ll look after you.’
Service for the licensing and installation of
THE REVEREND MERRILY WATKINS
as Priest-in-Charge of the parish of Ledwardine.
7.30 p.m.
ALL WELCOME.
‘Expect a full house,’ Ted said when he turned up with the printed leaflets. ‘We haven’t had o
ne of these for over thirty years ... and a woman, too. You’ll enjoy it. You’ll sparkle, I know you will.’
Merrily rubbed tired eyes. ‘How about if I just smoulder?’
Ted smiled. ‘By the way, was it something important you wanted to ask Alf? Because the old bugger won’t be coming. He’s in the Algarve. Timeshare villa.’
‘Easier to maintain than this place.’ Merrily noticed that the kitchen’s smallest window had been reduced, by a rampant Russian vine, to the size of one of those arrow-slits you found in castles.
‘Ah,’ Ted said. ‘It’s this house, isn’t it? You really shouldn’t have to tire yourself out trying to make the place habitable.’ He paused. ‘Look, I’ve been making a few enquiries. If you can hang on for a year, I think we’ll be able to find you something more manageable. Plans’ve gone in for a small development down by the Hereford road. Executive housing, aimed at the kind of people who’d eat at Cassidy’s, so he won’t be objecting, for once.’
Merrily said carefully, ‘Was Alf Hayden glad to get away?’
‘He was glad to retire. Even more time for golf and fishing. I don’t know about get away from the village.’
‘I meant from this house.’
‘Well, it was different for him, as I say, with that big family. He always seemed fond of this pile, even if he didn’t take care of it’
‘He actually found it a good ... atmosphere?’
‘Atmosphere?’ The lawyer’s eyes narrowing in the florid farmer’s face.
Drop it, Merrily thought. Let it go.
‘Sorry.’ She carried his cup and saucer to the sink. ‘It’s just a bit dreary, that’s all.’
‘You’ll brighten it up. And Jane. How’s her apartment coming along?’
‘I don’t really know. She’s keeping it under wraps.’
Jane had bought her own paints and brushes to do her Mondrian thing. Coming out once to meet Merrily halfway up the second stairs, arms spread wide. ‘No – stay out. You’ll only say I’m making a mess.’ Knowing her mum was far too honourable to sneak up there while she was at school.
