The Cure of Souls

by Phil Rickman

  Wrong turning, somehow. It was easy enough to do, even in the daytime, even in countryside you thought you knew. In the middle of this unknown, unmanaged wood, snagged with hawthorn, he heard his T-shirt rip, and he stood there, shaking his head.

  Lost again. Story of his life.

  Knight’s Frome was a scattered hamlet with no real centre, so it wasn’t as if he could look around for a cluster of lights. Or even listen for the river. All he could hear was the humming: a plaintive sound that rose and fell and pulsed as if a melody was trying to escape.

  Lol turned, walked back the way he’d come, putting a hand up to his glasses, pushing them tight onto the bridge of his nose; losing your specs was not something you did in a wood at night. When he took his hand away, he saw the trees and bushes had fallen away and there was now a clear space up ahead. A small yellow light appeared, not too bright, a little unsteady, with a black cone above it: a witch’s hat. The kiln tower again.

  When the sky was clear of branches, a trailing scarf of brightness told him which direction was north… and then it was suddenly split by something black and rigid that made him reel back, startled. He slipped and stumbled, went down on one knee before it – waiting for the thing to move, bend down, snatch him up, hit him.

  Nothing moved. Even the humming had stopped. Lol scrambled warily to his feet.

  It was only a pole, half as thick as a telegraph pole, but not tall enough to carry telegraph wires or electricity cables – although it did support wires of some kind. To avoid it, he took a couple of steps to the right. No trees or bushes stood in the way and the ground was level.

  A second black pole appeared, rearing hard against the northern sky, and this one had a short crosspiece like – his first thought – a gibbet. From it hung something limp and shrivelled, the skeletal spine of a dead garland; when he passed between the two poles, his bare elbow brushed against the remains with a dry, papery crackle.

  Now he could see the extent of it: dozens of black poles against the pale night, in lines to either side of him across the barren ground, most of them with crosspieces, some connected by dark wires overhead. It was like a site laid out for a mass crucifixion. Between the wires, he could still see the yellow kiln-house light, perhaps two hundred yards away. And the nearness of the kiln told him what this was… or should have been.

  It was high summer and these poles should be loaded with foliage, the ripening bines high on the wires, rippling with soft green hop-cones. But this whole scene was in black and white and grey, and there was an awning of silence: no owls, no scurryings in the undergrowth. No undergrowth, in fact.

  The silence, Lol thought, was like a studio silence: soft, dry, flat and localized. The air seemed cooler now, and he could feel goosebumps prickling on his bare arms as he ventured tentatively into a hop-yard where no hops grew, along an alley of winter-bleak, naked hop-poles, a place as desolate as the stripped-back bed of someone recently dead. He felt a little scared now. There was no contented cattle-breath around this place – it felt less like a memory of the womb than a premonition of the grave.

  No reason to stay. Lol started to turn away. Afterwards, he couldn’t remember whether these thoughts of death had occurred in the moment before the humming began again, or whether it was the combination of the sound and the stark setting that conveyed the sense of mourning, loss, lamentation. The bleak keening seemed to be around and above him, as if it was travelling along those black wires, as if they were vibrating with some kind of plangent sorrow.

  And then, as he turned, there was another noise – a crispy swishing, like dried leaves in a tentative breeze, like the noise when he’d touched the remains of the dead hop-bine, only continuous – and a pale smear blurred the periphery of his vision like petroleum jelly spread on a camera lens.

  Lol saw her.

  It was like she was swimming through the night towards him, from the far end of the corridor of crosses.

  No sense of unreality here, that was the worst of it. It was not dreamlike, not hallucinatory.

  She stopped between the poles, legs apart, leaning back, one moment all shadows, and then shining under the northern sky: a thin, white woman garlanded with pale foliage. Rustling and crackling like something dead and dusty, moved by the wind.

  But there was no wind.

  Lol backed into a pole, felt it juddering against his spine and the back of his head, as he gasped and twisted away, semistunned and reeling, into a parallel hop-corridor, the poles rushing past him like black railings seen from a train.

  Between them, he saw the woman moving. A long, dried-out, bobbled bine was wound around her like a boa, around her neck, under her arms, over her shoulders, pulled up between her legs – the cones crackling and crumbling on her skin, throwing off a spray of flakes, an ashy aura of dead vegetation.

  As she drew level with him, he could see, under the winding bine, black droplets beading her breasts, streaks down her forearms, as though the bine was thorned.

  She turned to Lol and the bine fell away as she extended her hands towards him.

  Lol very nearly took them in his own.

  Very nearly.

  2

  In the Old-fashioned Sense

  IT WAS LIKE she’d told the Bishop: anything iffy, out came the coal-tongs and the asbestos gloves, and it made you wonder whatever happened to that old job description: The cure of souls.

  ‘I’d just said “The blood of Christ keep you in eternal life,” and that was when the girl went slightly crazy,’ Canon Dennis Beckett explained on the phone.

  To be fair, he had good reason to feel this wasn’t really his problem. He was retired now, and lived on the other side of the county. He only came across to Dilwyn to take the Sunday services for two weeks a year, when Jeff Kimball, his godson, was away on holiday. Which was a diversion for Dennis, too, and a nice place to drive out to: this neat black and white haven with its village green.

  But at the end of it, the thing was, other than on a superficial, hand-shaking level, he didn’t really know these people, did he? And in this case there was a young girl involved – always dicey. Also, for extra tension, a touch of drama, it had happened during Holy Communion.

  ‘We’ve all had situations of people becoming ill, of course,’ Dennis said, ‘even dying in their pews on two occasions that I can recall. But… well, it’s usually elderly people, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Since coming to Ledwardine less than two years ago, Merrily had seen a stroke, a blackout, an epileptic fit and a birth. ‘Not invariably.’

  She wasn’t yet seeing this as a deliverance issue. She’d met Canon Beckett two or three times at local clergy gatherings, remembered him as grey-bearded, vague, affable. She wondered why, if this incident had occurred last Sunday, it had taken him five clear days to decide he should tell her about it.

  It was the first morning of Jane’s school holidays. Friday the thirteenth, as it happened.

  ‘It was embarrassing rather than anything else, at the time,’ Dennis said. ‘The mother appeared to be affected the most – essentially such a good family, you see, in the old-fashioned sense; a family, in fact, to whom the term God-fearing might once have applied. And I’m afraid you can’t say that of very many of them nowadays, can you?’

  ‘No.’ Merrily tucked the phone under her chin, leaning forward through a sunbeam to pull over her sermon pad and a felt pen. ‘I suppose not. So, what did happen, exactly?’

  ‘She dashed – that’s the only word for it – dashed the chalice from my hands. And then she was sick.’

  ‘She actually—?’

  ‘Threw up. Copiously. Tossed her cookies, as my grandson would say. In the chancel. On everything. On me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Rather a mess. And the smell soured everything. Hard to continue afterwards.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Everyone was extremely understanding and trying not to react. Someone said, Oh dear, very quietly, and then they all discreetly mo
ved out of the way. The mother was absolutely white with the shame of it, poor woman. She’s one of Jeffrey’s regulars – cleans the church, arranges the flowers. There she was, dragging the child away down the aisle, followed by the father, and I was starting to go after them when this elderly lady suddenly began clutching her chest. I thought, Oh Lord, that’s all we… Anyway, as it turned out, the old dear wasn’t in the throes of some cardiac crisis, which was a mercy, but by the time I reached the door, the whole family had vanished. So… we simply cleaned everywhere up and… resumed. At the time it seemed—’

  ‘The best thing?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Luckily, I managed to find a fresh surplice. There were only about five communicants left by then. A few had walked away in… the wake of it.’

  Dennis Beckett paused. Through the scullery door, Merrily heard impatient footsteps across the flags in the kitchen.

  ‘Look, I’m aware this doesn’t sound like much, Merrily,’ Dennis said. ‘Certainly didn’t seem so to me, at the time, but I thought I ought to reassure the parents, so I got their number and when I arrived home I gave them a call. No answer. I made a note to try again the following day, but I’m afraid it got mislaid and other things cropped up, and it wasn’t until this morning that I finally got through to them.’

  ‘Mum?’ Behind Merrily, the scullery door opened. Jane stood there in jeans and a yellow sleeveless top, summery but somehow waiflike, a bit forlorn. ‘Look, I’m going to get the bus into Hereford, OK?’

  Merrily held up a hand, signalling for the kid to hang on until she was off the phone. ‘Sorry, Dennis…’

  Dennis Beckett lowered his voice.

  ‘It was still quite a long time before anyone answered. I was about to hang up when the mother came on, rather abrupt until she realized who I was. Whereupon she simply burst into tears. An eruption. As if she’d been holding it back for days. You know… “Thank God you’ve called. Thank God. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know what”… No, in fact, her actual words were: “I don’t dare to think what’s got into her.” ’ He paused.

  Jane scowled, threw up her arms in exasperation and walked out.

  ‘ “Got into her”?’ Merrily said cautiously.

  ‘Her own words. The child’s being generally… not herself. She’s normally a quiet, studious, demure sort of girl. A nice girl. Been taken to church every week since she was about seven. Suddenly, she’s exhibiting signs of a distinct… aversion. Claiming she’s not well on Sunday mornings – headaches, this sort of thing.’

  Merrily thought about Jane. ‘Being generally difficult? Mood swings? Emotional?’

  ‘I gather.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Well…’ Merrily tapped her pencil on the desk, remembering similar phases. ‘No need to get too carried away about that. Unless—’ An obvious thought had struck her. ‘Could she be pregnant?’

  ‘What? Oh… I see what you mean.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking it over. ‘Well, she… seemed to me to be a very young fourteen. She was wearing her school uniform, which in itself is a rather uncommon sight these days, out of school hours.’

  ‘True.’ Half of Jane’s school clothes seemed to have vanished by the time she reached home.

  ‘Let me tell you the main thing,’ Dennis said. ‘It seems Amy had been brought along to Holy Communion precisely because her parents were getting worried about her spiritual health. In the old-fashioned sense.’

  ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

  Dennis hesitated and then sighed. ‘Meaning they’re now asking for something I would not personally be happy to undertake,’ he replied eventually.

  As Merrily went into the kitchen, Ethel the cat looked up at her from a sun-pool on a deep window sill. No sign of Jane; the kid must have gone back up to her apartment in the attic. Merrily went back into the scullery, stared at the phone for a few seconds and then picked it up and rang Sophie at the gatehouse.

  ‘I’m just following procedure here, Soph.’

  ‘Do we have a procedure?’ The Bishop’s lay secretary, servant of the Cathedral and posher than the Queen, would be in her office next to the Deliverance room, from where she also dealt with the admin side of Merrily’s business.

  ‘We have a rule. There’s only one situation where we have a rule,’ Merrily said, ‘and this is it.’

  ‘I see.’ A tiny pause, a vacuum snap – Sophie uncapping her gold Cross fountain pen. ‘What would you like me to tell the Bishop? We’re talking major exorcism?’

  ‘Won’t be an exorcism at all, if I can help it. I suspect they don’t know quite what they want, apart from some reassurance. I’m just informing the Bishop, according to the rule.’

  Jane appeared in the doorway. ‘What?’ She saw the phone at Merrily’s ear and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Sorry, Sophie, I’ve just got to ask Jane something before her very limited patience snaps.’

  ‘I am sixteen,’ Jane muttered. ‘As you keep telling me, I have all the bloody time in the world.’

  ‘You know a kid called Amy Shelbone?’

  Jane blinked. ‘Know the name. Probably.’

  ‘I think she goes to your school.’

  ‘She does?’

  ‘Not in your class, then?’

  ‘No, she… I guess she’s probably in the fourth… or the third year. Something like that.’

  ‘OK.’ Merrily nodded. ‘Thanks, flower.’ Worth a try, but kids in a lower form were pond life. ‘Sorry, Sophie.’

  Jane didn’t leave. Merrily frowned at her. ‘You’ll miss the bus.’

  ‘So like, what’s this Amy Shel… thing done?’

  ‘Go,’ said Merrily.

  She waited until she heard the front door slam. Her dog collar lay in the centre of the pale blue blotter, glowing in the sunbeam. Sophie would disapprove of her discarding it simply because of the heat. The women’s ministry had been hard-won; it was like some ex-suffragette not turning out for the polls because it was raining.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘I think you can assume she’s gone now,’ Sophie said. ‘But you may wish to check the room for listening devices.’

  Sophie would also disapprove of Merrily asking the kid about Amy Shelbone, but Merrily knew it would go no further. It had reached the stage, with Jane, where there was a certain trust, forged out of experience. Jane was sixteen; there wasn’t such a huge age-gap between them. They told each other almost everything. Didn’t they?

  She sat for a while at her desk, looking down the garden towards the apple trees. She was thinking about Father Nicholas Ellis, the fundamentalist zealot who had interpreted the term cure of souls all too freely, administering exorcism like doctors prescribed antibiotics, without ever consulting the Bishop.

  But at least Ellis had certainty, a complete faith not only in God and all His angels, but in himself as the approved wielder of an archangel’s broadsword. How he must have despised her.

  Merrily put on her dog collar.

  Ellis had crossed the line, big-time. She was never going to do that, God help her. Nor was it up to the priest to decide who was genuine, who was misguided, and who was trying it on.

  She knelt by the side of the desk, under the window, put her hands together, the backs of her thumbs against the centre of her forehead. She closed her eyes, let her thoughts fall away. The sunshine through her eyelids made her feel washed in a warm orange glow. It felt good.

  Too good. Merrily moved into shadow, facing the white-painted wall of four-hundred-year-old wattle and daub, and prayed for perception.

  Since Dennis Beckett had first told her about Amy Shelbone, she’d been thinking, on and off, about the occasion she’d thrown up in church herself – her own church, on the fraught night of her installation as priest in charge. Churches were powerful places; they sometimes amplified emotions, might well have an emetic effect on stored-up stress. It didn’t necessarily mean any kind of invasion.

  However, this was at
Holy Communion, and a dramatically adverse reaction to the presence of the sacrament was… something that needed to be looked into.

  After a few minutes, Merrily picked up the phone and called the number Dennis Beckett had given her for the Shelbones, in Dilwyn.

  There was no answer.

  3

  Stock

  THE FIRST TIME Lol saw Gerard Stock, he thought the bloke must have some kind of status here, that maybe he was the original owner of the whole place, including the stables and the pigsties.

  This was perhaps because Gerard Stock kind of swaggered.

  It was not a word Lol recalled ever mentally applying to anyone before. Stock walked like he was shouldering his way through a crowd of people who didn’t matter, to get to somebody who did. This looked odd, because he was all alone on the track which crossed the hay meadow. No bushes, no banks of nettles, no cows; nothing but lush, knee-high grass in a valley smouldering with summer.

  It was eleven-thirty in the morning, and Stock was heading their way.

  Prof was not glad to see him. ‘The sodding countryside. You get more privacy in Notting Hill. He wants to know who you are. He always has to know who everybody is, the bastard. He’s obviously seen you walking around here and he thinks you might be someone of significance.’

  ‘Obviously hasn’t noticed my car, then.’

  Lol was standing, with a mug of tea and a slice of toast, at the window of the studio anteroom-cum-kitchen, which had once been a pigsty and now possibly looked even more of one.

  ‘This guy…’ Prof drained his mug, added it to a pile of unwashed crockery beside the sink. ‘I ask myself, should I have to cope with guys like this any more, my time of life? The business is top-heavy with the bastards, always has been. They know everybody – shared spliffs with Jerry Garcia, toured with Dylan, played jew’s harp on the cut that never made it onto Blood on the Tracks… which, of course, is how come their name was tragically omitted from the sleeve. These guys…’ Prof palmed his stubbly white chin. ‘These guys are losers the likes of which I hoped that by moving out here I should never have to encounter again.’