The Cure of Souls

by Phil Rickman

  The fifties, this was, and the early sixties: feudal times still in the Empire of Frome.

  It was said the gypsies took Caroline away,’ Lol said, explaining quickly that Isabel St John had told him a little of this – some of the dirt on Conrad Lake, which would have been published in Stewart Ash’s book.

  ‘And I suppose they did, in a way,’ Sally said.

  Caroline became particularly close to one family after helping them get medical assistance for a child who turned out to have meningitis. Caroline called out her own doctor in the middle of the night and the condition was diagnosed in time to save the child. This was something the Romanies would not forget and, from then on, the doors were open to the young Empress, the mysteries revealed. Under the tutelage of an old lady – the puri dai, the wise woman – and some others, she became aware of an entirely new way of looking at the countryside, the world.

  She learned about living lightly on the land. Taking what you needed and no more and then moving on. Fires from the hedgerows, water from the springs. The secret of not owning.

  ‘Ecology… green politics… all this was far in the future.’ Sally’s face shone in the light from the stable walls, and her hair was like steam. ‘To Conrad it was simply communism, of course. Conrad lived very heavily on the land. For a while, she thought she could change him – women do, as you know, and sometimes they succeed. But Conrad was already middle-aged and heavy with greed, and Caroline, still in her twenties, was learning fast… too fast.’

  ‘They gave her a present,’ Al said. ‘The Romanies, this was. The mother of the baby she helped save made her a dress, a beautiful white dress, exquisitely embroidered. She wore this wonderful garment, with pride, to a party at the end of the hop season. This was the first and the last time she was to wear it.’

  ‘The Emperor went into her wardrobe and took out the dress,’ Sally said. ‘Took it into the kiln – yes, yes, that kiln. Gave it to the furnace-man to put into the furnace. The furnace-man couldn’t bear to do it and took it home to his wife, who wore it to a dance. The word got back, and the furnace-man was sacked, of course. After this, the dress was considered bad luck, but no one wanted to destroy it. It was passed from hand to hand and… well, we have it at the hop museum now. One day, I like to think, it will go on display. When it’s safe. When the full story’s told.’

  ‘What did happen to Caroline?’ Merrily asked. ‘She left him, presumably.’

  ‘Yes, after… I – I believe that Conrad began to abuse her in a more direct sense.’

  ‘Physically?’

  ‘Conrad was an owner. Body and soul. Caroline had to leave him, of course she did. She had a little money of her own, and the gypsies had awoken in her a need for more… within less. There was – we assume – a discreet divorce. She joined a community set up to develop human potential – at Coombe Springs with J.G. Bennett, who had been a pupil of the Armenian guru, Gurdjieff, at Fontainebleau. And she embraced Schumacher. But Caroline is not so important to our story from then on. If she ever came back, I imagine it was to haunt Conrad’s hop-yards.’

  ‘She’s dead?’

  ‘She’s not important,’ Sally said. ‘Rebekah Smith’s the important one now.’

  The Rom were always very protective of their women. The term ‘communal existence’ didn’t come close; it was a vibrantly crowded life among siblings and parents, grandparents, great-grandparents – eating together, sleeping together, part of the same chattering organism, Al explained.

  The point being that young gypsy women did not go for solitary walks. Outside the camp, even outside the vardo, they were always within sight of the brothers and the uncles. Part of the traditional defence mechanism.

  So how could Rebekah disappear?

  ‘I’ll show you some photos of her sometime,’ Al promised. ‘You’ll see the long, coppery hair, the wide, white gash of her mouth as if she’d like to seize the whole world in her teeth. It gives you a small idea of what went wrong.’

  No one could explain how Rebekah came to be quite as she was. Poshrat, didekai? No way. Her lineage was impeccable. This was a good family, and Rebekah was deeply grounded in the traditions. Also, she had the sight, had been dukkering from early childhood. Rebekah could read your palm and your very eyes. Rebekah could look at you and know. They used to say a true chovihani was the result of some dark union between a Romany woman and an elemental spirit. Well, everyone knew who Rebekah’s mother’s husband was. But her father?

  ‘If you look carefully at the pictures, you’ll see the courage and the arrogance. She was not afraid to be out there,’ Al said. ‘She was twenty-three years old, and they all said she ought to have been married.’

  When she wanted to go off, for a night or longer, she’d always outwit the brothers and the uncles, who would suffer the consequential tirades from the wizened lips of the puri dai every time they lost her. But lose her they would, whenever Rebekah decided it was time to make one of her forays into the gaujo world.

  It was as if something would be awakened in her during the hop-picking season in Knight’s Frome, when the gypsies were as close as they ever came to being part of a larger community. After she went missing, the police discovered she was already well known – or at least very much noticed – in some pubs in Bromyard and Ledbury, also further afield, Hereford, Worcester. A woman of the world, it seemed: two worlds, in fact. Rebekah Smith, once away from the camp, wore fashionable clothes, was never even identified as a gypsy. Where did she get those clothes? Who bought them for her?

  It was clear she wanted out, the police said. She wanted the bigger scene. She’d be in Birmingham now, or Cheltenham or London. Or even in America. Wherever she was, she’d have landed on her feet. She was twenty-three years old, said the travellers. She should have been married.

  She was dead, said their puri dai.

  But no body was ever found.

  And the Emperor of Frome, still raging in private over the corruption and defection of his wife? Oh, he was never even questioned in any depth.

  Al looked like he wanted to spit.

  Sally Boswell said, ‘We look at the 1960s and we tend to think that was not so very long ago. The young musicians now are all influenced by sixties music – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead and people freaking out on hallucinogens, the voice of youth.’

  She leaned forward under the wall-light, as if to make herself more real, her museum curator’s voice taking over. She must have been breathtakingly beautiful back then, Merrily thought.

  ‘But the sixties were a long time ago,’ Sally said.

  Particularly the early sixties, when there was still an almost mystical aura around the Royal Family… when, in the countryside, this was still feudal England… when the Lakes were the squirearchy, clear descendants of the Norman marcher lords. And when their actions were not subject to examination.

  Conrad Lake’s friends included MPs and would-be MPs like Oliver Perry-Jones. The Emperor dined and drank with senior councillors, magistrates, chief constables… and this was the time when the senior police would tend to be ex-army officers with medals from the Second World War, men for whom stability meant the preservation of a hierarchy – and the structure – at all costs. When the police knew their place.

  ‘Conrad was himself a magistrate for a time,’ Sally said. ‘He was also Worshipful Master of the local Masonic lodge. And the gypsies were vagrants, and their so-called culture was primitive. And they lied, of course. And they also had a grudge against Conrad. So when the police were told that Rebekah Smith had been seen getting into Conrad’s car…’

  ‘And they were told,’ Al said. ‘There was more than one witness.’

  ‘Uncles or brothers?’ Lol asked.

  Al smiled. ‘You see the problem.’

  Merrily saw how intense Lol had become, as though he’d channelled his confusion and distress into an urgent need to know.

  ‘Isabel told me the police finally concluded the gypsies had sim
ply made it up to get back at Lake for banning them from his hop-yards,’ he said.

  Sally nodded. ‘That was one suggestion, yes.’

  ‘But she also thought Stewart Ash had evidence linking Lake to the disappearance. Does that mean he just spoke to the gypsy witnesses who the police chose to disregard?’

  ‘Oh, more than that,’ said Al. ‘It would have to be more than that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like photographs. She took a very good picture, did Rebekah.’

  Merrily stayed quiet. Lol hadn’t told her any of this – not that there’d been time.

  ‘Especially naked.’ Al’s eyes glinted metallically. ‘Gypsies aren’t the most inhibited of folk, and Rebekah – well, she was not the most inhibited of gypsies. I imagine there would have been times when she had Conrad crawling to her feet.’

  ‘Conrad took many photographs,’ Sally said quickly. ‘He liked to have photos of his land and the things he owned – or wanted to own. He’d bought all the most expensive equipment.’

  ‘You sound as if you know that Stewart had pictures,’ Lol said.

  ‘Well, of course.’ Al extended long hands that bore no signs of arthritis. ‘We know Stewart found some of them when he was carrying out his rudimentary renovation of the kiln. Stored behind the furnace, like a private porn collection. For a long time, Stewart preserved the old furnace. I guess it would be – when?’ He looked at his wife. ‘Early last year? When he decided it was going to have to come out to make more kitchen space.’

  ‘It was certainly well into the spring when he showed you one of the photographs and asked you if you recognized the woman.’ Sally turned to Lol. ‘When the furnace came out, the builder had found a space at the rear, well away from the heat, where the bricks could be removed. And that was where an old briefcase had been stowed. It contained, apparently, about two dozen photographs. Of the same naked woman.’

  ‘Though not necessarily the same hop-bine,’ Al said.

  Merrily saw Lol flinch slightly. She drew the cardigan around her. She didn’t like where this was going.

  ‘And those pictures of Rebekah,’ Lol said. ‘They were going in Stewart’s book, right? So where are they now?’

  Al laughed. ‘You tell me. He showed me just the one. He said he had the others. We became excited, naturally, that an old mystery might be solved, an old injustice exposed. But I warned him to keep quiet. Obviously, it must not get back to Adam Lake.’

  ‘And did it?’ Merrily asked. She wasn’t convinced this would have exposed an injustice. What was there to link these pictures to Lake?

  ‘Well, if it did, it wasn’t us who told him,’ Al protested.

  ‘If it did get back to Adam,’ Sally said, ‘it was probably through Stewart himself. Consider: Stewart bought the kiln at a knock-down price, after the receivers moved in – Conrad’s death being almost contemporaneous with all this.’

  ‘The Emperor became old quickly and died quickly,’ Al said, with evident approval. ‘When his second wife left him, taking the child, Adam, they said his mind was already going. They said he drove her away. Eventually, the old bastard had a timely coronary while out patrolling his shrinking domain. He was found by a walker, dying in the hop-yard below the kiln. Yes… that hop-yard. I like to wonder if, knowing the kiln was being sold, the Emperor was on his way to retrieve his photos when he was struck down… and died knowing his final crime was there to be discovered.’

  ‘Why would he keep them there?’ Merrily asked.

  ‘We can’t know, can we?’ Sally said. ‘Perhaps it was his old hiding place, going back to when the kiln was part of his farmhouse. He knocked down the house in the bitter wake of his first marriage, built the new house for his second.’

  ‘That’s another thing – why did he knock down the house and leave the kiln standing?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Sally said, too quickly.

  ‘Why would he have kept those pictures at all?’

  ‘Obsession, Mrs Watkins.’

  Merrily didn’t ask her to expand, didn’t think it would get her anywhere, not yet. ‘You were about to tell me why Stewart might have told Adam Lake about the pictures.’

  ‘To get him off his back, of course,’ Al said. ‘Obsession again. Adam’s obsession was to recover what he could of the old empire – especially that bit. Maybe he even knew there was something in that kiln, maybe that was another reason why he was so anxious to get it back that he was prepared to make Stewart’s life a misery. Maybe Stewart told him about the pictures and tried to blackmail him. Who knows?’

  ‘Al,’ Lol said softly. ‘Who really killed Stewart?’

  Al’s head tilted. ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘You couldn’t let Stewart turn those pictures over to Adam Lake, could you? Not at any price. If Stewart had let Lake have the pictures, they’d have been destroyed. So the truth would never have come out.’

  Al looked down at his long, guitarist’s fingers. ‘Yes,’ he said calmly. ‘Quite right, Lol.’

  ‘And he would have, wouldn’t he?’ Lol said. ‘He’d have given them away in exchange for money or just the removal of the big blue barn – just to be left in peace and a decent amount of light to get on with his books. I mean, I never knew Stewart, obviously, but I don’t see him as any kind of investigative writer. The idea of publishing those photos – that would’ve scared him to death, probably. I mean, how often do you find soft porn in a local-history picture book? The story of Conrad Lake’s war with the gypsies, maybe culminating in an undiscovered murder – it wasn’t exactly an obvious sequel to The Hop Grower’s Year, was it?’

  Merrily stared at Lol with, for the first time, a kind of awe. She wondered how long he’d been brooding about all this? And what had happened in that cold, sterile hop-yard to sharpen his focus.

  There was momentary quiet around the table. Then Sally Boswell pushed away her mug of cooling tea.

  ‘You’re right, of course. Stewart Ash was a gentle soul. I feared very much for him, with the appalling Adam Lake pursuing the kiln. He was so happy there – compiling his little books, talking to the locals about the old days. Taking his careful photos with equipment so old that Conrad Lake would have discarded it without a thought. You’re right – poor Stewart just wanted to be left alone in his beloved kiln-house.’

  Sally said she’d once asked Stewart to whom he planned to leave the place. It would have to be his favourite niece, he said – despite her dreadful husband. And so it was Sally who had suggested, half humorously, that he make a will leaving it to the most obnoxious of his relatives, with a clause pre-empting resale… and then tell Lake what he’d done. On the other matter, the book, Sally had asked Stewart if he’d consider turning the photographs over to her, saying she was prepared to write the book and publish it, too, and sell it in the museum if no one else dared take it.

  ‘He could keep the profits, for all I cared,’ Sally said.

  ‘And what did Stewart say?’ Lol asked.

  ‘He was thinking about it,’ Sally said. ‘He was still thinking about it when he was killed.’

  ‘By who?’

  Al exploded. ‘Mother of God, there’s no big mystery here, boy. Stewart was gay. He was doing a book on the hop-pickers of yore, and his bits of research did indeed bring him into contact with some very nice gypsy boys. Most gypsies have very few hang-ups about sex. Twenty quid for a three-minute hand job would sound very reasonable indeed.’

  ‘And these are nice boys,’ Sally said cynically. ‘Very friendly. He can trust them. So perhaps we weren’t the first ones to see those photographs.’

  ‘Let’s just imagine,’ Al went on, ‘that Stewart – no doubt more interested in the hop-bine than the naked girl – gives one of the photos to the Smith boys and asks if any of them can tell him who the girl is. They say they’ll take it back to their family and ask around. They return the picture a day or so later, heads shaking: “Terrible sorry, guv’nor – nobody’d recognize this one at all.�
� ’

  Al flashed his goblin’s grin around the table.

  ‘But in fact someone in the family whose opinion you do not, under any circumstances, discount, has said to the Smith boys, “It is your duty to the family to go back and get the rest of these photos and if you know what’s good for you for the rest of your dishonourable lives, you will not return without them…” ’

  ‘So the Smith boys did do it,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Never any doubt in my mind. It was probably much as it was told to the court – an attempted burglary. They went for the pictures – all of them. And the book, too, whatever stage it was at, to find out how much Stewart knew, find out what really happened to Rebekah Smith. Oh, a mission of great importance. And had it been anything else – anything but his precious book – Stewart would’ve said, “Go ahead, take it, take it all.” ’ Al sat back. ‘Anything but his bloody book.’

  A large moth, with black rings on its wings, landed in the centre of the table, moved around it for a few moments and then fluttered away.

  ‘There goes Stewart now,’ Al said whimsically.

  Lol kept asking about the pictures. Where were they now? Did the Smith boys take them, or did they panic and leave empty-handed, as had been implied in court? If the Smiths had taken them, would they have had time to pass them on before they were brought in by the police?

  Merrily thought Lol seemed obsessed, as if he was determined to spread out all the mysteries of Knight’s Frome, like the cut and turned hay under the full moon.

  ‘If the family have the pictures,’ Al said, ‘they’ll keep bloody quiet about it now, at least until after the appeal. No stronger evidence of the boys’ guilt. And it’s all spoiled now, anyway. Who could ever justify the murder of an innocent man to prove the guilt of another who’s already dead?’

  ‘Besides which,’ Merrily said, ‘it’s just a photograph of a naked girl – no proof of who took it and no suggestion of what happened to the girl.’

  Lol looked at Al and then at Sally. ‘And what did happen to the girl?’

  ‘No one knows,’ Sally admitted. ‘We don’t know how the relationship between Rebekah and Lake came about, which of them seduced the other, who exploited whom. But everything I know of Conrad suggests that it was probably going on before Caroline left him. He would have taken a perverse delight, knowing of her friendship with the Romanies, in forming one of his own. However, Conrad’s idea of a relationship was not… a two-sided thing.’