Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi

by John Grant

  Windows. Yes, the windows of St Leonard's were quite narrow, which no doubt accounted for the lack of light in the church. There was some fine stained glass in those windows.

  The doors silently fell shut behind her, closing off the rectangle of sunlight that had failed to spill over the threshold.

  The windows weren't all that narrow. There should be a matrix of glowing colour falling across the congregation.

  There should be candles at the altar.

  And suddenly the whole of the interior was flooded with light, brighter even than her recollections of the sky of the Wardrobe Folk's world. She reeled back against the unyielding doors, holding her arms up to cover her face, dropping her handbag and hearing, despite the lusty hymn, the echoes as her possessions flew away in all directions across the cold stone floor. She knew she'd feel better if she screamed, but some misplaced remnant of decorum forbade her to do so: she was in a church, after all.

  The light pulsed, impossibly, even brighter, and then dwindled.

  Cautiously, Joanna lowered her arms. The church was illuminated as if by spring daylight. She could see that the glass of the two windows in the long wall opposite her had been blasted out of the frames; strips of lead hung twisted in place.

  St Leonard's was empty, except for herself.

  No, there was somebody else there, standing alone among the pews, hands clasped reverentially across her chest.

  Tony Gilmour looked blankly at her for a moment, then opened her mouth to launch into the next verse of "When the Saints Come Marching In".

  7: Friendly Pariah

  She opened her eyes. The church was full of people, one or two of whom were smiling kindly in her direction. The windows opposite were intact. Candles flickered merrily in their holders around the altar. In the gilt pulpit the Reverend James Daker was holding forth about his namesake, who'd run the pub across the road.

  Joanna looked for Tony Gilmour's face, and saw the girl standing where she'd seen her only a moment ago, but this time surrounded by the rest of her family and much of the rest of the village.

  Tony smiled at her shyly, as if uncertain of how Joanna would react.

  No one was singing.

  Joanna took a step forward to grip the end of the nearest pew. She imagined that the Reverend James Daker paused momentarily in his homily, as if he disapproved of her late arrival – which he quite probably did. She needed to sit down, urgently, but all the pews seemed to be full.

  She looked towards the Reverend James Daker, and he smiled at her.

  This time there was no imagining that he hesitated. The beefy man stopped entirely, and beckoned her forward towards him. Obediently she moved along the aisle, aware that every eye was on her. She became aware, too, of the rich gamey smell that hung on her: the sweaty jeans, the unwashed bottom, the socks that she'd been wearing awake and asleep for more days than she could remember. She put a hand to her face and found a little crust of dried food at the corner of her mouth.

  "Come on, dear friend," said the Reverend James Daker, kind but firm. "We can't wait all day for you."

  There was a solitary chair placed in a space of its own directly in front of the altar. It was to this that he was pointing. Gratefully Joanna tiptoed towards it, knowing that it would make just as much sense to walk normally, since everyone was anyway watching her progress, but wanting to go through the pantomime of courtesy.

  Once seated, she lit up a cigarette and began to relax.

  The Reverend James Daker continued his flow mid-sentence, as if there had been no interruption. Jas Paisley – it was the first time Joanna had known the landlord's name, although it must have been staring her in the face over the lintel every time she went into the Blue Horse – had shared many of the same fine qualities as her Aunt Jill, if the vicar was to be believed: he had been sober and upstanding – rare qualities in a publican, remarked the Reverend James Daker with a condescending smile – and the community had been fortunate to have such an outstanding person in its midst.

  There was much more of the same, and Joanna fished out a second cigarette. Yet again she wished she'd had the foresight to equip herself with a hip-flask. The little chair on which she'd perched herself was not overly comfortable, as if it had been designed for the use of penitents, and she shifted around in it, trying not to make it creak. She ground the butt of her first cigarette out beneath her heel, and put its replacement in her mouth, sucking on the unlit tobacco while she burrowed in her pockets for her matches.

  "... and now," the Reverend James Daker was saying, "we have here before us our old friend Jas for one final time ..."

  The man seemed incapable of saying anything briefly. Joanna toyed with the idea of getting to her feet and interrupting him, of reeling off a far terser oration that she knew would much better summarize the character of Jas Paisley, the intolerant old bastard, than any of the vicar's kind words could do, but she restrained herself.

  There was no coffin.

  It wasn't the sort of thing you expected to notice at a funeral – the fact that one of the most vital pieces of the whole rigmarole had been forgotten – but it was the case. She was closest to the front of the church so she had the best view, and it was a certainty that the coffin was missing. She twisted right around to try to see over the heads of the congregation in case the box had been put somewhere at the back, but it didn't appear to have been. She felt her cheeks twitch, and wondered if she'd started grinning like an imbecile. This is going to be something to laugh about later, she thought, over a couple of drinks in the Blue Horse.

  Near the rear of the church sat Rupert, the longest-serving of all the pub's regulars and possibly the closest friend the dead man had possessed. Tears were flowing down the wrinkled cheeks; the eyes were like a pair of stagnant ponds. Rupert, too, had begun to lose a lot of weight. You're going to be the next, Joanna thought. First there was Aunt Jill, and then came the landlord, and the third on the list is going to be you, old man. Unless, of course, there had been others before Aunt Jill. It was something she had never thought to ask, and no one – certainly not Dr Grasmere – had volunteered the information.

  "... I'm sure our good comrade Jas wouldn't be averse to giving us a last song, if we all asked him," concluded the Reverend James Daker above her.

  She turned to the front again. This was the most bizarre funeral service she could remember attending, but at last it seemed to be wending its way towards its close. She realized she hadn't got a hymn-book, and hoped that the concluding psalm would be one of the few she knew well. She peeked into her crumpled cigarette packet and discovered that she'd got only three left: enough to get her through the rest of the service, certainly, and with luck also the ceremonies at the grave-side. If need be she could always cadge a couple from one of the other mourners.

  "Please, a song, Jas," said the Reverend James Daker insistently.

  Joanna, glancing around, suddenly realized that he was looking directly at her.

  There was a rustle of voices from elsewhere in the church. "Yes, Jas – come on – just one more song for old times' sake – buy you a pint afterwards, har har."

  "Please don't keep us waiting all day," said the Reverend James Daker, a hint of annoyance coming into his voice. He was not a man who took kindly to having his wishes ignored, as Aunt Jill had discovered during her disputes with him over the Bloody Bells. "It's the least you can offer us in return for this splendid service we've been holding for you."

  Now his stare was certainly fixed on her.

  "But," Joanna piped, "there must be some mistake. I'm not Jas. I'm Joanna."

  Several of the villagers chuckled, but the Reverend James Daker's face became severe.

  "This is surely neither the time nor the place for jest, Jas," he said. "All of us here can recognize you. Even the newcomers, like the Gilmours, know you well enough not to mistake you for that bitch Jill Soames's tart of a niece. Sing us a song, if you please – and preferably a respectable one, such as befits the occ
asion."

  She could hear her voice winding higher. "But I'm not Jas Paisley!" she protested. "I'm Joanna Gard, I tell you. I'm nothing like old Jas at all. I'm a woman, for God's sake!"

  "God moves in mysterious ways," murmured Rupert from the back. "His wonders should perform."

  "Stop this!" she yelled, standing up, so that the cigarette packet shot out from her lap and slid under the step in front of the altar. "The joke isn't funny! Leave me alone, won't you! Stop doing this to me!"

  "It seems," said the Reverend James Daker with heavy irony, "that our dear, deceased friend declines to give us this last little pleasure. Well, that must remain a matter to be settled between himself and his Maker; it is not for us to be his judges. So in the mean time there's nothing left for the rest of us to do but bury him."

  Pews screeched and squawked on the floor as they were pushed back. Joanna could hear the clumsy crowd movements of the congregation getting to its collective feet.

  "Wait!" she cried. "There's a mistake! You're making a dreadful mistake!"

  "The grave's already dug, Jas. Surely you're not saying we should let all the sexton's hard work just go to waste?"

  "But I'm not Jas! Can't you understand that?"

  The Reverend James Daker looked exasperated. He shut the book in front of him with a loud slam, and turned away from her, raising his hands as if to appeal directly to the Almighty. "Jas, I'm certain you've told more lies to your God in your lifetime than all the rest of the village put together, but surely you must realize that now, of all times, there's no point in keeping up the pretence any longer. Maybe you'd be able to get away with this sort of nonsense in one of the big cities, like Newton, but not among a small, close-knit community like ours. I appeal to you to abandon your lies at this turning point in your existence."

  The words that came out of Joanna's mouth weren't the ones she'd intended to say. They tasted strange, as if they belonged to someone else.

  "You're quite right," she said. "I'm Jas. And I'll sing you a song."

  "Glory be!" cried the Reverend James Daker sarcastically. "The man's come to his senses at last! And what's your song going to be, Jas? `Three German Officers Crossed the Rhine'? `The Ball of Kirriemuir'? `'Twas on the Good Ship Venus'? Something in keeping with the way you lived? Or are you going to honour us with a testament to your new, repentant soul?"

  His concluding shout died away in echoes.

  "The Lord is my shepherd," Joanna sang, "I shall not want ..."

  As she continued, other voices raised themselves in chorus alongside hers, so that, in later verses where she grew less certain of the words, her stumbles were able to pass unnoticed. The organist, unseen somewhere among the rafters, joined in with both his instrument and his voice – a booming bass, hitting each note to perfection. Up in the pulpit, the Reverend James Daker rocked his shoulders from side to side, moving his body in time to the music. His red face beamed at her.

  The psalm ended in a triumphant peal from the organ, and hush crept slowly across the space. Joanna stood with her head bowed, trying to look contrite, portraying – she hoped – the image that Jas would have wished to project.

  "And now," whispered the Reverend James Daker at last, "it is time to proceed with the burial."

  There was a buzz of excitement from the congregation.

  This can't be happening, thought Joanna. It seemed to be the leitmotif of her stay here. Singing a song was one thing, but surely they can't really be intending to bury me, for Christ's sake?

  The Reverend James Daker descended the pulpit steps in stately fashion, his hands folded across his belly – no longer so ample, Joanna noticed distractedly, as it had used to be – and crossed the floor of the church towards her. "Come along with me, my child," he said amiably, "for we are all children in the eyes of the Lord."

  "Hallelujah!" someone shouted, and others took up the cry.

  "I am only a child," Joanna responded dutifully.

  "We are all only children," stressed the Reverend James Daker.

  "Yes!" She recognized Rupert's voice again. "Let's scrag him, lads!"

  She tugged herself away from the Reverend James Daker and threw herself towards the side of the church.

  "All those years," bellowed Rupert, tears choking his voice, "all those years he was pretending to be my friend he was short-pinting me, the bastard! Every effing pint! And he knew I'd never say anything about it, because I'm not that sort, so he just kept on doing it."

  "And," said someone different, "he was always cheating in the cricket. That time he gave me out lbw, I knew it was just because the ..."

  "He told all his customers I put poisonous potions into my flapjacks so that they'd die if they dared to eat in the Crafts Centre ..."

  "He ran over my dog in 1972 ..."

  "Please!" roared the Reverend James Daker, lifting up his hands to cow the mob. "Please, my friends. This is the house of the Lord. Let us not permit anything unseemly to occur between these walls! One at a time, for the mercy of Christ! Rupert – you were the closest to him, so you must have suffered his evils the most. You can lead the way to the cemetery. Put a rope around Jas's neck so that he does not stray from the path."

  There was already a rope around Joanna's neck, she discovered – a rope made of plaited seaweed. She couldn't remember putting it on in her bedroom, but then she'd been in such a rush to try to get here on time.

  The organist struck up a new tune, and it took her a moment to identify it. It was the grotesque Dies Irae from the fifth movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, but played in the style of Scott Joplin. Some of the villagers were linking arms and beginning to dance together. Rupert, implacable, was stalking towards her, his face twisting furiously, spittle dribbling from the corners of his lips. The heavy arm of the Reverend James Daker fell across her shoulders, pinning her in position.

  Rupert grabbed the free end of the seaweed rope. "Every effing pint," he grunted at her, and then he spat in her eyes.

  She broke.

  Her hand clawed across Rupert's face, the long nails digging deeply into his flesh. She felt the edge of his eye tear. She knew she was screaming something, but they weren't words and they weren't under her control. She kicked Rupert hard in the knee, breaking something of her own – a toe – in the process, but she didn't feel any pain. The old man was crumpling up in front of her, his face a curtain of blood.

  "Unseemliness in the house of the Lord," thundered the Reverend James Daker. "Is our esteemed old friend possessed by demons? Drive out the demons, my friends! Drive out the implements of evil!"

  And then the whole congregation was upon her, hurling her to the stone floor and kicking at her, jabbing at her with their walking-sticks and umbrellas, beating down on her with weighty handbags.

  "Stop!" came a voice, louder than even the Reverend James Daker's. "Stop that! Leave her alone."

  A last few kicks, and then the people were pulling back from her.

  "Are you wild animals?" said the unidentified voice. "Have you gone mad? Leave the child be!"

  "That's no child," said the Reverend James Daker. "That's Jas. Dead Jas. We all know him as Jas."

  "Are you nuts, fat boy? That's Jill Soames's niece, Joanna. She's only a slip of a girl."

  "He's right," someone said, sounding puzzled.

  A hand reached down to help her up. She clutched gratefully at the strong arm, then released it almost at once, tipping back towards the floor. This must only be Steve, in another of his incarnations. The hand grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her to her feet.

  He wasn't Steve. His face was sombre as he looked her over. She guessed he was about her own age. Sand-coloured hair, just too long and just too short to be fashionable, fell over his forehead. He was wearing black-rimmed glasses.

  "Are you all right?" said her rescuer.

  "Joanna," Greta from the Crafts Centre whined from behind him, "has something been going on?"

  You were within seconds of pulling me to pieces,
that's what was going on.

  "Take me out of here," she said to the sand-haired man. "I need fresh air. Help me."

  His side felt reassuringly strong against hers as she hugged him to her.

  "Help me," she said again.

  ~

  "I know you," she said twenty minutes later. They were walking among the ancient gravestones that surrounded St Leonard's. No one had been buried here in the church's original plot for over two hundred years; nowadays the graves were dug in the New Cemetery, as it was called, on the far side of the Ham's Lane playing fields. "I've seen you before somewhere."

  "I've seen you before, too," he said. "You used to come and visit Jill Soames every now and then. She introduced us once, in the street. I'm Ian Piper."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't ..."

  "It's all right. Lots of people don't."

  "I'll remember you now, though," she said after a pause. "I'll remember you for the rest of my life. Which I think you've just saved, back in there."

  She gestured towards the silent church building. No one had followed them out, yet now the edifice seemed deserted. Perhaps they'd all slunk away shamefacedly through the exit by the vicarage garden.

  "A small labour." He looked embarrassed. "I was passing, and heard the noise. I thought a rat must have attacked the Bloody Bell-ringers, or something."

  "The Bloody Bell-ringers," said Joanna. "That's what my aunt used to call them. The Bloody Bell-ringers."

  "I liked Jill. She and I felt the same way about the bell-ringers." He grinned suddenly. "The same robust way."

  "Forthright," she countered.

  "Unsubtle."

  "Forceful."

  She giggled. It was a game Aunt Jill had played, but only when she was secure in her company. This man must indeed have known her well. Unlike Ronnie Gilmour, for example, who had claimed so much.

  "You need to get cleaned up," he said. "I don't like to be the one to say it, but ..."

  "I smell a lot."

  "I was thinking more of the blood on your clothes. And the dust on your face. For all the Reverend James Daker's holiness, he's never shown very much interest in keeping St Leonard's clean. You do look a shambles."