by Phil Rickman
Merrily said, ‘It’s just that I’m standing in a muddy field, with some people…’
‘Well, if you tell me when it’s best to call you back. I really don’t want to keep hassling you, and I truly think, when you know about this, that it’s something you’ll want to comment on. For your own sake.’
Oh God. ‘Can we leave it till tomorrow? If you’re not carrying the piece until Sunday…’
‘What about tonight?’
‘OK, I’ll see what I can do,’ Merrily said.
Remembering the note from Jane but not Jenny Box’s number, Merrily rang Directory Inquiries and asked for Box, Ledwardine. It turned out, as expected, to be ex-directory. Damn. Nothing else she could do from here.
‘Problem?’ Huw said.
‘Parochial.’ She rang Uncle Ted’s number. What the hell kind of story had the Mail got? She remembered James Bull- Davies: Woman’s got a bit of a crush on you, after all. Pretty common knowledge.
No answer at Ted’s. She shut down the phone and stood staring across the scrubby field to where Gomer was shovelling out his first shallow trench, Bliss walking alongside now, peering down. The chapel, behind them, was black and formless.
Ring the brother, eh?’ Huw said close to her ear. ‘Tell him you think a requiem would be best for all concerned and, as nobody’s going to know, time’s no longer of the essence.’
‘Huw,’ she said, ‘did you set me up for this funeral?’
‘Banks genuinely didn’t want to do it.’
‘I realize that.’
‘Merrily,’ Huw said, ‘you’ve not been at it long but, of all of them, you’re the one I trust most. You don’t make assumptions and you never just go through the motions. And you’re never too sure of yourself, never afraid to say when you don’t understand.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Merrily said.
Huw looked away. ‘I’ve said enough. Don’t want to influence you.’
‘I’m already influenced. I think you and Frannie are letting personal issues block your objectivity. Personal grief, in your case.’
‘Sometimes you have to follow your heart.’
‘You never said that before. That’s the opposite to what you told us on the course.’ She stood in front of him, her back to the digger. ‘You never said that before!’
‘Happen I never knew it.’
‘Christ, Huw…’ Her shoes were sinking into the mud. ‘You cannot exorcize him! Even if you think he’s here. Even if you think he’s in that chapel, you cannot do it. Because, no matter what kind of pond life he was, he was of this earth.’
‘What if there were summat else?’
‘There was nothing else.’ She thought of the missing builders’ tools, the callused hands around Zoe Franklin’s neck, the walking definition of the term earthbound, the lamp of the wicked and the hunger of the dead. ‘It was soiled lust of the worst kind – a depraved appetite that could only be sated, in the end, by causing extreme, mortal fear.’
‘And what happens when the body’s gone and only the appetite remains in a black void? What is that? And what happens when there are human beings out here, amongst us, who ‘actually aspire to the black void? People who are, by whatever means, prepared – eager – to call it into themselves?’
Merrily closed her eyes. She felt the cold mass of the old Baptist chapel very close behind her, almost as if she was carrying it on her back. She could hear the digger coming towards her, and then the shuffling, metallic scraping of the blade in the earth.
‘At least do the requiem,’ Huw said.
She nodded and brought out her phone.
45
Execution
THERE WAS A low rumbling: the wind on ill-fitting leaded windows.
‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.’
No need to raise the voice above normal, not for a congregation of nine, including the two undertakers and the corpse.
Under lights that were dusty orbs, yellow going on brown, Merrily walked over to Roddy Lodge’s coffin.
‘I’m convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rules, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.’
It had been well after dusk when a white van had been driven to the church door. George Lomas, cheerfully overweight, with rimless glasses, and his son, Stephen, stocky and hedgehog- haired, had slipped Roddy inside like contraband.
Only ninety minutes later than planned.
No disrespect, but it seemed like the best way, Mr Lomas had whispered to Merrily, shaking hands in the porch. I panicked a bit after that demo last night. Didn’t want no scratches on the hearse, so I phoned the Lodges, suggested we put the whole thing back until everybody’s home from work, watching telly. Didn’t nobody tell you?
‘I’m afraid not,’ Merrily had said coldly to Mr Lomas, whose bill might reasonably be expected to reflect the unorthodox hours.
Lol’s concert! She could have wept.
From the glass wall beside the stairs you could see most of the city glowing just below you, and you wanted to walk out into it, like some glistening sea.
‘Maybe I’ll go out for some air,’ Lol said.
Prof leaped up and put his back against the door of the Green Room. ‘You’ll stay where you are, you paranoid bastard!’
‘It’s OK,’ Lol said. ‘Loads of time.’ He wasn’t due to go on until halfway through the gig. And then only if it feels right, Moira had said.
As if it ever could.
The Courtyard, all glass and Lego, was set at right angles to the road, in the city’s recreational quarter, opposite Hereford United’s Edgar Street ground. Lol had driven himself there in the Astra, Prof driving tight behind him the whole way to make sure he didn’t take a detour via Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff…
When he’d driven into the car park, the lights in the glass front were scary, making it seem very public, like a bus station. Within a couple of hours he was supposed to be standing alone on a stage inside that glass palace with the lights burning down on him, only a guitar to protect him and a crowd four times the size of the one which had watched Roddy Lodge die. Screaming encouragement: Why’n’t you jump?
Moira had the dressing room immediately behind the stage and Lol was changing here in the Green Room, with a washbasin and a kettle, the Washburn guitar, the Boswell guitar and Prof Levin hopping about like a surrogate nervous system.
‘Why you got to keep messing with that mobile? Just switch it off. If he calls now, you’ll have to say you’ll get back to him in the morning.’
Lol had left two messages for Mephisto Jones. Maybe Mephisto was sick, struck down with an electric migraine. Then, half an hour ago, Merrily had rung, upset, close to tears. She wasn’t going to make it in time. Probably wasn’t going to make it at all. He was almost relieved, and he told her that, and she said, If you run away, now… don’t you dare run away…
He’d gone down to the booking office to leave a message there: when a Jane Watkins arrived to pick up her ticket, tell her to wait for Lol Robinson afterwards. Then he’d changed into black jeans and a fresh alien sweatshirt with no holes in it, remembering how King Charles I had worn an extra shirt for his execution so that at least he wouldn’t be trembling with the cold. Sitting on a stool in the Green Room, Lol had a terrible feeling now: ominous.
‘What’s wrong?’
Moira had drifted in, the beautiful folk-rock goddess in her long dress of midnight blue, low-cut. A silver pendant was trickling like water between her breasts, as though it was part of the same stream that began in her long dark hair.
‘Talk him through this, Moira,’ Prof said. ‘I have to go check things in the booth.’
Lol smiled uncertainly at Moira. ‘So you’ll do half a dozen songs ending with “Tower”, and then I kind of creep on and we do “Baker’s Lament”.’
‘Then you play for as long as you feel happy about, and I’ll come back as and when. Piece of cake, Laurence.’
‘Piece of cake,’ he said and felt that flicker of separation, putting him minutely out of synch, and for a moment he was watching himself looking at the beautiful woman in midnight blue and silver, knowing now for certain that it wasn’t going to happen for him, that this was her concert and hers alone and nothing else was going to happen.
‘Oh, it will happen,’ Moira said, and he didn’t even wonder how she’d plucked that thought from his mind, because he might actually have said it while he was out of synch. Anything could have happened; his head was full of storm clouds.
A possibly important thought came to him, then wafted past like a pale moth, and he put his head in his hands for a moment to try and catch it. But it had gone, and he heard Moira saying, ‘Who the hell are you?’
Cola French was standing in the doorway, the golden stars in her hair and a small black hat with a feather.
‘How’d you get in?’ Moira growled.
‘Friends,’ Cola said. ‘And lies. I tell a lot of lies.’ She looked past Moira at Lol. ‘I lied before, Lol – I lied when I said I wasn’t involved.’
Lol was on his feet. Then his phone buzzed.
‘Lynsey and Piers and Roddy and the whole bit,’ Cola said. ‘But when I heard the copper with Piers, and your… lady, this morning at the shop, I’m thinking, I can’t sit on this shit any more.’
‘Aye, well, you can sit on it a wee bit longer, hen,’ Moira said. And as Lol watched her shepherding Cola French into the passage, he heard in the phone, ‘It’s Jones here. That Lol Robinson?’
Another voice, one of the Courtyard staff, said, ‘Ten minutes, Moira.’
‘We meet in the name of Jesus Christ, who died and was raised to the glory of God the Father. Grace and mercy be with you.’
There was a muffled gonging from one of the cooling radiators. Under those opaque glass globes, it looked as cold inside here as it was starting to feel.
No warmth for those who would mourn a murderer.
It was a boxy place, the Church of St Peter, Underhowle, so regular and heavy with dark wood that it might have been a Victorian magistrates’ court. A Jerome Banks kind of church. Merrily, wearing her monastic white alb, was not comfortable here.
‘We… we’ve come here to remember before God our brother Roddy, to commend him to God, our merciful redeemer and our… judge. To commit his body to be buried. And to comfort one another.’
There were two rows of pews – to her right the Lodges, on the left Ingrid Sollars and Sam Hall. Ingrid wore a brown shawl over her ravaged wax jacket. Sam’s silver ponytail was tied with a thin, black ribbon.
The light-pine coffin rested on a bier like a hostess trolley. Lomas and son sat two rows down, behind the Lodges, inflating the congregation by twenty-five per cent.
‘Almighty God, you judge us with infinite mercy and justice… and love everything you have made. In your mercy, turn the darkness of death into the dawn of new life…’
Alone at the bottom of the nave, hunched like a night- watchman, was Huw. He’d phoned Banks himself, to arrange for the sacrament. Merrily didn’t trust him. The word AGENDA hung in the air above him, in mystic neon.
‘… And the sorrow of parting into the joy of heaven; through our saviour, Jesus Christ.’
Meanwhile, Gomer was out there, working by hurricane lamp at the bottom of the churchyard. Tony Lodge had shown them the spot, to the left of his parents’ grave, about ten feet from the boundary hedge, a line of laurels screening it from the rest of the churchyard. Seeing the spot had made Merrily wonder why anyone had thought it worth objecting; this would be a grave you’d need a map to find.
It was fortunate, in a way, that the funeral had been delayed because Gomer had also made a late start.
This was due to his stoical digging around the Baptist chapel uncovering nothing but stones.
At four-thirty, Frannie Bliss, pale and sweating, had still been refusing to give up, raging against the dying of the light, Try here… Try back there. It’s gorra be here, or it all falls down. And then, in agony, Don’t let me down, Gomer! Until Gomer, exasperated, had snatched out his ciggy: I’m tellin’ you, boy, you blew it. There en’t nothin’ buried yere but clay.
At 4.55, Fleming’s secretary had rung, wondering where Bliss was. Merrily saying, Isn’t he there already? I hope he’s not had an accident, like she was Mrs Bliss, poor woman. By then Frannie – so convinced earlier that he’d be making the triumphant call that would bring Fleming and his team down here, with a small army of SOCOs and the Home Office pathologist – had been close to tears. He’d said he might come up the church later; Merrily hoped he wouldn’t. Rage and despair were not helpful at a funeral.
The reflection of the cold globe above it wobbled now in the steel plate on the coffin. Merrily imagined Roddy Lodge lying there in the merciful darkness, sealed away from a hostile world of electric lights, televisions, mobile phones, radiation.
The schedule for Common Worship suggested this was the most suitable time for the first hymn. Hymns were useful; they gave you a break, time to gather your thoughts for the next stage, which was your ‘tribute’ to the deceased.
For which she wasn’t ready. There were some things still to work out. It was important to at least approach the truth.
But there would be no hymns tonight. There was no organist. She imagined seven strained voices raised in stilted intimacy under the dismal hanging lamps.
No hymns.
She was grateful, at first, when the side door opened and Gomer slipped in. He didn’t come any further, just stood by the entrance, still carrying his hurricane lamp, and when she raised a questioning eyebrow at him, wild, white light flared in his glasses: warning, warning, warning.
‘Would you… excuse me… one moment.’ Merrily moved down past the coffin and followed Gomer into the porch, closing the doors against the wind. Gomer coughed.
‘This yere grave, vicar. Problem with him. En’t entirely vacant.’
‘Oh.’ This sometimes happened. A graveyard was crowded underground; there was slippage. It would happen tonight. ‘How far down is the other coffin?’
Gomer said. ‘That’s the point, ennit? This one don’t have no coffin.’
‘Put it out of your head, all right?’ Moira picked up the Boswell guitar by its neck and handed it to Lol. ‘I told the girl you’d talk to her afterwards. She’ll find you. Now let’s get this stuff on stage.’
Mephisto Jones had said he’d been out all day helping a friend to do some fencing on his farm. Then he’d called in for a beer on his way home. He said he was feeling good at the moment; on nights like this, feeling stronger, he wondered if it wasn’t time to come back to England, give it another try. Yeah, he remembered Prof, of course he remembered Prof.
Lol had made himself sit down and ask some questions about the symptoms of electrical hypersensitivity, telling Mephisto about Roddy Lodge’s death on the pylon. At one point, Prof had looked in, his bald head shining with sweat, shaking both fists.
He’d be well out of it, Mephisto had said. Wouldn’t know who he was any more.
He said he was Satan,’Lol had recalled.
Makes sense, Mephisto had said. I used to think I was the walking dead, but you know what they said about Satan…
Now Lol and Moira carried the guitars down the passage, under muted lights, and out onto the stage, where black curtains concealed the auditorium. Sounds of mass movement out there. This wasn’t a big theatre, but it still felt like standing on a cliff- top overhanging a vast city.
They put the guitars on stands: the curved-backed Boswell, the Washburn and Moira’s thin-backed Martin. There were voice microphones and guitar mikes at waist level.
‘Check the tuning,’ Moira instructed, and Lol went through the motions while she fingered a couple of chords on the Martin, provoking a whoop from beyond the curtain. She put the guitar down, placed
both hands on his shoulders, gripping hard, and hissed, ‘She’s no gonnae go away. She’ll find you. But you have to do this first, OK?’
A young guy in a black sweater appeared. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
‘Thanks.’ Moira nodded. Rustling, chatter, laughter from behind the curtains. An audience. Hundreds of people anticipating an experience. ‘Will your wee priest have made it?’
He shook his head. ‘She’s been delayed.’
I lied when I said I wasn’t involved… Lynsey and Piers and Roddy and the whole bit. What were the implications here? What could he do about it tonight? Moira would play for maybe forty-five minutes, then he’d shamble on, do his forgettable best, shuffle off. An hour lost, maybe more.
On the other hand, if he were to shuffle off now…? It wasn’t as if he’d be letting Moira down – probably the reverse; appearing with sub-standard support didn’t help anyone’s reputation. And he certainly wouldn’t be letting the audience down. But how easy would it be to find Cola French and then get out of the theatre?
They came to the black curtains at the back of the stage. The main curtains had opened now, and he could see the audience in the steep theatre, could see that it was almost full, that all the boxes set into the walls on either side seemed to have been taken.
The house lights went down. The chat sank as sweetly as the ambient noise being lowered in the mix of a live recording. The mike stands and the guitars stood in pools of golden light, and you could almost hear the steel strings vibrating in the air.
Silence like a gasp. Four hundred people out there. Anticipation.
Then Moira said, ‘OK, off you go.’
He spun in shock, and she stepped behind him to cut off his retreat, and the curtains either side of her were execution black.
‘I thought, with you needing to get away, you could go on first after all,’ Moira said.
Lol’s lungs made like a vacuum pump.
Moira pushed him hard. ‘Just get the fuck out there, eh, Robinson?’
46
Mephisto’s Blues
