by Phil Rickman
As soon as Merrily had rung the bell she pulled back, appalled.
The front door was new. Polished hardwood, expensive. ‘Cole Barn’ carved tastefully into an oak plaque.
She backed away from it, disorientated. Looking around and not recognising anything. As if she’d come here without thinking, taken the wrong turning, walked into the wrong room.
Looking back towards the orchard, you almost could believe there was some primeval energy around that path. Not so much a healing, life-affirming force as something that amplified your anxieties into obsession.
If you were vulnerable. If you’d prayed for advice and received nothing. If you were afraid your daughter was unwittingly linked with someone who had killed and butchered a man. If, wherever you looked, you saw people losing control of their lives and threatening shadows cloaking the same implacable figure: the enemy of faith, the spirit of the secular state. The worm in the apple.
Nobody answered the door.
She breathed out hard, finally turning away. Anticlimax or relief?
Whatever, just get out of here. Walk away. Go home. Consider yourself saved.
All the same, Merrily was reluctant to go back on that same path. Just didn’t want to.
On a ridge at the top of the hedged paddock there was a wooden stile, giving access to Coleman’s Meadow, the platform crane arching over it as if it was offering lifts into the meadow. If she went back that way, at least she’d have something to tell Jane tonight.
The rain was in remission again, the air felt a little fresher. Walking up the sodden field, she became aware of the bell-shaped Cole Hill rising on the other side of the meadow.
So perfect from this angle. Robed in cloud, somehow lighter than the sky. She was aware, for the first time, just how breathtaking it would be, viewed between standing stones.
And stopped, strangely moved, touched by a connection. Was this how Jane felt all the time? Was this what Jane would interpret as pagan consciousness? It didn’t matter. All she knew was that the destruction of this view by Lyndon Pierce’s upmarket estate of fake Tudor executive homes with double and triple garages would be the worst kind of insult both to the living and the long, long dead.
This wasn’t myth. It was the only certainty she’d felt all day.
She felt lighter stepping down from the stile alongside the platform crane, its great arm half raised from the back of a black and yellow truck marked access hire.
Behind it, two men were arguing, blocking the path, one scowling from under a green waterproof hat, the other wearing a red hiking jacket and an expression somewhere between pained and placating.
‘True,’ the hat guy was saying. ‘We did know about it, we knew it was happening, but we were definitely not told it was going to be televised, with all the crap that involves. And I’m not trying to be awkward, but I came here for a bit of peace. To work, you know?’
‘Which I fully — I do understand your situation, and I’m sorry. But with this weather we’ve got way, way, way behind schedule, and we just can’t afford to delay it any longer. I mean, have you any idea—’ the man in the red jacket indicated the crane ‘—what that costs to rent?’
‘With respect, mate, that’s really not my—’
‘All I’m saying is we absolutely need to get a couple of days in before Christmas. And then — I promise you — most of us will clear off for a week or so and leave you in peace. OK?’
‘Where are you getting your power?’ the man in the hat said. ‘Electricity — for lights and things.’
‘Generators.’
‘All of it?’
‘Of course all of it.’
‘No cables leading out? You’ve got any uncovered cables?’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ The man in the hat abruptly turning away. ‘Oh—’ Nearly walked into Merrily. ‘I’m so sorry…’
‘My fault, I think I crept up on you.’
‘No, no, it was my — Look, I’m sorry, are you local? Can I ask you — do you mind? — did you know about this?’
‘Well, I did know about it,’ Merrily said, ‘but I’ve not heard of an official announcement, and I don’t think there’s been anything in the papers.’
‘We never put anything out to the papers in advance,’ the red-jacket guy said. ‘Simply because we don’t want a huge crowd of spectators. Which I’m sure wouldn’t be in your best interests, either, Mr—’
‘Winterson.’
Merrily took a step back, the red-jacket guy saying, ‘Yes, of course. I was going to come round to see if we could talk to you.’
‘You are talking to me.’
‘I meant on camera. I’m sorry, my name’s Mike Brodrick. I’m not an archaeologist, I’m a director with Trench One. What happens, we usually interview either the owner of the site or the person living closest, to learn something about its recent history. I now realise that, in your case, that—’
‘Look, Mike, just…’ Mr Winterson shaking his open hands, irritated ‘… carry on, yeah? Do what you have to do.’
‘Well… thank you. It won’t be anywhere near as disruptive as you think, I promise.’ Mike Brodrick gratefully walking off, calling back over a shoulder. ‘And we’ll have a security man on duty throughout. Day and night. Meanwhile, you know, stroll around if you’d like to. Check us out.’
‘I’ll do that.’ Mr Winterson moved away from the path, turning to Merrily. ‘Sorry about that. Must’ve sounded like one of these awful city types who move in and then start complaining about the cock crowing and the church bells.’
He took off his hat. He didn’t have a beard and his greying hair was short. He was nowhere near eighteen stone. His smile was rueful. ‘Elliot Winterson.’ He put out his hand. ‘You look absolutely soaked.’
‘I’m getting used to it. Merrily Watkins.’ She shook his hand; it wasn’t limp and it wasn’t cold. ‘TV guys, huh?’
‘Think they walk on water. I was a journalist for years — print journalist, scum of the earth, you know? While the TV boys are personalities. And don’t they know it. I mean, did you hear that? Offer the neighbours a chance to be on the box and watch all their complaints melt away. I’m sure it never bloody fails.’
He looked at her. She found she’d opened her coat, exposing the dog collar, like you brought out the big cross and the sprig of garlic.
‘Ah.’ He didn’t look fazed. ‘Yeah, I thought I’d heard the name. Did I see you at the meeting the other night?’
‘But not in uniform.’
Merrily was trying not to stare at him. Black fleece and grey trousers. His hair looked as if it was growing back after being shaved tight to the skull. The beard stubble was younger, maybe two days’ worth, making a mauvish circle around his entirely friendly white smile.
‘Quite interesting,’ he said, ‘the way people were divided over this dig.’
‘Not so much the dig as what happens afterwards,’ Merrily said. ‘Whether the stones get re-erected in situ.’
‘We certainly felt as if we were intruding on a family dispute.’
‘Pretty dysfunctional family.’
‘All communities are. Who was that woman who thought they represented satanic evil?’
‘Our postmistress.’
‘Member of your church?’
‘She comes to services, but I think she finds me a bit disappointing.’
He laughed. He looked relaxed now — more relaxed than Merrily felt. So much for the reprieve. A van drew into the field from the lane. A white van with a grey cromlech symbol on the side, the word Capstone across its lintel.
‘So you, erm, don’t really like it here, Mr Winterson?’
‘Elliot. No, look, it — the village itself is perfectly pleasant and unexpectedly civilised — nice pub and that bistro place. It’s just — you don’t think they’ll have great big floodlights at night, do you?’
‘Hard to say. I don’t know much about archaeology.’
‘Me neither. Shall we have
a walk around? You can spare ten minutes, surely. I feel safer with the vicar.’
Huh? Another line from The Hole in the Sky came back at her, the kind that lingered, smarting, like your arm after an inoculation.
… the pathos of the modern-day clergy. These sad, vacant players in a dated masquerade.
‘Someone local, anyway,’ he said. ‘My wife — have you met my wife?’
‘I think my daughter did.’
‘Ah yeah. Jane? Jane who started all this. Jane who we have to blame.’
Two men were taking something that looked like a complicated Zimmer frame from the back of the van.
‘She’s eighteen,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s hoping to become an archaeologist.’
‘Seems to have made an impressive start. She told my wife about her… visionary experience.’
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
‘She’s…’ he shrugged, the rueful smile again ‘… young.’
‘It did lead, eventually, to the discovery of the buried stones.’
‘Yes.’ His eyes didn’t flicker. ‘My wife’s hoping to shoot a photo-sequence for the Independent when they get going.’ He smiled. ‘I suppose, now I’ve made myself into a possible thorn in their side — a potentially difficult person — these chaps’ll be more inclined to give Lenni access, to keep me happy. Not that that was any kind of strategy, you understand. Can we see any of these famous stones yet?’
‘They had at least one virtually exposed,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m not sure how big it was, but it looks like they’ve covered it over again. Probably because of the weather. There are at least another two, apparently, but I’m not sure where exactly.’
They walked down from the ridge towards the unturfed area, where a young woman was pacing something out between two khaki-coloured tents. You could see where the turf had already been removed in stripes, two orange-coloured mini-JCBs facing one another like adolescent dinosaurs squaring up for a fight.
‘So what do you do, Elliot?’
‘Me?’
‘You told the TV guy you were here to work.’
‘Ah.’ He grinned. ‘Bit of an exaggeration, I’m afraid. I’m on a sort of self-imposed sabbatical. I was working in America when my father died suddenly, leaving—’
‘Oh, I’m—’
‘Leaving me with a lot to sort out.’ Waving away the sympathy. ‘And enough money to buy time to consider exactly where we wanted to be.’ He grimaced. ‘Back in London, frankly, might’ve been quieter, but my wife… perhaps she’ll get the country out of her system. Or perhaps I’ll get used to it. I’m… looking at a few ideas for books. Nothing I feel confident enough to talk about yet. I’m sorry, that sounds a bit…’
‘I wasn’t prying.’
‘No, really, you have every right to pry. It’s not fair arriving somewhere being mysterious. People want to know. People need to know. Mystery wastes everyone’s time.’ He glanced at her, little smile. ‘And, er… I gather from my wife that you’re not just a vicar.’
‘Nobody’s just anything, Mr Winterson.’
‘Suppose you don’t like talking about it. Understandable.’
‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘Not at all. It’s usually more a case of people who don’t like asking me about it. Think I must be a bit weird.’
‘Surely not,’ Mathew Stooke said.
She could almost see the hot coals being laid out for her to walk along. There were, of course, ways of explaining Deliverance that even an atheist would buy… almost.
She was thinking about Nigel Saltash, the consultant psychiatrist introduced by Canon Siân Callaghan-Clarke to help modernise Hereford’s deliverance module. Saltash with his trim beard, his sports car and his undisguised disdain for the paranormal, which you could very plausibly translate into terms like mental imbalance and psychological projection and then go on to discuss the many forms of schizophrenia. On the other hand, that was the coward’s way out, and Nigel Saltash hadn’t lasted the course.
‘Well, somebody has to do it,’ Merrily said.
‘Really.’
‘At least one person in every diocese, sometimes a group or a panel. We’re very aware of the need to avoid sensationalism, which is one reason it isn’t talked about much.’
‘People gossip, though. I mean locally.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Perhaps because you’re not exactly the archetypal exorcist, are you?’
‘Big hat and a black bag? That would be the Jesuits. In the movies.’
‘Untypical?’
‘If you start seeing the demonic everywhere, you can very soon lose your balance. Mostly it’s about helping people who feel… threatened by conditions they’re living in.’
‘You make it sound like rising damp.’
Merrily shrugged. Talked about hauntings and perceived hauntings.
‘Meaning it all has a rational explanation?’
‘Sometimes it does. You need to be aware of that. But, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, once you’ve eliminated the rational…’
‘You enjoy it?’
They’d stopped by the galvanised gate, blocking the path which led up Cole Hill. Nobody had ever asked that before.
‘I think it’s worthwhile,’ she said.
‘And when you’re confronted by someone who believes that he or she is afflicted by some… paranormal presence, what exactly do you do? How do you establish if they’re telling the truth? Or at least what they perceive to be the truth.’
‘Depends on the circumstances. I might begin by just praying with them. Which often proves effective without recourse to… further measures. And sometimes indicates to me whether what I’ve been told is the truth.’
And didn’t it sound feeble?
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the power of prayer.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask if you’ll be coming to church.’ Merrily checked herself. Would at least agnosticism be a safe assumption, based on his attitude so far? She could hear the sluggish rumble of a generator, overlaid by laughter from inside one of the tents, squeals, a cry of mock protest. Quite young, some of these archaeologists. Maybe students.
‘You get good congregations, Merrily? Despite church attendance being generally in decline?’
‘Less so in rural areas. Rural people are always closer to… Anyway, I try not to count heads. And just because traditional services are in decline—’
She broke off again, frowning, her memory for some of Stooke’s more cutting put-downs becoming almost photographic.
Christianity only hangs on because of the general mental laziness of congregations and its continuing mix ’n’ match reinvention by the Church of England.
‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘it isn’t just there for services. Or just for Sunday. Some people prefer to come in on their own, sit and think, walk around. We’ll always need places where people can do that.’
He didn’t reply. She looked up into the spongy sky as plump new raindrops landed on her cheeks.
‘I think I need to get back. It’s starting to…’
Fastening her coat over the dog collar, realising what was happening. Drawing up her hood and pulling it across her face, as if it could conceal her thoughts.
‘Sorry if I’ve delayed you, Merrily.’
‘No, you—’
‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you,’ Mathew Stooke said as the heavens opened. ‘Very much.’
Once Merrily was out of sight of Coleman’s Meadow, she headed directly for the main track and the orthodox route to the village centre, walking faster and then almost running through the sheeting rain, getting rapidly out of breath until, halfway up Old Barn Lane, she had to slow down because the water, in places, was flowing around her in a brown tide, almost ankle deep.
She stood panting on the edge of the pavement. Her hood had been blown back, her hair was soaked and water was dripping into her eyes as she walked miserably into Church Street.
Dawkins, you watched him on TV, you sensed th
e sneer. Come on, you felt him saying, with a certain embittered weariness, hate me. Hate me because you know I’m right.
But Stooke… Stooke was nothing like his book. Polite, defer-ential, self-deprecating. God, she’d almost liked him. Maybe had liked him.
She walked into the square, by the side of the Christmas tree, not yet lit, although shop lights blazed defiantly. No human life on the cobbles. It was one of those days when you wouldn’t even notice the onset of darkness.
And somehow she’d allowed Mathew Stooke to interview her. Done a few interviews with journalists in the past; there was always curiosity about deliverance. What they’d later written was sometimes cynical but usually fair.
But Stooke didn’t do articles, he did books, and he didn’t do fair. Bliss had said, He wants a bit of privacy to finish his next… whatever shite he’s working on now. Even Lol had warned her to leave him alone. But she couldn’t, could she? She’d taken his presence personally. All the picturesque backwaters. Just had to go and find him, put herself through the test.
And now he’d contrived to interview her. Just like his wife had interviewed Jane.
Merrily hurried into the drive, past a parked car, both its doors opening. When she reached the front door, she half-turned to find her key and found two people behind her in the wet and muddied half-light.
A woman in a bulky blue fleece and a woollen hat. A blond-haired man in his twenties, ready with his ID.
‘Mrs Watkins?’
‘Yes?’
‘DI Brent, West Mercia CID. This is DS Dowell. May we come in?’
Dowell? Karen Dowell? Pushing wet hair out of her eyes, Merrily peered at the woman: stocky, pink-cheeked, thirtyish. Bliss’s bagman, right? Bliss always spoke well of Karen. And yet…
She wasn’t smiling; she looked tense, her face overlaid in Merrily’s thoughts with stark and grainy images from dark dramas and fly-on-the-wall police documentaries.
And one recalled instant of frozen reality. May we come in?
When they said that it was never good news.
27
Epiphany
When Jane got off the bus, the rain was lighter, and she didn’t mess around: throwing her airline bag over her shoulder and hurrying across the square, under the lych-gate and into the churchyard, where she stood for a moment with her hands either side of the curve of Lucy’s gravestone, feeling the energy coursing up both arms.
