by Phil Rickman
‘It’s not for sleeping in, my love. King-size folding bed?’ Gregory spread his hands. ‘I got some spare keys, if you wanna look.’
‘Well,’ Eirion said, ‘that would be—’
‘We’d rather not,’ Jane said firmly.
‘Like I say,’ Gregory said, ‘I’ve done security on a few of these gigs now. Shagfest, or what?’
‘Bill Blore… and his students?’
‘Well, not all of them, obviously,’ Gregory said. ‘Not the blokes.’
* * *
Out, then. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Leonora Winterson had relaxed into her seat as if a weight had been lifted from her body. Her turquoise coat was hanging open; underneath she wore a white sweater with a deep neckline, and the tops of her breasts were tanning-salon brown.
‘No way he was going to hide,’ she said.
‘The police actually wanted you to adopt a new identity?’
‘For a while. The traditional book-burning by red-neck morons in the US Bible Belt, that’s part of the package. Islam, however…’
‘The religious are as cringe-makingly predictable as the doctrines they follow.’
‘My God, you’ve read the book?’
‘Dipped into it. There was a Muslim threat?’
‘Wasn’t a fatwa or anything, just mutterings by a couple of crazy imams, but the police and the security services have been very nervy since 7/7. But, you see, he’s a journalist. We don’t hide. And if you can’t stand up for what you believe in, it makes a mockery of the book.’
‘So this is a compromise.’
‘Only because we don’t want people on our back all the time. He’s become a kind of anti-guru, so you get the disciples. Almost worse than the religious bigots, for whom just knowing he’s around is enough to provoke a need to confront him. As if, by not doing it, they’re betraying their faith?’
‘Really no accounting for some of these people,’ Merrily said.
‘Hates being recognised, anyway. Hates the thought of becoming a personality. Hid behind that beard for a while and now people have that rather messianic image of him he’s got rid of it. The weight — that was an exaggeration anyway. People with big beards always look heavier.’
‘So… the Wintersons.’
‘His mother’s maiden name. Now you know.’ Leonora paused. ‘Jane, huh?’
‘Easy to underestimate Jane.’
‘You’re not going to out us, are you?’
‘That would be unchristian.’
Leonora smiled briefly, stood up and walked over to the tomb, making eye contact with Tom Bull.
‘Bizarre. First person in this village I get to talk to without having to watch what I say, and it’s the vicar in the bloody church. A vicar and a dead lech.’
‘Some irony here that escapes me?’
‘I’m from a solid Church family.’
‘Ah.’
‘Went to Church schools, all the bullshit that goes with that. Why are you nodding?’
‘Your reaction to being in here was… somehow, not the reaction of a lifelong atheist.’
‘Do not…’ Lensi levelled a finger ‘… get too clever.’
Merrily smiled.
‘My father worked for the diocese, in an administrative role. My mother was a Sunday School teacher. Not many of those left, even then. Village in Buckinghamshire, not so unlike this one. My old man became increasingly, insufferably devout. Anglo-Catholic. Hounding the local vicar into installing a statue of the Virgin. Then finally, in middle age, he was ordained himself, and it all became seriously stifling. I used to walk around our church, as an adolescent, muttering obscenities, just for the thrill of the guilt, the almost erotic joy of blasphemy.’
‘You’re trying to shock me?’
‘Hell, no.’ In the ice-white light, Leonora’s skin looked thin, almost translucent. ‘I’ve met a lot of priests. They don’t shock. They simply become lofty and disapproving.’
‘But you were trying to shock your parents.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how many honourable God-fearing, High Church public-school boys were around, even fifteen years ago, and I must’ve been introduced to every one of the genuflecting tossers. Which is why I threw myself at Elliot. Good-looking, ten years older than me. Worldly, married, and a bloody atheist. My God.’
‘When was this?’
‘When I was still at university. London. He was a reporter with the Guardian then. I was always attracted to the media, but I didn’t particularly want to start off on some provincial rag, so I used to hang around their pubs. He was married but I made myself… you know, hard to resist. Don’t ask.’
‘You threw yourself at a religious-affairs correspondent?’
‘Well, he wasn’t, then. Just a general news reporter. That came later, when their religious-affairs guy was off sick and they asked Elliot to stand in. Guardian reporters get a fair bit of leeway on how they handle a story, and Elliot… well, you can imagine. Good writer, very funny… and Guardian readers are liberal, and liberals tend to be atheist…’
‘Not invariably.’
‘Well, a higher proportion of them are. You must know that’s true. Anyway, shortly after that, he was poached by the Independent.’
‘And of course the Independent doesn’t exactly do religion, does it? Or at least not from the normal perspective.’
‘If the Indy was going to have a religious-affairs correspondent it had to be an atheist, yeah.’
‘I can see the logic.’
‘Still a while before people started to get the joke. And even then, it’s not the biggest-selling paper on the rack. It was quite funny — my parents, when they found out what he did, they actually thought I was coming to my senses at last.’
‘When did they find out?’
‘About the same time as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office, I’d guess. Filtered down, and then the doors started closing. The religious establishments build high walls very quickly. Centuries of practice. By the time it was common knowledge where he was coming from, the damage was done, they’d all been on the end of Elliot’s harpoon. Unfortunately, by that time my father was too old for it to be much fun any more. I never actually threw it in their faces — hey, I’m marrying the Emperor of Unbelief, suck on that — but we… haven’t spoken for some time. Not since the book appeared, anyway.’
‘The book, I suppose, being inevitable.’
‘It was — looking back — very much the only way to go. An aggressively atheist religious-affairs correspondent was always going to have a limited lifespan.’
Merrily said nothing for a while, beginning, at last, to see where the Stookes were coming from.
The Emperor of Unbelief. The awful banality of it flagged up against the flaky, fake piety of the Bull Chapel.
38
Wounded Bird
Outside, Eirion, naturally, had to ask.
‘So did he…?’
‘No!’
‘No, I wasn’t suggesting he actually — I mean, he never even made, like… an overture?’
‘He’s an archaeologist, not a bloody composer. And two days ago I’d never even met him.’
The rain was mist-thin, clinging to Jane’s face like cold sweat as they walked away from Gregory’s caravan through coils of chilled mud they couldn’t avoid.
‘I suppose if he…’ Eirion took Jane’s cold hand. ‘I suppose he’d leave you alone if he had you lined up from the start as a sacrifice to the god of TV ratings. I mean, personally, I cannot imagine anyone who would not want to—’
‘What is this? Let’s stop Jane from slashing her wrists before Christmas? Look, it’s clear that, if you’re a woman, with Blore you’re going to get stuffed one way or the other.’
Jane looked back at the excavation. Somewhere a bird was chirping, but Coleman’s Meadow was unrecognisable as the place where, on a golden morning in high summer, Eirion had photographed her cupping the sun.
‘It’s dead, Irene.�
��
‘Just the way it looks now, work in progress.’
‘No, something’s gone. I don’t want to remember it like this.’ Jane zipped her parka. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘I can’t get anything right today, can I?’ Eirion said.
‘It’s not you, it—’
Down on the edge of meadow a car door slammed.
Someone called out through the murk.
‘Jane!’
Neil Cooper was waiting for them down near the wicket gate, where his car and a white van, probably Gregory’s, were parked. The ghost of Cole Hill was embossed on the clouds like a pale bell on a minimalist wedding card.
‘I’m sorry, Jane — about what happened, I really am. I wasn’t able to say much yesterday, and I didn’t like to phone you at home.’
He looked older. He hadn’t shaved. He wore a patched camouflage jacket and a woolly hat. He was drenched, his jeans dark with damp, like he’d been walking through high undergrowth.
‘Not as if you didn’t warn me, Coops,’ Jane said.
‘For what it’s worth, if somebody’d warned me, I wouldn’t’ve taken any notice either. Is this…?’
‘Eirion Lewis,’ Eirion said.
He put out his hand. Coops nodded, shook it limply. Jane thinking the way he was looking today, Eirion would have no reason at all to feel threatened. Pity about that.
‘You didn’t come here on a wet Sunday to look for me,’ she said.
‘Weather’s lousy, half the county’s under water, and Blore’s in the pub. I just wanted to…’
He was worried about something. Possibly even upset, and it wasn’t about what had happened to her. She had a sense of parting, the end of something for him, too, and she shivered in the damp, airless drabness of everything.
‘Main reason,’ Coops said, ‘is we’ve arranged to go away for Christmas, to my wife’s parents in Somerset.’ He gestured with his head towards the meadow. ‘Blore’ll be carrying on, with a skeleton crew. He doesn’t seem to observe Christmas. This is the last chance I’ll get this year to try and see what’s going on.’
‘But you’re in charge, aren’t you? You’re the county guy… the employer.’
‘That’s no longer the way it operates, Jane.’
Coops gave Eirion a sideways look.
‘Forget everything you’ve heard about the Welsh,’ Jane said. ‘He’s absolutely to be relied on.’
‘I can die happy now, I can,’ Eirion said. ‘I am no longer a symbol of the ludicrous English preconceptions about my race.’
Coops smiled faintly, then looked away across the site towards the grey swelling that was all that remained of Cole Hill. He bit his upper lip.
‘As the Council — or rather the Council Cabinet — are into farming out as much as possible to the private sector, the truth is that half the time we’re not quite sure who we’re supposed to be working for.’
‘The council-tax payers? The people?’
‘Don’t make me laugh. Decisions get made over your head, you don’t even know who’s made them or why. I… probably need to get out of this area next year, get a job somewhere else.’ He pulled off his hat, wiped his face on the lining. ‘You going away for Christmas?’
‘Coops, my mother’s the vicar. This is the time of year when they do big box-office? So if there’s anything you need me to do…’
He shook his head.
‘Hey, it’s not as if I’ve got anything to lose. I’ll be looking for a new… career path or something, in the New Year.’
‘No! Jane, listen to me, this is was what I was afraid of. You must not let that bastard ruin your life, do you understand? This job needs people like you.’
‘Loonies?’
‘People who care. People who… love everything here that’s ancient and mysterious, even if it isn’t spectacular… even if it isn’t visible. In fact, there’s a report coming out from English Heritage next year that will suggest that, the way we’re going, less than ten per cent of the ancient monuments we can see now will be visible for future generations. No decent money available for conservation, developers ripping up the countryside. We need people who can get angry about that.’
‘Blore gets angry.’
‘He also gets rich. Easy enough to get angry over lost causes like the Serpent.’ Coops wiped his forehead again with his hat, put it back on. ‘I’m probably a bit overwrought, Jane. Couldn’t sleep last night, which is not like me.’
‘Coops, could you just, like, spit this out?’
‘Not that easy. I don’t really know what I’m getting at.’ He walked away, up the path towards the orchard, as if the site might be bugged. ‘OK… I don’t have many friends in the Chief Executive’s department. In fact just the one, and no more than a lowly secretary to an assistant, but she… happened to be in the right place at the right time to notice that someone in that department had received a report. About this dig.’
‘From who?’ Eirion said.
‘Not from us, that’s the point.’
‘From Blore?’
‘It’s a report which, in the normal way of things, might have been expected to go to my boss.’
Eirion said, ‘Blore is reporting directly to the Chief Executive of the Council? About Coleman’s Meadow?’
‘Blore was very proprietorial about this excavation from the start. Did all the geophysics personally, with ground radar, and he was working here before any of us even knew he had the contract.’
‘And what does that suggest?’ Eirion said.
‘Well, obviously, it’s a prestigious excavation. And it’s exciting. We don’t often find unknown standing stones, and whatever happens it’ll make for some fantastic television. Now, it might only be that, or it might be… he’s found something we didn’t expect.’
‘Like what?’ Jane said.
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? Whatever it is he’s — Obvious he’ll want to keep it to himself, especially if it could provide an eye-popping climax to his programme. If he has got something, he’ll let it out no more than a week before the programme goes out, for maximum publicity.’
‘Yes.’ Eirion nodded. ‘That’s how it’s done.’
‘What could it be, Coops?’
‘I’m not sure. At the end of the day, he might be a shit but he’s a bloody good archaeologist. I’ve just spent a couple of hours walking round the place, trying to second-guess him, but he covers his tracks. He had one stone more or less unearthed, the whole thing, but now the soil’s gone back, or most of it. As if there’s something he doesn’t want anyone else to see.’
‘Couldn’t that just be because of the danger of flood damage?’ Eirion said.
‘Sure, but…’
‘What can we do?’ Jane said.
‘Nothing.’
‘No, I mean, what can we do — me and Eirion? We’ve really got nothing to lose, Coops. We can watch him. We can watch what he does, where he goes.’
‘No. I don’t want you going near him, Jane. I’m serious. He’s done enough to you already, but if he really takes offence he can script his programme in a way that will make you look even worse.’
‘We don’t have to make it obvious. What are we looking for?’
‘God… I don’t know.’ Coops ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw. ‘Anything unexpected. Say, for instance, if he suddenly starts to extend the site. In any direction.’
‘What would that mean?’
‘Well, it… it could mean, obviously, that there’s more here than we thought. Originally, as you know, we were thinking in terms of a shortish stone-row, like Harold’s Stones at Trelleck. The original geophys suggested three stones, possibly a fourth, fairly randomly arranged, no identifiable pattern and not too far under the surface. But Blore’s done his own survey and, although I haven’t seen the results, I wouldn’t rule out something more extensive.’
‘A stone circle?’
‘Too early to speculate with any authority.’
‘Bu
t this excavation,’ Jane said. ‘You’re saying this could be just the beginning of something huge. I mean, like the Serpent? As important as that?’
‘Please, Jane…’ Coops wiped some dampness from his forehead with his sleeve. ‘I wish I’d never…’
‘I won’t go near him. I’ll be very careful.’
Eirion said, ‘Jane, I don’t think—’
‘We’ll be very careful. Coops, do you have a number where I can contact you? I know you’ll be back after Christmas and everything, and Blore’s not going to have that much—?’
‘No,’ Coops said. ‘You don’t understand, I won’t be here after Christmas. Not officially, anyway. We’ve been told to stay out of it. Get on with other things. Leave it to Blore.’
He looked gutted.
‘So whatever he finds,’ Jane said, ‘he gets all the credit?’
‘That’s… yes. He gets the credit. And the money. Look… you’ve got my mobile number. I’ll keep it charged. Just don’t get carried away. I could be totally wrong. I don’t want to look like a complete idiot. I’m a professional, not a visionary.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Jane said, ‘it looks like I’ll never be a professional, but nobody can stop me being the other thing.’
She felt her smile go crooked. She felt a small release, her soul stirring like a wounded bird among the dead leaves.
It had started to rain.
It had probably never stopped.
39
Martyr
‘What can I say?’ Merrily said. ‘He seemed a nice man. I confess I didn’t expect that.’
The rain fizzed in the chapel window. Leonora Stooke looked amused.
‘An atheist can’t be a nice man?’
‘His book is aggressive, disdainful, derisive…’
‘And funny?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘He’s a good writer,’ Leonora said. ‘A good writer can write anything. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘I think the one word we’re walking all around here,’ Merrily said, ‘is hack. He did it for the money and the need to cash in on his brief notoriety. Recycle all the dirt he’d gathered, plus a few scurrilous anecdotes he might not have been able to use in the paper. Put it all together, cement with vitriol. Get it out before his star vanished from the… journalistic firmament.’
