To Dream of the Dead mw-10

by Phil Rickman

  The Hole in the Sky.

  ‘You feel better now?’ Leonora said.

  She was playing absently with Tom Bull’s fingers. The poor old sod must be squirming in sexual anguish.

  ‘Yeah. I do, actually.’

  Merrily felt angry at Stooke, angry at the Lord of the Light website. Above all, angry at herself, and yet…

  ‘All books are written for money,’ Leonora said. ‘Quite an auction for this one. More populist than Dawkins, more outrageous and no screeds of tedious Darwin-idolatry — I’m quoting one of the reviews. It was still a gamble, though. He needed to quit the paper first. Outside of daily journalism, he could drop any pretence of editorial balance.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And I have to tell you, Merrily, he is so tired of it now. Doesn’t want to write another word about religion, one way or the other. Out of his system. Only you don’t get away that easily. The publishers want another, and there’s a frightening pile of money on the table.’

  ‘But the cupboard’s bare, right? No more interviews with archbishops and cardinals. No more Dalai Lama.’

  ‘There’s the diary of the period post-Hole. All the lunacy it spawned.’

  ‘My life as the Devil’s spin doctor?’

  Leonora sighed.

  ‘He even thought of joining one of these fundamentalist sects, dissect it from the inside. Not as if they’d recognise him. But it would just be too tedious. And they always turn out to be far less sinister than their websites, don’t they? Sad, inadequate little people in search of some kind of imaginary — look, you know the truth about that 666 thing? He didn’t change the spelling of his first name. His father simply registered his birth in a hurry and didn’t realise there were supposed to be two Ts in Matthew. And then they rather liked it. It’s that simple.’

  ‘This is the most disappointing day of my life, Leonora. Most people in my profession would give up two years’ stipend to come face to face with the man who handles the Antichrist’s publicity.’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Still needs new material, though, doesn’t he? Might even have to fall back on the story of how he wound up in a crazy village with a priest who doubles as diocesan exorcist while her daughter follows ley lines and worships old gods.’

  A silence.

  ‘Don’t tell me we weren’t earmarked for Chapter 14, Leonora. He was questioning me far too thoroughly.’

  ‘It’s the way he is. He collects people. Can’t resist it. Professional curiosity.’

  ‘And then there was you and my daughter. At Lucy’s grave. Oh, what sort of pagan are you, Jane?’

  Leonora racked up a smile that was rueful but perhaps not rueful enough.

  ‘You’re quite a nice story, you and Jane.’

  ‘It’s been done.’

  ‘Only skirted around — I’ve seen the cuttings. Look, Merrily, you may be right, Elliot will have you in his scrapbook, you and Jane — awfully photogenic, the pair of you. He’s an opportunist, seldom wastes anything.’

  ‘Well, thank you for putting my mind at rest.’

  ‘But he isn’t going to repay a favour by shafting you.’

  Merrily leaned back, listening to the rain hissing and crackling like a fat-frier in a chip shop.

  ‘A favour.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was beginning to think we’d never get here.’

  ‘We have a problem,’ Leonora said. ‘Essentially, you’re not the only one who knows we’re in the village.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s stupid, but it’s causing us a lot of tension. The ravings of anonymous fundamentalist zealots, as I say, part of the package, all grist to the publicity mill, but this is too close.’

  ‘And, erm… why are you telling me?’

  ‘Because it’s a member of your church.’

  ‘Am I allowed to ask?’

  Leonora leaned back against Tom Bull, so that she was almost sitting on his face. Maybe the significance escaped her, probably it didn’t.

  ‘It’s the postmistress.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Arguably the worst of all possible scenarios.’

  ‘Mmm. You have got a problem, haven’t you?’

  The day was growing dim. Wrapped in her sodden cape, Merrily stood on the edge of the square and watched reflections of the yellow lights in ancient houses trembling in the flood. No curtains were drawn. If it was coming for them, the residents wanted to know.

  And she couldn’t lose the feeling, as James Bull-Davies loped through the lashing rain, that the village had changed for ever, lost its nerve, its confident sheen. The old timbered buildings seemed to be leaning closer together, as nightfall turned black and white into grey and white and the dismal rain kept on, and there were no lights in Lucy’s old house.

  ‘James, have you seen Lol?’

  ‘Last I saw of him, out working with Parry.’ James followed her into the shelter of the market hall. They stood by an oak pillar, looking towards the water. ‘Ken Williams, who owns that strip west of the village hall, agreed for Parry to go on his land with the digger, build up the bank. Might save the bottom end of the riverside estate.’

  ‘Save it? You mean—?’

  ‘Well, not yet. Water’s a foot deep in some gardens, though. So probably only a matter of time.’

  The impact of the continuing rain made the bottom of Church Street look like a choppy sea.

  ‘So if it keeps on raining…?’

  James leaned forward, hands linked behind his back, his face long.

  ‘Then we’re probably looking at evacuation.’

  Merrily looked up in alarm from under the rain-heavy hood of her cape.

  ‘Do people know that?’

  ‘Tentatively suggested to a few families on the estate that they should think about moving valued items of furniture upstairs. Naturally, they’re resistant to the idea. As if Christmas confers some sort of immunity, as if nature can’t wreak havoc because it’s Christmas. Gord! Like the blessed river’s going to wait till they’ve finished stuffing their faces.’

  ‘What can I do? We have spare bedrooms at the vicarage.’

  ‘Hell, Merrily, don’t go broadcasting that. We’ll be suggesting people find relatives they can stay with, outside the village.’

  ‘Leave the village?’

  ‘Don’t like saying it, and some of them don’t like hearing it from the likes of me, but what’s the alternative? Council’s got problems all over the county, some worse than this. Question of priorities. Planning bods’re going to get some stick when this is over about allowing new housing on the flood plain, but that’s happening everywhere.’

  ‘But what can we do now? What can I do?’

  ‘Do? Do nothing. Save your accommodation for emergencies, any people left homeless in the night. Meanwhile, go about life as normal, hope the rain stops, level goes down.’

  ‘And pray.’

  ‘Only try not to do it in the street.’ James puffed out his lips. ‘Be expedient to lock that bloody woman in a cellar somewhere until all this is over.’

  ‘Shirley West?’

  Not a subject she’d raised with anyone before, but it was probably necessary now.

  ‘Much wailing and wringing of hands whenever she can find an audience. Beginning of the end, sort of thing. Great flood come to wash away our sins. Or more specifically, Merrily, your sins. Not the best time, I’d have to say, to have unleashed that particular sermon.’

  ‘It needed saying, James.’

  ‘No, it didn’t.’ James shaking his head as if in pain. ‘Nobody cares, Merrily. Nobody gives a fig about the spirituality or otherwise of whichever bloody savages erected the damn stones in Coleman’s Meadow. Nobody apart from you… and her. Truth is, possibly because of your other… hat, you’re dwelling on issues beyond normal people’s need-to-know. I’m sorry, but that’s how it looked to me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. No, you
’re right. I overreacted. It’s ridiculous. One woman out of a whole village. But she does worry me. Couple of months ago never out of church, full of this slightly suspect humility, but humility none the less, and now…’

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ah.’ James shuffled his feet on the cobbles. ‘Alison was in Leominster yesterday. Found the place littered with flyers for this Church of the Holy Light?’

  ‘Church of the Lord of the Light. Shirley’s other church.’

  ‘That’s the crew. Born-again johnnies. Gather in a former warehouse on the industrial estate. Odd set of buggers. Members forbidden to use the health food shop. Beyond me. However, something you should know, if you don’t already… seems to be an offshoot of that revivalist thing that mushroomed in the Radnor Valley, couple of years ago.’

  ‘Ellis?’ Merrily spun away from the oak pillar, her hood falling away. ‘Nick Ellis is back?’

  ‘Gord, no. Calm down. I said an offshoot. Can’t see that fellow showing his face around here again, ever. Well, actually, you can… there are pictures of him in his white robes plastered all over the town.’

  ‘I’ve not been in Leominster for a couple of weeks. God, James…’

  Father Ellis. The hysteria, the speaking-in-tongues, the internal ministry for women possessed by the demon of lust. All the charges that ought to have been hung on Ellis, including sexual assault, criminal damage, and he’d got away with it.

  ‘Lord of the Light — he was part of a charismatic Anglican fringe movement called Sea of Light. Became too extreme for them. Last I heard he was in America.’

  Merrily felt damp inside, with apprehension. Remembered there’d been a lot of rain when Ellis was dominating his congregation in the hill village of Old Hindwell.

  ‘I was fully prepared to testify, James, but nobody else was willing to, and the Crown Prosecution Service threw it out. As they do.’

  ‘Well… something of a martyr now, apparently. Hounded out of his own country.’

  ‘A martyr? The bastard got off without a… wasn’t even charged. And this is after I actually made a statement saying I’d seen him insert a crucifix into—’

  ‘Yes, quite.’ James backed off, palms raised. ‘All I’m saying, if there are lunatics going around claiming Ellis was falsely accused, pointing fingers in your direction, might well explain the change in West’s attitude towards you.’

  ‘Might, yes. Thank you.’

  The last explanation of Shirley West had come from Siân Callaghan-Clarke, standing in while Merrily was away for a few days. Siân discovering that Shirley had become committed to a rigid form of self-cleansing after learning that her husband — now ex — had been a distant cousin of the Herefordshire-born mass-murderer Fred West. Hanging on to the name, in penance.

  ‘James, if they’re in contact with Ellis himself…?’

  ‘Internet.’

  ‘Mmm. Makes it all too easy.’

  ‘Especially if the chap wants to keep the lid on his whereabouts.’ James sniffed. ‘Never liked fanatics who set up churches in sheds. Seen soldiers turn from perfectly serviceable fighting chaps to Bible-punching lunatics after one week’s leave.’

  Merrily fell silent, thinking of the website, Thelordofthelight.com. How she’d said to Lol, in all innocence, Maybe coming in from America.

  ‘Watch your back, vicar, that’s all I’m saying. This climate-change business… sometimes think even people’s brains are getting overheated. Avoid her. Anyway, need to be orf. Rain’s not going to stop anytime soon.’

  ‘Avoiding her could be… a bit difficult.’ Merrily slipped between the oak pillars, pulling her hood back up. ‘Better make a run for it.’

  40

  Moral Void

  Back in the vicarage, Merrily went directly through to the scullery, hanging her soaking cape behind the door and sitting down at the desk in front of the black Bakelite phone. She took a breath, let it out slowly, then dialled Huw Owen’s number in the Brecon Beacons.

  Engaged. She’d wait. This was potentially political. Not a good idea to take it any further without advice from her spiritual director.

  She made some tea, picked up The Hole in the Sky. Opened the cover, held it up to the window and peered through the hole. All the way to hell?

  nothing… what did you expect?

  It made a lot more sense now. Merrily started on page one, twenty minutes of fast-flipping taking her through the entire book.

  ‘God’ telling the Yorkshire Ripper to kill fallen women and advising George W. Bush to take Iraq. The Spanish Inquisition, the sectarian horrors in Northern Ireland, all the bloodied roads to 9/11.

  Nothing new — how could there be? Not even Stooke’s delight in old-fashioned blasphemy. Giving God a good kicking with steel toecaps, trampling on taboos. The Christian God and Jesus Christ, as was the custom in this country, getting a bigger kicking than Allah and The Prophet Mo, as Stooke called him with something close to a condescending affection. Apart from the recycled interviews with unsuspecting religious leaders — Rowan Williams was a good one — there was little here not already covered by Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, a more distinguished hack than Stooke.

  The relishing of blasphemy… when you thought about it, that seemed more characteristic of Leonora than Stooke himself who seemed to have no personal axe to grind against the Church.

  She turned to the final chapter.

  Predictions? Hardly.

  … within fifty years, cathedrals will be art galleries, theatres and concert halls, churches quaint medieval grottoes available for secular weddings and civil partnerships.

  The clergy? What remains of it will be unpaid. Little pretence that it’s promoting anything more than the first pulp fiction.

  The Church of England? Now, what on earth will be remembered of that beyond its origins in the need to legitimise a fat king’s leg-over? Future historians will struggle to explain how it managed to go on for so long, flabby with hypocrisy and conceit…

  Merrily dialled Huw’s number again. This time it was the machine. Well, it was Sunday and he had a bunch of isolated churches.

  ‘I’m not in. If it’s owt important you’d best leave a message.’

  ‘Huw, it’s me,’ Merrily said. ‘I have a problem.’

  She put the phone down and before she could take her hand away, it rang.

  ‘Gorra favour to ask, Merrily.’

  ‘Frannie. A favour. That’s not like you.’

  ‘Ho ho. Listen, that nursing sister at the hospital, your mate, what was her name? Belfast woman, indiscreet.’

  ‘I’d be more inclined to see her as a woman of conscience with a fairly flexible loyalty to the Hereford health authority. Eileen Cullen.’

  ‘Could you get her to find out something for me? Nothing contentious. Just I don’t want to be connected with it.’

  ‘But it’s OK if I’m connected with it?’

  ‘Nothing contentious, Merrily.’

  ‘Your drug thing pan out?’

  ‘Better than expected, as it happens. Yes, indeed. I just need a bit of information that your friend should be able to provide very quickly.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’

  Silence.

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll try and get hold of Eileen Cullen, explain what an essentially decent person you are, underneath, and give her your number. That way you can tell her what you want and she can decide if it agrees with her conscience’

  Bliss thought about it. Merrily could hear traffic noise.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Do that. Give her the mobile. If I don’t hear from her in an hour, I’ll call you back.’

  ‘It’s that urgent?’

  ‘My whole life is urgent, Merrily.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In the car. The car’s me office now. A privacy issue.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeh, I’m rediscovering me faith.’<
br />
  In the pause, she heard an angry car horn.

  ‘When I was a little lad,’ Bliss said, ‘I had a hard time separating God from Santa Claus. Our priest, Father Flanagan, used to come round on Friday nights with his bets for me dad to put on for him. And this particular Friday — I was a cocky little twat — I said, Father. I’ve decided I’ll not be coming to church on Sunday, and he goes, Why is that, Francis? And I say, Because I’ve just turned nine, Father, and I’m too old to believe in God. And Father Flanagan’s creased up laughing. One day, Francis, he says, when you least expect it, you’ll look up, and there above you you’ll see what is unmistakably His face. And when that happens… when that happens… you’ll remember this moment.’

  ‘And you were suitably chastened?’

  ‘No, it was a bit of an anticlimax. I thought he was gonna tell me something interesting.’

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Bliss said, ‘I looked up, and it wasn’t the big feller, it was a face called Steve Furneaux. But I finally saw what Father Flanagan was on about. There is a God.’

  ‘And is he on your side?’

  ‘I frigging hope so, Merrily, because no other bastard is.’

  * * *

  A few minutes later Jane and Eirion came back and Merrily cobbled together a seriously late lunch of cheese omelettes and hot mince pies — not good enough, but nobody seemed hungry, the combination of darkness and flood making Ledwardine seem, for the first time, like a perilous place to be. And she kept thinking of Father Ellis and the dark brew of piety and perversity that had poisoned a valley.

  Jane was more animated now, but in an agitated way. Her eyes flickering as she ate. There was a thin streak of red mud down her face that looked disturbingly like a knife wound.

  They listened to the flood update on Radio H & W. Roads all over the county were being closed, even major roads, east — west routes particularly affected. Merrily had to collect a guitar and was apprehensive. There were few places in the county further east than Knights Frome.