by Phil Rickman
She’d bought some time, but it was running out. The gap year nearly half gone and nothing from it, this limbo state between school and college, supposedly a time to discover herself. A freedom that wasn’t freedom at all. Ought to be applying to universities now, for next year, citing her work experience, her passion for archaeology. But why? Why? Archaeologists were ten a penny and nobody wanted to pay them.
She’d got talking to this supermarket manager in Hereford with a second in English Literature. Asked him if he couldn’t get a job as a college teacher, and he’d said he’d rather be a supermarket manager.
The mossy shoulders of Lucy’s stone felt warm under Jane’s hands. Above the quote from Traherne, the stone said,
LUCY DEVENISH
of this village
No dates, as requested in Lucy’s will – was that allowed?
As if she was not dead but still here, still functioning in some way. A witch in the oldest sense. Talk to me, Lucy. You saw them. You know what they were.
He was built like an old-fashioned wrestler, short and thick set, shaven-headed, overweight. He came creaking out of the leather-backed chair at the end of the conference table.
‘At this point, I’d just like to ask, what do we think we’re doing? Do we even know?’
There are so many of us. No more than a dozen, actually. Men and women from the coalface, some old mates, some new to the ministry, a couple whose names Merrily struggled to remember and this guy who she didn’t know at all.
At first, she’d had him down as aggressively evangelical – the only one of them wearing a white dog collar at a jeans-and-trainers event – but maybe not. Accent too plummy. While the others were having coffee a short time ago, he’d bought himself a large glass of red wine.
‘I’ll be honest,’ he said. ‘I rather think I might be having a crisis.’
‘Crisis of faith?’ Clive Wells said.
‘Certainly not that,’ the wrestler said. ‘Because I’ve realized that the deliverance ministry is anti-faith.’
Oh please…
Merrily was sitting next to Clive Wells who she’d persuaded to chair the gathering. Clive twitched a tired smile.
‘Go on then, Paul. Explain.’
‘Anti-faith,’ the wrestler said, ‘in that it has us hunting for evidence of the miraculous. For example, we deal with people who think their houses are haunted, and we – some of us – feel the need to become psychic investigators, as distinct from priests.’
Nick Cowan sat up. Nick the former social worker, now senior deliverance minister for Worcester, who had opened the morning session by making a thin case for the survival of exorcism at a time of dwindling congregations on the basis that people always came back to the Church when troubled by the unknown.
Merrily hadn’t liked to mention the proliferation of paranormal-rescue groups with their digital recorders, magnetometers, resident mediums and baseball caps on back to front. Showing you digital pictures of your orbs, playing you EVP messages of your entity croaking through analogue radio static.
‘Times change,’ Nick Cowan said. ‘People are more widely read on the paranormal and related issues. They’ve seen TV programmes, films, they expect more than a blessing and a pat on the head. They expect an explanation.’
‘So we make one up for them?’
The wrestler leaned back behind folded arms, telling them how he’d been invited into deliverance by his bishop because of his experiences abroad with Oxfam and Amnesty International. This was around the time African kids were undergoing wholesale exorcism in parts of London, and there were hints of it in the Midlands.
‘In areas of malnutrition and rudimentary schooling, evil spirits are very much part of the package. But even in Africa, I never encountered a child who seemed possessed by anything more than the earthly evils of deprivation, shortage of healthcare, poor schooling and parental apathy. Never encountered anything that I didn’t believe couldn’t be turned around through a combination of sympathy, prayer—’
‘And foreign aid. Yes,’ Clive Wells said. ‘Paul, given that the policy generally adopted by Bishops for the appointment of exorcists would include, amongst its criteria, a level of scepticism—’
‘Not about the nature of God, Clive, don’t accuse me of that. I’m merely questioning the way we interpret people’s ghost stories.’
‘None of these issues are simple.’
‘Or are we perhaps overcomplicating them? Which, I have to say, leads me to question the kind of clergy who allow themselves to be recruited for deliverance training.’
Merrily slid Clive Wells a note on the back of a menu. This Paul – who is he?
‘So what would you do?’ Nick Cowan said. ‘What would you do if faced with a mother who’s convinced her child is possessed by a satanic evil you don’t really accept? Or, indeed, what have you done in that situation?’
The wrestler beamed savagely.
‘Whatever it might be – delusion, psychosis or, indeed, alleged satanic evil – I throw the book at it. Certainly wouldn’t waste my time turning detective. Just as I might not see it as my job to investigate the history of a so-called haunted house to try to give the alleged spirit an identity. Is the house built on the site of a pagan cemetery or something? Who cares? I don’t want to get to know it, whatever it is, or find out what it’s after, or why it might be unquiet… if it’s some former resident who doesn’t like the new decor. Because none of that can ever be proven and – in case anyone’s forgotten – the Bible forbids us from having dealings with the dead. Does anyone want to take issue with me here? Anybody?’
He looked from face to face. Merrily thought his gaze lingered on hers, but maybe that was insecurity. Clive Wells was looking wary now.
‘So what do you do, Paul?’
‘I’ve told you. Leave it to the Holy Spirit. We don’t exorcize, God does, at our request. As we have no means of understanding what’s actually happening, we should regard it all as potentially evil – at least, in the sense that it could be opening doors to mental illness.’
‘So you wouldn’t follow the suggested procedure, beginning with, say, a house blessing?’
‘I’d cut to the chase. Whatever I’m told has been experienced, be it a ball of light or a fragrant perfume, it is an intrusion. Or an imagined intrusion. I say a prayer, then tend to command whatever it is, in the name of Our Lord, to get the hell out.’
‘Although you don’t necessarily believe – yourself – in whatever it is you’re supposed to be dealing with?’
‘Clive’ – the wrestler throwing out his arms – ‘my personal reaction, as a human being, is irrelevant. I’m a tool of God. Equally, I’m suspicious of any deliverance minister who claims to use so-called psychic skills in his or her work. As you may know, Dom Robert Petitpierre, who edited the findings of the Bishop of Exeter’s 1970s commission on exorcism, believed himself to be psychic but was determined to suppress it in his deliverance work. Not relevant. A distraction.’
‘Let me get this right,’ Nick Cowan said. ‘You’re suggesting the deliverance ministry is attracting people whose faith is weak. Who are looking for evidence of the paranormal to strengthen their belief in a supernatural deity?’
‘Nicholas, I’m playing devil’s advocate, if you like.’
Merrily poured herself a glass of water. Dissent was hardly unknown at a deliverance meeting. How many exorcists did it take to change a lightbulb before all the others blew?
Abbie Folley, a recent appointment from Merthyr, was playing with her bangles.
‘And is that your problem, Paul? You don’t know how much you’re supposed to believe?’
‘My problem…’ Planting both hands flat on the table, leaning forward. ‘… is that I’m unsure whether the sympathy and prayer I mentioned earlier should extend to appearing to share the convictions of the people I’m trying to help. All right, what’s our most common form of apparent haunting? The so-called bereavement apparition. The comfort-projection f
ollowing the death of a loved one. “Oh, yes, I saw him, vicar, clear as day, sitting in his favourite chair.” Well, of course you did, Mrs Davies. Two sugars in mine, please.’
He laughed, looked up and down the conference table, face to face.
‘Harmless, surely? Humour them.’
Merrily said carefully, ‘In my experience, the bereavement apparition has its place in the cycle of grief.’
The wrestler grinned at her.
‘Of course it does. “Oh, don’t sit there, vicar, that’s George’s chair.” But how do we know, Merrily? Is George imaginary or wishful thinking? Or, taking the negative viewpoint, is he a possibly harmful obsession? Or – if this was America, where so-called psychic intrusion tends to be considered demonic – something dark, malign and essentially alien. Something not George.’
‘One of the problems we’d have to work out,’ Merrily said. ‘As best we could.’
‘Why? How?’
‘Consideration. Meditation. Prayer. Feel free to substitute your own word.’
He didn’t do that. She became of aware of Abbie Folley looking at her, minimally shaking her head as the menu came back from Clive Wells.
Paul Crowden, Wolverhampton area. Seems to be a new member of the Lichfield deliverance panel. Former charity worker. Been there, done that. Ordained in middle-age. Making up for lost time. Bit of a PITA. (destroy this, please)
Paul Crowden said, ‘Tell me, Merrily, do you feel it’s part of your job to investigate the paranormal?’
‘Well… not as an end in itself. But if background knowledge of something might help me confront a particular issue…’
‘Is that what you think the Bible tells us to do? Investigate?’
Merrily felt herself frowning. She wondered what PITA meant.
‘You mean the Bible which forbids us from having dealings with the dead? Thereby appearing to regard anything paranormal as potentially evil?’
‘Some weeks ago,’ Crowden said, ‘an elderly woman approached a vicar in my diocese, telling him she was seeing, amongst other phenomena, the ghost of her dead cat. The vicar was fond of cats and asked my advice.’
‘Oh hell, Paul,’ Abbie Folley said. ‘You didn’t tell him to zap the poor bloody cat on the off chance it was demonic?’
Paul Crowden said nothing.
Merrily thought, PITA. Pain In The Arse?
‘I have to decide quite soon,’ Crowden said, ‘whether to continue in deliverance or to tell my bishop that it’s really not for me. That’s why I’d like to know from all of you, with reference to the issues I’ve raised, how you approach this most problematic of ministries.’
Merrily looked up at a movement. Abbie Folley, in thigh-length crocheted sweater, black leggings, was pushing her chair back and standing up.
‘Paul, I’m sure we all have a lot to say, and I can’t wait to start, but all right, is it, if we have a toilet break first?’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Merrily said.
Through the leaded windows, she could see the rain-shredded fog had become a translucent yellowy haze. Dispiriting. The fog had been better.
7
Cut sideways
THE SKY CLOSED in again and the sour, sporadic rain came back, but Jane was reluctant to leave and prowled amongst the graves. She saw where greasy grass had been trodden down in front of Lucy’s stone – her own boots and Mum’s, some evidence of their aborted visit.
She looked down towards Aidan Lloyd’s grave, letting her breathing settle, blanking her mind, her gaze resting on the green plateau. Reliving the dark: those moments of pounding feet, intermittent glimmers of lamplight, the sense of…
… ritual?
A catch-all word in archaeology for anything which had no obvious explanation. A regular joke among the guys in Pembrokeshire, on her short-lived, gap-year, work-experience dig. Well it’s obviously not a settlement so it must be a ritual landscape.
Archaeological in-joke. She heard their laughter, maybe always there like tinnitus whenever she thought about the Pembrokeshire dig. They could be so cliquey, those guys. Except, of course, for Sam who’d got her into bed.
Jane choked on residual fog and gave in to coughing. Those texts and emails, continuing to arrive, mostly offering her work jobs on other digs. If she’d said yes to one of them, she wouldn’t now be out of work. Just booked into the same B & B as Dr Samantha Burnage. Same room, same bed.
Oh God, God, God…
She walked uselessly away to where entrails of fog were hanging from holly and apple trees, two of them bending like old and skeletal birds over Aidan’s grave. Thinking back, it was like the trees themselves had come alive in the dead of night, gnarled arthritic limbs acquiring new muscle in a crackling of bark.
Don’t laugh. This was part of the Ledwardine ritual landscape… where the medieval orchard might well have been following the perimeter of a prehistoric henge. The idea of one day proving it was still the main reason she’d decided to become an archaeologist.
Destiny.
The big irony was that it probably wouldn’t get excavated unless plans for a supermarket went ahead on the eastern perimeter of Jane’s henge, which meant the council would have to sanction a dig before the ancient site became a building site.
Wasn’t life a bitch? Jane sank her fingers into the moss on Lucy’s stone.
No more shall clouds eclipse my treasures
Nor viler shades obscure my highest pleasures
The patrician voice in her head was as clear as it had ever been. Clear as the memory of the day Lucy had cut an apple in half, sideways, to reveal the fibrous green pentagram within, an everyday mystery most people were never aware of because they never cut sideways.
The warm, mossy stone under her hands, Jane imagined Lucy coming down from wherever to stand next to her. The poncho, the wide-brimmed hat. Looks like an old Red Indian scout, talks liked a headmistress, Mum used to say. Did wise old Lucy have any kind of degree? Who knew? She’d just run a dark little shop called Ledwardine Lore, repository of rural mementoes and ancient wisdom, and kept an eye on the quiet kaleidoscope of village life.
‘Janey?’
Agony from the ankle as she whirled around to a tiny spark-shower in the air briefly reflected in bottle glasses under an old, patched flat cap.
‘Gomer…’
‘You’re crying, girl.’
He was snatching the roll-up from between his lips. She hadn’t even heard him approaching.
‘I… I just like twisted my ankle, Gomer. I’m OK. I was kind of resting it for a bit?’
He stared at her. She guessed he’d only come in here because he – or someone who’d told him – had spotted her alone and limping under the lychgate. You couldn’t move in Ledwardine without somebody grassing you up.
‘Sorry, Janey.’ Squeezing out the red end of his roll-up. ‘If I’d a knowed it was you, see, I’d’ve had the ole baccy stick goin’.’
Jane collapsed into a grin. She’d brought him back from Pembs an e-cig pack, in a bid to prolong his life. Embarrassed about it now.
‘That was… intrusive of me, Gomer. Keep meaning to apologize.’
‘No, no, girl, I’m gettin’ on all right with ’im.’ Gomer fishing out the e-cig to show he’d still got it. ‘He d’work better’n I reckoned he would.’
‘That’s what Mum says.’
‘It’s the rollin’ of ’em, I misses, see. Gives you time to think.’
The sun slid palely into view and then vanished like a coin into a slot machine. Jane nodded at Aidan Lloyd’s turfed-over grave. In the absence of Lucy nobody knew more about the hidden side of Ledwardine than Gomer Parry.
‘You come to check that out? Like make sure it’s all… settling down?’
He looked at her like she was daft.
‘Janie, I been diggin’ graves since before your ma was born.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Earth’ll take care of him.’
‘Right.’
He looke
d at her, curious.
‘You knowed this boy?’
‘Did anybody? I mean, I saw him around.’ She remembered this thin, quiet, vague-looking guy, dark eyes, dark jaw, sitting in the Swan, making a half of cider last a long time. ‘Heard things about him.’
‘Oh, aye, we all yeard things.’
‘We didn’t know, though, did we?’
‘Village folks, you don’t go around tellin’ everybody your life story, they makes one up for you.’ The brim of Gomer’s cap dipped towards the grave. ‘Less’n half as old as me and bloody gone already. What’s that about?’
‘I suppose it’s about tobacco on its own helping you concentrate, but hash…’
‘Oh aye?’ Gomer looked up. ‘That’s what they reckons, is it?’
‘They’re like… his brain must’ve been fried when he drove out of a field into the path of a van. Could be he hadn’t smoked anything at all that day, but hey…’
Gomer looked pensive.
‘Couple years ago, we done some field drains for Iestyn Lloyd.’
‘Did you get paid?’
The bigger the farm, the tighter the farmer, that was the general rule.
‘And a borehole, too,’ Gomer said. ‘Boy come out with us. Walks round a bit, then he goes – bit hesitant, like – mabbe sink him yere?’
‘The borehole?’
‘And bugger me if he wasn’t right.’
‘He knew where you’d find a good water source? He was a dowser?’
‘Didn’t have no forked twig, mind. He just knowed.’
‘It’s just an aid, the twig, or the rods,’ Jane said. ‘They reckon if you’re really good you don’t need any of it. Blimey.’
‘Feller once told me I could do it, but I never found the time, see.’
‘Bet you could, Gomer.’
‘Allus folks around can do it better, so best leave it to them. I recall the boy says could we not tell his ole feller.’
‘Why?’
‘Just din’t want him to know he done it. Or mabbe as he could do it. Iestyn Lloyd, he got no time for that ole wallop. Modern farmer, see. Works hard, works his ground hard. He done well, mind. Hell of a big farm now.’
