by Phil Rickman
She hefted it to an ear.
Ledwardine Vic—’
‘Merrily?’
‘Bloody hell, Sophie—’
Realizing, before the name was quite out, that this wasn’t Sophie.
‘That’s her daughter, is it? Jane?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry, I thought—’
‘Jane, this is Julie Duxbury, from Ewyas Harold. Is it possible you can get a message to Merrily, or am I too late?’
‘Too late for what?’
Another one?
‘Jane, is she in the church?’
Jane hesitated. Julie Duxbury didn’t.
‘I’ve been talking to Gareth Brewer’s wife, who— I’m trusting you, Jane, because I have to start trusting people, or nothing will ever stop all this. Lara’s been getting calls from Sir Lionel Darvill. Angry and frustrated and certainly suspicious of me. I meddle, you see. We have such small congregations, scattered over so many churches now, that we’re inclined to feel superficial, and so we meddle. All that’s left for us to do, I sometimes fear.’
‘Nothing wrong with that.’ Jane said. ‘Someone has to. OK, yeah, she’s in the church.’
‘With Gareth?’
‘I think so.’
‘That’s all right then. That’s good. Jane, your mother needs to know that Darvill knows she was here this evening – I don’t know how he knew, he has eyes everywhere. Suffers from an increasing paranoia and he’ll damage people without a thought. Doesn’t want her talking to Gareth. Well, that’s no surprise, and it shouldn’t affect anything, it’s her job. I just wanted her to know, but it doesn’t matter.’
‘Are you at home?’
‘Yes, but I may have a visitor later. I’ll give you my mobile number just in case but it doesn’t matter. Just tell her not to worry, and we’ll talk tomorrow.’
Jane took the number down, encouraged at someone treating her like an adult, for whatever reason. Then she called Sophie back.
A tick had formed in Gareth Brewer’s lower face, seeming to follow the rhythm of the fluctuating candle flames.
‘Wasn’t about making him dance,’ he said. ‘It was what he wanted.’
‘You thought that?’
‘It was what we had to believe.’
‘You mean that was what Darvill told you.’
He’d admitted to putting a menthol inhaler up his nostrils to block the smell when they opened the coffin. He’d read police did that at post-mortems.
On his feet now, backing away from the chancel. She’d had to stop him trying to demonstrate how he and another dancer – Jed, the cheesemaker – had shared the dead weight. The two of them lifting the body, carrying it between them, its arms over their shoulders, at one end of the open grave. The grisly customizing of a dance that Lionel Darvill had learned from his father.
‘So you were bringing him back. Into the fold. Into his Kilpeck persona – the Man of Leaves.’
‘That’s it. We put the mask on him first. By the time we’d cut the jacket off, got the bells strapped to his calves, it was like, Oh, we gotter get him out to get the rag jacket on proper. So out he comes. One of the boys was sick. Got sent into Iestyn’s field to throw up.’
Jane had described the holly and the white-berried mistletoe set in bark, the fissured features that had seemed to alter their expression in the unsteady lamplight.
Gareth Brewer looked up, that vibration in his jaw.
‘I s’pose what we’d forgotten was how he’d died. Instantly, it said in the Hereford Times. Sounds clean, that. I never figured he’d be, you know, mangled. Nobody said his face’d been half ripped off. And the post-mortem and sewn up and that. It was just a blotch. I’m sorry to be telling you all this, I—’
‘No, go on…’
‘When the lid come off, it was horrible. No blood, like, but that made it worse. This drained thing in the suit and tie. Me, I just turned off. At first. We’d agreed to do it, put the bells on him and the jacket and the mask, to bring him back into the side. We were the Kilpeck Morris. We’d had the benefits of it, and we accepted there was things you gotter do sometimes. Things outside normal experience. Seemed like a good thing to do, sending him from here as a dancer. Reverse the damage Iestyn done. We were happy with that idea.’
‘Happy?’
‘We were up for it. Specially after a few drinks. Making jokes, the way you do. Burke and Hare, all that. We had two good spades, so it didn’t take that long to get down to the box. We’d danced first. We didn’t need music. It was slow. You could almost find the rhythm by your own heartbeat. We’d bound cloth over the sticks so there wouldn’t be much noise. We felt energized. Up for it. Feeling… not good, but capable.’
‘How long was all this going on?’
‘I dunno. An hour? Hour and a half? An energy starts to come through, look. The energy you put in, it increases the energy you get back. When you first start dancing, you might think you’re fit, but you get tired quite soon. Gotter keep on till you break through it. Till you engage.’
‘Like moving up a gear?’
‘That’s it. When that happens, you come out… I don’t know where you come out, but it’s somewhere else. When you’re doing it proper. When you’re in the right place at the right time. On the right day… night.’
‘Festive days?’
‘Aye. Saints’ days. And the equinoxes. When you’re holding the balance between the seasons. Dancing the summer in. Or, in our case, more often, it’s the winter. Summoning what we needs for the hard days to come.’
‘And the energies, where do they come from?’
He shrugged.
‘Out of the earth. And the air. The rain sometimes. The wind. Ice. Or fog. Even fog. You work with what’s around. You goes at it steady till it starts to engage.’
Gareth talked about the euphoria that would often emerge in the whoops and roars of the Border morris men. And the fusion, all of them becoming the same organism. She remembered the grunts and the rhythms of breathing in the churchyard, and the smell of the country fog. No roaring, no whooping. Only what must have been the muted cackling of the bells around a dead man’s legs.
‘I still can’t imagine how you got through it.’
‘We just did, Mrs Watkins. We had the energy between us, all of us together.’
‘What were you feeling then? Inside.’
‘Nothing. It was only afterwards, when we’d gone our separate ways, that it started coming back to me – feeling what I hadn’t felt at the time. This cold bony arm bent round my neck. The sheer, bloody horror of that. But while it was happening I never felt like that, see. I was able to do it.’
‘How did it end?’
‘We put him back. And the soil, the earth.’
Not properly, though, jammed halfway down; they’d wanted out.
‘And that was it?’
‘We replaced the turfs. Neat as we could. And then we…’
He looked puzzled for a moment, as if something had occurred to him for the first time.
‘Jesus, we never done,’ he said, ‘what we should’ve done. When you finish the dance – they all do this, all the morris sides, all the ones I seen, anyway – you all walks in a circle. Around the place where you done the dance.’
‘Why do you do that?’
Like she couldn’t recognize the ritual aspect, the hint of magic: the closing of the circle, making sure that whatever energies they’d awoken would remain inside…
… the grave? Lara’s voice came to her. … started to breathe through his mouth, in great gulps, as if he’d been underwater, no air… And the cold. And the smell…
In the cold of the nave, Gareth was sweating freely, his eyes flitting erratically from the dull lustre of the organ pipes, past the pulpit to where the nave escaped the candlelight and shut down into shadow.
‘We took him out,’ he said, ‘and we made him dance, and now the bugger’s dancing and he won’t go back. Oh Jesus.’
Shaking now.
‘OK.’ Merrily stood up. ‘We need to do something about this, Gareth.’
‘Just get him away from me. Get him back.’
‘Yes.’
She was close to trembling, too. Felt a pulse in her gut.
This would not be quickly dealt with. She asked him to excuse her and went down to call home, explain to Jane, but it was engaged.
There was a text, from Julie Duxbury. it said,
whatever anyone else tells you, DO THIS!!!
*
‘You need to tell me what she’s doing,’ Sophie said.
‘I don’t know what she’s doing.’
‘How long have they been in the church?’
‘Most of an hour? She didn’t have time to explain much. Except that the guy was in a mess and she needed to organize something quickly. You probably have a better idea than me of what that’s likely to be. Now… if you think this is important enough for me to go and bang on the church door with a big stick…’
‘No. Don’t do that. Let it take its course.’
Sophie’s voice sounded surprising. Shocking, even, in its roughness, its… vulnerability? Sophie? Jane stared hard into the circle of lamplight.
‘You’re going to have to tell me, Sophie. I know that this guy Darvill, for reasons of his own, is doing his best to keep her away from Brewer. I know he’s been leaning on Julie Duxbury and… well, obviously, someone’s been leaning on you as well. So like who would that have been? As if we didn’t know.’
Cavernous silence in the old phone before Sophie’s voice came cautiously back.
‘Your mother’s presence in Kilpeck tonight was noted. The person you mentioned assumes he has the Bishop’s ear.’
‘By virtue of being Sir Lionel.’
‘And a significant patron of the church. And while the current bishop’s ear is far less accessible than the ears of his predecessor, it does tend to… prick… at the mention of certain names. Merrily Watkins being one of them. He didn’t actually speak personally to Sir Lionel Darvill, the call was intercepted by Ben. Who passed it on to the Archdeacon. From whom I received a call.’
Siân Callaghan-Clarke. That figured. Jane had met Siân and, in the end, they’d got along OK. But she was a former barrister and ambitious. Becoming Archdeacon of Hereford wouldn’t be a career summit for Siân.
‘Sounding, I have to say, not her normal self,’ Sophie said. ‘Insisting that Kilpeck is a purely pastoral matter.’
‘What the hell’s that mean? It can safely be left to the cows? Sorry—’
‘Something for which deliverance is not considered appropriate. The rector will also be receiving a call telling her it can be dealt with by prayer and counselling. I asked the Archdeacon informally if she could tell me what was behind all this. She said Sir Lionel Darvill seems to think that your mother, misguidedly, is interfering in a delicate situation that Julie Duxbury is already trying to resolve. He thinks she may be superfluous. And likely to make unnecessary waves.’
‘But… hang on, Sophie, Julie Duxbury told me, not ten minutes ago, that Darvill’s accusing her of exactly the same things. She’s, like, meddling. He’s bonkers.’
‘Nonetheless, the Archdeacon suggests it might be advisable for your mother to suspend all activity in connection with Kilpeck until further notice.’
‘Bloody hell, that’s—’
‘And I’ve been asked to keep it off the Deliverance database. And there are other complications. So you see why I thought I needed to speak to Merrily. However—’
‘I’ll get her to call you as soon as she gets back,’ Jane said.
‘No.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Don’t. Not tonight. It’s too late. She’ll have done what she thinks is necessary. And whatever she’s done, it needs to settle. I’m not a priest, but… it needs silence. She can call me tomorrow. Tell her nothing tonight. It’s too late.’
‘How can I avoid—?’
‘Go to bed or something.’
When she put the phone down, Jane stood by the window, looking up into the awful clarity of the sky, stars gathering like a huge audience over the churchyard wall. Then she called Lol.
38
Each of our dyings
IN THE BRECON Beacons, the ringing stopped, and the machine cut in.
‘This is Huw. Tell us what you’re after or just leave a number, and if nowt’s happened to me I’ll get back to you when I can. God bless.’
She said, ‘Huw? It’s me.’
In the vestry, the phone on speaker on the table beside the rack of Ledwardine picture-postcards. She’d packed the airline bag: wine, chalice. Unhooked her woollen funeral cape to take on the cold.
Nothing. Sometimes he let the machine do its bit to find out the score, then picked up. This time, he really wasn’t in.
‘Huw, don’t call me back. Just stay with me, if you pick this up. Couple of hours? I’m sorry, you know what I’m saying? I’ll call you when I—’
Bleep.
Damn.
She thought for a moment and then flicked through the numbers stored in the phone, selecting one and getting through instantly this time.
‘You’re asking for my advice?’ Abbie Folley said.
‘Second opinion. And, erm, back-up.’
‘I’ve never done anything like this.’
‘Well, me neither. That’s to say I’ve done it, but not in these circumstances. Or for this reason. Though that’s what a Requiem’s about in a deliverance context, isn’t it? Ostensibly for the soul of the departed, essentially for the people whose lives he’s complicating.’
‘You’re in the church with him now, Merrily? I mean the bloke who—’
‘Both of them, if you like. I’m in the vestry, Gareth’s close to the altar. And keeps looking around as if his dead friend might have followed us in.’
‘Jesus, you’re spooking me out already.’
‘This is a man whose funeral was… not as thorough as it might’ve been. Partly my fault. Mainly my fault. But there’s someone else who’s seriously screwing things up. Who’s… playing with the dead to score points. I’m not even going to… mention Darvill’s name. Or Iestyn’s name. Keep them both out of this. ‘If I had more time I’d probably try and summon a few more people, but the way things are, I just can’t see… oh God…’
‘Something happened?’
‘Good God, woman, you—’
‘What’ve I said?’
‘Not you, Abbie, me. Me. I’m stupid. I keep missing the obvious. It was staring me in the face, but if I hadn’t rung you it might not have occurred. Might be possible, might not. I need to call somebody else. Sorry, I’m all over the place…’
‘Listen, what time?
‘Not planning to start later than nine o’clock. Let’s say nine. If there’s a delay I’ll call you back. Would that be OK?’
‘Does Huw Owen know about this?’
‘He’s not answering his phone.’
‘Scraping the bottom of the barrel then. No, listen, I’ll be there. As it were. Do you want to give me the name?’
‘It’s Aidan Lloyd.’
She gave Abbie details of his death, told her where she could find a picture on the Net.
‘I’ll get into fancy dress, then,’ Abbie said, ‘and go down the church. Give me a call when it’s a wrap, if you’re not a gibbering wreck.’
* * *
She’d said the Lord’s Prayer with Gareth Brewer, advising him to keep on repeating it in his head, slowly, while she was away. A firewall.
When she walked back up the aisle, put down her bags, he was looking up at her, trusting, like a dog, putting himself in her hands as people, even today, tended to. When you were all they had left. Merrily thought of bereavement apparitions reported by friends in the pub, colleagues in the workplace – the ghost at the watercooler. Even children in a classroom when a favourite teacher had died. Usually, they just stopped. But when they didn’t…
The wrestler, Paul Crowden, cut
in, so many of his words printed on her memory like the government warning on a cigarette packet.
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… As we have no means of understanding what’s actually happening, we should regard it all as potentially evil…
No.
She brought out her mobile phone, muted against incoming calls, and conjured up the picture of Aidan Lloyd from the Hereford Times.
Evidently a blow-up from a group shot at some farmers’ gathering. If there’d been time she’d have printed it out, because this was the Aidan she knew, if she knew him at all: face like a weather map, all smudges and shading, dark around the mouth, dark around the eyes.
‘Exorcism? Forget it,’ she told Gareth Brewer. ‘This is a Requiem Mass, or Eucharist, if you prefer. A second funeral service, if you like, the central purpose being to take the pressure off Aidan, wherever he is now. Which, thanks to Sir Lionel, could be anywhere. Reject this if you want, but I think what Sir Lionel had you do, out there in the churchyard, was… not a good idea. To say the least.’
‘You think we didn’t know that?’
Despite the cold, he’d been sweating, hair glued to his forehead. Molten candle wax was in freeflow on the altar, the flames erratic now. Yes, he’d said, he’d been to Holy Communion many times in his younger days. He was familiar with the procedure. She talked to him, keeping it conversational, as she prepared the altar.
‘I don’t know where Darvill’s coming from, and I’m not sure we have time to go into it. But whichever spiritual path you’re following – or psychological path, whatever – you have a guy here, a possibly troubled guy, with two personas, whose death came – bang! – in a crash. Unexpectedly. Who gets a duff funeral because his father’s angry, embittered, feeling betrayed by the son he’s burying. Whose grave is immediately invaded on the instructions of a man who’s convinced Aidan would rather be in Kilpeck.’
In full kit now, under the cape, she turned back to the chancel.
‘Now tell me there’s more to it than that.’
