by Phil Rickman
The Pershore college, it seemed, had closed within two years of Sir Henry’s departure. The costs of maintaining the building alone must have been prohibitive. He’d invested in it a good proportion of the money left to him by his father – the first son had the farm, the second a lump sum. But then, to his sorrow, Sir Henry had wound up getting the farm after all and was forced to leave his beloved college.
‘And, erm… you know all this how? Do you mind me asking?’
‘Through his son. Lionel.’
‘You get around, don’t you, Mr Khan?’
‘Lionel spent his early years in Pershore,’ Mr Khan said, ‘and was therefore exposed to his parents’… diversions.’
‘Both parents? His mother was involved in all this, too?’
‘Until she ran off with one of the other students. All part of college life, Mrs Watkins. When one experiences true awareness of self, it can be extremely powerful and effect all kinds of personal changes. There are… casualties.’
‘So Henry and his son came back to Kilpeck on their own.’
‘I’m told that when Henry took over the estate after his brother’s death he went into it with an air of Gurdjieffian intentional suffering. Changing the estate into something perhaps less profitable but more spiritually rewarding. But he himself… was not destined to get much of a reward.’
Merrily wondered how Mr Khan had come to know Sir Lionel, who must be at least a decade older. He watched her firing up the vape stick.
‘When you asked me about Sufism, I wondered if you were interested for personal reasons?’
‘A convert? Me?’
‘It’s not so absurd. I’ve met several Christians who’ve studied Sufism in a practical sense without necessarily abandoning their faith. It’s about working on yourself. There’s much to be learned.’
‘It’s Islamic.’
‘Older, actually, but we did come together, for protection, so it’s now considered a part of Islam. Even if the Sunnis and the Shias tend to hate us with an equal passion, but let’s not dwell on that.’
As she understood it, Sufism was the only aspect of Islam which regarded music as sacred rather than abhorrent and might therefore tolerate Mr Khan’s nightclubs. As for his less public earner… well who knew for sure, or would, until such time as Frannie Bliss fulfilled his career-long ambition of putting him before a Crown Court.
Raji Khan sipped his tea.
‘There comes a time when even the most committed student stops regarding suffering as an incentive. We are all human, Mrs Watkins. The conversion to organic farming was time consuming and costly. Sir Henry had been forced to sell off property to avoid a potentially even more costly industrial tribunal – which might have gone against him even though it was his land to do with as he pleased.’
‘Why didn’t he contest it?’
‘I think he was simply tired. He’d reached the point where he was no longer able to see it all as a spiritual exercise. His will was broken, his wife was not coming back – perhaps she also wanted money from him. His mental collapse… was it suicide…?’
‘Oh my God.’
‘… or an accidental overdose of antidepressants? Did it matter. Lionel was nineteen years old, a student at Magdalen College, Oxford. Not a very distinguished student, he says now, but still rather hoping that his father would have married again and had another son to take over the estate and allow him to get away. But then… no father.’
‘He could’ve sold the estate, I suppose.’
‘After centuries? A man of Norman ancestry finding himself the recipient of a title and all it represented? Couldn’t very well walk away from that. Knew he’d have to face it sometime – although there was a period of what you might call drink-sodden procrastination. With unfortunate consequences.’
Mr Khan accepted more Earl Grey, in no hurry.
‘He was young. He’d barely lived. He’d watched his father following obsessions that backfired on him. Long hours in the pub, I’m afraid. Pursuit of women. Until his accident. Have you met Lionel?’
‘No.’
Mr Khan drew in air through his small, white teeth, let it out thinly.
‘Let me try to explain. I’ve known him for some years – my only titled friend – and most of what he does is admirable. A man directing a large, diverse organic farming enterprise from a wheelchair. A handful of faithful employees and co-workers, including what one might call a Girl Friday, who I like to see as perhaps more than that. On the practical side, he keeps a selection of extraordinary all-terrain wheelchairs and adapted vehicles with hand controls. And receives a good deal of assistance from his morris… team?’
‘Side. So the morris…?’
‘Is a largely vicarious pastime. I believe he occasionally allows himself to be brought into the dance, physically supported by the others, which I suppose— Are you all right, Mrs Watkins?’
‘Somebody walking over my grave. Can we deal with this? Can you tell me what you think is different about the Kilpeck Morris and how this relates to what happened at the college? We’re talking about dancing which is… a path to something else?’ She saw him hesitate. ‘You need to know why I’m asking you about all this.’
Mr Khan smiled.
‘All dancing is a path to something else. Ballroom dancing was a courtship ritual. As for the frenetic, narcotic movements experienced at the raves I organized in my youth, I doubt you’ll need that explained.’
‘On the Net, I found some pictures of white-clad people clearly involved in some kind of circle dance.’
‘The movements.’
‘Something dervish-linked?’
‘Only to an extent. Gurdjieff’s movements were about disconnecting what you might call our normal circuits, so that – for example – one’s arms and legs would perform different actions simultaneously. This requires considerable practice. Its benefits are not mere physical fitness.’
‘And they corresponded to aspects of the morris.’
‘To an extent. There were traces of it. Suggestions that the original morris dancers – and we’re talking many centuries ago, if not millennia – were, shall we say, a priestly, even monastic order. That the morris was indeed a sacred dance. Shamanic, perhaps, in that the dancers might receive… I don’t know… messages from other realms. I do know that what began at the Sherborne Academy as a diversion turned, at the College for Perpetual Learning, into a serious study. When Henry Darvill left and the college closed, he invited some of his fellow students to come to his home, Maryfields, and continue the work. And thus a new tradition was born. Most of those chaps have since moved on.’
‘But Lionel…’
‘Henry tried to bring his son into it, yes. Lionel… he’ll tell you he was too young. Didn’t realize how important it was to his father that he should continue the tradition. He’ll tell you now that his disinterest could only have contributed to Henry’s decline into depression. By the time Henry died, the Kilpeck Morris had disintegrated into little more than a boozy pub ensemble. It was only after his accident that Lionel became committed to his father’s values. Obsessively so.’
‘And the church?’
Mr Khan smiled his cat’s smile.
‘I know,’ Merrily said, ‘that he fell from the church roof.’
‘Yes.’
‘He seems to have seen a connection,’ Merrily said, ‘between images on the church… and the morris. The Kilpeck Morris, anyway.’
‘Perhaps he’s made those connection himself. I don’t know. I suspect there was a time when he almost hated the church. As if it represented something that was dragging the male members of his family back to the village to – if I may be excused an element of melodrama here – their doom.’
‘You can understand that. Almost like a curse.’
‘Mrs Watkins, let me say something… apart from being my only titled friend, he’s a decent man. But I’m not sure he knows what he’s doing. He isn’t following Gurdjieff’s system, Sufism or any other
teaching. He seems to be following his own instincts, and that… that may not necessarily be a good thing. I would not go so far as to suggest he has a death wish, but… I think he could use some advice.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as a man who’d be easy to advise.’
‘It would be a challenge, certainly.’
‘You’re looking at me?’
‘You telephoned me, I responded.’
‘I only rang you for some background information because I couldn’t think of anyone else. I didn’t expect you to know Darvill personally.’
‘Small county, Mrs Watkins.’
She nodded, automatically pouring him more tea.
‘His fall…’
‘I doubt it was simply a fall.’
‘He’s told you—?’
‘He hasn’t told me anything. And I’m a friend and also a spiritual sympathizer. And he still hasn’t told me.’ Raji Khan spread his hands in sorrow. ‘Intentional suffering, Mrs Watkins. Intentional suffering.’
57
The fool
LATE AFTERNOON. LOL ran across the forecourt through the last light and the half-frozen rain, to the half-open front door. Nora Mills, waiting for him under the great beam, wore a clinical white coat and a sombre expression that seemed to be saying she hoped he knew what he was doing.
At least she wasn’t carrying a shotgun.
‘You’re early.’
‘Is that bad?’
He’d awoken early again, feeling dizzy when he was out of bed, the winter song rumbling in his head; he didn’t like it now, wished he’d never started it. No time to go to the doc’s, even if he could get an appointment. He’d just sat down at the desk and scribbled a couple of new lines: the wind is prowling in the east, to raise the devil, scorn the priest.
The scuffed interior door swung open before him to the ashy logs in the hearth and Kilpeck Church, in Tom Keating’s painting, blossoming like a clump of bright poppies. Nora didn’t follow him in. Sir Lionel Darvill looked up over reading glasses.
‘You’re early.’
‘I’ll go for a walk and come back if you like.’
‘You’re on your own?’
‘People were beginning to talk.’
‘Not the girl, Robinson.’ Testily. ‘Her mother.’
‘She’ll be here on Monday. She needs to square it with the Archdeacon. And it’s a very busy time of year for a vicar.’
‘And she thinks I’ll interfere with her service.’
‘You mean you don’t have form for that?’
Darvill snorted.
‘It’s not her church.’
Wasn’t his either, except in his head. The church, the remains of the castle, the disappeared village: all part of the extended Maryfields, the Maryfields of his mind.
‘You didn’t arrive early by accident,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know? And sit down.’
‘Thank you.’
Enclosed in the Chesterfield, knowing he had to get this right, Lol struggled to collect his thoughts. He’d spent most of the morning dredging what he could about the green man from the Net and Jane’s bookshelves. He’d read about the fool who danced with the morris men and sometimes against them. In the morris world, the Man of Leaves was the fool, who thought he was the king and could, for a moment in the dance, be the king. He’d get to that, but first…
‘Aidan Lloyd. You had him exhumed.’
Unloaded. He leaned back.
Darvill didn’t react at all.
‘You put the Border morris kit on his body,’ Lol said, ‘and the green mask over his face.’
Darvill’s eyelids lowered for a moment, tightened. Then he relaxed.
‘Of course. Brewer told Merrily Watkins that nonsense. In the so-called sanctity of his deliverance.’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. He didn’t need to, anyway. She and Jane saw something happening in the churchyard, and the next day it was obvious someone had tampered with the grave. So we – that’s me and a very trustworthy friend – we dug it up again. At night.’
Darvill’s upper body lengthened in the chair, his head rising.
‘Did you now?’
‘I’m afraid we did.’
‘Not being deliberately insulting here, Robinson, but I wouldn’t have thought you were capable of that.’
Lol shrugged.
‘Can’t say you’re a real man till you’ve stared death in the face. By lamplight. With a shovel in your hand.’
Darvill leaned forward.
‘Prove it to me.’
‘How?’
‘Tell me what you found.’
‘Yes. OK.’ Lol’s hands were clasped, shaking. ‘It looked like they couldn’t get him back into the coffin… with the bells around his legs. So they put the bells on top, loose. The bells… rattled… jingled, when we took the lid off. The mask… that was also loose. It had holly and mistletoe. From your orchard? And yew, I think. Yew from Kilpeck churchyard?’
‘Yew for immortality.’
‘Of course.’
‘All right,’ Darvill said. ‘I believe you.’ He looked suddenly happy. ‘How did you feel?’
‘Sick. It was awful. The worst thing I’ve ever done.’
‘The final taboo.’
‘Probably.’
‘The darkest part of a rite of passage.’
‘Don’t…’ Lol pulled back into the leather sofa. ‘Don’t tell me that, Lionel.’
‘You said it yourself. “Can’t say you’re a real man…”’
‘That was a joke. That was me trying to make light of it.’
‘Make light.’ Darvill’s eyes sparkling. ‘Yes. I bet you did. I bet you can remember every moment of it. Vividly.’
‘More or less. Going to haunt me for a long time.’
‘Shocked into consciousness.’
‘I have dreams I can’t remember, and I don’t feel good when I wake up.’
‘It isn’t easy.’
‘Oh, for—’
‘No wonder it didn’t work for poor Brewer.’ Darvill was excited. ‘No wonder he was fucked up and had to be unfucked. Wasn’t meant for him. Such a balanced man. Admirable guy, grounded, normal – wife, kids, steady income from doing something always going to be needed in the countryside. No need of a wooden mask. Not enough of—’
‘No. Do not—’
‘What?’
‘Don’t say it. Not enough of a misfit. Insufficiently deranged. Like Aidan Lloyd.’
‘The Man of Leaves is an archetype. He was the making of Aidan.’
‘No.’ Lol gripped the deep arm of the Chesterfield, his last attempt to reach for reality. ‘You were the making of Aidan. You cured his asthma. You introduced him to cannabis. You broke him through to something. The Man of Leaves was just—’
‘Enough. Don’t dare try to talk yourself out of this.’ Darvill spun his chair round, rolled towards the door which opened for him. ‘It’s time.’
He never seemed to change. The short, stiff white hair, the suntan that lasted all winter, the face that was creased but always smiley. Like a poster-boy American GI from the 1950s, but his accent wasn’t that far west of Hereford.
‘Now, Merrily, if I’m intruding on something, you just tell me, girl. Kick me off the premises. It’s just I was passing, and I thought, I surely oughta talk to Merrily about this, it’d be only polite, look, but if this en’t convenient—’
‘No, it— Come in, Charlie. Kettle’s on.’
But he was already in. Behind him, night had fallen. He’d arrived within a few minutes of Raji Khan driving away, as if he’d been waiting. Thank God he hadn’t recognized the car with its personalized registration, SUF 1. If he didn’t already know, he wouldn’t have picked up on that anyway.
‘Coffee for me, Merrily. Splash of milk, two sugars. Gotta keep the energy levels up, else folks’ll be thinking the ole boy’s on the slide.’
‘Not me, Charlie.’
He followed her from the hall into the kitchen,
holding the door open over her shoulder. The only thing about Charlie Howe that creaked was his latest cream leather jacket. His current girlfriend was rumoured to be similar in age to his daughter, Annie, in whom he’d always declared a fierce pride: youngest head of CID in the history of Hereford policing.
Merrily heard a door closing at the bottom of the kitchen: Jane slipping away into the inner hall and up the back stairs to her apartment. Jane had a low bullshit threshold these days.
‘About this poor boy, Aidan Lloyd, it is, Merrily.’
‘Wondered if it might be.’
‘Excellent idea of yours, to hold a memorial service.’
‘Erm…’
‘These things slip by, look. That’s the way of it in the country. Don’t make waves. Country folks tend to accept fate like a slap in the face, turn the other cheek.’
‘But they don’t forget.’
‘True. But what they didn’t know in the first place they en’t had a chance to forget. And in the country there’s always things as don’t get known about.’
‘Well, yes…’
‘I was a copper nigh on forty years, and it never ceased to… to interest me… how really quite serious crimes happened in quiet places and nobody knew – or, if they did, they let them go by, on account of it wasn’t neighbourly to make waves.’
‘So I’m told.’
Seemed a little disingenuous this, coming from Charlie, rumoured to have turned his head away from one or two quite sickening crimes. She plugged in the percolator.
‘Charlie, is there by any chance something I don’t know about Aidan’s death and you do?’
‘Well now, Merrily…’ He lounged in the cane chair, hands behind his head, relaxed, more than a little smug. ‘A few people do have ideas about how that boy died.’
‘Like riding a quad bike under the influence of drugs? I’ve heard that. But I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s probably not true. He used cannabis, but words like stoner could be a serious exaggeration. Gossip, eh?’
‘Gossip’s a useful tool,’ Charlie said, ‘to some folks.’
‘You plant the same idea in different places and then two people who’ve heard it from different sources meet, and suddenly it’s fact?’
