by Andy Jarvis
Some brave soul must have dared to speak out and the police became involved. John Cannon Sr. absconded and Reverend John was taken into care. Isabel’s remains were buried in the garden at Fearn Lane cottage. Nobody at the time would entertain the thought of a practitioner of pagan rites being buried in a Christian cemetery. A simple square stone marked the spot, but there was no mention of the child on it. The grave was apparently something of an off-the-beaten-track curiosity to ramblers and such, mentioned in a few of the hiking guides. Thora Rankin had been buried some years previously, in a simple pauper’s graveyard some way from the village.
Reverend John had come to his decision. Isabel should be buried in the grounds of St. Mark’s, along with the child. Of course there would be protest from certain members of the Parish, but Reverend John was adamant that it was about time. Arden had been back to the church for more tests and Reverend John had made his peace with him. Asking for release of the child’s corpse from the Trust, he granted Arden licence to exhume the remains of Isabel and to conduct DNA tests to finalise the relationship between Isabel and child. It would take a while and some red tape, but Reverend John like his father before him, would have his way. It was a brave decision for Reverend John. There was always the risk of publicity being blown up out of proportion, and Reverend John wanted to avoid that if at all possible. A quiet, low key funeral with Christian blessings and justice would be served to the two innocents.
Then the haunting would stop.
11.
A couple of weeks or so passed, and although we heard nothing from Reverend John, it became apparent later that he’d been busy making preparations for the funeral.
Winter had slipped by to his dismay, but try as we might, nobody could make the new boiler ignite. Reverend John had become embroiled in a dispute with McBright over it. In the end McBright promised that he would replace the entire unit if necessary. Despite Reverend John assuring him that me and Baz had been hard at it throughout, McBright blamed us: “I don’t know what you two fuckers have done but you’ve done it!”
The time we spent working back up home and listening to McBright brought me down to earth, and my memory of the village seemed more and more surreal, to the point where I sometimes woke on a morning and wondered if it had ever really happened at all. Still, hardly a minute went by when I wasn’t thinking about it. Despite being there for a relatively short time, my heart still seemed to be stuck in the place.
The invites for the funeral arrived near the end of March. This was planned for a Monday, in an attempt to avoid too much attention being drawn from weekend day trippers. McBright gave us our leave, a working leave thankfully, (for us) and begrudgingly for him: “Have another stab at the white elephant while you’re there,” were his parting words.
I can still recall years later the strangest feeling of relief on arriving back in Candlewell. As we drove up to the Bell Inn both of us simultaneously said, “Home at last.”
We sat in the van for ages just looking at the Inn front with its hanging baskets of winter pansies and little green winter shrubs in pots bedecked between picnic tables.
I’d missed the place. I had a fondness for it, more so than most of the towns we visit. But until that defining moment I’d always considered it the sort of place that wasn’t us. Something that me and Baz had never had, and therefore weren’t allowed in our simple working lives.
Baz snapped me out of it. “So, what are you brooding over now?” he said.
“I like it here,” I said.
“Yeah, me too. Now can we go in for a pint?”
“No, I mean it Baz. I wouldn’t mind living here. I didn’t realise it until recently. There’s something about the place that I just can’t fathom, but I want to stay.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you will one day when you’ve got enough money and you’re free from McBright’s clutches.”
“No, I mean now,” I said. “You feel it too, right? You said it just now, you said home at last, same as me. It’s this place isn’t it? It’s what everyone wants in life…home, that’s what. We all want to go home at some time or other, and as far as I’m concerned, this is it. I’ve never felt this strong about a place before, as attached, if you like, but this is definitely it. I don’t really want to be anywhere else. You might well call it gay talk, but think about it; what are our lives so far? A load of meaningless nights out on the tiles, getting drunk, risking a mugging followed by a hangover and McBright on a Monday morning? What’s that?”
“Sounds like good fun to me pal, except for the Monday morning part.”
“Baz, everything I want is right here. You can always hit the city sometime if you really feel like it. But I just want some day to meet the right girl, one who cares about proper values in life, not clubbing or pub crawls in Ibiza; maybe have kids and…I don’t know…just be real.”
Baz breathed a heavy sigh, pushing his shoulders back and stared up at the van skylight. “If you don’t mind me saying it, mate, I think this whole episode with the appearance in the church has got to you. I mean some of the things you say I can dig, but you seem rattled. You're talking like one of these arty-farty types who throws everything away to be a beachcomber and suddenly calls himself a student of the university of life. I mean, what would you do for work? You have to make a living, bud.”
“Seriously Baz, we don’t want to be geezers about the town forever, do we?”
“It wouldn’t bother me, mate.”
“No, look Baz, I’m past thirty. I’ve got no woman in my life, a shit job that may pay okay and a tyrant for a boss that still uses us as whipping boys. Where does the dignity come in? Some of my schoolmates went off to university, not because they were any more intelligent. I was just too eager to ditch the learning and see some cash after all that school tie and blazer crap. And now it seems I’m in the same old rut, uniform replaced by boiler suit, and still getting our knuckles rapped like naughty little school boys.”
“Okay, okay; I can dig what you’re saying, but why here? Why would you want to live here?”
“Because these are real people, Baz; salt of the earth, simple hardy folk that take you for what you are, and not what you can give them, or worse still – what they can screw from you. I mean, look at Reverend John and how upset he was about us trying to steal the Records. It wasn’t the stealing that bothered him, it was that bond of trust. That was more important to him. He was hurt we’d let him down. It speaks volumes about the kind of person he is.”
“Oh yeah, and what about Mrs. Braithwaite then?” said Baz. “Was she taking us for what we are, when she started throwing those accusations at us?”
“Mrs. Braithwaite was…deranged, for want of a better word. Even Reverend John said as much. She couldn’t help it, and I guess we’re at least partly to blame.”
“For what?”
“For disturbing…it,” I said. “I mean her. There was nothing happening before that, was there?”
“No, I suppose not. Apart from that you think everyone here’s the bee’s knees, right?”
“No one’s said a bad word. They may look on us a bit suspiciously at times, but that’s to be expected. Damn it Baz, there’s folk up our way living in tower blocks that never say hello to one another unless they’re dealing drugs. That’s the difference here. You and me get along together because we’re like minded. Folk here communicate because they care.”
“Or maybe it’s just guilt.”
“Guilt?” I said.
“Sure, you know what they did, or rather what their elders did. They sent some poor cow and her kid to their doom. Maybe they’re just trying too hard to make amends, all smile and handshakes, sort of like the Germans after the war.”
“You know,” I said, “it’s interesting you should make that comparison, because I think that’s probably what it was like around here in Reverend John Sr.’s time. It must have been that type of mass hysteria for folk to do that. I bet he even rallied them in church with speeches, just like old
Adolph at Nuremberg. But still Baz, I don’t think the folk living here are any less sincere, despite the past.”
We sat silent. Baz drummed his fingers on his knees and whistled a noiseless, tuneless sigh every so often. It was the sort of impatient body language I give out myself while awaiting some job order or a telling off from McBright.
“Baz,” I started quietly. “I feel that way; I can’t help it. Maybe it’s been influenced, but I feel that this is home. You said it yourself, home at last. Why?”
“Sure,” said Baz. “But it was a slip of the tongue, mate. I meant home as in home away from home.”
“But you still feel it, don’t you?”
“Yeah, maybe…but we can’t have this. Think about it Ed. Maybe when you’re old and grey this would be the place to be. But we’ve got jobs to do; money yet to earn. Wives we haven’t met who probably wouldn’t want to hang out here if it was the last place on earth. Look around you. Other than the farmhands most of the kids here have gone. Lads our age have left out of sheer boredom or lack of meaningful work. It’s all very idyllic as you say, but could you inflict that on a young wife stuck at home bringing up a family?”
He was right, of course and I suddenly felt foolish for my outburst, and Baz momentarily seemed like some down to earth elder relative bringing sense and reality back into order…until he spoke again:
He leaned forward placing one elbow on the dashboard, turned and looked straight faced at me. “You know what you need? A good woman, that’s what. One who’ll lay you down and make you have it. That’ll straighten you out. Then you’ll know on what side your bread’s buttered. You’ll feel less confused about your, your…hmm…your orientation.”
I looked at him. The face was still dead straight. I started to smile. “Orientation? Careful now, that’s a big word. You might be accused of being gay.”
Baz slowly began to crack, trying to stifle a quivering smile that formed at the edges of his mouth. “Well I must have learnt it off of you,” he said, thumping my arm and laughing. “Hey, how about United tomorrow night? You think we can make it if we get this boiler going and get off in time?”
“Damn, I nearly forgot,” I said, suddenly cheering up. “The fourth round, right? Just you try and stop me!”
Baz went for his early pint, but I was tired from the journey, opting to go up to my room for a short nap. I lay on the bed attempting to do some reading but soon fell off into a not quite dreamless slumber. It was as though my mind was at peace for the first time in ages as I began drifting off to the gentle hum-drum of bar customers below me or the odd pedestrian whistling in the street. The room felt oddly strange, but comforting at the same time. I felt as if I had been away for much longer than a few weeks.
In that weird land between consciousness and total sleep, Isabel played with my mind. Her image drifted across no-man’s landscape, speaking but never quite saying, never quite communicating verbally, as though there was no need. She smiled at me from a distant place, waved and disappeared through a door without a house into another place, a place I glimpsed at as the door closed, never quite seeing what was beyond but wanting to be there. A place that I knew was green, and bright and pleasant. And peaceful.
I awoke in a darkened room to Baz tapping at my door: “Hey, come on gayboy. I’m not propping up the bar all night by myself.” He left quietly on my mumbled and yawning reply as I sat up stretching.
A huge orange moon hung low in the eastern sky, casting an eerie glow across the fields and hedges as I peered from my window. A single leafless tree by a low hedge, alone in the field, seemed to sway. I opened the window, feeling for the breeze. There was none. A black object appeared to move through the branches, then suddenly drop behind the hedge. Whether man or beast I couldn’t tell. I stood alone in my room for an age watching, but nothing moved again. If it was gone it must have journeyed a long distance out of my sight range behind the hedge…and on four legs.
12.
“He’s lying,” said Arden.
“You know what?” I replied, “I don’t give a shit. I just want to leave it now, forget it.”
“But aren’t you curious? I mean look at these, just look,” he said waving a handful of papers at me. “He wasn’t taken into care at all. And John Cannon’s father didn’t disappear until several years after the time that Reverend John says he did.”
Arden slid the papers across the table. They were photocopies of newspaper articles, concerning events about the mysterious disappearance of Reverend John’s father. He was right as usual, to my annoyance, about the dates concerned.
Sunday evening at the Bell, the day before the funeral, and Arden was the last person I wanted to see. Baz and me had driven down a day early as the service was planned for nine in the morning. Our real purpose, as far as McBright was concerned was to start decommissioning the ‘faulty’ boiler after the funeral in preparation for another he had on order. Then we were given a few more service jobs in and around Norwich while we awaited Chorley’s delivery. Arden had got wind of our returning and awaited us in the bar.
I looked at the articles for a moment then passed them to Baz. “Where did you get these?” I aked. “Me and Baz looked through the village hall archives including all the old back issues of the Candlewell Gazette, but there was nothing about this.”
“Of course there wasn’t,” said Arden. “It’s like the village folk didn’t want to know or even that the editor of the Gazette at the time was too frightened of Reverend John Sr., even after the police had been and done their investigation. They cleared him, you see. They left him here, still in charge of the Parish. No charges. Free to carry on as spiritual leader of the community. Oh no, these articles come from certain periodicals from about the same time, no doubt generated from rumours coming out from the village at the time. They were written, no doubt, by independent journalists unattached to Candlewell affairs, latching on to the stories circulating at the time. Probably by someone very much like a Jim Harvey of the time. Someone Reverend John Sr. had no influence over.”
“It’s strange, yes, I admit,” I said. “But I guess I can understand the local folk not wanting to read about it. That must be why there’s nothing in the local press history. You couldn’t blame them at the time, could you? I mean they don’t even want to talk about it now. Harvey found that out when he went snooping around the village. If it wasn’t for Silas in the first instance opening his gob then no one would be any the wiser. So what’s your point?”
“My point is that Reverend John is lying,” said Arden. “I seriously think that by lending me the Parish Council Records he hoped that I’d miss something like this, or, almost like a sleight-of-hand trick, it would deter me from doing outside research.”
“So?” I shrugged my shoulders. “He must have his reasons.”
“I’m sure he does,” said Arden. “Don’t you want to know what they are?”
“We don’t care anymore,” said Baz. “Me and Ed think Reverend John should be left in peace now, right Ed?”
“Ditto,” I said. “Enough is enough.”
“I agree,” said Arden. “Far be it for me to start hassling an old man over his past, but don’t you find it a little strange that he should still be trying to cover something up?”
It really was something that I didn’t want to discuss. The deal was done with Reverend John as far as I was concerned. But Baz was having none of it and curiosity got the better of him. Again. “There’s still something I don’t quite get,” he said.
Arden perked right up. “Yeess?” He drew out the word as long as if it were a sentence as he slowly drew out a cigarette, almost as if he were drawing the word out from the same lapel pocket. He tapped the end of the cigarette on the table in his usual manner.
“I still don’t get why Reverend John Sr. wasn’t arrested at the time,” said Baz. “I mean, Reverend John says that he didn’t actually commit a crime, but I find that a bit hard to believe. I mean someone died because of him. And then if w
hat you say is right, he even manages to stay put in Candlewell as if nothing ever happened.”
“Well, Reverend John’s quite correct,” said Arden. “His father didn’t commit a crime. He may have orchestrated this whole conspiracy, but the entire village was part of it. Any words he communicated to the rest of the Parish Council would have been unknown to the police. I guess the villagers just looked on Reverend John Sr. with a certain fear and guilt and got on with their lives.”
“It’s still very hard to believe,” I said. “Don’t any of these news clippings say anything about his part in it?”
“No, the only record of this thing ever being a conspiracy lead by Reverend John’s father is the Parish Council Records, and they must have been hidden at the time no doubt.”
“Yeah, Reverend John said he came into possession of the records and that he kept them hidden himself after that. But I still agree with Baz, it’s hard to believe that things could just carry on as normal after. It would make more sense if he had run away as Reverend John says.”
“I agree,” said Arden. “And there must have been hearsay and gossip in the community, especially if someone spoke out to the police in the first place, but pinning something on a clergyman with no proof or records of any such influence, well that would be difficult. No, it seems his father was alive and well for longer than Reverend John says. I shudder to think what figure of a man he was. This town must have been almost a complete wall of silence in the face of a major police investigation. He must have made some speeches from the pulpit that would have done Hitler proud to turn folk’s minds.”
