by Phil Rickman
Locked?
He’d locked himself in?
Merrily rapped on the bevelled glass.
‘Syd?’
She could hear his footsteps on the flags. Then they stopped and she sensed him staring at the doors from the other side, the one word she’d spoken insufficient for him to identify her.
‘It’s Merrily. Are you going to let me in?’
He must have kept her waiting for a good half-minute before she heard the key turning, and then his footsteps going away again.
When she pushed open the doors and entered the vast parish church, Syd was standing in front of the chancel with its capacious semicircular choir stalls. He was wearing his cassock, and she thought what a particularly constraining garment it must be for a one-time man of action.
He looked around, with his arms out, at the empty pews, the oak-framed pulpit, the organ pipes like giant shell-cases.
‘Can you do anything about this?’
There was nothing to see. But Merrily could smell the incense.
41
Protect the Memory
There used to be a setting sun on the sign, Lol recalled. But it had been replaced now with less scary white lettering on a sky-blue background.
The Glades Residential Home: a one-time Victorian gentleman’s residence at the end of a drive close to the border with Wales. Wide views of the Radnorshire hills. Big, long sunsets.
Lol sat in the old white Astra in the car park, knowing he was here at least partly because, after shutting the door on Lyndon Pierce, he’d needed to be somewhere else – and fast. Him rather than Jane.
He’d watched her walking with Gomer down the street to Gomer’s bungalow, in her school uniform. Girls in uniform: always suggestive of sexual impropriety? Ironic, really: he wasn’t at all fond of uniforms, especially nurses’ uniforms. Kissing a woman in a dog collar had taken an act of will, the first time.
When he left the car, a mantle of heavy windless heat settled around him. A woman came towards him out of the stern gabled porch, a big woman in a light blue overall, late fifties, bobbed blonde hair.
‘Brenda Cardelow,’ she said. ‘Mr Robinson?’
The situation at The Glades had changed. The proprietors Lol remembered, the Thorpes, had left over a year ago, Mrs Cardelow had told him on the phone. Burn-out. She’d laughed.
‘You’re a lucky man, Mr Robinson. She appears to remember you. She’s usually inclined to deny all knowledge of visitors.’
‘One of the privileges of age,’ Lol said, but Mrs Cardelow looked unconvinced.
‘I tried to persuade her to come down to the residents’ lounge, but she insists on seeing you in her room, so I hope you’re prepared for that.’
‘I’ve never been in her room. But I’ve heard a lot about it.’
‘I’m sure you must have,’ Mrs Cardelow said.
The old woman wore a black woollen cardigan and a black wool skirt. A fluffy scarf, also black, was around her neck. Her eyes were hard and bright like cut diamonds. Nestling in the window seat, among the cushions and the books and the Egyptian tapestries and the wall-hung Turkish rugs and more books and more cushions, she was like a tiny, possibly malevolent story-book spider.
‘Robinson.’
Crooking a finger with a purple-varnished, finely pointed nail. Same sherbet-centred voice. The air in here was tinged with incense.
‘Miss White,’ Lol said.
‘Of course I remember him.’ Miss White flung a brief, barbed glance at Mrs Cardelow. ‘Nervous, would-be paramour of an unusually attractive little clergyperson – quite a curiosity at the time, amongst all those horse-faced lezzies in bondage clobber. How goes it, Robinson? Been inside the cassock yet?’
‘Anthea!’ Mrs Cardelow turned to Lol. ‘They’ve all read that damned poem that goes on about “when I’m an old woman I shall dress in purple”. They think that shedding their inhibitions will keep senility at bay, but in my experience it only hastens the onset.’
‘You’ll be demented long before me, Cardelow,’ Miss White said in her baby-kitten voice.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Cardelow said sadly. ‘I’m afraid she could be right.’
‘Mind’s on the blink already. Keeps calling me Anthea.’
‘That’s what it says on your pension book.’
‘Then it’s a misprint. Go away, Governor. Lock us in the cell if you must, but kindly leave us alone.’
Mrs Cardelow raised a martyr’s eyebrow at Lol on her way out. Lol settled himself on a piano stool with no piano.
‘Still demoralizing the screws, then, Athena.’
‘Passes the time. Where are the chocolates? She said you’d brought me chocolates.’
‘Sorry, left them in the car. Black Magic still appropriate?’
Miss White giggled. Lol remembered how Merrily had reacted when she’d first encountered her – called in within weeks of being appointed Deliverance consultant to look into claims by elderly residents that The Glades was being haunted by a handsome man of a certain era. Treading on eggshells in the big shoes of Canon Dobbs, Hereford’s last Diocesan Exorcist. On a later occasion, knowing that Merrily needed help but was afraid of what Athena White might represent, Lol had gone on his own to tap into her knowledge of forbidden things.
Finding he got on rather well with this one-time highly placed civil servant who’d decided to devote her retirement to the study of the complex esoteric disciplines popularized by Madame Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and Dion Fortune. Maybe a stretch on psychiatric wards had helped.
‘So?’ she said. ‘Have you been inside the cassock?’
‘Never really been turned on by women in uniform.’
‘Don’t be evasive.’
Miss White used to say she’d forgone the high-maintenance, roses-round-the-door cottage to set up what she called her eyrie in an old people’s home because it gave her more inner space. Lol had no idea how old she was, but, like an elderly radio, all her valves still appeared to be glowing.
‘OK. Out of uniform, it’s much easier,’ he said, and Miss White clapped her tiny hands.
‘Splendid! And you needn’t explain why the clergy-person isn’t with you. I always felt she regarded me as a potential patroller of the Left-Hand Path, with whom it would not be at all appropriate to be publicly associated.’
‘I’m the go-between,’ Lol said.
‘You lied to Cardelow. Told her some frightful porkie about first meeting me when you came to visit poor Pole.’
‘That was because I wanted to talk to you … about Maggie Pole,’ Lol said.
‘She died.’
‘I know.’
‘In her sleep. And in the middle of a quandary. She thought I was a spiritualist, you know. A medium. Some of the inmates do. Frightfully insulting, to be lumped in with the pygmies. But I tend not to disabuse them – they wouldn’t understand the distinction.’
‘Mrs Pole asked you to help her, as a … spiritualist?’
Athena White didn’t respond for a while, exploring him with her eyes.
‘Robinson, are you still working with that dreadful shrink in Hereford?’
‘Dick Lydon?’
‘So-called psychotherapist.’
‘No, I gave all that up. It didn’t seem to be actually curing people.’
‘Good,’ Miss White said. ‘Psychoanalysis was the great folly of the twentieth century. Leads nowhere except up its own bottom.’
‘In what way did Maggie Pole ask you to help her?’
‘Robinson, I know the woman’s dead, but there are certain proprieties to be observed. Why do you want to know?’
‘All right,’ Lol said. ‘When I first came to see you … you remember? We talked about Moon, the archaeologist, and Hereford Cathedral and its connection, along the ley line, with Dinedor Hill?’
‘Ley lines?’ Miss White placed a purple-tipped finger on her chin. ‘Watkins? Your friend’s called Watkins, isn’t she?’
‘So’s her daughter. Jane. I don’t t
hink you’ve ever met Jane, but she … Jane feels very strongly about things, and she doesn’t give up. And she’s only seventeen and still at school, and she’s thrown herself into something which is backfiring on her. And I’m feeling guilty, because I didn’t get involved and she’s vulnerable and I’m not … well, not in that way.’
‘Oh, I think you are, Robinson. You didn’t want to interfere in case it should harm your relationship with her mother, which you appear to value above life itself.’
‘You ought to be—’
‘Don’t you dare tell me I ought to be a psychologist. How does this connect with Margaret Pole?’
‘Jane’s found what she thinks is a forgotten ley line, which somebody wants to build across. In Ledwardine. It’s called Coleman’s Meadow. We’re told that Margaret Pole’s mother left it to her, having apparently said she didn’t want it touched. I wondered what had made Maggie Pole change her mind. When I heard she’d been at The Glades I thought if anyone might know something about this it would be … you?’
Miss White withdrew into her cushioned grotto like some little English guru.
‘Ah…’ It came out like a tiny puff of white smoke. ‘A ley line. Could that have been what it was about?’
‘This makes sense?’
‘She wanted me to contact her mother.’
‘You mean on the…’
‘In the land where the dead sit in an eternal garden among eternal fountains, discussing trivia and eating fairy cakes. Wanted me to contact her mother to ask if she was doing the right thing. A man kept coming to visit her – all too frequently in her last year. Well, you see this all the time. You don’t have to be here very long to recognize a vulture in a suit. He was … some relation.’
‘Nephew?’
‘I listened to Pole talking to the inmates – sometimes sit in the lounge, pretending to be asleep. She’d ramble on about how worried she was that he was going to have to give up his farm – the last farm in a farming family, for umpteen generations. Falling prices, imports, the usual problems. I was thinking, what does he want from her?’
‘Maybe a piece of land that he knew he could sell for a lot of money, for housing? Which she’d promised not to sell.’
‘Yes. On which basis, I think he wanted her to give him the land. As a way of saving his farm. Trying to persuade her it was futile to preserve it as … I don’t know, some sort of memorial? Do you know what kind of memorial?’
Lol shook his head.
‘Rather intriguing. Pole used to talk of her mother as some frightfully elevated creature with aesthetic sensibilities far beyond those of her slug of a husband. Perhaps she’d met a lover in that meadow. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Pole never told me.’
‘But she came to you … eventually.’
‘A dilemma. Said she was sure the last thing her mother would have wanted was for her grandson, or whatever he was, to lose everything. Keeping her awake at nights – well, you know how old people dwell on these things. So yes, in the end, after much heart-searching, she came to me.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Oh, we had a seance. Great fun! Most of the old dears were absolutely terrified – they do so love to be terrified. And then Cardelow appeared in the middle of the proceedings like some great dollop of rancid ectoplasm and broke it up.’
‘And did you … ?’
‘Of course I didn’t. Never been drawn to necromancy … well, not in that way. The seance was a sham. My attitude was to take the path of least resistance. If Pole’s mother was such an elevated soul, she’d hardly be worried about the loss of one field. Obvious way to go was for Pole to keep her promise not to sell it in her lifetime and simply agree to leave it to the sod. I said an angel in Grecian attire appeared to me in a dream and passed on that little snippet.’
‘So, um … the fate of Coleman’s Meadow is probably your fault.’
‘I suppose it is, yes. But you know, Robinson…’ Miss White smiled sweetly. ‘We really aren’t meant to have much of an effect.’
‘And I suppose we’ll never find out what Mrs Pole knew about the significance of that field.’
‘What does the girl think is significant?’
‘Jane? She thinks it more or less holds the secret soul of the village. It connects the church and a few other sites with Cole Hill, which Jane thinks is the village’s holy hill – like Dinedor is to Hereford. She’s at a … an intense age.’
‘A perceptive age,’ Miss White said. ‘Although they often need assistance in decoding their perceptions. What are yours?’
‘Oh, I … just think a particular councillor has a stake in it.’
‘Hmm.’ Miss White kicked off her slippers. She wore a black bow around one ankle. ‘There is a niece, you know. Elizabeth … Kington? Kingsley?’
‘Who got the money.’
‘And the memories. In two suitcases. She came to collect them. I made a point of beckoning her over. I said protect the memory. As if I knew what I was talking about. She knew who I was – or thought she knew what I was. She said, If you get any more messages – oh dear! – and left me her address. I have it somewhere.’
‘Yes, that might…’
Not once had Athena White stopped looking at Lol. Or through him. Eyes like miniature fairy lights. If he hadn’t been feeling so empty inside, it might have been disconcerting.
‘What else?’ she said. ‘Come on, Robinson, you must make the most of me before I’m called away to spend whole aeons in atonement. What ails you? Can’t get it up?’
‘Something like that,’ Lol said.
42
All the Time in the Worlds
Gomer’s kitchen was this cheerful but fading memorial to Minnie, full of bright, shiny, literal objects like BISCUIT tins with biscuits printed on the side in crumbly brown letters. The letters on the bread bin were badly worn; time after time, when Jane looked up she read ‘bread’ as DEAD.
Even Gomer seemed jittery, unsteady. Around six, he agreed to go and monitor the situation at Coleman’s Meadow, and Jane switched on her mobile to check the answering service. Couldn’t put it off any longer. Supposed if it was all too heavy to handle – follow-up calls from Jerry Isles, threats from Mum – she could always pretend she’d left the phone at home.
Didn’t remember the last time she’d felt this low, this useless.
‘Where the hell are you?’ Eirion was demanding, on voicemail. ‘We’re getting masses of emails referred from the EMA site. Have you any idea at all what’s going down here?’
She called him back. She told him she knew exactly what was going down. Told him about Pierce, how she’d played it all wrong, couldn’t restrain herself, ended up shafting Lol.
‘The Meadow,’ Eirion said. ‘What’s happening at the Meadow?’
‘Fenced off.’
Jane told him about the ragged protest, and how terrible she felt that she hadn’t been there supporting them. But she didn’t dare show her stupid, notorious face, and at least it sounded like it was all over for tonight.
‘Over?’ Eirion said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘They got the police in. I’m dead in the water, Irene. I haven’t been to school again. I’m stuffed.’ Disgusted at how she must sound, how waily. ‘I’m probably going to have to leave, as from like now, get a job or something. Grow up, you know?’
He’d been talking; she’d only half-heard.
‘… The Deathroad Society, of Antwerp? Conservers of coffin tracks in the low countries. Particularly pissed off. Their chairman, Ronald Verheyen—’
‘All right.’ Jane sat down. ‘I’m sorry. What are you on about?’
Eirion laid it out for her. If Alfred Watkins wasn’t much honoured in his home town, it looked like there were thousands of people all over the world to whom he was some kind of minor deity, and earth-mysteries geeks and landscape anoraks from the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, wherever, were now blasting Herefordshire Council with electronic hate-mail. Far as Eirion
could make out, just about every department in the authority – planning, health, chief executive’s, trading standards – they’d all been getting it.
‘It’s somehow got tied into the whole international Green politics thing. These guys are picking up email addresses wherever they can find them. Apparently, individual councillors have even been targeted at home.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Because the EMA have had an approach from the council’s lawyers. Jesus, Jane, if the council hated you before…’
‘Irene…’ Jane swallowed. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
She felt hot and swollen all over, like she’d invaded a wasps’ nest and been multi-stung. Gomer’s phone started ringing just as he came in and he hooked it from the wall by the fridge.
‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire yere.’
‘The EMA guy says if it gets too hot he’ll have to pull the story,’ Eirion was saying. ‘I mean, they haven’t got any lawyers or any money, not to speak of. But it’s too late, anyway, now it’s been picked up by the general media. You watching Midlands Today?’
‘I don’t want to know.’
‘Well, I can’t see it either, in Wales, but I gather—’
‘I don’t care! Oh shit, Irene. This explains Pierce. What do I do?’
‘Just keep your head down, I suppose. I’d come over and try and take your mind off it, but it’s Gwennan’s birthday, and Dad’s got this surprise party, where we all have to pretend nobody speaks English.’
‘Her’s on the mobile right now, boy,’ Gomer said into the phone. ‘I get her to call you back?’
Jane said, ‘I’ll call you back, Irene.’
Clicked him off and went over to secondary-smoke Gomer’s ciggy.
‘All right,’ Gomer said. ‘Will do, boy.’ Handed the phone to Jane. ‘Lol.’
‘Look, what Pierce said before— I didn’t—’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Lol said, ‘I’m over that. It doesn’t get to me any more. Can you write something down?’
The very fact that he knew instantly what she was talking about showed he was far from over it. Jane made scribbling motions to Gomer and he brought her a pen and a receipt book with Gomer Parry Plant Hire billheads. Lol said that if she and Gomer wanted to get out of the village for a while there was a woman they could check out. It might be something or nothing, Lol said. She needed to be polite. Thanks.
