Remains of an Altar mw-8

by Phil Rickman

  ‘I don’t know. Honestly. You going to be able to organize it in time?’

  ‘Won’t be too much of a problem,’ Dan said. ‘After last time, nobody’s going to want to miss it. Even the ones who went home scared.’

  A priest could go through his entire career without facing this kind of situation. That was the irony of it.

  ‘Not a lot frightens me. I can deal with most physical pain, emotional pain, stress. I can achieve separation from the weakness of the body. But there are leaps I can’t make. Aspects I can’t face.’

  ‘You’re worried by the non-physical?’

  Syd leaned back and took a deep pull on his cigarette.

  ‘Samuel Dennis Spicer,’ he said. ‘Church of England.’

  ‘Because you can’t resist it, overpower it … slot it? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Samuel Dennis Spicer. Church of England.’

  Merrily smiled.

  ‘You talked about any of this to Winnie Sparke?’

  ‘Winnie?’ He’d been about to bring the cigarette back to his mouth. He brought his arm down. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘They’re saying in Wychehill that you’re seeing a lot of her.’

  ‘Told you.’ He leaned his head back over the chorister’s stall. ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘You told me about the Ladies of Wychehill.’

  ‘I assisted Winnie Sparke with her researches into the origins of the church. Parish records. And a few other things. Anything else…’ He squeezed out the cigarette between finger and thumb. ‘Anything else, my wife really wouldn’t like.’

  ‘Your—?’

  ‘In essence, stories of our separation are overstated. Having three parishes can be an advantage, Merrily. You go missing for a while, they all think you’re in one of the others. Fiona took the kids down to Reading to get away from a difficult situation. We have a house, and her family’s down there, so it seemed expedient. I go down every week, or we meet somewhere. Yesterday it was in Berkshire. Hungerford.’

  ‘That works?’

  ‘Separation – she’s used to that. Least I’m less likely to get killed as a clergyman. Seemed easier to let people think we’d split, otherwise there’d be three restless parishes wondering how long before the new guy.’

  ‘But why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just leave? Go for a new—’

  ‘Because I was sent here. Never yet failed to complete a mission. One way or another.’

  Like God was his field commander. But obviously Merrily understood.

  ‘And the difficult situation … that would be drugs?’

  ‘Partly. Emily’s been a problem. Shrinks say she has an addictive personality. As a kid she overate. You tried to cut down the Mars Bars to three a day … tantrums. Cold turkey on Mars Bars, you believe that? With adolescence, it stopped, all the weight dropped away, and we were so relieved that it was quite a while before we realized what’d replaced it. The shoplifting conviction was a clue. Then robbing the offertory box.’

  ‘She was in rehab?’

  ‘Joyce told you all this, I assume. Joyce, the parish talking-newsletter.’

  ‘And then the Royal Oak changed hands,’ Merrily said. ‘And suddenly it was all on your doorstep. Like a sweetshop.’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a group of us, county-wide – parents of kids with drug problems. We attend briefing sessions with the police, regional seminars. We learn what to look out for.’

  ‘Like Roman Wicklow? Did you know about him?’

  ‘Suspected.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell the police.’

  ‘One man with a rucksack?’ Spicer snorted. ‘Take Wicklow out of the picture and there’s another one in place by next week, in a different beauty spot. Better the devil you know.’

  ‘If they’d arrested him, he could’ve fingered others…’

  ‘His sort don’t finger people.’

  ‘What about Raji Khan?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Raji Khan –’ he looked almost amused ‘– is a very clever boy. Somebody like me says a word against him, it’s like the Crusades are back – I must be starting a holy war. Anyway, not your problem. Your problem’s more ethereal. It’s my problem too but … we’ve been into that.’

  ‘What are you asking me to do?’

  ‘Your requiem should be broadened. I was thinking a wider brief. For a start, you might give this place some attention.’

  ‘What are you trying to lose?’

  ‘Longworth, for a start. I don’t know what his problem was, but I reckon St Dunstan’s only compounded it. You look at the records, you find that what existed on this site could have been no more than a single monk’s cell. A Celtic hermit’s primitive stone hut. So he builds a pseudocathedral. Look—’

  Spicer sprang up, walked into the nave, pointing out empty stone ledges, blank areas of wall.

  ‘When I first came, there were terrible pictures on these walls, of saints and angels … figurines in niches.’

  Merrily looked around. Light oak furniture, a marbled font. He was right: there was little of the period clutter that even churches less than a century old accumulated.

  ‘They’re in storage. None of them great works of art. No treasure. Phoney High-Church iconography, reeking of … hierarchy. Grotesque, to me. Forbidding – like that hideous angel on Longworth’s tomb. When we had one small statue nicked, I talked the parish council – well, Preston Devereaux – into safeguarding the rest. He didn’t need much encouraging. His family always found Upper Wychehill an intrusion. His grandfather’s on record as having attempted to stop Longworth building.’

  ‘You’ve virtually … stripped the place?’

  ‘Best we could, bit by bit, over a period. They’re all newcomers here, nobody missed anything. But I didn’t get rid of it. It’s as if it’s built into the stone.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Longworth’s grandiose concept. Longworth himself. He brought something here that’s caused an imbalance. This church is disproportionate to its surroundings and to the community. It’s a big stone ego-trip, and it’s like the houses are hiding away from it … below the road,over the road, squeezing into the rocks. It explains a lot about Wychehill. I found a journal kept by one of my predecessors, thirty, forty years ago. Even then, the population was unstable, people buying and selling, coming and going.’

  Syd Spicer’s voice was crisp and carried across the body of the church with hardly an echo. Whatever you thought about Joseph Longworth, he’d known who to consult about acoustics.

  ‘I know a bit about geology,’ Spicer said. ‘Rock-climbing used to be my specialist skill. I was an instructor some of the time, so I know about rock. There’s a small fault through Wychehill, did you know that? I mean, the whole of the Malverns, that was volcanic, but a long time ago. The shifts in this area – there’s been more recent action here. I say recent – eighteenth, nineteenth centuries.’

  ‘A history of earth-movement and then quarrying?’ Merrily followed him down the central aisle. ‘No wonder Winnie Sparke says the hills are in pain.’

  ‘She’s not a stupid woman,’ Syd Spicer said. ‘She gives you all this fey stuff, but that’s her screen. If you think she’s more gullible than you are, you start to lose your inhibitions, tell her more than you intended to. C. Winchester Sparke – former professor of anthropology, back in the US. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Specializing in ancient history, comparative religion, philosophy, anthropology. Smart woman. Don’t be fooled. We had a serious talk about this once. Her theory is that the whole of the Malvern range was one huge ritual site … because it was so volatile. People didn’t live here, they came here to experience transcendence … to have visions. That’s the pagans and the early Christians.’

  ‘The hermits in their cells and their caves. Like in Tibet.’

  ‘Presumably. That’s not the point of Christianity, though, is it? That’s smoke. Smoke and … incense.’

  ‘Wasn’t Longworth sup
posed to have had a vision?’

  ‘I have a theory about that.’ Spicer sat down on the edge of a pew. ‘Well, it’s not my theory, but it fits. You mess around on volatile rocks, on operations or just on exercises, and you become aware of occasional phenomena, linked particularly to fault lines and places where the Earth’s crust has been been disrupted. Lights, usually. Balls of light.’

  ‘You’ve seen it?’

  ‘Couple of times. It’s like ball lightning. Might have been ball lightning. Gets people excited about UFOs, but it’s natural, I think. The Ministry of Defence knows about it. I think that’s what Longworth saw.’

  ‘Preston Devereaux says the story is that Longworth saw the Angel of the Agony in a blaze of light. Which, presumably, is why there’s a representation of it on his tomb.’

  ‘I’d go for just the blaze of light.’

  ‘Is there any actual record of what Longworth believed he saw? Did he ever describe it?’

  ‘If he did, it wasn’t around this locality. Maybe he told Elgar. It’s all smoke, Merrily. And I’d like to get rid of it. Starting with the music.’

  ‘I’m sorry – which music?’

  ‘Loste’s music. His lush, extravagant choral works. It’s become clear to me that that’s part of the problem. It’s not the place for music like that. And certainly not the place for experiments.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying…’ And it was odd, Merrily thought, that a man inclined towards a blanket rejection of the numinous should be saying it. ‘I think you’re saying that, for sacred music to be effective, it needs a strong, working spiritual foundation – an abbey, a cathedral. Like the difference between a puddle and a well.’

  ‘And if you’re being literal about that, the Wychehill well disappeared with the quarrying.’ Spicer shrugged. ‘I might be wrong. If I am … But I thought about it all the way back from Berkshire and it was the only conclusion I could reach. Which means that as from next week Tim Loste and his choir can go and look for a new home.’

  ‘You mean you’re … ?’

  ‘Evicting him. I’m within my rights, as priest in charge – I checked. What’s more, I think it’s for his own good. He’s being drawn into an unhealthy fantasy.’

  ‘When are you going to tell him?’

  ‘I’ve already told him, Merrily. I went in the back way from the rectory while you were talking to Winnie Sparke. I told him there were probably dozens of other churches and halls that would be overjoyed to have him and the choir. I said he might want to think about moving. That this place wasn’t good for his … health.’

  ‘That must’ve sounded like a threat.’

  ‘Not the way I put it, I assure you.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said … he said he didn’t know how he was going to tell Winnie.’

  ‘Syd…’ God almighty, no wonder Spicer had needed a cigarette. ‘She’ll go completely bloody berserk. This – whatever she’s trying to reach through Loste – this has become the central focus of her life.’

  ‘Merrily, if the central focus of her life is producing a bestselling book on the secret source of Elgar’s inspiration … well, she can do that anywhere, can’t she?’

  ‘I’m not sure she can. Not the way she sees it. And I’m not sure that’s the entire—’

  ‘She needs to get out of here, too, the quicker the better. Out of the area.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Spicer stood up and stepped out of the pew.

  ‘And, of course, this had to be done before Sunday evening.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Jesus, Syd…’

  ‘You have a problem with that?’

  ‘You mean so that, on Sunday evening, we can solemnly invite God to wipe away every last taint of Longworth and Loste’s brand of Anglo-Catholicism?’

  ‘Think about it. It makes sense.’ He walked towards the main doors. ‘Maybe you should stay for a few minutes on your own, get the feel of the place?’

  Merrily sat down in a pew, the confluence of at least three sunbeams.

  Spicer probably didn’t want them to be seen leaving together. People might talk.

  What a total bloody … It wasn’t quite a sectarian isssue, but it was close. She wondered if he’d served with the SAS in Northern Ireland and something had left a bad taste.

  No, that was ridiculous. His decision to stop the choral singing could be justified purely on the basis of what they’d said about puddles and wells.

  But there was already a bad taste in her own mouth.

  And Spicer still hadn’t told her everything he knew, of course. Merrily was sure of that.

  PART FOUR

  ‘On our hillside night after night looking out on our “illimitable” horizon … I’ve seen in thought the Soul go up and have written my own heart’s blood into the score.’

  Edward Elgar, from a letter (1899)

  ‘For some, it is the living on after the action that requires the final reserves of courage.’

  Tony Geraghty, Who Dares Wins: The Special Air Service, 1950 to the Gulf War (1992)

  44

  The Plant-Hire Code

  Jane thought, there are still women like this?

  ‘My husband’s out,’ she’d said. ‘You should really come back when my husband’s in.’

  It was a detached bungalow on an estate on the wrong side of Hereford – not that there was a right side any more, with all the roadworks connected with the building of new superstores that nobody wanted except Lyndon Pierce and his power-crazed mates. Taken Jane and Gomer most of an hour just to get here, and Jane wasn’t planning on moving without some answers.

  ‘Mrs Kingsley, it’s you I wanted to talk to. If that’s all right.’

  Mrs Kingsley was a tired-eyed woman in an apron, sixtyish, with a resigned sort of look. She didn’t seem like a Guardian reader.

  ‘But I don’t really understand what you want,’ she said. ‘As I say, my husband deals with our finances.’

  OK, wrong approach. Stupid to say it was about her inheritance. Stupid to try and sound mature and official. Shouldn’t have nipped home to change out of the school uniform. Start again.

  ‘My name’s Jane Watkins. And I’m doing a project. For … for school. I’m a … you know … a schoolgirl?’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Kingsley looked happier. ‘Which school is that?’

  ‘Erm … Moorfield? It’s near—’

  ‘Yes, I know it. I had a nephew there.’

  ‘Well, I probably—’

  ‘He’s a bank manager now, in Leominster. Now, what did you want to know again?’

  ‘Well, it’s this project on … on my great-grandfather? Alfred Watkins? You know who I mean? He was a county councillor and a magistrate, back in the 1920s and…’

  ‘Mr Watkins?’ Mrs Kingsley smiled at last and nodded and came down from her front doorstep. ‘Yes, I know about Mr Watkins. And his photography, and his ley lines. And he was…’ She looked suddenly uncertain. ‘Your great-grandfather?’

  Oh no. ‘Sorry…’ Jane did some rapid arithmetic. ‘I always get this wrong. Great-great-grandfather. It takes me ages to trace it back through the generations. We’re all over the place now, you know, the Watkinses.’

  Jane glanced back at Gomer, sitting at the roadside in the old US Army jeep he was driving now. He’d said he probably wouldn’t be much use, not knowing Mrs Kingsley, only her late aunt.

  ‘Of course, it was my grandmother knew Mr Watkins, not me,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘I’m not that old. My grandmother, you see, was very well connected, that was what I was always told, although I was quite small when she died. I imagine she could’ve told you some marvellous stories about Mr Alfred Watkins.’

  ‘Really … ? Well, that … that’s what I heard,’ Jane said. ‘You see, we live in Ledwardine—’

  ‘Yes, that’s where my aunt—’

  ‘And all the main people in Ledwardine told me the person I could’ve spoken to, if I wanted to know about Alfred’s connecti
ons with the village, was Mrs … Pole.’

  ‘Do you know Mr Bull-Davies?’

  ‘James Bull-Davies! Absolutely. James said Mrs Pole was, erm … he said she was a real lady.’

  ‘Oh, she was. I’m so glad Mr Bull-Davies remembers her.’

  ‘They all do, Mrs Kingsley. Ted Clowes, the senior churchwarden? Ted said, Jane, you want to be sure and get Mrs Pole into your project. And her family. Which, erm, could eventually be published, of course, by the Ledwardine Local History Society.’

  ‘So that was what you meant when you mentioned my inheritance,’ Mrs Kingsley said.

  ‘Well, it…’

  ‘You meant Coleman’s Meadow,’ Mrs Kingsley said.

  ‘I think that was what it was called.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I didn’t inherit the land, dear. That was my cousin. He’s the farmer.’

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  ‘As you’d probably have known if you’d seen the local television news tonight,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘Where he was interviewed.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Shit.

  ‘The reporter did say they’d tried to find the instigator of the protest, but you were keeping a low profile. Although they did have quite a good photograph of you, from one of the newspapers.’

  Just when you thought you were being so smart.

  ‘It was strange, though,’ Mrs Kingsley said, ‘that they didn’t mention you were the great-great-granddaughter of Alfred Watkins.’

  ‘Well, it’s not something I…’

  ‘Talk about,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘No. I don’t suppose you do, you silly little girl.’

  Which was when Gomer came over.

  He wasn’t even smoking, and he’d buttoned his tweed jacket.

  ‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire.’ Handing one of his cards up to Mrs Kingsley. ‘Once put in a new soakaway for your auntie, but I don’t suppose her’d’ve talked about it much at family gatherings.’

  For a man of seventy-odd he moved fast. Must have seen Jane’s face folding up, and he’d been there before she reached the bottom of the steps.