The Fabric of Sin mw-9

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I’m supposed to be staying with the local priest. They haven’t got a vicar in the Garway cluster at present, so a retired guy’s taking services meanwhile. He and his wife do B. & B. I turn up there with a boyfriend, how’s that going to look?’

  ‘What about Jane?’

  ‘Jane stays here. Can’t miss any school at this stage. Woman curate called Ruth Wisdom’s lined up to mind the parish. Work experience. She’s OK. And Jane’s less likely to drive her to self-mutilation than at one time, and she—’

  Merrily looked up. A woman was standing behind Lol’s chair.

  ‘Excuse me. You just have to be Lol Robinson?’

  She was tall and very slender. She’d been with a group of women in their twenties, with fancy cocktails, their backs to the bar. All of them now looking at Lol, hands over smiles.

  ‘Nobody has to be anybody,’ Lol said.

  Mr Enigmatic. The woman was leaning over him now, her glossy black dress like oil on a dipstick, one small breast almost touching his cheek.

  ‘Lol, I just wanted to say, we all went to see The Baker’s Lament at the Flicks in the Sticks special preview, and it was … absolutely enchanting. Especially the music, obviously. But, listen, when I went to buy the CD in Hereford they hadn’t even got it? Nobody had?’

  ‘Well, it … it all takes time,’ Lol said.

  ‘And I’m like, for Christ’s sake, this guy’s local? And the manager guy, he eventually admitted they’d had about fifteen orders just that day? Fifteen orders in one morning? This tells me you need to get a better recording company, Mr Robinson. I couldn’t even find a download?’

  ‘Well, it’s kind of caught them on the hop,’ Lol said. ‘All of us, really. We didn’t actually—’

  ‘Well, I have to say I just totally love it. Hope you don’t mind me coming over?’

  ‘Er, no,’ Lol said. ‘No, not at all. Thank you.’

  The young woman straightened up. As did her conspicuous nipples. She looked across at Merrily and smiled at her.

  Merrily felt small and dowdy and old.

  ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he?’ the woman said.

  Walking back across the village square, Lol avoided the creamy light of the fake gaslamps; Merrily was a pace behind him.

  ‘Fifteen orders? In one morning?’

  ‘She was probably exaggerating.’

  ‘Why would she?’ Merrily pulled on her woollen beret, zipped up her fraying fleece. ‘She doesn’t know you. Although she’ll probably be telling people she does, now.’

  ‘One small song in one small film?’

  ‘Not so small now. And you know what? People will remember the song when they’ve half-forgotten the film. Because it’s somehow caught the mood. The zeitgeist … whatever. You have become a cool person, Laurence.’

  ‘It’s not real.’ Lol was shaking his head, as if to clear it after his two halves of lager. ‘It’s a freak accident.’

  Sometimes you wanted to encircle his neck with your hands and …

  Over a year now since this young guy, Liam Brown, not long out of film school, had written to Lol, telling him about his self-financed rural love story. How badly, after hearing it on Lol’s album, Alien, he wanted ‘The Baker’s Lament’ on the soundtrack, only wasn’t sure he could afford it. Just take it, Lol had told him, the way Lol would, sending him three versions of the song, including an unreleased instrumental track, and forgetting all about it. Not even mentioning it to Merrily until the middle of July, when the first DVD arrived.

  The Baker’s Lament. There on the label, with a bread knife stuck into a country cob. The guy had named the movie after the song.

  Shooting the picture with unknown actors who’d formed some kind of workers’ cooperative. Lol and Merrily had watched it together at the vicarage: the tragicomic story of a young couple setting up a village bakery on the Welsh border in the 1960s when the supermarkets were starting to starve small shopkeepers out of business. Following through to the new millennium when the couple were played — and not badly, either — by the actors’ own parents and the village had turned into something like contemporary Ledwardine, the bakery now a twee delicatessen.

  The movie was simple and charming and unpretentious, a rural elegy with Lol’s music seeping through it like a bloodstream, carrying the sense of change and loss and a kind of resilience.

  Liam Brown was even worse than Lol at self-promotion, and they hadn’t known it had been released — in a limited way, on the art-house circuit — until it was in the papers that an obscure British independent film had picked up some debut-director award at Cannes. Then the who is this guy? calls had started coming in to Lol’s producer, Prof Levin.

  Change was coming. New Costwolds, new Lol.

  They stopped on the edge of the cobbles, where they’d go their separate ways, Merrily to the vicarage, Lol to his terraced cottage in Church Street. When he took her hand, his felt cold.

  ‘Apparently, the next question they ask is, Is he still alive? Thinking maybe it’s a forgotten recording from the Sixties, by some contemporary of …’

  ‘Nick Drake?’

  ‘It should be him, Merrily. Not me.’

  ‘Lol, he’s dead. He died in 1974, after a mere five, six years of not being successful. You get to double that … and some.’

  She pulled him under the oak-pillared village hall and — bugger it, if there were people watching, let them watch — clasped her hands in his hair and found his lips with her mouth and then unzipped her fleece and tucked one of his cold hands inside.

  ‘All this,’ she said, aware of the ambivalence, ‘is something overdue. Remember that.’

  Trying to banish the image of the girl in the pub, showing him her implants out of a dress that must have cost something close to two weeks’ stipend.

  Jane said, ‘You’re a soft touch, Mum. Always were. A doormat.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  It was getting late, but it was Friday night and Merrily had lit a small log fire in the vicarage sitting room. The whole place was colder since they’d said goodbye to the oil-gobbling Aga. Which, while it had to be done, meant she wasn’t looking forward to winter.

  ‘And I don’t mean one of those rough, spiky doormats,’ Jane said.

  ‘You’ll like Ruth. She rides a motorbike.’

  ‘Jeez, if there’s anything worse than a trendy lesbian cleric in leathers with a vintage Harley between her legs … Like, maybe I could arrange to stay at Eirion’s …’

  Jane’s voice dried up, and her face went blank. Eirion was away at university now, and she still hadn’t got used to that. OK, it was only Cardiff, and he came home to Abergavenny at weekends, but things, inevitably, had changed.

  ‘Ruth’s not a lesbian, Jane.’

  ‘Not a problem, anyway.’ Jane, on her knees on the hearthrug, stared into the desultory yellow flames. ‘I was thinking of giving girls a try for a while, actually.’

  Shock tactic. Cry for help. Merrily pulled up an armchair.

  ‘He didn’t phone, then.’

  ‘Erm … no.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Ten days? No problem. I don’t think he was even able to get home last weekend, didn’t I mention that?’

  ‘No, but I kind of assumed that was why you suddenly had to work on your project.’

  ‘All that’s gone quiet, too. They may not even start the dig until the spring.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Pity about that. Jane had been hyper for a while after her campaign to stall council plans for executive homes in Coleman’s Meadow. Convinced that the field had once been crossed by an ancient trackway and, amazingly, she’d been right. They’d found prehistoric stones there, long buried by some superstitious farmer. Sensational archaeology, for a place like Ledwardine.

  ‘He’ll call,’ Merrily said. ‘He’s Eirion.’

  ‘I don’t care if he calls or not.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Like, it’s very demand
ing, university life.’ Jane didn’t look at her. ‘Lots of guys you’re obliged to get smashed with. Lots of girls to assist with their essays and stuff.’

  ‘Eirion was never like that.’

  ‘He was never at university before.’

  University. Further education. This could be the time to talk about it again. Just over six months from her A levels, Jane needed to start applying to universities … like now. But Jane wasn’t interested, because that was what everybody did. She kept saying she could feel The System trying to stereotype her. And look at the cost. Tuition fees. Could they afford it? Was it really worth it? Especially as she hadn’t yet decided on a career. Like, you didn’t just do further education for the sake of having done it.

  ‘You went to uni,’ Jane said, looking down at the rug, ‘and got pregnant before you were into your second year.’

  ‘We were naïve in those days. Well … comparatively immature. Although I suppose every generation gets to say that.’

  ‘In which case I must be—’ Jane turned to her, moist-eyed, or was it the light? ‘I must be very seriously immature, then. Pushing eighteen and only the one real boyfriend? That’s not normal, Mum. That wasn’t even normal in your day. That’s, like, almost perverted?’

  ‘Well, actually, flower, I think it’s really quite—’ The phone rang then, offering her a timely get-out, which she felt compelled to ignore. ‘I’ll let the machine—’

  ‘No, you get it. Go on. You’ll only sit there worrying until you find an excuse to sneak off and play the message.’

  Merrily nodded, got up.

  ‘It’s a doormat thing,’ Jane said sweetly to her back.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She took the call in the scullery office, padding over the flags in the cold kitchen where no stove rumbled, scooping up the phone with one hand, switching on the desk lamp with the other.

  ‘Ledwardine Vic—’

  ‘Mrs Watkins, is it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Adam Eastgate likely mentioned me.’

  ‘Oh … right. Mr …’

  ‘Barlow.’ Low-level local accent. ‘Felix.’

  ‘Right. I was going to call you tomorrow, actually, see if we could arrange to meet.’

  ‘Tomorrow would be all right for us, yes.’

  ‘At the house?’

  Owls whooping it up in the orchard. Silence in the old black bakelite phone, the kind of phone that could really carry a silence.

  ‘The house at Garway?’ Merrily said.

  ‘No,’ Mr Barlow said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Any … particular reason?’

  ‘Well, see … person you need to talk to, more than me, is my plasterer. It’s my plasterer had the experience.’

  ‘Your plasterer.’

  ‘I call her that. We’re converting this barn at Monkland, see. We’re in a caravan on the site.’

  ‘That’s not far for me. It’s just I thought you might find it easier to explain the problem in situ,’ Merrily said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You couldn’t spare the time?’

  Another silence; no owls even. She waited.

  ‘I think you’re gonner have to come here,’ he said. ‘We don’t plan to go back, see.’

  ‘To the Master House.’

  This was what he was ringing to tell her? That they weren’t, on any account, going back to the house?

  ‘That’s correct,’ he said.

  She had the feeling that he was working to a script and whoever had written it was standing at his shoulder. She felt another question coming and hung on for it.

  ‘I was told you … you were the Hereford exorcist.’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘And you’ll have the, um, full regalia, is it?’

  ‘Regalia?’

  ‘We’d like it if you came with all the regalia,’ Felix Barlow said. ‘The full bell, book and candle, kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘If that’s all right with you,’ Barlow said.

  3

  Fuchsia

  She was beautiful and shimmery in the mist. Like one of those exotic birds that weren’t supposed to migrate here. Greens and blues in her dark, tangly hair, skin like milky coffee. She stood by the long green caravan, in her pink-splashed overalls and her turquoise wellingtons, calling out when Merrily was close enough for the dog collar to show.

  ‘Will you bless me?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘In the old-fashioned way, please,’ she said. ‘That is, with all due ceremony?’

  From the field gate, through the lingering mist — a keen hint of first frost — she’d looked as young as Jane. Close up, you guessed she was nearly thirty. Still not Merrily’s idea of a plasterer.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘I can tell.’

  Merrily looked into eyes which were startlingly big and round, like an owl’s, and widely separated.

  ‘It strengthens the aura,’ the woman said. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I’m sure it must be.’ Merrily parted her woollen cloak to expose the cassock, hemmed with mud now. The full regalia could be a pain. ‘But would it be all right if we talked first?’

  ‘I just wanted to ask you while Felix wasn’t here. He’s not religious.’ The woman turned away and moved back to the caravan. ‘Fuchsia,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Fuchsia Mary Linden.’

  Which meant that her parents had been either gardeners or big fans of the Gormenghast trilogy. Following her into the caravan, Merrily’s money was on Gormenghast.

  * * *

  She felt tired again, had a lingering headache. She’d awoken a good hour before dawn, her body all curled up, tense with resentment.

  Never her favourite negative emotion, resentment. Most times it came hissing like poison gas out of inflated self-esteem — they can’t treat me like this. Seldom objective, never exactly Christian and hardly (thank you, Jane) the Way of the Doormat.

  At six a.m. she’d been hugging a pot of tea, Ethel the black cat on her knees, in the frigid kitchen. Watery sunlight eventually seeping into the windows before the mist had blotted it up.

  The more she’d thought about the Duchy job, the more senseless it had seemed. She was expected to desert the parish — and Jane and Lol — for up to a week to address some embarrassment in an empty house?

  An empty house. That was the other point. No family life disrupted there. Nobody’s sanity at risk. Was there, in fact, anything more on the line than the reputation of the Bishop of Hereford as a faithful servant of the monarchy, and the professional judgement of the Duke of Cornwall’s land-steward?

  Merrily had put on her pectoral cross and knelt, in her bathrobe, on the cold stone flags and prayed. And listened.

  The result had been inconclusive.

  It was a substantial, professional caravan, with a living room and a good-sized kitchen area, copper pans on hooks conveying weight and a sense of permanence. Twin doors at the bottom of the living area suggesting a separate bedroom and bathroom.

  The walls of the living room were lined with oriental rugs, and there was a wood-burning stove, lit, the sweet scent of apple logs mingling with the sweeter fumes of cannabis. Fuchsia kicked off her wellies, picked up a rubberized walkie-talkie.

  ‘I’ll call Felix. He’s over at the barn. Have a seat, please, Merrily.’

  Shrugging off the black woollen cloak, Merrily made a space for herself between tumbled books on one of the fitted sofas. She could see the barn, its bay agape, through the window opposite and the goldenbrown mist. The window behind her framed the church tower across the rutted field and the lane where she’d left her car. Monkland was a main-road village on the way to Leominster; this was the first time she’d penetrated its hinterland.

  ‘So the barn’s going to be …?’

  ‘Our home. It’s supposed to be finished by now.’ Fuchsia prodded at the walkie-talkie. ‘But that’s what it’s li
ke with builders, Merrily, they fit in their own projects between jobs. If a builder’s home looks like some wretched hovel, that means he’s doing very well.’

  The ephemeral beauty didn’t include her voice, which was quite slow. And loud, in an uncontrolled way, like a child’s.

  Merrily folded the cloak over her knees, less puzzled now about why it, or the cassock, had been necessary. Why Felix Barlow, though not religious himself, had thought traditional priestly attire would be appropriate.

  The walkie-talkie cackled and Fuchsia said, ‘She’s here, babes,’ and clicked it off. ‘He’ll come now, Merrily. He was getting a bit frazzled and he needed to work with his hands to calm himself down. Felix has problems talking about the non-physical. Which is very odd because he’s really perceptive, and buildings speak to him.’

  ‘How do they do that?

  ‘They send him information, communicating what they were and what they can be again. It’s like dowsing. He feels it in his muscles — the needs of the stone and the oak. Well, in some buildings, anyway.’

  ‘What about the farmhouse at Garway?’

  ‘The Master House had been left to rot.’ Fuchsia was wrapping her thin arms around herself as if to crush a shudder. ‘And it wasn’t complaining. Houses know when they’ve gone bad.’

  ‘And this is what it said to Felix?’

  ‘This one didn’t speak to Felix, Merrily,’ Fuchsia said. ‘It spoke to me.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And now my aura’s permeated with darkness.’ Fuchsia opened her arms. ‘Can you see?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Some priests can. Not the man at Garway, he was no help at all, but there was a very good guy in the place I grew up. He’d packed it in, but it never goes away. It’s a calling, like they say. I believe that, Merrily. If you answer the call, you may receive gifts.’

  ‘It’s as well to be careful about gifts,’ Merrily said. ‘You can never be too sure who they’re from.’

  Fuchsia crouched in front of the stove and opened up its vents, pale flames spurting in the glass square. On a shelf to the left of the stainless steel flue, Merrily read titles from a stack of paperbacks. The Gap in the Curtain, The Secrets of Dr Taverner, The Flint Knife, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary.