by Phil Rickman
‘Sort of Welsh longhouse in one of its incarnations,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Barn or cattle shed attached. Are you all right, Mrs Watkins?’
‘I’m fine.’
If disoriented. Like she’d passed into a dream and then from one dream into another that was darker. The Globe: where did fiction begin? And why had Mrs Morningwood suddenly decided to pass on information that would make the place, for Jane, even sexier?
‘Nice job on the roof, actually, Mrs Watkins. Timbers patched rather than replaced, and he had the foresight to use second-hand stone tiles. New ones might’ve been disastrous. The chap was good. Pity he couldn’t stay.’
‘What’ve you heard, Mrs Morningwood?’
‘His girl was frightened.’
‘He told you that?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘You told him it was an unhappy house,’ Merrily said. ‘Would it be possible to explain further?’
Moving beyond the second oak tree, she saw a granary, with stone steps and a barn with a badly holed roof. Mrs Morningwood zipped up her cracked and fissured Barbour over the pink scarf.
‘Last time I was in there was nearly fifty years ago. I was nine years old.’
‘You lived next door and you haven’t been in for fifty years?’
‘“Next door”’s a relative term, darling. My cottage is six fields away, including one we let go to conifers, for purposes of concealment.’
‘So you wouldn’t see this house?’
‘Word is the Duchy of Cornwall wants to turn it into craft workshops, employing green energy. Good luck to them. I’ve nothing against Charles — been times I’ve even applauded the chap. Especially when he supports alternative remedies against the weasels of the medical profession taking their grimy little backhanders from the drug companies to cure us of non-existent ills. Cholesterol — who the hell invented cholesterol?’
Mrs Morningwood had sunk her fists so deeply into the pockets of the worn Barbour that you could see her knuckles through the holes.
‘Do you know what a watch night is, Mrs Watkins? Or was.’
‘Erm … maybe.’
‘Most places it had faded out by the end of the nineteenth century. Garway’s said to be the last part of Herefordshire to carry it on. Even so, it had almost vanished, even here, when it was reinstated by the Newtons.’
‘This was the family who’d bought the place from the Gwilyms?’
‘And how much do you know about that?’
‘Not much. That’s why I’m here. Learning history.’
‘Fychan Gwilym,’ Mrs Morningwood said.
‘Sorry?’
‘A name inevitably — and deliberately — mispronounced this side of the border. It all begins with Fychan. The Gwilyms, while not exactly marcher lords — being, of course, mainly Welsh — nonetheless had a substantial domain, and Fychan was their patriarch around the turn of last century. Notorious drunk, gambler, fornicator, wife-beater and, worst of all, a very bad farmer. Weekends, he’d take himself off to the fleshpots of Hereford and Monmouth. Weekdays, he’d be out hunting and gradually running the farm into the ground to pay off his debts.’
‘When was that?’
‘Early 1900s? Fortunately, one morning they found the bastard dead on the road to Bagwyllydiart. The eldest son far too young to take over, and the widow — much relieved, one imagines — rejected the local vultures, moved to a cottage on the edge of the village and shocked everyone by flogging the farm to the Newtons. From Off, Mrs Watkins.’
‘How far off?’
‘Over towards Ross, I believe. Well-heeled farming family, the Newtons, looking for a living for a second son. Gwilyms incandescent with rage. Hordes of them wriggling out of their holes. Imagine a raiding party of red-necked bastards, spitting and cursing — well, I exaggerate obviously, but such were the recriminations that the widow Gwilym found it expedient to leave the area altogether within the year.’
‘This house was so important to the family? Or was it the land?’
‘Oh, the house, principally. Ancestral family home, you see. Attempts to stop the sale, but it was legal, and once the Newtons were in they started buying more land — couple of fields here, bit of woodland there — gradually assembling a lucrative holding. Aware all the time, of course, of the Gwilym family closing in like Birnam Wood from the Welsh side — for many years in the ample shape of one Owain Gwilym, who had a farm near Skenfrith, ground extending almost to the border. Dedicated to getting the Newtons out and the Master House back. Not an ideal neighbour.’
‘Sounds like the seedbed of a classic border feud.’
‘Inevitably. Two farming dynasties head-to-head. Harassment … destruction of fences … smashing of gates … rustling of stock …’ Mrs Morningwood sniffed in contempt. ‘Farmers can be like children — petty bullying and breaking one another’s toys. Split the community down the middle. You were either for the Gwilyms or the Newtons. And the Newtons, during this period, had considerably more money and were generous to their local employees.’
‘Always helps.’
‘And they were clever. Always thinking of ways to weave themselves into the very fabric of the area, learning its psychology, absorbing its traditions — and using them. Which brings us back to the watch night. You remembered yet?’
‘I think …’ Merrily flicked a wary glance at Jane ‘… that it was about … keeping company with the dead?’
Mrs Morningwood folded her arms and hunched her shoulders, leaning her head back, as if to allow the memories to come sliding down like grain.
‘Specifically, Felicity Newton. Only ever remember her as an old woman. Must’ve been close to a hundred when she died in the 1950s — and not many people made the century in those days. Her son, Ralph, head of the family, decided to make an event of it — in theory, to allow everyone to pay their respects. One can see now that it was designed to work as a kind of ritual homage, binding the village and the neighbouring farms to the Newtons. All I know is, it haunted my dreams for years.’
‘You all had to see the body?’
‘Darling, if only it had stopped there.’
Mrs Morningwood pointed down to the Master House, where the skeleton of a porch had been half pulled away from the Gothic-shaped front door of whitening oak. She described a square hall just inside, which had also served as the living room. With a large inglenook, in front of which the remains of Felicity Newton had been displayed.
‘It must have been about eleven p.m. on a winter’s night — I was quite excited, I’d been allowed to stay up. We walked across the fields, my mother and I — just across here. People going in before us, all dressed in black, leaving their hurricane lamps outside. People who all knew one another, but no one spoke. I remember there was a fire in the room, kept very low, the only source of light, apart from the one candle. Like a grotto, a shrine. We were allowed to enter in ones and twos, and each time the door closed behind us, so that we were shut in with the corpse.’
Merrily saw Jane discreetly rolling her eyes.
‘First time I’d seen a dead ’un,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘The candle was in a saucer. Sitting in a mound of salt on a saucer placed on the chest of the corpse, which lay in its coffin on trestles in the centre of the room. The candle casting a quite ghastly light on the face. I remember — one of those frozen moments that resurface, for years, in nightmares — taking one look and being gripped by a horror that was physical, like a cramp in my stomach. Tried to run out, but then, from the shadows by the inglenook, a bigger shadow arose. Tessie Worthy, the Newtons’ housekeeper. A large and formidable woman. I remember, as clearly as if it was yesterday, Tessie Worthy, in her big white starched apron, rising up and intoning, in this low rumble of a voice, Everybody is to touch her.’
‘Gross,’ Jane said, hugging the wolfhound.
‘I remember my mother lifting me up and placing my hand on the withered cheek. I remember turning my head away when the smell wafted up at me — I’m sure if I
went in there now I’d smell it again. Putrid. The faint but piercing stench of decay, mixed with the sickly smell of molten wax. I closed my eyes tightly. The face felt like the skin on a cold egg-custard.’
‘This is an old Celtic thing?’ Jane said, unfazed. ‘Like corpse candles?’
‘About keeping away evil spirits, m’ dear. A light must remain burning in the room where the corpse lies, up until burial.’
‘Until the funeral,’ Merrily said, ‘the spirit was supposed to be hanging around the house and shouldn’t be left alone. That was the belief, I think.’
She looked down at the house, some of its windows leaded and framed with rusted metal, others just holes, like the sockets of eyes which had been put out.
‘However, I do believe the Newtons used it as a kind of controlling device,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Each hand on the dead cheek an unspoken gesture of allegiance. And, of course, almost everyone came — except, obviously, anyone called Gwilym.’
‘How often did that happen?’ Merrily asked. ‘These communal visits to the Newton dead.’
‘Twice? Three times? I don’t truly know. I left home in my twenties. Couldn’t wait to get out, to the big, exciting, non-superstitious city. By the time I returned, they’d moved out.’
‘Left the house?’
‘Built a new house, originally for a tenant, then improved and extended it, and then it became the family home. More convenient, easier to heat — or that was their story. The Master House was rented out, first to some people who tried to run a riding stables — and failed — and then to one of those 1970s good-life communes, posh kids with ideals but no morals. They’d gone, too, time I returned, and word was the Gwilyms were trying to buy it back. Gruffydd Gwilym, not a bad chap, actually, but the Newtons turned him away — rather see the house rot away than returned to the Gwilyms. And now, of course, there’s Gruffydd’s son. Suckarse.’
Merrily blinked, patting Roscoe, the wolfhound, who’d come to sit between her and Jane.
‘Sycharth, actually.’ Mrs Morningwood spelled it out. ‘Some of us do know our Welsh pronunciations but can’t resist taking the piss. Sycharth inherited earlier than expected, Gruffydd having been killed in one of those ubiquitous tractor accidents that occur on hill farms. Wouldn’t happen to Sycharth — man’s never even been on a bloody tractor. Big businessman, now, in Hereford. Property, restaurants. Latest is some abomination called The Centurion?’
‘I know it.’ Flash eatery on Roman Road. ‘He owns that?’
‘A reversal of fortunes for both families. The Gwilyms back in the money, hard times for the Newtons. Suffered terribly during the Foot and Mouth of 2001 — which, of course, the despicable government allowed to spread, to shaft the farmers the way Thatcher shafted the miners.’
Merrily nodded. You heard this all the time. A conspiracy theory that would last for at least a generation.
‘All governments are the same underneath. Final straw, though, for the Newtons. Farm was like a concentration camp after the war — smoke and death. And the Newtons — hardly the powerful family I remembered, and it didn’t get any easier. The boys wanted out, and that might’ve been the end of it, had the eldest girl, Roxanne, not married Paul Gray. Young farmer with ambition and enough family funds to buy in. Actually started to turn it around … before he was diagnosed with MS.’
‘Ah. I saw him. Briefly. Trying to avoid his wheelchair.’
‘He’s fighting. Cursed, though. Farm was cursed. People still talk like that, as I’m sure you know.’
‘And the feud?’
‘Never went away. Like a live electric wire under the ground, and periodically someone would strike it with a spade. Sycharth pretends it’s all history. When the word leaked out about Paul’s illness, he immediately offered to help by buying back the Master House and surrounding land. Which might’ve been tempting if he hadn’t been a Gwilym.’
‘Didn’t want to know?’
‘But I think it did make them realize that this might be a good time to sell … to the right buyer.’
‘Ah.’ Merrily nodded. ‘Perhaps a respectable outside buyer with plenty of money and no possible link to the Gwilyms?’
‘I don’t know the details,’ Mrs Morningwood said, ‘but it was clearly the Grays who made the approach to the Duchy of Cornwall.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Knowing how keen the Duchy were on Herefordshire at the time, having recently bought Harewood Park, not a dozen miles away.’
‘Clever.’
‘Oh, they’ve always been clever, Grays and Newtons both. If rather unlucky.’
‘And how do the Gwilyms feel about the Duchy?’
‘One can only imagine. All right then, darling …’ Mrs Morningwood squeezed out her cigarette, tidily pocketing the stub. ‘If you want to go into the house, I won’t detain you any longer. But at least you know some of the background.’
‘Yes. Thank you, Mrs Morningwood.’
‘You have a key?’
‘A very big key.’ Merrily could feel its outline bulging her bag. ‘Only problem now is, I’ve a church service to take at seven-thirty, back in Ledwardine.’
‘Time for a peek, surely. I’m sure your God will protect you. Come along, Roscoe.’
‘You’re not coming?’
‘Hens to get in before nightfall. Besides, I think I told you — I never go there.’
‘Because you actually believe it’s haunted or for some other reason that you … maybe don’t feel able to share?’
For just a moment, Mrs Morningwood looked almost thrown. Then she smiled.
‘I trust the dog, Mrs Watkins. Once got carried away, in pursuit of a bunny, found himself within yards of the ruins. He froze for a moment — absolutely froze — then made the most extraordinary noise and came running back to me like the wind, tail well down. Walked pitifully to heel all the way home.’
She attached the leather lead to Roscoe’s collar and then held out the looped end, first to Merrily, then to Jane.
‘Go on — try him. See what happens.’
Jane looked at Merrily.
‘Wouldn’t be fair,’ Merrily said.
17
The Inglenook
A year or so before moving to Ledwardine, Merrily had helped take the funeral of a youngish woman with psychiatric problems, wife of a local head teacher. Probably suicide but passed off, by a kindly coroner, as accidental death.
Up in Liverpool this had been, when she’d been a curate, and there’d been an open coffin, in the American tradition. And that had bothered her, and the fact that it bothered her was also worrying. Was she squeamish? Immature? Surely it was good to be as open as possible about death. Took away the fear. Touch a corpse, you’ll never be afraid again.
They’ve made her look so composed, the husband had said. After all her suffering and her confusion, I want everyone to see how together she looks.
Together, yes. Like an expensive doll in a white padded gift-box. A classy ad for the embalmer’s art, but you couldn’t believe it had ever enclosed an animating spark.
This was the problem: the underlining of the finality of death, the erasure of the spirit, a lasting image of the recently departed in eternal rigid repose. Where was the promise of freedom, the energy of release?
Standing in the ruins of the Master House porch, gripping the big, rust-brown key, Merrily was still unsure how she felt about public displays of mortality. But one thing was certain: a single, eerie experience as a child would hardly be enough to keep someone as world-hardened as Mrs Morningwood at bay for a half a century.
‘Weird about the dog,’ Jane said.
‘Maybe.’
‘You think she was winding you up? You could’ve just taken her up on the offer, walked him down here yourself.’
‘Wouldn’t have proved anything. Most dogs don’t like being suddenly taken away from their owners on the end of a lead. Perhaps she knew how he’d react.’
‘Honestly …’ Jane scowled. �
�You’re always so suspicious of people. Is that really good for a vicar? I mean, I liked her.’
‘I liked her, but I’m not sure how far I’d trust her. Everybody has an agenda, and she’d targeted us. There were things she wanted me to know. That’s suspicious.’
‘And you a Christian.’
‘Yes, it’s very sad.’
Down in the hollow, the air was already purpling with dusk, the birdsong withdrawing into the trees. Two sparrows flew out of the eaves. Merrily looked at the oak front door.
‘Makes you wonder why these Gwilyms wanted it back,’ Jane said. ‘It’s going to cost a fortune even to patch it up.’
‘I can understand that — if it’s the family home since way, way back. And if this guy Sycharth owns The Centurion, he’s certainly got the money.’
The house looked heavier close-up, less vulnerable, some of its lower stones like boulders. Jane picked up a stone tile fallen from the porch and propped it against the wall.
‘So these Gwilyms are obviously going to be seriously pissed off about the Newtons or the Grays or whoever cut this deal with Charles’s guys behind their backs.’
‘Having to sit there on the other side of the river and watch the old homestead getting immaculately renovated. Turned into somebody else’s business.’
‘Would there be any chance of them ever buying it back?’
‘Can’t be ruled out, flower. The Duchy’s a business, buying and selling property. If they can’t make it work, they might sell it on. And the project certainly hasn’t got off to the best of starts.’
Merrily was watching the top unrolling from a new can of worms. How influential was Sycharth Gwilym in Hereford property circles? Had Felix Barlow ever worked for the Gwilyms? Had Felix somehow been got at? OK, that seemed unlikely but … God, who could you totally trust? Who could you ever trust?
‘So,’ Jane said. ‘We going in?’
She was standing, brown paw marks down her front, under the grey metal skull of a lamp over the front door. Fragments of glass embedded in its rim like splintered teeth. Merrily frowned.
