Pressure Head

by JL Merrow

  When the service was finally over, Patricia turned round to me again. “Are you staying for coffee, Tom?”

  “Er . . .” Actually, I’d been planning on making a quick getaway before Phil had a chance to ask me what the bloody hell I thought I was doing here.

  “Oh, do stay. It’s all fair trade, you know.”

  I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to persuade me, but I found myself nodding. Lionel looked pretty pissed off about the whole thing, which was a plus. “Well, seeing as it’s you asking,” I told her with a smile, and she glowed a bit in response. So after the organist had played the retreat for the blokes in frocks—with the choir as well, there were quite a lot of them—I joined the queue for the coffee urn, which was handily set up just inside the area I’d been sitting in.

  The coffee was all right, but the fair-trade biscuits turned out to be not a patch on Patricia’s shortbread. I turned to tell her so, but while I’d been exchanging a few words with the ladies serving coffee, it seemed Lionel had whisked her away. Instead, I found myself face-to-face with Phil. Well, all right, given the height difference I was face to throat with Phil, but that didn’t make things any easier. Neither of us spoke. Then both of us spoke at once.

  “You all right—”

  “Sorry about last—”

  We fell silent again. Set into the floor by my feet was a stone slab like a tired gravestone; I could just make out the words, Here lyeth ye virtvovs body of . . . The name had been worn away by generations of Christian feet, but whoever it was, I envied them briefly.

  “Hello, again. You’re new, aren’t you? Welcome to St. Anthony’s.” I looked up from my feet and into the wrinkled face of the old dear from earlier. “Are you two together?”

  I was momentarily floored. Did she mean together together, or just together?

  “Um, we’re, um . . .” I managed.

  “No,” Phil said flatly and walked away. It felt like he’d slapped me in the face.

  “Well, he wasn’t very friendly, was he?” It was delivered in high, ringing old-lady tones, which had to have been heard by half the congregation and must have left Phil’s ears burning. I was glad he couldn’t see my smile.

  “Maybe he’s just not a morning person,” I suggested. “Thanks for the welcome. I’m Tom, by the way, and yeah, it’s my first time here. Nice church—those flowers are lovely.” I nodded at a big, fancy spray of red and white blooms and greenery that’d almost taken my eye out a couple of minutes ago.

  Her crepey cheeks bloomed with a rosy glow. “Thank you! I do my best with them, but of course, it isn’t easy in the winter. I’m Edith Penrose, but please, call me Edie.”

  “Lovely to meet you, Edie. Would that be Miss or Mrs.?”

  “Mrs., you cheeky young man, although I lost my dear Albert twenty years ago. He’s out by the lychgate. I’ll be paying him a visit after I’ve finished my coffee.”

  Just as I was wondering if she was going to invite me along to say hi to the late Mr. P., and if she’d be expecting him to say hi back, a familiar voice battered my eardrums from around three inches away. “Tom! Darling, what on earth are you doing here?”

  I turned to see Gary beaming at me. “Came to hear the church-bell concerto, didn’t I?”

  “I hope you haven’t been leading our Edie astray. Watch him, Edie, he’s a total heathen. And the worst flirt.”

  She gave me a roguish smile. “I might have known you’d turn out to be a friend of Gary’s.” She made it sound like a euphemism. “Well, it was lovely meeting you—I do hope we’ll see you here again soon.” As she twittered off, I could just make out a sigh, and the words, “Such a waste.”

  “Hey, I’m not a flirt,” I protested.

  “And I’m the Pope, sweetie. Now, why are you really here?”

  I sighed. “It’s complicated. Phil’s here too, by the way.”

  As I’d thought, that got Gary’s attention off difficult questions right away. “Ooh, where? Where is he? Tall, blond . . .” He scanned the coffee crowd feverishly.

  “By the door, about to bugger off.”

  Gary looked, just as Phil half turned, displaying a firm-jawed (some might say gittishly stubborn) profile. “Oh, my God! Is that him? He is gorgeous! No wonder you’re such a mess about the whole thing.”

  “I’m not a mess!” Anyone would think I was a love-sick schoolgirl, the way Gary was going on about it.

  “Don’t argue with your uncle Gary. Now, have you finished your coffee? Good. Let’s get out of this crush before Merry signs you up for choir practice.”

  “Not much chance of that,” I muttered darkly.

  “Why do I get the feeling there’s a lot you’re not telling me?” Gary asked, shepherding me past the milling faithful like a little lost lamb. We emerged blinking into the sunlight, which gave me a good excuse to pretend I hadn’t seen the Rev. He was waiting at the door to moisten everyone’s palms, a sort of final baptism before they headed out into the wicked world again. “Now, I wonder . . . Ooh, there he is!” He waved frantically, and I saw, with a sinking feeling, that Darren was here. He was leaning on a tombstone, but as I watched, he pushed himself off it and started ambling towards us. “He said he might come, if he wasn’t too tired after last night.”

  “Thought you and him were getting an early night?” I said, a bit distracted. I should have known, really I should.

  Gary’s elbow impacted sharply with my ribs. “Oh, but we did. Very early. And very exhausting!” He giggled.

  Darren caught up with us. “Oi. I thought I told you to stay away from my bloke,” he said, but he was smiling, so it looked like my nadgers would live to nadge another day.

  “Want to tell me exactly what you think we might have got up to in church?”

  He gave me a look. “Ah, but how do I know you were in church? You can get up to all sorts in that belfry of Gary’s.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I told him.

  “Of course he wouldn’t, Sweetie Pie,” Gary put in. “I’ve never had Tom up in my belfry.”

  “You’ve had me up there, though, haven’t you, Pumpkin?” Darren gave a filthy laugh. “Several times, now.”

  I might not be religious, but I was a bit scandalised, all the same. “Gary! You can’t do that kind of stuff in a church!” I hissed.

  They burst out laughing.

  “What?” I said, miffed.

  “Darren was speaking, ah, euphemistically. We weren’t talking about the actual belfry.”

  Thank God for that. “Right. Fine. But keep it down, yeah? The volume, I mean, in case you thought I meant that euphemistically too. There are people still coming out of church.” I turned to indicate the open door, just as the Rev poked his head out.

  He saw our little group, and for a moment, I thought he was having a heart attack. His face, pale to begin with, turned grey, and he literally staggered where he stood. A group of die-hard churchgoers surrounded him then, and he was lost to view.

  I felt sick. Christ, what had I done to the poor bloke?

  “Well, well, well,” Darren said. “Who’d have thought it?”

  I wrenched my attention back from the concerned knot in the church porch. “Thought what?”

  “I’d never have reckoned I’d see that face above a dog collar.” He laughed. “Not that sort, anyhow.”

  “Ooh, do you know our Merry?” Gary trilled.

  “Darren,” I said carefully. “If you’re about to tell me you used to work with the bloke, I think my head’s going to explode. Fair warning and all.” Bloody hell. The Rev’s little episode hadn’t been about me at all. It’d been about Darren.

  Darren laughed. “Nah—but he was a fair old goer in his day. Years ago, it was, back in London, when I met him. There was this party, see—we was celebrating, ’cause we’d just finished filming . . .” He frowned. “Sod it, which film was it? Might have been A Taste of Mud Honey—or hang on, was it Hope and Glory Holes? You’d have liked that one; it had a plumber in it. Goes to fix a
public lav in Clapham, and when he bends over to shove in his plunger, he gets—”

  “And the Rev?” I whispered, impatient.

  “Yeah, he was— Oh, I know which one it was we’d just done. The Horniness of the Long-Dicked Cummer. Good film, that was. I had some great reviews for that one.”

  I looked around nervously, but luckily all the old dears from church were already doddering off to their Sunday lunches or their online bingo or whatever it was they did with their time, not listening in to Darren’s potted history of British gay porn. “So this party, what happened?”

  “Well. Me and the lads turn up at this place—it was at the director’s house, nice place it was too, very nice—and we was still in costume, so we was in a fair bit of demand. I had on this leather harness—”

  Gary’s face lit up. “Ooh, Sweetie Pie, have you still got it?”

  “Nah, sorry, Pumpkin. Weren’t mine to start with—I had to give it back after the party. Tell you what, though, I know a bloke with a garage in Camden—”

  “Can we get back to the bit about the Rev, here?” I interrupted. “You can sort out your kinky love lives later.”

  “Bit of a prude, are we?” Darren asked in an Ooh, get him! kind of voice.

  “Just think of me as the saddo who isn’t getting any, so doesn’t want to hear about people who are,” I muttered.

  “You won’t want to hear about the Rev, then. When I saw him, he was sucking off Wayne—he was the long-dicked cummer—and getting his arse pounded by Rudy. Course, Rudy just had a small part in the film.” Darren cackled with laughter. “Had a big part in your Rev, though, din’t he?”

  My gob was well and truly smacked. I stared at him, open-mouthed. Then I closed it quickly, because the mental image of a spit-roasted Merry wasn’t doing wonders for my stomach.

  “I don’t believe it!” Gary actually sounded genuinely shocked, which is not an easy feat to accomplish. “Merry?”

  “He was that night, anyhow. Totally off his head. Anyone’s and everyone’s, he was.”

  “You didn’t!” Gary gasped, his hands to his mouth.

  “What, me personally? I’m wounded, Pumpkin. I thought you knew I’ve got taste.” He winked. “I know a few more who did, though.”

  God, Merry must have been easy prey for that lot, with all his pent-up desires and his repressions wiped out by the alcohol and whatever else he was on. Maybe Darren read my expression. “What? He was old enough to look after himself, wasn’t he?”

  Gary made a sort of apologetic face.

  “Course,” Darren carried on thoughtfully, “now I come to think about it, maybe it ain’t so surprising. I used to live near Lambeth Palace, and you wouldn’t believe what a load of randy buggers some of them was. They never admitted they was church, mind, but you can tell.”

  I didn’t need to hear any more. “Listen, I’ve got to go, all right?” I said. “I’ll catch you later.” I half ran out of the churchyard. I had to tell Phil about it. This was just what he’d been talking about, wasn’t it? Blackmail—at least, the possibility of blackmail.

  It didn’t make sense, though. Even if Melanie had somehow found out about the Rev’s wild youth, would she really have blackmailed him? I didn’t want to believe her capable of something so, well, heartless. And it was an even bigger leap of faith to imagine the Rev killing her. After all, when he’d found me poking around his stuff, he hadn’t gone ballistic with the fire irons, had he?

  I shivered a little, though, as it finally sunk in what a risk I’d been taking, going there on my own. Phil was right. I’d been a twat.

  I got in my Fiesta, made sure my seat belt was nice and tight, and drove back to St. Albans, bypassing my house and heading straight for London Road.

  I was relieved to see Phil’s Golf parked outside his building—for all I’d known, he might have been off investigating something, or even just out at a pub somewhere for Sunday lunch. I found a space halfway down the road, glad the restrictions didn’t apply on Sundays. Parking in St. Albans is a bloody nightmare. I pulled on the hand brake, wiped my palms on my jeans, and went and knocked on his front door.

  Phil didn’t look happy to see me. Then again, he didn’t look all that unhappy either. Basically, he was back doing his impersonation of a slab of rock. “Tom,” was all he said.

  “Yeah. Can I come in?” I asked, shifting my weight from my bad side.

  He stepped aside, leaving the door wide open, and set about clearing one of the folding chairs. There was noticeably more mess around than last night; he’d obviously spent the evening working on his box collection. Maybe he’d wanted to make sure he’d unearthed all potential skeletons before the next time I came round and blundered across them. “Coffee?” he offered.

  “No, thanks. Just had some,” I reminded him.

  “Want to sit down?”

  I didn’t, really, but it seemed a bit impolite not to seeing as he’d cleared the chair specially. I sat, and he loomed over me like one of the monoliths at Stonehenge gone rogue, while I shifted on the chair, trying to get comfortable without actually collapsing the flippin’ thing.

  “Listen,” I said. “I found something out today. After you left. Darren—that’s my mate Gary’s new bloke—he used to know the Rev.”

  “And?”

  I took a deep breath. “And it looks like I should have read the letters, after all. Turns out the Rev’s got a bit of a secret past.”

  “What kind?”

  “The open-to-blackmail kind. Darren called him, and I quote, ‘a right goer’ in his day. He said he’d seen him at some kind of sex party, and it wasn’t so he could tell people the error of their ways.” I hesitated, then blurted it out anyway. “But I still don’t think he killed Melanie. She’d never have blackmailed him, and he’s not the violent sort. No way.”

  Phil stared at me—then looked away. He grabbed another chair and shunted the boxes onto the floor, then sat, leaning towards me with his elbows on his knees. “Tom, you’ve met the vicar twice. All right, three times, if you count this morning. You never knew Melanie at all. Do you really think you’re qualified to decide what either of them is capable of?”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he carried on.

  “You’re letting yourself get too close to these people. Nobody wants to believe crap like that about people they know—but it happens every bloody day. Maybe Melanie was one of those Christians who think being gay’s a sin; have you thought about that? She might have told Lewis he had to resign or she’d expose him. And you’ve no idea what kind of pressures the Reverend’s under. Sometimes people just snap. Christ, Tom, you need to be more careful.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re wrong. I don’t know how I know it, but you’re wrong.”

  “What is this, more of your special talents? You’re a bloody polygraph now, are you?” Phil turned away with a muttered curse. “Sorry,” he said, staring out of the window. “But have you got any basis for believing what you do?”

  I stood up and walked around, trying to ease the ache in my hip. Bloody church pews. “No,” I admitted. “Sod it, I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve told you now, all right? So you can do what you like with that little bit of information.”

  Phil turned back to me. “This Darren, you got a full name and address for him?”

  “Sorry. I can give you Gary’s address, I suppose. Darren seems to have more or less moved in there. Or you can catch him at the market; he’s got a stall. You can’t miss him—shortest trader, loudest voice.” God, I hoped Gary would forgive me for sending Phil round to ruffle the feathers in their little love nest. I wandered over to the window, having noticed a picture of a good-looking, dark-haired bloke that hadn’t been on the sill last night. “Who’s this?” I asked, picking it up.

  “My husband.”

  Shock stabbed me in the chest, and I spun round so bloody fast I nearly fell over. “Your what? You mean all this time, all this dancing around me you’ve been doing, you’re sodding well married
? Does he know you bring blokes home when he’s away? Or is it that sort of marriage anyway? Forget it—I don’t give a monkey’s. Just leave me out of it, all right?”

  I was halfway to the door, breathing hard, my heart beating furiously, before Phil spoke. “He’s dead.”

  This time, I turned slowly, feeling cold inside. “Dead?” I said stupidly. “Really dead, or just as in he’s dead to me, dead? Because you’ve been sending out some pretty mixed signals—”

  “He died in a car crash. Seems there’s a lot of it about.” There was nothing humorous about his smile. “It was a couple of years ago, now, and we were separated, anyway.”

  “But you still wear the ring. Why the bloody hell did you lie about it?”

  “I didn’t lie. I told you I wasn’t married, and I’m not. Not anymore.”

  “Yeah, but you made me think—”

  “Think what? That I was an arsehole? So what? No skin off your pretty little nose, was it?”

  There was that phrase again. Did it mean anything, him calling me pretty, or did he say that sort of thing to everyone? “I don’t like people lying to me,” I said. Because whether or not he’d said the words, he’d lied.

  “And I don’t like telling the whole bloody world about me and Mark, all right?”

  “I’m not the whole bloody world!” I snapped, stung.

  Phil rubbed his face with both hands. “No. You’re not . . . now. But back then, you might just as well have been. For all I knew, you still hated me for what happened when we were seventeen.”

  Had I hated him? I wasn’t sure anymore. “You don’t like it, do you? Letting people in. Letting them find stuff out about you.”

  Phil looked up but couldn’t seem to meet my eyes. “Knowledge is power.”

  “Bollocks. That’s just what people say when they’re paranoid Google’s logging their porn.”

  “Is it?” Phil took a step forward, and for a moment, I thought he was about to grab me by the shoulders, but then he let his hands fall. Just as well—I didn’t fancy getting into a knock-down fight with him. I had a feeling it’d be me who’d end up getting knocked down. “You’re telling me if no one had ever found out about you being queer at school, you’d still be walking with a limp?”