by Phil Rickman
I’m sorry. She couldn’t even say that.
Someone coughed. She saw the congregation below her. Caroline Cassidy in her light blue jersey suit, the sun putting a sheen on Terrence’s pointed head. At the other end of the pew, Richard Coffey – here because of the bishop, his supporter – and Stefan Alder. A respectable distance between them and the Cassidys, but the fact that they were on the same pew showing how the battle lines had been drawn.
Stefan’s eyes were shining, reflecting some erotic Wil Williams fantasy and the conviction that the priest was on his side.
But you couldn’t trust a woman could you? He’d be there at the reception afterwards, with his glass of the Wine of Angels. How was she going to face him? What was she going to say to him?
I, Merrily ...
Come on. She’d learned all the replies, practised them, testing herself, but the words wouldn’t come and a part of her didn’t care, because they wouldn’t, Oh God, be coming from the heart.
Why not? And did it matter?
She heard whispers washing through the congregation. A spreading awareness of something wrong. And it was her. She was wrong. The Reverend Merrily Rose Watkins. A mistake. They were all realizing their terrible mistake. She saw Jane for the first time, right at the back, on the end of the pew, gripping the prayer-book shelf. White-knuckled. You could sense the tension in that grip.
A tension, too, under Merrily’s arms, a friction on the skin, a burning sensation and then that sudden tightening around the chest, as though someone had grabbed her from behind, grasping both breasts, squeezing and pulling them back into her ribcage. She thought of Child, felt physically sick, rocked backwards, all the breath forced out of her.
She saw James Bull-Davies’s left arm stretched along the back of the pew, no concern on his face. Priests came, priests went; the rock on which this church was founded had Bull inscribed upon it.
She saw Jane, half out of her pew now.
I, Merrily ...
But the priest could not move. Her chest was as tight and rigid as a wooden board.
A shockingly cold thrill passed from pew to pew. The vicar can’t go through with it!
The priest saw Eve in the window, holding out the apple to her. The apple which she knew instinctively was a Pharisees Red.
No.
Try. Try to speak. Draw a breath. Let it out. I ...
‘I ... Merrily Rose Watkins, do so affirm and ace—’
The breath caught in her throat like phlegm. The dregs of her voice drifted away into an empty church.
The pressure was abruptly released from her chest. She swayed, taking rapid, shallow breaths. She looked around.
She was on her own. The bishop was gone, the congregation had vanished. The church was empty. The soaring red walls had faded. There were no colours in the windows. The air was chill.
Something crawled, on hands and knees, up the aisle towards her. It was naked, pale and stark as a cold candle.
Her mouth opened as it slid towards her, its head bowed, its body racked and twisted. Its anguish crawled into Merrily’s raw and empty stomach and unravelled a dark ribbon of bile. She tried to scream but her throat filled up.
The congregation rose in horror as the priest-in-charge fell forward into her own thin vomit.
23
Black-eyed Dog II
ALMOST SULKILY, ALISON said, ‘It really isn’t complicated. I give him what he needs, he gives me what I want.’
She was sprawled in an ancient, shapeless chintzy chair, stretching out her legs, inspecting her bare toes. Finding them more interesting than Lol.
The room was lofty and colourless, with a high, tiled fireplace, and no way could he believe this was what she wanted.
None of it sounded right. He’d sat here nearly an hour and she’d talked, and it was all superficial crap. How she’d always had this fantasy of living in the country since she was a kid in Swindon and helped out at this riding school. How she’d thought that, when she and Lol got here, meaningful things to do would suggest themselves: ways of making money, finding fulfilment. But when you were living, as they had, in a little cottage with a little garden you might just as well be in some suburban villa. Whereas this, this was the real thing. Country life as it was meant to be lived.
What she was saying was profound like Hello! magazine was profound. For once, Lol couldn’t let himself accept it.
‘Hang on ...’ He moved to the corner of a sagging settee, leaned towards her. ‘You chose the cottage. You said it was perfect.’
‘So I was wrong. It was small, it was shut-in. It was worse than the city. Nothing suggested itself.’
‘Except Bull-Davies, apparently.’
Alison still didn’t look at him.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘that may not be precisely what you think, OK?’
‘What do you think I think?’
The sun was sinking below the sills of the deep Georgian windows, the room fading to dusty sepia.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I imagine you’re hurt. Wounded. You think I never really cared for you. That I just used you until someone more interesting came along.’
Took the words out of his head. It was still killing him to think she might have been this superficial all along.
‘I really didn’t want you to get hurt, Lol. I wanted you to be, you know ... angry. As in hating me. I didn’t want any of this honourable, shaking hands, let’s-still-be-friends shit.’
He stared at her.
‘I mean, that was the very last thing you needed. Aggression. You needed aggression. Bitterness. You were never bitter. I couldn’t understand that. Why were you never bitter? Dumped by your family, messed around by the system ... Where was the resentment? I wanted you to hate me, rather than ... I mean I couldn’t bear to see you just crawling away and crying into the bloody cat.’
‘How do you know I did that?’
It was not too dark to see her looking pained. He remembered how, when people started smirking at him in the shops, he thought it was because he was this really obvious townie and maybe he needed to wear a flat cap, buy a beat-up truck. Grow sideburns below the jawline.
She curled her toes at him in exasperation.
‘Somebody really should have told you. I put on a hell of a show for Miss Devenish at that Twelfth Night thing. Poor James was dreadfully embarrassed. And even she didn’t take you on one side. Jesus. Little harmless-looking guy like you and nobody has the consideration or even the bottle to tell him his woman’s screwing around.’
Lol winced. ‘Little harmless guy. Thirty-seven years old and the best I ever managed was Little Harmless Guy.’
‘And endearingly messed up. Women love men to be messed up. I really was going to sort you out. But, you know, you get a ... an opportunity ... you have to take it. I didn’t imagine it was going to come so quickly. I’m sorry.’
He felt cold. There were no visible central-heating radiators and although paper and logs were built up in the dog grate, she hadn’t attempted to light them. The message here, at least, was clear.
‘For what it’s worth,’ Alison said, ‘it was that day I went into the village and got a puncture. James was parking his Land Rover on the square. He changed the wheel for me, I said I’d buy him a drink, so we went across to the Black Swan. We talked. For ages. At one point, I said I liked riding, and he said he had horses, didn’t know why he kept them on. Just that the family always had, for hunting and things. James hates to let go of a tradition. That’s sort of admirable, isn’t it?’
‘From what I heard,’ Lol said, ‘his father seems to have kept horses so there’d always be a steady supply of stable girls.’
There was a heartbeat’s silence.
‘Where’d you hear that?’ Her voice stayed casual, he couldn’t see her expression, but he was sure he saw her toes tense.
‘A friend mentioned it.’
‘Lol, you only have one friend. What exactly did Devenish say about the old man?’
; ‘Does it matter? He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘Humour me.’
‘You’ll just tell bloody James.’
‘James ...’ Alison said in a measured kind of way, ‘is the last person I’ll tell.’
‘She said disregard for the finer feelings of women was a family trait. Lucy had a friend who was one of the stable girls. Patricia somebody?’
The windows lit up.
‘Shit,’ Alison said.
Land Rover lights.
‘Get your head down,’ Alison said.
Lol didn’t move. ‘But she did suggest James was different,’ he said, more out of fairness to Lucy than consideration for Bull-Davies. ‘On account of having a conscience. Like he was the first in the family to have one, and he ought to get out of this house before—’
‘What the hell’s he doing back? He said it’d be at least half-ten.’
Maybe this was meant, Lol thought. Face-to-face in a cold triangle.
‘Listen,’ Alison hissed. ‘He finds you here, he’ll kill you. Listen to me. He’ll come in the back way, so listen ... Wait in the hall until you hear his key and then leave quietly by the front door. Just pull it to behind you.’
‘And there was me,’ Lol murmured, ‘getting all hyped up for a fight’
‘Go!’ Alison was on her feet. ‘Piss off!’
He stood up, disoriented in the gloom.
‘Please.’ Alison’s eyes glowing urgently.
‘All right.’
In the hall, he stood next to a coat stand smelling of Barbour-wax and manure. He heard a key jingling in a distant lock, but he didn’t move.
‘Utterly unbelievable,’ Bull-Davies bawled.
‘Darling?’ Her voice was pitched up the social scale. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Silly bloody bitch threw up! In the damn church!’
‘Who did?’
‘Ten minutes into the service, loses her bloody lunch. I ask you, does a real priest ever lose control of himself like that? I’ve seen Hayden in that pulpit with streaming eyes, two boxes of Kleenex for Men ...’
‘James, what are you talking about?’
‘The damn vicar. Physically sick in front of half the village. Perhaps they’ll realize their mistake when we get a notice outside the church saying All Services Postponed due to Menstrual fucking Cycle.’
Lol hung on, half-fascinated. Alison was a committed feminist; if he’d said half of that she’d be into his throat.
‘Well, darling,’ Alison said soothingly, ‘you did tell them, didn’t you?’
Lol let himself out. Stumbled down the steep drive, between the broken gateposts, the last of the sunset spread out before him like a long beach, the church spire a lighthouse without a light. Nothing left that seemed real.
They’d brought her into the vestry. She must have fainted. There was a couch in there and they’d laid her on it and someone had put a rug over her. Faces came into focus, like a surgical team around an operating table, stern and concerned and ... triumphant?
She must have passed out again and when she came round she didn’t remember whose faces those had been.
‘Stressed out, I’d say,’ Dr Kent Asprey said. ‘Overworked, neglecting herself. Mrs Watkins? Can you hear me? Merrily?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Merrily whispered. ‘I don’t know what ... Is the bishop ...?’
‘He’s out there taking charge,’ Uncle Ted said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’
‘Where’s Jane?’
‘I’m here, Mum.’ Kid hanging back, sounding scared.
‘Oh God.’ A white, naked figure, pale as veined marble still crawled amongst her wildly flickering thoughts. ‘What have I done?’
‘You were taken ill,’ Uncle Ted said. She sensed a reserve in his voice. Not the churchwarden, now, but the old, wary lawyer.
The pale figure was inside her now, like a white worm. She tasted bile, sat up at once, clutching at her throat. Someone had removed her dog collar.
She hadn’t completed her vows.
In the church, organ chords swelled. Pause. Singing began.
Haven’t made my vows!
‘All right, Merrily,’ Dr Kent Asprey said. ‘Just relax.’
‘I’ve got to go back. I haven’t made—’
‘Someone’s going to bring you a cup of tea, and then you’re going home.’
‘No ... Please ...’ The thought of going back to the huge, empty, haunted vicarage suddenly terrified her. ‘This is my home.’
‘Just relax,’ Asprey said.
‘What am I going to do? What am I going to do?’
‘You’re going home to bed and I’m going to come and see you in the morning.’
She stared at him, all crinkly eyed and caring, the stupid, fatuous sod.
‘Just get a good night’s sleep, Merrily.’
In Ledwardine vicarage? She wanted to laugh in his face. To scream in his face. To scream and scream.
Scream herself sick.
The small shadow became detached from the hedge in Blackberry Lane. Lol thought it was a rat, until it rolled on to his shoe.
When he bent down, it produced a tiny cry.
He went down on his knees, but when he touched her she hissed and slashed at him and rolled over and tried to stand up and couldn’t. He felt wet in his fingers. Blood.
‘Oh God.’
He’d left her shut in the kitchen, with food and water and a full litter tray. Hadn’t he?
She squealed when he picked her up and when he tucked her under his jacket he could feel her trembling. When he reached the gate and heard the music, she was purring, but he knew there were two kinds of purr and one was a sign of pain.
All the lights were on in the cottage. He saw the front downstairs window had been thrown open, and the music shivered out into the lane, the late Nick Drake singing ‘Black-eyed Dog’, the death song, the stereo cranked up beyond distortion level, fracturing the already tight, brittle splinters of guitar.
He could see Karl Windling’s wide-shouldered silhouette in the chair under the open window. Facing into the room. Facing the open kitchen door.
Nick sang that there was a black-eyed dog calling at his door and it was calling for more. It called for more and it knew his name. Nick’s voice was cut up and broken by the volume. Under Lol’s jacket, Ethel, the little black cat, quaked with pain. Beyond the kitchen door there was cat-litter all over the carpet, fragments of food dish.
In a high, scared, doomed voice, Nick Drake, at twenty-six, sang that he was growing old and he wanted to go home.
There was apple blossom all over the lawn, and the white petals were huge now. The song ended and Karl Windling’s shadow filled the window for a moment before the stylus was ripped across the record with a jagged whizz of puckered vinyl.
Lol saw that the white petals on the lawn were the torn and scattered pages of a book. He bent and picked one up and held it into the light from the window.
...to love all persons in all ages, all angels, all worlds, is divine and heavenly ...To love all ...
The house invaded, the book torn down the spine, the album ruined, the cat kicked half to death. Lol’s life smashed and the fragments scattered.
And there was me, getting all hyped up for a fight.
Karl would be well-stoned by now; that was his style – a satisfying surge of violence and then a nice, fat joint to make it feel doubly all right. Lol thought, I should go straight in there – it’s my house, for Christ’s sake, my own home – and ... and ...
I wanted you to hate, Alison had said, not half an hour ago.
But Karl knew Lol Robinson from way back. Knew he didn’t fight and lacked the nerve to hate. Knew that Lol’s speciality was fear.
All the lights on, the window open. Karl Windling standing in the centre of the room now, staring directly at the window, but he couldn’t see Lol in the darkness. Karl’s bearded face unsmiling.
Lol glanced at the empty drive, wondering for a second what Karl had done to
the Astra before remembering he’d parked it in the village.
Under his jacket, Ethel had gone still.
He heard his own thin whimper on the air, as he turned and walked away from his home into the darkness of Blackberry Lane.
She felt like some child molester leaving court.
As the remaining congregation sang, watched over by the bishop, Merrily Watkins was escorted from the church wrapped in the rug, surrounded by Kent Asprey and Uncle Ted and Jane and Caroline Cassidy and Councillor Garrod Powell, their bodies hiding hers.
Hiding her from the eyes of villagers who’d left the congregation before the bishop had restored order but were still bunched in the darkness, like sightseers on the scene of a fatal road accident.
‘En’t a good sign,’ an old woman whispered too loudly.
Across the square, Merrily saw the softly illuminated hanging sign of the Black Swan, a beacon of stability in what was turning into an alien world. They’d been happy there. Now she was cold and confused and frightened and she didn’t know why, and none of the people with her said a word, not even Jane; it was like a funeral procession.
They took her into the vicarage. Ted still had keys, as if he’d known she was only on probation and it might not work out.
‘I’ll make some tea.’ Caroline Cassidy looked with distaste around the grim kitchen, still partly lit by unshaded, underpowered bulbs. ‘Where’s your kettle, my dear?’
‘No,’ Jane said. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘Look.’ Merrily struggled to keep her voice level. ‘You’ve done so much already and I’ve ruined it, but if you leave now you can still go ahead with your cider launch.’
‘Merrily, I wouldn’t dream—’
‘Yes, you would. You have to. Village life goes on. Anyway, I’d be less embarrassed if I thought it wasn’t all a total disaster.’
‘Well, if you’re sure ...’
