by Phil Rickman
‘I don’t quite know,’ Merrily said. ‘It all seems to go deeper than I can say. Or you, I suspect.’
‘It couldn’t go any deeper with me,’ Stefan said, and Coffey frowned.
‘In the village, I meant.’ Merrily thought of her afternoon with Lucy, who’d said she wanted the play to go on in the church so that the truth would come out. When the ditch-waters are stirred, the turds often surface. ‘I think I want whatever’s bubbling under there to come to the surface. Is that what you want?’
‘It’s all I want,’ Stefan said humbly, without even a glance at Coffey.
‘What I don’t want, though,’ Merrily said, ‘and what I don’t think the village deserves, is for it to happen in the middle of a media circus. I don’t want’ – a sideways glance at Coffey – ‘to play Dermot’s game.’
Coffey said from the shadows, ‘Don’t try to be clever, Mrs Watkins. Spell it out.’
‘All right.’ She looked down to the village, where lights were coming on. ‘I heard Stefan and your friends Martin and Mira discussing the idea of involving the community in the drama by having a few local people virtually take on the roles of their ancestors. So you’d have Wil Williams defending himself from the pulpit, explaining his ... situation. And perhaps some reaction, whether it’s surprise or dismay or sympathy. Who’d play Thomas Bull?’
‘We’d have an actor,’ Coffey said guardedly. ‘I even considered doing it myself.’
Merrily said, before she could stop herself, ‘You do like to live dangerously, don’t you?’
A cold silence from Coffey’s corner.
‘We would hardly expect Bull-Davies to be there,’ Stefan said.
‘Don’t underestimate him.’
‘And don’t underestimate me, Mrs Watkins.’ Richard Coffey inclined his head to her. ‘Don’t push me too hard. There are other churches. There’s even a cathedral’
‘No!’ Stefan cried. Merrily raised a palm.
‘I’m not pushing anybody. I’m just suggesting that if you want the local people on your side and no embarrassing interruptions, then you might like to try a private run-through with a private, local audience. Unpublicized. Word of mouth. I can guarantee an audience.’
‘And Child would guarantee a television crew or two.’
‘I think not,’ Merrily said icily.
‘And when were you thinking we might do this?’
‘Tomorrow night?’
She heard Jane gasp. Two or three seconds of incredulous silence followed, before Coffey’s forced laughter and Merrily interrupting it.
‘Why not? It’s all written, isn’t it? Stefan’s well into the role.’
‘Mrs Watkins, your ignorance of the demands of a theatrical production I find—’
‘But we’re not talking about a theatrical production! We’re talking about ... I don’t know what we re talking about ... A confrontation. A dialogue. A dialogue with the past. The village facing up to its most shameful episode, seeking redemption. Looking into its own soul and groping for the truth after three centuries of ignorance. Trying to find the light.’
‘The beginnings of a pretty soliloquy,’ said Coffey. ‘Who would you play, Mrs Watkins?’
‘I understand what you’re worried about. You’re afraid of a shambles. Of word getting out that it was a disaster. Maybe Dermot Child shafting you. Well, all right, I can buy that. But this would be a village thing – the sort of thing churches were intended for.’
‘She might be right.’ Stefan Alder was on his feet, his back to the window, looking out over the lights of Ledwardine. ‘We know everything about the village,’ he said to Merrily. ‘We’ve a great, thick file of information. Richard paid a chap who used to work for the local paper to collect stories and memories from local people.’
‘Shut up, Steffie.’
‘This chap was marvellous. He hung out in the Ox and places, he talked to a meeting of the WI. They all thought he was collecting information for one of those local history books. Nobody knew it was for us. We can use all that. We’ll surprise everybody with how much we know, how much a part of this village we’ve become in such a short time. She’s right, Richard, we can bond with these people, we can win them over, prove beyond all doubt that we’re the right people to do this, to tell the truth.’
‘She might very well be right, Steffie, but what she’s suggesting is utterly impossible. Why tomorrow night anyway? Why not in a couple of months’ time, when we know where we’re going with this?’
‘Because I don’t know where I’m going with it, Mr Coffey. It keeps coming up in front of me. I keep telling myself it’s only a bloody play, but ...’
‘It isn’t,’ Stefan said. ‘It’s a public redemption.’
‘Yes. Whatever. Anyway, those are my terms. You want to do it somewhere else, you go ahead. You know my number.’ Merrily stood up. ‘Come on, Jane.’
‘All right.’ Stefan Alder turned towards them, a shadow, even his ash-blond hair black against the blue-grey window. ‘We’ll do it. We’ll do it tomorrow night. Bring who you want. Fill the church.’
‘Stefan, don’t be a bloody fool’ Coffey sprang up, his face pulsing. ‘Leave us, Mrs Watkins.’
‘Sure. Flower?’
Jane crept quietly away from the empty hearth. They let themselves out. In the dark room behind them, they heard Richard Coffey snarl, ‘You stupid little shit. It’s my play.’
‘I’ll see he’s there,’ Stefan called after them, his voice high and tremulously theatrical. ‘I’ll have him there.’
‘It’s my play!’
‘Not you,’ Stefan sang out, with stinging contempt. ‘Wil. It’s Wil’s play.’
38
Winding Sheet
MUM DROVE THEM slowly home in the Volvo with the Hazey Jane album playing quite loudly on the CD, a signal she didn’t want to talk. Maybe this was just as well, Jane was thinking. She’d only have said something really crass about Mum coming on, at last, like an actual catalyst.
It was like Lucy was in the back seat.
And what was so crazy about that? Jane looked out of the side window as they came into the village as if she might spot the lamp of the moped bobbing into the market place, a little golden light. What had they done with Lucy’s moped? Probably being examined by some police mechanical expert, who’d say the brakes were crap or something and the little bike was a death trap and why wasn’t she wearing a helmet?
Because it wouldn’t fit over her big hat, you cretins! You want Lucy Devenish to go out without her hat?
There was life after death. There had to be. Or there was no justice; no justice for good people like Lucy. Who nobody could replace; something had died with Lucy, a spirit. It was mega-depressing.
She glanced at Mum’s profile, the dark curls in need of a cut. Run with this, Vicar, don’t let her down. And then thought about Colette. Where was she tonight?
It’s like somebody cuts out a section of time and joins the ends together, second to second. Like with the dancing girl in Mrs Leather, maybe Colette will be visible occasionally in the little, green orchard.
The thought wasn’t scary; it was hopeful. It had been there on the back burner since she first read that story. If Colette was there, somebody should try and reach her.
The market place was still full of cars, but, at barely ten, people were already dribbling out of the Black Swan under the hanging lanterns. Not much of a gig, then. She wondered how Lol was getting on. It had just been so much fun making him look like a vicar, like traditional country vicars were supposed to look, kind of weedy and innocent. In the end he looked much more like one than Mum, but then Mum never really had.
Before they left for Coffey’s place, Mum had told her the whole story about Lol and Karl Windling and the young girls in the hotel – which she’d found so awful and so barely credible that she wanted to go and find these girls and their smug parents and tell them just what they’d done. As for that bastard Windling ...
On the CD, Lo
l was singing, the low, breathy voice solo with acoustic guitar, about being alone in the city in a cold January rain but not wanting to go home.
It made such horrifying sense. It made her want to cry. It made her wish she was old enough to marry him or something.
A police car rolled out of Church Street. The awful Howe would be hoping now, like Bella, that Colette was dead, turning it into a big case for an area like this. Dreaming of picking up Lol and shoving him into a little grey-walled room, like on The Bill, her and that Mumford asking him kind of nonchalantly what he’d done with the body. Telling him they just wanted to help him. That was what the police always did, they told you they just wanted to help you. But they were just in it for themselves. Like everybody was.
Except Mum.
‘Suppose they’ve got him?’ she said as they pulled into the vicarage drive.
‘If they’d got him,’ Mum said calmly, switching off the engine and the stereo, ‘I think they’d be waiting for us, too. I don’t see anybody, do you?’
‘Lol wouldn’t finger us.’
‘No,’ Mum said. ‘I don’t think he would.’
Inside the vicarage, she seemed to collapse. No sleep, not much food for over a day. Running on empty for too long. She was trying to open a can of sardines for Ethel, but the metal key thing snapped, and she just stood there in the kitchen and started to weep.
Somehow, the vicarage did this to her. The vastness of it, the emptiness, was far worse for Mum than it was for Jane, who still thought a big house was cool. Not as if it was haunted or anything. It just seemed to do Mum’s brain in. She’d been dynamite at the Upper Hall Lodge, pushing even the scary Coffey into a corner, getting what she wanted. And now, here she was, sobbing her heart out in her own kitchen, and Jane just knew she was thinking about Dad and what a balls they’d made of their marriage and everything and how stupid she’d been to think she could manage a parish and all the other stuff that came down on you when were exhausted in a place you hated.
‘Go to bed, Mum. Please go to bed. I’ll look after everything.’
‘I can’t. What about Lol?’
‘I’ll wait up for him. Please go to bed.’
Mum wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper. ‘Sorry.’
‘You’re overtired.’ Jane eased the sardine can out of her hands.
‘I gave him a key,’ Mum said. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘I think you did. Don’t worry. Sleep.’
Mum looked at her, just about finding the energy for suspicion.
‘I’ll go up too,’ Jane assured her. ‘I won’t go out again, I promise.’
Not tonight, anyway. Got to prepare. Got to get it right.
There was a lounge, for residents only, with a TV set tuned to a film about surfing, with the sound down. A waitress served cocoa to two elderly couples at a window table.
Lol took a seat by the door. One of the elderly ladies smiled at him, and Lol said, ‘Good evening,’ in his soft but resonant vicar’s voice and sat, composed, his fingers loosely entwined.
She would come. She’d directed him here. Smiling and nodding pleasantly for the thirty seconds she’d been speaking to the Rev. Locke, smiling for the benefit of James Bull-Davies, who’d been getting drinks at the time. An actress. Every move she made powered by this low-burning, high-octane fury.
He saw that now. The Rev. Sandy Locke, one step removed from it all, seemed able to see so many things concealed from screwed-up, introverted Lol Robinson.
‘Two eggs,’ one of the elderly men said. ‘Bacon, sausage, liver, onions, black pudding, chips. Nine ninety-five.’ He sat back, triumphant. ‘Inclusive of sweet.’
‘The toilets weren’t clean, though,’ his wife said. ‘At least the toilets are clean here. And what’s more, what I always think is important in a hotel—’
She broke off as Alison glided in, both elderly ladies looking rather shocked when this blonde in the revealing dress went to sit next to the clergyman, the old men looking pleased.
‘Hi.’ Lol smiled. ‘Where did you tell him you were going?’
‘Powder my nose. Evidently, I bumped into someone I knew in the Ladies’, you know what women are like.’
‘I’m kind of learning,’ Lol said. ‘At last.’
‘He’ll find someone’s ear to bend. Won’t notice I’m missing for a while. As to that’ – Alison gestured at his dog collar – ‘I’m not going to ask.’
‘A drink?’
‘No time.’
‘So you talk,’ Lol said. ‘And I’ll listen. I won’t interrupt.’ He felt like he was hovering, very steadily. Everything delicately balanced but, for the first time in his adult life, he was keeping the balance.
Alison shook her hair back. ‘I suppose Devenish told you, God rest her heathen soul’
‘No, it was insight.’
‘From you?’
He grinned. She couldn’t touch him tonight. He lowered his voice. He took this great leap in the dark.
‘I can’t help wondering what James would say, if he knew he’d been fucking his ... what? Half-sister?’
She remained entirely calm. ‘You going to tell him?’
Jesus. It’s right.
‘Probably not,’ he said.
In the darkness of her too-big bedroom, Merrily knelt to pray by her too-big bed.
‘I, er ... I don’t know what I’m asking for. Strength, certainly. Yeah. I’m not strong. But You know that.’
She went quiet. Receptive. Opening up a space in her heart. Wanting very much to receive something, if it was only an upsurge of blessed scepticism. She didn’t want to believe in bloody ghosts and fairies.
In the silence, there was no sense of blue or gold. Was that itself a sign? Was the lack of response, the sense of praying into a black void, an indication that she should harden herself against phoney mysticism, spurious superstition? She felt distantly angry at God for never giving it to you straight.
Of course, it was Lol himself who’d pointed her at Lucy.
Mentioning, when Alison had talked about the Bull-Davies tradition of keeping horses, that James’s old man seemed to have carried on the equine tradition purely for a steady supply of stable girls.
The first chance she had this morning, Alison had been off to pursue this angle with Lucy Devenish, good friend of Patricia Young who’d slaved in the Bull stables in the early sixties.
‘And came home pregnant to Swindon,’ Alison said. ‘Steadfastly refusing to name the father. My gran was very supportive, although God knows she had enough on her plate at the time, with Grandfather failing fast. He died, in fact, the night after I was born, so we came back to a house of mourning, Mother and I.’
The waitress returned and, evidently thinking the minister was a hotel guest, asked if they would like anything. Lol ordered coffee, figuring this was going to take longer than Alison imagined.
‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that Lucy mentioned anything to me about her friend being pregnant. I don’t think she knew. She said she’d warned her to get out of Upper Hall and she’d taken the advice.’
‘You’re right, Devenish didn’t know about the pregnancy. She said this morning that that was what she was afraid of. My mother would come to her in tears, asking what could she do when she needed the job and the money. In the end, Devenish gave her some to get away. Which was kind. But too late. No, she didn’t know about a baby. How did you?’
Lol explained, without mentioning Merrily, about the book in the box. The word Young and then Alison. How he’d kept looking at it and puzzling and then remembered the name, Patricia Young. All those weeks of agonizing over why she left him, and then this moment of blinding certainty. Intuition.
‘I had no choice, Lol’
‘No,’ he said neutrally.
‘You don’t believe that. Hell, you don’t owe me any generosity, I don’t expect any. I needed to live in a certain posh village, couldn’t afford a mortgage.’ She shrugged. ‘You were there. You needed help too. I�
��m sorry. But I’d do it again.’
Lol didn’t react. He understood now. He didn’t care.
‘So when did your mother eventually admit the old Bull was your father?’
‘Never. Never did. My gran said she’d sometimes imply it was one of the village boys. Unconvincingly.’
‘You must have asked her who your father was, as you got older.’
‘No, no you don’t understand.’ Shaking her head impatiently. ‘I don’t remember Patricia. I don’t remember my mother at all. That’s the whole point. One day, when I was about eighteen months old, she left me with my gran, said she was going back to Hereford to see some people. Get some money out of the father, that was always Gran’s theory, because they had money problems at the time, after the old man died. Bills. Debts. He was a farmer, too, of sorts, my grandad. So Gran didn’t try to stop my mother going. Died regretting that.’
‘Why?
‘Because she never came back, Lol. She returned to Ledwardine to face the father and she never bloody well came back. Gran reported it to the police and they made cursory, routine inquiries in Ledwardine and said nobody had seen her, and that was that.’
‘That was it?’ He thought of the way the police were turning over the village for Colette Cassidy.
‘Grown women, Lol, sometimes choose to disappear. The police were suggesting she’d only come back to Swindon to dump the baby, make sure I had a good home. Then off to join some man, with no inconvenient little kid in tow.’
‘They check with old Bull-Davies?’
‘Oh, sure. Squire John, county councillor and magistrate. Local constable deferential on the doorstep. Sorry to disturb you, sir, tug-tug on the forelock, but this silly girl you once kindly employed ... Just a formality, sir, if you’d be so good as to confirm you never saw her again, thank you very much, sir, sorry to have bothered you.’
Alison tossed back her hair.
‘People like you, Lol, into all this progressive sixties music, forget that it was still quite primitive then, in country areas. You didn’t ruffle the hawk’s feathers.’
‘What do you think happened to her?’