The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

  She braked, catching a movement on the grass verge: badger about to scuttle across the road.

  ‘—get involved with a witch-hunt.’

  ‘Witch-hunt.’ The Bishop leaned his head back over the passenger seat, from which the headrest was long gone. ‘How simple things were in those days. The mob would have dragged her in front of some judge who thought he was God, and then taken her out and hanged her at Gallows Bank.’ He turned his head towards Merrily. ‘Still there, you know. Still this patch of open space, in the midst of modern housing. You can see where the actual gibbet stood, so that executions would be visible all over town. Ludlow, you see, looks after its past.’

  ‘Unlike Hereford?’

  ‘We try. Unfortunately, I think our old execution site is underneath Plascarreg.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t you dare make anything of that.’

  Merrily smiled.

  ‘And try not to hang George. He’s an old-fashioned civic leader. Middle Ages, he’d have been the sheriff. When they eventually come to lay him out, they’ll find the imprints of chain links on his chest.’

  Of course, he’d know exactly how George felt because it was how he felt. If Ludlow was tainted, George was tainted, and if Bernie let George down he would probably feel he’d forfeited his right to come back and live out his sunset years in the benign shadow of the Buttercross.

  ‘Of course, the woman’s obviously mad,’ he said. ‘Too many chemicals in years gone by, one assumes.’

  ‘You think we should inform the Diocesan Director of Psychiatry?’

  She felt him staring at her, working this out. He shifted, something clicking ominously under his seat.

  ‘Saltash.’

  ‘You read the Mail, then.’

  He grunted. ‘It was in The Times, too, actually. Yes, that man did rather exaggerate his role, didn’t he?’

  ‘Glad you think so.’

  ‘Heavens, Merrily, last thing we want is worried people avoiding Deliverance for fear of being considered eligible for assessment under the Mental Health Act.’

  ‘But under our new, agreed working practices, I’m supposed to report — for instance — what we’ve just been told, for consideration by the panel before any action is taken. Like I said earlier, I shouldn’t even have come tonight without clearing it with them.’

  ‘It’s preposterous, Merrily.’

  ‘It’s what we agreed.’

  ‘What they agreed, you mean.’

  In theory he could, as Bishop, overrule any of it. In practice, it would be impossible without dispensing with the panel and making lifetime enemies of Siân and Saltash, and the Dean who had brokered the deal. She left all this unsaid, but it was drifting between them as Leominster appeared over to the right, an island of lights.

  The Bishop sighed.

  ‘Merrily, let’s not fool ourselves. Look at me: overweight, over sixty and not up to much in the pulpit. I’ve never been under any illusions. I’m a caretaker here and I suspect my time’s already running out.’

  ‘Come on, Bernie, people like you.’

  ‘Like? What’s that got to do with it? There are those who could have me quietly retired in no time at all, if they chose to whisper in the right ears. And I rather suspect Ms Callaghan-Clarke’s one of the potential whisperers.’

  ‘You think Siân wants you out?’

  ‘I don’t know what I think. Hereford’s not the most exalted of dioceses, and nicely out on a limb. Good place for a woman to have a chance at the helm, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Siân Callaghan-Clarke?’ Was that the wheel shaking, or her hands? ‘Bishop of Hereford?’

  ‘I’m simply saying it’s a possibility that’s occurred to me, that’s all. May be years off, yet. Then again…’

  ‘Christ,’ Merrily said.

  ‘And there’s… something else. I’m not supposed to tell you this yet, but… the Archdeacon came to see me this afternoon. You know Jeff Kimball’s moving to St John’s at Worcester, leaving a major vacancy at Dilwyn?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, he is. And with Archie Menzies retiring in the autumn, your area of north Herefordshire’s going to be stretched. Inevitably, the Archdeacon’s looking at the possibility of a shake-up — introduction of a collaborative ministry in that area: rector, team vicar, et cetera. And, as all this would be happening very close to the Ledwardine parish boundary, it’s been suggested that Ledwardine should be included in the review.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Her hands slackened on the wheel. She could see where this was going. Only a matter of time.

  ‘And, of course, someone pointed out that you had only one parish,’ the Bishop said.

  ‘Inevitably.’

  ‘Something of a rarity these days, you will admit.’

  ‘Who, er… pointed that out?’

  ‘No idea, but I expect you could make a solid guess. My opinion, as I’ve frequently stated, is that, with an expanding Deliverance department to run, one parish is quite ample, and I do know you’re working seven days most weeks. But when I pointed this out to the Archdeacon, he said it had been suggested to him that perhaps Deliverance was something that, ah, expanded according to the time and the manpower — or, indeed, womanpower — available.’

  ‘The Archdeacon’s been got at.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Someone wants me to have a bunch of extra parishes. Thus leaving very little time for Deliverance work.’

  ‘Draw your own conclusions. The thinking, I would guess, is that Deliverance would itself then become something of a team-ministry.’

  ‘And the post of Diocesan Exorcist — under whatever title?’

  ‘Would disappear.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s neither here nor there.’ Merrily kept her eyes on the road. ‘Except that the end result would probably be that Deliverance itself — as a specialist field — would eventually also disappear.’

  ‘I can see that happening, yes,’ the Bishop said. ‘It’s a political thing, isn’t it?’

  They hit the Leominster bypass, picking up speed and extra rattle. The Bishop seemed tired, almost defeated. Merrily wondered how close he was to pre-empting attempts to remove him while a suitable property in Ludlow was still within his price range.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to tell you tonight.’

  ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘I may be misinterpreting it.’

  ‘I don’t think you are. It explains a lot. Well…’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘If I fight it, it’s going to look like pure self-interest, extreme selfishness — some ministers struggling to support seven parishes, while I’m poncing around with a flask of holy water.’

  ‘There’s so much resentment in the Church now. I’ll hold out against it, of course…’

  ‘You can’t. I wouldn’t expect you to. Anyway… let’s see what happens. Meanwhile, there’s the Ludlow situation to sort out.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you think you should take it to the Deliverance Panel, do it. If they say leave it alone, leave it alone.’

  The parish church of St Mary, Hope-under-Dinmore, rose up on the left, separated from its parish by the fast road. Our Lady of the Bypass. Merrily slowed; this stretch had a bad record for deaths.

  ‘Stuff them,’ Merrily said. ‘I’ll do it. But if anything rebounds on George I won’t try to catch it first, OK?’

  ‘Of course not. Merrily, look, I’ve been thinking about this whole situation. Why don’t you take a week or ten days off from the parish — get Dennis Beckett in as locum. Then you can look into the situation and you won’t be responsible to anybody, will you? You won’t be there. You’ll be working… what’s the word?… not plain clothes?’

  ‘Undercover?’

  ‘That’s it. Afterwards, you produce a report for me, and I inform anyone who complains that this seemed to me to be the best way of dealing with a delicate and rather nebulous
situation.’

  ‘Bernie, have you really thought this through?’

  ‘And it’s not a witch-hunt, Merrily, it’s pastoral care. It’s very clear that this woman needs help. Women don’t behave in this way because they’re happy and fulfilled. They don’t leave used sanitary towels down the back of a fifteenth-century misericord, they—’

  She turned to him. ‘I don’t remember him telling us that.’

  ‘He didn’t. He got halfway and became embarrassed. The incidents — it happened three times in successive, ah, months — were mentioned as a whimsical footnote in a report on church maintenance I was obliged to read.’

  We didn’t exactly hold on to the evidence.

  ‘That’s weird, Bernie.’ She followed a pale grey ribbon of road up the long hill towards Hereford. ‘Not to say faintly ridiculous.’

  ‘Play it by ear. Follow your conscience.’ The Bishop loosened his seat belt, settled back with his hands folded on his stomach. ‘Do have a cigarette, Merrily, if you want.’

  ‘You’re a true man of God, Bernie,’ Merrily said.

  Merrily didn’t have the cigarette until she’d dropped Bernie Dunmore at the Bishop’s Palace, behind Hereford Cathedral. It was about nine-thirty p.m., a few people about. She parked for a few minutes on the corner of Broad Street and King Street, opposite the cathedral green, took the Silk Cut from her bag and thought about Belladonna and Marion de la Bruyère.

  About ghosts.

  In the 1930s, a cowled, monkish figure had been repeatedly seen in the cathedral close. Seen initially by policemen. The whole town had been hugely excited, apparently. Excited rather than frightened. As many as two hundred people would gather here on the green, night after night, in the hope of spotting the ghost. Like a football crowd, someone had observed at the time.

  Merrily smoked and gazed out at the green and the Cathedral and the soapy spring moonlight splashing through the trees, where all those people had stood in anticipation of… a multiple psychological projection, a shared hallucination on a grand scale?

  The existence of ghosts, the nature of ghosts. At least half of the raison d’être of Deliverance.

  She rang Jane to say she was on her way home. The kid sounded tired.

  ‘I’ll probably have an early night. Take it nobody beat you up or anything?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice. Look, I’m sorry I had to go out again.’

  ‘Save it for Lol. He’s off to Bristol tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh my God, I forgot!’

  ‘You always forget.’

  ‘I’d better go round.’

  ‘Stay the night, I’ll be OK.’

  ‘I’ll be back by midnight,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jane said morosely. ‘I expect you will.’

  * * *

  She parked the car at the vicarage and let herself in. A kitchen lamp had been left on, but there was no sign of Jane. She gave Ethel a foil pack of Felix and then, out of habit, went quietly up to the attic apartment, just to make sure.

  ‘Er… night-night, Mum,’ Jane said from the other side of the door.

  Merrily smiled. Forgiven. Kind of.

  She managed to catch the Eight till Late just before it closed, picked up some cigs and a bottle of white wine, carrying the bottle openly down Church Street. The village was deserted, but there were a lot of windows on either side. It was the darkened ones you had to worry about — not all of them were holiday homes.

  However, the darkened ones did not, tonight, include Lol’s.

  He’d seen her coming. He was standing in his doorway.

  ‘You’ve had the electricity reconnected!’

  ‘No going back now,’ Lol said.

  He still seemed bewildered at finding himself a man of property. The hall behind him was lit by a low-wattage bulb dangling over the newel post where Lucy Devenish used to hang her poncho.

  Merrily felt a rush of emotion.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Definitely no going back.’

  In full view of all the darkened windows in Church Street, she stepped up to the doorway and kissed him on the mouth. Saw his eyes widen close to hers as he manoeuvred her inside, throwing the door shut behind them.

  ‘What have you done?’

  Oh God, her glasses! They were still in the car.

  ‘I…’ She swallowed. ‘Would you believe it if I said I’d walked into a lamp-post?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thought not.’ She put the bottle on the floor, felt at her dog collar. ‘Look, I’m sorry I’m still in the kit. It’s coming off tonight, for… for at least a week. I’ve been told to get a locum in, so I can be a… an ordinary person.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m probably demob happy, Lol, that’s what it is.’

  A lock of hair brushed her bruised eye like a bird’s wing. She pushed it aside with a hand and winced.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Lol said.

  She looked up the stairs and imagined Lucy Devenish standing at the top, watching them with a weary disappointment, her poncho drooping. And then caught a sudden mental image of Belladonna down near Ludford Bridge, wrapped in her floor-length cape, electric-blue light on her beautiful, predatory face.

  Thought about Marion de la Bruyère — a young girl who had reacted to betrayal in the manner of the times, now a ghost more than eight centuries old — and what the Mayor of Ludlow might be asking.

  Probably her last task as a Deliverance minister.

  And it wasn’t even official.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘to be honest, I’m not so much demob happy as demob… very pissed-off.’

  Could have done a deal with Bernie, Merrily told God later. I could have said save my ministry, get those two bastards off my back, and I’ll help you in Ludlow. That was the obvious thing, wasn’t it?

  But, like, playing politics — that’s not what the Church is supposed to be about, is it? Yeah, yeah, the Church has been deep into politics from the start, but that didn’t make it right. Or did it? I mean, it survived, didn’t it? Would it still have survived if there hadn’t been political popes, reformation, renewal and… and…

  I don’t want it to end. That’s what I’m trying to say. Deliverance. I don’t want it to be over.

  Thought I was starting to get it… to get some of it right. Maybe helping people. Sometimes. OK, I was too late to help some people, like Roddy Lodge, and too blind to help others — Layla Riddock? But I had a strong feeling You were using me to give Nat and Jeremy a chance at Stanner last winter. That was… I mean sometimes it’s been amazing.

  And, sure, I’ve felt desperate because it didn’t seem to be working, or I wasn’t getting it right. And guilty when it was fulfilling, when it felt like I was wielding light… guilty because I only had one parish and didn’t have to go on the road on Sundays and learn how to preach properly.

  Have I been guilty of pride? Are there ministers in this diocese — there surely are — who could do this so much better than me? Did YOU send Siân and Saltash? Am I stupid and naive and blind? Is it Your will that I give this up, let it be taken from me, stop meddling in the affairs of the dead, run five, six, seven parishes instead, watch it all falling away for all of us…?

  I’m sorry. I don’t know. I don’t know. Do I fight this or lie down? Which is worse, cowardice or pride?

  And do You ever listen any more?

  Merrily opened her eyes, standing by the window, moonlight sugaring the trees on Cole Hill, no easy answers written in the sky.

  PART THREE

  Bell

  To 20th-century eyes such colossal expenditure on unproductive religious ritual may seem strange, but in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries most people were in no doubt that what kept mankind from both spiritual perdition and temporal catastrophe was an incessant flow of prayers to God from the priesthood and from religious orders. It was more vital expenditure than commercial investment or relief of poverty.

  Michael Faraday, Ludlow, 1085–1660 (1991)

  Ludlow h
ad become the elite leisure centre of the middle marches in the 18th century and the castle was the focus of this burgeoning tourist industry… John Byng thought it was ‘one of the best towns for a genteel family of small fortune to retire to… Ludlow was thus one of the first tourist “honey pots” in England.’

  David Whitehead — ‘Symbolism and Assimilation’, chapter in Ludlow Castle, Its History and Buildings, ed. Ron Shoesmith and Andy Johnson (2000)

  24

  Ancient Incense

  Merrily felt very small and exposed.

  She was wearing jeans and a green fleece with a torn pocket. She had a canvas shoulder bag with her cigarettes inside and her phone. Around her neck was a chain with a tiny gold cross on it that was hidden by the neck of her grey T-shirt.

  Demob-disorientated in an old town like a pop-up book, coming at her from all angles in wedges of carrot-coloured antique brick and twisted timbers and thrusting gables.

  Cars and trucks laboured up Corve Street and down Old Street, or were funnelled, squealing like pigs, into the Bull Ring and King Street which must have been designed for donkey carts. And the sun slithered overhead like a soft-boiled egg trailing clouds of bloodied membrane. Or that was how it looked, through the rose-tinted glasses.

  And she felt very small, especially next to Jon Scole of Ghostours.

  ‘Drinks,’ he said. ‘Right. OK… OK… I’ve got to think about this. Which one of these tarted-up piss-parlours threw me out last?’

  Ethereal he wasn’t. He wore a motorbike jacket with extraneous chains. He seemed about seven feet tall, and he had long hair and a beard and a Manchester accent that could split logs. He winked at Merrily, tossed back his blond ringlets.

  ‘Only kidding, Mary. They love me, really. I bring ’em customers they’d never see as a rule: old ladies who want coffee, or a bitter lemon if they’re feeling daring — soft drinks and beverages, that’s where the real money is. ’Sides, you need a clear head for ghosts, I should know. OK, the Feathers it is, then. Top place. You did say the Feathers, didn’t you? They always do.’