by Phil Rickman
Then, ‘Oh, no!’ the girl was wailing. ‘My heel’s gone! Nez, you bloody wuss, I told you I didn’t want to come down here.’
‘I’ll carry you…’
‘Oh, get—’
‘What’s going on?’
Outrage and a yellow light, probably from one of the cottages in The Linney.
‘Shit,’ one of them whispered. ‘It’s my grandad. Sorry, OK? We’re off now. We just wanted to see if it was true, all right? We’ll leave you to it. Goodnight.’
‘Erm… yeah… Goodnight.’ Merrily smiled.
She switched off the flashlight, waited until it was quiet again and the light in The Linney had gone out. We just wanted to see if it was true. How often did this happen?
She put the torch on again, twisted the neck until there was just a thin beam, directing it at the ground, following it along the track until it found the fat bole of Marion’s yew tree. And Bell Pepper sitting under it, in silence now, with something across her knees, her elbows resting on it and her face between her hands, a small light at her feet.
‘I don’t want protection,’ she said.
‘You’ve been getting it, anyway.’ Merrily switched off the torch. ‘For a long time.’
‘Oh.’ Bell Pepper turned her head. ‘I thought I… it’s Mary, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sorry, I followed you. Didn’t like to think of you going back out there after what happened.’
‘It was very stupid of Jonathan to phone you.’
‘He was worried, too. Can we talk?’
Merrily sat down next to her, between the roots. The space under the yew’s dense canopy was lit like an earthen grotto by the candle in the lantern, and she could make out Belladonna’s once-famous patrician profile, recalling an album cover where her face had been sprayed with creamy white plaster, eyes calmly closed, like a death mask.
‘Children,’ Bell said. ‘I expect I was some kind of goddess to their parents. Now I’m a mad old slapper.’ She gazed out between the trees towards the invisible river. ‘When they’re spraying your name three feet high on walls, you never imagine that one day you’ll be…’
Normal, Merrily thought. Ordinary. It was odd — she’d always thought that Lol was the exception in his line of work because he seemed, in spite of everything, so normal. Odd how you could be taken in by the intentional mythologizing of rock musicians.
‘Maybe in ten years’ time those kids’ll think you’re a goddess, too,’ she said. ‘Tastes change rapidly in music. And then they bounce back again.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I was a fan. I came to one of your gigs once. And my boyfriend’s in the business.’
‘Business?’
‘Music. He plays. Writes songs.’
‘You poor cow. Would I have heard of him?’
‘I don’t know. Lol Robinson? OK if I smoke? Tobacco, that is. I’m feeling a bit…’
‘Go ahead. Christ, I remember Lol Robinson. Hazey Jane? They put him away, didn’t they?’
‘Psychiatric hospital.’ Merrily found the Zippo and the Silk Cut packet, crushed, in her fleece. ‘He fell into the system.’
‘OK now?’
‘He always was.’ Merrily held out the cigs to Bell. ‘You do nicotine these days?’
‘Only vice I’ve ever given up, Mary.’
Merrily lit up, inhaled and let out the smoke on the back of a sigh. It was not comfortable, sitting in the dirt at the foot of the yew.
‘But not, I assure you,’ Belladonna said, ‘because I didn’t want to die. That would be…’
‘Positively hypocritical, in your case.’
Bell laughed. ‘Am I right in thinking you and Jonathan are…?’
‘God, no.’
‘That was emphatic.’
‘I told you, I have a boyfriend.’
‘How quaint. Is he as quaint when he’s on tour?’
‘He’s so quaint that old ladies want to buy him.’
‘I see.’
‘You?’ Merrily lowered the cigarette; the smoke was making her bad eye smart.
‘Me, what?’ Bell said.
‘Jonathan?’
‘Makes you think that?’
‘I think he’s awfully interested in you.’
‘Most men are. But some are also frightened, and he, I suspect, is frightened.’
‘Jon?’
‘Just because he looks like a mad biker with a taste for rape and plunder… Actually, on reflection, most men are scared. And most women hate me. And children peer at me from behind the bushes.’
‘Except…’ Merrily snatched a shot of nicotine and went for it. ‘Except for Robbie Walsh?’
Belladonna looked at her, full face in the shivering candlelight, and Merrily saw that her mouth was slightly twisted, blots of dried blood on her jawline, dirt still scraped across one cheek, a pinkening lump on her forehead above the proud, aquiline nose.
Ludlow is my heaven.
Oh God, something was very wrong here. This woman was not normal. Merrily became aware of the garment that Jon Scole had described as a nightdress. It was probably satin. Shapeless as an operating gown. She glimpsed a ribbon under one of Bell’s arms.
Merrily tightened up, gripping her knees.
Bell said slowly, ‘Who told you about Robbie and me?’
‘Couple of people who saw you with him. Around the castle.’
‘I gather some people have been saying he committed suicide. And therefore I must have helped him nurture his depression.’
‘Who’s saying that?’
‘He wasn’t depressed. Absolutely not. Robbie Walsh would walk these streets in a state of near-ecstasy. Jonathan’ll confirm that. He was happier than any child I ever saw.’
‘While he was here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because he was here. He had a passion for history.’
‘A passion for Ludlow. And your interest in him is…?’
‘I have a friend who was his uncle. He feels he… he feels more than a bit responsible.’
‘We all feel that.’
‘Did Robbie come here with you? To this tree?’
‘Oh yes. I think he was very much in love with Marion.’ Bell leaned her head back against the tree, stretching her neck. The garment was torn on one shoulder, strands of the white fabric making loops. ‘Schoolboy crush. If Robbie was going to have his first crush, it would have to be someone from the Middle Ages, wouldn’t it? Only a small part of him was living in the present. You know what I’m saying, don’t you?’
‘I think we’ve all experienced it.’
Bell let out a small, exasperated hiss. ‘I don’t know about you. Only what Jonathan’s said, and Jonathan’s prone to the most awful hyperbole.’
‘I think,’ Merrily said carefully, remembering Jane’s advice, ‘that we all have heightened experiences in a town this close to its own history.’
‘Yes.’
‘And although I never met Robbie Walsh…’
‘He’d describe scenes to you… like a sighted person interpreting for the blind. He’d read the names on all the plaques outside the old houses so many times that he knew them all off by heart — by heart, Mary, the town was in his heart. He knew who’d lived in every house, and he’d describe them to me. And he’d come here and he’d describe Marion.’
‘Oh? What did she look like?’
‘Quite small. Brown hair, brown eyes — passionate, angry eyes. Robbie was an adolescent boy, he wasn’t sophisticated, his terminology was simple. He was in love with Marion because she was everything you rarely find any more. She was… all feelings. All strong passion and impulse, in comparison with all the apathetic, jaded kids he had to mix with. Can’t you feel her, Mary? Now? Here?’
‘I can feel her confusion,’ Merrily said, and it was true. ‘I can feel her uncontrollable rage. And her despair.’
‘This was possibly the time of night she did it… hacked the bastard down and took a dive. Out of the windo
w just above us. No tree here then, just stones. Marion plummeting down with a scream of terminal anguish. Her body bouncing as it lands, breaking, finally coming to rest—’
‘Coming to unrest,’ Merrily said.
‘—Where we’re sitting now, blood issuing from her mouth.’ A fluid thrill, like oil, under Bell’s voice now. ‘Oh, you do understand, don’t you?’
‘I understand Marion. Marion’s easy. She was both the betrayed and the betrayer. She’d let the enemy in. She didn’t see a way out, except through one of these windows. Jemima Pegler, however… that’s much more complex. And so’s Robbie Walsh. This friend of mine, he took me to see his mother, Robbie’s gran. Because she said she was seeing him around the house and around the town…’
‘He asked you to help her, as a psychic.’
‘Something like that. She said she was seeing Robbie reflected in mirrors and shop windows. And… in the water.’
‘She drowned…’
‘I was there that night,’ Merrily said. ‘And you came down to the river, with a bunch of… goths, it looked like.’
Bell stared at her, her arms in the ragged sleeves lifting what had lain on her knees — a black instrument case, too big for a violin, too small for a guitar.
‘And you seemed to know who it would be,’ Merrily said. ‘Who they’d found in the water.’
‘What are you suggesting…? Oh, look, all right… It was one of the band heard it was Robbie’s grandmother. Couple of them were in the town, and they heard someone—’
‘The band?’
‘It’s a young band, called Le Fanu, who come here sometimes. They’ve been influenced by my music and they come down some weekends and we play. They’re… my support mechanism, if you like. We hang out and we get a little stoned sometimes and… we’re putting an album together. Look, I hear stories that I’m flooding the town with fucking goths, but it’s just Le Fanu and their hangers-on.’
‘And was… one of them involved in a stabbing incident?’
Something squirmed, some creature, rattling twigs in the undergrowth on the other side of the path. Bell let out a breath.
‘Yes, yes… He was a roadie, and he doesn’t work for them any more. It was a very minor incident, I…’ She hugged the case. ‘… I don’t mind being considered mad — I am mad — but I won’t be accused of importing violence, do you understand?’
Her voice was breaking up now and she was trembling.
‘You’re shivering. You’re cold.’
‘I like being cold, you must’ve heard that. Cold as the grave.’
‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘Mary, are you writing a fucking book about me, or something?’
‘I’m—’ Merrily had to break off, take a breath. The cigarette lay dead between her fingers. Her spine was starting to ache, and her bum had gone numb. If she wasn’t careful she was going to come out with the truth. ‘I just think some of the things being said about you are probably all wrong. Jon—’
‘Jonathan’s an idiot. Him and his ghost-walk — irrelevant, an irritant.’
‘Maybe you just want to be an enigma,’ Merrily said. ‘The mad woman of Ludlow who walks in the night and sings her old songs to the moon while sitting under this… age-old symbol of life and death and immortality, wearing… wearing a bloody shroud…’
Bell Pepper started to laugh. ‘I really think you’re the first to notice.’
Oh God, and she’d been hoping it wasn’t. She stared out, past the lantern, at the ominous black forestry across the river, towards the Welsh border.
‘I didn’t think they made them like that any more. They seem to use paper now, or the body’s dressed in ordinary clothes.’
‘They don’t make them like this any more,’ Bell said. ‘I had a friend, an undertaker. He found them in a stockroom. Six of them. Old stock. Years old, even then. Probably post-Victorian, nineteen-thirties, I don’t know.’
‘I see.’
‘This was the guy who did the arrangements for my baby, if you were wondering.’
‘Your baby died…?’
‘My baby… had no life outside of me. When they pulled him out, he was dead meat.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need to be. It works both ways. Ever since — over twenty-five years — a part of me has been where he is.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Merrily said, ‘I’m going to have to stand up, my back’s starting to seize up…’
She rose awkwardly and walked out of the penumbra of the yew. She was surprised to see the sky like deep copper foil over the Hanging Tower. It didn’t mean dawn, just another mood of an increasingly crazy night.
‘Do you want to come home with me, Mary?’
Bell Pepper was at her shoulder, the musical-instrument case at her feet, her hands around its stem.
‘I… I’ve got a daughter at home, I…’
‘How old?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Hardly a problem, then. You’re obviously not as comfortable here as I am. Come back to The Weir House.’ Bell touched her arm. Her fingers felt like the wet tips of icicles. ‘You want to know, don’t you? About Robbie?’
Merrily didn’t reply.
‘I was entirely shattered when he died.’ That dark, translucent voice, the poshest pop star since Marianne Faithfull. ‘It was like — for me — some awful kind of retribution.’
Merrily turned to her. ‘Why?’
‘Because Robbie Walsh was my son,’ Bell Pepper said.
35
A Resort for the Dead
The phone was ringing. Jane woke up under the duvet on the sofa in the parlour, Ethel on her feet. She was fully dressed, more or less. Padded through to the scullery.
The clock said two-fifteen a.m. She’d unplugged the answering machine, so the phone was still ringing, and she snatched it.
‘Mum?’
‘Jane…?’
‘Lol!’
‘What’s wrong?’ Lol said.
‘Wrong?’
‘All the lights are on. I’m sorry, I’m becoming the neighbour from hell. Maybe it’ll be better when I get a bed. I woke up on the sofa and I felt something wasn’t right, and I went to the front door and… all the lights are on in the vicarage. Well, not all the lights, just… more lights than usual. Sorry.’
‘She got called out to Ludlow. Belladonna was… assaulted.’
Jane explained. She was wide awake now. Waking up had never been a problem and she thought it was good, in one way, that Lol had noticed the lights. He cared.
Well, of course he cared.
‘She left her phone behind. I don’t think it was intentional, she was in a hurry. But I’m a bit pissed off, actually. I was supposed to be going with her tomorrow to sort out Belladonna.’
‘She was going to expose Belladonna to you?’
‘Maybe she senses I’ve mellowed. Do you want to come over for some hot chocolate or something, Lol? We could sit by the phone together.’
‘Not a safe thing to do in this village at the moment, with your mum conspicuously not at home. If we’re awake, someone else will be. Then you happen to trip up outside and cut your lip, and I’m back on Victoria Ward, and—’
‘Lol!’
‘You could give me a discreet call when she comes in. Or do you think I should maybe go over—’
‘Certainly not!’
‘You’re right. That would be… intrusive. Unforgivable. I need to keep my nose out.’
‘You don’t like Belladonna, do you?’ Jane said.
‘I don’t know her.’
‘You don’t trust her, then.’
‘Well, not from what I’ve heard, no, but we shouldn’t always believe rumours, should we?’
‘No. Lol’ — Jane sat at the desk, flicked on the anglepoise ‘— about that. The rumours. Do you have any idea who’s been spreading them?’
‘Not really. As long as the right people don’t believe them, I’m not going to worry.’
‘You heard from Q magazine yet? When the piece is going in?’
‘Should I have?’
‘You could ring them and ask.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t like to miss it.’
‘Eirion gets it, doesn’t he?’
‘Yeah. So he does.’
‘Is this small talk, Jane?’
‘Bit late for that,’ Jane said ambiguously.
With no chance of getting back to sleep, Jane made some hot chocolate and took it back to the computer. Put Belladonna into Google and found, like, six million mentions. Put in Belladonna/religion and got it down to a couple of thousand. What it seemed to amount to was that this woman had tried everything and rejected most of it, including forms of paganism, mostly eastern.
When she found herself back in the Departure Lounge with Karone the bastard Boatman, Jane typed in: You still here, Karone? Suggest consult own website and act accordingly.
She Googled The Weir House, where Belladonna lived. There were three mentions, two negligible, one cursory. Essentially, a new house created authentically on the site of a fourteenth-century ruin, with a connection to the Palmers’ Guild. Jane Googled the Guild and came up with this fairly detailed article about a quasi-spiritual organization that had played a major part in making Ludlow what it was today — well preserved and not short of a few quid.
She printed it out and read it twice. It tied in fairly well with what she already knew, from A-level history, about the medieval social system — the need for wealth, status and godliness in equal measures. Like, forget all that rich man/eye of the needle crap; if you had the money you could provide for an afterlife. Jane was reminded of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the ancient and interminable Led Zeppelin song that Eirion had in his anorak’s collection. Apparently, Tony Blair knew all the chords. Figured, somehow.
She tried Belladonna/Ludlow and hit on a short item from one of these Heat-type celeb magazines, which included this little gem:
‘Do you know how many ghosts there are in this place?’ Bell has been saying to friends. ‘Dozens. Everywhere is haunted. This town is like a resort for the dead.’
She printed this out, too, sensing some significance here, and then checked the e-mails. There was one from Eirion, marked For Jane.
