The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

‘Because he was dead?’

  ‘And then I fetched up in Ludlow, visiting Saul’s daughter, Susannah, who was now my legal and financial adviser — business manager, I guess — and it was… another epiphany.’

  ‘The town you’d dreamed of when the baby was…’

  ‘Yes. Knew it soon as I got out of the car. Didn’t quite believe it at first, so I went away. Had the dream again. Came back, and the pull was even stronger. A town that, like me, was outside of its time. And the child… well, the child wanted to come back.’

  ‘Are we talking about… Robbie?’

  ‘You’re getting there.’ Bell sighed. ‘I must be insane — you could be a reporter.’

  Merrily smiled.

  ‘But when you’ve been courted and worshipped and shafted by thousands of people the world over, you pride yourself on being able to recognize the ones who’re going to be of some importance. When I saw you with Jonathan at Marion’s yew, I thought, yeah… No, don’t say anything, Mary, don’t feel flattered, I’ll be a burden to you, I always am.’

  ‘Robbie?’

  ‘Is my son. Is my son. I wasn’t looking for a child, for God’s sake. I was probably looking for a man. And then one day you’re face to face with your twin soul, and it’s a… a bloody little boy.’ Bell drank some wine, tears like lenses over her eyes.

  ‘Someone I spoke to,’ Merrily said, ‘actually said you were like mother and son.’

  ‘We were mother and son. Birth parents are merely that — seldom of any consequence, an impedance more often than not. We were part of the same spiritual seed… essence. And we were both connected with this town and realized it. We’d both come home. We saw the town burning with the same golden light. I remember, in my first dream, walking from the castle to the church, stopping and gazing up at the steeple, and it was like a bar of gold, and the sky was red with sunset, and I felt… well, you can imagine how I felt.’

  ‘Euphoric.’

  ‘Oh, well beyond euphoric.’

  ‘Like a near-death experience? Bell, are we talking reincarnation here?’

  Bell shook her head. ‘I don’t believe in that shit.’

  ‘Someone… that is, I wondered if you felt you were connected with Marion de la Bruyère.’

  ‘No, not at all. Marion’s an entry point. She’s important because most of the ghosts here are nebulous presences, and she’s fully formed. We know where she died, and how and why. And she’s very much here — like Robbie. So I went to see his grandmother.’

  ‘Mrs Mumford?’

  ‘When he’d gone back to school, last January, I went to see the old woman. Realized, soon as I started talking to her, that there was no way I could explain the half of it. I said I was impressed with his knowledge and his enthusiasm and wondered if there was some way I could help with his education. It was pretty clear that she wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Would you have expected her to?’

  ‘Probably not. So, in the end, I went to see the mother. I went to this crummy estate in Hereford. And I met the mother. And it became very obvious, very quickly, that this woman and I would be able to find a common… currency.’

  ‘Currency?’

  ‘I’m not speaking metaphorically. Look at this place… it’s a shell. I walk through this house like another ghost. I wanted…’

  Merrily sat up, hard. ‘You wanted to adopt him?’

  ‘My stepdaughter could deal with the formalities. But the essence of it, as far as the mother was concerned, was a large — not to say life-changing — one-off payment.’

  ‘Christ,’ Merrily said.

  ‘He didn’t know. I wanted to be sure, before I discussed it with him, that nobody would get in the way. It was obvious Phyllis Mumford wouldn’t be in any state to look after him for much longer. As for Angela… Angela’s eyes positively lit up at the implications.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘And then he died,’ Bell said. ‘He died like Marion. And everything shifted. The whole axis of the town shifted under me.’ She stared at Merrily, and her eyes looked as if they were melting in the firelight. ‘It’s the endgame now, Mary.’

  The fireplace reared over them. Bell was in shadow, but her breathing was loud and uneven, and you could smell the wine.

  ‘This is the endgame,’ she said again. ‘It’s as if we’re all part of some great, tragic tapestry across time. And now I’m walking this house and this town like a ghost. Like the ghost…’

  ‘Like the ghost,’ Merrily said softly, ‘that you’ll become?’

  37

  Like in the Belfry

  While Jane was in the kitchen, scrambling a basic breakfast together, the phone rang in the scullery.

  ‘Put your mother on, please, Jane.’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Well, get her,’ Sophie Hill said.

  It was about half-nine. Outside the scullery window, the first blossom was ghosting the apple trees, although the sky was dull. Ethel was sitting on the wall, watching for movements among the graves in the churchyard.

  ‘Not so easy,’ Jane said. ‘She went over to Ludlow last night, and she’s not back yet. And, of course, she forgot her mobile.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Sophie said. It was Saturday, so she was probably calling from home. ‘She’s there now?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Sophie drew breath as if she was about to explain something.

  ‘Sophie? Is there something wrong? Something I can tell her if she—?’

  ‘Thank you, Jane,’ Sophie said and hung up.

  And Jane was worried now because Sophie was worried — conspicuously.

  A woman not known for displaying unwarranted emotion.

  Lol had been up for a couple of hours when Gomer Parry arrived at the back door.

  Gomer had a small boy with him — about ten, fair hair, combat trousers.

  ‘Tell him,’ Gomer said.

  The small boy looked at Lol, then over the fence into the orchard. Then he tried to run past Gomer into the entry that led back into Church Street.

  Gomer caught him. ‘Tell him.’

  ‘Get off me, you ole paedophile!’

  ‘We gonner do this the easy way, boy, or the hard way?’ Gomer said. ‘Either you tells this man what you did or we goes and talks to your dad.’ He looked across at Lol, who was standing in the doorway. ‘His dad’s on the Hereford council — Lib Dem, hangin’ on by his fingertips last time. Hate it to get out that his boy was in the poison-pen business. Now tell the man.’

  The kid looked at the step Lol was standing on.

  ‘Posted you a letter.’

  ‘I see,’ Lol said. ‘And did you, er, write the letter?’

  ‘Tell him,’ Gomer growled.

  ‘Yeah,’ the kid said. ‘But I din’t make it up. He told me what to write.’

  ‘Who tole you?’ Gomer said.

  ‘Bloke.’

  ‘What bloke?’

  ‘I don’t know! I keep tellin’ you and you don’t believe me. He give me a quid both times.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Fiver.’ The kid looked up at Gomer. The light flared in Gomer’s glasses. ‘Tenner. To keep quiet.’

  ‘So let’s get this clear, boy. Bloke gives you the paper, tells you what to write on it, then he puts it in the envelope, tells you where to take it, right?’

  ‘Yeah. When it’s dark.’

  ‘What do he look like, this bloke?’

  ‘I dunno — tall.’

  ‘Local?’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘You seen him before round yere?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was he in a car?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘All right,’ Gomer said. ‘You see him again, you come and tell me. You know where I live — bungalow down the hill, with the big sheds.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You tell me quick enough, mabbe I’ll give you a tenner. Or mabbe I just won’t tell your dad. Now bugger off.’

  When t
he kid had gone, Lol said, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Paedophile — you yere that? Bloody hell, it don’t take the little bastards long, do it?’

  ‘How did you find out about him?’

  ‘Maggie Tomlin — lives across the way. Sits in a wheelchair by the window, listenin’ to the radio. Knows everybody. Jasper Ashe, her says, straight off. Thought he was delivering flyers for a car boot or some’ing, but he only delivered the one. Gavin Ashe’s boy. Gavin had Rod Powell’s ole seat on the council, but the Tory woman run him close last time, see.’

  ‘I don’t get it, Gomer.’

  ‘Ar, it’s a puzzler,’ Gomer conceded. ‘Somebody got it in for you and the vicar, but they en’t local. But mabbe you’re supposed to think they are local.’

  ‘Making me paranoid. Unsettled.’

  ‘Sure to, ennit.’

  ‘Well… thanks, Gomer.’

  ‘Us incomers gotter stick together,’ Gomer said.

  ‘Er… yes.’ As Lol understood it, Gomer had been born approximately ten miles outside Ledwardine. ‘Right.’

  ‘Where’s the vicar?’

  ‘Over in Ludlow.’

  ‘Been out all night, looks like.’

  ‘Er…’ Lol heard his mobile from inside the house, playing the first few bars of the tune that Jane had keyed in — ‘Sunny Days’.

  ‘You better get that, boy, might be her.’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘You wanner keep an eye on that little woman,’ Gomer said. ‘Some funny folks in Ludlow now, what I yeard.’

  The next caller had asked for Mrs Watkins. Jane hadn’t recognized the voice, but it was too precise to be, like, Emma from Everest Double-glazing or somebody in Delhi calling on behalf of British Telecom. This voice was also actually quite low and pleasant.

  ‘Would that be… Jane?’

  ‘It would, yes.’

  ‘Jane, this is Siân Callaghan-Clarke. Canon Callaghan-Clarke, from Hereford.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  Big warning bells, up close and agonizingly loud, like in the belfry on a Sunday morning.

  ‘Jane, I’m awfully sorry to bother you, but it’s most important I get hold of your mother before… other people do.’

  ‘Other people?’

  ‘The media, for instance.’

  ‘She’s pretty good with the media, actually.’

  ‘Yes, so I understand. Do you know where she might be? Does she routinely tell you where she’s going?’

  ‘You mean, like, am I a latchkey kid who gets her own meals?’

  Siân Callaghan-Clarke laughed lightly.

  ‘Actually, she normally tells me everything,’ Jane said, ‘but I’m afraid I got in rather late last night myself — the bus broke down — and I, um, overslept. She’s usually up very early, on her hands and knees, scrubbing the church floor, or visiting the sick, and I’m afraid I have to go out again in a minute, so…’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘I could leave a note for her.’

  ‘You’re sure she hasn’t gone to Ludlow, Jane?’

  ‘Ludlow.’ Jane paused. ‘That’s in Shropshire, isn’t it?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Siân Callaghan-Clarke said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  Mistake.

  ‘So something’s gone down,’ Jane said to Lol. ‘And I don’t know what it is. And Mum hasn’t rung and I can’t get hold of her because bloody Belladonna’s ex-directory. And Eirion’s gonna be here any minute to pick me up.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Maybe you could come over to the vicarage and just like… stay here? Man the phone and stuff?’

  ‘You think I’m responsible enough?’

  ‘Please, Lol, it really is the best thing you could do right now. Something’s happened, and I don’t know what it is. I’ve got the radio on — Hereford and Worcester — and there’s nothing. Lol, please…’

  In the dream — and she knew all along that it was a dream — Merrily was at a junction of several old streets with gilded buildings on either side. They had timbers like bars of dull gold and small bricks like jewels, and the entrance of each street, as she approached it, was aglow with enticing lights, the air perfumed with applewood smoke. But the further in she went, the darker and closer it all became, the brickwork crumbling, the beams blackening and the perfume gradually corrupted by a rising stench of dampness and rot. And ahead of her — slapping of sandals on dry flagstones — a woman with a musical-instrument case swinging like a censer from one hand.

  Scared, Merrily began wading out of the dream. She opened her eyes, and one of them hurt. The light was grey and rationed, sweat congealing on her face like a sour syrup. She pushed the plain cream duvet away, tentatively lowered her bare feet to bare boards.

  No splinters on this floor. This was very old wood, worn smooth long before it had been laid here. Could have come from anywhere. Had its own history.

  The Weir House. Hundreds of disparate histories mingled here, their vibrations filtered through reclaimed timbers and the stones of demolished barns from miles away and nothing would be—

  God, what time is it?

  In bra and pants and small pectoral cross, she stumbled across to the only window, a Gothic slit with just one pane, and peered out.

  She saw a short track with a metal gate at the end. There was a flat field, a glint of river and, above it all, sprouting out of the wooded bank and a sky that was as cold and hard as marble, something like a ragged and monstrous clump of giant brown mushrooms.

  Use the castle room. Bell Pepper opening the door for her but not entering. An engaging smile through twisted teeth. But if you see Marion, be careful. She’s unstable.

  Merrily had not wanted, at that time, to see Marion. She remembered sitting down on the bed, alone, to think and to pray: St Patrick’s Breastplate — Hold me safe from the forces of evil. On each of my dyings shed your light.

  Must have slept, for… She went back to the bed. The rest of her clothes — T-shirt, jeans, fleece — were in a heap beside it, her watch on top. It was nearly eleven-thirty a.m. She’d slept for nearly six hours.

  She had to start talking to people — Jane, Lol, Mumford, the Bishop.

  Recalling a bathroom somewhere, mercifully modern, she grabbed her clothes into a bundle and unlocked the oak door — yes, it did have a key and she had locked it — and went out into a short passage that was daylight-dim: interior lime-plastered walls of wattle and daub, which was basically clay and cow muck over a framework of branches and twigs. Clay and cow muck and animal fat and whatever other personal ingredients—

  Merrily stopped, clutching the bundle to her chest. The woman standing at the end of the passage was not Belladonna.

  38

  Like Hello!

  Breinton was on the western side of Hereford in sloping, wooded countryside that managed to conceal most of the city’s lower, more modern buildings, so that from the road outside the Fyneham residence you could see the cathedral apparently poking out of greenery, as if the city centre was a neighbouring village.

  Eirion parked his Peugeot half on the grass verge, just out of sight of the solid wooden gates that were like castle gates: all you could see of the house was a brick wall, a chimney and a burglar alarm. Homes up here cost an arm and a leg now.

  ‘Hereford’s Beverly Hills,’ Jane said sourly. She was seriously uptight, the world full of invisible hostility. If she’d been a hedgehog she’d have been rolled up in a ball, spikes out.

  ‘If that’s meant to be an insult, it would escape Fyneham.’ Eirion locked the car. ‘He’s a Beverly Hills kind of person. How do you reckon we get to the front door?’

  ‘You need one of those little battering-ram things the cops have.’

  ‘Jane…’ Eirion was looking at her as though she might have been secretly carrying one. ‘Don’t do anything, right? Leave this to me.’

  ‘You know me, Irene.’ Jane put on an icy smile. ‘Walking definition of the word discretion. Look
— dinky little door in the wall.’

  There was a black iron ball-handle; when Eirion turned it, the door opened onto a short gravel drive and this imposing, blindingly white conservatory porch with a Victorian type of bell pull that turned out to be electric and sent Big Ben chimes bonging through the house.

  The woman who responded was serious second-wife material: bleached blonde, about thirty-five, and dressed for hovering hopelessly with hi-tech secateurs. She stayed inside, keeping a hand on the door, Eirion treating her to his winning smile.

  ‘Oh, hi. Sorry to just turn up like this, but Jack said if we were ever passing…’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘This is the right house, isn’t it? Jack Fyneham?’

  ‘Jack?’ She looked blank for a moment and then she said, ‘Oh, you mean Johnno.’

  ‘Actually, we just know him as JD at school.’

  ‘Oh, I see, you’re—’

  ‘This for me, Tessa?’ J.D. Fyneham appeared in person at her shoulder, wearing a half-smile that faded with gratifying speed into this oh-shit expression when he saw who was outside. Jane smiled at him.

  ‘Why don’t you take them up to your rooms, Johnno?’ Tessa said. ‘I’ve got this guy coming about the pool, which your dad, of course, conveniently forgot about…’

  ‘Cool.’ Eirion beamed. ‘JD’s told us so much about his rooms.’

  In the first hour, nobody rang. Lol went upstairs to Merrily’s bedroom and brought down the Washburn he kept there and tuned it and played fingerstyle to Ethel, the way he had when he’d lived in Blackberry Lane and Ethel had been his cat and he’d probably still been half-mental.

  Walking across to the vicarage, he’d seen a woman looking at him and then she’d frowned and looked away and Lol had thought, Jesus, no… and put his head down and almost run across and into the driveway. Jane, in the doorway with Eirion, waiting to leave, had glared at him with a kind of furious pity.

  And now there was a knock on the front door, and he put down the guitar and didn’t know whether or not to answer it.

  Someone had paid a child twenty quid to write and deliver two anonymous letters, the latest accusing him of beating up his half-secret girlfriend, the parish priest. No smoke. Not everyone would believe Gomer Parry. He envisioned a drab lynch mob of Ledwardine villagers clustered around the porch: What have you done with the vicar?