by Phil Rickman
‘I just thought you should know,’ Lol said, aware that, for Merrily, more knowledge was more responsibility.
But the main responsibility tonight was his.
He finished his tea. ‘What was the name of that other guy?’
‘What other guy?’
‘The guy who came to you with Saltash and the woman.’ Lol stood up. ‘Maybe I can get us into the castle.’
Merrily was disturbed. Yes, it felt so much better with Lol here, it always did, but there was something he wasn’t telling her. He had this almost startled air, like someone reanimated after a long time in hibernation, this sense of purpose coming off him like heat — a guy who normally felt safer in the shadows and who wasn’t, as far as she knew, familiar with this town.
She stood with her back to the castle wall, out of sight while Lol talked softly to the policewoman, Kelly. A big sign said: CASTLE CLOSED. Almost all the shops were shut by now, and the crowds had thinned and the busker had gone.
And cautious, low-key Lol was chatting up a policewoman in a futile bid to get inside the castle. It was not like him.
‘I don’t get this with you guys,’ Kelly said to Lol. ‘I don’t see it.’
‘Trust me,’ Lol said.
‘I don’t trust anybody outside my own family, and I wouldn’t trust them with any money,’ Kelly said. ‘Stay there.’
A man was walking quickly up to the top of Mill Street, something swinging by his side that reminded Merrily, at first, of Bell’s mandolin case, and then she saw it was a TV camera. Had to happen at some stage.
Lol came back to stand with Merrily. The day’s spring heat was spent, and he held one of her cold hands between both of his, as George Lackland strode up from the direction of Woolworths. George without his overall: dark grey suit, tie, watch-chain, a newspaper under his arm. Mr Mayor. She saw the reporter, with a short boom-mike attached to the camera, homing in on him: Amanda Patel, of BBC Midlands Today.
‘That woman knows me.’ She pulled Lol behind the big cannon, as the cameraman positioned George with his back to the castle gate.
‘Rolling,’ the cameraman said to Amanda, and then George was telling her he didn’t know who the girl in there was, and it was beyond devastating that this should happen again.
‘We’re all praying they can talk her down. There are people in the church now, praying.’
‘Mr Lackland,’ Amanda said, a small audience, mainly kids, forming behind her, ‘you were reported this morning to be calling for an exorcism here. And now this happens. Do you see a connection?’
‘Not in so many words,’ George said. ‘You know me, Amanda, we’ve had many a drink together in the Feathers, and you know I only act on what I believe the majority of people here would want me to—’
‘I’m sorry, George,’ Amanda said. ‘Could we start again, without the personal stuff; this is likely to go network.’ She turned to the cameraman. ‘Can you wipe that, Neil?’
George had clearly done this before, many times, knew how to kill a question he didn’t want to answer. Amanda was repositioning them for a second take when Merrily heard the voice of the policewoman, Kelly, from the other side of the castle gate.
‘Where’s he gone? Mr Longbeach!’
Lol hugged Merrily quickly and went to the gate.
‘All right, you can go in, Mr Longbeach,’ Kelly said. ‘Across the green, over the bridge, through the gate at the big tower. Sergeant Britton will be there. Don’t talk to anyone but Sergeant Britton, you understand?’
‘Thank you,’ Lol said.
The sun was hanging like a tarnished penny over distant Mid-Wales hills as they opened the castle gate for Lol, a diminutive figure in his Gomer Parry Plant Hire sweatshirt.
Merrily stared: what was he doing?
* * *
His interview over, George spotted Merrily and came across. They were almost alone on the square now, except for police, press people and the couple with the Power of God placard, who had been away and come back. The cameraman was trying to shoot the placard, instructing them not to look into the camera.
‘Come and have a coffee, Mrs Watkins,’ George said.
‘Just had some tea, thanks. I’m fine.’
‘You’re wasting your time, they’re not gonner let you in.’
‘No.’ She knew how pathetic she must be looking. ‘George…
‘You want to come back to the house, talk to Nancy?’
‘George, what happened between you and Bell?’
She was watching his face and saw it flinch. Saw his whole frame rock, the way a telegraph pole sometimes seemed to when hit by a sudden gust. But George recovered quickly.
‘Mrs Watkins, I think I told you and Bernard that I have as little as possible to do with the woman.’
‘Yes, but why?’
‘Because she’s not my type of person.’
‘All right. The petition, then.’ She leaned against the great cannon. ‘Why did you feel the need to manufacture that petition? What do you care about exorcizing Marion de la Bruyère? Reflecting public demand? Bollocks, George. There virtually isn’t any.’
‘Not the most seemly language from a lady of the cloth.’
‘Why don’t you let those poor people take their placard home? They’d much rather be watching Casualty.’
‘Not very well disposed towards you, are they?’ the Mayor said. ‘Those folks in the castle.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘Woman with white hair and a dog collar? Doesn’t seem to like you at all.’
‘Nice try, George.’ She looked across at the TV team, on the corner of Mill Street. ‘Could be a long night for Amanda. I wonder if she’d like another interview, expressing serious doubts that anyone’s interested in disposing of Marion. As such. Only that someone might be hoping someone else might be damaged in the… in the slipstream of an exorcism. Or is cleansing a better word? A general cleansing. The removal of something dirty. Which wouldn’t necessarily be my word, but might be yours, Mr Mayor.’
George adjusted his watch-chain. ‘Leave this alone, Mrs Watkins. You’re on your own here. Even Bernard’s keeping his head down. Besides, you’re not even wearing your clerical uniform.’ He looked across at Amanda. ‘She wouldn’t—’
‘Amanda knows me. I’m like you, done this before. Learned how to use the media to put the cat among the pigeons. And sometimes to take the cat away before it does any damage. Not that I normally go in for that. I just… don’t seem to have much to lose tonight.’
‘I can’t talk about it.’ George backed away. ‘Not to a woman.’
‘Oh, you can,’ Merrily said softly. ‘I’m very non-judgemental. And awfully discreet.’
‘Please…’
‘And it’s not as if you were the first. Just the first citizen.’
The Inner Bailey was more impressive and better preserved than you would have expected from outside. A serious bit of building: walls and towers, archways and openings. Defensive holes expanded into stone window frames, entrances exposing stone stairways spiralling into the dark.
And it was quite dark in here; the retreating sun, already cloaked in aspiring rain clouds, had slipped away behind the outer walls, and Lol was feeling the chill of second thoughts.
‘Just that they weren’t expecting you,’ Sergeant Britton told him.
‘No. Sorry about the casual…’ Lol tugged at his Gomer Parry sweatshirt. ‘I just had the message from the Bishop’s office, and I thought, better not waste any time.’
‘Not to worry — they said you were slightly unconventional, sir.’
In the centre of the inner space was a squat round tower with a Norman arch and a mullioned window but no roof. A group of people had assembled outside it, mainly uniformed police and paramedics. Lol kept his distance.
‘How’s the girl?’
‘Sitting tight. Nearly four hours now. Dr Saltash is convinced she has absolutely no intention of doing it, just wants an audience.’ Ste
ve Britton sniffed. ‘Wouldn’t bet on it, meself. She’ll be quite rational one minute, accepting a pack of sandwiches, can of Coke… and then she’s back up into the window space, all hunched up. And you know that all she’s gotter do is lean gently back and it’s all over.’
‘Salt— Nigel’s talking to her himself?’
‘Sandy Gee, our family liaison officer — she’s doing most of the talking, sometimes the Canon, when the girl starts on about being possessed. Dr Saltash is watching and making observations, offering advice. He says he’ll come out and talk to you in a few minutes, if you just hang on here. There’s really not that much space in there, and they don’t want her to feel crowded or threatened.’
‘When you say possessed? Things were a bit rushed. The Bishop’s office didn’t have time to explain much on the phone.’
‘They watch too much TV, sir. Too many DVDs. And what was in the morning papers didn’t help, obviously. All I know is she apparently turned up this morning, hung around for a couple of hours, found nothing was happening and got herself in a state. Then she sees the scaffolding in the tower, and up she goes. First she’s come to kill herself, then she’s waiting for the exorcism. Confused.’
‘Have they… done anything? Any kind of…’
‘Mumbo-jumbo? Sorry, sir, forgetting who I’m talking to. Long day. No, Dr Saltash advises against it, and I think he’s probably right. In my experience, you need to calm people like this down, not overexcite them.’
‘Sarge!’ The policewoman, Kelly, appeared by the gatehouse, holding up a mobile phone. ‘DI Bliss, Hereford. They’ve found the parents. They were shopping in Worcester.’
‘OK,’ Steve Britton said. ‘Better have a word. Excuse me, Mr Longbeach.’
And so Lol was on his own when Saltash came out of the castle.
Never seen him before, but there could be no mistake. Something in the walk, something in the cursory inspection of the police and paramedics gathered by the sawn-off round tower.
Sometimes, Lol wondered if there really was some trait, some aspect of demeanour, that united psychiatrists or if it was simply something that he projected on men once he knew that this was what they did. And they were men, nearly all of them. Maybe most women didn’t have the arrogance for it. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to sleep so easily.
Saltash wore a cream-coloured cotton suit. His tie was loosened. His face was narrow and evenly tanned, lined rather than wrinkled, and his grey beard was barbered to the length of his grey hair. He stood on the short, tufted grass, where shadows converged, looking around for a man whom Merrily had said was plump and friendly and conspicuously camp. He didn’t move, expecting the man to approach him.
Lol wandered over. ‘Dr Saltash?’
Saltash stared through him. ‘I’m looking for Martin Longbeach. Is he here?’
‘I think you’re looking for me.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Saltash said. ‘Because you don’t appear to be Martin Longbeach.’
‘And you don’t appear to be Lord Shipston,’ Lol said, aware of so many years tumbling into this moment. ‘But I think you know him.’
43
Nobody but God
The Palmers’ window told its tale in reds and blues and gold.
Merrily made out a ship bound for the Holy Land, a stylized ship like a floating horn, with people far too big to fit into it. She saw King Edward the Confessor and St John the Evangelist, whose chapel was dominated by this window. The mystical ring passing between St John and the King, via the Palmers, all dressed in blue.
Mostly myth and wishful thinking. The Saxon King Edward had predated the first of the Ludlow Palmers by about two centuries.
The Chapel of St John, the original Palmers’ chapel, was to the left of the high altar in St Laurence’s, a dark three-aisle palace of a church, not far short of a cathedral. George Lackland stood at the entrance to the chapel, his back to a narrow door set in stone. Looking down, Merrily saw she was standing on an inscribed tombstone.
‘Guild wardens buried under here,’ George said.
He and Merrily were alone in the church, George having obtained the keys from the verger on his way out. Who could anyone trust with the keys more than George, former churchwarden and a merchant of quality who, in the Middle Ages, would surely have been a prominent Palmer himself?
Not that the Lacklands had been in Ludlow in the Middle Ages; they hadn’t left East Anglia until the eighteenth century. But George, with his tiered face and his slow-burn eyes, looked like part of the story, part of the myth.
It would have been enough for Bell.
‘One weekend — a Saturday — we were all here… in the church.’ His voice was dry and ashy. ‘Nancy and Susannah and Stephen and me. And her.’
Merrily recalled George’s description of Bell on that day or a similar one: dressed decently and conservatively. Her Edwardian summer dress, her blonde hair neatly styled. Quite girlish, rather attractive.
A day in the rosy dawn of Bell’s love affair with Ludlow. Tripping and gliding around the Buttercross, her smiling face upturned to the sun.
‘Like a buttercup,’ George said now, his voice laden with a damp sorrow. ‘And then she wanted to go to the top of the tower.’ He turned to the narrow door behind him. ‘This is the way, behind here, see.’
‘Famous viewpoint,’ Merrily said, ‘I’d guess.’
‘Spectacular. See for miles. But it’s a long old haul — couple of hundred steps, and it seems like more. Bell said would someone like to go up with her? Nancy said, no, thanks, once was enough, and her legs ached for days afterwards. Susannah wasn’t particularly interested either, so I said — because, I suppose, I didn’t want her to think I was an old man — I said, Aye, I’ll go. I’ll go up with you.’
George turned his back on the door. He said the steps were very narrow and twisty, so it was necessary to go up in single file. There was a rope that you could hold on to, to help pull yourself up.
Bell went first. You can catch me if I fall, George, she said.
‘She didn’t fall. She was very light on her feet.’
‘Oh yes.’ Merrily recalled the stage act — split black skirts, bare feet.
‘I tried to leave a bit of space between us, see, but when you’re on a tight spiral the person in front’s apt to disappear around a bend. You know what I mean?’
‘Mmm.’ Vicars knew about church spirals.
‘So, three or four times, Bell would come to a sudden stop on a bend, and I’d go bumping up against her. Which was embarrassing for me, but she’d just laugh. That laugh that she has, far back in her throat.’
George wouldn’t look at Merrily while he was talking. His gaze was raised to the Palmers’ window, as if he was wishing he could sail away to the Holy Land or anywhere. Merrily felt that the closer George’s story took them to the top of the tower, the more it was plummeting to the bottom of his own deepest well.
He’d refused to tell her about this in the street, insisted on coming into the church, knowing it was about to close for the night, as if it was part of his penance to unload it all before God and a woman young enough to be his daughter, who also happened to be an ordained priest.
George in purgatory.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘when we finally emerged at the top, Bell starts dancing around, with her arms thrown out. Well… there’s not much room up there — big sort of pyramid coming out the middle with the weathercock sticking out the top.’
Such a proud cock, Bell had said and giggled outrageously, the sleeves of her dress rippling up her arms.
George’s half-shadowed face was blushing a deeper red than King Edward’s footstool in the Palmers’ window as he described how he’d turned away from the woman and gone to look out at the view to the west, doing a bit of a commentary.
Over there in the west, behind those hills, that’s towards Knighton, see, which is in Radnorshire — and that’s Wales. Not many folks know that Ludlow, although it’s in England, used to
be the main administrative centre for Wales — the military capital.’
When he’d stopped talking, there had been no sound from behind him, no rustling of her papery frock. When he turned, she was nowhere in sight. Ludlow was spread out far below them, like a model village, and his heart had lurched and he’d shouted, in alarm, Bell!
And heard her laughing again, a dry, brittle, chattering sound. Looking down in horror to see her coiled on the stones at his feet, those arms and hands weaving in and out of his legs like white serpents.
‘Serpents,’ George spat.
There was an inviting-looking gift shop at the foot of the vast nave, with cards and all the books and pamphlets about Ludlow and its church. Merrily went to stand there while George stood in the nearest aisle, with his feet together and his head hanging down, like a victim of self-crucifixion.
Of course, it went without saying that he’d never behaved like that in his life before, not even when he was a young man, before he’d been married to Nancy.
Well, no.
George was… the epitome of Old Ludlow… An honourable man. Conservative in every conceivable sense of the word.
‘And on the church.’ A bony hand tightening on a pew end. ‘Of all places, on the tower itself, where…’
Where nobody could see them but God.
As if they were putting on a show for Him.
‘On the Monday,’ George said. ‘I formally handed in my resignation as senior churchwarden. Said I was not able to perform the duties as assiduously as was necessary, due to my impending mayoral year. And this, I’m afraid, is the first time I’ve been in here since, apart from services. And even then I feel dirty… soiled. Every Sunday, soiled, a disgrace.’
‘I’m the first person you’ve told?’
‘Other than in my prayers.’
Merrily didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t exactly a huge surprise. There had to have been something. She wondered if Susannah had actually known, from Bell, or if she’d just suspected.
