by Phil Rickman
‘And I don’t want people talkin’ about me in the church,’ Dexter said. ‘She said you was just gonner… I dunno, just do the healin’.’
‘It wouldn’t be like that, Dexter — people talking about you. It’s just, you know, to give me some guidance. Everything you tell me is totally confidential. Just between the two of us.’
‘Nothing to tell.’
‘Have you really not been in a church since your christening? No weddings? Funerals?’
He didn’t reply. In the silence, she thought his breath had coarsened. She tapped the Anglepoise button, still didn’t press it down. The directional light might make this seem too much like an old-style police interrogation. She thought of the basement interview rooms, opposite the cells at Hereford police headquarters, the ventilator grilles high on the walls, no windows. You didn’t need to be asthmatic to feel you couldn’t breathe down there.
‘You ever been in bother with the police, Dexter?’
It just came out, on the back of the thought.
‘Eh?’
‘Look, I’m sorry if that was—’
‘I fuckin’ knew it.’ Dexter was pushing back the chair.
‘I’m sorry.’ With difficulty, she didn’t move. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’
a feeling — or a word — sometimes drops into our minds.
Dexter was on his feet, a terrifying rattle in his breath.
‘It was out of order,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I dunno…’ Dexter moved clumsily to the door. ‘Dunno what she’s been tellin’ you, that ole bat.’ He had his inhaler out. ‘But fuck this for a game of soldiers.’
When Eirion tried to ease Jane back onto the bed, she just couldn’t go for it. Not with Mum two floors below, doing what she was doing. Doing the business, doing the priest bit, whatever she perceived that was today.
‘I really worry about her now.’ Jane sat on the edge of the bed, with her elbows on her knees.
‘It’s probably reciprocated tenfold,’ Eirion said.
‘I’m serious. The Jenny Box thing, that whole affair, it really messed her up — this woman in desperate need of support, sitting on awful secrets, and Mum not being there for her when it came to a head.’
‘She couldn’t know, though, Jane, could she?’
‘It doesn’t matter, she still feels responsible. Male priests can be aloof from it all — if they can get a few bums on pews then they feel they still have a role and a bit of status. Women, everything that goes wrong they take it as their fault.’
‘Isn’t that slightly sexist?’ Eirion said.
‘And with Mum you’ve got this constant self-questioning — all this, “Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing to try and fill His bloody sandals?” ’
Eirion came and sat close to Jane, bending forward to peer into her face.
‘I’m not upset,’ Jane said, ‘just in case you were thinking I might be in need of a groin to cry on.’
‘So what is she doing?’
‘Huh?’
‘Down there, with this bloke.’
‘I think she’s been invited to cure whatever it is that’s causing him to keep sucking his inhaler.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘OK.’ Jane let him take her hand. ‘It started with Ann-Marie Herdman. It’s all round the village that Ann-Marie Herdman was cured of something very nasty — that she may or may not have had — after Mum prayed for her. Now, if it had been a regular prayer for the sick, in the course of a normal service, nobody would’ve said a word. But because it was at one of the mysterious new Sunday-night sessions where there are weird things like — woooh — meditation… then it must be… you know?’
‘She’s teaching meditation now?’
‘In a simplistic Christian way. Nothing esoteric. I didn’t realize how far it had got until I went down the shop a couple of hours ago for some stuff for sandwiches, and there were these two women talking about it to Brenda, who’s Ann-Marie’s mum. I mean, I knew about Ann-Marie, but I thought it was just another NHS cock-up. I didn’t realize Mum was in the frame as… God, I can’t bear it. And if I can’t bear it, how does she feel?’
‘They’re saying she has healing skills?’
‘It’s the way people are, that’s all. Always desperate for evidence of miracles. It’s like when all these idiots form queues to worship a potato with the face of Jesus. One of the women said Alice Meek had brought her nephew in to have the vicar pray for him to be healed, and I’m imagining some little kid, and I’m thinking, Oh God, this is terrible, that’s all she needs. Then Mum turns up with this big jerk with the inhaler who keeps leering at me and accidentally rubbing his leg against mine under the table. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so… not funny.’
‘So what exactly is she doing?’
‘If she’s got any sense, Irene, she’s explaining to him that she’s unfortunately become the focus for a load of superstitious bollocks put about by old women with nothing better to occupy their minds. And then maybe suggest to this guy — Dexter, for heaven’s sake — that they say a quick prayer together but don’t expect to be throwing his inhaler into the river just yet.’
Eirion thought about this. He was Welsh; a large number of them still took religion seriously. ‘But she’s a priest,’ he said.
‘Er… yes.’
‘Don’t you see? She has to acknowledge at least the possibility of miracles. She has to accept that God can do it, and that she could be a channel for it. She can’t just walk away from it if anybody thinks there’s a small chance. You know?’
Jane sighed. ‘It’s a fine line.’
‘It’s not that fine, Jane.’
‘The big joke…’ Jane stared at the Mondrian walls — big plaster squares in the timber framing that she’d painted in primary colours. ‘The big joke is that women think getting ordained was some huge coup for their sex. The fact is, it’s the crappiest job there is, and it’s getting worse all the time, as society gets more and more secular and cynical. It’s obvious that the ordination of women was actually a subtle conspiracy by the male clergy, desperately searching for fall guys as everything around them collapses into some like… pre-Armageddon bleakness.’
‘I thought you were over that.’ Eirion stood up and walked to the window. It had started snowing: not much, but it always looked worse from up here, especially at dusk, white on grey.
‘I have the occasional relapse,’ Jane said.
Eirion sighed. ‘So, do you want to know how to work this video camera, or what?’
Maybe Merrily should have realized that something was spinning out of control. Maybe, if she hadn’t been thinking about Dexter Harris, she would have been curious about the extra cars on the village square. She didn’t even notice them.
It was becoming unexpectedly cold — she was aware of that. She saw snowflakes clustered like moths around the fake gas-lamps on the square. As soon as she slid into church, wearing Jane’s old duffel coat over jeans, her black cashmere sweater and her smallest pectoral cross, she made sure that the heating was on full — checking that Uncle Ted hadn’t crept in and turned it down.
He hadn’t, for once, but she still felt a need to do more and lugged the little cast-iron Calor-gas stove out of the vestry, wheeling it to the bottom of the chancel steps. It wouldn’t make much difference, temperature-wise, but a glimpse of real, orange flames kind of warmed the soul.
She felt domestic about the church tonight, wanting to turn the House of God into a big kitchen.
How she felt about Dexter Harris — that was different. The fact that he was so charmless and unresponsive somehow made it more important to try and help him. The fact that he didn’t want to be helped made it complicated: if there was something in his past that had caused or advanced the asthma, did she have any right, let alone responsibility, to try and find out about it?
Responsibility: where did it begin and where did it end?
Sitting alone in th
e choir stalls, she cleared Dexter from her mind, closed her eyes and became aware of her breathing, allowing it to regulate itself. A short meditation had become an essential preliminary to the Sunday-evening session. When she sat down here, twenty minutes before the start, she would usually have no real idea at all what form it would be taking. But when she stood up again, that no longer mattered.
It was the sounds of movement that brought her out of it. Too much movement. She knew her church; she knew her congregations and the sounds of them, familiar coughs and whispers.
When she came back into the body of the church, standing next to the faintly hissing gas stove, it was like she was in some other parish, staring out at faces she didn’t recognize: a woman with a baby, two teenage girls. And in the aisles, two wheelchairs, one occupied by a boy of about eleven and the other by a woman in her fifties with a tartan rug over her knees.
There was a shuffling quiet in the church, everybody looking at Merrily, in her black sweater and her jeans, and she felt small, bewildered, desperate.
Fraudulent.
It was snowing so hard that Eirion had to leave. Jane had been hoping he wouldn’t notice until it was too late, so he’d have to spend the night, but he’d borrowed his stepmother’s car again, needed to get it back to Abergavenny.
Jane stood at the front door, cuddling Ethel the cat and watching through the bare trees as he drove away, red lights reflected in the half-inch of unsullied snow on Church Street. Much of what he’d told her about the camera she was sure she hadn’t really taken in, but she’d made notes. She ought to practise with the gear before she went back to Stanner. In normal circumstances she could ask Mum to help, perhaps record an interview with her, with the external mike plugged in. Except that, because of the nature of what she might be shooting up at Stanner, it wasn’t wise even to mention it.
Christianity was a minefield. You could talk about spirituality but not spiritualism, open yourself to spiritual healing but never spirit healing. If she told Mum about the White Company, she’d be letting herself in for one of those long, serious talks, ending with the usual warnings: Well, it’s up to you, you’re intelligent and old enough to make up your own mind about what you get involved in, but…
The rest unsaid, the word ‘betrayal’ never passing between them.
The phone was ringing. Normally, she’d let the machine grab it, but she felt like talking to somebody. She stepped back inside and shut the front door, putting Ethel down and dashing through the kitchen into the scullery to snatch up the receiver.
‘Ledwardine Vicarage.’
‘Mrs Watkins?’ Female voice.
‘No, she’s in church. Can I help?’
‘Oh… no… It’s all right, I’ll call back.’
‘Can I give her a message?’
‘No, it’s all right, really.’
The caller hung up, just as Jane recognized the voice. Was sure she’d recognized the voice.
She dialled 1471.
‘You were called at seven-fourteen today. The caller withheld—’
Jane hung up. Two chairs were pulled away from the desk, as if Mum and Dexter had left in a hurry. Jane sat down in one.
Talk about betrayal…
Danny tried to listen to some music, but The Foo Fighters made his headache worse. It was the first time this had happened; normally, the heavier the music the more it relaxed him. In the end he watched telly with Greta, listening to Heartbeat with his eyes shut, identifying the sixties numbers on the soundtrack until he fell asleep.
And Greta woke him again, with the cordless phone.
‘No,’ Danny mumbled. ‘Please, God.’
‘Gwilym Bufton, it is. I told him you wasn’t well, but he said you’d want to hear this.’
‘Gwilym?’ Danny struggled to a sitting position. First time he’d had a call from the feed dealer since he’d given up livestock, which Gwilym saw as an act of treachery.
‘’Ow’re you, boy?’
‘Half dead.’
‘That’s good. Looks like we’re in for some snow, ennit?’
‘Sure t’ be.’
‘Not a problem for you n’more. In fact, it’ll be contract work with the council, you and Gomer. Got your plough fitted?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Good business, Gomer’s.’
Danny waited, his head throbbing. Bloody trouble with Border folk, took for ever to get to the point. For ever later, Gwilym gets there.
‘What you been doing to Sebbie, then?’
‘What have I been doing—?’
‘You and the Berrows boy.’
‘What’s he saying we done?’
‘En’t said a thing. Havin’ a go at him, though, wasn’t you? Not a happy man in the pub afterwards.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘Just wonderin’ what else you might’ve yeard.’
‘Like?’ This needed care; Sebbie was a valued client of Gwilym’s.
‘Worried man, Danny.’
‘Din’t look worried to me.’
‘Well, he don’t, do he? All bluff and bluster. You remember Zelda? Zelda Morgan, from the Min of Ag, as was?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘Sebbie been giving Zelda one for quite a while,’ Gwilym said. ‘Her lives in hope, poor cow. Distant relative of my good lady, see.’
‘I’d make it even more distant, her becomes Mrs Dacre.’
Gwilym laughed, just a bit. ‘He don’t sleep much.’
‘Zelda’s complainin’?’
‘Zelda’s bothered, Danny. Wakes in the night, there’s Sebbie, bollock-naked at the window. Shaking. Shaking like with the cold. And it is cold in Sebbie’s bedroom, but it never bothers him as a rule.’
‘Mabbe not as much as the price of heating-oil.’
As well as feed, Gwilym was the agent for an oil depot in Hereford.
‘So he’s going — this is Sebbie — he’s going — “Look, look…” Drags Zelda out of bed, points down the valley, over Berrows’s ground. “See it, see it?” ’
‘See what?’
‘Her don’t know. He won’t say. And Zelda don’t see nothing. Moonlit fields, that’s all. Couple nights later, wakes her up again. “You hear that? You hear that?” Her can’t year nothing, ’cept for Sebbie bleating like a ewe in labour. This is confidential, Danny.’
Sure it was. Fellers like Gwilym doing the rounds, farm to farm, was the reason this valley leaked like a smashed sump.
‘So what’s this gotter do with me?’ Danny said, patient as he could manage with a bad head. ‘If Dacre’s losin’ it, he’s losin’ it.’
‘And then Sebbie’s going, “It’s coming out of Berrows’s ground… Berrows’s ground.” ’
Danny’s hand tightened on the cordless. He said casually, ‘Good to know the bastard recognizes the boundary now.’
‘He says, “It’s Berrows. Berrows and that bitch.” ’
‘Zelda tell you this herself?’
‘Zelda’s pretty scared, Danny. Her asks Sebbie about it next morning, over breakfast, bugger hits the roof. Sweeps the bloody cups off the table, everything smashed. Thought he was gonner hit her. White with rage.’
‘He’s always bloody white, Gwilym, it’s the skin he’s got.’
‘So, like, Zelda says to me, “Can you ask Jeremy Berrows ’bout this? I can’t never talk to him.” ’
‘Which is why you’re askin’ me,’ Danny said.
‘En’t real sure what I’m asking, Danny. You’re the nearest he’s got to a friend — do any of this make sense?’
Danny thought about it.
‘No,’ he said after a bit. ‘Do me one favour, Gwilym, don’t spread this around. Gimme a chance to find out what I can. Or am I too late already?’
‘You knows me, boy.’
‘Aye,’ Danny said. That was the bloody trouble.
‘What was that about?’ Greta said when he’d clicked off.
‘Feller Gwilym knows with a David Brown tractor for sale.
I said I’d pass the word on to Gomer.’
‘In other words, keep your nose out, Greta,’ Greta said.
Danny stared into the reddening wood-stove.
16
Responding to Images
Frannie Bliss, of Hereford CID, called back on Monday afternoon, just as the light was fading.
‘Not a career criminal, Merrily, I can tell you that much.’
‘Didn’t really think he would be.’ Merrily brought the cordless and a mug of tea to the kitchen table. ‘I just thought, with mention of all the clubs… drugs?’
‘Certainly not a recognized dealer and if he was dealing he doesn’t sound bright enough that we wouldn’t know. Doesn’t sound like he could run very fast, either, if we were after him.’
‘Sorry.’ She pulled over the ashtray, fed up now. ‘Shouldn’t have asked you.’
And wouldn’t even have considered an approach to any other copper, but by now she and the Mersey exile Bliss knew too many of each other’s flaws for him to sell her down the Wye.
As for the ethics, it went like this: she was following through on something that might help Dexter Harris with his medical condition. She had nothing to tell Bliss that might get Dexter nicked. She hadn’t even told him why she wanted to know if Hereford Division had ever heard of Dexter, and he hadn’t asked her.
‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘I’ve known a few disabled villains over the years. Only difference is they tend to have less conscience. Feeling the world owes them. A wheelchair ramp at the town hall is often considered insufficient recompense.’
Merrily found a grin. ‘It’s so reassuring to talk to a man for whom the pit of human depravity can have no floor.’
‘Ah, you’re following your nose. You’re a priest. How can you know if a gut feeling isn’t a tip-off from God?’
‘That’s very empathetic, Francis.’
‘Yeh, well…’ Bliss was a Catholic from what was probably still the most Catholic city in England. He knew all the questions priests asked themselves with little hope of a convincing answer.
‘So, how are… things?’ Merrily said.
‘Kirsty? We’re not out the woods yet, but we’re having what you might call a trial reconciliation. It’s a start. The Job: I’m not on any shortlist for DCI as yet, but the word is that the main man in Worcester who, as you know, does not love me like a brother, may be on the top-detectives’ transfer list, with an eye on Thames Valley. So that could be goodish news.’
