by Phil Rickman
‘I’d heard you didn’t talk about it.’
‘What’s the point? You want some whingeing psychobabble? Psychiatrists and therapists… every so often, one would have a go at me. Sod that. I don’t make excuses, I don’t feel self-pity, and I don’t permit myself to feel pity for… them. I did my time, I deserved it, that’s it.’
It sounded like a litany, one she’d intoned many times.
‘And I’m not mentally ill like my mother, and I’m not a drunk like my gran.’
‘Your mother was—?’
‘My mother, at the age of seven, tried to kill her sister. She was rescued from a psychiatric hospital by my father. Not long after I was born, she slashed her wrists in the bath. Let’s not talk about it. I’m not mad.’
What? ‘You’re probably too sane,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s what’s scary.’
‘One of a number of things, actually.’
‘You came here as owner of The Nant?’
‘Done some homework, then. I’ve got a dossier on you, too. No, a lawyer and an accountant see to all that. I came because something had already happened. Well, two things. One, like I said, because Clancy stuck a Biro in a kid’s eye. Two, because my dad was dead, but before he died he told me what he should’ve told me years before. Told me about Hattie and what happened at the big house we used to look at through the pines, Jeremy and me, when I was a kid on holiday.’
‘Did your mother know about Hattie?’
‘She’d cancelled Hattie from her history at an early age, but Hattie came through — or something did. My mother was diagnosed as schizophrenic. My dad was a male nurse who thought he could handle that.’
‘And you really didn’t know until—?’
‘My dad didn’t know until he brought me up here to look at The Nant, and Eddie Berrows told him.’
Merrily said, ‘Clancy… the pen… was that the only time?’
‘I hope so. Look, I said the shrinks never got anywhere with me, and that’s true, but there was one guy. He was the chaplain at my last place — the open prison. He was ex-Army, and he went back into the Army as a chaplain a year or so later. He was very posh, but a bit of a rough diamond, and we… got on, you know? Mates, kind of. The last year, I’d go out for weekends and stay at his place, with his wife and kids. It was a laugh. He wasn’t holier-than-thou, and he had his problems. And he’d keep saying to me, “You need a better priest than me.” ’
‘What did he mean by—?’ Smoke from under the green log belched into the room like dragon’s breath and made Merrily cough.
‘What he meant was a Deliverance priest, and he tried to explain what that meant, but I was like, “Sod off, Chas; what am I, demonic?” He… we still stayed in touch after I came out, and he must’ve been in contact with Ellie Maylord because he rang me a couple of nights after she did, about the biro incident. I’d spoken to my dad by then, and I told Chas about Hattie, and I said — even though I hadn’t really made a decision at that stage — that I was thinking about coming back here to suss all that out, and he went a bit quiet. Well, what did he think, I was gonna be like my mother, run away, pretend it never happened? Even she finally realized that was futile. The next night he’s on the phone again: “I’m going to give you the name of someone who can help you.” I was still managing this hotel in Shropshire, and he faxed me some stuff over, and it said, The Rev. Merrily Watkins, Ledwardine. He said he knew you and he’d have a word with you if I wanted. I said, Forget it, no way, stay the hell out of it.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Chas? Charles Headland. The Reverend. You remember him?’
Merrily sank back into the sofa, an image coming up of an unforgiving, grey Nonconformist chapel below the point of Pen-y-fan in the Brecon Beacons, overlooking the valley of the shadow of death. An ill-assorted bunch of Anglican priests, most of them nervous, a couple over-confident, trying to see across the valley.
‘I was on a course with him. The course — the Deliverance course. Where we were trained to investigate the paranormal and told where to sprinkle the holy water. I knew he’d been in the Army, but he never said anything about being chaplain of a women’s prison. Where is he now?’
‘He’s out of it. He’s not even a vicar any more. He had a breakdown.’
‘I didn’t know.’ It happened. It happened to Deliverance ministers in particular.
‘He faxed me a load of guff — where you lived, your phone number, the fact that you had a daughter about Clancy’s age who went to Moorfield High School. Which was the only bit that was any use, initially. I didn’t want Clancy to go to the school at Kington in case… well, I don’t trust people, I didn’t want any risk of it getting out. So I got Clancy into Moorfield, which was a safe-ish distance away. And I did ask her to look out for a girl called Jane Watkins, if only for Chas’s sake. Not realizing Clancy was going to be practically stalking the poor kid.’
Merrily sat up.
Brigid smiled ruefully. ‘She’s quite good at not seeming to be doing it. She has a talent for appearing forlorn and vulnerable.’
Merrily remembered Jane telling her, half-exasperated, about the new girl who hung around looking all needy and alienated. Who was a year behind where she ought to be and therefore had to go into classes with little kids. How they had absolutely nothing in common, but she felt sorry for her and…
Merrily began to feel uneasy.
‘It was me who got the Foleys to offer Jane a job,’ Brigid said. ‘I don’t know why I did it, really. Except that I supposed it would guarantee Jane not becoming too fed up with Clancy, and I thought Jane was probably good for her. And Amber kept offering to pay Clancy to help out around the place, and frankly I didn’t want her around this place too much. I suppose that while I wanted to find Hattie Chancery I didn’t want Hattie to find Clancy. If that makes any sense.’
Merrily nodded, lighting another cigarette.
‘I got to know a woman called Beth Pollen, whose husband had died, and the suddenness of it had thrown her into spiritualism. She was interested in Stanner, because he’d been doing a paper on it, and… she was OK. Somebody I could trust, amazingly. So I did. Beth became the first person outside the System I’d ever just told who I was and what I’d done. And she said that if there was an ancestral problem here — a curse, however seriously you want to take that as a description — then we should address it from a position of knowledge. Between us, we uncovered a lot of stuff about the Chancerys and Hattie and what she was like. We went right back into it… right back to Ellen Gethin, who was the wife of Black Vaughan and killed this guy in cold blood after he killed her younger brother who—’
The lounge door opened a crack, and Brigid turned and waved, and the policewoman, Alma, came in. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Thanks,’ Merrily said. Alma went out and the door closed.
‘I still didn’t want to involve you,’ Brigid said. ‘I didn’t want us to have a half-arsed bloody exorcism — not after we found out about the crazy thing the Chancerys did, when the guy over the fireplace may or may not have been in attendance. I didn’t want to resort to superstition, if there was any way… I don’t know what I wanted.’
Jeremy? Did you want Jeremy?
The question had kept pushing itself into Merrily’s head, and she kept pushing it back. She was aware that Brigid had mentioned Jeremy only in passing, only in relation to some other point she was making.
The log on the fire was giving up. There were no more flames. Brigid shivered and pushed her arms into her cardigan. Her mouth was wide and generous, her eyes were warm, with deep, wry lines in the corners, and she talked like she was already back behind bars.
‘I gather you’ve got quite a big vicarage in Ledwardine. Seven bedrooms?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Just you and Jane?’
‘Mmm.’
‘I won’t dress this up. Would you have room for Clancy?’
‘What?’
‘That’s my
bottom-line question. When I go away again, can Clancy come and live with you?’
‘I—’
‘Jane’s told Clancy all about you and your situation. Jane’s done a lot of rabbiting, because Clan doesn’t have much to say, except to me.’ Brigid was talking rapidly now. ‘Jane’s told her about the big vicarage, and Lol, and how inhibited you are about that — not wanting anybody to know, not wanting to be seen as living in sin, and yet you’re big on the concept of the Church offering sanctuary, and you feel guilty about all those bedrooms doing nothing, and… Look, I’m sorry to hang it on you like this, Merrily, but what other chance am I going to have?’
‘Brigid, it’s—’
‘Natalie. It’s Natalie. For the moment, it’s Natalie.’
‘It’s a big step.’
‘It could be the biggest thing you ever did. I mean it’s too late for me, right? And yeah, I feel very bad about putting this kind of responsibility on anybody. But what happens if Clancy goes into the System? What happens if she goes into the System and somebody gets hurt, or somebody dies? Go on, tell me I’m being ridiculously superstitious. Tell me, from your vast experience as a Deliverance Minister, that I’m entirely irrational.’
‘No. You’re not.’
‘Doesn’t have to be a full-time thing — I realize that if Jane thinks Clancy’s a pain in the arse now, that isn’t going to improve. I thought maybe Danny and Greta, they got no kids… I thought they could have her some of the time, to take the pressure off.’
‘That’s why you sent her to Greta tonight?’
‘It was an opportunity. I didn’t realize, obviously, how tonight would turn out — this wasn’t a set-up, Merrily, it wasn’t cold-blooded. Listen, the other thing is that money won’t be a problem. I know how pitifully little the clergy earn, and I can pay you ten grand a year, maybe a good bit more, until she’s twenty-one. It’s… all arranged.’
‘It isn’t about—’
‘What it’s about is spiritual security. And I know it’s a huge thing to ask, and I promise that if it goes wrong for her, I will never, never hold you in any way responsible.’
‘Natalie, how long have you been planning this?’
‘Is that important?’
‘And what about Jeremy Berrows?’
The door opened again, and Bliss’s head appeared. ‘Ladies—’
‘Five minutes, Frannie,’ Merrily said. ‘Please.’ Before the door had closed, she was leaning forward. ‘What about Jeremy?’
‘I’ve damaged him enough,’ Brigid said. ‘It’s best if he doesn’t see me again. Best if he truly forgets me this time, and that’s all I want to say about it.’
Her face had become flushed and against the faded brocade of the chair she looked radiantly beautiful, lit up by this powerfully incandescent, raging… sorrow.
Merrily said, ‘Tell me something: did you ever love him at all, or was he just the only man you could be around for any length of time without wanting to take him apart?’
‘That’s not fair—’
‘Natalie, we don’t have time for fair.’
‘What do you…?’ Brigid Parsons dug her shoulders into the back of her chair, pulling her cardigan tightly across the opening of her shirt, as if it was a gash. ‘What do you know about Jeremy, anyway?’
‘I’m just trying to work out, from the bits you’ve let slip, whether you came back here for Jeremy or Sebbie Dacre.’
‘You can’t—’
‘I mean, to kill him. Kill Dacre. And I don’t really know where that came from. All I do know is how perilously close you came to killing them both.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Erm, earlier tonight, Jeremy—’
Brigid Parsons stood up so suddenly that she knocked over the coffee table and both cups. ‘What’s he done?’
Bliss and Alma exploded into the room, followed by two male uniforms.
45
Fatalist
It had stopped snowing again, but this only made the air seem colder and the sky darker. Alice was breathing up at it — a damp, soughing sound, like the wind through rotting leaves.
Alice was birdlike, but she was soaked and felt like dead weight as Lol waded through the orchard under the snowlagged limbs of apple trees that he never saw until it was too late, because he’d had to leave the Maglite behind on the tomb, along with Alice’s shoes buried in the snow.
It seemed strange that, when some snow-fuzzed twig scraped her cheek, she didn’t wake up struggling and flapping, cawing at him, outraged. He wondered if she would ever wake up again and what state she’d be in if she did, how much of her would be functioning. Salt and vinegar on that, is it, lovey?
Or would the chip shop be under new management? Get ’em served and on to the next one, don’t give ’em too many chips neither.
Lol stopped.
At the edge of the church’s own orchard, the rhythm of Alice’s breathing had fractured, the indrawn breath suspended like a roller-coaster car pausing on a peak before clattering into the long valley, and he thought, Christ, she’s gone.
He didn’t know any more about strokes than what the condition looked like. He didn’t know whether the schizophrenic woman in the psychiatric hospital had lived or died, only that they hadn’t seen her again.
Oh… God. Alice’s breath shuddered back into the night, Lol quivering with relief.
The vicarage formed in front of them, lightless, just a different texture of night. Beyond it, you ought to have been able to see sporadic lights in the hills, but there was nothing there, nothing to convey space or distance.
Lol’s hands and Alice connected with the wicket gate into the vicarage garden. He had trouble with the latch, had to put Alice down in the snow. Felt her sinking, but what else could he do? He was so soaked and freezing in his Gomer Parry sweatshirt that he could hardly pick her up again.
He carried Alice through the gate, across the lawn to the path that circuited the house and then round to the front door which, without a key, he’d left unlocked. He backed into it.
Completely black in here. Too risky to try and get her upstairs with no lights. Lol carried her into the kitchen, where the old Aga snored but where there was no sofa, not even a big chair. He was feeling for heat with the backs of his hands, holding Alice up. He knew there was a rug on the floor to the side of the stove, before you reached the window.
He found it with his feet and lowered her, and roughly rolled up his parka and pushed it between her head and the wall. Stood up and felt his way to the refectory table where there were chairs with cushions you could pull out. Collected four and took them back to where Alice lay, a small pile of clothes with a noisy pump inside. He began feeding two cushions behind her head against the wall.
Alice moaned, and he thought her hands moved.
‘Alice?’
He felt her falling forward. Keep her head up. Don’t let her swallow her tongue.
Alice said, ‘Whosat?’
‘Alice,’ Lol said, ‘if you can hear this, it’s… She wouldn’t know him. ‘I’m getting a doctor, OK? You’re safe.’
‘Wangohome.’
‘You’re safe.’
But she was still as crispy-cold as a sack of peas out of the deep-freeze.
‘Pummedown. Dexer, pummedown.’
‘Alice, I’m going to ring for some help. Just—’
‘Dowannago.’ A hand clawing at him, unexpectedly strong. ‘Pummedown, Dexer!’
‘He’s not here, Alice. It’s OK. Dexter’s not here.’
But almost as he spoke, he knew by the drifting odour of sweat and something else that he couldn’t define — a gross swelling in the air — that he was wrong.
Left alone again, Brigid and Merrily gathered up the crockery from the burn-scarred carpet in front of Ben Foley’s sour, hissing fire of green softwood. Merrily got out her cigarettes. There were only two left in the packet. She placed it on the arm of Brigid’s chair. Brigid’s face was candle-white.
‘Why didn’t I… think?’
‘Danny’s with him,’ Merrily said. ‘You know Danny — he’ll stay there all night.’
‘Can’t stay for the rest of his life.’
‘And would you have?’
‘Given the chance,’ Brigid said. ‘I thought we were meant, right from the beginning. The one thing I could never forgive my dad for was intercepting Jeremy’s letters. And — even worse — he found some way of stopping my letters to Jeremy getting out. I still don’t know who he persuaded, or how he did it.’
‘Because you did what you did soon after coming here?’
‘And he found out about Hattie. He didn’t believe… anything. And yet he obviously convinced someone that any correspondence from the area of Stanner would not be healthy.’
They sat for a while in a pool of quiet. Brigid didn’t touch the cigarettes. The bulb in the standard lamp went dim and then stammered back to life.
‘If the power goes, they’ll probably handcuff me to the banisters at the bottom of the stairs.’
Brigid found a crumpled tissue in her jeans and roughly stabbed at her eyes with it. She stared into the dismal fire, and Merrily thought of the everlasting furnace in Jeremy’s living-room range and was startled when Brigid said, ‘I never changed a thing, you know. He kept on at me to move things around, have brighter colours, impose me on The Nant, but I never touched a single ornament.’
‘Did you want to?’
‘Every day.’
‘But better it looked as though you’d never been there at all? If you weren’t permitted to stay.’ Merrily took a breath. ‘Why did he do it?’
‘It’s not for me to…’ Brigid dug her fingers into her forehead. ‘He thought he was doing it for me. That’s all I want to say.’
‘People couldn’t get their heads around it — you and Jeremy.’
‘People are crass and stupid and superficial. Educated townies, with weekend cottages, tend to venerate country folk.’
‘Touching, isn’t it?’
‘Always venerating the wrong ones. Never people like Danny Thomas and that little guy, Gomer. Certainly never Jeremy Berrows. Always the loud bastards, who know everything and nothing.’
