by Phil Rickman
Jane nodded soberly. ‘OK, I’ll… tell her to call you in the morning.’
‘Thank you, Jane.’
‘I’m sorry, OK?’
‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. Goodnight now. God bless you.’
‘Thanks.’ Jane turned away to walk home, past the forecourt by the entrance to the church, and saw the steeple rising from the middle of the ragged apple trees.
And then she turned back and called out, ‘Did you see it? Did you really see an angel?’
Jenny Box stopped, her white scarf slipping back. ‘Jane, it doesn’t matter what I saw. It was a personal experience. A confirmation. It’s nothing to do with anyone else. I’m not claiming to be Bernadette. I don’t care whether anyone believes me.’
‘You don’t understand what I’m asking, do you?’
Jenny came up to her. They were alone in front of the lychgate. Jane felt suddenly forlorn.
Jenny reached out and took both Jane’s hands in her own. Jenny’s hands were cold.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I saw it, Jane. And she was beautiful.’
41
A Rainy Night in Underhowle
HUW CONCLUDED, ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we pray that this building might be free from all powers of darkness, spirits of evil. Defend from harm, Lord, all who enter and leave through this door…’
The words dissipated, Merrily thought, like the smoke of a single cigarette. This was Huw going through the motions – never leave a possibly disturbed place unblessed.
Ingrid Sollars put all the hanging bulbs out of their misery before locking the Victorian oak door with one of the keys on a jailer’s ring. She pulled at the iron handle. ‘Sometimes it’s come open in the night.’
‘How do you mean?’ Merrily looked at Ingrid: scratched waxed jacket, practical slacks: a woman who looked like she could shoe horses and change oil filters. ‘How could that happen?’
‘It just has. I’m the one who usually locks it. I don’t make mistakes.’
Huw leaned an elbow on the small window ledge. ‘Still happening?’
‘Not for some months, but I still check.’
‘Rogue energy, happen?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘A church or chapel this size is an amplifier for energy, and when a place has been used for worship, it accumulates. When you take away the prayer, where’s it go? If it’s left derelict, the energy might turn negative. If the worship’s replaced by something antisocial or irreligious, it definitely will.’
Merrily stared at him. Did he actually believe that?
‘A spring-water bottling plant?’ Ingrid Sollars said sceptically.
‘Hmm.’ Huw inclined his head. ‘Would you happen to know who the people are who ran this enterprise, Ingrid?’
‘I do know them,’ Ingrid said guardedly. ‘They’re running a similar operation in the Usk Valley. Is it important?’
‘Think you could get them on the phone tonight?’
‘I could try.’ She opened the modern porch door. Outside it was raining. In the distance, Merrily could still hear a chant of Roddy’s Body OUT. It was irregular now and punctuated with laughter.
‘If you could do that,’ Huw said to Ingrid, ‘happen you could find out the name of the contractor who did the conversion.’
Merrily said, ‘What—?’
‘Meanwhile,’ Huw said, ‘there’s the other thing. Come on, now, Ingrid, you’ve been on the brink of telling us.’
Ingrid sighed. ‘Actually, Mr Owen, I’ve been hoping the person concerned would come over herself. I did ask her.’
‘People get coy sometimes, lass. Who is it?’
Ingrid hesitated. ‘A girl. Schoolgirl.’
‘Parents know?’
‘I think so.’
‘Where’s the problem, then? Not like we’re the police, is it?’
Merrily thought she’d rather face the police than Huw in this mood.
The mother wore a purple fleece top, crushed-velvet trousers, green-tinted hair and a gold nose-stud on a chain.
‘They were just having a bit of fun together,’ she said. ‘You’re only young once, aren’t you?’
You didn’t realize how much things had changed, Merrily thought, until you heard that from a parent. The attitude seemed to be that they were going to do it anyway, so why erect barriers? She thought about Jane and Eirion. Perhaps the most you could ask for was that your kids should wait until the age of consent and that there should then be a degree of emotional commitment.
Merrily wanted to get home. She felt cold and anxious.
Huw was clearly in no hurry. ‘So you found the door open?’ he said to the girl. He and Merrily were sharing a red leather sofa in the front room of number 27 Goodrich Close, where the central heating could have sustained tropical lizards. Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? was on TV; nobody had turned that down either.
‘I didn’t want to go in, right?’ Zoe Franklin said. ‘But Martin had been to the pub, and he was feeling brave.’
Zoe was a serious-minded girl, according to Ingrid Sollars. Doing A-level maths and sciences in Ross. University material. Not an imaginative girl – that was what Merrily thought Ingrid had been trying to convey. Zoe’s long-time boyfriend had been Martin Brinkley, two or three years older, a junior bank clerk and a good lad, generally.
‘If they wanted to keep people out, why didn’t they just lock it?’ Mrs Franklin demanded. She’d told them that Zoe’s dad and Zoe’s brother, Curtis, had gone on the Roddy Lodge demo. Pub, more likely, Mrs Franklin said.
Ingrid had said that Zoe’s mother wouldn’t have minded much if Zoe had stuck with Martin Brinkley, got herself pregnant and forgot about all this university rubbish, because that was likely to cost them, wasn’t it? Ingrid said Zoe’s parents were what you would have regarded as typical Underhowle parents. Typical, at least, of the pre-Fergus era.
‘What had you heard about the place, Zoe?’ Huw asked.
‘I thought it was all stupid.’ Zoe wore jeans and a T-shirt and an anxious expression. ‘It’s just one of those stories that goes around the school. It was supposed to be haunted and they said that when the ghost was there the door would be open. So if you tried the door – that’s the old oak door inside the porch – and opened for you, you could go in and… something would be waiting there.’
‘And what had people seen?’
‘Nothing, really. They just said you could feel it watching you.’
‘What did you feel?’
‘Martin, I’ll bet!’ Mrs Franklin said and rocked with laughter.
‘You wanner make us a cup of tea, Mam?’ Zoe said patiently.
‘I’m here as your responsible adult!’
‘Jesus,’ Zoe said, ‘that was when the police had Curtis in. This is the Church, for Christ’s sake! Please?’
Mrs Franklin stalked out and Zoe grabbed the remote and switched off the TV.
‘They wanted to sue the Development Committee because I had bruises. They thought they could make some money out of it. That’s why I didn’t say anything, except to Mrs Sollars. They didn’t believe the other stuff, anyway. Thought I was making it up. My parents can’t believe anybody actually tells the truth. Like, I was going to come and see you tonight, but I didn’t want any of them to know.’
‘The protesters?’ Merrily could stand the heat no longer and shrugged off her coat.
‘It’s all stupid,’ Zoe said. ‘It’s Mr and Mrs Lodge who are going to suffer. What’ve they ever done to anybody?’
It had been raining, and Zoe didn’t fancy going on the back of Martin’s motorbike in that kind of weather, thanks very much, and while they were thinking about what to do they’d gone into the chapel porch to shelter for a bit, and Martin had grinned and said, ‘I wonder if it’s open tonight.’
It was one of those myths that took hold: modern folklore, almost always passed on by children. Martin Brinkley had heard it from his younger brother,
who said he’d heard it from a boy who’d gone in with his girlfriend and she’d been so frightened she’d let him do it.
Zoe had said ‘Don’t be stupid’ and ‘Let’s go’ and things like it that, but Martin had already had a pint in the pub with his mates and he was, you know, a bit skittish. He’d tried the door and… would you believe it? Hey!
Martin had gone in.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Zoe had shouted from the porch.
Silence. Martin hadn’t come out.
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid!’ Zoe had cried.
And had taken a step inside – and, bang, the door had slammed behind her, and Zoe had screamed and Martin’s arms had come around her: Don’t be scared, I’m here. And she’d had to laugh, and then they’d started kissing and, you know…
Well, the door was open, look, and it wasn’t as if there was anything they could damage in there; the place was already gutted. But it was dry and cleaner than Zoe would have expected, and it wasn’t that cold and where else was there to go on a rainy night in Underhowle? So they’d fetched a rug from the box on Martin’s bike. Though, actually, the truth was that Zoe hadn’t liked it in there from the first, but what could she say without looking like a wimp?
‘Why exactly didn’t you like it, lass?’
‘It was… as if the walls had eyes, you know? As if they were bulging inwards to make sure they didn’t miss anything. You could, like, feel it, even though you couldn’t see much, just the light in the windows. Now I know that sounds stupid, but at one point, because I was so convinced someone was watching us, I made Martin put all the lights on, even though people might see them from outside.’
‘If it was me, I’d’ve been hoping people would see,’ Merrily said.
‘Yeah.’ Zoe smiled gratefully. ‘Actually, it was worse, somehow, with the lights on, because of all the shadows which made it seem like the walls really were swelling.’ She moved her hands in and out, like an accordionist. ‘You felt there was something there – inside there, with us – that wanted the lights on. So it could see us. So we put them out again.’
You didn’t actually see anything, though?’ Merrily asked.
‘No.’
‘What about the temperature? Did you feel it was especially cold? Colder in some areas than others, say?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know, really, it was all cold. I didn’t want to stop there at all, but Martin’s putting his arms round me, and he’d rolled up these dust sheets, which were fairly clean, and… Oh, I don’t have to talk about this stuff, do I?’
‘Of course not. We’d just like to know when anything happened that you… weren’t expecting.’
‘Yeah, well, I wouldn’t let him go any further, anyway. I said no, that’s it, I’ve had enough, this is stupid, and I got up to go. I remember getting up, and then…’ Zoe closed her eyes for a moment and, in the botanical-garden heat, Merrily actually saw goose bumps appear on the girl’s arms. ‘I was just thrown back, really roughly. Back on to the dust sheets – that’s when I got the bruises, yeah? And I wasn’t afraid then, so much as – you know – startled and angry. I’m like, Geddoff, you dull bugger!’
Merrily said, ‘Did you – when you were thrown back – feel anybody actually touch you?’
‘Yeah, I… I think so. But I didn’t really have time to, because I couldn’t breathe, you know? I was choking. There was suddenly this awful pressure on my throat.’
‘What kind of pressure, Zoe?’ Huw said. ‘What did you actually feel?’
Zoe rubbed her arms. ‘I couldn’t exactly say it was hands. I couldn’t say it felt like hands. But I thought of hands. I thought of these rough – what’s the word? – callused, kind of hands. And dirty. And what I heard – this was the very worst moment, I can tell you – I actually heard Martin’s voice. He was going, like, “What’s up with you? What you doing?” And his voice was like a long way away. I mean, what – five, six metres? And I’m trying to shout, scream… and all I could make were these little rattly noises, like snorting. And I was… absolutely… bloody terrified.’
‘I bet,’ Merrily said.
‘I thought I was gonner die. I thought I was gonner die there and then. You believe me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re, like, a vicar, too, yeah?’
‘Mmm.’
‘And I’ll tell you something else. Martin, he en’t got hands like that. He works in a bank.’ Zoe nodded towards the door, lowered her voice. ‘They still don’t believe me. Not really. Sometimes I think I dreamed it. You know, that we fell asleep in there or something. But I can’t have. I wasn’t comfortable in there, you know, not from the start.’
‘What happened in the end, Zoe?’ Merrily asked.
‘Martin put the lights on and there was nothing there.’
‘How far were you from the lights?’
‘’Bout four metres.’
‘Could you still feel the pressure as he was putting the lights on?’
‘When the lights went on, I could breathe. It wasn’t Martin. It definitely wasn’t Martin. And there was nobody else in there, I swear to God.’
‘Did you have any marks on your neck, Zoe?’ Huw asked.
‘No. Well, redness maybe. But no bruises like you’d expect. Listen, can you tell me what happened? I’ve heard some of this stuff Mr Hall talks about, and I’m doing physics at A level, so… I mean, I’ve been trying to tell myself this was all caused by electromagnetism and radio waves on my brain. That maybe, like he says, there is some problem caused by like intersection of electrics from the power lines and signals from the TV booster and the mobile-phone transmitters…’
Merrily looked at Huw.
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘it’s possible.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’ Zoe said.
An old Land Rover was parked outside the house; its lights flashed once and a rear door opened for them.
Ingrid Sollars was at the wheel, Sam Hall next to her. ‘If this was daylight,’ he said, ‘you’d see the goddam pylon right at the back of the house, and you’d see the TV booster across the valley. The existing mobile-phone transmitter’s in the wood across there, and the big new one—’
Ingrid switched on the engine, creating foundry sounds. ‘This is the Reverend Owen, Sam, and I really don’t think he believes this begins and ends with electricity.’
‘More sick people on this estate than you could otherwise account for – how d’ya do, Reverend Owen? – and Melanie Pullman lived right over there, end of the turning circle.’
The turning circle was jammed with cars, so Ingrid Sollars had to reverse off the estate. She drove them back into the centre of the village, where a few people still hung around and the placard saying KEEP SATAN OUT! was propped against a lamp-post.
Sam leaned over the back of his seat. ‘Ingrid, of course, would actually prefer this whole thing to be down to Satan.’
Ingrid pulled in behind Merrily’s Volvo. ‘What he means is that Ingrid would prefer it not to have been caused by something the removal of which would damage the progress of this village out of the Dark Ages. We need communications, and we need all those computers, and we need the power to make them work. At the moment, a child as bright as Zoe Franklin is the exception in her age group. In ten years’ time she’ll be the norm.’
‘It’s the main source of argument between us,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t believe this is progress if it’s gonna kill off half the people and give the rest waking nightmares.’
‘That’s a ridiculous exaggeration.’
‘Sure it is – at present.’
Huw said, ‘You talk to the spring-water people, Ingrid?’
Ingrid switched off the engine. It subsided with noises like the collapsing of metal plates. ‘Yes, I did. I said the Development Committee had limited funds and would very much like to know the name of the contractors they employed in the original conversion.’
‘And?’
‘They said they didn’t have a phone number
but they were pretty sure this particular contractor was… no longer available.’
‘I bet they couldn’t remember his name, either.’
Ingrid said, ‘What do you propose to do about this, Mr Owen?’
‘I intend to discuss it with my colleague here, who I hope will allow me to be involved in tomorrow’s funeral.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Don’t spread it around, eh?’
‘You’re a bastard, Huw.’ Merrily realized she was driving too fast and her foot stabbed the brake. The rain had stopped, but the night clouds hung low and sombre as the lights of Ross began to flower around them.
‘Me mam never tried to hide it,’ Huw said placidly.
‘For a start, you knew what Zoe was going to tell us.’
‘Ingrid told me about it while you were messing with the TV people. She didn’t give me the name then, though.’
‘But you had to make the kid go through it again.’
‘Cathartic, lass. Anyroad, I wanted you to hear it. You might not’ve believed me. A few tools disappearing and a bloke punched off a ladder doesn’t amount to much. I wanted you to feel that sense of being watched. And the rest of it.’
‘It doesn’t prove anything.’
‘Nothing’s ever proven.’
Merrily drove slowly through the medieval centre of Ross, behind the ancient sandstone market house, the church rising on her left, roofs glistening.
‘You even knew who the contractor was.’
‘The good Mumford and his contacts,’ Huw said. ‘Ear to the ground, that lad. A respectable spring-water firm would hardly like it broadcast. Nobody wants to be known as having employed him, having been to the pub with him a time or two, and certainly not—’
‘You wasted Ingrid’s time.’
I wanted her to hear it, and I wanted you to hear it from her.’ ‘Because you didn’t want me to think it was all down to you.’
Huw said nothing.
‘Which it is, of course.’
‘Who else cared enough?’ Huw said.
Consider, Huw said.
Consider Cromwell Street, Gloucester: a street full of flats and bedsits and therefore young people in need of cheap accommodation, coming and going, moving out and moving in. And the top rooms in number twenty-five were the cheapest of the lot. Police had actually traced about a hundred and fifty former tenants, some of whom had paid no more than a fiver a week.
