A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  And what was so wrong with that? He looked at the wild and golden lady who should be Rhiannon or Artemis or Titania but insisted on being called the ultimately prosaic Betty (this perverse need to appear ordinary). She knew what he needed – that he didn’t want too many mysteries explained, didn’t care to know precisely what ghosts were. Nor did he want the parallel world of faerie all mapped out like the London Underground. It was the gossamer trappings and wrappings that had given him a profession and a good living. He was Robin Thorogood: illustrator, seducer of souls, guardian of the softly lit doorways.

  The box, then... Well, sure, the box had been more interesting unopened. Unless the paper inside was a treasure map.

  He pushed it towards Betty. ‘You wanna check this out?’

  She shook her head. She wouldn’t go near it. Robin rolled his eyes and picked up the paper. It fell open like a fan.

  ‘Well, it’s handwritten.’ He spread it flat on the tabletop.

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ Betty said. ‘You can fake all kinds of stuff with computers and scanners and paintboxes. You do it all the time.’

  ‘OK, so it’s a scam. Kirk Blackmore rigged it.’

  ‘If it was Kirk Blackmore,’ Betty said, ‘the box would have ludicrous runes carved all over it and when you opened it, there’d be clouds of dry ice.’

  ‘I guess. Oh no.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It’s some goddamn religious crap. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses or one of those chain letters?’

  ‘OK, let me see.’ Betty came round and peered reluctantly at the browned ink. ‘ “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen, amen, amen...” Amen three times.’

  ‘Dogmatic.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Betty read on in silence, not touching the paper. She was standing directly under one of the dangling light-bulbs, so her hair was like a winter harvest. Robin loved that her hair seemed to have life of its own.

  When she stepped away, she swallowed.

  He said hoarsely, ‘What?’

  ‘Read.’

  ‘Poison pen?’

  She shook her head and walked away toward the rumbling old Rayburn stove.

  Robin bent over the document. Some of it was in Latin, which he couldn’t understand. But there was a row of symbols, which excited him at once.

  Underneath, the words in English began. Some of them he couldn’t figure out. The meaning, however, was plain.

  In the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost Amen Amen Amen...

  O Lord, Jesus Christ Saviour Salvator I beseech the salvation of all who dwell within from witchcraft and from the power of all evil men or women or spirits or wizards or hardness of heart Amen Amen Amen... Dei nunce... Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen.

  By Jehovah, Jehovah and by the Ineffable Names 17317... Lord Jehovah... and so by the virtue of these Names Holy Names may all grief and dolor and all diseases depart from the dwellers herein and their cows and their horses and their sheep and their pigs and poultry without any molestation. By the power of our Lord Jesus Christ Amen Amen... Elohim... Emmanuel...

  Finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might that we may overcome all witches spells and Inchantment or the power of Satan. Lord Jesus deliver them this day – April, 1852.

  Robin sat down. He tried to smile, for Betty’s sake and because, in one way, it was just so ironic.

  But he couldn’t manage a smile; he’d have to work on that. Because this was a joke, wasn’t it? It could actually be from Kirk Blackmore or one of the other authors, or Al Delaney, the art director at Talisman. They all knew he was moving house, and the new address: St Michael’s Farm, Old Hindwell, Radnorshire.

  But this hadn’t arrived in the mail. And also, as Betty had pointed out, if it had been from any of those guys it would have been a whole lot more extreme – creepier, more Gothic, less homespun. And dated much further back than 1852.

  No, it was more likely to be from those it said it was from.

  The Local People – whatever that meant.

  Truth was they hadn’t yet encountered any local local people, outside of the wood guy and Greg Starkey, the London-born landlord at the pub where they used to lunch when they were bringing stuff to the farm, and whose wife had come on to Robin one time.

  Betty had her back to the Rayburn for warmth and comfort. Robin moved over to join her. He also, for that moment, felt isolated and exposed.

  ‘I don’t get this,’ he said. ‘How could anyone here possibly know about us?’

  2

  Livenight

  THERE WERE FOUR of them in the hospital cubicle: Gomer and Minnie, and Merrily Watkins... and death.

  Death with a small ‘d’. No angel tonight.

  Merrily was anguished and furious at the suddenness of this occurrence, and the timing – Gomer and Minnie’s wedding anniversary, their sixth.

  Cheap, black joke. Unworthy of You.

  ‘Indigestion...’ Gomer was squeezing his flat cap with both hands, as if wringing out a wet sponge, and staring in disbelief at the tubes and the monitor with that ominous wavy white line from a thousand overstressed hospital dramas. ‘It’s just indigestion, her says. Like, if she said it enough times that’s what it’d be, see? Always works, my Min reckons. You tells the old body what’s wrong, you don’t take no shit – pardon me, vicar.’

  The grey-curtained cubicle was attached to Intensive Care. Minnie’s eyes were closed, her breathing hollow and somehow detached. Merrily had heard breathing like this before, and it made her mouth go dry with trepidation.

  It’s rather a bad one, the ward sister had murmured. You need to prepare him.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ Merrily plucked at the sleeve of Gomer’s multi-patched tweed jacket.

  She thought he glanced at her reproachfully as they left the room – as though she had the power to intercede with God, call in a favour. And then, from out in the main ward, he looked back once at Minnie, and his expression made Merrily blink and turn away.

  Gomer and Minnie: sixty-somethings when they got married, the Midlands widow and the little, wild Welsh-borderer. It was love, though Gomer would never have used the word. Equally, he’d never have given up the single life for mere companionship – he could get that from his JCB and his bulldozer.

  He and Merrily walked out of the old county hospital and past the building site for a big new one – a mad place to put it, everyone was saying; there’d be next to no parking space except for consultants and administrators; even the nurses would have to hike all the way to the multi-storey at night. In pairs, presumably, with bricks in their bags.

  Merrily felt angry at the crassness of everybody: the health authority and its inadequate bed quota, the city planners who seemed bent on gridlocking Hereford by 2005 – and God, for letting Minnie Parry succumb to a severe heart attack during the late afternoon of her sixth wedding anniversary.

  It was probably the first time Gomer had ever phoned Merrily – their bungalow being only a few minutes’ walk away. It had happened less than two hours ago, while Merrily was bending to light the fire in the vicarage sitting room, expecting Jane home soon. Gomer had already sent for an ambulance.

  When Merrily arrived, Minnie was seated on the edge of the sofa, pale and sweating and breathless. Yow mustn’t... go bothering about me, my duck, I’ve been through... worse than this. The TV guide lay next to her on a cushion. An iced sponge cake sat on a coffee table in front of the open fire. The fire was roaring with life. Two cups of tea had gone cold.

  Merrily bit her lip, pushing her knuckles hard into the pockets of her coat – Jane’s old school duffel, snatched from the newel post as Merrily was rushing out of the house.

  They now crossed the bus station towards Commercial Road, where shops were closing for the night and most of the sky was a deep, blackening rust. Gomer’s little round glasses were frantic with city light. He was urgently reminiscing, throwing up a wall of vivid memories against the encroaching dark – tellin
g Merrily about the night he’d first courted Minnie while they were crunching through fields and woodland in his big JCB. Merrily wondered if he was fantasizing, because it was surely Minnie who’d forced Gomer’s retirement from the plant hire business; she hated those diggers.

  ‘... a few spare pounds on her, sure to be. Had the ole warning from the doc about that bloody collateral. But everybody gets that, ennit?’

  Gomer shuffled, panting, to a stop at the zebra crossing in Commercial Road. Merrily smiled faintly. ‘Cholesterol. Yes, everybody gets that.’

  Gomer snatched off his cap. His hair was standing up like a small white lavatory brush.

  ‘Her’s gonner die! Her’s gonner bloody well snuff it on me!’

  ‘Gomer, let’s just keep praying.’

  How trite did that sound? Merrily closed her eyes for a second and prayed also for credible words of comfort.

  In the window of a nearby electrical shop, all the lights went out.

  ‘Ar,’ said Gomer dismally.

  Through the hole-in-its-silencer roar of Eirion’s departing car came the sound of the phone. Jane danced into Mum’s grim scullery-office.

  The light in here was meagre and cold, and a leafless climbing rose scraped at the small window like fingernails. But Jane was smiling, warm and light inside and, like, up there. Up there with the broken weathercock on the church steeple.

  She had to sit down, a quivering in her chest. She remembered a tarot reader, called Angela, who had said to her, You will have two serious lovers before the age of twenty.

  As she put out a hand for the phone, it stopped ringing. If Mum had gone out, why wasn’t the answering machine on? Where was Mum? Jane switched on the desk lamp, to reveal a paperback New Testament beside a newspaper cutting about the rural drug trade. The sermon pad had scribbles and blobs and desperate doodles. But there was no note for her.

  Jane shrugged then sat at the desk and conjured up Eirion. Who wasn’t conventionally good-looking. Well, actually, he wasn’t good-looking at all, in some lights, and kind of stocky. And yet... OK, it was the smile. You could get away with a lot if you had a good smile, but it was important to ration it. Bring it out too often and it became like totally inane and after a while it stopped reaching the eyes, which showed insincerity. Jane sat and replayed Eirion’s smile in slow motion; it was a good one, it always started in the eyes.

  Eirion? The name remained a problem. Basically, too much like Irene. Didn’t the Welsh have some totally stupid names for men? Dilwyn – that was another. Welsh women’s names, on the other hand, were cool: Angharad, Sian, Rhiannon.

  He was certainly trying hard, though. Like, no way had he ‘just happened to be passing’ Jane’s school at chucking-out time. He’d obviously slipped away early from the Cathedral School in Hereford – through some kind of upper-sixth privilege – and raced his ancient heap nine or ten miles to Moorfield High before the buses got in. Claiming he’d had to deliver an aunt’s birthday present, and Ledwardine was on his way home. Total bullshit.

  And the journey to Ledwardine... Eirion had really spun that out. Having to go slow, he said, because he didn’t want the hole in his exhaust to get any bigger. In the end, the bus would’ve been quicker.

  But then, as Jane was climbing out of his car outside the vicarage, he’d mumbled, ‘Maybe I could call you sometime?’

  Which, OK, Jane Austen could have scripted better.

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ she’d said, cool, understated. Managing to control the burgeoning grin until she’d made it almost to the side door of the vicarage and Eirion was driving away on his manky silencer.

  The phone went again. Mum? Had to be. Jane grabbed at it.

  ‘Ledwardine Vicarage, how may we help you? If you wish to book a wedding, press three. To pledge a ten-thousand-pound donation to the steeple fund, press six.’

  ‘Is that the Reverend Watkins?’

  Woman’s voice, and not local. Not Sophie at the office. And not Mum being smart. Uh-oh.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s not available right now,’ Jane said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘When will she be available?’

  The woman sounding a touch querulous, but nothing threatening: there was this deadly MOR computer music in the background, plus non-ecclesiastical office noise. Ten to one, some time-wasting double-glazing crap, or maybe the Church Times looking for next week’s Page Three Clerical Temptress for dirty old canons to pin up in their vestries.

  ‘I should try her secretary at the Bishpal tomorrow,’ Jane said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The Bishop’s Palace, in Hereford. If you ask for Sophie Hill...’

  Most of the time it was a question of protecting Mum from herself. If you were a male vicar you could safely do lofty and remote – part of the tradition. But an uncooperative female priest was considered a snotty bitch.

  ‘Look.’ A bit ratty now. ‘It is important.’

  ‘Also important she doesn’t die of some stress-related condition. I mean, like, important for me. Don’t imagine you’d have to go off and live with your right-wing grandmother in Cheltenham. Who are you, anyway?’

  Could almost hear the woman counting one... two... three... through gritted teeth.

  ‘My name’s Tania Beauman, from the Livenight television programme in Birmingham.’

  Oh, hey! ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously,’ Tania Beauman said grimly.

  Jane was, like, horribly impressed. Jane had seen Livenight four times. Livenight was such total crap and below the intelligence threshold of a cockroach, but compulsive viewing, oh yeah.

  ‘Livenight?’ Jane said.

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Where you have the wife in the middle and the husband on one side and the toyboy lover on the other, and about three minutes to midnight one finally gets stirred up enough to call the other one a motherfucker, and then fights are breaking out in the audience, and the presenter looks really shocked although you know he’s secretly delighted because it’ll all be in the Sun again. That Livenight?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tania said tightly.

  ‘You want her on the programme?’

  ‘Yes, and as it involves next week’s programme we don’t have an awful lot of time to play with. Is she in?’

  ‘No, but I’m Merrily Watkins’s personal assistant, and I have to warn you she doesn’t like to talk about the other stuff. Which is what this is about, right? The Rev. Spooky Watkins, from Deliverance?’

  Tania didn’t reply.

  ‘I could do it, of course, if the money was OK. I know all her secrets. I’d be very good, and controversial. I’ll call anyone a motherfucker.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Tania said drily. ‘We will bear you in mind, when you turn twelve.’

  ‘I’m sixteen!’

  ‘Just tell her I called. Have a good night.’

  Jane grinned. That was all Eirion’s fault. Making her feel cool.

  In the silence of the scullery, the phone went again.

  ‘Jane?’

  ‘Mum. Hey, guess wh—’

  ‘Listen, flower,’ Mum said, ‘I’ve got bad news.’

  3

  Loved Like That

  ‘SO, LIKE... HOW long will you be?’

  ‘I just don’t know, flower. We came here in Gomer’s Land Rover. It was all a bit of a rush.’

  ‘She was never ill, was she?’ Jane said. ‘Like really never.’ The kid’s voice was suddenly high and hoarse. ‘You can’t count on anything, can you? Not even you.’

  Merrily sighed. Everybody thought she could pull strings. Gomer and Minnie’s bungalow had become like the kid’s second home in the village, Minnie the closest she’d ever had to an adopted granny.

  ‘Flower, I’ll have to go. I’m on the pay phone in the corridor, and I’ve no more change. As soon as I get to know something...’

  ‘She’s not even all that old. I mean, sixty-something... what’s that? Nobody these days—’

  Jane broke off. Rememberi
ng, perhaps, how young her own father had been when his life was sliced off on the motorway that night. But that was different. His girlfriend was in the car, too, and the hand of fate was involved there, in Jane’s view.

  ‘Minnie’s strong. She’ll fight it,’ Merrily said.

  ‘She isn’t going to win, though, is she? I can tell by your voice. Where’s Gomer?’

  ‘Gone back in, to be with her.’

  ‘How’s he taking it?’

  ‘Well, you know Gomer. You wouldn’t want him prowling around in your sickroom.’

  Gomer, in retirement, groomed the churchyard, cleared the ditches, looked out for Merrily when Uncle Ted was doing devious, senior-churchwarden things behind her back. And dreamed of the old days – the great, rampaging days of Gomer Parry Plant Hire.

  ‘He’ll just smash the place up or something, if they let her die,’ Jane concurred bleakly.

  Meaning she herself would like to smash something up, possibly the church.

  How many hours had they been here? Hospitals engendered their own time zones. Merrily hung up the phone and turned back into the ill-lit passage, teeming now: visiting hours. Once, she’d had a dream of purgatory, and it was like a big hospital, a brightly lit Brueghel kind of hospital, with all the punters helpless in operation gowns, and the staff scurrying around, feeding a central cauldron steaming with fear.

  ‘Merrily?’

  From a trio of nurses, one detached herself and came across.

  ‘Eileen? I thought you were over at the other place.’

  ‘You get moved around. We’ll all end up in one place, anyway, if they ever finish building it, and won’t that be a fockin’ treat?’ Eileen Cullen put out a forefinger, lifted Merrily’s hair from her shoulder. ‘You’re not wearing your collar, Reverend. You finally dump the Auld Feller, or what?’

  ‘We’re still together,’ Merrily said. ‘And it’s still hot.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s disgusting.’