A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  ‘These particular Thomases had two daughters. Barbara was one?’

  ‘Got you now. Her runned away?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘An’ the other one wed Big Weal, the lawyer.’

  ‘Menna.’

  ‘Their ole man was Merv Thomas, Maesmawr, up by Walton. Never worked for ’em, mind – too tight, digged their own cesspits, never drained a field. Merv’s dead now, ennit? Ar, course he is. Her’d never be wed otherwise.’

  ‘You know Weal?’

  ‘Always avoided lawyers,’ Gomer said. ‘Thieving bastards, pardon me, vicar. Weal’s ole-fashioned, mind, but that don’t make him any less of a thieving bastard. Looks after his wife, though, ’cordin’ to what they says.’

  ‘Menna’s dead, Gomer.’

  ‘Never!’ Gomer was shocked enough to whip the ciggy out of his mouth.

  ‘Died in the County, same night as Minnie.’

  ‘But her was no more’n a kiddie!’

  ‘Thirty-nine. A stroke.’

  ‘Bugger me.’ Gomer stared down at the soil. ‘Big Weal must be gutted.’

  ‘Could say that.’

  Gomer put his ciggy back, shook his head. ‘Ole Hindwell, eh? You know what they says about that place, don’t you, vicar?’

  ‘Tell me.’ Merrily managed to get her cigarette going before the breeze doused the Zippo.

  ‘ “Place as God give up on”,’ explained Gomer.

  ‘Lot of places like that.’

  ‘With the church, see. Lets their church fall into ruin and never had another.’

  ‘Until now.’

  ‘Ar?’

  ‘There’s a kind of missionary minister who’s holding services in the parish hall. Father Ellis?’

  ‘Oh hell, aye.’ Gomer puffed on his ciggy. ‘Nutter.’

  ‘That’s what they say about him, is it? Nutter?’

  ‘Had two or three proper, solid ole churches under his wing, and they says he favoured Ole Hindwell village hall above the lot of ’em. An’ all this clappin’ and huggin’ and chantin’ and stuff. Mind, in Ole Hindwell they wouldn’t notice another bloody nutter if he was stark naked in the snow.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Inbreedin’.’ Gomer chuckled. ‘We always says that. Some places gets that kind o’ reputation for no reason at all other’n being a bit off the beaten track. And havin’ its church falled into ruins.’

  ‘Why did it fall into ruins? Apart from God giving up.’

  ‘Now, there’s a can of ole worms, ennit?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Last but one vicar, they reckoned he went mad.’

  ‘Like Ellis?’

  ‘No, mad mad. All kinds o’ rumours, there. Never come out, proper. You got a problem out there, vicar?’

  ‘Well, erm... Mr Weal seems to be set on putting Mrs Weal into some kind of tomb in his garden.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Gomer said non-committally.

  ‘And Barbara doesn’t think that’s a good idea. She doesn’t think Weal’s quite grasped the need to let go of the dead. And she wants me to go to the funeral with her, to hold her hand... or maybe to restrain her. And I think there’s something odd about that whole situation. Would, er, would you happen to know anybody who might know the score there?’

  Gomer nodded slowly. ‘I reckon.’

  ‘And maybe a bit about Barbara and why she hates that area so much.’

  ‘Likely. Anythin’ else?’

  ‘Father Ellis? Seems to me that for everybody who thinks he’s a nutter, there must be another five can’t get enough, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘No accountin’ for the way folks is gonner go, them parts. Seen it before, oh hell, aye. Gimme a day or two.’

  This time, Gomer declined the offer of tea and breakfast, said he’d got himself a nice, crusty cob needed using up. She could tell he was pleased to have something to occupy his time.

  And digging was what Gomer did best.

  Merrily went into church and prayed for Barbara and Menna and asked the Boss about another matter – kind of hoping she’d get a strong negative response.

  Back at the vicarage just before seven, she punched out Tania Beauman’s Livenight number. Waited for the answering machine to kick in.

  ‘Oh... this is Merrily Watkins at the Hereford Diocese. Sorry for not getting back to you last night. I’ll be in the office from about half nine, if you want to talk about... what I might be able to contribute to your programme. Thanks.’

  No backing out now.

  Be something different, anyway: bright lights, hi-tech hardware, the fast chat, the tat, the trivia, the complete, glossy inconsequentiality of it.

  Jane came down for breakfast, all fresh and school-uniformed.

  ‘Been up long, Mum?’

  ‘Couple of hours. Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘So, you rang Livenight, then?’

  ‘Not much gets past you, does it, flower?’

  ‘It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Be fun for you, watching at home.’

  ‘Er... yeah,’ Jane said airily.

  That night, after a wedding rehearsal at the church for a couple whose chief bridesmaid would be their own granddaughter, Merrily phoned Eileen Cullen from the scullery.

  ‘I just got the feeling you might have heard from Barbara Buckingham again.’

  ‘And why would you be thinking that, Reverend?’ Cullen sounded more than usually impatient, as if she was carrying an overflowing bedpan in her other hand.

  ‘She’s keen to find out why Menna died.’

  ‘High blood pressure.’

  ‘Well, yes, sure. But why did she have high blood pressure at her age?’

  ‘I told you why, and I haven’t changed my mind. I reckon she’d been on the Pill for longer than she ought to’ve been. Years longer, that’s my guess. Prolonged ingestion of synthetic oestrogen. Bad news – but then you’d know all that.’

  ‘Eileen, I live the life of a nun. I’ve forgotten all that.’

  ‘Well, it’s not your problem, and it’s not mine either and it’s not poor Menna’s any longer.’ A pause, then she came back a little softer. ‘Listen, if you’ve got the Buckingham woman on your back in a big way, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I sent her over, so I am.’

  ‘You must have felt at the time that she had a valid problem.’

  ‘Just wanted her out of me hair. You know what I’m like.’

  ‘Mmm, that’s why I don’t think you’re being entirely upfront.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, I’m always upfront. Nobody in this fockin’ job’s got time to go round the side any more.’

  ‘Did you by any chance tell her about Weal and that business with the water?’

  ‘You mean so they could have a big row and disturb all my patients? Are you kidding? Did you tell her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, good.’

  ‘Confidentially—’

  ‘Merrily, when the hell do we ever talk any other way?’

  ‘Barbara’s getting troubled dreams.’

  ‘Troubled, how?’

  ‘Says she sees Menna.’

  A pause. ‘Does she?’

  ‘Night after night.’

  ‘Stress,’ Cullen said. ‘Look, I’ve got to—’

  ‘Well, you would say that. No ghosts, no God. You think my whole life’s a sorry sham.’

  ‘Aye, but you’re a well-meaning wee creature. Listen, I really do have to go.’

  ‘So you haven’t seen her then?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t fockin’ seen her!’ Cullen snapped. ‘What the hell d’you think I am?’

  Merrily’s head spun. She stared at the circle of light thrown on the Holy Bible. The rosebush chattered at the dark window.

  ‘I meant Barbara,’ Merrily said.

  ‘I have to go.’ Cullen hung up.

  Part Two

  Witchcraft may be underestimated by Christians on the grounds that it is phoney and synthetic and that its covens are co
mpletely eclectic and belong to no national organization. There are, however, dangers...

  Deliverance (ed. Michael Perry) The Christian Deliverance Study Group

  12

  Bear Pit

  SHE FIRST BECAME aware of him in the green room.

  Her initial thought was that he must be a priest, because he was wearing a suit, though not a dog collar – well, how many did these days, outside working hours? And then, because he was so smooth and assured, and – perhaps, she thought afterwards, because his shirt was wine-coloured – she even wondered if he might be a bishop.

  He brought her a coffee. ‘This stuff could be worse,’ he said. ‘BBC coffee is much worse.’

  ‘You do this kind of thing fairly often then?’ she said. God, that wasn’t quite, ‘Do you come here often?’ but it was dangerously close.

  ‘When I must,’ he said. ‘Edward Bain, by the way.’

  ‘Merrily Watkins.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  He was, of course, attractive: lean, pale features and dark curly hair with a twist of grey over the ears. He’d made straight for Merrily across the green room – it sounded like some notoriously haunted, country house bedchamber, but was simply the area where all the participants gathered before the show. It was long and narrow and starting to look like a pantomime dressing room because of some of the costumes: Dark Age chic meeting retro-punk in a tangle of braids and bracelets.

  The producer and his team mingled with the main guests and the support acts, observing and listening, picking out the potential stars-for-an-hour. Meanwhile the guests drank tea and coffee and spring water – no alcohol – and nibbled things on sticks, talking a lot, losing inhibitions, unblocking their adrenal glands, developing that party mentality. As if most of them hadn’t brought it with them.

  ‘Lord,’ Edward Bain murmured, ‘do they really want to be taken seriously?’ He looked at Merrily with a faint, pained smile.

  The smile chilled her. It was Sean’s smile – her dead husband’s. Boyish, disarming. Sean’s smile when accused. She turned sharply away, as though distracted by an argument in progress between a tight-faced security officer and a ginger-bearded man wearing a short, white cloak over a red tunic with a belt. Into the belt was stuck a knife with a black handle.

  ‘It’s my fucking athame, man. It’s a religious tool. You wouldn’t ask a fucking bishop to hand over his fucking crozier!’

  Edward Bain’s smile became a wince, wiping away the similarity to Sean. If it had ever really been there. Merrily swallowed.

  The security man turned to Tania Beauman for support. Tania wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, leave it, Grant. I suspect it looks more dangerous than it actually is.’

  ‘Tania, it’s a knife. If we start allowing weapons in the studio, we may as well—’

  ‘It’s a f—’ The ginger guy blew out his cheeks in frustration, turned to Tania. ‘This doorman is really hacking me off, you know? This is religious persecution.’

  ‘Sure.’ Tania was a short, capable bottle-blonde of about forty. ‘If we just agree that it’s purely ornamental – yeah, sorry, religious – and that you won’t be taking it out of—’

  ‘Of course I won’t be fucking taking it out!’

  ‘And if you use that word on camera before midnight, you realize you’ll be excluded from the debate, yeah?’

  The ginger man subsided in a surly kind of way, a semi-chastened schoolboy.

  ‘That’s his card marked,’ Edward Bain told Merrily. ‘He’ll be used purely for decoration, now. Won’t get asked a single question unless it starts to slow up and they’re really desperate for confrontation.’

  ‘I don’t see that happening, somehow,’ Merrily said, ‘do you?’

  ‘The boy’s an idiot, anyway. If the athame is to have any potency at all it should hardly be displayed like some sort of cycling club badge.’

  He smiled down at Merrily – instant Sean once more – and glided away, leaving her feeling clammy. And she thought, Oh my God. He’s one of them.

  ‘Ooooooooh.’ Tania went into a sinuous shudder. ‘Magnetic – and more.’

  Over by the door, Edward Bain was into an intense conversation with a woman in a long, loose, classical kind of dress, like someone from rent-a-Muse. Merrily saw now that one of Bain’s middle fingers wore a silver ring with a moonstone. She saw him and the woman clasp hands lightly and smile, and she imagined tiny blue electric stars crackling between their fingers. She wondered if they’d even met before tonight.

  ‘Who is he?’ Merrily muttered. ‘I mean, what is he?’

  ‘Don’t you vicars ever read the News of the World?’

  ‘Only if we’re really desperate for a sermon.’

  ‘He’s the Man,’ Tania said. ‘If you call him something like King of the Witches, he’ll look pained. He doesn’t like the word “witch”. He’s a champagne pagan, if you like. Works as a publishing executive and would rather be profiled in the Observer than the News of the World... and, yeah, he’s getting there.’

  ‘By way of Livenight?’

  Tania frowned. ‘Don’t take this programme too lightly, Merrily. You can get deeply shafted out there. And we are watched by all kinds of people you wouldn’t expect.’

  Especially this week! By the acting Bishop of Hereford this week, and probably half of Lambeth Palace. Take it lightly? She’d had to put down her glass of spring water because she couldn’t hold it still. Ridiculous; she conducted services every Sunday, she talked to hostile teenagers, she talked to God, she...

  Sean was there, smiling in her mind. In getting here, she’d had to drive past where he died, on the M5, in flames. Go away!

  She said, too loudly, ‘Tania, can you... give me a rundown? Who else is here?’

  ‘OK.’ Tania nodded briskly. ‘Well, we get the programme peg out of the way first, right? The couple who want their kid to be allowed to do his pagan prayers and whatnot at school.’ She nodded towards a solemn, bearded man in a home-made-looking sweater. His partner had a waist-length plait. They might have been Muslims. They might even have been Christians.

  Merrily said, ‘Am I right in thinking you’re not going to be spending very long on them?’

  ‘Dead right. Boring, boring, boring. Actually, the headmaster of the school’s going to be better value. Born-again Christian. Actually talks like Sir Cliff, like he’s got a boiled sweet in his cheek. OK, over there... Patrick Ryan – long hair, velvet jacket – Cambridge professor who’s done a study of pagan practices. And shagged half the priestesses in the Home Counties by all accounts, but I doubt he’ll be discussing that. If Ryan’s too heavy, the little guy with the shaven head’s Tim Fagan, ex-hack from the Sun, was sent out to do an exposé on some sexy coven and wound up joining them. Now edits a popular witchy magazine called – ha ha – The Moon.’

  Edward Bain excepted, they all looked fairly innocuous.

  ‘What about the other side?’

  ‘Right. Well, we’ve got a really angry mother who claims paganism turned her daughter into a basket case. She is very strong. The kid got drawn into white witchcraft and ended up peeing in churches. Which leads neatly into you, I think.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Tania had revealed on the phone that she had seen news cuttings on last year’s Herefordshire desecration case, involving the sacrifice of a crow in a country church. Not entirely appropriate, in Merrily’s view.

  ‘I mean, I can’t say that was your orthodox paganism – if there is such a thing, which I doubt. It was a peculiar kind of black magic. It was a one-off.’

  Tania Beauman shrugged.

  ‘By “the other side”,’ Merrily said, ‘I actually meant us, the Church. You said I wouldn’t be on my own here.’ How pathetic did that sound?

  Tania looked mildly concerned. ‘I didn’t say that, did I? I’m sure I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You did, Tania.’

  ‘Oh, well, what happened, the oth
er bloke let us down. I think his wife had a miscarriage or something.’ She was blatantly improvising. ‘But if you’re looking for back-up, the headmaster’s brought along a few members of his church. See the guy in the white—’

  ‘Which church would that be?’

  ‘Well, Christian, obviously, but I suppose you’d probably call it more of a cult.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘They’ll be doing some heavy apocalyptic stuff about the Antichrist walking the earth disguised as... Hang on – looks like Steve wants to do his pep talk.’

  A bald man of about thirty, in white jeans and a crumpled paisley shirt, strode into the centre of the green room, lifted up his arms for silence, and went – Merrily guessed – into autopilot.

  ‘OK, listen up, everybody, my name’s Steve Ewing. I’m the editor of Livenight. I’d like to welcome you all to the programme and point out that we’ll be on the air in about fifty minutes. You’ve all seen the show – if not, then that’s your problem for sticking with boring old Paxman or the dirty movie on Channel 5. OK, now what I mainly want to stress to you is that Livenight is like life – you don’t get a second chance.’

  A woman cackled. ‘All you know, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, very good.’ Steve Ewing smiled thinly. ‘What I’m trying to get over here is that we don’t hang around and neither should you. If you have something to say, don’t hold back, because it’ll be too late and we’ll have moved on to another aspect of the debate, and you’ll be kicking yourself all the way home because you missed your chance of getting your argument across on the programme.’

  Merrily looked around for any exit sign. Wasn’t too late to get the hell out of here.

  ‘What I’m looking for,’ said Steve, ‘is straight talking and – above all – quick, snappy responses. There’s a lot of choice material to get across, and we want to help you do that. So it’s straight to the point, no pussyfooting, and if it’s going to take longer than about thirty seconds, save it for your PhD thesis. John Fallon’s the ringmaster. You won’t meet him until you go in, but you’ve all seen John, he’s a smart guy, a pro, and his bullshit threshold is zero. Any questions?’