A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  Jane said, ‘Maybe you need the new light.’

  Betty shook her head. ‘There won’t be any. We won’t bring that place out of the darkness; it’ll suck us in.’ She looked vaguely around, from face to face. ‘Whatever you may think about this, I’ve called out to the goddess in the night, and the goddess won’t come to me. I’m not being emotional or hysterical about this. I just don’t see a good future.’

  ‘OK, so you go back,’ Merrily said, ‘and you try to stop it. How do you do that?’

  Betty shrugged. ‘If necessary I can just tell them all to get out. It’ll cause another row with Robin, but the house is half mine. That’s only a last resort. If I play along for a while, something subtler might occur. I don’t want to create negative vibrations, if possible. What about you?’

  ‘I’m going to have to try and cool Ellis. One or two ideas occur. Well, one anyway.’ Merrily’s throat was dry from too much smoking, not enough sleep. ‘Maybe we can meet somewhere, late afternoon, and see where we stand.’

  ‘There’s a footbridge,’ Betty said, ‘that leads from the church to the other side of the brook.’

  ‘I know it. Four o’clock?’ Part of her was saying this was whimsy, that the only really important things were to, first, find Barbara Buckingham, and second, persuade the police to investigate the Hindwell Trust. ‘Betty, what do you think, seriously, is likely to happen if we can’t stop this tonight?’

  Betty shook her head quickly, non-committally.

  ‘The dragon gets out,’ Jane said, ‘whatever that means.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’ Betty looked at Merrily. ‘The problem with this place is nothing really to do with us. But it is to do with you, I suspect – with what you do. Ellis thought it needed exorcizing. I’m not sure he was wrong.’

  ‘But not by him.’

  ‘No,’ Betty said, ‘not by him.’

  ‘You mean... by me?’ Merrily felt obscurely honoured and immediately guilty about that.

  ‘I wondered about tonight,’ Betty said. ‘Candlemas is Candlemas. I suppose it’s a good time, wherever you stand. I mean, I’d go in with you, if you thought that would help. Or, if you thought that would be spiritually wrong, I’d stay out of the way.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Would you think about it, Merrily? It’s become kind of central to everything, hasn’t it?’

  ‘But... exorcizing a church...’

  ‘Like you keep saying,’ Jane said, ‘it isn’t a church any more.’

  ‘All right, I’ll talk to the bishop.’

  ‘Please don’t do that,’ Betty said. ‘He might suggest you have other priests along. That would bother me. I don’t want it to look like a formal sellout.’

  Merrily nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘Wow,’ Jane said.

  43

  Mitigating Circumstances

  JANE HAD CALLED Eirion at the rotting mansion and there was no answer. Well, there was an answer... on a machine, and in Welsh.

  Like she wasn’t already feeling excluded enough. Gomer had collected Betty and taken her back to Old Hindwell, Mum had gone off on her own. Little Jane had been given the really important job of relaying any messages to Mum on her mobile.

  Bastards!

  ‘I can’t speak bloody Welsh!’ she howled over the message. ‘Just tell Irene... Eirion... to call me. It’s very urgent. It’s Jane Wat—’

  She shut up. The message was being translated.

  ‘Dafydd and Gwennan Lewis are unable to take your call. Please leave your message after the tone. Diolch yn fawr.’

  ‘OK. Please, please, tell Eirion to ring me. It’s Jane Watkins. It’s very urgent. Please?’ Realizing she’d ended on a kind of strangled sob. Maybe that would underline the urgency, or maybe just the existing suspicions of the wealthy and powerful Dafydd Lewis about the hysterical English. It was not bloody fair, because she now had, like, masses of new data to lay on Eirion. He could hit the Net, and they could crack this thing wide open.

  Jane paced the kitchen. Actually, she was quite proud of Mum this time, agreeing to undertake an exorcism on behalf of a witch. Like, it was a really heavy decision to have to make. But had she accepted the significance of Kali Three? It really was a pity they hadn’t got a decent computer.

  Ah!

  Jane went rapidly round the house, doing what had to be done – laying a fire in the drawing room, putting out dried cat food for Ethel, and all the time thinking hard. She didn’t need Irene; she just needed an online computer.

  Sophie!

  Sophie had one in the Deliverance office. It was only right that the diocese should pay for this research.

  There should be a bus to Hereford passing through Ledwardine within the hour. Jane ran a brush through her hair, tugged on her fleece coat and was out of there. There’d be some resistance from Sophie, sure, but nothing Jane couldn’t handle with the usual combination of pathos and rat-like cunning.

  She bought a Mars bar from the Eight-till-Late and stood on the square munching it, relishing the freedom to do things. Back at bloody school next week, with dismal GCSEs looming. Although the public school system was this, like, totally disgusting anachronism, she wished she was at the cathedral school with Eirion; at least it was in the middle of town.

  It was bright but unexpectedly cold on the square. Jane chewed and stamped her feet on the cobbles. A silver BMW went past, then slowed suddenly and backed up and stopped on the edge of the square. The window glided down on the passenger side. Some sex beast wondering if she was in need of a lift.

  ‘Excuse me, little girl.’ Creepy voice sibilating from the bourgeois, tinted interior. Eyes narrowing, Jane pocketed the Mars bar and sashayed over. ‘Looking for somewhere, I am, see?’ he oozed. ‘Wonder if you can point me in the right direction. Little place called... if I can just see it on the map... Ah, got it...’ The passenger door was thrown wide open. ‘England!’

  Jane glared in delight. ‘You bastard!’

  ‘Good morning, Eirion,’ Eirion said. ‘How’s the whiplash? Well, it’s quite a bit more comfortable, thank you, Jane.’

  Jane got in. The leather seat creaked luxuriously. ‘Where’d you steal the flash Kraut wheels?’

  ‘Gwen’s, it is. She owes me. Don’t ask. Are you doing the decent thing and going to school?’

  ‘Well, I was, naturally. But, on second thoughts, I think we’ll go to Hereford Cathedral. I can show you the Deliverance office, in the gatehouse.’

  ‘Jane...’ Eirion snatched off his baseball cap and his dark glasses. ‘Half the school goes past there.’

  ‘You won’t be spotted, you’ll have your head bent over a keyboard. By lunchtime your eyes will be so terminally weakened you’ll be regretting you ever left the land of Druids and sad male voice choirs.’

  Eirion sighed and let out the clutch. He handed her a brown A4 envelope. ‘Read this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  Jane pulled out a thin sheaf of printouts.

  ‘Kali Three.’

  She read about her mother and her father.

  At home with a young child, Merrily Watkins was horrified to discover that her husband was ‘representing’ Gerald McConnell, a West Midlands businessman who would later be jailed for four years for fraud and money-laundering. It was this...

  Jane looked across at Eirion. She felt embarrassed.

  Eirion drove serenely on. ‘There but for the grace of God, Jane. When my father was on the board of the Welsh Development Agency... Never mind, he’d have been out by now even if the charges had stuck.’

  ‘You’re just saying that to make me feel better.’

  ‘I wish. Read the other stuff, on Bain and his old man. Start at the top of page five.’

  Jane read:

  Ned was ten years old when his mother, Edward Bainbridge’s first wife, Susan, walked out on her husband. They were quietly divorced and, soon afterwards, Bainbridge formed a relationship with Mrs Fr
ances Wesson, the widow of a chaplain at his college. Mrs Wesson had remained a strong, even fanatical Christian, although the extent of this did not become apparent to Bainbridge or his son until after the marriage.

  Strange how formally this was written. Like out of a real biography, not the usual chatty crap you got off the Net. It drew you into what, even though it was then the mid-1970s, seemed like a Victorian kind of world.

  Thus Ned entered his teenage years in a stifling High Church household dominated by the beautiful but austere Frances Wesson, whose own two children seemed to be accorded special privileges. To please his new wife, Bainbridge, hitherto a lukewarm Christian at most, began to attend church services twice every Sunday. Ned was soon glad to be sent away to public school, where he was free to pursue an interest in subjects which would certainly have been forbidden at home.

  During school holidays, he became aware of his father’s slide into depression. Edward Bainbridge had given up writing poetry after his latest volume had been derided as maudlin, self-pitying and, indeed, pitifully inept. Unsurprisingly, his academic reputation was crumbling and his drinking had become a problem. All of this was concurrent with the dissolution of the Bainbridge marriage, with the couple living increasingly separate lives. If Edward now no longer attended church, his wife had inflicted all its trappings and symbolism on what remained of their domestic life. The house in Oxford had become heavy with icons and crucifixes; its drawing room had a constant and pervading smell of incense, and Frances had even set up a private chapel in a pantry next to the kitchen.

  The summer of 1975 brought a severe and life-changing shock for Ned. Edward Bainbridge’s brother, David, arrived at the school to break the news that his father was dead. Ned learned, to his horror, that his father had bled to death on the floor of the private chapel, and that his stepmother had already been charged with murder.

  Some days later, to the eighteen-year-old Ned’s outrage, the charge was reduced to manslaughter, to which Frances Bainbridge had agreed to plead guilty. There was, she had claimed, a strong element of self-defence. According to Mrs Bainbridge, her husband, who had been drinking heavily for most of the day, had come hammering on the door of the chapel while she was at prayer and, when she refused to admit him, had kicked in the door, burst into the tiny chapel and proceeded to tear down drapes and overturn the altar. When she screamed at him to get out, he began to slash viciously with a kitchen knife at a Victorian picture of Christ, until he stumbled and dropped the knife – whereupon Mrs Bainbridge snatched it up. Edward Bainbridge then attacked his wife, tearing at her dress, and in her struggle to get away she stabbed him fatally in the throat.

  The original murder charge was reduced to manslaughter after Frances Bainbridge’s description of the events – somewhat unconvincing to Ned – was supported by her son Simon, aged fifteen, and her twelve-year-old daughter Madeleine, both of whom said they had witnessed the struggle. Frances Bainbridge pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but walked free from the court after being given a two-year suspended sentence because of the mitigating circumstances.

  Ned Bainbridge returned to school to sit his A levels before going up to Oxford, to his father’s old college where, with fellow students, he formed his first coven.

  Eirion drove into Hereford via Whitecross. ‘Quite a significant family skeleton, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You can understand that guy not being over-fond of the Church.’

  44

  Feel the Light

  GREG HAD SHAVED. He wore a clean shirt. He stood in the back doorway at the end of the yard and made rapid wiping movements with his arms.

  ‘No, no, no.’

  Merrily stopped about four yards away. ‘She’s worse?’

  ‘She’s better,’ Greg said. ‘That’s the point, innit? I’m grateful for you taking the witch away and everyfing, but I’m not having you upsetting my wife.’

  The day, like Greg, had hardened up. Merrily dug her hands into the pockets of Jane’s much-borrowed duffel coat. She nodded, resigned, looking down at all the crushed glass ground into the pitted concrete yard.

  ‘I’m sorry, Reverend,’ Greg said. ‘I said I’d ask her if she’d talk to you, but I didn’t in the end. I don’t want noffink bringing it back. These past two days – bleedin’ nightmare. You understand, don’t you?’

  ‘You think she’s coming out of it?’

  ‘She’s talking to me. That’s enough for now.’

  ‘Right, well...’ Merrily shrugged. ‘Thank you. I’ll see you, Greg.’

  It was nearly eleven a.m. Martyn Kinsey, of BBC Wales, had spotted her going into the yard, and given her a conspiratorial wink. Martyn was going to be her last resort, if she got nowhere with Marianne Starkey. Martyn Kinsey and a big, unchristian lie: Entirely off the record, the diocese has received two complaints, of a very serious nature, against Father Nicholas Ellis. Yes, of course from women.

  Last resort, though.

  Merrily had reached the entrance to the alley which led from the Black Lion yard to the village when she heard the wobble and slide of a sash window. ‘Who’s this?’ a woman called down.

  ‘’S all right,’ Greg rasped. ‘I dealt wiv it. Just go back and siddown, willya?’

  ‘Hey!’ Marianne leaned out of the upstairs window. ‘I saw you, din’ I?’

  Merrily paused. Please, God...

  ‘Inna toilets,’ Marianne said, ‘with Judy Prosser. ’Cept you was wearing a... whatsit round your neck.’

  Merrily put a hand to her throat. ‘Day off today.’

  Greg said nervously, ‘Marianne, just leave it, yeah?’

  ‘You wanna cuppa tea, love?’

  ‘That would be really very nice,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s quite cold again today, isn’t it?’

  Greg hung around, restive, breathing down his nose. Marianne waved him away. ‘It’ll be OK. You go and replace your kegs.’

  They were upstairs in the living room of the flat above the pub. The furniture looked inexpensive, but it was all newish, as if they’d ditched all their old stuff when they moved here. For a bright new start.

  Greg waved a finger at his wife. ‘You just say what you wanna say.’

  Marianne was in a cream towelling robe, and she wore no make-up. She slid back into a big lemon sofa opposite the television. The sound was turned down on two young women ranting at Robert Kilroy-Silk.

  ‘Slept late,’ Marianne said. ‘Must have a clear conscience.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You reckon it can really do that? Wipe the slate clean?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Siddown... please.’ Marianne picked up a cigarette packet from the sofa. ‘Ain’t taken everything away, mind. I still need these. Don’t suppose you do?’

  ‘Actually...’ Merrily slipped off her coat, let it fall to the carpet. She sat on the edge of an armchair beside the TV, and accepted one of Marianne’s menthol cigarettes.

  ‘Blimey, you’ll go to hell, love. In spite of it all.’

  ‘I prefer to think I’ll just go to heaven a bit sooner. How do you feel now, Marianne?’

  ‘Bit weird. Bit hollow.’

  ‘All happened kind of suddenly, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Can’t believe it. I feel like a little girl. All nervous. Need me hand held.’

  Probably why she’d been so glad to see Merrily. A lady priest. Someone who would know, would understand.

  ‘I mean, you shouldn’t be feeling like that at someone’s funeral, should you?’ Marianne said. ‘Ain’t right.’

  ‘You mean feeling good?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Merrily lit their cigarettes. ‘Finding yourself joining in the singing?’

  ‘The singing. Sure.’

  ‘Mmm. I know what that’s like.’

  ‘I should think you do, Reverend.’

  ‘Merrily.’

  ‘Nice name. Yeah, that’s what happens, Merrily. I only went along for a laugh. No, not a laugh, I was hacked off with everybody, with this place, with Gre
g. Like, Greg’s sayin’, one of us oughta go, put in an appearance. It’s the way they are, the locals, innit? God-fearing? So, yeah, OK, I’ll do it – ’cos they all reckon I’m a slapper – I’ll be down that hall with me hat on and I’ll put on a real show for ’em.’

  Merrily smiled. ‘And in the middle of the show... wow, it turns into the real thing.’

  ‘Cloud nine, love. Like after half a bottle of vodka? Nah, not really. I mean, I was so ashamed. Joyful, yet ashamed. Ashamed of me. I was horrified at me – what I was, what I’d been. I wanted... what’s the word...?’

  ‘Redemption?’

  ‘That’s a bleeding big word.’

  ‘Big thing.’

  ‘Do you know, I went out the back afterwards, and I was sick over the fence? Sick as a dog, with all that hating of meself pouring out. After that, I felt very... light, you know? Cut loose. Then this lady come over, I don’t know her name, but she lives in a bungalow on the road out of here, and that’s where we went. Some other ladies come too, and they was all really kind. I cried most of the time.’

  Merrily smoked and nodded. It was difficult to believe it could happen so quickly until you encountered it, but it did happen. It happened particularly to people in crisis, depressed people and – unexpectedly – to angry, cynical people.

  ‘Found I could talk to them. Talked about stuff I never talked about since I left London. Personal stuff, you know? One of the ladies, she says, “I knew you was in trouble when I seen you and that feller.” ’

  ‘Robin Thorogood.’

  Marianne shivered. ‘I thought it was me invited him. But he was playing with me. He’s a dark person, he is, Merrily. He brought out the bad and lustful part of me.’

  ‘Who told you he was a dark person?’

  ‘In the paper, wannit? They come round with the paper... yesterday.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Eleri, from the post office. And Judy Prosser. I’d been to church – to the hall – on Sunday, and it was wonderful, I was blown away all over again, really. And afterwards I was introduced to Father Ellis, and he’s like, “I can tell you been deeply troubled. I feel you been exposed to a great evil.” And it sets me off crying again, and he takes my hand and he says, in this lovely soft voice, he says, “You come back to me when you feel ready to have the disease taken away.” And the next day Eleri come round with the paper, and there he is, that Robin, his face – like I never seen it before, I mean you could see the evil in him, snarling, vicious. I went a bit hysterical when I seen that picture. He was like they said he was.’