A Crown of Lights (34 page)

She caught up with Gomer alongside a new stile which, he said, had been erected by Nev for the archaeologists. This was where the track became a footpath following the line of the Hindwell Brook, which was flowing unexpectedly fast and wide after all the rain. It had stopped raining now, but the sky bulged
with more to come. Gomer pointed across the brook, shouting over the rush of the water.

‘Used to be another bridge by yere one time, but now the only way you can get to the ole church by car is through the farm, see.’

‘Where was the excavation?’

‘Back there. See them tumps? Nev’s work.’ He squinted critically at a line of earthmounds, where tons of soil had been replaced. ‘Boy coulder made a better job o’ that. Bit bloody uneven, ennit?’

She went to stand next to him. ‘You’d like to get back on the diggers, wouldn’t you?’

‘Minnie never liked it,’ Gomer said gruffly. ‘Her still wouldn’t like it. ’Sides which, I’m too old.’

‘You don’t think that for one minute.’

Gomer sniffed and turned away, and led her through an uncared-for copse, where some of the trees were dead and branches brought down by the gales had been left where they’d fallen.

‘Prosser’s ground, all of this – inherited from the ole fellers. But he don’t do nothin’ with it n’more. Muster been glad when the harchaeologists come – likely got compensation for lettin’ ’em dig up ground the dull bugger’d forgotten he owned.’

‘Why’s he never done anything with it?’

‘That’s why,’ Gomer said, as they came out of the copse.

And there, on a perfect promontory, a natural shelf above the brook, on the opposite bank, was the former parish church of St Michael, Old Hindwell.

‘Gomer...’ Merrily was transfixed. ‘It’s... beautiful.’

The nave had been torn open to the elements but the tower seemed intact. A bar of light in the sky made the stones shimmer brown and grey and pink between patches of moss and lichen.

‘It’s the kind of church townsfolk dream of going to on a Sunday. I mean, what must it be like on a summer evening, with its reflection in the water? How could they let it go?’

Gomer grunted, rolling a ciggy. ‘Reverend Penney, ennit? I tole you. Went off ’is trolley.’

‘Went off his trolley how, exactly?’ She remembered that Bernie Dunmore had made a brief allusion last night to the rector at the time actually suggesting that Old Hindwell Church should be decommissioned.

Now, with a certain relish, Gomer told her what the Reverend Terence Penney, rector of this parish, had done with all that ancient and much-polished church furniture on an October day in the mid-1960s.

‘Wow.’ She stared into the water, imagining it foaming around the flotsam of the minister’s madness. ‘Why?’

‘Drugs,’ Gomer said. ‘There was talk of drugs.’

‘Where is he now?’

Gomer shrugged.

She gazed, appalled, at the ruin. ‘I bet we can find out. When we get back to the car, I’ll call Sophie. Sophie knows everybody in a dog collar who isn’t a dog.’

They went back through the dismal, dying copse.

‘Not many folks walks this path n’more,’ Gomer said, ‘’cept a few tourists. Place gets a bad reputation. Then this feller fell off the tower, killed ’isself.’

Merrily stopped. ‘When?’

‘Year or so back? Bloke called Wilshire, army man, lived New Radnor way. Falls off a ladder checkin’ the stonework on the ole tower. That’s how come these Thorogoods got it cheap, I reckon.’

‘I see.’

At the car, despite the extensive view, the mobile phone signal was poor and she had to shout at Sophie, whose voice kept breaking up into hiss and crackle, shouting out the name Penney.

Gomer said, ‘You wanner go talk to the witches, vicar?’

‘Dare we?’ She thought about it. ‘Yeah, why not.’

But when they drove back to the farm gate, there was a TV crew videotaping a thirtyish couple with a ‘Christ is the Light’ placard. You could tell by their outward bound-type clothing that they were not local. Merrily found herself thinking that some people just didn’t have enough to do with their lives.

She was confused. She didn’t
know
this place at all. It was like one of those complicated watches that did all sorts of different things, and you had to get the back off before you could see how the cogs were connected. Problem was, she didn’t even know where to apply the screwdriver to prise off the back.

‘Black Lion?’ Gomer suggested. ‘I’ll buy you a pint and a sandwich, vicar.’

At the Black Lion there were no visible candles – no lights at all, in fact.

Merrily saw Gomer glance at his wrist, before remembering he’d buried his watch. ‘About a quarter to two,’ she said.

Gomer frowned. ‘What’s the silly bugger playin’ at, shuttin’ of a lunchtime with all these TV fellers in town?’

Merrily followed him up a short alley into a yard full of dustbins and beer crates. There was a door with a small frosted-glass window and Gomer tapped on it. Kept on tapping until a face blurred up behind the frosted glass, looking like the scrubbed-over face of one of the suspects in a police documentary. ‘We’re closed!’

‘Don’t give me that ole wallop, Greg, boy. Open this bloody door!’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire.’ Sounding like he was planning to take a bulldozer to the side of the pub if he couldn’t gain normal access.

Bolts were thrown.

The licensee was probably not much older than Merrily, but his eyes were bagged, his mouth pinched, his shirt collar frayed. He’d shaved, but not well. Gomer regarded him without sympathy.

‘Bloody hell, Greg, we only wants a pot o’ tea and a sandwich.’

The man hesitated. ‘All right... Just don’t make a big fing about it.’

They followed him through a storeroom and an expensive, fitted kitchen with a tomato-red double-oven Aga, and the sound of extractor fans.

‘Busy night, boy?’

‘Yeah.’ But he didn’t sound happy about it. ‘Go frew there, to the lounge bar. I won’t put no lights on.’

‘Long’s we can see what we’re eatin’.’

The lounge bar, grey-lit through more frosted glass, looked to have been only half renovated, as if the money had run out: new brass light fittings on walls too thinly emulsioned. Also a vague smell of damp.

‘I can make you coffee, but not tea,’ Greg said without explanation.

‘We’ll take it.’ Gomer pulled out bar stools for Merrily and himself.

Greg threw out the dregs of a smile. ‘Hope this is your daughter, Gomer?’

‘En’t got no daughter,’ Gomer said gruffly. ‘This is the vicar of our church.’ As Greg’s smile vanished, Gomer sat down, leaned both elbows on the bar top. ‘Who made you close the pub, then, boy?’

‘The wife.’

‘And who made
her
close it?’

‘Look,’ Greg said, ‘I’m not saying you’re a nosy git, but this is your second visit inside a few days, asking more questions than that geezer from the
Mail
. What are you, Radnorshire correspondent for
Saga
magazine?’

Merrily was quietly zipping up her coat. It was freezing in there. ‘Well, Mr...’

‘Starkey.’

‘Mr Starkey, the nosy git’s me. I’m with the Hereford Diocese.’

Greg’s eyes slitted. ‘Wassat mean?’

‘It means... Well, it means I’m interested, among other things, in what the Reverend Ellis is getting up to – you know?’ Greg snorted; Merrily unwound her scarf to let him see the dog collar. ‘This seems to be one of the few places without a candle in the window.’

Greg pushed fingers through his receding hairline. He looked as if there wasn’t much more he could take.

‘You wanna know what he’s getting up to? Like
apart
from destroying marriages?’

‘No, let’s include that.’ Merrily sat down.

Greg said there’d been a full house last night.

‘First time in ages. Folks I ain’t never seen before. Not big drinkers, but we got frew a lot of Cokes and shandies and if you know anyfing about the licensing trade you’ll know that’s where the big profit margins lie, so I got no complaints there.’

‘Thievin’ bugger,’ Gomer said. ‘So what brought this increase in trade, boy?’

‘Wife went to church, Gomer. That funeral. Mrs Weal. Never come back for a good while after you’d left. I mean hours. Said she’d got talking to people. First time she’d really talked to anybody since we come here.’ He scowled. ‘Including me.’

‘She’d never been before?’ Merrily said. ‘To church – to the hall?’

‘Nah. Not to any kind of church. See, what you gotta realize about Marianne – and I’ve never told a soul round here, and I would bleedin’ hate for anybody—’

‘Not a word, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘Not a word from us.’

‘She got problems.’ Greg’s voice went down to a mutter. ‘Depression.
Acute
depression. Been in hospital for it. You know what I mean – psychiatric? This is back in London, when we was managing a pub in Fulham. She was getting... difficult to handle.’

Merrily said nothing.

‘Wiv men and... and that.’ Greg waved it away with an embarrassed shake of the head. ‘Ain’t a nympho or noffink like that. It was just the depression. We had a holiday once and she was fine. Said she was sure she’d be fine the whole time if we went to live somewhere nice, like in the country.’ He snorted. ‘Country ain’t cheap no more. Not for a long time.’

‘’Cept yere, mabbe,’ Gomer said.

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s a trap, Greg, boy.’

‘Tell me about it. I’ve had people in here – incomers, you can pick ’em out from the nervous laughter – still lookin’ for strawberries and cream on the village green and the blacksmith taptappin’ over his forge. Be funny if it wasn’t so bleedin’ tragic.’

‘That was you, was it?’ Merrily said softly. ‘When you first came here?’

‘Her – not me. I ain’t a romantic. I tried to tell her... yeah, all right, maybe I did fink it was gonna be different. I mean, there’s noffink
wrong
with the local people, most of ’em...’

‘I coulder tole you, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘You come to the wrong part o’ the valley. Folks back there...’ he waved a hand over his shoulder, back towards New Radnor. ‘They’re different again, see. Bit of air back there. Makes a difference.’

‘So your wife went to church again yesterday?’ Merrily prompted.

‘Yeah. Off again. Up the village hall. Couldn’t get out this place fast enough. I didn’t want
this
. Sure, I wanted her to make friends, but not this way. I said, come on, we ain’t churchgoers and it’d be hypocritical to start now.’

‘Without the hypocrites, all our congregations would be sadly depleted,’ Merrily admitted. ‘But she went anyway. And came back all aglow, right?’

Greg didn’t smile.

‘Made lots of new instant friends,’ Merrily said. ‘People she’d only nodded to in the village shop hugged her as she left. She realized she’d never felt quite so much at home in the community before.’

‘Dead on,’ Greg said sourly.

‘And she wants you to close the pub and go to church with her next week.’

‘Says it’s the only way we’re gonna have a future. And I don’t fink she meant the extra business. It won’t...’ He looked scared. ‘It won’t
last
, will it, Miss...?’

‘Merrily.’

‘It can’t last. Can it? She’s not a
religious
person. I mean... yeah, I coulda foreseen this, soon as people starting whispering about the
new rector, what a wonderful geezer he was, how their lives was changed, how he’d... I dunno, helped them stop smoking, straightened out their kids, this kind of stuff. All this talk of the Holy Spirit, and people fainting in church. And Marianne kind of saying, “Makes you fink, don’t it? Never had no luck to speak of since we moved in. Wouldn’t do no harm, would it?” ’ Greg looked at Merrily’s collar. ‘Not your style, then, all this Holy Spirit shite?’

‘Not my style, exactly...’

Gomer said, ‘Don’t do any good to let your feet get too far off the ground, my experience.’

‘Why did they want you to close the pub today?’ Merrily asked.

‘Aaah.’ Shook his head contemptuously. ‘You seen the paper. He told ’em all yesterday this was coming off. Got bloody Devil-worshippers in the village and they gotta be prepared. Bleedin’ huge turnout. Standing room only up the hall, ’cording to Marianne, when I could get any sense out of her. People hanging out the doors, lining the bloody steps.’

‘This is local people or... newcomers?’

‘Mainly newcomers, I reckon. A few locals, though, no question. And apparently Ellis is going...’ Greg threw up his arms. ‘ “There’s a great evil come amongst us! We got to fight it. We are the chosen ones in the battle against Satan!” ’ Satan is this Robin Thorogood? All right, a Yank, a bit loud – in your face. But
Satan
? You credit that?’

‘You know him, then?’

He shrugged. ‘Americans. Talk to ’em for half an hour, you know ’em. His wife’s more down to earth. I didn’t know they was witches, though. They never talked about that. But why should they?’

‘You were going to tell us why you’d closed the pub.’

‘He don’t want any
distractions
. He wants
concentration of faith
.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Merrily said. ‘Why?’

‘Mondays he holds his healing sessions,’ Greg said. ‘Up the village hall.’

‘So?’

There was a lot of pain and bewilderment in his eyes.

‘I can help,’ Merrily said. ‘Just tell me.’

Greg breathed heavily down his nose. ‘Last night, she says to me, “I’m unclean.” Just like that – like out the Bible. “I’ve been tempted by Satan,” she says.’

‘En’t we all, boy?’ Gomer said.

‘By
Thorogood
. Suddenly, she’s being frank all the time. She’s telling me stuff I don’t wanna know. Like she was... tempted sexually by Robin Thorogood, agent of Satan. She was possessed by his “dark glamour”. She wanted to sh— sleep wiv him. She comes out wiv all this. To
me
.’

‘
Wanted
to sleep with him?’

‘Ah, noffink bleedin’ happened. I’m sure of that. He ain’t been here two minutes. Plus she’s ten years older than what he is, gotta be, and if you seen his wife... Nah, I doubt he even noticed Marianne. It’s just shite.’ Greg shook his head, gutted. ‘I’ll go get your coffee.’