A Crown of Lights (48 page)

‘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 Greg. 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.’

‘What happened then?’

‘They took me up the hall. Father Ellis was there.’

‘Did they tell you
why
you were going to the hall?’

‘What?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Father Ellis...?’

‘He was dressed all in white, as usual. He was like a saint, and I felt so comforted. I felt I was in the right hands, the hands of a living saint. And we sits down and Father Ellis explains about the demon what Robin had put inside of me.’

‘Those were his words?’

‘Once he’d given me the demon, he didn’t wanna know me no more, he just pushed me away.’

‘Robin?’

‘Pushed me away, and I fell down in the street. The demon did that. That was the demon. After the pub closed, Greg and me, we had this terrible ding-dong. I’m insulting him, I’m like
belittling
him, you know what I mean? I’m screaming, “Go on, do it to me, you got any bottle.” Poor Greg. Turns him off like a light, you talk dirty. But that wasn’t
me
. I know now that wasn’t me. That was the
demon
.’

‘Is that what Father Ellis said?’

‘He said he could take it away, but it wouldn’t be easy, and it was not to be gone into lightly and I would have to understand that I would be giving myself to the Holy Spirit. He said it was a foul entity, the demon, and it was gonna have to come out... like a rotten tooth.’

Merrily said. ‘You mean... out of your mouth?’

Marianne’s eyes narrowed, lines appeared either side of her mouth. She looked accusingly at Merrily. ‘Judy said you come to spy on Father Ellis.’

‘I was sent to support him,’ Merrily said. ‘From the bishop, remember? The bishop thought he needed some help.’

Marianne looked confused. ‘That Judy, she took you outside, din’t she? I was glad when she did that.’

‘We hadn’t met before. I think she was a bit suspicious of me.’

‘She took you outside,’ Marianne said. ‘I was very glad.’

‘We had a good chat,’ Merrily assured her. ‘We worked things out. Marianne, do you remember what Father Ellis did... to exorcize the demon of lust?’

Marianne blinked, affronted. ‘He said the Church has strict rules about the exorcizing of demons. They don’t just
do
it. You could wind up exorcizing someone who was mentally ill, couldn’t you?’

‘Er... yes. Yes, you could.’

Ellis told her this
? Merrily’s heart sank a little. This was established Deliverance procedure. You didn’t even contemplate exorcism until all the other possibilities, usually psychiatric, had been eliminated.

‘Don’t get me wrong, love, he could’ve done what he liked without a word, the way I was feeling, long as he took it away. But he explained it was a
disease
. I needed checking over by a doctor, and what he was doing should be medically supervised.’

‘He
said
that?’

‘Dr Banks-Morgan was there for the whole thing,’ Marianne said. ‘That’s the kind of man Father Ellis is.’

The male figure in the doorway.

She sat in her car for a while.

Then she rang Hereford Police, asked for Mumford. He was out, so she rang Eileen Cullen at home, hoping she wasn’t asleep. A man answered; Merrily realized she knew nothing about Cullen’s domestic situation. When she came on the line, she sounded softer, a bathrobe voice.

‘Before you say a word, Merrily, there is one incident I will never talk about again, not to you, not to anyone.’

‘Angina,’ Merrily said.

‘Ask away,’ Cullen said.

‘The pills you take for angina. Tri-something?’

‘Trinitrin. You feel it coming on, you stick one under your tongue.’

‘Becomes automatic?’

‘Long-term sufferers, they practically do it in their sleep.’

‘Take a hypothetical case. Person on Trinitrin for angina becomes converted to herbal remedies. Says I’m going to stop filling myself up with these nasty drugs. Then she feels an attack coming on, so what does she do?’

‘Reaches for the Trinitrin. Says I’ll stop fillin’ meself up with these awful drugs
tomorrow
.’

‘All right.’ No time for the subtle approach. ‘Hypothetically, if, in circumstances like this, a doctor saw an opportunity to do away with a patient in a way which might throw blame on someone else, say for instance the herbalist... how would he go about it?’

‘Jesus, Merrily, what
is
this?’

‘It’s, er... a question. Just a question.’

‘Well here’s your answer – a hundred ways. Could casually swap her Trinitrins for blanks, for starters. Who’s gonna know? It’s easy for a doctor. Always has been.’

Robin had been gazing from his studio window when he saw her walking, like some grounded angel, across the yard, and he’d gone running wildly through the farmhouse, like some big, stupid kid, knocking a bowl of cornflakes out of the hands of a mousy, pregnant witch from Gloucester, called Alice.

Now he held Betty’s hand, and he was breathing evenly for the first time in many hours. They shared this big cushion they used to have in their previous apartment. Only now it was on the floor of the parlour, the room with the inglenook which was now the house temple.

They’d been left alone in here, just Robin and Betty and the altar and the crown of lights.

The kindly, mature witch, Alexandra, Betty’s one-time tutor, had made it. Alexandra was a twig-weaver, or whatever you call it, and
this was a tight wreath of hedgerow strands, like a crown of thorns without the thorns. Across the top of the wreath was shaped a kind of skullcap made out of one of those foil trays you got around your supermarket quiche. The candles which ringed its perimeter were the kind you had on birthday cakes, though not coloured.

‘A
Blue Peter
job,’ Betty had said with a wistful smile, referring to some TV show she used to watch as a kid, where you were taught how to make useful artefacts from household debris. Foil trays apparently featured big.

‘I love you,’ Robin said. ‘I want you to wear it tonight.’

Outside on a calm night, with all the candles lit around the head of a beautiful woman, the crown of lights looked awesome.

‘It’s the mother wears the lights,’ Betty said.

‘This is special.’

‘What would Ned say?’

‘He’ll be cool.’

Everything was cool, coming together, happening just like he’d known it would. He hadn’t asked where she’d spent last night. That didn’t matter. She sometimes needed time to think things out. He recalled how one moonlit night she’d gone out walking from Shrewsbury into the countryside, hadn’t returned until dawn, had covered maybe twenty miles and hadn’t noticed the time go by. He’d been frantic, but she was her own person. She was his priestess. He would trust her for ever, through life after life after life.

‘Ned’s even gonna fix things with Kirk Blackmore, I tell you about that?’

‘Yes,’ Betty said, ‘I’m sure he will.’

‘Bets, things are really turning around. It’s Imbolc. I can feel the light coming through.’

‘Yes,’ Betty said.

Down the hill, into the forestry land, until she came to the point where there were farm buildings either side of the road and a Land Rover with a ‘Christ is the Light’ sticker. Oh, he
had his uses, did Jesus Christ: the very name served as a disinfectant.

Merrily turned in to a rutted track between two stone and timbered barns, and there was the farmhouse, grey brown, black windows. No garden, just a yard of dirt and brown gravel, where she parked the Volvo. There was a glazed front porch, its door hanging ajar. She saw the interior door swing open before she was even into the porch, and Judith Prosser standing there, cool and rangy in her orange rugby shirt.