A Crown of Lights (56 page)

George stopped. Betty had stood up. In this damp, chilly room she was a heat source: the only one here who didn’t look kind of tawdry. She looked like a goddess.

‘Ask him what he’s waiting for,’ she demanded.

‘Please...’ George wilted back. ‘Just leave it.’

Ned Bain didn’t move.

‘He’s waiting for his stepbrother,’ Betty said. ‘He’s waiting for the hymns to start up, only louder. He’s waiting for his stepbrother to lead the enemy to the gate.’

‘But, Betty, we
need
that tension,’ George said. ‘That’s what this is about – the changeover. In the dawn of the year, the dawn of a millennium, a pretender is banished.’

‘Christ, you mean?’

‘If you like. I prefer to think in terms of the warlike Michael. I’ve got nothing against Christ, but he was, at best, an irrelevance. Yeah, Christ, if you like.’

‘I
don’t
like,’ Betty said. ‘We’re an alternative. We’re not the opposition. I mean,
he
might be – he and Ellis both. Whatever else they are, whatever they claim to represent, it’s completely soured by what lies between them. I don’t want that. I don’t want to go into that old, fouled place on the back of twenty-five years of pent-up hatred. I suggest everybody gets changed and leaves now.’

Howls of protest and serious consternation at this, shared by Robin. In some ways, the recent revelations had made him feel better about the situation – the great Ned Bain brought down to human level.

‘Bets, look,’ he said hoarsely, ‘you can’t precisely say we were set up.
We
decided to go for this place. All the omens said it was right at the time. Plus, we had the promise of the Blackmore deal and all that it could bring. We were on a roll.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Betty said, ‘the Blackmore deal.’

Ned Bain shifted. Robin felt a pulse of alarm.
I still think Kirk could be persuaded to listen to reason.
This was all gonna crash now, the rainbows in the puddles turning black.

‘Robin, love...’ Betty’s eyes had misted, or was it his own? ‘Kirk Blackmore’s been working you like a puppet, hasn’t he? All your highs and all your lows.’

‘He was important, sure.’ Robin looked at Ned. Ned was
staring at the stone flags in the floor, elbow on knee and arm outstretched, cigarette loose between his fingers.

And suddenly Robin knew.

‘I guess
you’re
Kirk Blackmore, huh?’

Bain didn’t reply. The room was silent.

Robin turned to Betty. ‘How did you find that out?’ Inside his rough woollen tunic he was starting to sweat like a hog.

‘Some... friends of mine got some information from the Internet. Blackmore’s this notorious recluse supposedly living on a Welsh mountain and communicating only by fax. People speculate endlessly on the Net about the true identities of authors. Publishers often write novels under pseudonyms: usually lurid, mass-market novels they might not want to be associated with. I’m really sorry, Robin.’

Ned’s brow was suddenly a little shiny.

‘But he could’ve bought this place out of his small change,’ Betty continued.

‘It was your destiny, not mine,’ Bain said calmly. ‘At the time.’

‘Bullshit,’ Robin said quietly.

‘Any time you wanted to get out, I’d have taken it off your hands.’

‘You mean like after we ran out of money? After we’d taken all the shit from the local people? After Ellis got safely kicked out on his ass by the Church? After our marriage got smashed up on the fucking rocks?’

‘There was always this growing atmosphere of turbulence,’ Betty said. ‘We were made to feel insecure from the first. He wanted us to feel beleaguered, maybe a little scared.’ She looked down at Bain. ‘You
needed
this, didn’t you? Were you working on it with your coven, Ned, or was it some magical construction of your own – long and intrictate, like one of your novels? Generating unrest – backed up by a campaign of mysterious letters and phone calls directed at Ellis. The dragon rising? Were you working towards some kind of cataclysm... only forestalled by stupid Vivvie giving it away – resulting in
this
farce.’

Vivvie snarled, ‘What
are
you these days, Betty? Because you’re not one of us any more.’

Bain said, ‘If you really want to discuss this, I’m perfectly willing—’

‘Did
you
buy the witch box from Major Wilshire? Did
you
have someone deliver it to us, place it on our doorstep?’ Betty paused. ‘And were you... were you
really
that surprised when Major Wilshire fell from his ladder?’

Ned Bain sprang up in a single movement. ‘Don’t you fucking
dare
...

His stiffened finger inches from Betty’s soft cheek.

Which was enough.

Robin lurched across the room to the altar. George reached out to stop him, but Robin shook George savagely away. He felt the weight of his hair on his shoulders. He heard warbling sirens in the night. He saw through a deepening mist. He remembered the pit of desperation that swallowed him when Al Delaney, of Talisman, had called to say,
He wants someone else to do it, Robin. He doesn’t want you.

Robin wrenched from the altar the great ceremonial sword. No toy this, no lightweight replica, but three and a half feet of high-tensile steel.

Robin raised it in both hands, high above his head. He heard Vivvie screaming.

M
ERRILY SAID
, ‘Y
OU
really did look after her, didn’t you? You really took care of her.’

Judith Prosser adjusted a fold in the corpse’s shroud. ‘I was the only one
ever
took care of her.’

‘Could we close the lid now?’

Judith didn’t touch the lid. ‘Why don’t you conduct your ceremony, Merrily? Take off your coat, make yourself into a priest.’

Taking control again.

Merrily moved to the head of the coffin, looking down towards Menna’s feet. Her airline bag, with the Bible, the prayer texts, the flask of holy water, stood by the door.

‘Why don’t you finally leave her alone? Why don’t you just accept that maybe you’ve done enough harm?’

‘Meaning
what
precisely, Mrs Watkins?’ Judith said briskly. She went to stand at the foot of the coffin, from where she could observe the faces of both Merrily and Menna.

‘You had her on the Pill from an early age. Dr Coll’s good like that, isn’t he? Ministering to the
real
needs of the local people? Dr Coll understands these things.’

‘She’d have been pregnant by fourteen if we hadn’t done something.’

‘Mmm, her father really
was
abusing her, wasn’t he? Maybe over quite a long period.’

Judith shrugged.

‘And, of course, you knew that.’

‘We didn’t talk about such things then. Other people’s domestic arrangements, that was their own affair.’

‘Yeah, yeah, but also because... whenever it happened, she would come to you.’

‘Oh, well, yes. Almost a mile.’ Judith smiled. Incredibly, it looked like a smile of nostalgia. ‘Almost a mile across the fields to our farm. To my parents’ farm. In tears, usually – or you could see where the tears had dried in the wind.’

‘And you would comfort her.’

Judith breathed in very slowly, her black coat flung back, breasts pushing out the rugby shirt. Merrily thought of her in the toilet at the village hall, tenderly ministering to Marianne. Always victims: always vulnerability, confusion, helplessness, terror, desperation. Like Menna, alone on that remote hill farm with her beast of a father.

‘What a turn-on that must have been,’ Merrily said.

Judith’s face became granite. ‘Don’t overstep the mark, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Why didn’t you just take her to the police?’

‘To give evidence against her own father? Apart from the fact that, as I say, such things were not
done
yere in those days, not talked about, how would she have managed on her own, with her father in prison? How would she have coped?’

‘Probably have been taken into care. And that’s probably the best thing that could have happened, in Menna’s case.’ Merrily paused. ‘If not in yours.’

‘You don’t know
anything
about this area!’ Judith snapped. ‘Social services?
Pah!
We have always managed our own social services.’

‘I’m sure. Especially after you got married and you were operating from the perfect, secure social platform.’

Marriage to Gareth Prosser.
Councillor, magistrate, on this committee, that committee. Big man. Dull bugger, mind. Lucky he’s got Judy to do his thinkin’ for him.

A very satisfactory arrangement that, in almost all areas of life, Judith needed Gareth for the framework, the structure, the tradition: a facade, and a good one. What did sexual orientation have to do with it? Fancy, meaningless phrase from Off. Self-sacrifice was sometimes necessary – for a while.

‘The foundations of rural life,’ Merrily said. ‘A husband, a farm and sons – preferably two of them, in case something happens to one of them, or the other grows up strange and wants to live in Cardiff and be an interior designer.’

Judith smiled thinly. ‘Oh, you’re such a clever little bitch. What about
your
life, Mrs Watkins? They say your husband died some years ago. Does the love of God meet
all
your needs?’

Merrily let it go. ‘When you’re married to a man like Gareth, nothing needs to change. You go to Menna, she comes to you. And then, when her father dies, you have the contingency plan for her: Jeffery Weal. Good old J.W., the solid, silent family solicitor. A local man, and discreet.’

He was too old for her, yes. Too rigid in his ways, perhaps. But it was what she was used to, isn’t it? She was a flimsy, delicate thing. She would always need protection.

What could be more perfect? His clothes smelling of mothballs, and little or no experience of women. And living just a few hundred yards down the hill from the Prosser farm.

‘
You
arranged that ideal marriage, Judith. You probably coached Menna in what would be expected of her. But she was used to all that, anyway, poor kid. She’d always been a kid – a sad, pale little girl. He must have frightened her a bit, at first, the size of him. He frightens
me
. But that would be no bad thing either, for you, if she needed a lot more comforting.’

Judith’s hands were on her hips. ‘Now you
have
overstepped the mark.’

‘And of course she must continue to take her Pill because children would not be a good thing
at all
. Having a child can make someone grow up awfully quickly.’

‘She was not strong enough for children,’ Judith said sullenly.

‘Was that how Weal eventually found out about you and Menna? Because
he
wanted children – with the family business to pass on to them. “Pills – what pills are these, Menna?” ’ She put up a hand. ‘No, all right. I reckon he did find out, though, didn’t he?’

‘You
reckon
,’ Judith sneered, ‘you
guess
, you
theorize
.’

‘Is that why you wanted me to come here tonight? To find out what direction the speculation was taking? I’d guess the answer is that you don’t really know for sure whether Weal knows about you and Menna, or not. But if he does, he wouldn’t say a word to you. It’s not the local way. Besides, I suppose you were useful to him. I expect there
were
aspects of Menna he couldn’t deal with. Maybe she’d finally changed – becoming a woman.’

‘You don’t know what you’re—’

‘But that wouldn’t be awfully good for you either, would it? To have Menna becoming a bit worldly-wise as she reached middle age? What actually
was
her mental state? I wouldn’t know but, my God’ – Merrily pointed into the tomb – ‘look at her now. Look at her face. It’s all coming out now, isn’t it, in that face? God Almighty, Judith, it’s almost turning into
your
face.’

Judith Prosser stood very still, seemed hardly to be breathing. Merrily moved away, back towards the door.

‘You know what I think? What I’d bet big money on?’ She was aware of her voice rising in pitch, more than a bit scared now of where this was inexorably leading. ‘When Weal had Ellis exorcize his wife, that was nothing to do with her father at all. Ellis seemed to be able to demonize
anything
and then get rid of it. He stopped your boy from nicking cars, didn’t he? So maybe Weal thought that Nicholas Ellis could purge Menna of the demon... the demon that was
you
.’

Merrily was shattered. She hadn’t quite realized what she had been about to say. But the evident truth of it was explosive.

Judith took a swift step towards her, then stopped, and said brightly, too brightly, ‘You are off your head, Mrs Watkins. You do
know
that?’ She laughed, her eyes glittering with rage.

‘That was only the half of it, though,’ Merrily said, to defuse things a little. ‘The next part would be the baptism of the two of them, in the same little bowl of holy water, I guess. Something medieval going on there: the fusion of two souls?’

Merrily stared down at the soured face in the tomb. In the medieval church, baptism was exorcism. Exorcism charms had been included in marriage services, or blessing of the sick. Pregnant women were exorcized too. In those days, demons were getting expelled from people like tapeworms.

A scenario: late afternoon, the sky like sheet metal. The baywindowed room north-facing, so not much of the sunset visible. A cold room and a cold time of day. Menna standing there like some white slave, her skin waxy, her arms like straws. Perhaps a bruise forming blue where Ellis had gripped her roughly – in his mind gripping not her but
it
. Perhaps she was wrapping her arms around herself and shivering. Or was she entirely unmoved? Compliant? Accepting this ritual as just another of those things men liked to do to her.

‘Do you embrace God?’ Ellis’s customizing of the rite.

J.W. Weal standing there, big as God.

Menna hesitating, perhaps a little worried by the word ‘embrace’ and thoughts of what else God might do to her after this.