Fabric of Sin (16 page)

Taken him a long time to realize that. Nick Drake never had. Nick who, for God’s sake, was so much better, all
he
’d felt was a paralysing
isolation which had sometimes left him playing with his back half-turned away from the crowd.

Lol opened the case that held the Boswell. Paranoia, he knew, but he was always worried that the vibration of the truck might have damaged it. Many different kinds of wood had gone into its mandolin soundbox. It wasn’t the kind of guitar you took out on the road, but he felt it was his talisman – receiving it from Al Boswell when his life was turning round, the songs coming through and Merrily, miraculously warm in his bed.

The guitar seemed fine. But, across the street, over the corner of the square, the vicarage had no lights.

Not how it should be. Before Merrily left the house to do the evening meditation, she’d always put on the globular lamp over the door. Always. Symbolic. Place of sanctuary. For Lol more than anybody. He pulled back the roll-top, locked it quickly, ran across the square to the vicarage gate. No visible lights in the house. No Volvo in the drive. Garage doors shut and bolted.

Lol felt the inner freeze of dislocation. She wasn’t there, and she hadn’t told him. He felt, for cold moments, like a stranger here again. Without Merrily, he
would
be a stranger, snatching moments of warmth only from his hard-earned applause, a furnace door opening and closing.

Stupid. Not as if they were married.

Maybe she’d left him a message on the answering machine? He ran back across the square to the terraced cottage in Church Street, unlocked his front door.

A haze of street light on the desk under the front window. Silence. No bleeps. Lol looked out into the street, up and down at the windows of Ledwardine, the mosaic of coloured squares now as unwelcoming as the ash in the hearth.

There would be a simple explanation. He was becoming neurotic, over-possessive.

Not as if they were married.

Yet, so often, with the nature of what she did, when he’d felt a wrongness there had been … something wrong.

He went back out to the square, to where he could see the body of the
church through the lych-gate, the bunched shadows of people drifting through to an evening service with no hymns, psalms, lessons or sermon.

A vaporous glow from the church-door lantern. About to walk down, glancing back at the vicarage, he saw a blur of white, someone emerging from the gate, crossing the cobbles towards Church Street.

Lol made tea, and Jane seized her mug with both hands, carrying it through to the parlour with the burnt-orange ceiling, where Lol switched on the parchment-shaded desk lamp, leaving the curtains open, his initial relief burning away.

‘You mean she’s ill?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jane’s eyes glassy and anxious. ‘Maybe.’

‘Jane—’

‘We were in a hurry, Lol. We got back late. I said I’d get on the computer, try and get some background.’

‘On what? She is
in
the church?’

‘Yeah. She dashed straight across. Left me to put the car away and feed Ethel and stuff.’

‘So what’s wrong with her?’

‘Lol, I just … I don’t know, all right? Maybe it’s been coming on for a while. OK, it’s been a heavy year, all the death, all the things she couldn’t prevent. All the stuff that came to nothing. I don’t
know
.’

‘OK.’ Lol sat down in the chair facing Jane on the sofa, a chill on the room. ‘Tell me. In sequence.’

And she tried to, but most of it he couldn’t really take in. The number of the beast and the pubs with the cosmic names, the spooky woman with the dog. And the farmhouse.

‘When we came out, honest to God, Lol, she was white as … as a surplice. Like, trying to be normal – kind of,
let’s not worry Jane
. Which only made it worse because it was so obvious. Like
I
’m going to be worried? Me? The pagan?’

‘Worried about what?’

‘And then we go into this field, and I get the full blessing bit. The spiritual body-armour, at sundown on the edge of a field? Like,
huh
?’

‘She ever done that before?’

‘No. But then I don’t usually go with her on these jobs, do I? She said it was routine. Quite normal. Yeah,
right
.’

‘And she’s gone ahead with the meditation?’

‘Mmm.’ Jane nodded. ‘I mean … maybe that’ll help?’

Lol got her to tell him again – about the pubs and the dovecote and M. R. James.

‘After you came out of the house, what exactly did she say?’

‘She looked at her watch, and she’s like, “Oh my God, we’re not going to make it back in time.” But you could tell that wasn’t what was really bothering her, and if we were late why was she wasting time with all this blessing crap? Like, I’m an idiot? And all the way back she was like talking about other things – trivial things, in this brisk, practical way. Like she was trying to screen something out. Like she’d seen something in there, or realized something she didn’t want to face up to.’

‘And when you got back, was she still …?’

‘Upset, yeah. That was obvious.’ Jane drank some tea. ‘She looked totally out of it, like someone who’d been in a car crash. But when we were actually looking around the place, she was fairly dismissive, a bit annoyed, like she’d been set up. She hates that, people treating her like she’s some dim … vicar.’

Jane finished her tea, still looking starved and unhappy and maybe even resentful that some dim vicar might have picked up on an aspect of
otherness
that she’d missed out on.

‘Lol …’ Catching him looking at her. ‘I think I’ve changed quite a bit the past year. I’d like to think I could help her. But she’s still wary, you know?’

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Lol said.

Lol padded past the font, unseen. Not difficult at the Sunday-evening meditation, when the front pews were arranged in a circle, and the only light was candlelight, vast shadows ghosting the sandstone walls.

About two dozen people had come – about normal. When the rumours of healing had been circulating, there would have been as many as a hundred, but it had calmed down now.

‘… Idea that prayer’s as much about listening … means we have to think about what we
mean
by listening.’

No priestly trappings, no ceremonial. No smoke, no mirrors, no applause, no stamping for encores.

Merrily’s gig.

She was sitting on the edge of the circle in her black jeans and sweatshirt, hair tied back. Never a pulpit person.

‘Because, when you think about it, we hardly ever really do it.’

Lol sank down a couple of rows back, in deep shadow, his eyes closing momentarily in relief. Feeling her voice: low, soft, conversational, unassuming, intimate. Half-guiltily fancying the hell out of her.

‘If we’re holding a conversation with somebody, even if we think we’re taking in what they’re saying to us, what we’re actually doing is filtering it … putting it through this sieve of our own needs, desires, fears. Thinking of what we
want
them to be saying, and also of what we’re afraid they might
really
be saying. We’re processing the words, analysing, alert for any subtext. Our minds are taking an active role, in other words. We’re not
listening
. Does that make sense?’

Murmured assent. The people who came here on a Sunday evening were, by and large, not the ones who came to the family service in the morning. This was post-watershed.

‘OK, then,’ Merrily said. ‘Do you think we should try listening tonight? Without filtering, without questioning or intellectualising? Without any attempts at interpretation.’

Someone said, yeah, they should go for it, and Merrily moved her wooden chair a little forward, into the candlelight.

‘First, we need to go into the contemplative state, opening ourselves up. So …’ laying her hands, palms down, on her knees ‘… if we start with the relaxation exercise, beginning at the feet. Becoming aware of our feet. Curling our toes …’

The scraping of a pew.

‘Merrily … I want to ask …’

Merrily looked up.

‘Shirley.’

‘Is this in the Bible?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Does the Bible tell us we should be opening ourselves up to … messages?’

‘Well … I think you’ll find it’s all over the Bible in one way or another. But when you say
messages
, I’m not sure we’re talking about the same—’

‘Messages from beyond? Is that in the Bible?’

‘I could find you some examples, Shirley, but this wasn’t really intended to be a Bible-study session as much as—’

‘Only, it’s what the spiritualists do, isn’t it? Go into a trance and wait for something to come through. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you’re trying to do something different here, Merrily, to bring some of these people into the fold, but I’m an old-fashioned Christian, and I keep asking myself, is the church the right place for it?’

Merrily sighed, her breath fluttering a candle flame.

‘Shirley, I take your point, but there’s a subtle difference between spirituality and spiritualism –
spiritism
. What I’m— No, actually the difference is not that subtle at all, it’s something entirely—’

‘How do we know that what’s coming through is from God? That it’s not a dead person?’

Merrily’s face was tilted into the candlelight, and now Lol saw the furrows and the strain.

‘Or something evil,’ this Shirley said.

Restive murmurs from around the circle. A groan. Lol just sighed. A fundamentalist – all she needed.

‘Because when we approach it like this,’ Merrily said, ‘in this context, it’s coming out of prayer and it’s an act of faith. Shirley, if you could bear with me …’

‘It’s just that, in the dark, with a ring of candles, it doesn’t feel right to me. I don’t
like
opening myself up. How do we know there isn’t somebody here who’s brought something evil in with them?’

This time, when Merrily looked up, Lol was shocked at the pallor of her face.

W
HEN IT WAS
over, Merrily held the snuffer over the last candle and then guided Lol through the darkness towards the south door.

‘Didn’t handle that too well, did I?’

Moving them both swiftly down the nave. She could find her way blindfold around this sandstone cavern – had even actually done that once, when she was new here; it had seemed necessary, having an intimate, tactile knowledge of the body of the church, her own sacred space, to which it had seemed desperately important tonight to get back.

Bad mistake. She felt sick. Better she hadn’t made it in time than have to watch the so-called ground-breaking meditation service crumbling away into a pointless debate about the validity of replacing the traditional Evensong, hymns and all, with quiet and contemplation. More like a bloody parish meeting.

‘I wouldn’t care, Shirley doesn’t normally come on a Sunday night. I mean, if she prefers the formality of a structured service, well, fine …’

‘Who is she?’

‘Shirley? I think I mentioned her. Currently my most enthusiastic parishioner.’

‘Oh. Yes, you did.’

Lol bumped into the prayer-book rack; there was the slap of a book landing on flags.

‘Leave it, I’ll find it in the morning. Why are we talking in the dark? How did the gig go? Oh hell, I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten where …’

‘Newtown. Theatr Hafren. It was good. Almost full. The local record shop was selling albums in the foyer. They sold out.’

‘That’s
fantastic
. Come back to the vic? Have some supper with us?’

Lol didn’t move. She could see his outline, head bowed.

He said, ‘When she said that about … someone bringing evil into the church …’

‘Lol …’ God, what was she supposed to say? ‘Look, this is uncharitable, but I sometimes think Shirley actually comes to too many services.’

‘You thought she meant you, didn’t you?’

Merrily’s fingers found the stone bowl of the font, pressing into its whorls and furrows.

‘You’ve been talking to Jane, right?’

‘Well, she came over just now. A bit worried. Told me about M. R. James and the woman who was saying she’d seen one of his ghosts. And the dovecote. And this Mrs Mornington …?’

‘Wood.’ Merrily straightened up. ‘Morningwood.’

‘And how you came out of the house, white-faced, and wouldn’t talk about it.’ Lol was standing next to her now. ‘Pretty much the way you’re not talking about it now.’

Merrily leaned against the firmness of the font. She looked back along the nave, vaguely moonlit now. Like a straight path through woodland.

But there was no green man at Ledwardine.

‘All right. I may have … I saw something that wasn’t supposed to be there.’

‘Inside the house? The Duchy of Cornwall house.’

‘It just looked ordinary. It felt ordinary. Until I decided, for some reason, to have a look inside the inglenook. It’s quite a high inglenook. Someone like me can stand upright in it, and quite a lot of space all round. Like a small, black room.’

Her mind was already tightening. She’d hoped it might melt away in the meditation. But the meditation had never happened, and maybe that was just as well. Maybe she
had
brought something back and if they’d gone into the meditation it would’ve been contaminated. Maybe Shirley—
Oh, for God’s sake
…

‘Go on.’ Merrily felt Lol’s hand on her arm. ‘The small black room behind the inglenook.’

‘There was a feeling of not being alone. I’m not talking about God or anything.’

‘You’re saying you actually felt something was with you inside this inglenook?’

‘Something watching me. It’s all a bit subjective. A feeling I’d been getting at Garway generally. It has a very peculiar atmosphere, I can’t explain it. Even the church seems to have eyes. Ancient landmark, sentient landscape … Oh God, listen to me, I’m starting to sound like Jane.’

Lol was silent. There were cooling clangs from the heating, which had switched itself off.

‘You know the green man?’ Merrily said. ‘Like you get in country churches? Stone face looking through foliage?’