Midwinter of the Spirit (19 page)

‘Are there any stories about the house? You’re fairly local, Helen. Are there any… I don’t really know what I’m looking for.’

‘Murders? Suicides? I don’t know, but I could ask around in Hay.’

‘Christ’s sake, don’t do that!’ Susan Thorpe rose up. ‘I know what it’s like in Hay. It’ll be all over the town in no time. This is a business we’re running here. Seven jobs depend on us, so let’s not get hysterical. So far, we’ve managed to conceal it from the residents, let’s keep it that way. And anyway,
we
haven’t seen anything, and no residents have reported anything in the past four years. Why should this… thing start to appear now?’

‘We believe imprints and place-memories can be activated after years and years,’ Merrily said. ‘Sometimes it’s a result of an emotional crisis or a disturbance.’

‘Absolutely not! Nothing like that here at all.’

‘You said yourself that old people can behave like delinquents. Sometimes mental instability, senile dementia…’

‘Any signs of dementia, they have to go, I’m afraid. We aren’t a nursing home. And the only signs of hysteria have been… well, not you, Helen, but certainly your predecessor…’

‘
You
didn’t see it,’ Helen said quietly. ‘Have you ever seen one, Mrs Watkins?’

‘Possibly. Put it this way, I know what it feels like. I know how frightening it is. But I don’t want to overreact either. I don’t plan to squirt holy water all over the place. What I’d like to do is go up there now, with both of you, and say a few prayers.’

Susan Thorpe sat up. ‘Aloud?’

‘Of course, aloud.’

‘Oh no, we can’t have that. Some of the residents will be in their rooms. They’ll hear you.’

Merrily sighed.

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ Helen Matthews said. ‘
I’ll
come.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Susan Thorpe stood up, adjusted her hairslide. ‘I can’t have it. Can’t you do it outside – out of earshot? God’s everywhere, isn’t He? Why can’t you go outside?’

‘I could, but I don’t think that would have any effect.’

Helen said, ‘If
I’ve
seen it, Mrs Thorpe, it’s only a matter of time before one of the old ladies does. What if someone has a heart attack?’

Merrily thought of the video again, and what Huw had said.
Bottom line is that our man in Northampton should not have left before administering a proper blessing, leaving her in a state of calm, feeling protected
. Yes, suppose someone
did
have a heart attack?

‘God,’ Susan Thorpe breathed, ‘this is getting beyond a joke.’

‘It never is a joke,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m starting to realize that.’

‘The problem is finding a time when that passage and all the rooms off it are empty. Look, all right… most of the residents totter off to Hardwicke Church on a Sunday morning, as people of that age tend to. What are you doing tomorrow morning?’

‘I’m going to my church, Susan. I’m a vicar.’

‘Oh.’ Susan Thorpe was unembarrassed. ‘You don’t do this sort of thing full-time then?’ Like this diminished Merrily – a part-timer. Susan became agitated. ‘Well, look… look, there’s going to be a party. One of the residents is a hundred years old; we’re having a small
soirée
for her. I can tell you, old people
never
miss a party. Suppose, while it was on, we could smuggle you upstairs and you could do your little ceremony? You do work at night?’

‘Your mother will be here then, I suppose.’

‘I should think.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Merrily said.

It would be very interesting to talk to Mrs Thorpe’s mother. Five thousand quid, and instructions to be out by the weekend? Either Dobbs really was going out of his mind, or there was something very odd here. She had to go carefully, though: mustn’t appear to be checking on him. Casually running into the former housekeeper while processing an
imprint
… that would do fine.

As she left the Glades, Merrily saw that it was snowing lightly out of a sky like stone. Winter deftly gatecrashing autumn’s mournful party.

16

Real Stuff

T
HE STALL WHICH
made Jane laugh the most was the one selling something called:

The Circlet of Selene

It looked like three strands of copper wire bound together into a bangle or a necklet and secured by small curtain rings. The wording was a bit careful. It didn’t actually promise you more energy, a better night’s sleep and a dynamic sex life; it claimed, however, that many people had
found
that all this had
come about
after
only three weeks
of wearing the Circlet of Selene. Which cost a mere £12.75 for the bangle or £17.75 for the necklet, neither of which must have cost more than 75p to produce.

Still, people were buying them – women mostly. Well, ninety per cent of the punters here were women, in fact. The tottyquotient was pretty bloody lamentable, especially in the marquee which had been erected in a field behind the pub. Most of the blokes had stayed in the bar, as blokes were wont to do, and even that wasn’t exactly crowded with intriguing, dark-eyed, gipsy-looking guys.

The marquee housed most of the stalls – crystals, incenseburners, cosmic jewellery – though it was far too cold a day for a marquee. You’d think the weather situation might have been foreseen, given the number of self-styled psychics and seers on the premises. Most had clearly taken cover in the pub, where it was warmer, but Jane hadn’t felt drawn to consult any of them; they were probably all a bit pricey, too.

‘Taste-lapse.’ She sipped muddy coffee from a plastic cup.

‘Serious, serious taste-lapse, Rowenna.’

They were in a cold corner behind a trestle table displaying lurid healing crystals and supervised by a gross middle-aged couple in matching bobble-hats. Tape-loop relaxation music was trickling out of little speakers, and it got on your nerves.

‘I’m sorry.’ Rowenna looked around. ‘The last one I went to wasn’t this bad, really. Oh, there’s Kirlian Photography over there. You could have your aura photographed.’

‘You ever have yours done?’

‘Once. I got a picture of my hand with what looked like little flames coming out of the fingertips.’

‘What does it prove?’

‘That you’ve got an aura.’

‘If you didn’t have an aura you’d be dead, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’m glad I can’t see yours today,’ Rowenna said. ‘It’d be all dark and negative. You having problems on the domestic front or something?’

‘Not to speak of.’

‘You can speak to me of anything at all, kitten.’ Rowenna touched the tip of Jane’s nose with a gloved forefinger. Her floaty red hair was topped by a black velvet beret. The coat she wore just had to be cashmere. She looked far too cool and upmarket for this shoddy bazaar.

‘Well, I was talking to this bloke,’ Jane said.

‘Bloke?’

‘A bloke I was sure was seriously into Mum at one time, and—’

‘Oh, your mum. How do you mean
into
?’

‘Well, not
into
– like not in the fullest sense. I just had it in mind that they’d be good together. He’s quite insecure and vulnerable, but also kind of cool. He was a musician and songwriter when he was young –
too
young maybe – and he got led astray and into drugs, and wound up in a mental hospital.’

‘The way you do.’

‘It’s surprising how easily that can happen. Anyway, I don’t like guys who are too secure and full of themselves, do you? Like, a certain degree of pathos can be kind of sexy.’

Rowenna looked unimpressed by this. The sound of slow waves breaking on rocks cascaded serenely out of the speakers – which sounded pretty naff in a damp tent in a field near Leominster.

‘So I was telling Lol that Mum was now an exorcist, like in that film where the kid gets possessed and spews green bile everywhere, and how there was no call for dealing with stuff like that around here. But like… I mean there is, you know? When you think about it, it’s really like that. And, whereas in that film you had these heavy-duty, case-hardened Jesuit priests and even
they
couldn’t handle it…’

‘ “Come into me… come into me,” ’ Rowenna intoned. ‘And then he crashes out of the window to his death. What do you mean, it’s really like that?’

‘She had this mega-nasty job,’ Jane said soberly. ‘Nightmare stuff – and, like, no warning, you know?’

‘I don’t actually believe you.’

‘That’s all right, I’m not supposed to talk about it anyway.’

‘All right, if you tell me I’ll buy you a Circlet of Selene.’

‘Not good enough. You have to promise never ever to buy me a Circlet of Selene.’ It was probably OK to talk about this one, with him being dead and everything. ‘All right. Guy in the hospital – this really awful rapist kind of slimeball, gets off on degrading women, and he’s dying, OK?’

‘OK by me,’ said Rowenna.

‘But he can’t let go of his abiding obsession. You can see it glistening on his skin, like grease.’ Jane shivered with a warped sort of pleasure. ‘Like, she didn’t tell me
all
of this, but I put it together. Anyway, the nurses, they’re all like really shit-scared of this pervert, because he’s got this totally tainted aura.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Mr Joy. Isn’t that excellent?’

‘You’re embroidering this.’

‘I so am
not
! His name was Denzil Joy, he was in the Watkins Ward, right up at the top of the hospital where it’s old and spooky, and the nurses were genuinely scared of him. Takes a lot to scare nurses, all the stuff they’ve seen.’

‘What did he do?’

‘She wouldn’t say, but I could tell she was still, like, trembling with revulsion hours later. Heavy trauma scenario. What I think it was… was that this man could like make you feel like you’d been raped; he could invade your body just by thinking about what he wanted to do to you. And that got all boiled together with the sickness and the frustration inside him. The nurses are convinced he was possessed.’

‘Creepy.’

‘The hell with creepy – this was bloody dangerous, if you ask me. And the Bishop just sends her in to sort out this evil scumbag without a second thought, on account of she’s like a priest and priests know what to do. But – seriously – is she equipped for this? Does she know what she’s doing? Does she hell. Occult-wise, she’s probably as naive as all these idiots cooing over the frigging Circlet of Selene. Like, I feel there’s probably a lot I could tell her – to help, you know – but would she listen?’

‘Jane,’ Rowenna said, ‘listen to me. You cannot change other people – only yourself. In the end, the winners in this life are the people who go in with their eyes open and say: I’m not going to let God or Nature or the Bishop of Hereford or whoever fuck about with me.
I’m
going to call the shots.’

‘Right,’ Jane said. ‘I suppose that’s right.’

‘And it’s great if you can actually see that while you’re still young enough to do something about it – like us, you know?’

And, of course, Jane knew it
was
right. When someone like Rowenna, who was just that bit older and a cool person too, said
this
is right, it conferred a kind of responsibility. You felt you had to do something about it.

She tossed her paper cup into a litter bucket. ‘Let’s get out of this amusement arcade.’

‘Good idea,’ said Rowenna. ‘Go find the real stuff.’

‘Huh?’

‘This is just a front, isn’t it? The real heavy-duty clairvoyants are in little back rooms in the pub.’

‘You want to consult a clairvoyant?’

‘Check them out, anyway – see if they’re genuine. If they’re not, it’ll just be a laugh.’

‘Cost an arm and a leg,’ Jane said doubtfully.

‘They usually leave the amount up to you. Hey…’ Tenderly, Rowenna bent and stroked back Jane’s hair and peered into her eyes. ‘You’re not apprehensive, are you?’

‘Christ, no,’ said Jane. ‘Let’s go for it.’

Twice Lol had been down to the shop. Once to see if Moon wanted any help; but she explained that running a record shop wasn’t as easy as he might think, and shooed him away. The second time to see what she was doing for lunch; Moon had brought along two apples and a banana.

Moon insisted she was fine. Dick Lyden also said Moon was fine. If Dick was in two minds about anyone it was probably Lol, who’d claimed that Moon was living in squalor in the barn – until Dick had seen the place looking like a suburban villa, and Moon poised like she was ready to serve the canapés.

Denny also seemed a little happier when he called in, appearing at the door of the flat wearing a plaid overcoat and a big hat with a red feather, halfway to a smile.

‘She’s looking almost healthy,’ he conceded. ‘Is there something I don’t know?’

Lol shrugged. What could he say to him without reference to ghosts or disembowelled crows?

‘Listen, I don’t mind.’ Denny spread himself in the armchair. ‘I think it’s good. I’m glad, all right?’

‘She’s working on her book.’

‘Book? Oh.’ Denny looked uninterested, a touch pained. ‘That’s not really gonna happen, is it?’

‘
Does
your family go all the way back to the Iron Age?’

Denny’s smile shut down altogether. ‘Could be.’

‘Is it a Celtic name, Moon?’

‘I really don’t know. We weren’t always called Moon. A daughter inherited the farm back in the eighteenth century, married a bloke called Moon. Look…’ Denny pulled on his earring. ‘There’s a little something you gotta help me with here, mate.’

‘Unblocking drains is not my responsibility. You are the landlord, Dennis.’

‘Nothing that simple, little friend. This is a
really
distasteful job. Dick Lyden fill you in about his kid? This Bishop-for-a-day crap – the kid refusing to play along?’

Lol nodded warily. ‘If they’d told me at sixteen I’d been picked for Boy Bishop, I’d’ve tried to get expelled first.’

‘This kid attends the Cathedral School,’ Denny said. ‘So his father pays good money for him to be publicly humiliated in front of his peers.’