Midwinter of the Spirit (25 page)

The luminous clock indicated 5.40 p.m. Time to leave for Evensong – except they’d dropped it last September because so few people liked turning out in winter darkness.

She remembered the essence of her dream. Oh God, an image of the lithe and tawny Val Hunter astride Mick under some high, moulded ceiling, with all the lights on. Merrily standing in the doorway, shocked to find herself wearing a very short black nightie. Cold legs, cold feet.
Come on, Merrily!
the Bishop had shouted impatiently.
Don’t be nervous. This is a time of transition. We have to experiment!
The king-size bed, a four-poster, had shiny purple sheets.

But that confrontation under the aumbry light now seemed no less unlikely than the dream of the purple sheets. Merrily slid out of bed.

Downstairs there was no sign of Jane. Ethel eyed her sleepily from the basket beside the Aga, as Merrily made herself some coffee. She thought of the night Lol had first arrived with Ethel, after the cat had been savagely kicked by a drunk. They’d examined her on the kitchen table, just there –

Where a note lay, neatly printed from the computer.

MUM: Rowenna turned up. Didn’t want to wake you, so left machine on. Back by ten… swear to God.

Here’s list of phone calls so far.

1. Emily Price, from Old Barn Lane, wanting to firm-up a date for wedding rehearsal.

2. Uncle Ted, in Churchwarden Mode. Didn’t say what it was about – probably usual pep talk about not neglecting parish for glamour of Hereford.

3. Sister Cullen. Can you ring her at home?

That’s it. Love J.

* * *

Eileen Cullen said, ‘Don’t worry, the auld feller’s not gone yet.’

‘I was thinking of visiting him. Is he allowed visitors?’

Cullen laughed. ‘Well, it’s funny you should say that, Merrily. Mr Dobbs
has
had a visitor. That’s why I called you. I thought you’d maybe want to know. Just the one visitor.’

‘Someone I know?’

‘You’ll be on your own if you do.’

‘You’re going to spin this one out, aren’t you?’

‘All right,’ Cullen said, ‘I’ll tell you. First off, I wasn’t there. Young Tessa was there – you remember Tessa? Sunday-school teacher – the plucky kid holding Denzil’s other hand?’

‘I remember.’ Like you could forget anybody there that night.

‘This afternoon, all right, a man in an overcoat carrying an attaché case. A minister, he says, come to pray with Mr Dobbs. But Mr Dobbs can’t speak, Tessa tells him. Doesn’t matter, the priest says. They would like some peace and quiet and nobody coming in.’

‘What was his name?’

‘He didn’t give his name. I told you Dobbs was in another wee side ward, all on his own? Well, the priest’s drawn the curtain across the glass in the door. Except it’s not possible to block the window fully. If you’re nosy enough, you can stand on a chair and look down through the top. Which Tessa did, after she caught the light from the candles.’

‘Candles?’

‘We’re always a bit careful, the range of religious fellers show up these days – and all quite legit, you know? Only Sister Miller’s on her break and Tessa’s a wee bit unsure about this, so she takes a peep. He’d about finished by then, so he had. He was picking up his wee bottles of holy water, scrubbing out his chalk circle.’

‘Chalk circle?’ Merrily sat down hard at the scullery desk.

‘Me telling you like this, it sounds like a joke, but the child was terrified. He’d drawn a circle round the bed, if you please! Yellow chalk. Making a bit of extra room by pushing the visitor’s chair under the door handle, the cheeky sod, so anyone’d have a job getting in even if they wanted to. And some bottles of water, with stoppers, placed around the circle. He also had a black book – very eerie, very frightening.’

‘What did she do?’

‘Went to find Sister Miller. Time the two of them got back, your man had gone. She rang me here during her break.’

‘Well…’ Merrily drew erratic circles on a pad. ‘I’m lost. I don’t understand this.’

‘All
I
can say is that I was raised a Catholic, and it isn’t one of our… things… our rituals.’

‘Doesn’t even seem like proper religion, Eileen. More like… magic. You sure this was a real priest?’

‘I didn’t see him. Tessa says he was wearing a dog-collar. He had a hat and scarf, so she couldn’t see much of his face.’

‘Did they check Dobbs over after he’d gone?’

‘No change. He lies there still as corpse, so he does. Sometimes his eyes’ll be open, but you never see it happen. What’ll we do? Call the police, you reckon?’

‘I don’t know what the police could do, to be honest. But if he shows up again… would you mind calling me?’

‘Merrily,’ Cullen said, ‘if it’s me that’s on when he shows, I’ll be on to you before the divil’s got both feet on the blessed ward at all.’

22

Edict

M
ONDAY MORNING, AND
Jane felt good – which was rare. She lay and watched for the dawn.

She’d seen like hundreds of dawns from here now, her bed facing the east window. This was not brilliant
feng shui
-wise, but you did get to see the sun come up over the wooded hill, and that was seriously important today.

Jane replayed last night’s encounter – still amazed at how
cool
Sorrel had been, inviting her and Rowenna over at once to talk about it all. Jane calling Rowenna, and Ro saying, ‘Look, better not tell them we’re still at school. These people worry about parents finding out and making a fuss.’ That was cool – so they were office working girls. Sorrel, who looked about Mum’s age, had with her an elderly woman called Patricia who was kind of the head of the group and was obviously a really heavy person and had quizzed them in this really soft, knowing voice.
How important is it to you to find the Path within yourself? Are you ready for so much hard work at a time when most girls your age are out having fun?

That made you think. You could spend years in search of enlightenment, and still wind up disillusioned at forty or something. The answer was: give it six months and then, if it wasn’t working for you, let it go.

No sign of dawn, and it was getting on for seven. Mum was probably up already, because –
yes!
– Mum was meeting Lol later in Hereford.

She didn’t know what the meeting was about, and why it was so early, but that didn’t matter. Their meeting was still a major coup for Mystic Jane, who had set the whole thing up the other night. Classic, when you thought about it: Lol taking Merrily in from the cold, offering her sanctuary just like she’d done for him that time. Mum still very big on the sanctuary concept, like with all those hookers she tried to rescue when she was a curate in Liverpool.

It would be really good to have Lol around again, so cool in his vulnerable, nervous way. This Moon – she was entirely wrong for him. You could tell, just by watching her in the shop, that she was remote and self-obsessed. So, OK, she was beautiful and about ten years younger than Mum. But Mum was still sexy. Well, she
could
be sexy, if she wanted to. If the bloody Church…

Or if they’d met way back – Mum in her Goth frock and her Siouxie Sioux make-up, Lol unhappily on the road with his band, Hazey Jane. You seemed to go all tightened up and inhibited when you got older. Especially when you had your whole life hijacked by the Church. The dogcollar – it was like some sick masochism trip. The punks used to wear actual dog-collars. Had Mum once been into bondage gear, and was that a natural progression to clerical costume?

Jane was just picturing Mum in the pulpit in her Sunday surplice and half a potful of coal-black mascara, when she became aware of the frozen night sky at last beginning to brown with heat from the east. Patricia said you were supposed to wait for the big orb itself but, like, what if it didn’t show until you were on the school bus or something?

She scrambled out of bed and walked slowly to the eastfacing window and opened it as wide as it would go. It was absolutely bloody
freezing
.

Well, good! Jane steeled herself and flung her arms wide.

Now her first exercise. She had the words Patricia had given them written out on the back of an old birthday card, all ready, balanced on the window ledge. She pictured Rowenna standing at her own window in the big modern house in Credenhill Jane hadn’t yet visited.

She pictured Patricia and Sorrel – sisters, kind of.

OK. She took a mouthful of cold air and coughed. Then she looked into the sandy sky and read aloud from the card.

‘Hail to Thee, Eternal Spiritual Sun

‘Whose symbol now rises in the Heavens
.

‘Hail to Thee from the Abodes of Morning.’

Jane lowered her arms, and stayed silent. By tomorrow, she wouldn’t need the card.

She was on the Path.

This time, she was going to do it right.

Merrily dumped her waxed jacket on a front pew and went to kneel in the chancel.

Before her, the altar was a hazy-grey block under a stainedglass window, its colours still sleeping. She hadn’t switched on the lamps or even lit a candle.

Unlocking the church, she’d thought what a shame it was to have to restrict the house of God to not much more than normal working hours. Ted wanted to lock it up at five each evening, but Merrily was insisting on seven at least, even if she then had to go along with her own keys. A church should really be offering sanctuary around the clock. Perhaps you could employ a sympathetic security patrol to filter out the vandals – try getting
that
one past the parish council.

Enough! Merrily kneeled in silence for maybe ten minutes, letting thoughts drift away, and then began.

Her voice was hesitant, but steady. She kept it low.

‘Christ be with me, Christ within me
.

‘Christ behind me…’

Christ and who else? A story in the
Church Times
last week had revealed two more attacks – one of them sexual – on women priests in their own churches. But you couldn’t wrap yourself in cotton-wool like some religious statuette.

Equally she’d seen with the Denzil Joy incident the potential dangers of not protecting yourself before you went out on a case. And there was a lot about this Moon business she didn’t like. Obsession, for a start, was always dangerous. She’d called Lol last night, while Jane was out, to get some more background. She didn’t like the idea of that newly displayed photograph of the dead father in a room full of Iron Age relics. There was the possibility that this woman was drawing down pagan Celtic elements she would not be able to deal with.

Lol was right: it was necessary to go to the location on this one. To try to see it through Moon’s eyes. But if there was something there, some lurking presence from way way back, would Merrily be able to sense it? While, at the same time, keeping it out?

‘I bind unto myself the Name
,

‘The strong Name of the Trinity
.

‘By invocation of the same
,

‘The Three in One and One in Three…’

Pip-pop!
The green tubes ejecting from the nostrils of dying Denzil Joy.
Pip-pop!

Merrily cringed.

Stop!

She opened and closed her eyes and pulled the folds of blue and gold around her.

Start again.

‘Christ be with me, Christ within me…’

But Merrily’s visit with Lol to Moon’s barn was not going to happen. Something appalling already had. Something she could not ignore.

Jane took the call while Merrily was making breakfast.

‘It’s some really nasty, officious-sounding bastard.’

‘Not so
loud
!’ Merrily took it on the cordless phone in the kitchen.

‘Merrily Watkins speaking.’

‘This is Major Weston, area organizer for the Redundant Churches Fund. I make no apologies for calling you before eight. I find it ridiculous that I should have to call you at all. I wanted the
local
man to deal with it. Bizarrely, the local man tells me all matters of this nature have to be referred directly to you.’

‘What’s the problem, Major?’ She wasn’t aware that the Redundant Churches Fund even had an area organizer.

‘Desecration is the problem, Mrs Watkins. At the Church of St Cosmas and St Damien at Stretford. Do you know where that is?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘I expect you’ll manage to find it. The police already have, for what
they’re
worth.’

‘What kind of desecration?’

‘What
kind
? Satanic desecration, of course.’