The Shift Key (12 page)

But on the other hand, Joyce was religious, yet her ranting and quoting from the Bible hadn’t helped them, had it?

In the end he drowsed off, head cradled on his arms, and only Chief barking to be let out aroused him in time to set about the morning milking.

When he came back Joyce was up and dressed, apparently
no worse for wear, insisting that he come with her to church.

Resignedly, he went to change and shave.

To the annoyance of the retired couple she rented a room from, the phone whose number Jenny had given to her Fleet Street contacts kept ringing almost as often as the Books’ throughout the evening. After her landlord and landlady went to bed – they being early risers – she waited beside it in the hall, to snatch it up at the first tinkle.

She was becoming a little worried about the response she had evoked. On any ordinary day an item like the parson of a West Country village going off his head would at best have rated a couple of paras down-column on an inside page. But it seemed that the national Sunday papers were looking forward to a drab weekend, particularly the popular ones that didn’t care to lead off with disarmament debates at the United Nations or news about Britain being censured in the European Court of Justice. A crazy parson in a village being attacked by the Devil was right up their street.

When at last a quarter-hour had elapsed without the phone-bell sounding, she remembered she had eaten nothing this evening. Stealing into the kitchen to make tea and toast and fry an egg, she thought regretfully of the meal Steven had offered to buy her.

At least, though, she had made one sound decision, by approaching the Sundays and not the dailies. Had she done the latter, the whole story could have been spoiled by a brief advance mention in a few down-market papers, no doubt in joky, mocking style, and she herself would have gained no credit. Moreover there was a good chance that, seeing Weyharrow thus pilloried, the locals would have pulled in their horns and presented a united front of denial to all reporters including herself.

As things stood, she was instructed to phone in updates tomorrow to at least two popular Sundays, to be paid for at
union rate, with the virtual promise from one of them that if they couldn’t spare a reporter on Saturday they’d take a story from her and splash it. Exactly what this would do to her relations with Ian Tenterwell, she hadn’t figured out and didn’t much care. After barely more than half a year working for the
Chronicle
she was bored and frustrated. This looked like the best chance she had so far had to break into the big time.

Her one real regret, as she slipped into bed, was that she hadn’t pumped Steven sufficiently about his own weird experience this morning. It was all very well to spread the story about the Devil to the sensational newspapers; ought she not, though, to have kept in reserve the sort of commonsensical explanation that a doctor might provide? Suppose it turned out to be something in the water, for example … or sprayed by a local farmer (two of them had gone mad today, hadn’t they?) … or, best of all, somebody drugging the communion wine … No, that wouldn’t fit …

She was asleep, dreaming of international fame. The dreams would have been delightful if only there hadn’t been a rather gauche young man constantly at her elbow, trying to tell her she had made some sort of terrible mistake.

At Weyharrow Court the evening had been indescribably awful. The din of rain on its resounding roof, spilling from neglected guttering and splashing randomly on the walls and windows, made a fitting accompaniment to the concerto of hatred within. The conductor, of course, was Helen, and Basil was the soloist.

Cedric blessed his good sense in visiting Sheila Surrean today and buying a batch of Stick’s fine grass. Not only had it given him an appetite at the dinner-table despite the fact that the main course was some sort of horrid stew; it had insulated him from the vindictiveness of the barbed remarks that flashed continually between his parents, because Ralph
Haggledon the lawyer had
not
turned up with a psychiatrist in tow and had declared himself singularly unimpressed by Helen’s claim that Basil was already fit for an asylum. Now and then, to their immense annoyance, he had actually been able to chuckle behind his napkin.

When that happened, old Marmaduke – normally stone-faced and glowering – relaxed his mask a trifle, going so far as once or twice to wink.

A point struck Cedric of a sudden. Could it be …? Of course! It could very well be that the old man, who had talked this morning about the way his grandson laughed, had no idea of the reason. Was he not given to pronouncing strictures about the young people who descended annually on Weyharrow, accusing them in particular of being dirty and using drugs? Cedric would have rebuffed the former charge, but as to the latter …

That made him laugh again, this time out loud.

Just as Helen and Basil were turning to glare at him, providentially the phone in the hall rang. Cedric jumped up, tossing his napkin on his chair.

‘I’ll go!’ – and suited action to word.

‘It’s probably for me!’ Helen called after him. ‘I’m expecting a call from Marge Grewsam.’

‘You mustn’t believe a word that old bitch says!’ Basil cried.

‘Have you forgotten how pleased you were when she put in a good word and got you added to the list of
JPS
?’ Helen countered frostily.

Marmaduke snapped, ‘Can’t you two talk reasonably?’

‘After what he did today –’ and ‘After the way she’s been treating me lately –’

The old man closed his ears. This one, in the cant phrase, could run and run.

Beyond the door, which he had pulled to behind him, Cedric snatched up the phone.

‘Hello!’

‘Hi!’ said a man’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar. ‘You’re Cedric, aren’t you? Is Stick there?’

‘Stick?’ Cedric echoed through a marijuana blur. ‘No, his number is –’

‘Shit, man, I got his number, but he isn’t answering. I got it the same time I got yours. Midsummer night!’

A flash of memory filled Cedric’s mind: flaring torches, dowsers of both sexes – some, to the horror of the local folk, ‘skyclad’, ie naked – clutching hazel-forks and demanding admission to the grounds of the Court at midnight because they claimed to have traced a ley line that led to the lost site of the pagan temple …

But he’d been fairly stoned on that occasion, too, and didn’t clearly remember either who the people were that he had met in the confusion, or even how he’d talked them out of achieving their intention. He did, though, recall that for the next two or three days his parents had treated him with unusual cordiality …

He said eventually, ‘Who is this?’

‘Shit, it’s Chris the Pilgrim, man! You gave me my
name,
man – and I let you hump my old lady Rhoda in exchange!’

‘Oh, wow,’ Cedric said softly. It was coming back to him now: a bonfire dying to embers at dawn., someone singing softly to a guitar, a passionate and sweaty body under his … and a visit to the Special Clinic at Chapminster Hospital when he remembered what he’d been up to.

Fortunately the verdict was: no harm done.

But that night he must have been – a term that Rhoda had come up with, that made him laugh anew – silver-tongued! He had not only talked the dowsers out of invading the estate; he had lured them away to a spot he himself had thought of as magical when he was a kid, a cup of ground concealed by sloes and hawthorn bushes, and persuaded them that this was a proper place for celebrating rituals. Into the bargain he had
conned a burly, bearded man called Chris into accepting a new name and conceding that an act of love between the giver of the name and his own mistress would be right and fitting …

A twinge of conscience penetrated Cedric’s foggy mind. He sought for proper words of apology. But before he found them, the phone was saying anxiously, ‘Hey, man, it’s nothing bad I’m calling up about! I mean, Rhoda isn’t pregnant or anything!’

Whoops!
That was something Cedric hadn’t considered, though the interval was about right for paternity to have been ascribed.

‘No, I just been trying to raise Stick, and when he didn’t answer the third time, I remembered you gave us your number too, and I know you’re close, so …’

‘What exactly can I do to help?’ said Cedric, choosing his question with care.

‘Well, like …’ A helpless and confused pause. In the background someone prompted Chris, and there was a muttered exchange too faint for Cedric to hear. Then: ‘Yeah, that’s right. See, there was this bit on the TV news. Some woman with a coachful of American tourists stopped near Weyharrow last night because the bus broke down. When she got to Stonehenge she started telling the
truth,
man! She said all about visitors from space in flying saucers, following the ley lines –’

An interruption. He resumed angrily, ‘Okay, she didn’t say ley lines! But she said pretty near the same thing! And there’s this guy we know, works for one of the papers. He says they had this weird call tonight saying the vicar’s telling everyone the Devil is playing tricks on him, right? You hear about that?’

A dreadful sense of inevitability had come over Cedric. He felt he knew precisely what he had to say, in order to disgrace his hateful father, in order to discomfit his loathsome
mother, in order to shock into his grave old Marmaduke, regardless of how likeable he might be. The conversion of Weyharrow Court into a pilgrims’ refuge was predestined. When he inherited …

He said slowly and clearly, ‘Chris, you’re right. But of course it doesn’t mean what most people mean.’

‘What?’

‘I mean when most people say the Devil what they mean is … Shit, man, you know what I mean, don’t you?’ He had run out of logic partway through.

‘You mean they mean the powers that go back all the way, the powers of the Old Religion. Right?’

‘Yes, I do!’ cried Cedric gratefully. ‘And they’re breaking out all over! Why, in court today my own father called for people to be hanged for stealing sheep!’

‘Hey, we heard about that …’ A muted discussion away from the mouthpiece. Cedric waited in frantic impatience.

‘You still there, man? We best get off this phone – we borrowed it kind of unofficially … But what you said made up our minds. Doesn’t matter what kind of power it is, we want to be there when it happens. We’re taking to the road right now!’

‘Fantastic!’ Cedric breathed. ‘I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.’

‘Same here, man. And same from Rhoda. She says you’re a great lay and if you ask again she won’t say no … Hey, just one more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Does Stick still grow that fine grass?’

‘Man!’ – in a properly reproving tone. ‘Don’t you know better than to say that on the phone?’

‘Ah, shit. You’re right. But I’m pretty stoned … You too?’

‘Me too,’ said Cedric solemnly. ‘See you tomorrow. And – hey!’

‘Yes?’

‘Spread the word! Get everybody here you can!’

‘Sure, man! Think we’d keep this kind of news to ourselves? See you tomorrow!’

‘See you!’ Cedric echoed.

And set down the phone, his whole being atingle with a sensation like an electric charge.

Oh, when Chris and his pilgrims got here … and the other people they would undoubtedly rope in … Weyharrow was going to be shocked out of its genteel rubber boots!

As for the impact on his family –!

‘Wasn’t that Marge Grewsam?’ His mother was looking out of the dining-room door.

‘No. It was a wrong number,’ Cedric said composedly.

‘A wrong number? And you were on the phone that long?’

‘Some wrong numbers,’ Cedric murmured, ‘are more interesting than right ones … I think I’ll call it a day. Good night!’

Save for the squalling of Rufus the tomcat, who fell silent in the end, the zone around Weyharrow Green was quiet during the early hours of Friday. Several lights stayed on late, because a good few unemployed teenagers saw no reason to get up before noon despite the trap of habit their parents were caught in. Thanks to them, whispers of the
BBC’S
all-night radio broadcast competed with but failed to outdo the clatter of raindrops. For the most part affairs seemed to have returned to normal.

It was about four, just after the rain moved eastward and a warmer drier belt of air replaced it, that a slow and smoky bus crossed the bridge and halted beside the green.

Cries of ‘Shush!’ and ‘Keep your voice down!’, plus the noise of luggage being disembarked, ensured that local residents were roused. Some peered through their curtains; seeing a bus, perhaps they remembered that another such had broken down nearby last night, as reported on the TV news, and went back to bed under the impression that Tom or Fred Fidger would turn out and fix it when called for.

Dawn therefore broke – dry and bright like yesterday – before anyone paid serious attention to the change that Jenny Severance had wrought on the fortunes of Weyharrow … thanks to that reporter in London who had heard about her call and remembered that Chris and Rhoda knew the place.

Producing, to the horror of most of the villagers, who had imagined themselves free until next spring of the folk whom Vic Draycock had nicknamed pilgrims, a mushroom-like copse of tents on the green, followed within the hour by campers with sleeping-bags and ground-sheets on the river-bank
beside the Marriage, and during the morning by a further influx that at noon exceeded sixty.

It was around six-thirty that the visitors began to rap on local doors, begging for water because they’d tried the village pump and found it no more than a memorial. Many of them had been to Weyharrow before, if only for the last summer solstice, and they remembered who then had or had not made them welcome. The ‘nots’ were the more numerous.

One door the visitors tried, behind Miss Knabbe’s cottage, proved to be unlocked. Two of them entered circumspectly and filled plastic canisters at her kitchen sink.

On their departure, they let in a cat who came purring round their ankles. It looked as though he must belong here, for he headed straight for a waiting saucer of milk.