Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘And did you know he came to this area?’

‘Well, no! I just didn’t ! It’s incredible.’

‘But you’ve read all the stories.’

‘Erm …’ Jane fiddled with the mouse. ‘Not all of them, to be completely honest.’

‘You totally love him, but you haven’t read all his stories.’

‘OK … mainly, I’ve just seen the TV versions.’

‘I don’t remember us watching them.’

Remembered them being on . Usually around Christmas, and mostly before Jane had been born.

‘Erm … I didn’t mean us .’ Jane’s face had clouded. ‘I saw them at Irene … Eirion’s. His dad had a complete set of the videos, and we watched most of them one night, one after the other. It was … it was pretty good. We were on our own and we scared ourselves silly.’

‘That must’ve been a long night. Watching them all.’

‘Not that long.’ Jane looked away. ‘They only lasted half an hour each. Or a bit longer.’

Oh, Jane, Jane …

Merrily guessing they’d watched them tucked up together in Eirion’s bed, when his parents were out.

‘Anyway,’ Jane said. ‘The TV versions were obviously set in East Anglia or somewhere. To be honest, I bought the book but I only got round to reading a couple. And I didn’t read the foreword, otherwise I’d’ve known about him coming here. Obviously, I’m now going to read everything. I’m going to find a biography. It’s amazing.’

‘Mmm.’

It was certainly a complication. Did Fuchsia know M. R. James had been to Garway? It was not unlikely.

‘So …’ Jane sat back, hands behind her head. ‘What’s your angle on this, Mum?’

‘Oh, it … it’s just somebody else who scared themselves silly.’

‘In a house belonging to Prince Charles?’

‘Did I tell you that?’

‘Not directly, but I just happened to click on history …’

‘And found the Duchy of Cornwall website.’ Merrily nodded, resigned. ‘Right.’

‘Didn’t mean to snoop, but this one was interesting. And you know it never goes any further, with me. Not any more.’

‘I’d’ve told you all about it, if you’d asked.’

‘I know, but … Anyway. Sorry. So, like, the house is at Garway, then. With the Knights Templar church. How did you get on to M. R. James?’

‘Because … there’s a mention of a Templar preceptory in one of his stories – “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”.’

‘That one is really scary. In the TV version, this professor, he’s not what you’d call sociable and he just goes around kind of mumbling to himself on this grey beach, and then he—’

‘Do you know of any more? Any more stories mentioning the Knights Templar?’

‘No, but I could email this website and ask this Rosemary Pardoe, who obviously knows, like, everything about M. R.’

‘OK,’ Merrily said. ‘Why not?

Whatever had happened to M. R. James at Garway, he didn’t appear to have used it in a story, but perhaps he had, in some less obvious way. If he’d been at Garway in 1917, it would have to be one of the later ones.

And Fuchsia … whatever Fuchsia had seen or imagined or invented at Garway, she’d linked it to a story set in East Anglia, albeit with a Templar connection.

James had talked of next time. Next time we shall know better .

You sensed a residual fascination.

‘ Holy shit … ’

‘Jane—’

‘Look at this … ’

Jane had read further down, to where Rosemary Pardoe was passing on her own observations about Garway Church and its environs. Merrily leaned across.

‘The dovecote?’

‘Mum, did you know about this?’

‘Sophie mentioned it. It’s apparently the finest of its period in the country.’

‘Oh, yeah, that too … Now, read the rest. Go on.’

‘It was built by the Knights Templar?’

‘Probably. And then rebuilt by the Hospitallers who took over at Garway. Go on … read it.’

Jane stood up. Merrily sat down.

As well as the ancient Garway church itself with its (semi) detached thirteenth-century tower, there is a huge dovecote on private property on the adjoining farm …

Its doveholes number a worrying 666.

‘Oh.’

‘When are you going back?’ Jane said. ‘And can I come?’

When she went upstairs to change into jeans and sweatshirt, Merrily took the mobile with her and called Felix again from the bedroom.

Unsure, now, of how best to approach this. It was all subtly turning around, M. R. James himself becoming a player, seventy or so years after his death.

As for the dovecote … if it had been there for the best part of eight centuries, it was a bit late now to start worrying about the implications of 666 dove-chambers.

‘ The person you are calling is not available. If you would like to leave a message … ’

‘Felix, it’s Merrily. Could you or Fuchsia please call me. I need to talk about the …’ She hesitated. ‘The face of crumpled linen.’

Crumpling her cassock for the wash basket, she put on jeans and the Gomer Parry sweatshirt. The alarm clock said one-forty. Meditation was seven-thirty. She swallowed two paracetamol in the bathroom, came back downstairs to find Jane still hanging around in their chilly kitchen.

‘Not got a meeting with, erm … Coops today?’

Jane shook her head. She looked less happy, her face a little flushed.

There were crossroads in her life.

‘Do you want to drive, then?’ Merrily said.

WHAT JANE KNEW about the Templars came, of course, out of paganism.

Those difficult months when she’d been a teenage goddess-worshipper, slipping out into the vicarage garden at night to make her devotions to the Lady Moon. Partly a rebellion thing – OK, understandable in an intelligent, imaginative kid who’d been dragged away to the unknown village where her mother had become a low-paid, low-level employee of the boring, set-in-its-ways, male-dominated, hierarchical Church of England.

Jane’s paganism: partly about giving Christianity a good kicking.

Merrily watched her driving, back straight, hands textbook on the wheel, eyes unblinking. Remembering the all-time-low, a couple of years ago, with the heat of the old Aga at her back, a white-faced Jane rigid in the kitchen doorway, and their relationship trampled into the flagstones.

Nobody gives a shit for your Church. Your congregations are like laughable. In twenty years you’ll be preaching to each other. You don’t matter any more, you haven’t mattered for years. I’m embarrassed to tell anybody what you do .

The rage had evaporated, tensions long since eased, but Jane’s pagan instincts remained – tamer now, certainly, but still feeding something inside her that was hungry for experience; up in her attic apartment she was still reading books about old gods.

‘Like, for centuries it’s been accepted that the Templars were the guardians of arcane secrets – including the Holy Grail. I mean, who better? They were spiritual warriors. They put their lives on the line to protect sacred truths. They were like … the SAS with soul?’

‘Who says the SAS have no soul?’

‘Unlike the Templars, however, they’re not known for their monastic celibacy,’ Jane said.

They’d driven in from the east, less of a back door to Garway and better roads for Jane, who was hoping to take her driving test before Christmas. The sun was low and intense, a searchlight spraying the yellowing leaves on the turning trees. When you weren’t driving, you got a more spectacular overview … or underview, maybe; all you could see of Garway Hill itself was the top of the radio mast on its summit.