Phil Rickman: The Fabric of Sin

It was getting late, but it was Friday night and Merrily had lit a small log fire in the vicarage sitting room. The whole place was colder since they’d said goodbye to the oil-gobbling Aga. Which, while it had to be done, meant she wasn’t looking forward to winter.

‘And I don’t mean one of those rough, spiky doormats,’ Jane said.

‘You’ll like Ruth. She rides a motorbike.’

‘Jeez, if there’s anything worse than a trendy lesbian cleric in leathers with a vintage Harley between her legs … Like, maybe I could arrange to stay at Eirion’s …’

Jane’s voice dried up, and her face went blank. Eirion was away at university now, and she still hadn’t got used to that. OK, it was only Cardiff, and he came home to Abergavenny at weekends, but things, inevitably, had changed.

‘Ruth’s not a lesbian, Jane.’

‘Not a problem, anyway.’ Jane, on her knees on the hearthrug, stared into the desultory yellow flames. ‘I was thinking of giving girls a try for a while, actually.’

Shock tactic. Cry for help. Merrily pulled up an armchair.

‘He didn’t phone, then.’

‘Erm … no.’

‘How long?’

‘Ten days? No problem. I don’t think he was even able to get home last weekend, didn’t I mention that?’

‘No, but I kind of assumed that was why you suddenly had to work on your project.’

‘All that’s gone quiet, too. They may not even start the dig until the spring.’

‘Oh.’

Pity about that. Jane had been hyper for a while after her campaign to stall council plans for executive homes in Coleman’s Meadow. Convinced that the field had once been crossed by an ancient trackway and, amazingly, she’d been right. They’d found prehistoric stones there, long buried by some superstitious farmer. Sensational archaeology, for a place like Ledwardine.

‘He’ll call,’ Merrily said. ‘He’s Eirion.’

‘I don’t care if he calls or not.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘Like, it’s very demanding, university life.’ Jane didn’t look at her. ‘Lots of guys you’re obliged to get smashed with. Lots of girls to assist with their essays and stuff.’

‘Eirion was never like that.’

‘He was never at university before.’

University. Further education. This could be the time to talk about it again. Just over six months from her A levels, Jane needed to start applying to universities … like now. But Jane wasn’t interested, because that was what everybody did. She kept saying she could feel The System trying to stereotype her. And look at the cost. Tuition fees. Could they afford it? Was it really worth it? Especially as she hadn’t yet decided on a career. Like, you didn’t just do further education for the sake of having done it.

‘ You went to uni,’ Jane said, looking down at the rug, ‘and got pregnant before you were into your second year.’

‘We were naïve in those days. Well … comparatively immature. Although I suppose every generation gets to say that.’

‘In which case I must be—’ Jane turned to her, moist-eyed, or was it the light? ‘I must be very seriously immature, then. Pushing eighteen and only the one real boyfriend? That’s not normal, Mum. That wasn’t even normal in your day. That’s, like, almost perverted?’

‘Well, actually, flower, I think it’s really quite—’ The phone rang then, offering her a timely get-out, which she felt compelled to ignore. ‘I’ll let the machine—’

‘No, you get it. Go on. You’ll only sit there worrying until you find an excuse to sneak off and play the message.’

Merrily nodded, got up.

‘It’s a doormat thing,’ Jane said sweetly to her back.

‘Thanks.’

She took the call in the scullery office, padding over the flags in the cold kitchen where no stove rumbled, scooping up the phone with one hand, switching on the desk lamp with the other.

‘Ledwardine Vic—’

‘Mrs Watkins, is it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Adam Eastgate likely mentioned me.’

‘Oh … right. Mr …’

‘Barlow.’ Low-level local accent. ‘Felix.’

‘Right. I was going to call you tomorrow, actually, see if we could arrange to meet.’

‘Tomorrow would be all right for us, yes.’

‘At the house?’

Owls whooping it up in the orchard. Silence in the old black bakelite phone, the kind of phone that could really carry a silence.

‘The house at Garway?’ Merrily said.

‘No,’ Mr Barlow said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Any … particular reason?’

‘Well, see … person you need to talk to, more than me, is my plasterer. It’s my plasterer had the experience.’

‘Your plasterer.’

‘I call her that. We’re converting this barn at Monkland, see. We’re in a caravan on the site.’

‘That’s not far for me. It’s just I thought you might find it easier to explain the problem in situ,’ Merrily said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘You couldn’t spare the time?’

Another silence; no owls even. She waited.

‘I think you’re gonner have to come here,’ he said. ‘We don’t plan to go back, see.’

‘To the Master House.’

This was what he was ringing to tell her? That they weren’t, on any account, going back to the house?

‘That’s correct,’ he said.

She had the feeling that he was working to a script and whoever had written it was standing at his shoulder. She felt another question coming and hung on for it.

‘I was told you … you were the Hereford exorcist.’

‘More or less.’

‘And you’ll have the, um, full regalia, is it?’

‘Regalia?’

‘We’d like it if you came with all the regalia,’ Felix Barlow said. ‘The full bell, book and candle, kind of thing.’

‘Oh.’

‘If that’s all right with you,’ Barlow said.

SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL and shimmery in the mist. Like one of those exotic birds that weren’t supposed to migrate here. Greens and blues in her dark, tangly hair, skin like milky coffee. She stood by the long green caravan, in her pink-splashed overalls and her turquoise wellingtons, calling out when Merrily was close enough for the dog collar to show.

‘Will you bless me?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘In the old-fashioned way, please,’ she said. ‘That is, with all due ceremony?’

From the field gate, through the lingering mist – a keen hint of first frost – she’d looked as young as Jane. Close up, you guessed she was nearly thirty. Still not Merrily’s idea of a plasterer.

‘I’m serious.’

‘I can tell.’

Merrily looked into eyes which were startlingly big and round, like an owl’s, and widely separated.

‘It strengthens the aura,’ the woman said. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘I’m sure it must be.’ Merrily parted her woollen cloak to expose the cassock, hemmed with mud now. The full regalia could be a pain. ‘But would it be all right if we talked first?’

‘I just wanted to ask you while Felix wasn’t here. He’s not religious.’ The woman turned away and moved back to the caravan. ‘Fuchsia,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Fuchsia Mary Linden.’

Which meant that her parents had been either gardeners or big fans of the Gormenghast trilogy. Following her into the caravan, Merrily’s money was on Gormenghast .

She felt tired again, had a lingering headache. She’d awoken a good hour before dawn, her body all curled up, tense with resentment.

Never her favourite negative emotion, resentment. Most times it came hissing like poison gas out of inflated self-esteem – they can’t treat me like this. Seldom objective, never exactly Christian and hardly (thank you, Jane) the Way of the Doormat.