Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘I’m fine.’

‘Shoes off,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

‘Look, I—’

‘Lie down on the chaise longue. Put that pillow behind your head, the other one under your back where the springs have gone in the middle.’

Mrs Morningwood wore jeans and a military sort of jumper, ribbed, and a pale lemon silk scarf. Her hair was down and looked freshly washed. Merrily tried to focus, saw the blur of a timelessly handsome woman no longer over-fussed about what she looked like. A clock was ticking somewhere. The room had cream walls, a bentwood rocking chair, an ebony desk and a black cast-iron range with a fresh log on a glowing bed, Roscoe the wolfhound lying full length below it, longer and hairier than the rug he was on.

‘I’m sorry …’ Merrily looked around for the clock, confused. ‘What time is it now?’

‘I should think coming up to midday. Clock’s in the kitchen. We don’t allow time in here.’

Midday. Oh my God.

She’d had breakfast at nine – most of a boiled egg, one slice of dry toast – watching Teddy Murray cheerily loading his knapsack, off to plan out a circular ten-mile walk for the German party next weekend, Bev inspecting Merrily, practical, blonde head on one side. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Merrily?’

She’d gone back to her room, lay down for a moment on the bed … woke up over an hour later, in a panic. Rushing into the bathroom, washing again, brushing her hair and stumbling down the stairs – nobody about, a radio somewhere playing Classic FM, but it still brought back celloed strands of ‘The Cure of Souls’, that reproachful song. She’d ring Lol, just as soon as she got back. Wasn’t his fault – her dream, her paranoia. Slipping quietly out of the front door, which had steps down to the lane, forgetting for the moment where she’d left the Volvo, only remembering where she had to go in it. Past The Turning three hundred yards, sign on the right, Ty Gwyn. Short track .

An end of a terrace, two tiny white-rendered cottages at one end knocked together, set well back from the road, overlooking fields and woodland under a pocked and mottled cheesy sky. Didn’t really remember getting here.

Mrs Morningwood had pulled up a piano stool with a black velvet seat to the foot of the chaise longue. Arranging a blue woollen travelling rug over Merrily’s legs. Bending over her feet now, reading glasses on her nose. Separating the toes and then running a thumbnail along one sole; it felt like a Stanley knife. Blanking out the pain, Merrily scrabbled for a question unrelated to her state of health.

‘Why did Jacques de Molay come to Garway?’

‘Who?’

‘Templar boss.’

‘Haven’t got a heart condition, have you?’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘Should’ve asked before I started. Remiss of me. Jacques de Molay. I suppose it’s more or less established that he did come here. About twelve years before his unfortunate death, I believe.’

‘Where would he have …? Oh my —’

‘Your stomach, darling. Tight as a drum. Intestines wound up like a watch spring. And then something implodes. I think you’re rather close to an ulcer. What’ve you been doing?’ Mrs Morningwood stood back, deep lines in her long face, all her features hard-focused in the sunless light. ‘You really weren’t aware of this? At all?’

‘No, I … God! ’

‘It’ll get less painful after a while. At first, you know, I was thinking premature menopause.’

‘What?’

‘No stigma. Sometimes happens to girls in their twenties. Probably isn’t. Probably plain stress. Never had reflexology before?’

‘Well …’ Rolling her head in the pillow ‘… Not quite like this. Not the seriously painful kind.’

‘Some so-called practitioners are merely playing at it. Feelgood, massage-parlour stuff, bugger-all use to anybody. Sorry, darling, what was your question?’

‘De Molay. I was trying to ask you where he might have stayed. When he was here.’

‘You really need to rest. A holiday. When did you last have a holiday?’

‘Four years? Five? I don’t know, we weren’t living here then. Another lifetime.’

‘I can feel other people’s problems curled up tightly inside you, stored away in little sacks.’

The Stanley knife again, biting into the side of a big toe.

‘Sacks that swell,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

Merrily shut her eyes. This was not going the way it was supposed to. The plan had been to walk in, eyes wide open, go for some straight answers: Mrs Morningwood, you didn’t just accidentally bump into Jane and me the other day, you had an agenda and presumably still have. Why did you court Jane with your revelations about the four pubs and the heavenly bodies? Why were you so keen that we should check out the Master House while you buggered off?

The pain faded. She let her head sink into the pillow. With her usual uncompromising dynamism, she’d staggered up the path, under a wooden pergola still lush with vines. Still trying to find a doorbell or a knocker when the door had opened and she’d virtually fallen over the threshold.

‘I suppose you’re thinking of the Master House,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘It would make sense of the name, certainly. Doubtless the sort of grand celebrity occasion they’d have wanted to commemorate.’

‘Nobody know for sure?’

‘So little from that period was written down, Mrs Watkins. Not exactly known for their illuminated script, the Templars. Didn’t keep diaries or ledgers, far as I know.’

‘Being illiterate couldn’t have helped. No word-of-mouth, old wives’ tales about why de Molay came?’

‘He was presumably inspecting the preceptory. Why does it interest you?’

‘Trying to get a handle on the place, that’s all. To what extent it’s connected to the Templars.’

A log collapsed in the range, gases spurting, Merrily starting to sweat.

‘Good.’ Mrs Morningwood didn’t look up, working on a toe with both hands, like peeling a plum. ‘You’re probably full of toxins. I’d hate to even inquire about your diet.’

‘Mostly vegetarian. Bit of fish.’

‘Bit of this, bit of that, I know. A vegetarian diet needs to be carefully organized or there’ll be deficiencies. Looks of you, I bet you don’t even bother to eat at all half the time.’

‘You find life isn’t something that happens between meals.’

‘Life, my darling, needs to be battered into shape.’

‘Easier said than— Oh, for … I thought you said it’d get less painful.’

‘I expect I lied,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

When Merrily awoke, still on the chaise longue, the light in the two windows was blue-grey and the light in the cast-iron range was molten red, like the crater of a live volcano. Like the sun through the glass of red wine she’d been given. The sun had been out then, when she’d drunk it. Gone now, the sun and the wine.

Mrs Morningwood was rocking gently in the bentwood chair, smoking. Merrily raised herself up on her elbows.

‘What was in it?’

‘Nothing much. Valerian, mainly.’

‘What’s that do?’

‘A remedy for nervous debility. Unclenches the gut. Promotes sleep, quite rapidly sometimes.’

‘You didn’t tell me that.’

‘Of course I didn’t tell you that – you’d’ve buggered off.’

‘This wasn’t supposed to …’ Merrily’s head fell back. ‘How long have I been here now?’

‘Why are you so obsessed with time? You’ve been here as long as was necessary.’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t get up yet, Watkins, you might fall over.’

Couldn’t have if she’d wanted to. Merrily felt limp and disconnected and distinctly odd but not in a bad way. And not, as she’d feared, in a drugged way. Something seemed to be vibrating inside her, like a motor idling.