Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

A few more calls like that, carefully spaced, would do no harm at all. Maybe a toned-down Scottish accent next time. Go careful, though, because this woman was …

… oops , coming out.

Jane stiffened. It was strange, almost surreal, watching another woman cleric emerging from the vicarage drive. Siân had on a dark belted coat, unbuttoned, over her cassock, the dog collar luminous and her pewter hair gleaming in the lights from the square. Walking purposefully, with directionality , up towards the church through sporadic rain.

On the edge of the square, Siân was ambushed by Brenda Prosser from the Eight till Late. Nobody else was about, so Jane could hear most of what they were saying.

‘Yes, I am indeed,’ Siân said. ‘We couldn’t leave Ledwardine without a priest for a whole week, could we?’

‘Well, you know, I hadn’t seen her since church on Sunday,’ Brenda said, ‘and I thought she might be ill or something. She works a bit too hard, I think, sometimes.’

Well, thank you, Brenda .

‘Merrily is very conscientious,’ Siân said. ‘Now, I know you’re at the shop, Mrs Prosser, and I fully intend—’

‘Oh, quite a few years now, Mrs Clarke. Came over from Mid-Wales, we did, when my husband was made—’

‘Only— I hope you don’t think I’m being terribly rude, but I did arrange to meet someone at the church at six o’clock, and I’ve just realized I’m going to be late .’

‘Oh, I’m sorry—’

‘No, it’s not your—’

Meet someone? Hadn’t taken her long to get her feet under the table, had it? And why not meet whoever it was at the vicarage?

Unsettling as the situation may appear, trust your instincts, listen to your inner voice and by next week’s climactic conjunction of —

Jane’s horoscope in the Sunday Times .

Right. Sod this.

Pulling up the hood of her parka, transferring the airline bag to her left shoulder, she came out from behind the pillar, walking directly towards Siân and Brenda. And then, drawing the fur trim across her face, she was gliding anonymously past them towards the end of the square. Crossing the street, slipping under the lych-gate and running through the spitting rain down to the church, calculating that the lower door would be unlocked because Tuesday night was choir practice.

It always felt better sidling in by the smaller door. OK, she might be coming around to accepting the sense and the structure and the basic morality of Christianity, but she couldn’t imagine ever going the whole way, not even when she was old and scared; it lacked thrills, wasn’t sexy.

And yet its buildings were, somehow. The church yawned around her, that sudden sense of live air you never quite got used to. The secondary lights were on, high in the rafters.

Jane didn’t move until she was sure that all the pews were empty. Then padding down the aisle, listening for footsteps, voices. Sliding into the Bull Chapel. Always a good place to hide; if anyone came in, you could slide around the wooden screen to where the organ was and then out through the chancel.

The effigy on the tomb of Thomas Bull, long-dead squire figure, had a naked sandstone sword by its side and, instead of the eyelids being humbly lowered, the eyes were wide open, part of this self-satisfied half-smile.

Lowering herself into the only pew, Jane smiled back: Don’t smirk at me, pal, your family counts for zilch these days .

Siân’s meeting, she was thinking maybe Uncle Ted. Retired solicitor – maybe he’d even worked with Siân?

Ted in senior churchwarden mode was a hypocritical old sod, suspicious of Mum’s deliverance role, for ever whingeing that she should be devoting all her energies to the parish. Ted would love that the village was getting increasingly upper-middle-class, and given the choice between ancient stones and executive homes in Coleman’s Meadow …

He’d sell you down the river . Jane patted Tom Bull’s eroded cheek, hoping his bones were twisting and tangling up in fury. Turn this chapel into a wine bar .

She jumped as the main doors creaked, and they came in together, the famous acoustics soon making it clear that this wasn’t Uncle Ted.

THERE WASN’T MUCH doubt at all, any more, was there?

‘Let me try to understand this,’ Merrily said. ‘Mary was writing to you from Tepee City.’

‘Yes.’

Mrs Morningwood was squatting on the floor now, arms around the dog, face in deep shadow, Roscoe panting. Merrily picked up the letter.

‘She wanted to meet you back at Garway. She wanted you to go with her to the Master House – because you’re the strong one. And yet you read this … and it doesn’t seem right.’

It’s in my dreams, Muriel. I thought I’d got away but I cant. When I was having the baby it was terrible, the dreams I was having then I cant tell you. Rachel who was looking after me said it was just the hormones and they got Rick who was a priest to pray with me and it was all right for a while but then it started again after the baby was born .

‘She’s had a very bad time at the Master House and yet she wants to go back?

‘She needs to deal with it,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘And now it’s different. Now she isn’t the only one affected.’

The baby cries too much. The baby cries day and night. I cant get no sleep and when I do the dreams start .

The baby cries whenever shes WITH ME. Thats not how it should be! It really frightens me! Please help me Muriel! Theres nobody else I can go to to do what I need to do .

‘You agreed to meet her? You replied saying you’d—’

‘I didn’t waste time replying, I came back. Drove across to West Wales, found this rather pathetic community, boiling their drinking water from the ditches. She’d left. Nobody knew where she’d gone. They weren’t terribly helpful.’

‘Nobody told you about a baby, then.’

‘Not a word. Probably thought I was a spy from Social Services.’

‘And you never heard from her again.’

‘Nobody did. And then, of course, while I was in Wales, something else happened. The police carried out their famous dawn raid on the Master House, removing quantities of drugs … and the future Lord Stourport.’

‘ Just Lord Stourport? He carried the can?’

‘Couple of others, I think. Nonentities. There were said to be some more people involved in the activities, but not living in. They may have got away minutes before the police broke the door down. A dawn raid tends to be less effective when its targets are habitually not going to bed until dawn.’

‘Have you still got the original letter?’

‘Somewhere. It was getting worn with repeated, agonized readings, so I retyped it, word for word. Preserving the erratic application of the apostrophe, as you may have noticed.’

‘And this is all of it? I mean, is this all she said? No explanation of exactly what happened to her at the Master House.’

‘No, it … perhaps she’d explained in a previous letter that went astray. That seems the most likely explanation.’

‘Or that she didn’t want to put it in a letter anyone might read. Or that she couldn’t bear to write about it. What’s all this about money? Look at the money your getting .’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The people at the Master House seem to have been paying her. For what?’

‘Evidently not merely as a housekeeper.’

‘No local gossip about it?’

‘Of course there was gossip. Sex, drugs, orgies. But nobody really knew .’

‘What about Lord Stourport? What’s happened to him?’