Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

Fuchsia watched the flames.

‘I was looking forward to it. It seemed a lovely area. It has two personalities, Merrily. Long, light views on the English side, and then deep green and full of drama as it swoops down to the Monnow Valley and Wales.’ She gripped her knees. ‘All spoiled now.’

Felix looked at her, worried, then he turned to Merrily.

‘So … Ledwardine, eh? You know Gomer Parry?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled. ‘Very well.’

‘Danny Thomas?’

‘Not quite as well. I didn’t meet him until he became Gomer’s partner in the plant-hire.’

‘I was in Danny’s band in the Seventies,’ Felix said. ‘Bass. Fingers always too messed up for anything more delicate than a bass guitar, and a bit clumsy at that. I think we did one gig, and I wouldn’t say folks was actually walking out the door—’

‘It was full of death,’ Fuchsia said. ‘The cold, white, waxy stillness of death.’

Merrily saw Felix grit his teeth, turning away from Fuchsia, whose elongated reflection in the stainless-steel flue was starting to look like Munch’s Scream .

‘I didn’t know whether it wanted me out or it wanted me dead, Merrily.’

‘Stop it, girl.’

Felix’s fingers gripping his knees. Merrily knelt down next to Fuchsia on the rug.

‘What made you think that something wanted you dead?’

Fuchsia shrugged.

‘I tried to work – I went out, I came back, I went out again. And then I went back. I am a professional.’ She stared defiantly at Merrily. ‘Felix went back on his own the next day, and when he came home it was like it was all over him. I made him shower and then I burned all the clothes he’d been wearing. Just out there, Merrily. I poured petrol on them.’

Merrily nodded. Very early in her deliverance career she’d been advised to do something similar, to draw a line under a particular situation. Some things it was easier not to question.

‘You said you went back.’

‘It was under the dust sheets.’

‘What was?’

‘I tried to ignore it, but all the time I could hear the dust sheets behind me, wriggling and rippling and whispering. The air was really thick and heavy and I wouldn’t let myself turn round.’

‘Felix wasn’t there?’

‘I was checking out the granary,’ Felix said. ‘Working out how many steps could be repaired. Heard her screaming, started running …’

Fuchsia was staring down at her hands, mumbling something. Merrily bent to her.

‘I’m sorry …?’

‘ A face of crumpled linen ,’ Felix said. ‘She’s said that a few times.’

‘That’s what you saw?’

Fuchsia nodded her head violently and bent forward as if she had awful stomach-ache, and Felix looked depairingly at Merrily, and then Fuchsia said, ‘Can we do it in the church?’

‘The blessing. Don’t see why not. But I’d need to clear it with the vicar.’

‘No. There’s no need, Merrily.’

‘Well, it’s what we usually do, but …’ At least she was on fairly good terms with the minister at Monkland; she could get away with it. ‘If you’d rather not make a thing out of it …’

‘Not this church,’ Fuchsia said.

She’d insisted on changing first, into something white.

The old-fashioned way. All due ceremony .

Merrily went back across the field, through the clearing mist, to the car and brought the blue case out of the boot. Inside it were the holy water and oil for anointing. Borrowed from Roman Catholicism but it was sometimes helpful. Partly theatre.

She waited in the field, with Felix.

‘Those books on the shelf near the stove – are they yours or Fuchsia’s?’

‘I don’t read much nowadays. Half a page and I fall asleep. If they en’t technical books, they en’t mine.’

‘I meant the ghost stories.’

‘Oh. Aye, she likes the old ghost stories. Sometime she’ll read one aloud and it scares the pants off me, but she just giggles. Finds them comforting, mabbe. The old houses, the formality, the stiff way people talk. Stilted. Sometimes she says she was born out of time. Wrong place, wrong time.’

‘Where was she born?’

‘She didn’t tell you?’

‘She said Cardiganshire.’

‘Well, that …’ Felix half smiled. ‘That’s more or less right. You heard of Tepee City?’

‘Blimey, is it still there?’

‘I reckon. Likely the longest-surviving alternative community in Britain by now. I was there about a year, as a young feller. Gap year, as you might say. Nice folks, in the main. Had to pull your weight, mind, or you wouldn’t be welcome for too long.’

‘So you were a tepee dweller.’

‘Bender, in my case. You know – the ole bent-over sapling kind of thing?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Only there a year, like I say, but I never regretted it. When you eventually graduate to building and rebuilding proper houses, if the first ones you ever put together was benders you’ve probably got your priorities right – make it warm, watertight and use natural insulation.’

‘Fuchsia said you, erm …’

‘Cut her cord? Aye, she likes to tell people that.’

‘Is it true?’

‘It is, actually.’ Felix squeezed his prickly jaw. ‘Childbirth in the valley, it could be like a communal event. I just happened to be nearest the scissors. Afterwards, Mary asked me to be her … godfather, kind of thing. Though we never went to church, just down the wood. Where we lit a fire, asked the gods to bless the child … bit pagan, sorry about that, but they did, kind of … you know, they included Jesus.’

Merrily smiled faintly.

‘Then we played some music, smoked some weed, and I held the child for a bit and made some vows in the smoke.’

‘So you and Fuchsia’s mother – I’m sorry for asking personal questions but it helps to know a few basics …’

‘No,’ Felix said. ‘Me and Mary, that never really happened. I wanted it to, at the time, I en’t denying that. She was beautiful. Thin. Fragile. Didn’t have much to say. Needed looking after. When she turned up at Tepee City, she was already pregnant. Said the father’d buggered off to America to go on the road in a pick-up truck. I suppose I got closer to her than anybody, but not as close as I’d’ve liked, you know? She stayed a few months, and then she … she just left.’

‘With the baby?’

‘No, she left the baby in the Valley. With another family.’

‘Just like that?’

‘More or less. Rachel, the woman who took Fuchsia, she was this earth-mother type, done it before. I mean, it was that kind of place. Fuchsia was a child of the tribe, kind of thing. We thought Mary was gonner come back – she said she’d been offered a job, good money and she’d be back for the kid. The social services tried to find her, got nowhere. So it ended up with Rachel adopting Fuchsia, or fostering her, whatever. And I kept in touch, kind of thing. Helped out. Sent money.’

‘You left when it was clear that Fuchsia’s mother wasn’t going to come back?’

‘No, no, what happened, my ole feller died suddenly, I had to sort things out. He had a builder’s yard, my dad. I sold it after a bit, went to work for a firm of conservation builders. Learning the trade, kind of thing. Then went on my own, built up a business. Got married, got divorced. Then Fuchsia showed up.’

‘What, just appeared?’

‘We’d put her through art college, see.’

‘ You had?’

‘Had the money by then, Mrs Watkins. Why not? I mean, I never meant for this … for us to be like, you know, how it’s turned out. She just arrived one day, and she was interested in what I was doing, the conservation work, and she hadn’t got a job …’