Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

Gomer nodded, plucked the ciggy tin from his pocket.

‘This qualify as a public place, vicar, under the law?’

‘As there’s no actual market on at the moment, I don’t really know.’ Merrily pulled out the Silk Cut and the lighter, an old rage pulsing through her at the attempted management of people’s lives, the negation of God-given free will. ‘But who gives a shit? Go on …’

‘This person. I think I tole you this person helps farmers, kind o’ thing.’

‘With tax problems and DEFRA forms.’

‘DEFRA, that’s a war, them bastards, vicar, but that en’t really the issue in hand. And it en’t only farmers. And it en’t hexclusively Garway. Like, for instance, you met my ole friend Jumbo Humphries, Talgarth?’

Merrily recalled a man the size of a double pillar box who ran a garage and animal-feed operation up towards Brecon while doubling as a private inquiry agent.

‘Now Jumbo, when his wife walked out – and this is confidential, vicar …’

‘Goes without saying.’

‘Jumbo was lonely, you know what I’m sayin’? Not that he di’n’t have no offers. But the kinder women making the offers, they had an eye to the business, which is worth a quid or two. What I mean is, not Jumbo. They wasn’t looking at Jumbo, not even in the dark, and he knowed it.’

‘It’s sad, Gomer.’ Merrily lit his roll-up, stepping back as a bus pulled in with a hiss of brakes. ‘But it happens.’

‘So this person … over at Garway … this person we been discussing … It was this person got Jumbo through a bad patch. Fixed him up. With his Michelle.’

‘Oh. I see.’ She looked at Gomer, his glasses opaque. She was thinking, Not a Thai-bride situation. ‘ Do I see?’

‘No,’ Gomer said. ‘Likely not.’

First Siân, then Robbie Williams.

Getting home half an hour earlier than usual, Jane was as unhappy and confused as when she’d left this morning. Life in flux, nobody you could count on.

Siân – it had been encouraging, in a way. All that about holding Mum in high esteem, treating Shirley’s crap with the level of respect it deserved. It had seemed encouraging. But it could be a screen, couldn’t it? You couldn’t trust people in the Church because the Church was in flux, too, a time of rapid change, everybody grabbing what they could.

That was the trouble with the present. It was always in motion and, if you let yourself get dragged in, you could be pulled to pieces.

The past was different. You could get a feel for the past.

Jane looked around at the black and white village settling in for the dusk, the first lights kindling way back inside the Black Swan. The sense of an ancient heart. You could stand here, on these cobbles, at dawn and dusk particularly, and feel part of something at the deepest level.

This was most apparent when she was in Coleman’s Meadow, on the prehistoric trackway to the top of Cole Hill. In the meadow where Gomer’s JCB had – as if this was meant – uncovered the first stone. Eight to ten feet long. Awesome.

Finding the stones, fighting for the stones, had grounded her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. But now she was expected to break it. The System said she must go away next year to college, develop around herself a new kind of life. With all the bureaucracy involved, it was even likely she wouldn’t be here when – if – the old stones were raised again.

Ancient signposts to a mystical communion with the planet.

As above, so below .

She’d wanted to talk about this with Robbie Williams again. Discuss what she’d gathered from the internet as a result of his suggestion about the real identity of the Garway Green Man: If that is Baphomet, is he guarding the altar? Or is he drawing attention away from it?

History had been the last period before lunch, and she’d hung round as Robbie packed his notes into his briefcase, but he’d looked up with a faintly worried expression in his eyes.

‘Ah … Jane. In a bit of a hurry today, unfortunately …’

‘This is just a quick question, Mr Williams. It’s basically about what happened to the Templar tradition after the Order was dissolved. I’ve been reading about Eliphas Levi and Baphomet, and he was French. What I was really interested in was what happened here .’

‘Jane …’ Robbie had come to his feet, buttoning his jacket over his beer gut. ‘I need to make something clear. While one can only applaud your interest in the fringe issues of history, this is not part of the syllabus.’

‘I never thought it was,’ Jane said. ‘It’s far too interesting.’

‘However, I get paid – and not as well as I’d like to be – to improve this school’s reputation as an A-level factory. It’s not about knowledge any more, Jane, it’s about results and statistics.’

‘That’s a pretty cynical attitude, Mr Williams, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Jane, if you were as close to blessed retirement as I am, having seen all that I’ve seen …’

‘But, like, I thought you were interested . In Garway Church and everything. You seemed interested the other day.’

‘Well, all I’m interested in at the moment,’ Robbie said, ‘is my lunch. And if you want to make the best use of your time here, I would suggest you pay more attention to the syllabus, because your essay on Charlemagne was skimpy, to say the least.’ He swung his briefcase from the desk. ‘Thank you, Jane.’

It made no sense. It was like he’d become a different person. She’d never ask him anything again. It was like there was suddenly nobody she could count on. Mum was working away, and Lol was out there making a career which, if it continued to build, would take him out of the village for months at a time. Lol and Mum, maybe their relationship had only worked when one of them was a loser.

And then there was Eirion … she’d chosen to end that before he did, because the writing was on the wall, anyway. One way or another, all the foundations were cracking, and Jane had spent the whole afternoon in a state of increasing isolation until, with the last period free, she couldn’t stand it any more; she’d walked out of the school and caught a bus into Leominster, strolled around the town in a futile kind of way, shrouded in gloom, before grabbing the chance of a bus to Ledwardine.

She shouldered her airline bag and tramped wearily across the cobbles, and … oh.

The Volvo was parked in the vicarage drive.

The way her heart leapt – well, you despised yourself, really. I missed you, Mummy . God. Jane folded up her smile, buried it deep as she walked into the drive.

Inside the vicarage a dog barked when she fitted her key into the front door. Inside the hall, she recoiled at the sight of the woman in the kitchen doorway with her hand on the head of the wolfhound, like Britannia or something from an antique coin, only made more sinister by the dark glasses, the dark green fleece zipped all the way up, the crust of foundation cream and the ruin of a smile which, when you looked hard, wasn’t a smile at all.

‘You don’t tell her where you got this, mind,’ Gomer said. ‘Her’s gonner have a bit of an idea where it come from.’

Nodding at her sweatshirt, where it said:

GOMER PARRY

PLANT HIRE

‘I think,’ Merrily said, ‘that I need to persuade her to tell me. May have to use you as a threat but … no way have we spoken. Gomer, this … I don’t know what to say … this fills out so many gaps in my meagre knowledge. Just need to have a walk around for a while to think it all out, work out how to approach it.’

‘Good luck, vicar.’

Gomer squeezed out the end of his roll-up, fanned the air. He hadn’t asked about her own involvement with Mrs Morningwood; he’d know she’d have told him if she could.