Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘The future. Right. I hate the sodding future.’

‘Yes, that’s how things have changed, isn’t it? When I was your age we couldn’t wait to plunge into it, like a deep blue swimming pool. Now the pool seems have gone and you’re looking down into hard, cracked mud.’

‘Yeah.’ Jane decided she wasn’t going to get anywhere on the phoney car crash. ‘You believe in clairvoyance, Mrs Morningwood?’

‘Depends how you’re spelling it.’ Mrs Morningwood broke into a fresh packet of cigarettes. ‘I accept, to an extent, the phenomenon of clairvoy ance . While remaining generally sceptical about clairvoyants – people who profess to prophecy.’

‘A woman once did a tarot reading for me,’ Jane said. ‘She said – for instance – that I’d have more than one serious lover before I was twenty?’

‘Not the most ambitious prediction, darling.’

‘I went out with this guy for, like, ages? Well over a year.’

‘A serious commitment.’

‘We were good friends.’

‘Quite rare.’

‘And I’m thinking, you’re seventeen . And you’re in danger of becoming, like, half of a couple ?’

‘Too cosy?’

‘I mean we’d nearly broken up a couple of times, but it never lasted. Then he went to university – last month. And I just stopped answering his calls.’

Mrs Morningwood sat and thought about this.

‘You mean you were angst-ridden because your love life was lacking in angst? No one else on the horizon?’

‘There was this guy I quite fancied. Not realizing that he was married. At one stage I was kind of thinking that could be, you know, quite … quite an experience. Being the other woman. But then I thought …’

‘Breaking up someone’s marriage?’

‘Then I thought of my dad betraying Mum. He had another woman. He was a lawyer, and she worked in his office and they got killed together in a car crash when I was little.’

‘Oh dear.’ Mrs Morningwood sounding less than sympathetic. ‘I … did that once, you know. Broke up a marriage.’

‘What happened?’

‘ I married him, and it was a disaster. After the decree nisi, I ran into his first wife, and she was into a new relationship and very happy. She said she was … grateful to me. Quite.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Pretty pissed off, darling, but that’s life, isn’t it?’

‘Nobody else, since?’

‘Oh, quite a few. But none of them ever became friends.’

‘And that’s the moral, is it?’ Jane said. ‘If he’s also a friend, hold on to him.’

‘Oh, I never talk about morals, of any kind. Nor do I give advice. What else did your tarot reader tell you?’

‘Well, that’s the problem. She knew what Mum did, and she had an agenda. So I can’t really trust the rest.’

‘But you trusted what she said about your love life.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you had sex with the married man?’

‘Actually, erm, no. But I think I could make it happen.’

‘Well, of course you could—’

‘Actually, it’s already been kind of good for me. In a life-changing way, really. What’s he …?

Roscoe was on his feet about half a second before the front doorbell rang.

‘I’ll get it.’ Jane stood up. ‘You’d better pop into the scullery in case it’s Bliss or somebody who asks questions.’

In the hall, she opened the door to a guy in a green hiking jacket. Clergy shirt and a dog collar underneath. Familiar-looking baggage at his feet.

‘Hullo.’ Dome head, big friendly smile through his white beard. ‘Would you be Jane, by any chance?’

‘Um, yeah. I’m afraid Mum’s out, though.’

‘Oh, well, look, I’m Teddy Murray. Odd-job man at Garway. Your mother was staying with us for a couple of nights and had to leave in a hurry. Said she’d come back for her stuff, but I know how busy she is and I happened to be passing through, en route to Hereford, so …’

He picked up the bags and beamed.

‘Oh, right,’ Jane said. ‘Great.’

‘Must say, this is a lovely village, Jane. You’re both very lucky.’

‘Yeah. I suppose we are.’

‘Well, I’ll just … leave them here, shall I?’

Teddy Murray dropped the overnight bags over the threshold, into the path of Roscoe who’d come trotting through from the kitchen.

And Roscoe just went totally crazy.

Snarling. Like all -snarl, huge jagged teeth exposed, like the ripper teeth on a circular saw. This Teddy Murray backing away into the drive.

‘ Roscoe! ’ Jane down behind the dog, desperately hauling on his collar through the hackles. She could be in trouble here. ‘Oh, God, sorry … sorry …’

Getting dragged through the doorway, Roscoe’s jaws opening and shutting like a gin trap on a spring.

‘Guard dog, eh?’ Teddy Murray trying to smile from a few metres back. ‘I suppose two girls on their own in a big house …’

‘Back to the …’ Jane’s knees grazed on the mat ‘… obedience classes.’

‘Tell your mum I’ll talk to her again,’ Teddy Murray said.

Jane got the door shut, the dog inside, the snarl reduced to a low rumble. Blowing out a lot of air in a whoosh, she went back into the kitchen where Mrs Morningwood was standing in the middle of the floor, face like hardening plaster.

‘My fault, darling.’ Her voice clearly on autopilot, somewhere different from her thoughts. ‘Should have shut him … somewhere.’

‘He hasn’t done it before, has he?’ Jane said. ‘I mean, like … tried to savage somebody?’

‘Oh.’ Mrs Morningwood was expressionless. ‘No. No, he hasn’t.’

Huw was in the North Transept with his old mate Tommy Canty, lighting a candle.

‘Dunmore’s here.’

‘Where?’

Merrily looked around. Six candles were burning on a tiered stand in front of the renovated shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe. Back in the Middle Ages, there’d been long queues – scores of pilgrims, sick people and relatives of the sick. Tommy Canty had been Beckett-class in his day.

There was a container of candles you could buy to light and ask for the saint’s help. Huw fitted his candle into one of the holders.

‘Bishop’s in one of the chantries. Trying to reach an arrangement with his Governor.’

‘That’s why you’ve got me here? To face up to the Bishop?’

She was feeling very much on edge. Lol had driven her down to Broad Street, dropped her on the corner by the Cathedral Green and then, against all her pleas, driven off back towards Westgate and Roman Road to find the man who’d destroyed the most beautiful guitar in the world.

‘Dunmore wants to talk to you,’ Huw said.

‘About what?’

‘About what he’s just trying to clear with his God.’

‘Bernie’s who you came to see? He was your appointment?’

‘And every bit as knackering as I’d figured. You forget how shit-scared they are. Bowed under the gross weight of centuries of solemn, dark ceremonial.’

‘Not as many centuries as the Church has. Not by a long way.’

‘Only the Church doesn’t threaten to rip your tongue out by the roots if you finger a brother or shout out Jahbulon on the bus.’

‘Fair enough. What’s he going to tell me?’

‘I’d say whatever you want to ask. So have a think about it before you go in.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Unless he chickens out.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘Mr Gwilym helpful, was he?’

‘Didn’t intend to be, but I rather think he was. What did you say to the Bishop?’

‘I’d better be off, lass.’

‘You’re going?’

‘Nowt else I can do here.’ He looked over the candles to the shrine. ‘See you, then, Tommy.’