Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

She felt hot and swollen all over, like she’d invaded a wasps’ nest and been multi-stung. Gomer’s phone started ringing just as he came in and he hooked it from the wall by the fridge.

‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire yere.’

‘The EMA guy says if it gets too hot he’ll have to pull the story,’ Eirion was saying. ‘I mean, they haven’t got any lawyers or any money, not to speak of. But it’s too late, anyway, now it’s been picked up by the general media. You watching Midlands Today ?’

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Well, I can’t see it either, in Wales, but I gather—’

‘I don’t care ! Oh shit, Irene. This explains Pierce. What do I do ?’

‘Just keep your head down, I suppose. I’d come over and try and take your mind off it, but it’s Gwennan’s birthday, and Dad’s got this surprise party, where we all have to pretend nobody speaks English.’

‘Her’s on the mobile right now, boy,’ Gomer said into the phone. ‘I get her to call you back?’

Jane said, ‘I’ll call you back, Irene.’

Clicked him off and went over to secondary-smoke Gomer’s ciggy.

‘All right,’ Gomer said. ‘Will do, boy.’ Handed the phone to Jane. ‘Lol.’

‘Look, what Pierce said before— I didn’t—’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Lol said, ‘I’m over that. It doesn’t get to me any more. Can you write something down?’

The very fact that he knew instantly what she was talking about showed he was far from over it. Jane made scribbling motions to Gomer and he brought her a pen and a receipt book with Gomer Parry Plant Hire billheads. Lol said that if she and Gomer wanted to get out of the village for a while there was a woman they could check out. It might be something or nothing, Lol said. She needed to be polite. Thanks .

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m still at The Glades.’

‘I’m bad news today, Lol. Nothing works out for me. Can’t you do it?’

‘No, I’m … I think I’m getting into something else,’ Lol said.

His voice sounding disconnected, like he was with someone, or his mind was already working on the something else.

‘Sholto.’ Lol folded up his mobile. ‘I think that was his name.’

‘Frightfully good-looking. Essence of Ronald Colman.’ Athena was gazing wistfully into a corner of the room. ‘So few of us remember Ronald Colman any more, even here.’

‘I bet they all remember Sholto, though,’ Lol said.

‘We needed him, Robinson. As I think I told your paramour at the time, who among the living could we attract any more?’

The alleged haunting of The Glades, as described by Merrily, had involved a languid shadow on the landing, blown bulbs. Hadn’t there been a smell of cigarette smoke, the flicking of a lighter?

‘The point being,’ Lol said, ‘that Sholto had no history at The Glades. He was just a face from an old photo album. Someone whose image you’d somehow contrived to … appropriate. And insinuate into people’s consciousness.’

‘What fun he was, though.’

‘But he was a … a product of persuasion?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Oh, come on, Athena.’

‘Well, it’s all so devalued now.’ She looked cross. ‘The techniques of projection. Used to be frightfully effective, but since that annoying young man on the television, Derren Somebody-or-other…’

‘Brown?’

‘Derren Brown, yes. Little twerp. Makes a point of insisting that it’s all psychology and suggestion, because it makes him look cleverer and the whole business less metaphysical and out of his control. Deserves a good spanking.’

‘Can I describe something to you?’

‘Why not?’ Athena stretched like a small cat, purple claws extended. ‘I have all the time in the worlds.’

Still unsure where he was going with this, Lol told her about Tim Loste and Sir Edward Elgar and Wychehill.

‘I’m afraid it’s a very, very different situation,’ Athena said.

She’d made some fragrant Earl Grey tea. They drank it out of small china cups. The teapot had a Tarot symbol on it – the Hanged Man, dangling from a tree by one foot.

‘You see, this place is ideal for it,’ Athena said. ‘Old women living for much of the time inside their own heads, inside their distant memories. Hothouse of hopeless fantasies. Frightfully easy to insinuate an image.’

‘And how exactly would you … ?’

‘Beyond that…’ Athena lifted both palms ‘… I’m revealing no tradecraft. Except to say that it soon begins to generate its own energy. Now, the village you’re describing seems far from a hothouse. If the dwellings are well separated and the residents have little in common and don’t mix socially … hopeless.’

‘It was only an idea,’ Lol said. ‘I was just—’

‘Being a little helpmate?’ Athena squealed. ‘Robinson, you infuriate me! She is a lowly … parish … priest. In the Church of England – half-baked, miserably unfocused, spiritually stagnant and led by a dithering Welshman who thinks that looking like an Old Testament prophet is half the battle. Now— Sit down, I haven’t finished.’

Athena White stood up, plumped out her cushions and curled up again in the window seat.

‘You’ve intrigued me now. Mentioned Elgar. Now there ’s a man with problems. Repressed, frustrated … trapped, for much of his life, inside petty conventions and constraints. A spirit yearning for a freedom which he was foolish enough to think was only granted to children. Do you know The Wand of Youth – piece he wrote when young himself, about children and fairyland?’

‘Only read about it.’

‘He kept trying to revive it at various times, as if he could rediscover the oneness with nature that he believed he had possessed as a child. Now. If you were to ask me if Edward Elgar could be summoned back to his beloved hills, I would say that it was quite conceivable that much of him never left. In other words—’

Athena’s head came forward, like a tortoise’s from its shell. She seemed quite excited.

‘… A man who indeed might haunt .’

Not what Lol had wanted to hear.

He watched Athena placing both her hands on top of her head, as if to prevent significant thoughts from fluttering away like butterflies.

‘Elgar’s biographers, you see, tend to be terribly highbrow music buffs with too much academic credibility to lose. His esoteric side is usually glossed over.’

‘You’ve read the biographies?’

‘Robinson, I spend at least seven hours a day reading. I’ve also known several people – some of them in this very mausoleum – who met him when young. Not always the most delightful of experiences, I’m afraid: he could be a rather negative presence.’

‘Someone said manic-depressive.’

‘There you go again with your silly psychiatric generalizations. Stop it.’

‘Sorry. What did you mean by his esoteric side?’

Lol was feeling confused. Everybody seemed to have a piece of Elgar, and all of them with jagged edges. He was a kind man, an inconsiderate and self-obsessed man; he was arrogant, he was insecure; he was a no-nonsense, self-made, practical man, and he was a mental case; he was a patriot and he was an artist resentful of the taint of patriotism. He was a staunch Catholic, and yet…

‘He was, like so many prominent figures of his time, drawn to the otherwordly,’ Athena said. ‘“Fond of ghost stories” is what the books usually say. But it was clearly more than that. His intermittent Catholicism was never enough to satisfy his curiosity. What do you know about The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn?’

‘Top people’s magical club,’ Lol said. ‘Aleister Crowley, W. B. Yeats…’