Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘You’re right, but I don’t think I will right now, all the same.’

‘Fair enough.’

He lit up, the striking match a sacrilegious gasp. He stretched out his legs in the direction of the central aisle, watching the smoke float up and dissipate at pulpit level.

‘At the core of the Special Air Service, there’s a harsh kind of mysticism. Kind you won’t find in any other area of the armed forces. Connected with survival. I used to think survival was ninety per cent training and preparation, nine per cent luck, and one per cent … one per cent something you could call on when you were at breaking point.’

‘I can imagine the closer you get to—’

Merrily shut up. She didn’t know. How could she possibly know?

‘I’m not gonna tell you when and where this happened to me,’ Syd said. ‘But there’s always one time when it all drops away – all your training and your discipline – and your insides turn to water. At first you’re just afraid of dying. Not death, dying. The way it’s gonna happen. The fear of … of fear itself, I suppose. Of giving in to fear. Of dying in it. Dying as someone who you can only despise. And when you’re suddenly confronted with that sorry person – with the sight and the smell of your own terror … that’s a big, gaping moment, Merrily.’

She nodded. She kept quiet. They didn’t know one another, not at all. All they had in common was the one per cent.

‘So I started to pray,’ Spicer said. ‘Prayed the way those poor buggers probably prayed when they jumped off the twin towers, out of the flames.’

Merrily nodded.

‘And something happened. Not a flash-of-lightning kind of thing … just a bloke behaving in a way he wouldn’t normally behave in the circumstances, and me finding a sudden unexpected strength. I won’t go further into it … except I thought, afterwards, I can respect this . A source of strength infinitely greater than your training’s ever gonna give you – and in the Regiment, training’s all, to a level of aptitude and precision that you believe makes you equal to anyone. Any one . But in that moment, the one per cent had become a hundred per cent. And I suppose it still is.’

‘Yes.’

‘What I’ll admit to being good at,’ Syd Spicer said, ‘is helping the dying. Having been there, very close, twice, I can find them strength. I know there’s gonna be help for them, and I can take the weight off just enough for them to feel it. The way you help your mates in a shit situation. So the dying … they’re the only people I tell exactly what happened at my times. Times and places, nothing concealed. It’s me passing on something precious, and they value it, and I think they take it with them.’

‘Syd,’ Merrily said, ‘how on earth can you say you can’t hack it?’

‘Because I could do that without being a priest.’

The phone was ringing when Lol got home. He caught the call just before the machine lifted it.

‘Lol, Dan.’

‘Sorry?’

‘From Much Cowarne?’

‘Sorry … out of breath.’

‘Me too, I expect, by the end of the night. Look, when you talked to Mr Levin, did you know something was about to happen?’

‘Like what?’

‘Just had a call from Tim. I’m glad to say they let him out – did you know?’

‘I’d heard. But I don’t know much more than that.’

‘Reason he was calling … I’m one of the three coordinators of the choirs. I told you about the three choirs, who did the three churches simultaneously?’

‘You did.’

‘OK, well, there’s a pool of about sixty of us, right? Three coordinators who can each pull twelve compatible choristers together at short notice. Twelve out of twenty’s usually a safe bet. Tim called me about half an hour ago. They’re trying to arrange Redmarley and Little Malvern Priory to join in with Wychehill again. Another simultaneous chant.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight. Like we did before, only longer. It has to last, somehow, from nine tonight until three a.m. Luckily, it’s Saturday tomorrow.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s what I’m ringing for, Lol. I wondered if you knew.’

‘He won’t tell you?’

‘He never tells you. He rambles. He gets incoherent. You stop asking because you think maybe he doesn’t know the answer anyway, but it don’t matter, you know you’re gonner get something out of it. Bit of a coincidence, though, ennit?’

‘I don’t know. Honestly. You going to be able to organize it in time?’

‘Won’t be too much of a problem,’ Dan said. ‘After last time, nobody’s going to want to miss it. Even the ones who went home scared.’

A priest could go through his entire career without facing this kind of situation. That was the irony of it.

‘Not a lot frightens me. I can deal with most physical pain, emotional pain, stress. I can achieve separation from the weakness of the body. But there are leaps I can’t make. Aspects I can’t face.’

‘You’re worried by the non-physical?’

Syd leaned back and took a deep pull on his cigarette.

‘Samuel Dennis Spicer,’ he said. ‘Church of England.’

‘Because you can’t resist it, overpower it … slot it? Is that what you mean?’

‘Samuel Dennis Spicer. Church of England.’

Merrily smiled.

‘You talked about any of this to Winnie Sparke?’

‘Winnie?’ He’d been about to bring the cigarette back to his mouth. He brought his arm down. ‘Why would I?’

‘They’re saying in Wychehill that you’re seeing a lot of her.’

‘Told you.’ He leaned his head back over the chorister’s stall. ‘Didn’t I?’

‘You told me about the Ladies of Wychehill.’

‘I assisted Winnie Sparke with her researches into the origins of the church. Parish records. And a few other things. Anything else…’ He squeezed out the cigarette between finger and thumb. ‘Anything else, my wife really wouldn’t like.’

‘Your—?’

‘In essence, stories of our separation are overstated. Having three parishes can be an advantage, Merrily. You go missing for a while, they all think you’re in one of the others. Fiona took the kids down to Reading to get away from a difficult situation. We have a house, and her family’s down there, so it seemed expedient. I go down every week, or we meet somewhere. Yesterday it was in Berkshire. Hungerford.’

‘That works ?’

‘Separation – she’s used to that. Least I’m less likely to get killed as a clergyman. Seemed easier to let people think we’d split, otherwise there’d be three restless parishes wondering how long before the new guy.’

‘But why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just leave? Go for a new—’

‘Because I was sent here . Never yet failed to complete a mission. One way or another.’

Like God was his field commander. But obviously Merrily understood.

‘And the difficult situation … that would be drugs?’

‘Partly. Emily’s been a problem. Shrinks say she has an addictive personality. As a kid she overate. You tried to cut down the Mars Bars to three a day … tantrums. Cold turkey on Mars Bars, you believe that? With adolescence, it stopped, all the weight dropped away, and we were so relieved that it was quite a while before we realized what’d replaced it. The shoplifting conviction was a clue. Then robbing the offertory box.’

‘She was in rehab?’

‘Joyce told you all this, I assume. Joyce, the parish talking-newsletter.’

‘And then the Royal Oak changed hands,’ Merrily said. ‘And suddenly it was all on your doorstep. Like a sweetshop.’

‘Yeah. There’s a group of us, county-wide – parents of kids with drug problems. We attend briefing sessions with the police, regional seminars. We learn what to look out for.’