Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

… The sad, sepia spirit of Lucy Devenish herself, hiding her anguish in the folds of her poncho as Jane threw herself into the gutted ground and rolled in front of the blade.

52

Remembering the Hurt

Half past ten and no signs of apocalypse.

Parked alone in the bay outside Wychehill Church, with the window down, Merrily could just about hear the choir. Not what she’d expected, not the fulsome, floating sound which had gilded the air last Monday night when she and Lol had arrived in Wychehill. This was low-level and travelled in pulses.

She’d walked quietly down to the church, some of whose windows were quietly aglow. Sliding into the porch with the idea of inching open the doors to see if Loste or Winnie was in there. But the doors were locked. No audience for this choir tonight.

She’d crept outside again, found a metal bucket and positioned it upside down below one of the clear windows and stood on it.

‘ Ave Mary ,’ she heard. Low and liquid. ‘ Ave Mary .’

She saw a group of heads in the chancel, in a nest of candelight. A candle in a pewter tray on the lectern, a candle on the pulpit, eerily Dickensian.

Also workmanlike . Not a performance.

Anyway, the conductor was bald. Merrily had fled back to the car.

Two police vehicles went past slowly: a lurid traffic car and a dark blue van. Perhaps the action wouldn’t start until the early hours. Perhaps it wouldn’t start at all. Perhaps Khan was right and what worried people like Leonard Holliday was not so much the reality of the Royal Oak as the idea of it, any challenge to the idyll. Hard, however, to imagine Holliday ever experiencing an idyll.

She lit a cigarette, looked across at the Rectory. Like everywhere else, it was in darkness. Ledwardine Vicarage was never entirely in darkness. If there was no light on in the house, a low-powered bulb would be burning in one of the outside lanterns. The light of the world. The glow of sanctuary.

No sanctuary here.

She got out and locked the car and walked up through the cutting into Church Lane, saw a TV flicker in Hannah Bradley’s cottage and thought about knocking. No time. Stay focused.

She walked on up the lane, surprised at how bright the night was with a moon that was far from full. There was a single guiding lamp at the top of the steep path down to Starlight Cottage, but the place itself was unlit and clearly deserted, even the windchimes unmoving in the herb-scented silence. Wind chimes: part of the illusion of innocence.

If Sparke had deliberately misdirected her, neither she nor Loste were going to be easily discovered tonight. Merrily didn’t hang around, walked quickly back up to the lane and down the hill towards the church.

A bulkhead light blinked on across the lane and a door opened.

‘Hey, I thought it was you,’ Hannah said. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Looking for Winnie, that’s all.’ Merrily walked across the road. ‘You haven’t seen her?’

‘I never look out for her.’ Hannah was standing by her gate. She wore a Keane T-shirt and shorts. ‘She looks out for herself.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Nice bloke, Tim Loste. Used to be. I don’t know what he’s like now.’

‘I wouldn’t know, either,’ Merrily said. ‘I haven’t been allowed to talk to him.’

‘Join the club. Phew, it’s hot tonight, innit? Yeh, I do a bit of running on the hill, you know, and I ran into Tim a few times. I thought he’d be all up in the air and highbrow, but he wasn’t. Not like that at all. Quite uncomplicated, really. We went to the theatre in Malvern once. Matinée. It had some quite famous actors in it, from TV. It was a laugh. Then she found out.’

‘Winnie?’

‘And that was it. Our paths, as they say, stopped crossing. And not for want of me going out of my way, I’ll tell you.’

‘When was this, Hannah?’

‘Few months ago. I think he’s back drinking now. She won’t stop him. She’ll bloody kill him before she’s done, and that’s a shame.’

‘Go on. Tell me.’

Merrily leaned on the gate. Hannah looked up and down the lane and then lowered her voice but not much.

‘When we were in Malvern, right? We ran into this old mate of Tim’s, from when he was a teacher. And I remembered his name after and I rang him up to ask him, like, you know, what’s the situation with Tim. And he said the Sparke woman was the reason his engagement was broken off…’

‘Tim’s? What, you mean she—’

‘Oh, nothing like that. She’d eat him for breakfast. She just tells him he’s a genius. She’s good at making people feel special. I don’t know if he’s a genius or not, but what’s it matter if genius is being miserable all the time? You know he tried to top himself? If you see her, you can tell her what I said. I don’t care any more. I wish I could get between them, but he won’t listen.’

‘And how are things with you?’

‘I just don’t go that way any more on the bike,’ Hannah said. ‘You getting anywhere with it?’

‘To be honest … don’t know.’

Back at the car, Merrily lit another cigarette, brought out the phone, watched it flare up, singing in her hand, and called Jane again. Her call could not be taken . Left another message on the voicemail and then called Gomer’s landline – Gomer’s partner Danny Thomas kept the firm’s only mobile, as Gomer had never been known to charge it up.

No answer.

At least this was likely to mean that wherever Jane was, Gomer was also there. Made no difference; she should be there. There was nothing much to be done here. If Loste and Winnie were doing a Last Night of the Proms before they were barred from Wychehill Church, it was perhaps none of her business.

On the other hand, when somebody had deceived you…

She rang Bliss: voicemail.

‘Frannie,’ Merrily said, ‘I don’t really know what to say to you except that something’s not right here. Which of course you— Oh, sod it, just call me back.’

She killed the connection and her cigarette, leaned back into the seat. Time to go and collect poor Lol. Drive back to Whiteleafed Oak hamlet and then call him on the mobile, call him away from the perpetual choirs.

Nice concept, lovely imagery. The great and beautiful mystery: how Elgar tapped into the music of the spheres. The ultimate unprovable theory. But also un dis provable. Clever Winnie.

She decided to drive back to the Ledbury road by the slightly longer route that would take her past the Royal Oak which, after all, she’d never seen fully operational – the moral cesspit, the gateway to hell. The road taking her past the gaunt Edwardian home of Tim Loste, which she hadn’t yet checked. She made out its wall and its peeling railings. No lights on here either, and she hadn’t expected any, but, as she accelerated away, something did catch her eye. Not a peeling railing, but…

Oh hell .

Merrily braked, lowered her window, looked behind her for oncoming headlights and, when it was clear there was nothing, reversed along the road to the front of the house and switched off the engine.

She couldn’t see it from here and had to get out. The narrow house rose up against the hill like an upended domino, double blank, and, halfway into Loste’s cramped driveway, she was able to confirm what she’d seen from the car.

It was the oak sapling planted in his tiny front garden, the tree which eventually would have crumbled his foundations and fused destructively with his supporting walls. The oak which she now knew represented something infinitely bigger. A symbol of something, is all , Winnie had said. A symbol he could use for meditation .