Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Jane, just tell me what’s wrong, could you do that? What’s happened?’

‘How do you know something’s happened?’

‘Because you didn’t ask me if I was naked.’

‘Right,’ Jane said.

‘That was a joke.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m not, anyway.’

‘Tonight, I don’t think I even care,’ Jane said.

And she told him why she was alone in the vicarage at one a.m.

It evidently knocked him back. He didn’t seem to know how to react. He knew Gomer; she couldn’t remember if he’d met Nev. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Oh bloody hell, that’s… The poor guy. Shit.’

‘Like, consider, OK? Nev. Consider that this guy was just put here – this human being was created – to be a digger driver… to live in the same valley all his life… to become overweight… to have a very bad marriage, to… to get humiliated, get drunk… and then get fucking burned to death . That’s it! I mean, that’s it , Irene – The Nev Parry Story. The whole incarnation! What was that about? What was it supposed to teach him? How is it going to help refine his immortal soul? And like don’t give me any of that Welsh-chapel bollocks about redemption through endless suffering.’

‘I don’t know,’ Eirion said soberly. ‘Maybe it’s not something we’re permitted to understand.’

‘Yeah, great. Either that, or it’s all complete crap. How often do you think of that? I find I’m thinking it a lot now: no God, only chaos.’

‘You’re an emergent atheist suddenly? What happened to paganism?’

‘Yeah,’ Jane said. ‘Paganism. What did happen to paganism? You want the truth? Sometimes I’m inclined to think modern paganism’s purely and simply about having fun – a reaction to the grey, studied bloody misery of Christianity. Dressing up, casting spells, cobbling together phoney rituals that sound heavy and significant, and kidding yourself you have like exclusive access to some arcane inner knowledge, which… I mean, somehow, it all just like… dissolves in the face of real life, the fucking savagery of it.’ Jane rubbed a wet eye with the heel of her palm. She felt cold and barren, nothing left to cling to except… ‘I wish you were here, Irene.’

‘Well, me too, obviously. I’m coming over tomorrow anyway… later today, would that be? Knight’s Frome? The session?’

‘Oh yeah.’ Lol had finally fixed it with Prof Levin for Eirion, the all-time rock-obsessive, to sit in on a recording session. ‘I don’t even know about that now. I don’t know how things are going to turn out. Life just comes at you, doesn’t it, like an axe? I was just thinking – again – Is Mum Living a Lie? It often comes back to that.’

‘Why don’t you have a proper talk to her?’

‘There’s never time. If it’s not trivial parish crap it’s Deliverance stuff. And how valid is that, really? I used to worry that she was in genuine spiritual danger from the unseen world … But how much crap is that? How often does the bloody unseen world destroy your—’

‘Jane, is this the time to talk about this stuff? I don’t think so.’

‘ Au contraire , Irene, it’s the time when you can see the reality of it in all its stark… reality.’

‘What about your psychic experiences? You were always going on about that stuff.’

‘I think… I think we fool ourselves half the time. We desperately want there to be something else, and our subconscious minds, our brains, help us out. Comfort chemicals.’ For a moment she was shocked at the hard, croaky sound of her own voice. ‘And she… like Mum always says, when everything else fails, you just have to believe in love.’ Jane stared into the darkness. ‘I don’t know whether that’s a smart answer or just a smart get-out.’

She was thinking, What if love’s also a lie? What if there’s only sex, to take your mind off the shit for a few minutes?

‘I’d better go,’ she said.

‘Mabbe this was a mistake,’ Gomer said as they followed the A49, a couple of miles out of Hereford, hitting the open countryside again south of Belmont. ‘You needs your sleep, vicar, all these buggers in the parish trying to stab you in the back.’

‘Parish politics, I’m afraid,’ Merrily murmured, ‘are what people do when life isn’t happening to them.’

‘I gotter be up early, too, mind,’ Gomer said. ‘See about hiring some machines for a week or two. Got a mini-digger at the bungalow, but he en’t gonner handle much.’

She slowed. ‘Oh, Gomer .’

Got clients. They en’t gonner wait around.’

‘Gomer, that’s not – excuse me – entirely sane.’

‘Nev would want it.’ He sounded like he was somewhere else: Planet Plant Hire. ‘Twenty-four-hour service, see.’

Merrily flicked him a sideways glance. ‘If you even attempt to work this week, I’m going to have you sectioned.’

‘Wouldn’t work, girl. Buggers’d only put me in the care of the community, then you’d get me back.’ He paused. ‘You knows me by now, vicar – I don’t get back to work, it’ll all come down on me.’

She was silent. It was true. If he didn’t keep on, in the face of everything, he’d turn into some kind of elderly person, and not the most contented kind. This was why they were here now, heading towards Ross-on-Wye through the squally night. Nothing to do with obtaining evidence, because there wasn’t going to be any. This was about Gomer Parry never giving in.

‘Right.’ He was on the edge of his seat. ‘Not far now, vicar. We oughter stop some way off, pull off the road like we broke down. Don’t wanner look conspicuous, see.’

The traffic was mainly long-distance container stuff, widely separated. Merrily settled in behind a tall van with a sign on the back that read How’s my driving? , with a phone number. If there’d been one on the back of Gomer’s van tonight, the line would be jammed.

‘OK, slow down now… by yere.’ He tapped the wheel, and she took the van over the kerb and onto the grass verge, braking hard when high bushes loomed, skidding on a mud path. ‘That’s all right, girl. Shove him tight into them bushes. I’ll get out your side.’

Merrily switched off the lights and the engine, and climbed out onto the wet verge, looking around. She ought to have known where this was, but it was different at night: a stretch of tarmac, no houses visible. On the other side, the moon revealed what looked like endless fields, just a few tiny lights in the far distance. On the nearside, a ragged line of unbarbered bushes followed the road around a left-hand bend maybe a hundred yards ahead.

Gomer joined her. ‘Got the—?’

‘Torch, yes. Where’s the house?’

‘Just around that next bend.’ Gomer looked back along the verge, pointing. ‘See that wood – he runs along the back.’ But he made no move to go that way, as if he’d finally accepted the futility of all this, realized he’d clutched at the idea of Roddy Lodge as saboteur simply because he couldn’t face going home to an empty house, a cold bed and an answering machine with Nev’s voice on it.

‘I expect you’d be able to tell straight away if by any chance Lodge had moved this thing,’ Merrily said.

‘Sure to,’ Gomer said dully.

‘Let’s do it, then.’ She moved along the verge, the hem of her alb getting soaked in the long grass. ‘If anybody sees us, we can say the van broke down and we’re trying to find a phone.’

When they rounded the bend, the road began to dip and the house was below them, a block of shadow. It was no more than twenty feet back from the road and looked even closer because of its comparative isolation. Living here, you’d hear the traffic all night, a restless lullaby.