Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

Before Lol could reply, a woman screamed. He saw Roddy Lodge gripping an overhead girder, swinging himself, apelike, into a steel V, finally wedging there. The orange overalls might have been designed to make him conspicuous in a pylon at night, like a warning beacon for aircraft.

‘Aw, Roddy !’ A small shrillness under Frannie Bliss’s voice as he called up, ‘Roddy, you daft bugger, where’s this gonna get yer? Tell me that, eh?’

No answer.

‘That’s because he doesn’t know,’ Sam Hall said to Lol.

‘Sorry?’

‘’Less, of course, he has an end in mind.’

Lol glanced sharply at him.

‘Which would depend on whether he’s done all they say he’s done,’ Sam Hall said.

‘How much danger’s he in?’

‘Boy, we’re all of us in danger from those monsters. I could name you three, maybe six people’d be alive today if they’d lived the other side of that hill. But Roddy… My guess would be that he’s done this before. You’ll notice somebody already cut through the barbed wire the power guys snag around the base to stop people climbing – and this is Roddy’s land, so I’d say it was him. Evidently knew where to find the footholds. He’s been up there before. Just look at the guy go…’

Roddy was moving again, pulling himself onto the first of the great arms, about sixty feet up now, lamp beams following him.

‘For God’s sake,’ a woman shouted from behind them, ‘can’t anyone get him down?’

‘Not possible, Ingrid,’ Sam Hall said, although there was no way she could hear him. ‘Not worth the candle,’ he said to Lol. ‘Tower’s earthed, so anyone standing on it’s earthed, too. Electricity will do anything to hitch a ride to the ground. What happens – he gets too close, it’s gonna jump him, and I wouldn’t like to be the person holding on to his feet when it does.’

‘You know a lot about it.’ Lol had his hands deep in his pockets, hunched against the shivering. ‘Worked in the power industry?’

Sam Hall let out a big, echoing laugh that sounded a little shocking in this situation, like it was bouncing around the valley. ‘Partner, what I do is I work against the power industry.’

Roddy Lodge had come fully to his feet. He was standing on the arm, a yard or so out from the shoulder, holding on to a diagonal steel bar with one hand. On the ground, the policewoman, Tiffany, and a male colleague were arranging a sheet of white plastic over the hole Lol had dug, weighting down the edges with bricks from a pile of building rubble.

‘Fact is,’ Sam Hall said, ‘a bunch of fat cats here and over in the US would give just about anything in the whole world to have me up there, ’stead of that poor sucker.’

A gasp of wind hit Roddy and he swayed and lost his footing and slipped down between two girders and hung there, his feet dangling in space.

‘Christ,’ Lol whispered. Three police officers ran, amid screams, towards the pylon.

‘Could be safer if he dropped now,’ Sam Hall said. ‘He doesn’t hit metal on the way down, he might not die. All depends on what he wants out of this.’

‘This is a little early for you, cariad ,’ Eirion said.

‘How’s the party?’

‘ Yn Cymreig . I’m having to watch my grammar.’

‘The whole party’s in Welsh?’ Jane sat on the edge of her bed, wrapped in the big bath towel.

‘My step-gran’s discovered cultural correctness in her old age. And her heritage – distant cousin of Saunders Lewis, see.’

‘You’ve lost me already.’

‘Anyone who wants to speak English is finding it expedient to go outside,’ Eirion said. ‘Bit like having a fag out on the balcony.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said, ‘another world. Is that where you are now?’

‘I’m in the kitchen. But not, I have to tell you, because my Welsh isn’t wholly fluent. Where are you?’

‘My bedroom. Just got out of the bath. Goose bumps everywhere.’

She heard Eirion moan faintly.

‘We could have telephone sex, if you like,’ Jane said. ‘I’m letting the towel slip slowly down my breasts. There are tiny bubbles of moisture…’

‘What is it you want?’ Eirion said tightly.

‘OK, I lied. I’m fully dressed. In fact, it’s so cold in this house that I’m wearing my fleece and leg warmers.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Listen, how far are you from the nearest computer?’

‘Decades,’ Eirion said obliquely.

‘Check someone out for me? On the Net? You remember Jenny Driscoll? All soft-voiced and drippy. Did these crappy daytime TV shows on fashion and decor and make-overs and stuff.’

‘Like the ones I always watch to find my feminine side.’

‘Irene, this is—’

‘Yeah, I do know who you mean. Nice-looking.’

‘You’re really into old ladies, aren’t you? There’s a word for it.’

‘And she lives in your village.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘You did.’

‘Christ, was I ever that sad? Irene, listen, this sounds… this is going to sound very stupid. But this woman, this Driscoll – or Mrs Box, as she now calls herself – she’s got her claws seriously into Mum.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘I can’t tell you, but it comes out of some middle-aged religious obsession. Or maybe it’s just attention seeking, or maybe she’s just a lonely old bag, I wouldn’t like to venture a hard opinion at this stage but, essentially, she’s claiming – this is what she’s told Mum, right? – that she’s had a mystical experience. Involving an angel. In the sky, over the church – our church. Don’t laugh. And she has a chapel in her house – this kind of shrine, under the floor, and she took Mum down there, and there was incense and candles and stuff. And of course Mum’s reacting in a suitably spiritually correct fashion.’

‘And you think this is another world,’ Eirion said.

‘It’s not actually a joke. It’s not actually funny, for at least one very bizarre reason that I’m not allowed to tell you about, so don’t ask me. But I do not believe this woman has had any kind of… experience, and— Irene, are you still there?’

Yeah. I… Jane, it’s still happening isn’t it? You’re still…’

‘Huh?’

‘Your… This whole dark-night-of-the-soul thing. A few months ago, if anybody claimed to have seen an angel within fifty miles of Ledwardine, you’d have been so excited you’d be up all night with a video camera.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m over it, all right? It was pitiful, and I’m finally over it. You can waste your life on that kind of shit.’

‘I don’t think you mean that, Jane.’

‘How would you know what I mean?’

Eirion sighed. ‘What do you want me to try and find out?’

‘Anything. What happened to her marriage. Why she got out of TV. Any of the kind of scurrilous flotsam that gets washed up on the Net.’

‘Surfing for shit?’

‘Just help me, Eirion.’

Silence. I called him Eirion , Jane thought in dismay.

‘You want any dirt I can find on Moira Cairns at the same time?’ he said.

‘That’s not fair.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Eirion didn’t sound sorry. He sounded disappointed, somehow.

A crowd had gathered, the way crowds did. Suddenly it was just there.

Lol didn’t know how many people lived around Underhowle, but at least seventy of them had to be here now. The ones who hadn’t broken through the police tape must have come across the fields on the other side of the pylon, by the edge of the woods fringing Howle Hill. Perhaps forty people were standing within twenty feet of the tower, like they’d bought tickets. Not enough police here to move them on – like the police didn’t have enough to think about.