Phil Rickman: The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Sorry,’ Merrily said. ‘My fault.’ In a roundabout way, she’d been attempting to make the point that, while incorporating a gift shop could be a good idea, the parish church should also be available simply as a quiet, sacred place – that it wasn’t only about hymns and preaching. It wasn’t only about Sunday.

‘Look, I’m not…’ Uncle Ted Clowes raised himself up. He looked irritated. ‘I’m not entirely getting this. How does running a small shop in the church prevent it being a place of sanctuary? No one’s suggesting the proposed outlet should be open for business all day and every day.’

‘No,’ Merrily said, ‘but the church itself should be.… within reason. But what I’m really saying is…’

And then she lost the thread. The problem was, she was still in two minds about this. She was all for the church becoming more open, less formal. Hadn’t she fought Ted’s plan to lock the doors nightly at six p.m.? Hadn’t she held out against parish purists outraged when she’d let Rex Rosser’s sheepdog, Alice, lie on a back pew next to Rex?

The harsh lights hurt Merrily’s eyes. There’d been no mention yet of the mobile-phone mast. Maybe Ted was thinking that if he could push the shop through without a struggle then he could slip the mast in near the end or save it for a future meeting – one even more poorly attended than this, with its handful of delegates from local societies: the Women’s Institute, the Young Farmers’ Club, the tourism association. A couple of shop owners had shown up to voice mild fears about competition if the church went into the giftware business. But nothing serious, nothing likely to cause undue worry for Ted Clowes and the pro faction.

‘I think the point is, Mr Chairman…’ Again, it was Jenny Box, née Driscoll, one of the few with no obvious reason to be here, who came to Merrily’s aid. ‘The real point is that commercial enterprise would surely conflict with the sanctity and peace that the church must be allowed to provide at all times. If I want to go in and say a prayer, I may not wish to do so in front of a coachload of holidaymakers choosing picture postcards.’

And Jenny Box did go into the church and pray alone. Merrily had seen her several times and walked delicately past with a quiet smile, making herself casually available, in case this woman needed help. No particular response so far, and she didn’t want to be thought of as courting the newest Ledwardine celeb.

The truth was that, while much of the village – especially the growing retired faction – recognized Mrs Box from daytime ‘lifestyle ’ TV or had shopped at Vestalia, Merrily had never even seen daytime TV, except by accident, and couldn’t afford Vestalia. She was faintly embarrassed because the face of Jenny Box, from the start, had meant nothing to her.

But…’ Ted was looking pained. ‘If you look at Hereford Cathedral, it’s had a sizeable shop for years, virtually next to the nave.’

‘But not in the nave,’ Merrily said. ‘And the cathedral’s just a tiny bit bigger than Ledwardine church, and if you do want to pray there you can always find a quiet corner somewhere, or an empty chantry.’

‘Well, if…’ James Bull-Davies pushed fingers through his thinning hair. ‘… If you’re talking about a quiet place, there’s always the Bull Chapel, isn’t there?’

Merrily said nothing. Even she had found it hard to pray in the Bull Chapel.

Again, Mrs Box dealt with it. ‘I accept it’s your family’s traditional resting place, Mr Chairman, but I don’t think I’m alone in finding that chapel just a tiny bit sinister, with that forbidding old tomb and the effigy of the man whose eyes seem to follow you around. Sorry, I suppose that’s silly of me.’

James gazed at Jenny Box, as he had several times tonight because, although he’d probably never seen her on TV either, Mrs Box was magnetic, her beauty soft and blurred under red-blonde hair just short of shoulder-length. There was very little make-up on her pale, regretful face, but even the livid lighting couldn’t insult her skin. She lived in a narrow, three-storey house on the edge of the village, near the river – alone, it seemed, although there was said to be an estranged husband somewhere.

‘Right, OK,’ James conceded surprisingly. ‘Point taken. We require a degree of separation, so I think we have to come back to Ted’s suggestion of the vestry. Reasonable enough size. Not as if we’re going to be selling country clothes or picnic hampers or what have you.’

‘Well… it’s a possibility.’ Merrily had already thought about it; she didn’t use the vestry much any more, not since the night it had been broken into. Now she kept all her clerical gear at the vicarage, and there was a cupboard in the body of the church for communion wine and stuff. ‘I mean, I suppose I could spare it, but I can’t speak for a future minister.’

‘Not our problem,’ James snapped. ‘Future chap can sort him self out. Or herself. Be many years, anyway, before you think of moving on, I trust, vicar. Nothing to stop us sticking a couple of counters and a till in the vestry meantime, is there?’

‘It’d need better lighting for a start, James. And some structural alteration, I’d guess. Costly?’

‘But it’s an option ,’ said James. ‘At last we have an option. Thank Gord for that. We’ll get it costed out, report back. Yes?’ He looked at Merrily; she shrugged.

When they came out, half an hour later, without anyone having raised the possibility of installing a mobile-phone mast in the spire, Merrily wasn’t entirely surprised to find Jenny Box, in a brown Barbour and a white scarf, waiting for her on the cindered forecourt.

‘Look, thanks for…’ Merrily gestured vaguely at the hall behind them. She felt short and inelegant in the old navy-blue school duffel coat that Jane had rejected as seriously uncool. ‘I get a little flustered in there sometimes. I think it’s the lighting, but if I turned up in sunglasses, somebody’d be putting it around that I’d been beaten up.’

Jenny Box didn’t smile. Uncle Ted Clowes came over and put a patronizing hand on Merrily’s shoulder. ‘I think you’ll find it makes a good deal of sense, my dear. Tourism’s going to be very much the future of Ledwardine, we all have to accept that.’

‘Not the whole of the future, I hope, Ted.’

‘Well, there is another possibility.’ He glanced warily at Jenny Box. ‘But we’ll talk about that again. Goodnight, ladies.’

Ted put on his hat and strolled away. A walkover, then. Merrily was aware that Jenny Box’s expression had stiffened. For the first time tonight, in the thin light from the tin-shaded bulb over the doors of the village hall, she looked her probable age: forty-three, forty-four?

‘Crass auld fool.’ An unexpected venom thickened her accent. ‘Sell his own grandmother.’

Merrily said nothing. The two of them walked away from the hall, into Church Street and up towards the square. The air glistened with moisture and the deserted village centre looked film-set romantic under a mist-ringed three-quarter moon.

‘So how much are you thinking you’d need?’ Mrs Box’s voice had softened again without losing any of its insistence. ‘For the church.’

‘Well, I can’t really…’ Merrily hesitated. It was the first time she’d spoken more than superficially to this woman.

‘Per year, say. How much per year, to maintain the church without the need of this tourist shop?’

It was a serious question, and there was no walking away from it. Merrily shook her head. ‘I don’t really know what a shop would turn over in a year.’

Mrs Box stopped on the edge of the deserted square. ‘Tell me, have you asked God?’