Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Well, actually, what…’ What Merrily wanted most was a cigarette. ‘What I normally do is have a chat with the relatives of the person who’s died so that, at the service, I can talk about them, as people. We don’t bury bodies, we bury people. If you see what I mean.’

She wondered if he did. There were few signs in this drab, functional farmhouse of real sorrow, only of resignation: perhaps an attitude branded into farmers by BSE and foot-and- mouth and endless forms from the Ministry of Agriculture, now called DEFRA – which Jane said stood for Destroying Every Farm-Reared Animal.

‘Look…’ Mr Lodge was facing her, although she could tell his eyes weren’t focused on hers as much as on the space between them. ‘I don’t want no fuss. I don’t want things said about him that weren’t true, just for appearances. I don’t really want anything said about him at all. Just like it done quickly and with dignity. Isn’t as if there’s going to be much of an audience anyway.’

Merrily sighed. ‘I’m afraid you might find there’s rather more of one than you think. There’ll almost certainly be police and… reporters. Possibly even television – I wouldn’t like to say.’

He stood up. He said, without raising his voice, ‘He was cursed from the first, that boy.’

The kettle came to the boil behind Merrily and began to shriek, as if demanding she should leave. She stood up, too. ‘Look, if you want to have a think about it, I’ll leave you my number, or I can ring you. We’ll also have to discuss the choice of hymns, that kind of… Oh, and one other thing – Roddy. Roddy’s… body. Where do you—?’

‘I don’t know all the details yet of how they release him. There’s already been a post-mortem. They reckons the inquest is being held tomorrow.’

‘Well… opened,’ Merrily said. ‘All they’ll have is a short hearing at which the coroner will take formal evidence of identification – which means that the body can be released for burial – and then it’s adjourned, usually for several weeks.’

‘So the worst is to come.’

How could she deny that?

Mrs Lodge almost brushed past her to reach the kettle on the Rayburn. Close up, Merrily registered that she was quite a few years younger than her husband, although the age gap was fogged by colourless, wispy hair and an absence of make-up – somewhere along the line, she’d lost the need or the will to be noticed.

Merrily pulled her coat from the back of the chair; they both knew that she wouldn’t be staying for tea. ‘Meanwhile, if there’s, you know, anything at all I can do…’

‘You will conduct the service, then?’

‘Of course. If that’s what you want. I’ll talk to Mr Banks, see when’s best for everyone.’

He nodded once. ‘And beyond that,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t do anything, if I were you. Let’s get him in the ground, and there’s an end to it.’

A bleak statement in bleak surroundings on a bleak day. She wondered if, in the end, he hadn’t been jealous of his manic young brother, travelling the countryside and apparently making a lot of money while he, the inheritor of the farm, stayed and rotted in it. Was that how it was? On the way here, she’d felt she ought to explain the circumstances of her own brief meeting with Roddy Lodge; now she didn’t think it would change anything, would probably not help at all.

At the door, she said, ‘What I meant was… if there’s anything I could do to help the two of you cope with this.’

‘Oh, we’ll survive.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘In this job, most of us gave up looking to God for any help a long time ago. If it’s the same God that helps the continentals to reject our beef, where’s the point?’

Not the time, either, for theological debate. Merrily saw that Mrs Lodge was standing over the Belfast sink, staring into it, unmoving.

‘I, erm… I have to call and see Mr Hall. Sam Hall? I was told his house is somewhere near here.’

‘Aye, carry on up the track and you’ll see his windmill. It’s a bit mucky up there, but you’ll get through. Friend of yours, Mr Hall?’

‘I’ve not really met him. As such.’

‘Nice enough man,’ said Mr Lodge. ‘Used to be local, then he emigrated to America and come back a bit cranky.’

‘Oh?’

‘Takes my dogs for a run. Loves dogs, he says, but he won’t have one himself ’cause he reckons there’s too many dogs around for no particular reason. That kind of cranky.’

‘Ah. Right. Look, I…’ Feeling, if anything, more hopelessly inadequate than was usual on these occasions. ‘I just want to say I’m very, very sorry for what’s happened.’

‘Thank you. But you don’t know what’s happened, do you?’ Tony Lodge presented her with his summary of Roddy’s life, scribbled in felt pen on half a sheet of lined notepaper. ‘None of us do. And likely that’s best for everyone.’

Spectral in the fog, the windmill rose like a huge, petrified sunflower out of a clearing on a small escarpment, a plateau on the edge of the hill. It looked alien and probably always would, Merrily thought. The house was about thirty yards away, behind a wall around four feet high and the winter remains of vegetable patches.

Pulling on woollen gloves, she left the Volvo at the top of the track, before it narrowed into a footpath and curved past the house towards what she guessed would be the summit of the hill – could only guess because it was smothered by the fog, whitish here like a blank stage backcloth.

Despite the murk, she could see no lights in the house. But then, from what Lol had said, this place would never be well lit. It was a brick-built bungalow, square and compact, with small windows, dense as Gomer’s glasses, and a solar panel like a blister in the roof. There was no smoke from the chimney.

The wooden front gate was unlocked, and Merrily went through, along a path between veg beds, to the front door inside its wooden porch. She couldn’t see a bell or a knocker and ending up banging on the panels with a gloved fist. No answer. She went back outside.

Electricity and radiation , Lol had listed. Pylons, power lines, TV and mobile-phone transmitters. The twenty-first-century plague. Hot spots and the death road. And something else it was clear he wasn’t going to tell me or Moira .

Me or Moira. Moira and me . Why did this nag? They were all supposed to be adults. But it had got into her dreams last night. In the last dream, she’d suddenly realized – with the dramatic intensity that only dreams could bestow – that Lol Robinson was in the music business… where everybody slept with everybody else. Awakening anxious and cold – again. Of course, she knew he wasn’t like that – quite the opposite in some ways, after what had happened to him all those years ago. But he was insecure about his abilities and perhaps this mature, experienced Moira Cairns was giving him the reassurance that only another musician could.

Oh God . The fog swirled around her like hostile floss.

Merrily heard footsteps on the track, then a slurring in the mud, the sounds somewhere inside the white fog. She stayed inside the garden wall, hands cold inside her coat pockets and the gloves.

The engine was running to support the heater, doing its best, but this was an old car and the heater took a while to get going, the car warming up very gradually like an old man rubbing his hands and massaging his joints.

The Volvo was backed onto the grass beside the footpath, out of sight, if not earshot, of Sam Hall’s eco-house. On the passenger side, Mrs Lodge was bulked out by a US Army parka, far too big for her. She’d started talking outside on the track, her voice high and querulous and revealing the remains of a South Wales accent. He’s not heartless , she’d cried. I didn’t want you to leave thinking he’s heartless .