Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

The Deliverance Ministry. My mother, the exorcist .

An Anglican shaman, a Christian witch doctor. Paid peanuts to humour fruitcakes.

Could be worse; she might actually have finished her

So university course and become a lawyer, like Dad, like Uncle Ted. Jane forced a grin, picked up the phone, tapped out a mobile number more familiar than their own. He’d be home now, in the grim family fortress outside Abergavenny.

Irene, what can I say? I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve to live . Could he bear to hear that again?

Ominous silence. No ring.

Vodaphone robot: ‘ The Vodaphone you are calling has been turned off… ’

And nothing about voice-mail. No, please… Jane felt like she was about to start hyperventilating. He’d even disabled his voice-mail.

Oh Christ, I didn’t mean it . Slamming down the phone, staggering back into the kitchen. I didn’t mean any of it. You know I didn’t, you utter bastard!

Drawing in a breath like a long, thin hacksaw blade. Once too often – she’d abused him once too often.

Jane wrapped her arms around herself.

It was over. It really was over.

She stood there, not moving, as though she was set in marble, an angel on a grave. Stood there for well over a minute before moving numbly to the sink, half-filling a glass with water and drinking it, watching Ethel disappearing purposefully through the cat door.

She went back to the table and pulled out the chair where Mum normally sat, removing a book from the seat before sitting down. This house was like a nunnery; even the book was by St Thomas Aquinas, Mum’s place marked with an envelope at a page with – she opened it – some stuff about… angels, of course. Bloody angels.

Messengers of God. Jane shook her head slowly in contempt, then lowered it into her arms on the table top. This was what Mum had once admitted to doing when all else failed, when she didn’t know where to turn. With a cringing curtsy to primitive superstition, she would actually open the Bible or some other holy tome at random, seeking divine inspiration from the first she read. God, the weight of sadness in a gesture like that .

And wasn’t it ironic that, after years of mocking Jane’s own passing fascination with nature spirits and angels, Mum should get finally get round to investigating the subject because a madwoman had given the church a hefty bung? Wasn’t it also typical that she’d turned to a medieval theologian rather than simply ask her own daughter, who had read more books on angelic forces…

Jane lifted her head slowly, then shook it, smiling what she guessed was a smile of near-insanity but really, what the hell ?

Maybe it worked. A sign from God. Angelic inspiration. She looked at the clock: five to seven. Be a least a couple of hours before Mum got back.

She got to her feet and went through to the hall. Didn’t, for once, feel the need to take down The Light of the World and smash it onto the flags, didn’t even give it a glance as she pulled her blue fleece jacket from the peg, shrugging it on as she opened the front door, Mum’s voice bleating in her head from when they’d had the row about Jenny Driscoll.

Maybe I didn’t push her hard enough.

Well, of course she didn’t. She wasn’t intellectually equipped for it. The truth was that Mum simply didn’t have the knowledge. Everything she knew about angels came from the Bible or the works of guys like Aquinas, whereas Jenny Box-née-Driscoll was coming directly from the New Age, where angelic energies corresponded with the deva s, the high-level faerie entities supervising whole areas of life… where angels were considered to be an ecological fact, not a religious device.

OK, it was all sad crap, but it was crap she knew about . Nobody in – well, OK, certainly nobody in this village was better equipped to get the truth out of Driscoll.

The fog wasn’t bad now, actually. Jane zipped up her fleece, plunged her hands in the pockets and set off down the drive, towards the square and Chapel House. It would have been good to discuss this first with Eirion, but she was on her own again now, had to find her own way, make her own decisions. thing

DELIVERANCE

From:cherry lodge cherry.lodge@agritel.co.uk

To:deliverance@spiritec.co.uk

‘Has her own separate e-mail address,’ Merrily noted. ‘But I’d be a bit concerned about mailing her back, all the same.’

‘I wouldn’t worry – the husband probably never even goes near the computer,’ Sophie said. ‘Some older farmers are uncomfortable with them. Their farm’s a private world, a domain, and they don’t like the thought of anything having access – whether it’s through a public footpath or the Internet. Electronic intrusion is as big a threat as a Ministry man with a clipboard.’

Lately, Sophie had been letting her white hair grow; in the subdued light it looked unexpectedly dense and dramatic above the grey cashmere and pearls. She was perched elegantly on a corner of the desk, her back to the window, conveying no hurry to be away. Sophie Hill: a woman who lived close to and for the Cathedral. Who didn’t, therefore, keep ‘hours’.

There’d been tea waiting for Merrily in the Bishop’s Palace gatehouse, and chocolate biscuits. Jane’s ‘Auntie Sophie’ jibe had not been entirely misplaced. It was a bit like going to your auntie’s when you were a kid. A guilty pleasure now, especially with Jane at home nursing her private angst.

Have you read this?’ Merrily asked. Below the Cathedral gatehouse, the lights of Broad Street were still fuzzy with fog.

‘Merrily, it’s why I called you.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘Well, obviously my first thought was that they should have told the police.’

‘ I can’t.’

‘No, of course not – not without consulting her first. But then, when you think about it, how interested would the police be anyway? What difference would it make, now he’s dead?’

We’ve been feeling isolated, like outsiders now in our village, even though Tony’s family has been here for generations. We’re the nearest farm to the village, but we don’t feel involved any more or especially wanted, and since all this came up it’s got much worse. Some people we’ve known for years have been very kind, but they don’t run things here any more. That’s why we didn’t want to talk about it to the police or anyone, it could only have made things worse than they are.

‘She’s very fluent, Sophie. Getting things off her chest.’

Sophie nodded. ‘E-mail can be a liberating experience, as I’m sure you know. One can say things it would be difficult, if not impossible, to say in a two-way conversation on the phone. While the problem with letters is that not only are they more formal but one is inclined to read them back an hour or so later and think, I can’t send that , and tear them up. But with an e-mail…’

‘You pour it all out and you’ve pressed send before you can change your mind.’

‘For people – especially for women – in remote situations, it’s become a refuge, a confessional… a lifeline. Particularly women who can’t discuss some things with their husbands. She probably gets into chat rooms as well. Therapy. Company.’

Merrily, sitting at Sophie’s desk, looked up, head on one side. ‘I’ve often wondered, never asked… but are you in The Samaritans?’

Sophie smiled briefly and looked away. It was obvious now, when you considered. And she’d be very good at it.

‘Also, one can write and transmit an e-mail while one’s other half is still in the house, without the danger of being overheard. Without even having to sneak it into the post. I suppose it’s become, for many people, the nearest thing to thinking aloud. Or crying aloud.’