Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘That’s something like blasphemy, Jane.’

Jane stood up. ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? You’ve got, like, everything – brilliant house, successful business, gorgeous husband – and you have to come here and mess with people’s lives. There’s nothing angelic in any of this. Divine fire? Like, the way I see it, there’s only one kind of divine fire as far as you’re concerned.’

Jenny Box was out of her chair now. She was very pale. Her white scarf had slipped to the flags.

Jane was in tears. It didn’t matter; she’d said it. It was out. Her eyes were wet. She wiped her sleeve across them and saw Jenny Box picking up her white scarf. Then the older woman was standing at the open kitchen door, with the table and ten feet of stone flags between them.

Jenny Box said, ‘When did you see my husband?’

‘How do you know…?’

‘He’s back in London now. We have the same houses, but we don’t live together. Did he come here?’

No.’

‘Which means you went to him.’ Jenny Box stood in the doorway, and when she spoke all that fey lilt had been punched out of her voice. ‘And did he touch you, Jane? As well as defaming me the best he could, did he touch you?’

‘ What? ’

‘Did you let him near you?’

Jane felt her mouth going out of shape.

‘It’s all right,’ Jenny Box said calmly. ‘I won’t distress you further. I’m going now.’

Jane came round the table, her fists clenched. When she reached the hall, Jenny Box had the front door open and was standing next to the Holman Hunt picture, half under the porch light but blocking it, so that it looked for a moment as if she was actually lit by the lantern that Christ was carrying in the picture. Her face was as white as a communion wafer. And she was muttering ‘Oh, dear God, dear God,’ and pulling her scarf over her head.

‘It was as if they wanted me to know,’ Mrs Pawson said. ‘From the first.’

‘They both came to install it?’ Lol asked.

‘It was quite a warm autumn day. She – the woman, Lynsey – was wearing a skimpy black top with nothing underneath it. Even when they were unloading the appliance from the truck, they kept touching one another all the time.’

‘What was she like?’ Merrily said.

‘Quite a big woman. Not much over medium height, but big bones. She had black, frizzy hair, dark eyes. She wasn’t particularly good-looking, but she had a sexiness about her, I suppose you’d have to call it. A sexiness that was not so much sultry as glowering . The way she moved – prowled – even when she was working, hauling these plastic pipes and equipment and… She hardly ever smiled – that was something that struck me – and when she did it wasn’t a very big smile, and… sly isn’t quite the word. It was as if she knew something you didn’t.’

Lol noticed that Mrs Pawson kept glancing at one of the table lamps as if to make sure it was still on.

‘I made the mistake of asking them in when they first arrived. They… their glances were everywhere. Looking at the furniture – which was fairly sparse at the time – not exactly admiring things, but noting them. As if they were checking if there was anything valuable. Then he asked if he could go to the lavatory, and I directed him to the downstairs washroom, but then I could hear him walking about in the bedroom overhead. Meanwhile, she started looking among the books, and she pulled one from the shelf, and she said, “John Donne – he was a sexy bugger, wasn’t he?” and gave me that half-smile. And then Lodge came back down, still smelling of that dreadful aftershave, and before they went back out, he stared at me in… I suppose a rather blatant way, and he asked me how I was getting on. Whether I was lonely without my husband. “Long nights,” he said. “Long old nights, eh?” ’

Mrs Pawson squeezed her arms together and began to rock slightly. Lol didn’t think she was aware of it.

‘At lunchtime, they would… They had a van – which she drove, because he’d brought the digger – and it was parked at the back of the house with the rear doors facing the kitchen. At lunchtime, they went into the back of the van, supposedly to eat their sandwiches, but it became obvious very quickly what they were actually doing. There was a single mattress in there. No attempt to hide it, no attempt at all to keep it quiet. In fact, they seemed to be making as much noise as they could. As if they were oblivious of everything else, like rutting animals. The van was actually creaking on its springs.’

Mrs Pawson stopped and looked at them, perhaps to make sure that they didn’t consider this was perfectly reasonable behaviour during a lunchtime break.

‘How many days did the work take?’ Lol asked. ‘The installation?’

‘Two. I’m sure it could have been done in one, but they seemed in no hurry – about anything.’

Evidently,’ Merrily said.

‘Naturally, but now I was regretting I’d ever hired him.’

‘Did you say anything to them?’

‘What was I supposed to say, without sounding middle-class and sanctimonious and… like a townie? Like some sort of buttoned-up townie who didn’t understanding country… spontaneity.’

‘What, you wondered if perhaps this was how all healthy young rural workers…?’

‘It’s not funny.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Merrily said. ‘Especially when you were on your own. It’s insulting, and it’s threatening.’

‘Anyway, on the second day, they left the back doors of the van wide open, and I assumed they really were eating their sandwiches this time, and I went out to ask… I steeled myself to go out and ask if they wanted a cup of tea. And they were both sitting there in the back of the van, naked. Well, she was, almost… she had her top off and her jeans unzipped. He was stripped to the waist, his belt undone.’

Merrily closed her eyes, shaking her head.

‘I screamed, I’m afraid. One tries to be cool in this sort of situation, but… Then Lodge laughed. He said what a hot day it was. Just cooling off, he said. I said something like, You’ll have to excuse me, and then she said, in this very low, throaty voice, “Why don’t you join us? Why don’t you join us, love? Do you good.” ’

Mrs Pawson started to cough, brought a hand to her mouth. Lol asked, ‘Can I get you a drink? Some coffee?’

‘No, thank you, I’ll be going in to dinner soon. If I can face it. So I said, very coldly, “How long will you be before you’ve finished?” I could smell the awful aftershave, and I was feeling sick. And she said, “As long as you want… as long as you can stand it.” And Lodge said, “Longer…” And he laughed. And I ran back to the house and locked the door and stood over the phone for quite a long time, wondering if I should call the police… if what they were doing – or what they’d said – constituted any kind of offence.’

‘They never came out of the van?’ Lol said.

‘No, not at this time. It could have been said that they were demonstrating nothing more than what you might call a lamentable lack of common courtesy. But there was – I really can’t tell you – an indescribable menace around them both. A quite palpable sense of something… predatory. I know people will say this is all with hindsight.’

‘What did you do?’ Merrily asked.

‘I didn’t know what to do then. I didn’t go out again. After a while, they came out of the van and simply finished the job, replacing all the soil. They didn’t come back to the house. I felt I should have gone to the police or somebody. But it would be my word against theirs. A townie, an incomer. And of course I absolutely dared not tell my husband. He never wanted that house, never really wanted to move to the country. Kept talking about, you know, living among… sheep-shaggers. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. The next day, I just had the locks changed – and doubled.’