Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘Uh huh.’ He nodded. Then he said rapidly, ‘Merrily, I’m sorry to, you know, spring out at you like this. I did come round to the vicarage quite early this morning, but—’

‘That – that was you knocking?’

‘But there was no answer, so I went to buy a Mars Bar and a paper at the shop, and then I ran into Gomer Parry and we talked for a few minutes and then… when I got back your car had gone.’

‘I… overslept.’ Merrily saw flecks of grey in his hair. It was shorter now; the ponytail hadn’t come back. She bit down on her smile, shaking her head. ‘You really choose your times, Lol.’

‘Because you’re working.’

‘Yeah. I mean, could we…? I mean…’

‘Gerard Stock, right?’

She felt the smile die completely.

‘As… as you know,’ Lol said hesitantly, ‘I’m about the last person to try and tell you anything about your job. But… don’t do this.’

‘What?’

‘Put him off – could you do that? Stall him? Please?’

‘I… No. No, I can’t do that.’

‘Then at least come and talk to the vicar,’ Lol said.

THE VESTRY AT Knight’s Frome was about the size of a double wardrobe and didn’t have a proper door, never mind a lock. She had Lol stand guard just inside the church porch while she changed.

This was getting crazy, too much to take.

She unpacked the bag: full kit plus pectoral cross.

Jane, of course – Jane would love this situation, wouldn’t she just? All the times in the past six months the kid had asked innocently, ‘ Have you heard from Lol? Has Lol been in touch? Does Lol spend all his weekends in Wolverhampton…?

Merrily took off her skirt and T-shirt, got into the cassock that she never wore except for services, since a certain incident.

Laurence Robinson: palely sensitive singer-songwriter – in downbeat, low-key, minor chords. Unlucky in love, survivor of a nervous breakdown and some years of psychiatric treatment. Might well have become the next Nick Drake – Q magazine. If, like poor Nick, he’d killed himself, the less satisfactory route to immortality.

But Lol had survived to become droll, self-deprecating and, from Jane’s point of view, dangerously cool. The stepfather to die for. And flirt with, obviously.

Merrily did up all the fabric-covered buttons of the cassock. Fortunately the kid was away. Her own feelings she could control, up to the present.

The last time she’d seen Lol Robinson had been on Dinedor Hill, above Hereford, where a few days earlier a young woman’s death had been shatteringly avenged – leaving Lol in the middle of steaming wreckage with two people dead and one dying. Heavy trauma. In a still December dusk, before Christmas, the two of them had stood next to a fallen beech tree on the edge of the Celtic hill fort and looked down over the city, where steeples and the Cathedral tower were aligned under a shadow of cloud and the distant Black Mountains.

A prayer, a meditation, in remembrance of the victims and then they’d walked back down the hill, hand in hand. And then Lol, no big fan of organized religion, had told her he was wondering if there wasn’t some middle way between spiritual guidance and psychotherapy… a new path, maybe. And they’d walked away to their separate cars and she’d known in her heart that they would meet again sometime, at least as friends, but that this wasn’t the moment to allow things to go further.

Lol Robinson. Just about the last person she’d expected to meet today, materializing in a heat haze at the roadside. And, more confusingly, revealed as one of the anti-Stock contingent warning her to back off.

Like she had a choice.

Abandoning attempts to contact Merrily, Lol had been on the road by seven a.m., knowing that if he didn’t catch her before she went out, she could be anywhere in the diocese and there’d be no chance of talking to her until she arrived at Stock’s tonight – by which time it would be too late.

I truly hope your friend has the sense not to get involved , Simon had said. And then, last night, Isabel: He gets things he can’t put into words .

When he found Merrily had left the vicarage, he’d gone into Hereford, checked the Bishop’s Palace parking area, then called the office to make sure she wasn’t there. Mrs Hill remembered him but wouldn’t tell him where Merrily had gone. She’d offered to pass on a message; Lol said it was OK, no problem. He’d decided to stake out the entrance to Stock’s place, all day if necessary, to catch her before she could go in.

But he’d arrived back in Knight’s Frome to find she was already there. Shoved the car into some bushes, gone running down the gravel track by the kiln, about to go and hammer on the door, disrupt whatever was happening… when the door had opened and she’d walked out—

—followed by Stock: Merrily and Stock together. The first time he’d seen her in six months and here she was with Stock, who was looking, from this distance, as pristine as the husband in some old soap-powder ad, a man on the side of the angels. Merrily had been nodding to him – conveying understanding and sympathy – and at one point seemed about to take his hand. But then she’d turned and walked towards her car and Lol had sidled along the bushes, back to the Astra, to follow the Volvo.

When she’d parked close to Simon’s church, it had seemed meant . He’d made his move. Shock value. It hadn’t even been too difficult to persuade her to walk with him the few yards to the white vicarage.

Where it had all seized up like an overwound clock.

The door had been opened by a woman of about sixty-five, in a pinny, who told them the vicar and Mrs St John had gone shopping in Hereford. They always went on a Tuesday, see, because it was a slack day in the city, between the weekend rush and the Wednesday market. Easier for Isabel to get around town, the housekeeper had explained. Easier for Hereford if Isabel was in a good mood, she’d implied.

Blank wall. How could he persuade Merrily to back away from this when he couldn’t tell her any more than she already knew?

Like, what was the real reason Simon had refused to exorcize Gerard Stock’s kiln? It was becoming clear that there was more to it than the vicar’s declared belief that Stock was fabricating the whole thing either to screw Lake or milk some money out of an inheritance he couldn’t sell.

Isabel had implied, Trust him . Lol didn’t trust him – too many suggestions of instability there. And if anybody could spot instability, it was Lol.

He stood gazing down the aisle of Simon’s very basic little parish church – no fancy carving, no stained glass – towards the altar. The truth was he had no reason to trust anyone in the clergy, except—

He turned at the swish of the velvet curtain, and she emerged from the vestry like she was stepping out of a dress-shop cubicle. Apparently, some men were kinky for women priests, like with nurses and meter maids, because of the uniform. But when Lol watched Merrily stepping into the nave, in her cassock and white surplice, it only made him scared.

Stock was very bad news. Simon knew more than he was saying.

Lol… was just a guy who wrote songs.

She gave him a small smile. She looked like a child playing dressing-up – the silly-vicar outfit. Then he saw the lines at the corners of her eyes. New lines.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s what I do.’

Walking back to the car, she sensed his discomfort. She didn’t think he’d ever seen her in the full gear before. Now she was a priest, with an aura of black and white sanctity; not a woman any more. There was even a new stiffness, a formality, in the way he spoke to her.