Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘— maskri . It’s a Romany term.’ Al Boswell’s white hair flurried as he did a little bow. She suspected he was mocking her.

A lantern hung from the bowed roof of the vardo , a thick candle inside it. On the grass in front of the wagon, a heavy wooden table was set up, with bentwood chairs. A shaggy donkey browsed nearby. In the distance, beyond the building housing the hop museum, glittered the tiered lights of Malvern.

Al Boswell presented himself in front of Lol, hands behind his back. ‘Where’s your guitar? Why didn’t you bring your guitar? We could have played for the moon.’

Lol told him Prof had insisted the guitar was a short-term loan. ‘Besides, it didn’t seem—’

‘Appropriate?’ Al Boswell arched his back like a thin, white cat. ‘Relevant? Seemly?’

‘All those,’ Lol said. ‘Plus—’

‘You can’t surely be afraid to play alongside an old man whose arthriticky fingers slur drunkenly over the frets?’

‘Tonight, I can manage without total humiliation,’ Lol admitted.

‘Certainly not in the presence of the lovely drukerimaskri .’

I am not going to ask what it means , Merrily thought.

‘Or are you afraid the drukerimaskri would think it was wrong to play for the moon? And besides, look at her: she’s in a hurry, there’s no time, she’s on hot bricks, she needs the information. Therefore, she might find you… trivial.’ Al Boswell walked right up to Lol, peered into his eyes. ‘And that would never do.’

‘Al, for God’s sake!’ The beautiful, frail silvery woman in the long skirt came down the steps of the wagon, carrying a tray with glasses on it. ‘He’s such a terrible walking cliché sometimes,’ she said to Merrily. ‘Except, of course, in the presence of other Romanies, on which rare occasions he’s almost withdrawn.’

‘She’s such a bitch tonight!’ Al Boswell howled. He took Lol on one side. ‘So, have you heard from Levin?’

The donkey had ambled up to Merrily and she ran her fingers through his heavy fur and gazed into his billiard-ball eyes. There was an unreality about the night or perhaps a hyper-reality – a sensual intensity she hadn’t been prepared for. Lol had brought her here, and suddenly she wanted Lol to take her away again; she wanted to be alone with him. Things needed to be said, worked out, if that were possible.

‘You’re terribly tense, aren’t you?’ Mrs Boswell was standing next to her. ‘And exhausted? I’m going to fetch you something that might help.’

‘No, honestly, it’s…’ Merrily let the donkey nibble at the sleeve of her jacket. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Stanley.’

‘Does that mean something in Romany?’

‘I do hope not.’

Merrily smiled. A wave of tiredness washed over her, and the lights of Malvern blurred.

‘About Stock.’ Mrs Boswell looked insubstantial in the dusk – like steam, like a ghost. But for the glasses on a chain, you felt you could have put a hand through her. ‘There’s nothing you could have done. It shouldn’t have been allowed to happen, but there’s nothing you could have done. You weren’t to know.’

‘Know what?’

Mrs Boswell didn’t reply. Merrily let it go: a false trail, probably. This woman didn’t look at all like a gypsy but she’d been married to one for many years.

‘What’s a drukerimaskri ?’ Merrily said.

‘Al called you that? Originally, I think, it meant soothsayer. Then it became applied to Christian priests who could lay spirits to rest. Drukerimaskro is the more familiar form, in the masculine: an exorcist, a healer of souls.’

Merrily held on to the donkey and looked for Lol.

Healer of souls .

The song had been happening when she got back to Knight’s Frome just after seven p.m.

She’d insisted on driving back in the Volvo – which had meant first returning to the office and submitting to two cups of sweet tea, a biscuit, a paracetamol and a dissertation on the parameters of responsibility.

‘The Bishop’s back tomorrow,’ Sophie had reminded her, finally seeing her to the car. ‘I’m going to advise him to put off the inevitable formal meeting with you until next week.’

‘I’d rather get it over with.’

‘And admit to things for which you were not to blame?’ Sophie held open the door of the Volvo. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘If I lose the job, I lose the job. There were things I got wrong. I’m not just going to keep denying everything to preserve my… dubious status.’

‘Merrily,’ Sophie said very clearly, ‘I have to tell you I’d be more than pleased – for your sake, at least – if you were to leave Deliverance behind for ever.’ Merrily stared at her in dismay. ‘But certainly not under the present circumstances. I’d never forgive myself if you went down for either Gerard Stock or Allan Henry and Layla Riddock. Now go back and get an early night. I’ll talk to you in the morning.’

Sophie pushed the car door closed – except it didn’t; this was an old car and you had to slam the door. Merrily opened it again to do that, overheard what Sophie was muttering to herself as she walked away.

She’d sat there with the door hanging open – maybe her mouth as well – until Sophie was out of sight. Then, to avoid having to think, she’d snatched the mobile and called David Shelbone at home, intending this time to insist he get the police in.

No answer. In the silence of the Bishop’s Palace yard, she’d prayed for the Shelbones and then started the car and put on the stereo very loud, something sparking with ideas but not too profound: Gomez – Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline .

At 7.03 p.m., she’d driven out of the lane from Knight’s Frome and on to the now-familiar track, parking the Volvo between the stables and the cottage. Lol’s Astra sat there, years older than the trees Prof Levin had planted to screen off his studio. In Prof’s absence, nature was running things again – green hazelnuts in the uncut boundary hedge and a gold-dust haze on the seeded long grass of what was supposed to be a lawn.

The stable door was open, and Merrily went into the kitchen area, putting down her bag on the breakfast-bar packing case, walking down the short passage to the studio door. It was ajar. She peered through the gap.

Some of the stable remained as it had been, three of the stalls turned into recording booths. Lol was sitting in one, his back to the door, a guitar on his knee. On the smaller of the two tape machines to her left, she could see spools revolving. He’d be laying down a demo for Prof Levin. She knew he’d had his orders.

There was a pair of headphones hanging from a metal bracket beside the tape machine. She could hear the tinnitus buzz of music and she slipped off her shoes and padded across. The air was still and warm. Feeling like whatever was the aural equivalent of a voyeur, she slipped on the cans.

The music stopped. ‘ Shit ,’ Lol murmured wearily into her head. There was silence, then a string was retuned. The crisp acoustic was frighteningly intimate: she could hear his breathing, the movements of his fingers on the machine-heads.

Lol said, ‘Take six.’

The guitar, in minor chord, was awesomely deep and full – this kind of weighted fingerstyle sounding like a piano. She felt like she was inside the soundbox and somehow also inside the heart of the guitarist, and tears came into her eyes as Lol’s voice came in, low and nasal and smoky, and the first shockingly resonant line fell like a stone into a deep, deep well.

‘ As you kneel before your altar —’

Merrily froze. Lol stopped. He cleared his throat. He sighed.