Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘Well, it won’t come from her, will it? It’ll come from the Chief Constable.’ Bliss stopped. ‘Not a word, OK? You can tell Merrily, and that’s it.’

‘OK.’

‘I mean it, Laurence. I fuck’n hate this politicking, but I’m not gonna lose me job over it.’

‘Sure.’

‘Right, this is it. Annie’s suggesting the Chief puts out a press statement on the lines of, if the Church can’t be relied on to police itself on matters of irresponsible exorcism, without psychiatric back-up and the like, then it should be made far more open to legal redress. Words to that effect.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I only wish it were so, pal.’

‘What’s the bottom line?’

‘The bottom line, Lol, is that the Chief Constable of West Mercia puts his name behind the suggestion that a priest who performs an exorcism that has unfortunate consequences should subsequently be held legally responsible for those consequences. In this case, for instance, we could even be looking at manslaughter.’

Merrily came through the gate. She looked worried. She was digging in her bag for a cigarette.

Lol said, ‘They’d want… that she could actually go to prison?’

‘That’s extreme, but,’ Bliss shrugged, ‘this could serve as an important precedent. Chances are nothing’ll come of it – I mean, they repealed the Witchcraft Act, didn’t they? But it’ll certainly make everybody very nervous for a good while.’

‘The Church has no balls,’ Lol said. ‘No bishop in this country would ever sanction an exorcism again.’

He watched Merrily coming towards them, the ruby glow of the cigarette between her fingers. It wasn’t the wider issue that worried him so much as what it would do to her. Prison – OK, unthinkable. But being identified as ‘the precedent’ would, for Merrily, be immeasurably worse.

The pariah. Goodbye to the clergy, obviously. And then what? He’d never fully come to terms with the awesome concept of her as a curer of souls. But ex-Rev. Watkins, the disgraced former priest – the consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about.

He couldn’t tell her. He had to do something.

‘As Father Flanagan used to say to us when we missed mass,’ Frannie Bliss winked, without humour, acquired an Irish accent, ‘ ding-ding , and there’s another round to the Devil.’

THERE WAS A screen behind the altar in the Barnchurch. Not a rood screen but the sort of concertina thing women used to toss their robes over in Victorian bathrooms.

The grey-white figure was hanging from this screen like a giant moth.

Jane stayed back. The face was chipped and grotesque: the face of a black, dress-shop dummy, greasy white rings smeared around the eyes.

‘People touch her clothes, usually,’ Layla Riddock said, weaving in the candlelight, ‘for healing.’

Jane recalled Kirsty: Gypsies got their own virgin – like a patron saint or a goddess – the Black Virgin .

‘Sara,’ Layla Riddock said carelessly. ‘Yes, she helps. Amy’s had so much starchy religion pumped into her that we have to bring her down slowly. Sara’s the Black Virgin, and you can view that two ways, can’t you? A saint or an inversion – or a semi-Christian mother goddess. All ways, she helps. Amy’s finding her true mother. And, through that, her true self.’

‘Where is Amy?’ Eirion said.

‘Haven’t you taught him any other words yet, Jane?’ Layla tossed her hair. Jane was realizing for the first time how scarily intelligent she was. ‘Watch my lips. I – don’t – know. Perhaps she went home. Perhaps she’s walking the streets. Perhaps she let a rapist in.’

‘ Don’t ,’ Jane shouted, ‘talk like that.’

… alk like at … The walls sent back the echo. This was a big, empty place, bigger than the average parish church. Layla seemed very much at home here.

‘Your mother came to see Allan,’ she said. ‘And me.’

‘What?’

‘Yesterday. She was with another woman, from the Cathedral, looking for Amy. Didn’t you know?’

‘No.’

‘That’s funny, because it sounded like someone had told her all about the Steve’s Shed Experience.’

‘So?’ Jane had backed up against something low and hard, an old manger.

‘Well, that wasn’t a very nice thing to do, grass up your mates, was it? And it caused a nasty little row between me and Allan, making it difficult to get away tonight. I arranged to meet Amy here, but I’m late, and now she’s pissed off. Anything could’ve happened to her. All because you had to blab.’

‘What do you expect me to do? My mum was in a hassle with the Bishop, because Amy had laid it all on me . Because she was scared to put you in the frame. What was I supposed to do ?’

Layla shook her head in disgust. The ring in her navel shone like the edge of a coin. Jane was bewildered and furious with herself. How could she have let all this get turned around?

‘Anyway,’ she found herself saying petulantly, ‘it was you who set her up.’

‘This is Kirsty again, yeah?’

‘It’s the truth, though, isn’t it? You hated that family ever since her old man got your fortune-telling act pulled at the Christmas Fair.’

Layla smiled. ‘Oh, Jane, one forgets, you’re so young …’

Jane gritted her teeth. ‘Caution, cariad ,’ Eirion whispered.

‘I’d go to all this trouble for that ?’ Layla exploded. ‘For fuck’s sake, what am I?’

‘You predicted all kinds of bad stuff. You sent old women home thinking they were going to die—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, I was pissed! I’d spent a couple of hours in the pub with some guys, then I go back to the school, put on the clobber, and I just couldn’t bear to do all that you-will-come-into-money-and-go-over-the-water shit. So I just let it come through.’

Jane stared at Layla in her black top and her black jeans standing next to the Black Virgin in her white robes and white headdress.

‘I can do this stuff. The dukkering . It’s a mixture of insight and scam. You do the patter, and sometimes the real stuff comes through. But you’re also observing, judging what kind of a punter you’ve got and tailoring your predictions accordingly. But I was pissed, like I say. I mean, you wouldn’t believe some of the people you get in there. There was this old woman, well dressed, dripping with jewellery, all she wanted to know was whether her friend, who was in the hospice, was going to leave all her money to her. You think, that age and all she cares about is more money? I said, yeah, you’ll get the money but you’d better spend it quick ’cause you ain’t got long yourself, dearie.’

Silence. Jane looked at Eirion. There was a little smile twitching at his mouth.

Layla chuckled in her throaty way. ‘The one I was a little sorry about afterwards – but, yeah, I said it, sure I said it – was Libby Walker who used to do school dinners part-time. You know Libby? She’s about thirty and she’s got about five kids, all by different dads, and everybody knows she just does it for a council house and the family allowance, that’s how thick and irresponsible she is. And as soon as she came in the booth I could see she’d got another one in the oven, and I just lost patience and told her in this sinister voice that I could see “a withering” in her womb. Course, the stupid bitch went bloody spare.’

Eirion made a little noise horribly suggestive of amusement, which made Jane blurt out, ‘You cursed Mrs Etchinson!’

‘Yeah.’ Layla sighed and fingered the hem of the robe of the Black Virgin.