Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

From a church? Was this ironic, too?

When it started to rain harder, Robin packed up his paints and folded the easel. A few stray drops on a watercolour could prove interesting; they made the kind of accidental blurs you could use, turned the painting into a rain colour. But if it came on harder, like now, and the wind got up, this was the elements saying to him: Uh-huh, try again.

He stood for a moment down below the church ruins, watching the creek rush into a small gorge maybe fifteen feet deep, carrying branches and a blue plastic feed-sack. Wild! There was a narrow wooden footbridge which people used to cross to get to church. The bridge was a little rickety, which was also kind of quaint. Maybe this even explained why the church had become disused. Fine when the congregation came on foot from the village, but when the village population had gotten smaller, and the first automobiles had arrived in Radnorshire... well, not even country ladies liked to have to park in a field the wrong side of the Hindwell Brook and arrive in church with mud splashes up their Sunday stockings.

In the distance, over the sound of the hurrying water, Robin could hear a vehicle approaching. It was almost a mile along the track to reach the county road, so if you heard any traffic at all, it had to be heading this way. Most often it was Gareth Prosser in his Land Rover – biggest farmer hereabouts, a county councillor and also a nephew of the two old guys who used to own St Michael’s. Robin would have liked if the man stopped one time, came in for a beer, but Gareth Prosser just nodded, never smiled to him, never slowed.

Country folk took time to get to know. Apparently.

But the noise wasn’t rattly enough to be Prosser’s Land Rover, or growly enough to be his kids’ dirt bikes. It was a little early to be Betty back from the widow Wilshire’s, but – who knew? – maybe she at last had developed the hots again for her beloved husband, couldn’t wait to get back to the hissing pine fires and into the sack in that wonderful damp-walled bedroom.

Sure.

Robin kicked a half-brick into the Hindwell Brook, lifting up his face to the squally rain. It would come right. The goddess would return to her. Just the wrong part of the cycle, was all. He offered a short, silent prayer to the spirits of the rushing water, that the flow might once again go their way. Winter was, after all, a stressful time to move house.

The vehicle appeared: it was a Cherokee jeep. When the driver parked in the yard and got out, Robin stared at him, and then closed his eyes and muttered, ‘Holy shit.’

He didn’t need this. He did not need this now.

‘But we don’t believe in those things any more, do we, my dear? Witches, I mean.’

How on earth had the wife of an SAS officer managed to preserve this childlike, glazed-eyed innocence? Betty smiled and lifted the bone china teacup and saucer from her knees in order to smooth her long skirt. Jeans would have been the wrong image entirely and, after the assault on the house over the past few days, she didn’t have an entirely clean pair anyway.

Clean was paramount here. It was a museum of suburbia; it had actual trinkets. Betty guessed that the Major’s wife had secretly been hoping that the renovation work at St Michael’s would never be completed, that it would be simply a long-term hobby for him while they went on living here in New Radnor – which, although it was on the edge of the wilderness and still dominated by a huge castle-mound, was pleasant and open, with a wide main street, neat cottages, window boxes in the summer, a nice shop. Unlike Old Hindwell, it kept the Forest at arm’s length.

Mrs Wilshire said, ‘It was silly, it was slightly unpleasant. And, of course, it wasn’t even terribly old.’

‘About 1850, as I recall.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Wilshire. ‘Have you found another one?’

‘No, I think it’s the same one,’ Betty said patiently. ‘Someone brought it back, you see.’

‘Who in the world would do that?’

‘We don’t know. It was left on the doorstep.’

‘What an odd thing to do.’

‘Yes, it was odd, which is why we’d like to find out who did it. I was hoping you might be able to tell me who you gave the box to when you... gave it away. Do you remember, by any chance?’

‘Well, Bryan saw to that, of course. Bryan always knew where to take things, you see.’

‘Would there perhaps have been... I don’t know, a local historian or someone like that who might have had an interest in old documents?’

‘Hmmm.’ Mrs Wilshire pursed her tiny lips. ‘There’s Mr Jenkins, at the bookshop in Kington. But he writes for the newspapers as well, and Bryan was always very suspicious of journalists. Perhaps it was the new rector he gave it to.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not that he was terribly fond of the rector either. We went to one of his services, but only once. So noisy! I’ve never seen so many people in a church – well, not for an ordinary evensong. They must have come from elsewhere, like football supporters. And there were people with guitars. And candles – so many candles. Well, I have nothing against all that, but it’s not for the likes of us, is it? Are you a churchgoer, Mrs Thorogood?’

‘Er... No. Not exactly.’

‘And your husband? What is it your husband does for a living? I’m sure I did know...’

‘He’s an artist, an illustrator. He does book covers, mainly.’

‘Bryan used to read,’ Lizzie Wilshire said distantly. ‘He’d go through periods when he’d read for days in his sanctum.’ Her big eyes were moist; Betty thought of parboiled eggs.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘is there anything I can do, while I’m here? Vacuum the carpet? Clean anything? Prepare you something for tea? Or is there anywhere you need to go? You don’t drive, do you?’

‘Bryan never wanted me to use the car. He always said rural roads were far more dangerous because of the tractors and trailers. And we have a local man, Mr Gibbins, who runs a sort of part-time taxi service. He takes me into Kington twice a week and carries my shopping for me. You mustn’t worry about me, my dear, with all the work you must have on your hands, getting that old place ready to move into.’

‘We moved in last week, actually.’

Mrs Wilshire’s small mouth fell open. ‘But it was an absolute hovel when—’

She stopped, possibly remembering that her own estate agent had preferred phrases like ‘characterful and eccentric’.

‘It’s still got one or two problems,’ Betty said, more cheerfully than she felt, ‘but it doesn’t let the rain in. Well, not in most of the rooms. Mrs Wilshire, is there anyone else apart from the rector that your husband might have handed that box to – or even told about it?’

Mrs Wilshire shook her head. ‘He brought it back here to examine it, but he didn’t keep it very long, I know that, because I wouldn’t have it in the house – so dirty. I do rather remember something, but...’

Betty sighed. ‘Look, let me wash up these cups and things, at least.’

‘No dear, I can manage.’ She fumbled her cup and saucer to the coffee table, but the cup fell over and spilled some tea, which began to trickle over the edge of the table onto the carpet. Betty snatched a handful of tissues from a box nearby and went down on her knees.

Mopping, she glanced up at Lizzie Wilshire and saw years of low-level pain there, solidified like rock strata. And then, as sometimes happened when observing someone from an oblique angle, she caught a momentary glimpse of Lizzie’s aura. It was not intact and vibrated unevenly. This woman needed help.

Betty gathered up the cups and saucers. ‘Are you having treatment for the... arthritis?’