Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘He’s the Man,’ Tania said. ‘If you call him something like King of the Witches, he’ll look pained. He doesn’t like the word “witch”. He’s a champagne pagan, if you like. Works as a publishing executive and would rather be profiled in the Observer than the News of the World ... and, yeah, he’s getting there.’

‘By way of Livenight ?’

Tania frowned. ‘Don’t take this programme too lightly, Merrily. You can get deeply shafted out there. And we are watched by all kinds of people you wouldn’t expect.’

Especially this week! By the acting Bishop of Hereford this week, and probably half of Lambeth Palace. Take it lightly ? She’d had to put down her glass of spring water because she couldn’t hold it still. Ridiculous; she conducted services every Sunday, she talked to hostile teenagers, she talked to God, she...

Sean was there, smiling in her mind. In getting here, she’d had to drive past where he died, on the M5, in flames. Go away!

She said, too loudly, ‘Tania, can you... give me a rundown? Who else is here?’

‘OK.’ Tania nodded briskly. ‘Well, we get the programme peg out of the way first, right? The couple who want their kid to be allowed to do his pagan prayers and whatnot at school.’ She nodded towards a solemn, bearded man in a home-made-looking sweater. His partner had a waist-length plait. They might have been Muslims. They might even have been Christians.

Merrily said, ‘Am I right in thinking you’re not going to be spending very long on them?’

‘Dead right. Boring, boring, boring. Actually, the headmaster of the school’s going to be better value. Born-again Christian. Actually talks like Sir Cliff, like he’s got a boiled sweet in his cheek. OK, over there... Patrick Ryan – long hair, velvet jacket – Cambridge professor who’s done a study of pagan practices. And shagged half the priestesses in the Home Counties by all accounts, but I doubt he’ll be discussing that . If Ryan’s too heavy, the little guy with the shaven head’s Tim Fagan, ex-hack from the Sun , was sent out to do an exposé on some sexy coven and wound up joining them. Now edits a popular witchy magazine called – ha ha – The Moon .’

Edward Bain excepted, they all looked fairly innocuous.

‘What about the other side?’

‘Right. Well, we’ve got a really angry mother who claims paganism turned her daughter into a basket case. She is very strong. The kid got drawn into white witchcraft and ended up peeing in churches. Which leads neatly into you, I think.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Mmm.’ Tania had revealed on the phone that she had seen news cuttings on last year’s Herefordshire desecration case, involving the sacrifice of a crow in a country church. Not entirely appropriate, in Merrily’s view.

‘I mean, I can’t say that was your orthodox paganism – if there is such a thing, which I doubt. It was a peculiar kind of black magic. It was a one-off.’

Tania Beauman shrugged.

‘By “the other side”,’ Merrily said, ‘I actually meant us , the Church. You said I wouldn’t be on my own here.’ How pathetic did that sound?

Tania looked mildly concerned. ‘I didn’t say that, did I? I’m sure I didn’t say that.’

‘You did, Tania.’

‘Oh, well, what happened, the other bloke let us down. I think his wife had a miscarriage or something.’ She was blatantly improvising. ‘But if you’re looking for back-up, the headmaster’s brought along a few members of his church. See the guy in the white—’

‘Which church would that be?’

‘Well, Christian, obviously, but I suppose you’d probably call it more of a cult.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘They’ll be doing some heavy apocalyptic stuff about the Antichrist walking the earth disguised as... Hang on – looks like Steve wants to do his pep talk.’

A bald man of about thirty, in white jeans and a crumpled paisley shirt, strode into the centre of the green room, lifted up his arms for silence, and went – Merrily guessed – into autopilot.

‘OK, listen up, everybody, my name’s Steve Ewing. I’m the editor of Livenight . I’d like to welcome you all to the programme and point out that we’ll be on the air in about fifty minutes. You’ve all seen the show – if not, then that’s your problem for sticking with boring old Paxman or the dirty movie on Channel 5. OK, now what I mainly want to stress to you is that Livenight is like life – you don’t get a second chance.’

A woman cackled. ‘All you know, mate.’

‘Yeah, very good.’ Steve Ewing smiled thinly. ‘What I’m trying to get over here is that we don’t hang around and neither should you. If you have something to say, don’t hold back, because it’ll be too late and we’ll have moved on to another aspect of the debate, and you’ll be kicking yourself all the way home because you missed your chance of getting your argument across on the programme.’

Merrily looked around for any exit sign. Wasn’t too late to get the hell out of here.

‘What I’m looking for,’ said Steve, ‘is straight talking and – above all – quick, snappy responses. There’s a lot of choice material to get across, and we want to help you do that. So it’s straight to the point, no pussyfooting, and if it’s going to take longer than about thirty seconds, save it for your PhD thesis. John Fallon’s the ringmaster. You won’t meet him until you go in, but you’ve all seen John, he’s a smart guy, a pro, and his bullshit threshold is zero. Any questions?’

There was some shuffling but no direct response.

‘Why don’t we get to meet Fallon before the programme?’ Merrily whispered.

Tania Beauman hardly moved her lips. ‘You’d know more about this than me, but I don’t imagine they’d normally introduce the Christians to the lion.’

They called this the gallery. It was a narrow room with a bank of TV monitors, through which the director and the sound and vision mixers could view the studio floor from different angles. Once the show was on the air, the director would be in audio contact with the producer and the presenter, John Fallon, down in the bear pit. They actually called it that. In fact, Jane had found it a little disappointing at first. It was much smaller than it looked on the box – like a little theatre-in-the-round, with about six rows of banked-up seating.

‘Does the whole audience have some angle on the debate?’ she asked a white-haired bloke called Gerry, an ex- Daily Star reporter who was the senior member of Tania Beauman’s research team.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a decent enough budget now, but it’s not that big. The audience are just ordinary punters bussed in – tonight’s bunch is from a paint factory in Walsall: packers, cleaners, management – a cross section of society.’

Gerry glanced at Eirion, who looked awfully young and innocent – and not happy. He had no stomach for subterfuge, Jane was realizing. He’d been appalled to discover that her mum, down there, did not know they were up here. Or, indeed, within sixty miles of Livenight .

Even in Eirion’s car, with the patched-up silencer, it hadn’t taken long to get here. The Warehouse studio complex had been quite easy to find, on the edge of a new business park, under a mile from the M5 and ten miles out of the central Birmingham traffic hell.

It was not until they’d actually left the motorway that Jane had revealed to Eirion the faintly illicit nature of this operation. ‘Irene, I’m doing this for you . This could be your future. This is like cutting-edge telly. It’s an in , OK. You might even get a holiday job.’