Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

Jane snorted a laugh. A big motorway sign loomed up, wreathed in tendrils of mist: ‘Worcester. The South West’. So many options. The motorway was romantic at night, despite those dark, blurred, nightmare memories that were more nightmare than memory, but fading.

‘Like, despite everything,’ Eirion persisted, ‘you’re still turned on by weird mystical stuff.’

‘Irene, it’s not “weird mystical stuff”, it’s about what we are and where we’re going. Do you never lie in bed and wonder what we’re part of and where it all ends?’

‘I could lie awake all night and agonize about it, but it wouldn’t make any difference, would it? I don’t like the look of this fog, Jane.’

‘But suppose it would? Suppose you could? I mean, suppose you could go places, deep into yourself and into the heart of the universe at the same time?’

‘But I know I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have the – what is it? – the application. Neither would most of those people there tonight. They think they can discover enormous, eternal, mind-blowing truths by summoning gods and spirits and things, but they’re just fooling themselves. I mean they were just... kind of sad tossers.’

‘Ned Bain wasn’t sad.’

‘Course he was. He was just the tosser in the suit.’

Eirion drifted onto the motorway. It wasn’t too foggy, but you couldn’t see the sky. Jane hoped Mum wasn’t feeling too choked about her performance to drive carefully.

She said, ‘He was making the point that paganism is no longer a crank thing; that it has to be taken seriously as a major, continuing tradition in this country and a genuine, valid force for change. He was like... very controlled and eloquent. I’d guess he’s quite a way along the Path.’

‘You mean the garden path?’

‘You know exactly what I mean.’

‘He’s manipulative. You couldn’t trust him.’

‘Because he’s kind of good-looking?’

‘Well,’ Eirion said, ‘that’s obviously a small plus-factor with you.’

‘Sod off. If I was that superficial, would I be going out with you?’

‘Are you?’

‘Superficial?’

‘Going out with me?’

‘Possibly. I don’t know. I might be too weird for you.’

‘Yeah, that’s my principal worry, too,’ Eirion said, deadpan.

‘Bastard.’ Jane leaned her shoulder into his. ‘I wish there’d been time to wait and grab that Vivienne when she came out.’

‘She wouldn’t have told you where that church is. You notice how quick she clammed up, as though she knew she’d said too much? Because if some witchcraft sect are secretly practising at a Christian church... well, I don’t know. If they haven’t actually broken in, is that some kind of crime? Probably not.’

‘Well, there you go.’

‘Your mother’s going to have to find out about it, though, isn’t she?’

‘Probably.’

‘And what will she do when she does find out?’

‘Go in there with a big cross? How should I know?’

‘You could be more sympathetic to her.’

‘I am sympathetic.’

‘You’re also sympathetic to paganism.’

‘I’m interested. I’ve had... experiences, odd psychic things I can’t explain.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it really.’

‘Oh.’ Eirion drove in silence. Yellow fog-warning lights signalled a forty mph speed limit.

‘I’m not being funny,’ Jane said. ‘This just isn’t the time.’

‘No.’

‘Haven’t you? Had things happen to you you can’t explain? Feelings about places? Things you thought you saw? Times when your emotions and your, like, sensations are so intense that you feel you’re about to burst through into... something else. Some other level? I mean, the Welsh are supposed to be like...’

‘My gran’s a bit spooky.’

‘Tell me in what way.’

‘No, you tell me about your mum. Tell me about your dad.’

‘That bloody Gerry,’ Jane said.

Eirion was hesitant. ‘Was what he said...?’ The rest of it was lost under the rattling of a lorry passing them in the centre lane, a low-loader without a load, fast and free in the night.

‘Yeah,’ Jane said. ‘He had it more or less right. My dad met my mum at university, where they were both studying law, and she... got pregnant with me and left the university, and he carried on and became a bent solicitor.’

‘There was a special course for bent solicitors?’

‘Ha ha. They were both going to do legal aid stuff and defend people who couldn’t afford solicitors and all kinds of liberal, crusading stuff like that, according to Mum. But Dad wanted money – because of me, maybe he’d have said. Because of the responsibility. Though Mum says she was already learning things about him she didn’t like. And, anyway, he got into iffy deals with some clients and Mum found out about it and there was this big morality scene, not helped by him screwing his clerk.’ Jane paused for breath. ‘Around this time, Mum had been helping the local vicar with community work and also she had this quite heavy experience of her own.’

‘What sort of experience?’

‘This was when things were really, really bad, and she was desperately trying to sort things out in her own head. She drove off into the sticks and came across this tiny little church in a wood or something and there was, like, a lamplit path...’

‘It was night?’

‘No, it was daytime, dickhead. The lamplit path was, like, metaphorical or in her head or a visionary thing. And listen, if she ever asks, I didn’t tell you this, because she hates... Can’t you go any faster?’

‘There’s a speed limit.’

‘I can’t even see any fog now. Because if she catches us up...’

‘There’s still a speed limit. And so your dad was killed?’

‘He hit a motorway bridge. They were both killed. I mean, Karen, too. I read some newspaper cuttings I wasn’t supposed to find. It was horrible – a ball of fire.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was years ago,’ Jane said without emotion.

‘Which motorway?’

‘The M5. I suppose this is the M5, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a long motorway.’

‘Well, it wasn’t on this stretch, I don’t think. I don’t quite know where it was. I didn’t read that bit. You don’t want to keep looking out for a certain bridge all your life, do you?’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘What Gerry said about a guilt trip, that’s bullshit. I mean, why should she feel guilty? She was never mixed up in any of those crooked deals. Well, all right, it’s easier for a widow to get into the Church than a newly divorced woman. Maybe she did feel guilty at the way that decision was so neatly taken out of her hands.’

‘How do you feel about your dad?’

‘He was kind of fun,’ Jane said, ‘but I was very little. Your dad’s always fun when you’re little. What was your home like? Did you all speak Welsh? I mean, do you?’

‘Only when we have certain visitors. As everybody can speak English and English is a much bigger language and more versatile, you don’t have to speak Welsh to anybody. But there are some people it’s more correct to speak Welsh to. If you see what I mean.’

‘Wow, minefield.’

‘It’s a cultural minefield, yeah. But I like Welsh. It’s not my first language, but it’s not that far behind.’

‘Do you swear in Welsh? I mean you could swear in Welsh at school, in front of the teachers, and nobody would know.’

‘That’s an interesting point,’ Eirion said. ‘Actually, most Welsh people, when they swear, revert automatically to English. They’re walking along the street conversing happily in Welsh, then one trips over the kerb and it’s, like, “Oh, shit!” ’