Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘But we feel these people have betrayed our trust and that is utterly despicable.’

‘Trust?’ Robin exploded. ‘What did that fat asshole ever trust us with?’ Jeez, he’d hardly even spoken to the guy till a couple days ago, and then it was like Robin was some kind of vagrant.

He sat down, beating his fist on the table. It was a while before he realized the phone was ringing. By that time, Betty had come down and answered it.

When she came off the phone she was white with anger.

‘Who?’ Robin said.

She didn’t answer.

‘Please?’

She said in low voice, ‘Vivvie.’

‘Good of them to call back after only a day. Did they know anything about that programme? For all it matters.’

‘She was on the programme.’

He sat up. ‘ What? ’

‘They were both there in the studio, but only Vivienne got to talk.’ Betty’s voice was clipped and precise. ‘It was a late-night forum about the growth of Dark Age paganism in twenty-first-century Britain. They had Wiccans and Druids, Odinists – also some Christians to generate friction. It’s a friction programme.’

Robin snorted. TV was a psychic drain.

‘Vivienne was one of a group of experienced, civilized Wiccans put together by Ned Bain for that programme.’

‘Jesus,’ Robin said, ‘if she was one of the civilized ones, I sure wouldn’t like to be alone with the wild children of Odin.’

And Ned Bain? Who, as well as being some kind of rich, society witch, just happened to be an editorial director at Harvey-Calder, proprietors of Talisman Books. Robin had already felt an irrational anger that Bain should have allowed Blackmore to dump a fellow pagan – although, realistically, in a big outfit like that, it was unlikely Bain had anything at all to do with the bastard.

Betty said, ‘She claims she lost her cool when some woman priest became abusive.’

‘She doesn’t have any freaking cool.’

‘This priest was from Hereford. Ned Bain had argued that, after two thousand years of strife and corruption, the Christian Church was finally on the way out and Vivienne informed the Hereford priest that the erosion had already started in her own backyard, with pagans claiming back the old pagan sites, taking them back from the Church that had stolen them.’

Robin froze. ‘You have got to be fucking kidding.’

She didn’t reply.

‘She... Jeez, that dumb bitch! She named us? Right there on network TV?’

‘No. Some local journalist must have picked it up and tracked us down.’

‘And sold us to the Mail .’

‘The paper that supports suburban values,’ Betty said.

The phone rang. Robin went for it.

‘Mr Thorogood?’

‘He’s away,’ Robin said calmly. ‘He went back to the States.’ He hung up. ‘That the way to handle the media?’

Betty walked over and switched on the machine. ‘That’s a better way.’

‘They’ll only show up at the door.’

‘Well, I won’t be here.’

He saw that she was wearing her ordinary person outfit, the one with the ordinary skirt. And this time with a silk scarf around her neck. It panicked him.

‘Look,’ he cried, ‘listen to me. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry about that picture. I’m sorry for looking like an asshole. I just... I just lost it, you know? I’d just had... I’d just taken this really bad call.’

‘From your friend?’ Betty said.

‘Huh?’

‘From your friend in the village?’

The phone rang again.

‘From Al,’ he said. ‘Al at Talisman.’

The machine picked up.

‘This is Juliet Pottinger . You appear to have telephoned me over the weekend. I am now back home, if you would like to call again. Thank you.’

‘Look’ – Robin waved a contemptuous hand at the paper – ‘this is just... complete shit. Like, are we supposed to feel threatened because the freaking Bishop of Hereford finds it a matter warranting deep concern ? Because loopy Nick Ellis sees us as symptoms of some new epidemic of an old disease? What is he, the Witchfinder freaking General, now?’

He leapt up, moved toward her.

Betty’s hair was loose and tumbled. Her face was flushed. She looked more beautiful than he’d ever seen her. She always did look beautiful. And he was losing her. He’d been losing her from the moment they arrived here. He felt like his heart was swollen to the size of the room.

‘We’re not gonna let them take us down, are we? Betty, this is... this is you and me against the world, right?’

Betty detached her car keys from the hook by the door.

‘Please,’ Robin said. ‘Please don’t go.’

Betty said quietly, ‘I’m not leaving you, Robin.’

He put his head in his hands and wept. When he took them down again, she was no longer there.

LEDWARDINE SAT SOLID, firmly defined in black and white under one of those sullen, shifty skies that looked as if it might spit anything at you. Just before nine Merrily crossed the square to the Eight-till-Late to buy a Mail .

A spiky white head rose from the shop’s freezer, its glasses misted.

‘Seems funny diggin’ out the ole frozen pasties again, vicar.’

They ended up, as usual, in the churchyard, where Gomer gathered all the flowers from Minnie’s grave into a bin liner.

‘Bloody waste. Never liked flowers at funerals. Never liked cut flowers at all. Let ’em grow, they don’t ’ave long.’

‘True.’ She knotted the neck of the bin liner, spread the Daily Mail on the neighbouring tombstone and they sat on it.

‘Barbara Buckingham’s missing, Gomer. Didn’t show up for Menna’s funeral. Never got back to me, and hasn’t been in touch with her daughter in Hampshire either.’

‘Well,’ Gomer said, ‘en’t like it’s the first time, is it?’

‘She just go off without a word when she was sixteen?’

‘Been talkin’ to Greta Thomas, vicar. No relation – well, her man, Danny’s second cousin twice removed, whatever.’

‘Small gene pool.’

‘Ar. Also, Greta used to be secertry at the surgery. Dr Coll’s. En’t much they don’t find out there. Barbara Thomas told you why her was under the doctor back then?’

‘Hydatid cyst.’

Barbara had talked as though the cyst epitomized all the bad things about her upbringing in the Forest – all the meanness and the narrowness and the squalidness. So that when she had it removed, she felt she was being given the chance to make a clean new start – a Radnorectomy.

Gomer did his big grin, getting out his roll-up tin.

Merrily said, ‘You’re going to tell me it wasn’t a hydatid cyst at all, right?’

Gomer shoved a ready-rolled ciggy between his teeth in affirmation.

‘I never thought of that,’ Merrily said. ‘I suppose I should have. What happened to the baby?’

‘Din’t go all the way, vicar. Her miscarried. Whether her had any help, mind, I wouldn’t know. Even Greta don’t know that. But there was always one or two farmers’ wives in them parts willin’ to do the business. And nobody liked Merv much.’

‘Hang on... remind me. Merv...?’

‘Merv Thomas. Barbara’s ole feller.’

‘Oh God.’

Gomer nodded. ‘See, Merv’s wife, Glenny, her was never a well woman. Bit like Menna – delicate. Havin’ babbies took it out of her. Hard birth, Menna. Hear the screams clear to Glascwm, Greta reckons. After that, Glenny, her says, that’s it, that’s me finished. Slams the ole bedroom door on Merv.’

Merrily stared up at the sandstone church tower, breathed in Gomer’s smoke. She’d come out without her cigarettes.