Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘Dead?’

‘Well... yeah, it really bloody shakes you up when you start thinking about it.’

‘Brings your life into hard focus. Unless you’ve had concussion, when it seems to do the opposite most of the time.’

‘I started thinking about your mum, what that would’ve done to her, with both her husband and her daughter – and it doesn’t matter what kind of shit he was, he was still her husband and your dad – like, both her husband and her daughter wiped out on the same bit of road. And maybe her, too, if she hadn’t stopped in time – these pile-ups can just go on and on in a fog. And... I don’t know what I’m trying to say, Jane...’

‘I do. It was like when I said to you in the car – I remember this because it was just before it happened. I said, do you never lie in bed and think about where we are and how we relate to the big picture?’

‘I just don’t lie in bed and think about it, I tramp around the grounds and the hills and think about it.’

‘That’s cool,’ Jane said.

‘And I was thinking how, when we were talking to Gerry earlier... you remember Gerry, the researcher?’

‘Gerry and... Maurice?’

‘That’s right. You remember Gerry saying, before the show started, that he wouldn’t be surprised if one of them – one of the pagans in the studio – tried some spooky stuff, just to show they could make things happen?’

‘He said that?’

‘He said spooky stuff. And I said, “What? What would they do?” And Gerry said a spell or something, just to prove they could make things happen. It was just after he was going on about your mum, and how your dad was killed and maybe she felt guilty—’

‘Oh yeah – the bastard.’

‘And you jumped down his—’

‘Sure. I mean, where did he get that stuff?’

‘He got it from that guy Ned Bain.’

‘Ned...? Oh, the really cool—’

‘The smooth-talking git,’ Eirion said. ‘But that whole thing was getting to me. Because they didn’t do anything, did they? There was no spell, no mumbo-jumbo, no pyrotechnics; they were all actually quite well behaved. But somehow Gerry had got it into his head that they were going to pull some stunt. So, anyway, I rang him this morning. You know... how I’m that bloke who wants to be a TV journalist? So I’m writing a piece on my adventures in the Livenight gallery for the school magazine...’

‘You’re not!’

‘Of course I’m not. It’s just what I told Gerry to get him talking. I told him I was explaining in my piece how the programme researchers get their information, and there were things I didn’t have a chance to ask him there on the night.’

‘And where do they get it?’

‘Cuttings files, obviously. But they also talk to the guests beforehand. Like this Tania talked to your mum... and Gerry talked to Ned Bain and a few others. But Gerry reckoned it was Bain had provided all this detailed background on the Church of England’s first woman diocesan exorcist.’

‘Gerry just told you that?’

‘It took a bit of digging, actually, Jane. After which Gerry said how he thought I had a future in his profession; said to give him a call when I get through college.’

‘Wow, big time.’

‘Sod off.’

‘So he was genned up on Mum? Like know thine enemy ?’

‘But is that sort of stuff about your dad going to be readily available from the Hereford Times or something?’

‘She won’t do interviews about herself.’

‘So where did he get it?’

‘It’s no big secret, Irene. Maybe it’s all floating around on the Internet.’

‘Exactly. I’m going to check it out, I think.’

‘Who told Gerry they were going to pull a stunt? That from Ned Bain too?’

‘Gerry claimed he’d never said that. He said I must’ve misunderstood. But he bloody did say it, Jane. He just didn’t want it going in a school magazine that they were happy for stuff like that to happen on a live programme.’

‘Stuff like what?’

‘I don’t know, it just—’

‘I mean, OK, let’s spell it out, bottom line. Are you suggesting the evil Ned Bain and his satanic cronies did some kind of black magic resulting in a fog pile-up which caused the deaths of several people? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Not exactly that...’

‘What are you, some kind of fundamentalist Welsh Chapel bigot?’

‘Unfair, Jane.’

‘So what are you suggesting?’

‘I don’t know, I just... I mean no, it would be ridiculous to suggest that those tossers in fancy dress could do anything like that, even if they were evil, and I don’t think they are. Not evil, just totally irresponsible. They’re like, “Oh, can we work hand in hand with nature to make good things happen and save the Earth?” How the fuck can they know that what they’re going to make happen is going to be good necessarily?’

‘You sound like Mum.’

‘Well, maybe she’s right.’

‘Don’t meddle with anything metaphysical? Throw yourself on God’s mercy?’

‘Unless you know what you’re doing, maybe yes. And they don’t, they can’t know what they’re doing. How can they, Jane?’

‘It never occurred to you that by working on yourself for, like, years and years and studying and meditating, you can achieve wisdom and enlightenment?’

‘But most of those people haven’t, have they? It’s just, “Oh, let’s light a fire and take all our clothes off...” ’

‘That is a totally simplistic News of the World viewpoint.’ Jane’s head was suddenly full of a dark and fuzzy resentment. ‘You haven’t the faintest idea...’

‘At least I’m not naive about it.’

‘So I’m naive ?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

There was a moment of true, sickening enlightenment. ‘You’ve been talking to her, haven’t you?’

‘Who?’

‘My esteemed parent, the Reverend Watkins. She didn’t just speak to your stepmother on the phone, she spoke to you as well, didn’t she?’

‘No. Well only at the hospital. I mean you were there some of the time.’

‘ That’s why there’s been no big row. Why she hasn’t asked me what the hell I was doing on the M5 at midnight. Why she’s so laid-back about it.’

‘Look, Jane, I’m not saying Gwennan didn’t also fill her in on some of the details, but I’ve never even—’

‘I’ve been really, really stupid, haven’t I? It really must have destroyed some of my brain cells. While I’m sleeping it off, you’re all having a good chat. You told her how I’d rigged the whole trip, making you think she knew all about us going. Then she’s like, “Oh, you have to understand Jane found it hard coming to terms with me being a priest, has to go her own way.” This cosy vicar-to-cathedral-school-choirboy tête-à-tête. Gosh, what are we going to do about that girl?’

‘Jane, that is totally—’

‘And you’re like, “Oh, I’m trying to understand her too, Mrs Watkins. If you think I’m just one of those reprehensible youths who only want to get inside her pants, let me assure you—” ’

‘For Christ’s sake, Jane—’

‘That is just so demeaning.’

‘It would be if it—’

‘You are fucking well dead in the water, Irene.’

‘J—’

MERRILY PULLED THE old Volvo up against the hedge.

‘I’m sure that wasn’t there on Saturday.’

A cross standing in a garden.

‘Mabbe not,’ Gomer said.

It wasn’t any big deal, no more than the kind of rustic pole available from garden centres everywhere, with a section of another pole nailed on as a horizontal. It had been sunk into a flowerbed behind a picket fence in the garden of a neat, roadside bungalow about half a mile out of Walton, on the road leading to Old Hindwell. There were three other bungalows but this was the only one with a cross. Although it was no more than five feet high, there was a white light behind it, leaking through a rip in the clouds, and the fact that it was out of context made you suddenly and breathlessly aware of what a powerful symbol this was.