Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘God,’ Susan Thorpe breathed, ‘this is getting beyond a joke.’

‘It never is a joke,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m starting to realize that.’

‘The problem is finding a time when that passage and all the rooms off it are empty. Look, all right… most of the residents totter off to Hardwicke Church on a Sunday morning, as people of that age tend to. What are you doing tomorrow morning?’

‘I’m going to my church, Susan. I’m a vicar.’

‘Oh.’ Susan Thorpe was unembarrassed. ‘You don’t do this sort of thing full-time then?’ Like this diminished Merrily – a part-timer. Susan became agitated. ‘Well, look… look, there’s going to be a party. One of the residents is a hundred years old; we’re having a small soirée for her. I can tell you, old people never miss a party. Suppose, while it was on, we could smuggle you upstairs and you could do your little ceremony? You do work at night?’

‘Your mother will be here then, I suppose.’

‘I should think.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Merrily said.

It would be very interesting to talk to Mrs Thorpe’s mother. Five thousand quid, and instructions to be out by the weekend? Either Dobbs really was going out of his mind, or there was something very odd here. She had to go carefully, though: mustn’t appear to be checking on him. Casually running into the former housekeeper while processing an imprint … that would do fine.

As she left the Glades, Merrily saw that it was snowing lightly out of a sky like stone. Winter deftly gatecrashing autumn’s mournful party.

THE STALL WHICH made Jane laugh the most was the one selling something called:

The Circlet of Selene

It looked like three strands of copper wire bound together into a bangle or a necklet and secured by small curtain rings. The wording was a bit careful. It didn’t actually promise you more energy, a better night’s sleep and a dynamic sex life; it claimed, however, that many people had found that all this had come about after only three weeks of wearing the Circlet of Selene. Which cost a mere £12.75 for the bangle or £17.75 for the necklet, neither of which must have cost more than 75p to produce.

Still, people were buying them – women mostly. Well, ninety per cent of the punters here were women, in fact. The tottyquotient was pretty bloody lamentable, especially in the marquee which had been erected in a field behind the pub. Most of the blokes had stayed in the bar, as blokes were wont to do, and even that wasn’t exactly crowded with intriguing, dark-eyed, gipsy-looking guys.

The marquee housed most of the stalls – crystals, incenseburners, cosmic jewellery – though it was far too cold a day for a marquee. You’d think the weather situation might have been foreseen, given the number of self-styled psychics and seers on the premises. Most had clearly taken cover in the pub, where it was warmer, but Jane hadn’t felt drawn to consult any of them; they were probably all a bit pricey, too.

‘Taste-lapse.’ She sipped muddy coffee from a plastic cup.

‘Serious, serious taste-lapse, Rowenna.’

They were in a cold corner behind a trestle table displaying lurid healing crystals and supervised by a gross middle-aged couple in matching bobble-hats. Tape-loop relaxation music was trickling out of little speakers, and it got on your nerves.

‘I’m sorry.’ Rowenna looked around. ‘The last one I went to wasn’t this bad, really. Oh, there’s Kirlian Photography over there. You could have your aura photographed.’

‘You ever have yours done?’

‘Once. I got a picture of my hand with what looked like little flames coming out of the fingertips.’

‘What does it prove?’

‘That you’ve got an aura.’

‘If you didn’t have an aura you’d be dead, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’m glad I can’t see yours today,’ Rowenna said. ‘It’d be all dark and negative. You having problems on the domestic front or something?’

‘Not to speak of.’

‘You can speak to me of anything at all, kitten.’ Rowenna touched the tip of Jane’s nose with a gloved forefinger. Her floaty red hair was topped by a black velvet beret. The coat she wore just had to be cashmere. She looked far too cool and upmarket for this shoddy bazaar.

‘Well, I was talking to this bloke,’ Jane said.

‘Bloke?’

‘A bloke I was sure was seriously into Mum at one time, and—’

‘Oh, your mum. How do you mean into ?’

‘Well, not into – like not in the fullest sense. I just had it in mind that they’d be good together. He’s quite insecure and vulnerable, but also kind of cool. He was a musician and songwriter when he was young – too young maybe – and he got led astray and into drugs, and wound up in a mental hospital.’

‘The way you do.’

‘It’s surprising how easily that can happen. Anyway, I don’t like guys who are too secure and full of themselves, do you? Like, a certain degree of pathos can be kind of sexy.’

Rowenna looked unimpressed by this. The sound of slow waves breaking on rocks cascaded serenely out of the speakers – which sounded pretty naff in a damp tent in a field near Leominster.

‘So I was telling Lol that Mum was now an exorcist, like in that film where the kid gets possessed and spews green bile everywhere, and how there was no call for dealing with stuff like that around here. But like… I mean there is, you know? When you think about it, it’s really like that. And, whereas in that film you had these heavy-duty, case-hardened Jesuit priests and even they couldn’t handle it…’

‘ “Come into me… come into me,” ’ Rowenna intoned. ‘And then he crashes out of the window to his death. What do you mean, it’s really like that?’

‘She had this mega-nasty job,’ Jane said soberly. ‘Nightmare stuff – and, like, no warning, you know?’

‘I don’t actually believe you.’

‘That’s all right, I’m not supposed to talk about it anyway.’

‘All right, if you tell me I’ll buy you a Circlet of Selene.’

‘Not good enough. You have to promise never ever to buy me a Circlet of Selene.’ It was probably OK to talk about this one, with him being dead and everything. ‘All right. Guy in the hospital – this really awful rapist kind of slimeball, gets off on degrading women, and he’s dying, OK?’

‘OK by me,’ said Rowenna.

‘But he can’t let go of his abiding obsession. You can see it glistening on his skin, like grease.’ Jane shivered with a warped sort of pleasure. ‘Like, she didn’t tell me all of this, but I put it together. Anyway, the nurses, they’re all like really shit-scared of this pervert, because he’s got this totally tainted aura.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Mr Joy. Isn’t that excellent?’

‘You’re embroidering this.’

‘I so am not ! His name was Denzil Joy, he was in the Watkins Ward, right up at the top of the hospital where it’s old and spooky, and the nurses were genuinely scared of him. Takes a lot to scare nurses, all the stuff they’ve seen.’

‘What did he do?’

‘She wouldn’t say, but I could tell she was still, like, trembling with revulsion hours later. Heavy trauma scenario. What I think it was… was that this man could like make you feel like you’d been raped; he could invade your body just by thinking about what he wanted to do to you. And that got all boiled together with the sickness and the frustration inside him. The nurses are convinced he was possessed.’

‘Creepy.’

‘The hell with creepy – this was bloody dangerous, if you ask me. And the Bishop just sends her in to sort out this evil scumbag without a second thought, on account of she’s like a priest and priests know what to do. But – seriously – is she equipped for this? Does she know what she’s doing? Does she hell. Occult-wise, she’s probably as naive as all these idiots cooing over the frigging Circlet of Selene. Like, I feel there’s probably a lot I could tell her – to help, you know – but would she listen?’