Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘Thought I was a prostitute.’

‘Like you always find in the Cathedral Close.’ Lol grinned. ‘Who was the bloke they put in the ambulance?’

‘Canon Dobbs. He’s had a stroke. We found him collapsed in the Cathedral.’

‘Oh.’ Lol shouldered the door open and turned on the light. They entered a hallway with a flight of stairs and a mountain-bike.

‘They called me in,’ Merrily said, ‘because he was… still is the last diocesan exorcist. You know about all that, I suppose.’

‘Well, you know, I’ve talked to Jane.’

‘Then you know everything.’

She looked around the shapeless, lamplit room with its beams and trusses and sash windows with lots of little square panes. Lol’s old guitar rested on a metal stand by the bricked-up fireplace. A stained and sagging armchair she remembered from his old cottage in Ledwardine.

‘Ethel used to sleep in this,’ she said.

‘How is Ethel?’

‘Ethel is fine. You get extra points for being a vicarage cat.’

Lol moved around, opening up radiators. His brass-rimmed glasses had half-misted.

‘This place is better for you?’ Merrily flopped into the chair without taking off her coat. ‘Do you feel better here?’

‘Haven’t been here long enough to think too much about it. It’s OK, I suppose.’ He went into what was presumably the kitchen, leaving the door open, a blue-white light flickering.

‘Very central. Convenient for the Cathedral.’

‘Right.’

She forced herself out of the chair, and went to join him in the kitchen. It had barely room for two people. The fluorescent strip-lighting hurt her eyes, reminding her of the sluice-room next to the Alfred Watkins Ward.

‘That was your idea, the taxi?’

‘All I could think of at the time.’ He had his back to her, filling the kettle.

‘Thank you,’ she said solemnly. ‘You… got me out of something heavy.’

‘Really?’ He turned round, looking happy. ‘Like you did for me and Ethel that night?’

‘Oh, more than that. The way this was going, I might not have had a career.’

‘Well, you know, I didn’t really hear anything.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘OK, I did. How many points for sleeping with a lady vicar?’

‘For a bishop? I honestly can’t recall a precedent. But bishops are survivors – especially this one, I suspect. Lady vicars… they’re expendable. Especially ones caught in sin.’

She was startled at how easy it was to discuss all this with Lol, though they hadn’t spoken for months. It might have been just this morning she last saw him. She looked around the little kitchen: plywood cupboards, a small fridge, a microwave, three mugs with hedgehog motifs on a shelf. Nothing suggestive of permanence. She was looking for a sign that Lol was out of limbo now and not finding one.

‘Erm…’ He turned to pull two of the mugs from the shelf. ‘When you said just now that you might not have had a career, does that mean that if I hadn’t shown up…?’

‘What it would have meant,’ Merrily said slowly, ‘is that, in order to get away from him, I would probably have had to stop pretending he was simply offering me a room for the night.’

‘Right.’ Lol set down the mugs. His glasses had misted again. ‘Jane’ll be glad to know that.’

They sat and drank their coffee, Merrily in Ethel’s old chair, Lol on the floor, his back to the window. She’d have to be going soon if she was going to grab a couple of hours before Holy Communion.

‘Jane said you were training to be a psychotherapist.’

‘Wild exaggeration. I’ve been helping my therapist. Former therapist, hopefully. That means I help a bit with other clients – as a kind of therapy. Well, one other client mainly: the woman who used to live in this flat.’

‘Oh,’ Merrily said, ‘that would be this, er… Moon? Just that Jane implied—’

‘I’ve got a vague idea what Jane implied.’

‘That kid could start wars.’ Merrily stretched. ‘I don’t want to move.’

‘So don’t move.’

‘I have to. Anyway, I think you’d make rather a good psychotherapist.’

‘Being an ex-loony?’

‘Not only that.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You know what I mean. You’ve been swallowed by the system once. You could be good at keeping other people out of the system.’

Lol said, ‘Maybe there are too many therapists and counsellors around already, all talking different kinds of bollocks.’

‘Is this Dick paying you?’

‘Kind of. There’s no big problem with money: the song royalties trickle in. And I might have another album – sometime.’ Lol stood up. ‘I, er… I was thinking of ringing you sometime, actually. What do you do if someone insists they’ve seen a ghost? I mean, not just any old ghost – a close relative. And so maybe they want to see it. To see more of it.’

‘Well… I’d try and find out if it was a real ghost. Maybe I’d ask a psychiatrist – or a psychotherapist – for some advice.’

‘And say this psychotherapist – or somebody else who knew this person well – was fairly convinced that there was something… unusual happening here.’

‘Well…’ Merrily lit a cigarette. ‘I’d probably try and explain to the person that this was not a very good idea. It’s not uncommon, actually, seeing relatives who’ve just passed on.’

‘Twenty-five years ago?’

‘That’s more uncommon. A visitor is the loose term we, er, we tend to use for this kind of… phenomenon.’

‘And it’s a bad thing, is it? Even if the person is not scared by it.

‘Any prolonged contact with a… spirit, or whatever, is unhealthy. It can lead to all kinds of problems. Mental problems obviously, and also… Well, you might think that what you’re seeing is your old mum, but it might be something else. I take it we’re talking about this Moon?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Lol, you only have one client…’

‘OK, it’s Moon.’

‘Who’s she been seeing?’

‘Her father. He died when she was two.’

‘Any complications?’

‘Shot himself.’

‘Oh.’

‘That’s not good, is it?’

‘That’s not good at all,’ Merrily said. ‘Would she see me, do you think?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe if you weren’t wearing… you know?’

‘A dog-collar.’

‘And I introduced you as a friend.’

‘Sounds like a good idea.’

‘She’s working in the shop down below all week.’

‘Maybe I’ll call in on Monday, then,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t know what time yet. I’ll be in the gatehouse if you want me – except mid-morning when I’m having discussions with my friend the Bishop.’

‘Pity you can’t see her house, really – a barn she’s leasing up on Dinedor Hill. She’s quite obsessive about the hill. It’s where she was born, where the family have lived since the Iron Age – or so she claims.’

‘This sounds awfully complicated, Lol.’ Merrily yawned and forced herself out of the chair. ‘Where’d I put my coat?’

‘All I can say is that she’s different when she’s up there. A different person – half… half somewhere else.’ He unhooked her waxed jacket from behind the door. ‘I don’t suppose… No, never mind.’

‘I hate it when anyone says that.’

‘Just that she left her bike here and I drove her home last night, because of the snow. So I have to pick her up on Monday morning, fetch her in to work.’

‘Early?’

‘Ish.’

‘If you could get me back to the gatehouse by eleven, I can come up with you. What’s my excuse, then?’

‘Your car wouldn’t start, so I’m giving you a lift somewhere? She’ll buy that. This is really good of you, Merrily.’