Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘I suppose you weren’t to know, but it’s one of my rules in a situation like this to know only the inner person. I don’t like to learn in advance about anyone’s background or situation, because then, if I see a problem in the cards, I can know for sure that this information comes from the Source and is not conditioned by my personal knowledge, preconceptions or prejudices. I’m sorry, Jane.’

Jane heard the rumble of bar-life from the room below.

‘Angela,’ she said nervously, ‘that’s not because you turned up some really bad cards and you don’t think I can take it?’

Angela looked cross. ‘Cards have many meanings according to their juxtaposition.’

‘Looked like a pretty heavy juxtaposition to me,’ Rowenna said with a hint of malice. Angela had already done a reading for Rowenna – her future was bound up with a friend’s, needing to help this friend discover her true identity – something of that nature. Rowenna had seemed bored and annoyed that the emphasis seemed to be on Jane.

Jane said, ‘What was it Rowenna told you?’

‘I told her what your mother was, OK?’ Rowenna said. ‘On the phone last night. It just came out.’

Priest or exorcist? Jane was transfixed for a moment by foreboding. ‘That reading was telling you something about me and Mum, wasn’t it?’

Angela straightened the pack and put it reverently into the centre of a black cloth and then folded the cloth over it. ‘Jane, I’m not well disposed towards the Church. A friend of mine, also a tarot-reader, was once hounded out of a particular village in Oxfordshire because the vicar branded her as an evil infuence.’

‘Vicars can be such pigs,’ Rowenna said.

‘However,’ Angela looked up, ‘I make a point of never coming between husbands and wives or children and parents.’

‘Please, will you tell me what—?’

‘Jane.’ Angela’s calm eyes held hers. ‘When I look at your inner being, I sense a generous and uninhibited soul. But if your mother’s burden is to be constrained by dogma and an unhappy tradition, you really don’t have to share it.’

‘Well, I know, but… mostly we get on. Since Dad died we’ve supported each other, you know?’

‘Admirable in principle.’

‘Like, she’s pretty liberal about most things, but she’s got this really closed mind about… other things.’

‘All right, my last word on this…’ Angela began to exude this commanding stillness; you found you were listening very hard. ‘It might be wise, for both your sakes – your own and your mother’s – for you to keep on walking towards the light. Don’t compromise. Don’t look back. Pray… I’m going to say it… pray that she follows in your wake.’

‘You mean she needs to get out of the Church.’

‘These are your cards, Jane, not hers.’

‘Or what? What’s going to happen to her if she stays with the Church?’

‘Jane, don’t put me in a difficult position. Now, how are things going at the Pod?’

The shadow on the stairs spoke in a surprising little-girly voice.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Mrs Rees?’

‘This,’ Edna said with an overtone of resignation, ‘is Miss Anthea White.’

‘Athena!’

‘Miss Ath e na White. Why aren’t you at the party, then, Miss White?’

‘At the piano with all those old ladies? One finds that sort of gathering so depressing.’ Miss White moved out of the shadows. She was small, even next to Merrily, wearing a long blue dressing-gown which buttoned like a cassock.

Very tiny and elflike. Not as old as you expected in a place like this – no more than seventy.

‘This is Mrs Watkins,’ Edna said.

Miss White inspected Merrily through brass-rimmed glasses like the ones Lol Robinson wore, only much thicker. ‘Ah, there it is. You keep the clerical collar well-hidden, Mrs Clergywoman. I say, you’re very very pretty, aren’t you?’

‘Thank you,’ Merrily said.

‘One had feared the new female ministers were all going to be frightful leather-faced lezzies. Come and have a drink in my cell.’

‘Now,’ Edna said, ‘you know you’re not supposed to have alcohol in your rooms.’

‘Oh, Mrs Rees, you aren’t going to blab to the governor, are you? It’s such a frightfully cold night.’ Light seemed to gather in her glasses. ‘ Far too cold for an exorcism.’

‘Perhaps you could excuse me,’ Edna said.

‘Oh, do you have to leave?’

‘I rather understand that I do,’ Edna said tactfully.

‘How did you guess?’ Merrily asked, feeling tired now.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’ Miss White handed her an inch of whisky in what seemed to be a tooth glass. ‘You were hardly here to conduct a wedding.’

Her room was an odd little grotto up in the rafters, with Afghan rugs on the wall, an Aztec-patterned bedspread. And a strange atmosphere, Merrily sensed, of illusion. Twin bottles of Johnnie Walker lurked inside an ancient wooden radio-cabinet. There were several free-standing cupboards, with locks. The room was lit by an electrified pottery oil-lamp on a stand.

Athena White went to sit on the high wooden bed, her legs under her in an almost yogic position, her dressing-gown unbuttoned upwards to the waist. No surgical stockings needed here. Merrily was sitting uncomfortably on a kind of camping stool near the door. It put her head on a level with Miss White’s projecting knees. Miss White seemed relaxed, like some tiny goddess-figure on a plinth.

‘Now then,’ she said. ‘What are you trying to do to Sholto?’

She let the name hang in the air until Merrily repeated it.

‘Sholto?’

A mellower light gathered in Miss White’s glasses. ‘Weren’t you able to see him?’

Merrily made no reply.

‘Come on, young Mrs Clergyperson, either you did or you didn’t.’

‘Let’s say I didn’t.’

‘That’s a shame. Perhaps you were erecting a barrier? That’s what your Church does though, isn’t it? Very, very sad – throwing up barriers, wrapping itself in a blanket of disapproval. And yet’ – Miss White’s head tilted in mild curiosity – ‘you are afraid.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Oh yes, I can always detect fear. You’re not afraid of Sholto, are you?’

‘Am I to understand Sholto is your ghost?’

‘How perceptive of you to apply the possessive,’ said Miss White. ‘I must say, it’s an awful job you have, Mrs Clergyperson. I never thought to see a woman doing it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Is it a specialist thing, or have you simply been commandeered as Thorpe’s prison chaplain?’

‘Miss White—’

‘Your Church is like some repressive totalitarian regime. Everyone has a perfectly good radio set, but you try to make sure they can only tune in to state broadcasts. Whenever the curtains accidentally open on some sublime vista, you rush in and snap them shut again. That’s your job, isn’t it?’

‘The soul police,’ Merrily said. ‘You should meet my daughter.’

‘Ye gods, are you old enough to have a daughter?’

‘Let’s drop the flattery, Miss White. What are you trying to tell me?’

‘What I am telling you’ – Miss White turned full-face to Merrily, and the light in her glasses became twin pinpoints – ‘is to leave him alone.’

‘Sholto?’

‘Have you any idea what it’s like in one of these places, where all is grey and faded, and romance resides solely in one’s memory?’

‘This room’s hardly grey and faded.’

‘You like my eyrie?’

‘It’s very cosy.’

‘Cosy!’ said Miss White in disgust. ‘Pah!’