Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘Nothing’s fixed yet,’ Merrily said, too sharply. ‘And, anyway, I’d only be here one-and-a-half days a week. I have a parish to run as well.’ God , she thought, does everybody know about this? So much for low-profile, so much for discretion.

‘Look in anytime,’ Neil repeated. ‘Always nice to see you.’

‘The trouble with older men,’ said Jane, as they left the Cathedral, ‘is that the cretins seem to fancy even older women.’

As they walked into Broad Street, the rain dying off but the sky threatening more, Merrily noticed that Jane seemed taller. A little taller than Merrily in fact, which was not saying much but was momentarily alarming. As though this significant spurt had occurred during the few days they’d been apart: Merrily experiencing weirdness in Wales, Jane staying with trusty villagers Gomer and Minnie, but returning to the vicarage twice a day to feed Ethel the cat.

Merrily felt disoriented. So much had altered in the ten days since she’d last been to the Cathedral. Ten days which – because the past week had been such a strange period – seemed so much longer, even part of a different time-frame.

She felt a quiver of insecurity, glanced back at the ancient edifice of myriad browns and pinks. It seemed to have shrunk. From most parts of the city centre, the spires of All Saints and St Peter’s were more dominant. The Cathedral had long since lost its own spire, and sat almost modestly in a secluded corner between the River Wye and the Castle Green and a nest of quiet streets with no shops in them.

‘Tea?’ Merrily said desperately.

‘Whatever.’

The late-afternoon sky was a smoky kind of orange. Merrily peered around for cafés, snackbars. She felt like a stranger, needing to ground herself.

‘The Green Dragon? They must do afternoon tea.’

Jane shrugged. They crossed towards Hereford’s biggest hotel, nineteenth-century and the longest façade on Broad Street.

‘So you’ve learned about Thomas Cantilupe at school?’

‘Only in passing. He didn’t figure much nationally. Nothing that happened in Hereford seems to have made much of a difference to anything in the big world.’

Useless arguing with Jane in this mood. The kid had consented to come shopping, a big sacrifice on a Saturday; it was now Merrily’s task to tease out of her what was wrong, and Jane wasn’t going to assist. Tiresome, timehonoured ritual.

They found a window table in the Green Dragon, looking back out on to Broad Street, the Saturday crowds thinning now as the day closed down. Sometimes November could bring a last golden surge, but this one had seemed colourless and tensed for winter. Merrily was aware of a drab sense of transience and futility – nothing profound. Maybe just wishing she was Jane’s age again.

‘Cakes,’ she said brightly.

‘Just tea, thanks. Black.’

Merrily ordered two teas and a scone. ‘Worried about our weight, are we, flower?’

‘No.’

‘What are we worried about then?’

‘Did we say we were worried?’

The bored, half-closed eyes, the sardonic tuck at the corner of the mouth. It was pure Sean – as when Merrily was trying to quiz him about some dubious client. You don’t see your daughter for a week, and in the interim she’s readmitted her father’s soiled spirit.

Merrily tried again. ‘I, er… I missed you, flower.’

‘Really?’ Jane tilted her soft, pale face into a supportive hand, elbow on the table. ‘I’d have thought you had far too much to think about, poncing about in your robes and practising your Out, Demons, Out routine with the soul police.’

‘Ah.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what this is about – the soul police? You think I’m…’

What? An anachronism? A joke? Though Jane was basically spiritual, she just didn’t believe the Church of England was. Bad enough to have your own mother walking around in a dogcollar, never mind the holy water and the black bag now. Was that it?

That was probably too simple. Nothing about Jane was ever really simple.

A man striding up the street towards All Saints glanced through the window, blinked, paused, strode on. Oh God, not him, not now . Merrily turned away from the window, stared across the table at Jane.

The kid pushed back her tumbling hair. ‘OK, look…’

Yes? Merrily leaned forward. A crack, an opening? Yes …

Jane said, ‘I’m uncomfortable about what you’re doing, Merrily.’

‘I see.’

Jesus. Merrily? A major development. Now we are sixteen, time to dump this Mum nonsense. We are two grown women, equals.

This needed some thinking about.

‘I don’t think you do see,’ Jane said.

‘So tell me.’

‘They’re dragging you in, aren’t they?’

‘Who?’

‘The Church. It’s all political.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘All those fat, smug C-of-E gits, they’re worried about losing their power and their influence, so they’re appointing cool bishops: smooth, glossy people like Michael Hunter… Mick Hunter, for God’s sake.’

‘Bishops are still appointed by Downing Street.’

‘Yeah, well, exactly. Old mate of Tony Blair’s. I can just see them swapping chords for ancient Led Zeppelin riffs. Like, Mick’s superficially cool and different, but he’s really Establishment underneath.’

‘Phew,’ said Merrily theatrically. ‘Thank God, my daughter has finally become a revolutionary. I thought it was never going to happen.’

Jane glared at her.

‘You really don’t understand, do you?’

‘Sure. You think I’m a glossy, superficial bimbo who’s—’

‘More like a trainee storm-trooper, actually.’

‘What?’

‘Look…’ Jane’s eyes flashed. ‘It seemed really interesting at first when you said you were going to do this Deliverance training. I’m thinking, yeah, this is what it’s all about: the Church actually investigating the supernatural nitty-gritty instead of just spouting all this Bible crap. And this course and everything, it all seemed really mysterious. So, like… Wednesday night, I go back to the vicarage to feed Ethel. I think maybe I should check the answering machine, see if there’s anything urgent. So I go into your office and I find… hang on…’

From a pocket of her jeans, Jane dragged a compacted square of printed paper which she opened out on the tabletop.

‘And suddenly I saw what it was all really about.’

Merrily pulled towards her a Deliverance Study Group pamphlet heralding a forthcoming seminar entitled:

NEW AGE… OLD ENEMY.

She’d forgotten about it. It had come in a package from the DSG the morning she left for the Brecon Beacons.

‘I haven’t read it, flower.’

‘I bet.’

‘But, sure, I can guess what it’s about.’

She picked up the leaflet.

Meditation-groups, sweat-lodges, healing-circles… it may all seem innocuous, but so-called New Age pursuits are often the marijuana which leads to the heroin of hard-core Satanism. Introducing the discussion, Canon Stephen Rigbey will examine the allure of alternative spirituality and suggest ways of discouraging harmful experimentation.

Merrily said steadily, ‘You happen to notice the key word in this?’

‘Don’t try and talk all around it.’

‘It’s “discussion” – meaning debate.’

‘It’s bloody spiritual fascism,’ said Jane.

‘Oh, Jane, listen—’

‘ You listen, for once. The New Age is about… it’s about millions of people saying: I want to know more… I want an inner life… I want to commune with nature and the cosmos and things, find out about what we’re really doing here and who’s running the show, and like what part I can play in the Great Scheme of Things. Right?’