Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

Oh, Miss White, so plausible. This career civil servant – very high-powered – who had committed herself to an old folks’ home to develop her inner life. Damned woman , Susan Thorpe had said afterwards, I could have sworn she was downstairs with the others. But you did manage to complete your exorcism? No problem, Merrily had assured her. Miss White was a surprisingly devout believer. One God. Angelic light .

A dabbler? A minister of God was following the advice of a mad dabbler all the way to New Age hell?

Now Merrily stood in the vestry, with no lights on and her torch switched off – after Sunday night’s break-in, Ted probably had vigilantes watching out for signs of intruders. She felt like a thief: the taking and destruction of priest’s vestments… wilful damage… and worse.

Burn them .

Where? On the drawing-room fire? In the garden, like a funeral pyre of her faith?

It was well meant. She had no bad feelings at all about Athena White as a human being. And the advice was… well meant.

And it was insidiously irresistible last night, after Jane had gone to bed, and Merrily had been standing at the sink, filling her hot water bottle and contemplating the night ahead… smelling his smell, feeling his fingers – scritch-scratch … hearing the ratchet wrench as his body snapped upright in its deathbed, the tubes expelled, pip-pop!

And now remembering how Ethel the cat – who, until this week, had habitually slept at the bottom of Merrily’s bed – had once again padded discreetly and faithlessly up the stairs after Jane.

It was then that she’d reached into the cupboard for the drum of kitchen salt. Taking it with her into the scullery-office, where she’d followed the mad woman’s next instruction – Trace it to its source – and called the Alfred Watkins Ward to ask Eileen Cullen for the address of the widow Joy.

And Eileen, puzzled, asking her, ‘Is there a problem there, Merrily, you think? Would it not be a case of blessed relief for the poor woman?’

‘Sometimes it doesn’t work like that,’ Merrily had said. ‘She may even be feeling guilt that she wasn’t there at the end.’

‘That was my fault, so help me, for not telling the poor cow until it was over. All right, Merrily, whatever your secret agenda is, you made a good case. You know your way to Bobblestock district?’

She’d find it. As soon as Jane was off the premises, she would go and find Mrs Joy. She would take the whole Deliverance kit, and fresh vestments in the car boot.

But not these vestments.

She opened the wardrobe and pulled them down. They’d been washed, of course, since the night at St Cosmas. She hung the cassock and surplice over the arm that held the torch, still not switched on. She opened both doors wide and felt around to make sure she’d taken the correct garments.

Which was when she found the man’s suit.

What?

She pushed the torch inside the wardrobe and switched it on. The suit was on a hanger, pushed to the end of the rail so that it was not visible if you opened only one door.

Merrily pushed her head inside to examine the suit. It was dark green, with a thin stripe of light brown, made of some heavyweight material, and well worn. She touched it. It felt damp.

Or moist, more like.

Merrily screamed. She now had her sign.

She stood, retching, in the moon-washed vestry.

The thin smell the suit gave off had reminded a doctor at the General Hospital of cat faeces and gangrene.

It was around eight, cloudy but fog-free, when Lol spotted the boy in Cathedral School uniform lurking below in Church Street. He went down, and the boy came over: a stocky darkhaired boy with an unexpectedly bashful smile. It was Eirion Lewis, son of the boss of Welsh Water.

‘Hoped you might be about, Mr Robinson. I just… didn’t really feel like going to school until I knew where we stood, you know?’

‘Come on up,’ Lol said.

Once inside, Eirion went straight to the guitar. ‘Wow, is that a Washburn? Could I?’

Lol handed Eirion the Washburn and the boy sat down with it, picking out the opening riff to ‘The Crow Maiden’.

‘I have to play bass in the band because James is rather better on this than me.’

‘Like McCartney,’ Lol recalled.

‘Really?’

‘He was the worst guitarist in the band, so he wound up on bass.’

‘Brilliant bass-player, actually. I… You know, I didn’t mean what I said about how he should have been shot. You feel you’ve got to keep up with James’s cynicism sometimes. Like, he’s younger than me, you know?’

‘Right,’ Lol said.

‘I… Mr Robinson, I really don’t have much time. I just sort of…’ Eirion hung his head over the guitar. ‘I don’t know what we did, but we did something , didn’t we? I mean, this is really important to me, this recording. I don’t want to blow it. You know?’

‘Well, it was that song,’ Lol said.

‘ This song? “The Crow Maiden”?’

‘Which of you actually wrote it?’

‘We both did. I do the tunes, James does the words. Like, he gives me a poem or something and I work a tune around it – or the other way about. You know?’

‘It’s a bit more, er, resonant than the other stuff, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘James tell you where he got the idea?’

‘I assumed he made it up – or pinched it from some ancient Fairport Convention album or something. Actually, you know, what can I say? I mean… James is a shit, isn’t he?’

‘Oh?’ Lol tilted his head. ‘Why?’

‘He just is, isn’t he? He kind of tells lies a lot. Enjoys getting up people’s noses. Does kind of antisocial things for the hell of it. Well, lately, anyway. God, this is stupid of me; you’re his dad’s mate, aren’t you? You used to kind of work with him, right?’

‘Oh, well, that’s over now,’ Lol said. ‘Nothing you say will get back to James’s old man, OK. “The Crow Maiden”, it’s about Denny’s sister.’

‘Sorry?’

‘She committed suicide last weekend. She cut her wrists with an ancient blade.’

Eirion’s fingers fell from the frets.

‘Mmm,’ Lol said, ‘I can see you didn’t know that.’

At the front door, Jane sniffed. ‘What’s burning out there?’

‘I can’t smell anything, flower. It’s probably from the orchard. Gomer’s been clearing some undergrowth.’

‘Right.’ Jane inspected her mum in the first bright daylight of the week. ‘You’re looking better.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Pressure off now?’

‘Maybe. You’re going to miss the school bus.’

Jane said casually, ‘You know, if things have loosened up a bit, Mum, you really ought to take the opportunity to think about your long-term future.’

‘It’s not a problem, flower. I’ll be going to heaven.’

‘God,’ said Jane, ‘you Christians are so simplistic. ’Bye.’

‘Work hard, flower.’

When the kid was out of sight, Merrily went around the side of the house to check out the garden incinerator. The vestments were ashes. She made the sign of the cross over them.

Then she burned the suit.

Merrily called directory enquiries for the Reverend Barry Ambrose in Devizes, Wiltshire. She rang his number.

‘I’m sorry, he’s just popped round to the church,’ a woman said pleasantly. ‘He’ll be back for his breakfast any minute. I’m Stella, his long-suffering wife. Can I get him to call you?’

‘If you could. Tell him I really won’t keep him a minute.’

‘That’s no problem. He’s talked a lot about you, Merrily, since you were on that course together. He thinks you’re awfully plucky.’