Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘Me! Me , me, me !’ Jane screeched. ‘You are so arrogant. You are soooo disgustingly ambitious that you can’t see the truth, which is that nobody gives a shit for your Church or the pygmies strutting around the Cathedral Close, not realizing what a total joke they are. Your congregations are like laughable . In twenty years you’ll all be preaching to each other. You don’t matter any more. You haven’t mattered for years. I’m just like embarrassed to tell anybody what you do, you know that? You embarrass me to death, so just get off my back!’

The phone stopped. ‘Get out,’ Merrily said.

‘Fair enough.’ Jane smiled. ‘I may be away some time.’

‘Whatever you like. In fact, maybe you could go and stay at Rowenna’s for a few days. I’m sure there are lots of spare bedrooms in Colonel Napier’s mansion.’

Jane paused in the doorway. ‘Meaning what?’

‘Only that you may not know as much about your very best friend as you thought you did.’

‘You’ve been investigating her too? You’ve been checking up on Rowenna ?’

Tears spurted into Jane’s eyes, and Merrily took a step towards her. ‘Flower, please—’

‘You keep away from me. You keep away . You don’t care how low you sink, do you, to protect your piddling little reputation?’

‘Get a life, Jane.’

Jane’s smile was horribly twisted. ‘Oh, I will. I will certainly get a life.’ She was whispering now. ‘You see, there’s no way I could ever trust you again, and if you can’t trust somebody, what’s the point? I don’t have to stay at Rowenna’s. There are loads of places I can live. I know lots of people now – like really good people.’

‘That would be really stupid. You’re sixteen years old.’

‘That’s right, at least you can count.’

‘And these are not good people.’

‘What the fuck would you know, Merrily?’ Jane prodded a finger at the air between them. ‘I’ll tell you something. I’d rather sell my soul to the Devil than spend one more night in this mausoleum.’

‘All right,’ Merrily said. ‘Stop right there. I don’t care what you say about me, but don’t ever say that . Just don’t… ever… say it.’

Jane shrugged. ‘Like… come and get me, Satan?’

She tossed back her hair, which wasn’t really long enough to toss, and went out into the hall and Merrily heard her snatching her coat from the peg and then the creak and judder of the front door.

Merrily stood in the centre of the kitchen. After a while, she was aware of Ethel, the black cat, mewing pitifully at her feet. She picked up the cat, and saw that the mist outside was thickening.

The phone rang again.

She’d been hoping the first call would be from Huw. But now she hoped it was Lol. She needed to tell somebody.

‘Merrily? It’s Barry Ambrose.’

‘Oh… Hello, Barry.’ She sat down at her desk in the scullery-office, hoping, just at this moment, that he was calling to say he hadn’t found out a thing.

‘I found out about that girl, Merrily.’

‘Rowenna?’

‘I hope she’s not too close to you, that’s all,’ Barry said.

THE FOG WAS worse in Leominster, which was why the bus was late, the driver explained. Fog, just when you thought you’d got rid of it!

Then again, if the bus hadn’t been late, Jane would have missed it – thanks to the Reverend Bloody Watkins.

She slumped down near the back and felt sick. That was it, wasn’t it? That was really it . There was no way she could go back there tonight. Outside the bus windows, the hills had disappeared, the view of fields extended about fifty yards, and then all you saw were a few tree-skeletons.

Why had she done this to herself? Why hadn’t she just sat it out, mumbled a few apologies about going to the psychic fair and… but that wouldn’t have worked, would it? Mum knew about the Pod. How the hell did she find that out? Was the Pod leaky? Had it been infiltrated by Christians?

This was just like so totally unfair . Jane felt sad and shabby in her old school duffel coat – hadn’t even had a chance to find something else. If you’re storming out, you had to do it, like, now ! You couldn’t blow the whole effect by going up to your apartment to change into your tight black sweater and your nicer jeans, or collect your new fleece coat.

Ironic, really. This morning, doing her salute to the Eternal Spiritual Sun , she’d thought: What is this really achieving? And thinking of the women in the Pod, how basically sad most of them looked. And yet the fact that they were so sad completely discredited Mum’s crap about them only being interested in Jane because her mother was this big-time Church of England exorcist.

This was all so mega-stupid. If the bitch hadn’t been so totally offensive , the two of them could have sorted this out. That remark about Jane having no boyfriend, that was just, like, well out of order. Boyfriend like who? Dean Wall? Danny Gittoes? The really humiliating aspect of this was that Mum herself – not long out of leather pants and tops made out of heavy-duty pond-liner – had been pregnant at nineteen, so presumably had been putting it about for years by then.

Life was such a pile of shit.

When they crawled into the bus station behind Tesco, Jane didn’t want to get off. She had her money with her, but she didn’t feel like shopping. Especially while walking around with Rowenna in all her designer items, and Jane in her dark-blue school duffel. What was she going to buy Rowenna, anyway, that wouldn’t cause mutual embarrassment?

She made her way out of the bus station and across the car park, hoping there was nobody from school around – which was too much to hope for on a Saturday close to Christmas. Everybody came into Hereford on Saturday mornings – where else was there to go?

The fog was cold and she didn’t even have her scarf. Tonight it would probably be freezing fog. Suppose Rowenna couldn’t organize her a room, what would happen then? It was a lie, natch, that Jane knew loads of people; she didn’t know anyone in the Pod well enough to beg a bed. Worst-case scenario, some shop doorway in the Maylords Orchard precinct? Or did they have iron gates on that? And then at two a.m. some dopehead comes along and rapes you.

OK, if it came to it, she probably had enough money to get a room in a hotel. Not the Green Dragon obviously, maybe something between that and the pubs where the junkies went to score. Funny how homely old Hereford took on this new and dangerous aspect when you were alone, and destined to stay alone, possibly for ever.

She turned down where the car park dog-legged and the path led through evergreen bushes to the archway under the buildings and into Widemarsh Street… and then Rowenna laughed lightly and said, ‘Why don’t we do it here? We’d be hidden by the fog. That would be pretty cool.’

Huh?

Jane stopped. There were cars parked fairly tightly here, with thick laurel bushes just behind them.

You could tell there were two people in the bushes, standing up, locked together. Jane backed up to the edge of the main car park. Vehicles were coming up out of the tunnel from the underground part, and one of them hooted at her to get out of the way. So she moved to the edge of the undergrowth and flattened herself against the wall.

They probably would never spot her from the bushes, as she couldn’t see them properly either. She wouldn’t have known it was Rowenna but for the voice. She could see the guy better, because he was pretty tall, and from here it looked like most of his tongue was down Rowenna’s throat.