Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

She’d stood for a long time at the roadside, looking across at the fog-fuzzed lights of the little house with the Christmas tree in its front window. ‘Why would she lie? Why would she think it mattered to me if she lived in a mansion or bloody tent? Why does she lie about everything?’

On the way back, Lol considered what Merrily had said on the phone about Rowenna’s sexual history. It had made him look quickly – but very hard – at the girl over Jane’s shoulder in Slater’s. Rowenna was pale, appeared rather fragile – fragile like glass.

Once they were back in his flat, he’d told Jane about the events in Salisbury.

Jane had listened, blank-faced, silent. Then she stood up. ‘This flat’s in a disgusting state.’

Lol sat with Anne Ross’s Pagan Celtic Britain open on his knees, and let Jane scrub violently away at the kitchen floor and her own illusions. In the book, he read that crow-goddesses invariably forecast death and disaster.

At last, Jane came back from the kitchen, red-faced with exertion and inner turmoil.

Lol put the book down.

‘I’m not going to be able to live with any of this,’ Jane announced.

‘But you still shafted me.’

Merrily was feeling her fury reignite – reflected in the red glow of the tinking electric fire, the sparky glimmerings from the Santas over Broad Street.

Trust in God, but never trust a bloody priest.

‘You claimed you hardly knew him.’

Huw had taken off his scarf, but left his woolly hat on. They were sitting at opposite ends of Sophie’s long desk under the window. Huw was just a silhouette with a bobble on top. You had to imagine his faded canvas jacket, his shaggy wolfhound hair.

‘I don’t know Dobbs,’ Huw said, ‘and I never tried to shaft you.’

She shook her head and lit a cigarette, staring out of the window. It was after six now and the traffic was thinning out. A granny and grandad kind of couple were walking a child down Broad Street towards All Saints, the child between them hopping and swinging from their hands under the decorations.

‘I’m trying to explain,’ Huw said. ‘I want to give you a proper picture, as far as I can see it. They didn’t want me to tell you, but there’s no way round that now, so balls to them.’

‘Who didn’t?’

‘The canons, the Dean’s Chapter – well, not officially. None of this is official .’

‘No kidding.’

‘Two fellers came to see me. No,’ raising a shadowy hand, ‘don’t ask. But they’re honourable blokes.’

‘As Mark Antony once said.’

‘Jesus!’ Huw thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘Merrily, there is no conspiracy. These lads are scared. They didn’t know what Dobbs was at, but it put the wind up them. Give us one of them cigs, would you?’

She slid the packet across the desk to him. ‘Didn’t know you did.’

‘You know bugger all about me – nor me about you, when we cut to the stuffing. Ta, lass.’ Huw shook the packet, extracted a cigarette with his teeth. ‘The Devil, what’s he like these days?’

‘What?’

‘The Devil, lass.’

Merrily said, ‘Forked tail, cloven hooves, little horns – deceptively cuddly. And we invented him to discredit the pagan horned god Cernunnos. This is what Jane tells me, over and over.’

‘Canny lass.’ Huw extended his cigarette towards her Zippo, and in its flare she saw his grainy bootleather features flop into a smile. ‘Like her mam.’

‘Thank you.’

And then the smile vanished. ‘So…’ He drew heavily. ‘What do you believe?’

‘I do accept the existence of a dark force for evil,’ Merrily said steadily.

Huw nodded. ‘Good enough.’

When he had first arrived, she’d told him about the projection of the fouled phantom of Denzil Joy: how they’d done it, how well it had worked. She’d told him about the burning of the vestments, and the eucharist she planned for Denzil and Denzil’s mute, abused wife. She was telling him because she needed him to know she was clean, able to deal with things.

Huw started now to talk about evil in its blackest, most abstract form. Evil, the substance . How it was always said that the deepest evil was often to be found in closest proximity to the greatest good. How Satanists would despoil churches for the pure intoxication of it, the dark high it gave them.

‘And does that explain St Cosmas?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve not told Dobbs about that. He smelled it on me, mind, that night. Knew I’d just done an exorcism. Happen that’s what got him talking.’

‘Ah,’ Merrily sat up, ‘so Dobbs has talked to you.’

‘Only in bits, till last night. The other times he were weighing me up, getting the measure of me. See, what he’s done is he’s shut himself down, boarded himself up, put himself into a vacuum. Working out whether he was going to snuff it or be fit enough to go back. I figured it was my job to give him the space he needed. To see he wasn’t pestered – you know what I’m saying?’

‘You sealed him into a kind of magic circle.’

‘ Protective circle: the invisible church. Magic is where you use your willpower to bring about changes in the natural pattern, to rearrange molecules. We ask God to do it, if He thinks it’s the right thing – which is subtly different, as you know.’

‘Protecting him from what? The Devil? What, Huw?’

‘I wanted to bring you in on it, Merrily, honest to God I did. I hated going behind your back. But the Dean’s lads are saying no way, no way. It’s the last thing Dobbs’d want. They don’t like the Bishop and you’re the Bishop’s pussycat.’

‘Terrific.’

‘You know that’s not what I think, so stuff the Dean. Let’s talk about this; I really don’t know how much time we’ve got. I’ve not come across it before in any credible situation.’

‘ What? ’

A shadow had dropped over the room, like a cloth over a birdcage. Merrily saw that a line of golden Santas had gone out over Broad Street.

‘We think there’s a squatter in the Cathedral,’ Huw said.

So, like, how could she go back to that school on Monday and be in the same room with the lying slag? The same building? How?

Lol said, without much conviction, that maybe it was best not to leap to too many conclusions.

‘Yeah?’ Jane collapsed on to the rug. ‘Like which particular conclusions is it best to avoid, Lol? Should I maybe like hang fire on the possibility that Rowenna wants to be my best friend for reasons not entirely unconnected with my mother?’

‘No, that’s valid.’

‘Is she real, Lol? Is she psychotic? Is there a word for women who need to shag priests?’

‘Janey, if we were merely talking about a psychological condition, it would make it all so much simpler. She hasn’t been anywhere near Merrily, has she?’

‘Just the once.’

‘All right,’ Lol said, ‘let’s go back to when you first knew her. This must be before your mum became an exorcist. When did she make the first approach?’

‘She didn’t. It was me. This was when she first started at the school, right? Before her, the last new girl there was me, and I know what it’s like when you come in from out of the area and they’re all kind of suspicious of you. I went over to talk to her, and we just got on. That’s it.’

‘Did she know about Merrily?’

‘Pretty soon she did. See, one of her most… attractive qualities is she likes talking about you . She listens, she asks questions, she laughs at the things you say. She’s sympathetic when you’ve got problems at home. You are the most interesting person in the world when you’re with Rowenna.’