Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

The change came with Anna’s persecution by Christians in the person of a junior Defence minister with a rigid Presbyterian background. A far more senior civil servant had been linked by a Sunday newspaper to an offshoot of Aleister Crowley’s magical foundation, the OTO. In the resulting purge, Anna’s resignation had been sought and bitterly given.

‘I suppose her resentment and loathing of the Christian Church began there,’ Miss White said, ‘but it really developed when she met Tim.’

Timothy Purefoy: already a rich man and getting richer.

‘Tim, like Anna, was blond and rather beautiful. Terribly charming and infinitely solicitous. Especially to elderly ladies in the area of Oxfordshire where he plied his trade. For in Tim’s hands it was indeed a trade.’

‘What did he do?’ Lol asked.

‘He was a minister of the Church of England, of course. First a curate and then a rector. I think he’d risen to Rural Dean by the time he was thirty. A throwback in many ways: what they used to call a “hunting parson”: field sports and dinner parties, frightfully well connected, etc. And so he often got named – along with the Church itself, of course – in the published wills of wealthy widows. This is common practice, and the Church seldom bats an eyelid as long as it gets its share as well. Timothy was always terribly careful like that. Probably be a bishop by now, if he hadn’t become fatally attracted to Anna, then reduced to a comparatively lowly post with Oxfordshire County Council.’

Miss White assumed that by this time Anna’s bitter resentment of the Church, its prejudices, and the hold it retained on the British establishment had almost certainly become obsessively bound up with her continuing magical studies. The Church had destroyed her promising career, so she felt driven to wound the Church at every opportunity.

Lol was picturing the gentle, sweet-faced woman with flour on her apron in that mellow farmhouse kitchen. Then, later, dabbing her eyes at Moon’s funeral.

‘The destruction, humiliation or corruption of a priest is a great satanic triumph,’ Miss White said. ‘Everyone knows that. But the greatest triumph, the ultimate prize, is the defection, the turning , of an ordained minister.’

‘Does that really happen?’ He thought of big, bluff, jovial Tim Purefoy in his shiny new Barbour and cap. Come to the farmhouse… have a coffee .

‘I don’t know how often it actually happens,’ said Miss White. ‘Perhaps some of them remain ministers while practising their secret arts. How many churches have been clandestinely dedicated to the Devil – how can anyone know? What I do know is how very, very much it must have appealed to Anna, as an ex-MOD person – the idea of turning Tim. The Cold War was at its height, former British agents like Philby flaunted by the Soviets, so how wonderful, how prestigious – among her circle – to convert a priest to Satan? Especially such a recognizably establishment figure as Tim Purefoy.’

Of how it happened, Miss White had no specific knowledge.

‘But one can imagine the Rural Dean’s slow-burning obsession with the sensational blonde in the little cottage… those long, erotic Sunday interludes between Matins and Evensong. The subtler arts of sexual love come naturally to a magician,’ she said enigmatically.

‘But if he’d got such a good thing going, milking widows and being accepted by the county set, why would he give that all up?’

‘Well, he didn’t, of course – not voluntarily.’

Athena believed it was a new curate, some earnest evangelical practising an almost monastic self-denial, who blew the whistle on both of them. It was revealed that Anna had been giving regular tarot readings to villagers, in a cottage in the very shadow of Tim’s parish church. And also once – famously – at the parish fête. It was Anna who was driven out of the village first, by a hate campaign drawing support from fundamentalist Christians for miles around.

‘And meanwhile Tim was photographed leaving her cottage late at night. It rather escalated from there, but it never became a very big scandal, because the Church kept the lid on it. I don’t know whether Tim was dabbling in Satanism by then, or whether that came later – but it did come. By which time both held a considerable grievance against the “witchhunting” Church itself. And the annexing of his spiritual baggage, no matter how corrupted it already was, due to his weak and greedy character, must have been an enormous boost for her own influence among her peers.’

Through the window, Lol could see a platoon of elderly ladies advancing up the drive.

‘Damn,’ Athena said. ‘First they’ll head off to their rooms to freshen up, if that’s a suitable term, then they’ll all come twittering in.’

‘How did the Purefoys carry on making a living?’

‘When a minister defects, he is treated – just like Philby in Moscow – as a great celebrity. He is presented at Court, as you might say.’

‘What do you mean by “Court”?’

‘Oh, Robinson, even I don’t know who most of these people are. Very wealthy, very evil – actual criminals some of them. Certainly the narcotics trade, whatever they call it these days, has a very large satanic element, and has had for decades. The Purefoys had capital, they had contacts, they had a very English charm. With their patronage and advice, lucrative property deals followed, leading, for instance, to the purchase of that building in Bridge Street housing the Pod. I then simply could not continue working with that group any more, which was a great pity, as it did get me out of here once a week – they always sent a car for me. No, I knew what was going to happen, you see.’

‘What?’

‘They would use the Pod as – what do you call it? – a front. Anything from an innocent reception centre to a kind of spiritual brothel. Podmore already told me about your friend’s daughter – but I want to ask you something about that. This friend herself wouldn’t, by any chance, be Merrily Watkins?’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Ha! This clarifies certain small mysteries. Oh, what a target that woman must be for the Purefoys and their ilk. A female exorcist – and such a pretty girl.’

‘Yes.’ Lol began to fold the map.

‘Ah,’ said Athena calmly, ‘I see.’

‘Where’ve you been? I mean where have you been?’ The kid just staring back at her, and Merrily taking a deep breath, gripping the Aga rail. ‘I’m sorry. Christ, what am I saying ?’

‘I don’t know, Mum.’

‘I close my eyes in church, I see that lime-green Fiesta reversing into our drive. I come back from church, and you’re not here. I’m sorry. There is no reason at all you have to be here all the time.’

‘No, you’re right,’ Jane said. ‘It was thoughtless of me.’

‘Ignore me, flower. I’m badly, badly paranoid. Previously, I see a stranger in the congregation, and I think: Yes. Wow. Another one! Now, when I glimpse an unfamiliar face, I’m watching for a little sneer at some key moment; I’m watching their lips when we say the Lord’s Prayer. I go round afterwards and sniff where they sat. Jesus, I shouldn’t be saying this to you – you’re only sixteen.’

‘Yes, I am,’ Jane said mildly. ‘And I’ve just been to see Danny Gittoes. Rowenna gave him, like, oral sex in return for breaking into the church and contaminating your cassock with Denzil Joy’s suit. Just thought you should know that.’

Merrily broke away from the Aga.

‘Also – and I’m not qualified to, like, evaluate the significance of this – but Rowenna’s been seeing – euphemism, OK? – seeing a young guy by the name of James Lyden. He goes to the Cathedral School and apparently tonight he’s going to be enthroned in the Cathedral as something called – vomit, vomit – Boy Bishop. Does this mean anything to you?’