Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

(The fact that it didn’t really rhyme, Lucy said, was a sure sign of the truth in it.)

What did it mean when an overripe apple survived the winter to tumble from a tree in full blossom?

Jane thought back over everything that had happened tonight. The images stammering through her mind like a videotape in fast-reverse. The tape stopped at a moment in the church, Mum on her knees, bent over, then looking up, threads of vomit on her lips.

Looking up.

Jane’s arm jerked back in a spasm and she threw the mummified apple so far into the orchard she didn’t hear it land, and she turned and ran all the way to the vicarage.

SIX A.M AND fully light, if overcast and cool. A thin, sharp breeze blew apple blossom over the churchyard wall from which the church noticeboard projected.

On it, a printed poster for the festival opening – the old, prosaic title, Ledwardine Summer Festival having pushed out Dermot’s Old Cider suggestion precisely because most of the posters had already been printed. But over this poster another smaller one, A4 size, had been drawing-pinned, giving notice of a

Special midnight service

THE REVEREND MERRILY WATKINS

will be holding a

BLACK MASS

(Bring your own sickbags)

Merrily stared at it for several seconds, quite shocked, before understanding dawned. Being sick in church was allegedly one way of identifying yourself as a Satanist.

This was probably one of the high-school kids with a computer. Things could be difficult for Jane on Monday, with the story all round the school. She tore down the notice and crumpled it up, forcing a smile, even though there was no one to observe it. If you didn’t smile you would go completely out of your mind. If anyone could handle this it was Jane.

But the smile wandered when she thought about the funeral card with Wil Williams, the Devil’s Minister on it. Could be the same person, couldn’t it? In which case, a schoolkid was less likely; it would be another move in the campaign, if such it was, to persuade her to keep the Coffey play out of church.

Which, of course, disinclined to feed Stefan’s obsession, she’d already decided to do, with a formal, public announcement of her decision at the buffet reception following her installation.

But that was yesterday. Before something she was insisting to herself was beyond her control had prevented her making her vows and established her as a weak, unstable woman entirely unfit to replace the stolid, long-serving Alfred Hayden.

Perhaps the parish really didn’t want her. Were ministers of the Church supposed to have regard to omens, or was that only for anthropologists and social historians, just as hauntings were the preserve of psychologists?

Something else not dealt with at theological college.

She was shivering inside the fake Barbour, feeling starved. She hadn’t really slept. It was well after two a.m. when she’d heard Jane come in, using her front-door key. Merrily lying on her bed, fully clothed, for over an hour in case the kid should drift into the drawing room and stumble over the refugee in his sleeping bag. In the event, Jane had come directly up to the third-floor bedroom next to the sitting room/study with its decidedly non-Mondrian walls.

About which Lol Robinson – rich coming from a manifest paranoiac – had told her not to worry too much. Something, possibly, that Miss Devenish would be able to explain.

She thought angrily that if she did leave this village it would not be because of her own humiliation but because of what Ledwardine – or something, or even Miss Devenish – was doing to Jane.

She dug her hands into her coat pockets and walked, head down, into the market place. It didn’t feel like a spring morning. The glorious, false summer was in suspension, the blossom on the churchyard apple trees looking grey, like ice.

A few cars were still parked on the square, and she saw that one was a police car. Some damage during or after the party? Vandalism? A break-in?

A compact figure in a flat cap and muffler waved at her and crossed over from Church Street. ‘Cold mornin’, Vicar.’

‘It sure is.’

He came and stood companionably beside her, unlit cigarette stub between his teeth. Had he been in last night’s congregation? She couldn’t remember. Either way, she felt absurdly pleased that Gomer Parry was still speaking to her.

‘En’t found her yet then, Vicar.’

‘Sorry?’

Gomer dipped his cigarette towards the mews enclosing Cassidy’s Country Kitchen. ‘Could be anywhere, see, flighty piece like that.’

Merrily looked from Gomer to the police car and back. ‘Colette Cassidy?’

‘You en’t yeard? Missing, she is.’

‘My God. Since the party? Jane didn’t say anything.’

‘Ah well,’ Gomer said, ‘mabbe ‘er’d left, see, ‘fore they knowed this girl wasn’t around n’more. Far’s I can make out, what happened, she’d brought in a few undesirables, and this din’t go down too well with that SAS bloke runs the restaurant, and there’s a bit of a row like and the next thing she’s walked out an’ they’ve all followed her and everybody’s dancin’ about the square an’ raisin’ Cain, half of ’em doped up to the eyeballs, an’ then the law rolls up and they’re off like buggery an’ ...’

‘Merrily!’

An urgent clacking of heels on the cobbles and Caroline Cassidy appeared in the entrance to the mews. Caroline as Merrily – and probably Ledwardine – had never seen her before, her eyes hot and glowing like small torchbulbs out of a Hallowe’en mask of ruined make-up.

Gomer Parry took one look and stepped hurriedly aside.

‘Oh, Merrily, I was going to send the police to you. Where’s Jane? Did Jane come home?’

‘Jane’s still in bed. I hope. Caroline, I’ve just heard.’

‘We should never, never, never have let it happen, but Terrence said, in Ledwardine, what could possibly go wrong? What has ever happened in Ledwardine? Merrily, I’m frantic. I keep thinking of that girl over in Kingsland who just disappeared, fourteen years old.’

‘I’m sure there’s nothing like that to worry about. Probably a bunch of them went off in a car to some club in Hereford and she’s just a bit sheepish about coming home. Colette’s very ... mature.’

‘She’s a child! Caroline’s mouth slack with fear. ‘You don’t know her. Everybody thinks she’s so precocious, but it’s all an act.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Merrily put an arm around her. ‘But I know that, with so many other people about, she’ll be OK. What actually happened?’

Caroline sniffed. ‘Come in and have ... have some coffee?’

Merrily thought of Jane back at the vicarage. She was still there, wasn’t she? And Lol Robinson, to whom she was giving sanctuary. A priest’s job was to help people in trouble.

‘OK.’

Lol awoke on the drawing-room rug to a dead fire and Ethel peering down at him from the sofa. He knew at once where he was and conflicting emotions crowded in on him, scaring him at first, like hungry fans after a gig.

The vicarage. Church property. His old enemy, the Church. This big, damp house: soulless. Why did all church buildings seem cold and forbidding and soulless?

Ethel nuzzled him and purred. It wasn’t the pain-purr this time. Cats could always put the past behind them, no matter how bad the past was.

He stroked Ethel and thought about Merrily Watkins, who was nothing like the Church, and felt a strange sense of lightness. In one night, he’d lost everything, his last hope of Alison coming back and then his house. He lay and almost luxuriated in the simplicity of it, knowing that as soon as he climbed out of this sleeping bag, responsibilities would tighten around him.