Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

‘Dermot Child,’ Jane said. ‘The Goblin.’

‘I’m going to deal with that.’ Merrily bit decisively into a slice of crisp toast.

From mid-morning, she hung around the churchyard, under apple trees, listening to the leaden, Victorian hymns, feeling redundant and rejected. She should be in there, today of all days, offering prayers for Colette Cassidy and her family, holding the community together, siphoning God’s comfort from the chancel to the nave.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Hadn’t thought of the implications of not being there today. But Ted presumably had, the machiavellian bastard. It had taken her rather too long to see Ted, not as an uncle, but as the worst kind of country solicitor, a man who’d spent his adult life smoothing over, glossing over, planing off rough edges. Female priest? A nice idea that failed. Too soon, my friends, too soon.

And there he was, as the main doors opened, fawningly attendant upon the imposing figure of the Rev. Norman Gemmell – tall, stooping, pointed beard, gravely patriarchal. Presiding in the porch, dispensing cordial clerical aftercare. Bowing over hands, tilting his head with concern, as though he’d known these rusticized city folk for many, many years, followed their family heartaches and triumphs through the generations. A true professional.

The worst moment came when the Cassidys emerged – the Cassidys, who rarely attended morning worship because of the Sunday lunch stampede. Norman Gemmell held Caroline’s fingers tenderly, led her a few yards away from the porch, bent his head to her pale, tight face. Spoke with earnest sincerity, and then patted Terrence on the shoulder as Caroline began to cry and two press photographers recorded the moment in a discreet chatter of motordrives.

Seemed like a good time, before the saintly Gemmell returned to the vestry to change into his civvies. Merrily crept from under her apple tree and made for the small rear door which led to the Bull chapel and the organ.

Pushed open the small, Gothic door and stopped.

There he stood, in his friar-like organist’s robe, pensive by the effigy of the Bull. Looking up – an initial shock at seeing her, plumped up in a second into the charming, old Dermot.

‘Why, Merrily, I thought ...’

‘We need to talk.’

‘Ah, if only I’d known, I should have rearranged my lunch appointment.’

‘You know now,’ Merrily said coldly.

‘Perhaps this evening? A table at the Swan?’

‘Dermot,’ Merrily said, ‘get your chubby little arse through that door before I rip my sweater and make allegations.’

‘Merrily!’

‘Calling as a witness, Mr Watts, the organ repair man ... among others.’

‘Merrily, what are you saying?’

She looked him steadily in the eyes and slowly lifted her sweater, exposing her midriff and the base of her bra.

Then she screamed.

‘All right!’ Dermot scowled and scurried after her out of the church, hitching up his robe.

AT THE BOTTOM of the churchyard, where apple trees in bloom overhung the graves, Dermot Child sat, legs crossed, on a nineteenth-century tombstone, looking very affronted and – disturbingly – very much like a goblin. A poisonous loser. Man’s so embittered he doesn’t care who goes down.

And Merrily, gripping a gravestone, had cold feet. Supposing they were wrong about him? Suppose he was just a funny but basically harmless little man with a perfectly harmless, perfectly natural, perfectly healthy ...

... about a hundred buttons down the front, and you imagine yourself undoing them all, very slowly, one by one. Oh God. White collar, pink body, brown nipples ...

... lust for female clergy.

‘Let’s be frank with each other, shall we, Dermot?’

His button eyes arose to level on her. No smile, possibly the beginning of a sneer. ‘Let’s do that, Ms Priest-in-Charge. Oh yes, I’m all for that.’

Merrily thought she could see, behind the blossom on the apple trees, the first small swellings of the embryo Pharisees Reds.

‘What do you know about the posters scattered around the village? The ones we discussed yesterday.’

The eyes were still. ‘A poor joke, as I said. Not terribly funny.’

‘Except there wasn’t really time for subtlety?’

‘Wasn’t there?’

She took a chance. ‘I gather they were done on the festival office printer.’

The eyes flickered. ‘Really?’

‘You supervise that?’

‘The printer or the production of the posters? Yes to the printer. And the posters ... well, indirectly, who knows? Do you know, Merrily?’

‘And the Sunday Times. Did you, perhaps, speak to them?’

There was nothing prominent in today’s Sunday Times, as it happened. At least, not the edition she’d picked up on the way to the church. The story had evidently been judged insufficiently strong at this stage, which was fine.

‘Oh yes,’ Dermot said. ‘Of course. I’ve spoken to all the quality papers. I have to try to interest them in our lovely festival. Part of my function, in the absence of poor, dear, tragic Terrence.’

‘And told them about the storm-in-a-teacup over Coffey’s play?’

‘More than that, surely, Merrily. A storm, at least, in a hogshead of cider. Old cider. A dark storm fermenting for many years. Centuries. Let’s not make light of these things.’

‘And you told the Sunday Times about it.’

He shifted on the tomb, uncrossed his legs under the thin robe. ‘Did I?’

‘Did you?’

He giggled. ‘Did I?’

She gritted her teeth.

‘Did I?’ Dermot said gaily. ‘Did I? Did I? Did I? Oh, Merrily, my dear, you don’t know a thing, do you? You’re fishing in the dark with a twig and a bent safety-pin, and you don’t know a thing about our ways, any more than poor old Hayden did, but he, at least, was content with that and went his bumbling way, the very model of a genial, faintly tedious country cleric. Ghastly, though not everyone agreed. Oh Lord, how I wanted you as his replacement, a jolly little dolly of a clergyperson with nice legs and dinky titties, oh what fun.’

Merrily cut off a shocked breath. Don’t react. She stayed very still, tried not to look away from his eyes, although Dermot had certainly looked away from hers, blatantly lowering his sardonic gaze to her breasts.

‘What fun,’ he said coldly. ‘But don’t dare imagine that you, any more than Cassidy, any more than the obnoxious Coffey, could ever know the essence of our quaint little village ways.’

She bit her lip. He wasn’t supposed to behave like this. Back in the church, she was convinced she had the little bugger. She was going to threaten him, quite calmly, in an absolutely straightforward way – tell him about the projected Wil Williams event, a village affair, and warn him that if the merest whisper of it got out to the media, she’d know precisely who to blame.

She rallied. ‘And what do you know about the village ways, Dermot? About Ledwardine life as it’s been lived in the past two decades? Having spent over half your life away, trying to make it in the big cities.’

A plump cheek twitched.

‘With no conspicuous success,’ Merrily said.

He scowled. ‘And so feisty, aren’t we? The new woman, oh my. Well, as a matter of fact, Ms Watkins, being born and raised here and then separated from it for a while gives one a highly individual perspective. The incomers don’t see at all, the locals see but don’t notice. But someone like myself, with a foot in both camps, observes all. Knows all the pressure points. Knows where a tiny tweak may have maximum effect.’