Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

‘I’m just glad he agreed to speak to me without an appointment,’ Grayle said now.

‘That’s because he overheard your accent. He’s very keen on attracting Americans to the courses. They’re more open-minded and they often leave donations as well. Oh, gosh, I keep forgetting who I’m talking to … you won’t use this, will you?’

‘Adrian, most American tabloids aren’t at all like your British tabloids. I’m a, you know, a very straight person.’

‘Oh. Right. That’s all right then. Sorry to seem, you know …’

But he’d given her an opening and Grayle moved into it. ‘Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of hoping for an American angle. When my paper called, they spoke to an Ersula … Underhill?’

‘Oh. Yes.’

‘I figured maybe we could nose off the piece on her, but, uh, Magda said she’d gone.’

‘Yes. She’s gone. Some weeks ago.’

‘Would you know where? Maybe I could catch up with her, talk about the stuff she did here.’

‘No, I’m sorry.’ Adrian shook his head. ‘I don’t know really where she’s gone. She left in rather a hurry. I think. We all assumed she’d gone back home to the States.’

‘Did she say she was going home? I mean, you know, I don’t want to cause any trouble. Like, if she was fired or something-’

Adrian looked shocked. ‘Oh, no. People don’t get sacked . Ersula was just a temporary person, anyway. She was studying the subject and so it was convenient for all of us.’

‘It’s just …’ Grayle figured she could go further with Adrian than she’d have dared to with Falconer, without arousing suspicions. ‘… just that Ersula Underhill was building quite a reputation in the States as an archaeologist and when our guy spoke to her on the phone, she seemed so blown away by what was happening here.’

‘Blown away?’ Adrian frowned. ‘I don’t really think she was that type. In our debates she tended to take Roger’s side.’

‘Right.’ Grayle took a deep breath. ‘Maybe it was Roger?’

‘Roger?’

‘That she was blown away with? He’s a … charismatic guy.’

‘Oh, now, look.’ Adrian’s shoulders went back; he looked stern. ‘It’s not going to be that sort of article, is it? When the People came, they were sort of sniffing around, you know, whether Roger was sleeping with his students, that sort of thing. Really not on.’

Grayle assured him again that she didn’t write that kind of stuff and swiftly spread some balm by telling him about the real nice people she’d met at the Rollright Stones.

‘Oh, they’re awfully good news,’ Adrian said earnestly. ‘Matthew and Janny are just the sort of people I’d like to see more of on the courses. Committed. Absolutely.’

‘Got to be committed if they’re even getting married in the stones.’

‘This weekend, in fact! Are you going? I am. I think it’s a really positive thing to do. All the times they’ve slept in that circle, committing their inner selves to the Earth. That’s what a wedding should be … a joining of a man and a woman with the Earth.’

And that was the moment — man … woman … Earth — when Grayle got the feeling. Like she’d swallowed a whole ice cube.

Adrian’s face shone with honest fervour. She thought, These guys have no real idea what they’re messing with. It’s like Cindy and his shamanic stuff; these stones are magnetic, all right, they attract airheads and fruitcakes like iron filings.

‘Well, thanks,’ she said. ‘You’ve been real helpful. Perhaps I will go.’

It’d be lovely if you could come, if you’re still around , Janny had said. We did invite Ersula, but …

‘To the wedding? Terrific!’ Adrian said. ‘We could go together.’

‘Yeah … well … maybe. Just one thing before I leave here …’

One last attempt to get close to whatever Ersula’s become .

‘Any way I can help …’ Adrian spread his arms. He looked simple and healthy, the least complicated of them.

‘Is there some kind of ancient site locally where I could maybe get a feel for the kind of thing you do?’

‘Oh. Nothing spectacular. Nothing like the Rollrights. There’s the Knoll, of course. Sort of collapsed cromlech. Shall I take you?’

‘No, please … I already took up too much of your time. Also, I’d kind of like to take in the atmosphere, make some notes. If you could just, like, point me in the right direction?’

‘Perhaps we could have dinner some time,’ Adrian said. ‘Just, you know, the two of us.’

Cindy heard Marcus hiss, at nobody in particular,

‘… fuck’s he doing here?’

A lean man with a greying ponytail peeled himself away from a tweedy clot of local-looking people in the churchyard and clapped Marcus on the arm. ‘Had to come, Marcus. Had to pay tribute to a remarkable lady.’

Cindy recognized Roger Falconer, respected television archaeologist and the educated, mature woman’s hunk. Even if he hadn’t known who it was, he would have realized that this was a TV personality. They had a way of projecting themselves from the crowd that was almost mystical; they made themselves shine.

‘You never even met her!’ Marcus clearly thrown off balance.

‘To my eternal regret I didn’t. But there are several people in this village who’ve testified to her remarkable abilities.’

‘Oh bollocks, Falconer. Anybody who’s read any of your crappy books knows you don’t give a toss for spiritual healing.’

Falconer smiled. ‘There’s a difference, I think, between spiritual healing and natural healing and Mrs Willis appears to have had an instinctive gift for plucking cures literally out of the hedgerows. My young colleague Adrian, for instance … We were kidding him about his psoriasis, saying he couldn’t possibly be seen on telly like that, and so he came, without even telling me, to see Mrs Willis and … gone. Gone in under a week. Flaked clean away. Now that’s remarkable.’

Falconer was speaking loudly, in his television voice. As if they were filming him. He wanted the entire village, Cindy thought, to know what a magnanimous person he was, not one to bear a grudge. And it sounded not in the least patronizing. Oh, a clever man.

Unlike Marcus, reddening.

‘Potent to the end, obviously.’ Falconer’s smile opening up two deep grooves in his lean, mobile face, from the edges of the eyes down to the wide mouth. ‘Sliced through my fence without much trouble.’

‘I’ll pay for it,’ Marcus growled, backing away.

‘I didn’t mean that, old chap. I realize she had a great affinity with Black Knoll, and it was wrong of me-’

‘ High Knoll.’

‘Sorry, sorry!’ Falconer held up his hands in mock defence against a shorter, fatter, older man with glasses. ‘Look, Marcus … I know this isn’t the best time to go into all this … or maybe it is, I don’t know … but things have been said that perhaps both of us regret.’

‘Speak for your bloody self…’

‘What I want to say …’ Falconer squeezed his chin, apparently reaching a decision. ‘In cutting that fence — her last act — Mrs Willis was making a point that I’m … well, that I’m ready to take on board. I shouldn’t have installed the bloody thing. It was a stupid … high-handed gesture. No ancient monument should be considered private property. They belong to all of us. Anyway, it’s all gone now, the fence, the wire, everything. So’ — spading a hand through the air — ‘go up there whenever you like. If it stands as a kind of shrine to Mrs Willis …’

A small crowd had gathered. Marcus’s face was plum-coloured now.

‘Another thing,’ Falconer said. ‘We may be approaching the same subjects from different angles and we’re never going to agree fully, any more than I agree with young Adrian and his cronies. But we do have a common cause. Which is human enlightenment.’