Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

‘Don’t you go looking at me like that, Ruthie Walters,’ Amy said. ‘Or I’ll tell him how much Owen and Ron took Falconer for, for that land.’

‘Careless talk…’ said the big woman.

‘The bloody war’s over,’ Amy snapped. ‘You don’t like it, tell your Edgar to get hisself a slate at the Crown.’

Ruthie Walters scowled. Amy said, ‘Owen and Ron Jenkins are That Bastard’s cousins who used to own Black Knoll. Till they found out how badly Falconer wanted it. That’s the sort of dealing goes on in this village. Like a dog with two dicks, Owen is. Where was I?’

‘You said it was a while before Tommy Davies did what he did,’ said Cindy.

‘Well.’ Amy lowered her voice. ‘He’ve snatched that strap off Edna and he’ve nailed it to the side of the barn. If that leather ever comes off its nail, Tommy says, he’s going to use the strap on Edna till her arse is blue.’

Cindy smiled and helped himself to another vol-auvent.

‘Well, nobody ever spoke to Edna Cadwallader like that before. A headmistress commanded respect, see. So the strap never came off the nail, but Edna never spoke to Tommy again for the rest of his life. The farmhouse was divided into two. They say you can still feel the change in the atmosphere to this day when you walk from Tommy’s half into Edna’s half.’

‘Well, well,’ Cindy said. No need to guess which half Mrs Willis’s Healing Room was in. Or was it? Perhaps she’d healed the house too.

‘And the two halves … well, that happened in the village as well. Those who supported Tommy … and the so-called God-fearing half who were on Edna’s side. Or didn’t dare not to be. It was like a feud. A silent feud. A … what’s the word?’

‘Schism?’

‘Prob’ly, aye. Family against family. Hard to credit, but this is a tiny little village.’ Amy looked up. ‘Are you trying to threaten me, Ruthie Walters?’

‘Get out of it, woman,’ an old man in a flat cap said. ‘It was somethin’ an’ nothin’.’

‘Oh, there was a truce,’ Amy told Cindy. ‘And the terms were that the whole thing was forgotten. So, to this day, nobody mentions Annie Davies’s vision.’

‘Weren’t her fault, though,’ the old man said.

‘That’s why there was such a turn-out this afternoon,’ Amy said. ‘No hard feelings, Annie.’

‘Now, you can say that , Fred,’ Ruthie Walters said. ‘But whatever powers that old woman had, I’m telling you, it wasn’t Christian.’

‘Course it was Christian, woman. Look at Lettie Pritchard’s shingles. You go an’ ask her if it wasn’t Christian to have her shingles took from her, her as sung in the church choir for forty-five year.’

‘See,’ Amy said. ‘Can of worms.’

‘No!’ Marcus said. ‘Whatever it is … no! I’m going to get pissed in my study and then I’m going to bed. The only person I want to speak to is a bloody decent estate agent, and as that’s probably a contradiction in terms it doesn’t arise.’

Maiden blocked his way to the study. ‘I just think you should speak to this person. Big Mysteries are involved.’

‘I’m sure,’ Marcus said sourly.

‘Her name’s Grayle Underhill. She’s from New York. She-’

‘York?’

‘ New York.’

‘A bloody American. Had a bloody American woman on the phone last week. Insane. Gabbled.’

‘That was me, Mr Bacton.’ Grayle Underhill came out of the study, carrying a tumbler with an inch of Scotch, looking very small inside the borrowed sweatshirt. ‘I called you about my sister. In the dreaming experiment? At Black Knoll?’

‘ High Knoll.’ Marcus glared at her. ‘Is that my fucking whisky?’

When Marcus Bacton pulled out this leather-bound photo album, Grayle got cold feet.

‘Listen, say I … Just say I do recognize her. I could be lying. How would you know I’m not lying?’

‘ I’ll know if you’re lying,’ Marcus said. ‘Thirty years of interrogating bastard schoolboys. World’s most adroit liar, the schoolboy.’

It was nearly six p.m., going dark early. In the lamplight, Marcus’s study was like something out of The Wind in the Willows . Flames in the glass-fronted woodstove. Shadows leaping up columns of books and everything misshapen and kind of organic, as if the furniture had grown out of the thick walls.

She took the album onto her knees. Part of her didn’t want to do this.

‘OK.’ She opened the album.

‘Fortunately’ — Marcus poured himself more whisky — ‘the pictures aren’t captioned or anything, and there are a lot of little kids in there, as you’ll see.’

‘I’m kinda scared to look.’

‘Where did you get this?’ said the guy with the eyepatch Marcus called Maiden.

‘Mrs Willis’s. To be honest, I pinched it in case any of the relatives tried to claim it. It’s all we have, you see. The only picture.’

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Grayle said. ‘All these years of writing about people claiming they saw ghosts. I just can’t believe I saw … Did you ever? Mr Bacton?’

‘Sore point,’ Maiden said.

‘I mean, I read hundreds of books, interviewed all these psychics and mediums. I knew if ever I saw a ghost, no way was I gonna be scared because of course a ghost is just a trick of the atmosphere, a memory imprint. Like, you see an old movie on TV and it’s Errol Flynn and you know he’s dead, you don’t go, Waaaah! That’s a dead guy! Because although I personally cannot imagine how a plastic box can bring a dead guy into my apartment, I know there are people who can, so that’s all right. And so I think … I think I lost the point. Am I burbling here? Am I gabbling? ‘

Turning the stiff card pages, peering back down a sepia century. Past men in wing collars, ladies in droopy hats. Men in baggy pants tied up with string, standing under haystacks. A line-up of small children.

Both of them watching her. Marcus with his soft bow tie and his glasses on the end of his nose. The comical dog called Malcolm watching too, through misaligned eyes. Everything completely still except for her hands turning the pages.

‘If you don’t find her,’ Marcus said, ‘it doesn’t invalidate your experience. If any of this was simple …’

But she could tell his tone was forced; Marcus was trying to keep emotion out of his voice. And Grayle was scared to look into the eyes of the children in the album. Although she knew, anyway, that the eyes were unlikely to help her, on account of none of them would be either wet with tears or flat and dead.

Lights shone in the window. Car sounds outside. Maiden stood up.

‘Probably bloody Lewis back,’ Marcus said. ‘Don’t let her in.’

And just then Grayle turned over a page and her hands sprang back from the album.

‘Red BMW. Oh my God, it’s … Oh, Christ.’

‘Oh God,’ Grayle said.

‘Underhill …?’ Marcus leaning urgently towards her.

‘Oh Jesus. I can’t believe this. This is, like …’

Marcus staring hard at her, searching her face for any sign that she was lying.

Below them, St Mary’s was a smudge on the bronze evening sky. How could he possibly have forgotten about this?

‘I can’t believe you’re living in a place like this,’ the blonde said.

Not having rushed out to embrace him or anything like that. Or left the car at all. Hardly looked at him, in fact, as the red BMW spurted dirt getting them out of the farmyard.

‘Well, I like places like this,’ Bobby Maiden said. ‘Quiet, lonely places.’

‘Very weird.’ She relaxed, checked her speed. ‘Wouldn’t want to get stopped by your little Welsh colleagues.’