Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

‘You’re putting it brilliantly well, actually. You must’ve been very scared by now.’

‘I was afterwards. When I got to work the first time they thought I must be ill. My colleague at the information centre, she wanted to send me home in a taxi, but I needed to work. Talk to people. Get over it. I did go home by taxi that night, mind. Had to go back next day on the bus to pick up the bike.’

‘Anything happen then?’

‘No. It never does when you’re afraid it might.’

‘When you say you weren’t scared till afterwards…’

‘Because you’re too much like… too much like a part of it to be scared. That’s what I meant by possessed. He was there. He was breathing all over me. I was wearing shorts – this was a week or so ago, this was another time. I was wearing shorts like these, only a bit tighter, and he – I swear to God, I felt his hand on my thigh, and I was angry, instinctively, you know? Gerroff! And he bloody chuckled. He chuckled.’

‘You heard him chuckle?’

‘I felt him chuckle. And that’s worse. You feel him chuckling inside your head. That’s what I meant by being possessed.’

‘How long did it last, usually?’

‘Probably no more than a few seconds, but a lot can happen in a few seconds when it’s something that’s never happened before.’

‘And how many times?’

‘Three. No, four. Until I realized what was happening and just… got off.’

‘When you got off the bike, it was all right?’

‘I realized then that it only happened when I was on the bike. As if I was actually generating it by pedalling.’

‘And there was nothing wrong with you physically. Unlike the others, though, you never actually saw anything.’

‘Never.’

‘When did it last happen?’

‘Earlier this week.’

‘Same man?’

‘Oh, yeh.’

‘ What happened?’

‘Bugger-all, ’cos I jumped off quick this time and wheeled the bike along till I got on the main road.’

‘Just to get this right, this is the hill where you come out of this lane, at the church, and then go past the Rectory… down past there.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Could you just tell me… when you were feeling his thoughts, what were they like?’

‘Dark, usually,’ Hannah said. ‘Angry.’

‘Angry with you?’

‘No. He doesn’t know me. I’m sure he doesn’t. He just gets into my space. It’s like he just needs somebody’s space to get into, and it doesn’t matter who you are.’

‘So who was he angry at?’

‘Something bigger than me. Everything. God? I couldn’t say.’

‘And the time something touched your leg…’

‘You’re thinking it might’ve been a leaf or something, aren’t you? That’s what I thought. And I’m not going to insist it wasn’t. I just know what it felt like. Are you married, Merrily? You are allowed to, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, you are. And I used to be.’

‘Join the club. All I’m trying to say… when you’re in bed with a bloke, right? And you wake up and he’s still asleep… but his hand’s sliding up your nightie? Like that. Shall we have a cup of tea? Tea’s better on a hot day, sometimes.’

Merrily smiled. ‘Love one.’

Hannah stood up and opened the sliding door into a kitchen that must once have been part of the same room.

‘Blokes, eh?’ She looked over her shoulder at Merrily. ‘Hand up your nightie and dead to the world.’

Mutated

Walking out of Hannah’s gate into the warmth of the afternoon, Merrily felt mixed emotions circling her like bees: primarily, a certain wild excitement that was close to the edge of fear. You realized how much time you spent coasting the safe surf between the hard sandbank of scepticism and the unfathomable deep blue abyss.

She stepped down through the cutting, with the church on her left and the sun in her eyes and the phone chiming in her bag. Aware of the layers of Wychehill. The layers of experience.

‘The Royal Oak,’ Sophie said, as she reached the Volvo. ‘Some things you might want to know.’

‘Go on.’

‘I have some information from the Internet which I can send to you at home, if you aren’t coming back to Hereford. However, I ran into Inspector Bliss and took the liberty of mentioning it. He said he’d be most interested to talk to you.’

‘About the Royal Oak?’

‘Discreetly,’ Sophie said.

It was probably worth going back. Merrily had a christening in Ledwardine tomorrow afternoon; if she dealt with parish business in the morning she could probably come back here on Wednesday and talk to Tim Loste and Preston Devereaux before the public meeting.

Feeling tired now. Up before six a.m. and two trips to Wychehill, and she hadn’t eaten yet.

Still… She smoked half a cigarette, then turned the car around and drove down past Ledbury… Trumpet… Stoke Edith. Midsummer in a couple of days, the first hard little apples like green nuts on the twisty trees and the hops on the wires. A potent landscape of cider and beer.

She felt light-headed. It was humbling and slightly shocking when, amongst all the self-delusion and the wishful thinking and the mind games, you encountered someone as guilelessly direct as Hannah Bradley.

Sophie said, ‘My attempts to log on to the Royal Oak’s actual website were frustrated by the inadequacy of our software. Apparently, the Diocese has failed to provide us with something called Flash Seven .’

‘Anything to save a few quid.’

‘From what I’ve been reading about the Royal Oak elsewhere, I’m quite grateful we don’t have it. There you are. You may understand some of this.’

Merrily went round the desk to peer at the screen over Sophie’s shoulder.

HIP-HOP… RAGGA… GARAGE… HOUSE… DRUM’N’BASS… BHANGRA… … I N T HE M ALVERNS?

Believe it!!! A big old country pub – used to be all darts matches and Rotary Club – has mutated…

‘My first experience of nightclub websites, I confess.’ Sophie said.

‘You surprise me.’

‘To save you some time, this establishment is just across the boundary into Worcestershire – and out of the diocese. Another good reason not to get involved.’

Sophie scrolled up to uncover a picture of a bejewelled black man called DJ Xex. Instantly dismissing him with a contemptuous flick of the mouse.

‘It appears that the Royal Oak is now owned by a Mr Khan – apparently quite a well-known entrepreneur in the West Midlands?’

Sophie glanced at Merrily, who shook her head. Never heard of him.

‘Quite a number of local press reports about local people calling on the appropriate authority to have Mr Khan’s licence withdrawn. I’ve printed them out for you.’

‘But you didn’t print the picture of DJ Xex for the noticeboard?’

‘This would be less amusing to you, Merrily,’ Sophie said, ‘if you had to live with it.’

Possibly true. All the innocent fun of inner-city club-land in the romantic Malverns: punters swarming in every weekend from the teenage wastelands, cars screaming through the village at one a.m., windows open, boom, boom, boom. Kids stopping to throw up in front gardens, relieve themselves in the churchyard. Have sex on graves… allegedly. And now a fatal road accident of the kind that people always insisted had been waiting to happen.

‘Sounds as if the victims of Saturday’s crash had spent the evening at the Royal Oak.’ Merrily gathered up the on-line news stories Sophie had printed. ‘Colliding with the chairman of the parish council, returning from a wedding.’

Sophie winced.

The stories were mainly from the Malvern Gazette: petitions to Hereford and Worcester councils, letters to MPs. Counter-allegations of NIMBYism and racism by the leader of a youth project who thought the restyled Royal Oak was the best thing to happen in the Malverns this century.