Phil Rickman: The Remains of an Altar

‘There was a poor man – a bit solitary – who’d come in the summer for weeks at a time and we never knew whether he was there or not, and one day… someone noticed all the flies.’

Mrs Aird gripped the arms of her chair, shuddering.

Merrily apprehensively balanced her tea, in its willow-pattern china cup, on her knee.

‘Doesn’t the Rector go to see people?’

‘Well, he does. Comes to see me about once a week, but then I’m a regular churchgoer. But some people don’t like it – see it as an intrusion, as if he’s going to evangelize. But of course Mr Spicer’s not like that, is he? And he’s got these other parishes to look after. And he’s on his own, too, now. Not been easy for him, with his wife… and his daughter. And everything that’s happened.’

Mrs Aird sat with her arms folded, looking expectant.

‘You were there when… the lorry driver…’

‘It was like an explosion, Mrs Watkins. I have a key to the church and I’d gone in early to put the flowers out because there was a funeral that day – Mrs Hatch, a mercy – and bang. I went rushing out, and the cab of the lorry was almost flattened on the driver’s side. He had to come out of the other door. I brought him in here and I gave him a cup of tea while we were waiting for the police and the breakdown people. He had his hands to his eyes, just thinking about it, and he said – I’ll always remember – he said, It was like a little sun.’

‘But it wasn’t a sunny day?’

‘It was later, but it was very dull then. Only about half past seven. When the police came, they breathalysed him straight away, and he was completely clear. They said he couldn’t have seen a light, but he insisted that was why he’d swerved, and he was a nice man – not young. One of the policemen said to me afterwards, Oh, I expect he fell asleep at the wheel and dreamed it. I said, That’s not fair, you don’t know…’

An orb, Merrily was thinking without much enthusiasm. Very fashionable with cable-TV ghosthunters, orbs. Bit of glare got recorded by the camera and it was an orb, a semi-formed manifestation. What Huw Owen called a spirit-egg, though you were never quite sure when Huw was being disparaging.

‘Did the driver think there was anything… strange about the light?’

‘Well, it was certainly strange, but I didn’t think there’d have been anything ghostly. Not then. But then there was Mr Loste… and the others.’

‘Mrs Cobham.’

‘She’s a bit…’ Mrs Aird put her nose in the air ‘… if you ask me. And not over-friendly. Mr Loste… well, some people think he ’s a bit

… what’s the word…?’ Mrs Aird waved her cardiganed arms about in a random sort of way. ‘Maniac… manic. Obsessed with his music and his choirs… and, give him his due, he’s marvellous. He’s done wonders. But some people think he’s not reliable in other ways. And his friendship with the American woman who goes to the wells. Bit peculiar. But… he saw what he saw, and he’ll tell you as much, give him his due.’

‘I’m hoping to see him later. I’ll probably need to go back and see the Rector first.’

‘He’s not in,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘His car’s gone.’

How did she know that from down here? Had she got a periscope?

‘He’s got three parishes, you know. And all his problems.’

Merrily drank some tea.

Oh, well.

‘I’m… afraid I don’t really know anything about that. Don’t really like to ask him these things.’ Peering over her cup. ‘Sounds like I’m prying.’

Mrs Aird looked up at the ceiling and made a sad, wounded noise.

‘It was his daughter wrecked everything. Emily. Got a son as well, but he’s too young to cause trouble. Emily would be… what, eighteen? Mrs Spicer, Fiona, she was from Reading, somewhere like that, near London. She didn’t really like the country, and when Mr Spicer left the Army-You know what he was, don’t you?’

‘Erm… no.’

‘ S… A… S.’

Mrs Aird mouthing it silently, like a breach of the Official Secrets Act.

‘Really?’

No wonder Syd Spicer was familiar with the Brecon Beacons.

‘Been out about eight years,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘But there’s something that doesn’t leave them, if you ask me.’

‘Mmm.’

Probably right. And they often didn’t leave the area. After many years based in Hereford, learning to become the most efficient killers in or out of uniform, they formed connections with the people and the land. Married local girls. Surprisingly – or maybe not – Spicer wouldn’t have been the first of them to become a priest.

‘Imagine the stress she must’ve been through,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘Never sure where in the world he was at any time, but knowing it was always going to be somewhere terribly dangerous.’

Merrily nodded. The SAS had probably the worst matrimonial record outside Hollywood. Breakfast with the wife, late supper in a cave in Afghanistan. Then retirement, still hyper, and they couldn’t settle down. The wives had to be very special to survive all that. Long periods alone, counting the Regiment graves in St Martin’s churchyard.

‘Sometimes…’ Mrs Aird leaned forward again ‘… Fiona came to talk to me on her own. She said he’d always promised her that when he came out of the Army they’d go back down south – bright lights and no sheep, she used to say. But then I suppose he found his faith. I don’t know where a man like that finds it.’

‘Oh… sometimes it’s just lying there, in your path, like an old coat, and before you know what you’re doing you’ve picked it up, tried it on and it seems to fit.’

‘That’s nice,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘I suppose.’

‘How did Mrs Spicer react to that?’

‘Oh, she stuck by him.’

Merrily smiled. Like Spicer had come out as a transsexual.

‘At least she knew where he was. He was a curate in Hereford, at first, and she didn’t mind that, thinking they’d move south as soon as he won his spurs, so to speak. They’d bought themselves a little house near his in-laws down in Reading, and they’d spend holidays there. But then he was offered Wychehill and the surrounding parishes – a bit closer to London, but it turned out to be the worst of both worlds. And the girl, Emily, she hated every minute she had to spend here. Off with her friends to nightclubs, every chance she got. And that, of course, led to boys and… the other thing. You know?’

‘No… what?’

‘That’s what…’ Mrs Aird leaned further forward as if the place was bugged. ‘That’s what broke up their marriage. The stress of dealing with the girl.’ She paused.

‘Drugs.’

‘Syd’s daughter?’

‘It’s everywhere, my dear. Young people can’t seem to face normal life any more, can they? Mr Spicer’s daughter… even Mr Devereaux’s elder son, when he gave up his job with the hunt. Went clean off the rails when it was banned, and they say he went on drugs. Luckily, he came round. But Mr Spicer’s daughter ended up in rehab.’

‘Oh.’

‘So you can imagine what it was like for them when the Royal Oak changed hands.’

‘Sorry?’

‘And that’s very much part of it, if you ask me. The evil.’

‘Evil…?’

‘Ingrid said you weren’t the kind to dismiss it like so many of the modern clergy do.’

Mrs Aird looked out of her wall-to-wall picture window across the valley with its pastures and orchards.

‘Expect I’ll have to go, soon. You wouldn’t believe how often the houses change hands up here. It’s like Mr Walford says – he’s disabled but a very intelligent man, we do crosswords together – and he often says, This is what I always wanted, a place up here, and then when you get it you suddenly wake up one day and realize you’re too old for it . This is not a place to be old, Mrs Watkins, though I’ll miss my sunsets.’