Phil Rickman - Crybbe aka Curfew

'You're joking,' Hereward said, stunned. He strode to the window and threw back the shutters. 'Good grief!' He turned back to Jocasta. 'Full price?'

'This is not a bloody discount store, darling.'

'Stone me,' said Hereward. 'The triptych. Just like that? I mean, who…?'

Jocasta waited a second or two, adjusted the Celtic brooch at her shoulder and then casually hit him with the big one.

'Max Goff.'

'Gosh.' Hereward pit down his cup. 'So it's true, then. He has bought the Court.'

'Sent his personal assistant to collect it,' Jocasta said. 'Rachel Wade.'

'This is far from bad news,' Hereward said slowly, 'in fact, this could be the turning point.'

Mrs Preece waited across the square with her shopping bag until she saw the large man in the white suit stride out past the delphiniums. He didn't, she noticed, close the garden gate behind him. She watched him get into his fancy black car and didn't go across to the house until she couldn't even hear its noise any more.

Jimmy was still sitting in the parlour staring at the wall.

Mrs Preece put down her shopping bag and reached over Jimmy to the top of the television set, where the onion was sitting in its saucer.

'You'll be late for your drink,' she said.

'I'm not going today. I 'ave to talk to the clerk before she goes back to the library.'

'What was he after?' demanded Mrs Preece, standing there holding the saucer with the onion on it.

'He wants us to call a public meeting.'

'Oh, he does, does he? And who's he to ask for a public meeting?'

'An interferer," Jimmy Preece said. 'That's what he is.'

Mrs Preece said nothing.

'I don't like interferers,' Jimmy Preece said.

There was nothing his wife could say to that. She walked through to the kitchen, holding the saucer before her at arm's length as if what it had on it was not a peeled onion but a dead rat.

In the kitchen she got out a meat skewer, a big one, nearly a foot long, and speared the onion, the sharp point slipping easily into its soft, moist, white flesh.

Then she took it across to the Rayburn and opened the door to the fire compartment. With a quick stab and a shiver – partly f revulsion, partly satisfaction – she thrust the onion into the flames and slammed the door, hard.

This may seem an odd question,' the vicar of Crybbe said after a good deal of hesitation, 'but have you ever performed an exorcism?'

The question hung in the air for quite a while.

Sunk into his armchair in Grace's former sitting-room, Canon Alex Peters peered vaguely into the thick soup of his past. Had he done an exorcism? Buggered if he could remember.

The sun was so bright now – at least suggestive of warmth – that Alex had stripped down to his washed-out Kate Bush T-shirt, the letters in Bush stretched to twice the size of those in Kate by the considerable belly he'd put on since the doctor had ordered him to give up jogging. On his knees was a fiendish-looking black tomcat which Grace had named after some famous Russian. Chekhov? Dostoevsky? Buggered if he could remember that either.

'Ah, sorry, Murray. Yes, exorcism. Mmm.'

What should he say? East Anglia? Perhaps when he was in charge of one of those huge, terrifying, flint churches in Suffolk… Needed to be a bit careful here.

'Ah! I'll tell you what it was, Murray – going back a good many years this. Wasn't the full bell, book and candle routine, as I remember. More of a quickie, bless-this-house operation. Actually, I think I made it up as I went along.'

The Revd Murray Beech raised an eyebrow.

Alex said, 'Well, you know the sort of thing… "I have reason to believe there's an unquiet spirit on the premises, so, in the name of the Management, I suggest you leave these decent folk alone and push off back where you came from, there's a good chap." '

The Revd Murray Beech did not smile.

'Expect I dramatized it a bit,' Alex said. 'But that's what it boiled down to. Seemed to work, as I recall. Don't remember any come-backs, anyway. Why d'you ask?'

Although he wore the regulation-issue black shirt and clerical collar, rather than a Kate Bush T-shirt, young Murray Beech didn't seem like a real vicar to Alex. More like the ambitious deputy head of some inner-city comprehensive school. He was on the edge of one of Grace's G-plan dining chairs, looking vaguely unhappy about the can of lager Alex had put unceremoniously into his hand.

'You see, the way you put it then,' Murray said carefully, as though he were formulating a point at a conference, 'makes it seem as if… you knew at the time… that you were only going through the motions.'

'Well, that's probably true, old chap. But who knows what we do when we go through the motions?' A sunbeam stroked Alex's knees; the cat shifted a little to make the most of it. 'Do I understand, Murray, that someone has invited you to perform an exorcism?'

'This appears to be the general idea,' the vicar said uncomfortably. 'The central dilemma is, as you know, I'm not into sham. Too much of that in the church.'

'Absolutely, old chap.'

'You see, my problem is…'

'Oh, I think I know what your problem is.' Perhaps, Alex thought, it used to be my problem too, to an extent. How sure of our ground we are, when we're young ministers. 'For instance, Murray, if I were to ask you what you consider to be the biggest evils in the world today, you'd say…?'

'Inequality. Racism. Destruction of the planet due to unassuageable… I'm not going to say capitalism, let's call it greed.' He eyed the Guardian on Alex's chair-arm. 'Surely you'd agree with that?'

"Course, dear boy. Spot on. Look, Tolstoy, would you mind not sharpening your claws on my inner thigh, there's good cat. So who wants you to do this exorcism?'

'Difficult.' Murray smiled without humour. 'Difficult situation. It's a teenager. Lives with the grandparents. Think there's some sort of – his mouth pursed in distaste – 'disruptive

etheric intrusion. In the house.'

'Poltergeist, eh? What have the grandparents got to say?'

'That's the difficulty. I'm not supposed to speak to them. This… person is rather embarrassed about the whole thing. Having read somewhere that so-called poltergeists are often caused by, or attracted to, a disturbed adolescent. You know that theory?'

'Rampant hormones overflowing. Smart boy. In my day, of course, the vicar would just have told him to stop wanking and the thing would go away.'

Murray said, 'It's a girl.'

'Oh.'

'She wants me to go along when her grandparents are out and deal with this alleged presence.'

'Oh dear.' Alex opened his can of Heineken with a snap 'You're right, my boy, it is a difficult one. Erm…' He looked across at Murray, all cropped hair, tight mouth and steely

efficiency. 'Do you suppose this youngster might have something of a… crush on you?' Well, it wasn't entirely beyond the bounds of possibility; there were some pretty warped kids around these days.

'Oh, I don't think it's that, Alex. That would be comparatively easy to deal with.'

'Glad you think so. What have you said to her, then?'

'We had a long discussion about the problems and insecurities of the post-pubescent period. Made more difficult in this case because she has no parents to go to – mother dead, father in the merchant navy. You see, I don't want to fail the kid. Because, you know, so few people in this town ever actually come to me for help. Especially with anything of a non-material nature – i.e. anything that doesn't involve opening jumble sales. It's obvious most of them find me an institutional irrelevance most of the time.'

'Wouldn't say that, old chap.'

'Wouldn't you? Oh, certainly, they're always there on Sunday. Well, enough of them anyway. So no congregation problems, as such, but…'