Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘Um, to change the subject – slightly – I was talking to Tom Storey.’

‘Poor Tom,’ Moira said. ‘Wasnae so rich and famous he’d probably have been under the shrinks years ago.’

Moira had once, way back, been in a band with Tom Storey. It was a very small pond, the British folk-rock scene.

Lol told her how he’d wound up talking to Tom. Moira rolled her eyes.

‘Belladonna, eh? The extraordinary Bell. Used to fancy the hell out of Tom, simply because he was rumoured to be, you know…?’

‘Sensitive?’

‘Amazing the number of women went after him because of that. To guys, a guitar hero. To women, a psychic guitar hero. None of them realizing it was the best way to have the poor guy heading for the airport. Bell couldnae figure it at all – she could’ve had anybody at that time.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Nobody knew her. We did a couple of the same festivals – you did one, I recall. This’d be before America discovered her. She was older than me and always kind of superior – she’s an artist, slumming, and I’m this folk-club kid on the make. And she resented me, probably for the same reason she fancied Tom.’

‘Because she’d heard you were…’

‘A touch fey, aye. Oh, and she’d made a wee pass at me and got soundly rebuffed. That didnae help.’

‘Went both ways?’

‘She went a hundred ways, Laurence, although I tend to think the allegations of actual necrophilia were no more than malicious gossip. It was all a major fetish thing. Other bands and singers, it was a phase. Her, it went on when goth stuff was no longer big-money cool, so…’

‘So there had to be a cause,’ Lol said.

‘Always a cause. They’re saying even schizophrenia’s no’ something you’re born with. The guy I did know was Eric Bryers, her boyfriend way back. Session bass-player, absolutely besotted with Bell. Do anything for her – coke, smack, acid. If you get ma point. She was gonnae have his child and everything, and it was all cosy-cosy, then she suddenly disappears – this is Eric’s version of events – and the next he hears of her she’s in LA and a big star, with no mention of a baby.’

‘Had it adopted, Tom said. He was furious.’

‘Ah, the adoption story, that’s one version. What I heard, the baby was stillborn, and she had a big funeral for it, fancy Gothic grave – that would be more in keeping. Last time I saw Eric, he… Aw, he was busking with another guy in Manchester – I had a gig at the Free Trade Hall, and there he was busking. I’m ashamed to say I couldnae face him, so I walked past quick, with ma scarf around ma head, and slipped all the cash I had on me intae his hat. Talked to a guy some time later, said Eric used to follow Bell’s gigs around the country, busking near the theatres, and getting arrested and moved on. I think he had a solid habit by then, and nobody was using him.’

‘Dead now.’

‘Aye. They got him off the smack and he turned to drink and his behaviour became erratic, and one day the poor devil threw himself off the top of a skyscraper block in London.’

‘Like Seress.’ Lol started to feel a little weird.

‘What?’

‘Rezso Seress – “Gloomy Sunday”?’

‘It’s late,’ Moira said. ‘Start again.’

‘There was this song about suicide which, according to the urban myths, has been leading to people actually topping themselves. By a Hungarian, Rezso Seress. He also died by throwing himself off a building. The Hungarian Suicide Song. Occasionally gets covered by artists feeling a bit daring.’

‘Bell?’

‘Very faithful version. Exactly like the original, down to the scratches.’

‘See, that’s just the kind of fuckin’ stupid thing that woman would do,’ Moira said. ‘The way Eric was, I can actually imagine him sitting there playing the damn thing over and over and refilling his glass. I’d like to give her a good slap.’

‘You ever see her now?’

‘Not in years, she’s well off the circuit – doesnae need it; weird kids keep rediscovering her. They also began using her music on commercials a lot – when TV commercials started becoming so diffuse and surreal you weren’t sure what they were advertising. Stroke me, poke me, invoke me – however that shit went. Only it would be a car. You staying here tonight?’

‘Going home, I think. It’s only just over an hour.’

‘Home,’ Moira said. ‘That’s such a nice word, isn’t it?’

It seemed unlikely he’d be back yet, but around midnight Merrily went to the end of the vicarage drive to see if there was a light on at Lol’s.

There wasn’t. There were no lights on anywhere in Church Street. It was a warm night, with no moon. She lit a cigarette, looked up at the window of Jane’s attic apartment, and there was no light there either. Good. The kid had done enough research for one night.

Kid. It wasn’t respectful even to think of her as a kid any more. She was smart and funny and perceptive and increasingly good to have around. And in eighteen months’ time she’d almost certainly be leaving home.

Home. Merrily turned her back on the vicarage. It had never really felt like home. Seven bedrooms – how the hell could she live here alone? Maybe one of the other five parishes she’d be invited to take on would have a smaller vicarage. Or maybe, when Jane finished school, it would be time to move on, out of the diocese. Maybe the writing was already on the wall, next to a hazy outline sketch of Siân Callaghan-Clarke in episcopal purple.

The image made her angry and she thought, Sod it, I’m going to do it – Mary the bloody psychic .

‘You know the way to be really convincing as a psychome-trist?’ Jane had said as she went up to bed. ‘Just wander around and don’t say a thing. Don’t claim you’ve had any visions or sensations at all. Say absolutely nothing.’

‘What good will that do?’

‘Because all phoney psychics come out with a mass of crap, and when you respond to some detail they snatch on it, and that’s how it works. If you say nothing she’ll think either you don’t want to reveal what you’ve picked up until you’re absolutely certain, or you know it would scare the pants off her.’

Made sense. Merrily pinched out her cigarette and went in.

Lol drove across the bridge into Wales and slowly up the border, along the deep, moon-tinted, green-washed Wye Valley into the lights of Monmouth and back into England and up towards…

Home, yes.

It would be overstating it to say that Moira could read you like a book, but she could see all the big words in your life as if they were spelled out in neon on your forehead.

Home… that was one of them. The last time he’d lived in Ledwardine, it had been a refuge, the place he’d hidden rather than lived in. Now… well, now he actually felt he was probably the right person to be in the house of Lucy Devenish.

And Merrily… that would work itself out. It had to.

Because she was the real meaning of home.

He left the Astra on the square, alongside the oak-pillared market hall. Perhaps he should think about renting a garage somewhere. Tonight, they’d sold more copies of his album than they’d sold of Moira’s. Well, OK, most of the audience would already have had all Moira’s albums, so that was understandable, but sixty copies…

It was twenty to two in the morning. Friday morning, Ledwardine hanging in timeless silence, a bat flittering overhead. Lol stood for a moment on the cobbles, looking across at the vicarage drive – a small, dim light on somewhere in the woody heart of the old house. There should always , he thought, be a light in there .

Tears came into his eyes and he hurried away.