Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘Could they get an injunction to keep you away from this woman?’

‘Unlikely. Anyway, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot, bringing it into the public domain.’ Merrily stood up, decided that she couldn’t face lunch after all. ‘Well, they can’t do a Mumford on me, accuse me of impersonating a priest.’

‘You’re going back, then?’

‘You’re glad?’

‘I hate to see you defensive and frustrated. Shouldn’t be too difficult. You going home now?’

‘I need to talk to Lol. And Jane. I’d hate her to find out about these rumours from anyone else.’

‘Quite.’

‘But first, I think I’ll pop into the Cathedral for a while. Some of the sensations I’ve been experiencing today could fall under the category of Unholy.’

‘As long as you don’t let Him talk you out of anything.’

Merrily blinked. ‘You’re very hawkish today, Sophie.’

‘Sometimes I feel the phrase “turning the other cheek” should come with a number of get-out clauses.’

‘Mmm.’ Merrily nodded, zipping her fleece.

It occurred to her, for the first time, that the level of anger behind Sophie’s cashmere calm might well exceed even her own.

She never made it to the Cathedral.

It was unavoidable. Cream suit, beard like it had been ironed on, he was following his smile in long strides across the green.

‘Merrily!’

‘Nigel.’

‘Tiresome meeting with the Dean and the Chairman of the Perpetual Trust.’

Challenging Merrily to explain what she was doing here when she was supposed to be on leave. Stuff it, why should she have to tell him anything?

‘And how is your poor aunt?’ Saltash said. ‘It is your aunt, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is.’

‘Great pity you haven’t been available. I rather thought we might have discussed the difficulties over in Ludlow.’

‘I thought we’d drawn a line under that.’

‘We should, however, I think, decide where we stand on the issue. In case any of us is… approached.’

‘Approached?’

‘For assistance. Or advice.’

‘I thought you had been. By the police. And the media.’

‘Purely as a psychiatrist,’ Saltash said.

‘Special adviser on mental health to the diocese, as I recall.’

‘And, naturally, I cleared it with the Coordinator before making any comment.’

‘You mean Siân.’

‘It’s so important that we’re aware of what we’re all doing. Effective teamwork, acting in unison, speaking with one voice…’ Saltash looked Merrily in the eyes in a way that made it very clear he was looking at her glasses. ‘Crucial, wouldn’t you say? In such an unstable society.’

BY THE TIME Merrily heard the school bus rattling onto the square, she’d been home two hours, doing a manic clean-up of the vicarage, not answering the phone. Going over the black-eye rumours situation, deciding how much to tell the kid. Conclusion: everything… almost.

She finishing hoovering the hall, and looked up into the wizened, thorn-tortured face of Jesus Christ in Holman-Hunt’s The Light of the World , the picture that said, with all its Pre-Raphaelite pedantry, there are no short cuts .

Jane first. And then, tonight, there would be Lol: a different approach.

Jane’s feeling of responsibility towards Lol sometimes verged, Merrily suspected, on the maternal. It had a long history. It was, unquestionably, Jane who had decided that this relationship needed to happen. Jane who had shielded the sparks from the wind, added twigs to the fire. Jane who, when it was going well, liked to bask in its glow. And, when it wasn’t going well, blame her mother.

Merrily touched her eye experimentally. It didn’t hurt.

Jane’s key turned in the lock.

This would hurt.

‘So who was it?’ Jane was gazing steadily into her mug of tea as if its surface would ripple and form into a face. ‘Who do we have to destroy?’

This was after she’d calmed down. Approaching seven o’clock, and the sun had come out to set and to mellow the kitchen in spite of everything.

‘I don’t do destruction,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m a vicar.’

‘I’m a pagan. We’re less squeamish.’

‘Not tonight, huh?’ Merrily said.

‘It’s clear you’ve got a good idea who in this village is trying to shaft you.’

‘Narrowed down the list of suspects, that’s all.’

Down to one.

‘Names?’

Merrily shook her head. ‘Not till I’m sure. I wouldn’t like innocent people to die. Eirion picking you up tonight?’

‘Eight o’clock. Maybe we’ll just go to the Swan.’

‘I think not. You’re still only seventeen. While I’m not naive enough to think you haven’t been going in pubs for the last couple of years, the rule is still not in this village .’

‘Irene’s eighteen.’

‘Anyway, the only reason you want to go into the Black Swan is to broadcast exactly what you’re going to do when you find out who’s been putting it around that Lol hits me.’

‘So? Something wrong with that? I mean, you won’t, will you? Because you’re the vicar. You have to take it on the chin.’ Jane pushed her tea away. ‘And in the eye.’

‘Look, when I first heard about it, I reacted just like you. Well, almost. It took Sophie to explain why that could only make things worse.’

‘Sophie exists to smooth things over. Sophie’s like human cold-cream.’

‘Whoever started the rumour wants us to react badly and, in the process, tell everybody who hasn’t already heard it. Thus doing their job for them. I think that makes sense.’

‘Doing nothing makes sense? Letting people think that Lol’s unstable again? You know where they’ll take it next, don’t you? They’ll think back to what happened last Christmas, and, like, where that used to be good – what a hero, saved Alice’s life – they’ll be like, yeah, but there was violence involved. OK, he never laid a finger… or did he?’

‘Don’t let your imagination—’

‘Mum, this is a bloody village.’

‘Jane, will you just…’ Merrily bit down on it. ‘What are you planning to do tomorrow?’

‘Go round the square, knock on a few doors, hold a kitchen knife to a few people’s throats. Dunno, really.’

Merrily thought about this. Contemplated the lesser of two potential evils. It would be unwise to leave Jane alone here, on a Saturday with the village crowded with locals and tourists and the whole day to consume.

‘You fancy coming over to Ludlow?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Meet a mad woman?’ Merrily said. ‘Make like a pagan?’

She could see the flaring of excitement in Jane’s eyes and how subtly it was extinguished.

‘Yeah, OK,’ Jane said.

Jane decided she didn’t want to do the clubs in Hereford tonight. Too expensive, even if Eirion was still living off the loot from his eighteenth birthday, and too loud to talk. And, naturally, she wanted to be home not-too-late and up early, nice and fresh, for the siege of The Weir House.

Belladonna. Oh boy… Couldn’t believe Mum was involving her to this extent. This was a major rites-of-passage situation. Not to mention a seminal event in Christian–pagan relations.

Between them, they would really nail this mad bitch to the wall.

So, in the end, she and Eirion ended up doing the old snog-walk through the white lights of Left Bank Village, down to the Wye, which some of the sad planning anoraks at Hereford Council were determined to see as like the Seine, only narrower and with just the one café.

She told Eirion about Operation Belladonna – how she was holding her breath in case Mum changed her mind. After which, it seemed legit to discuss the domestic-violence outrage.