Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

Merrily didn’t move; if she leaned away from him she’d be trapped in the armchair, if she edged forward she’d be touching his knees. He was evidently still a little drunk. It would, on the whole, have made more sense not to come up here.

‘What was she wearing?’

‘Aye, well…’ Jon Scole stood up. ‘That couldn’t’ve helped.’ The keys clunked at his belt; he seemed to like wearing things that made metallic noises.

Merrily took the opportunity to stand up, too, stepping nearer the door.

‘She’s got… kind of a nightdress on,’ he said. ‘Satin. It laces up at the sides. It looked… strange.’

‘She was walking through the streets like that?’

‘I offered to drive her home. She wouldn’t let me. Just as well, I expect I’m a touch over the limit.’

‘You could’ve walked back with her.’

‘Mary, nobody’s allowed to do that. When she walks at night, she walks alone.’

‘Don’t you think you should ring the police now?’

‘She’d know who it was. I keep telling you, Mary, I don’t want to blow it with her. She’s like…’ He waggled his hands. ‘Look, if you wanna make sure she’s OK, I know which way she goes.’

‘What sort of state was she in?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Shocked? Distressed?’

‘I don’t know…’ He went to the window, looked down into the street. ‘Angry… electric.’

‘In what way?’ Merrily moved nearer the door.

‘It’s like something charges her up. I went to watch her, once. I waited for her in the churchyard, behind a tree – just to watch what she did, you know? I’d waited for bloody ages by the time she showed. I mean showed – faded up, not a sound. Weird. She was like she was in a trance – like her mind was somewhere else, but her body was… wooar… trembling. Vibrating, you know? Like it was aglow. I’m probably exaggerating this a bit, she was just a woman walking in the dark. Anybody like that in these streets is bound to look a bit spooky.’

‘You approach her?’

‘Break the spell? She’d have had me eyes out. I let her go past, and I went home.’

‘What did you think was happening?’

‘She was getting off on it.’

‘On what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Scole seemed almost angry that he didn’t know. ‘When she comes banging on the door tonight, she’s all over me. Hot and… you know. Burning up. It’s why I called you. Anybody could see she were burnin’ up…’

Merrily waited by the door. There was a dark green waste bin next to it, with chip paper in it, a curry carton, squashed lager cans.

‘I din’t trust meself, all right?’ He looked down at his trainers. ‘Didn’t wanna blow it.’ He looked up, across at Merrily, punched his palm. ‘I cannot believe you’re a priest. What’s a woman like you doin’ bein’ a fuckin’ priest?’

‘Which way did she go, Jon?’

‘Dunno. Back towards St Leonard’s? Makes no difference, she’ll pass through St Laurence’s churchyard. Whichever way she goes, it always takes in the churchyard. I’ll show you, eh?’

‘No, I think it’s best if I go on my own, thanks. We don’t want her to feel threatened. Not after what happened.’

‘You think that’s safe, Mary, on your own?’

‘It’s Ludlow, Jon, not Glasgow.’

‘I wouldn’t touch you,’ Jon Scole said, plaintive.

‘I know. I just… maybe I should talk to her on my own. Maybe it’s the best chance I’ll get.’

‘As a psychic?’ He laughed.

‘Something like that.’ She pushed down the door handle and the door sprang against her hand, and she was grateful he hadn’t locked them in. ‘And, yes,’ she said, ‘for future reference, I have got a boyfriend.’

‘Well, he’s a lucky twat,’ Jon Scole said bitterly, not moving from the window. ‘Hey…’

‘What?’

‘You wanna watch yourself, Mary. She likes women, too.’

‘But not priests, apparently,’ Merrily said. ‘If it gets difficult, I can always flash the cross.’

There were still a few people around as Merrily walked quickly up through the centre of the town towards the Buttercross: the inevitable sad drunk, the inevitable couple-in-a-shop-doorway and, more curiously, two women with one small boy trotting ahead of them, a good six hours after his bedtime. All the untold stories of night streets.

At the Buttercross, she slipped like a cat into the tightness of Church Street, narrow as a garden path, with its pub and its bijou shops and galleries, most windows dark now. Behind this street – seamed by alleyways, made intimate by moonlight and scary by shadows – was the church of St Laurence with its great tower, the axle through the wheel of the town.

She stood at the main entrance, looking directly up at the Beacon of the Marches, taller by far than the castle keep. The tower, with its lantern windows, seemed to be racing away from her, a lift shaft into heaven, and she thought about the Palmers’ Guild, convinced it was pressing the right buttons. Medieval Christianity: two steps up from magic.

The night was soft and close here, the air still sweet with woodsmoke from dying fires in deserted hearths, and the sky was olive green, lightly stroked with orange in the north.

She stood listening for a couple of minutes, almost convinced that if there was anything abusive or violent occurring anywhere in Ludlow she’d be able to hear it, because this was the nerve centre. Never had a cluster of buildings felt more like some kind of living organism, and she wondered if Belladonna, of whom there was no sign at all, was standing somewhere, just like this, letting it heal her.

Or perhaps she’d simply run all the way home.

Merrily walked past the body of the church into what she thought was College Street, old walls closing in – was this the college where the chaplains appointed by the Palmers’ Guild had lived? Turning a dark corner, now, and emerging into what could only be The Linney, the narrow lane that followed the castle wall to the river, the backstairs from the country to the heart of the town.

She walked quietly down the centre of the lane, which would be just about wide enough for one car if you were daring enough to risk it. Terraces and stone cottages were wedged either side, most of them unlit, backing onto the darkness of the castle’s curtain wall to the left and the edge of the hill to the right, a gap between houses revealing the countryside below salted with tiny lights.

Feeling as if she was balancing on Ludlow’s curving spine, she stopped and listened again. No movement, and no obvious place of concealment in the narrows of The Linney. There was a sign announcing a new restaurant, and someone had stuck a white paper flyer on it that read, The Lord will tear down the temples of gluttony!

After the last house, a path to the left… surely the path that burrowed among the castle foundations, the path she’d taken with Jon Scole to the yew tree where Marion fell, where Jemima Pegler fell with the heroin raging through her veins.

Here, the ground softened underfoot and the texture of the night seemed to have altered, the shapes of trees morphing into matt shadows and the woodsmoke aroma becoming the raw stench of damp earth.

And the castle was a hard form, a stronghold again, the land falling invisibly away to the right of the track, through the trees and into darkening fenced fields, sports clubs, and the river and the woodland around The Weir House.

And Merrily knew, then, that it was too quiet.

There should be wildlife-rustlings, foxes prowling, badgers scrabbling, night birds, and… and there wasn’t anything.

She stopped.

Sometimes on still evenings, before a church clock chimed somewhere, you would be aware of a pause in the atmosphere itself – a soft, hollowed-out moment, all movement suspended. And then a vibration, like a shiver, as if the air knew what was coming. When you spent days and nights hanging around churches, it became a familiar phenomenon. It seemed like part of the mechanism, and maybe it was – some ancient acoustic collusion between night and clocks.