Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘So you’ll be going through Ledwardine to get there.’

‘No.’

‘Just that the Ludlow trip could be off.’

‘Does this mean I don’t get to do something potentially rewarding all on my own?’

‘You can do what you like after you switch the light out, but maybe you could call for me in the morning. I feel strongly about this, too. Lol’s my… whatever you call the bloke your mother’s having an unaccountably clandestine relationship with. And he’s… he’s taken enough shit this week.’

‘You told Lol about Fyneham?’

‘No. Not a word. I mean, let’s find out what the score is first. Like, if it turns out you’re wrong and the guy actually is working for Q …’

‘Jane, I went through a pile of back copies, looking for the name Jack Fine in all the concert reviews and small stuff, and then every known music website. I put him into every available search engine. If Fyneham’s working for Q , I’m going to leave school, get a job on a remote hill farm in Snowdonia and shag sheep.’

‘Yeah, OK, we get the point.’

‘Call me when you know if you’re going or not?’

‘I will do that.’ Jane noticed a new e-mail for Mum from the Deliverance office. It was highlighted with one of those red exclamation marks, conveying urgency. Sophie, who knew Mum always checked her e-mails before bed.

‘If I don’t hear from you before ten forty-five,’ Eirion said. ‘I’ll just go straight over there, OK?’

‘And, like, will you be armed?’ Jane said.

She put the computer to sleep and went to the window. A fox was standing in the dark garden, as though embossed on the wall. Jane didn’t move either; foxes were cool. She supposed she ought to grab a couple of hours’ sleep. Flushing out Fyneham would be second-best to penetrating Belladonna’s lair, but still better than an average Saturday.

And then the phone rang and the fox sloped away towards the orchard and the churchyard.

Mum, this time. ‘What on earth are you doing still up? I was going to leave you a message on the machine.’

‘Running the switchboard. You left your—’

‘Phone. I know. Jane, I’m just… it doesn’t look like I’ll be back till the morning, OK?’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, everything’s fine.’

‘You sound like you can’t talk.’

‘Well, there you are, then.’

‘Somebody’s there?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Right.’ They’d become good at this over the years. Jane focused on the computer’s hypnotic lemon sleep-light as it swelled and faded like a nervous sun. ‘Could this be Belladonna? You’re with Belladonna, in person?’

‘Very intuitive, flower.’

‘Is she mad?’

‘Bit early to say. Definitely before lunch.’

‘I mean, you’re not in need of help?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘So where are you exactly? Like, where are you going to sleep? Are you going to sleep?’

‘Well, just a bit… weary. Been a long day.’

‘Wow… you’re at The Weir House?’

‘Exactly. So get some sleep yourself, all right?’

‘Oh, I forgot…’ Jane leaned forward and revived the computer. ‘There’s an e-mail from Sophie, marked urgent. You want me to read it?’

‘Quickly, then.’

‘OK, one sec…’

Merrily, this came just before I left, from a secretary at Lackland Modern Furnishings. The attachment is a scan of a petition received by the Mayor of Ludlow this afternoon. It was marked for your information (by the Mayor, this is). Hard to say if it’s important or merely an attempt by someone to pre-empt your inquiries and perhaps pressure you into unnecessary action, but I thought you should see it.

‘I’m opening the attachment, Mum, OK? If it’s a virus, you know who to blame. Uh-oh.’

‘What?’

‘Looks like the fundamentalist loonies are on your back again.’

to the mayor of ludlow, County Councillor G. H. Lackland.

Sir,

A GREAT GODLESSNESS.

It has come to our notice that you have been in discussion with the diocese of hereford with regard to recent tragic events at ludlow castle. we are glad that, as our first citizen and a practising christian, you have shown such commendable regard for the spiritual and moral health of the community and trust that you will support our call for suitable action to remove what many townsfolk regard as the shadow of darkness and dissolution.

with respect,

(followed by 443 signatures)

‘Notice that “shadow of darkness”,’ Jane said. ‘As distinct from a shadow of light. Who wrote this turgid crap?’

‘Well, thank you, flower,’ Mum said. ‘That’s made my night.’

‘But what do they mean? OK, you can’t… I understand. Anyway, if that’s the worst thing that happens to you before dawn you’ll be OK. But, like, if I was having to sleep in Belladonna’s house, I’d make sure my bedroom door was well locked.’

IT SMELLED OLD: this was what you noticed first. Because the trees around it made everything so dark and close, and there was a night mist down here near the water, there wasn’t much to see until you were inside, where the smell met you: the dusty sweetness of woodsmoke and warm stone, like the balm of a small church.

Even when Bell put on the lamps, it remained dim. An entrance hall with a low ceiling. The beams, Merrily noticed, were rough-cut, retaining an element of bark. Two lanterns projected from the swollen, ochre walls – electric, but the bulbs were no bigger than match flames, and so the room was no brighter than it would have been in the Middle Ages, lit by candles or rushlights.

The phone was in a niche in the wall, like an aumbry for the sacrament. But this was evidently for the concealment of an anachronism, and Bell drew the short curtain back across it.

‘Your daughter was still up, then?’

Bell Pepper was faintly haloed by the clay-coloured light. She’d brushed her fair hair and washed her face. It looked pale and puffy, like creased linen, and there were shadows under her eyes, but no blood – except down the front of the shroud, like an emblem of war.

‘She was waiting for me to call,’ Merrily said. ‘She’ll go to bed now.’

‘My son was born dead,’ Bell said bluntly. ‘He died inside me.’

Some belligerence there. This was a famous-artist thing: you demanded privacy, railed against media intrusion, but it was important that people should realize that your experiences were always more dramatic and significant than theirs.

‘I was dreaming a great deal, then.’ Bell’s voice softening, a hint of the years in California rolling in like surf. ‘Lucid dreams in which I was walking the streets of an old, old town, and I had no body. I was light.’

Merrily said nothing. Hormonal. So many chemicals at work during pregnancy.

‘And during this really vivid dream, Mary – a dream full of colours and the scent of woodsmoke – during this dream, I was aware of someone beside me, and I was so sure that my baby had died.’

‘Yes, I… can understand that.’

‘And yet I didn’t feel the way you’d expect.’ Bell smiled – those crossover teeth, what Lol had called that strange kind of uneven beauty. ‘No sorrow, more a kind of… Come and have some wine, Mary.’

‘Well, it’s a bit—’

But Bell had moved away through a low Gothic doorway, coffin-shaped around her, and Merrily shrugged and followed her into a passage that was low and narrow and unlit, sensing this woman’s smile moving ahead of them like a guiding light, something separate.

‘It was more like a kind of awe,’ Bell said, ‘that I was carrying death inside me. That I was containing death. That death had happened inside me. I knew from that moment that I’d always have death with me. And that death is like love… it must be nurtured.’