Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

George in purgatory.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘when we finally emerged at the top, Bell starts dancing around, with her arms thrown out. Well… there’s not much room up there – big sort of pyramid coming out the middle with the weathercock sticking out the top.’

Such a proud cock, Bell had said and giggled outrageously, the sleeves of her dress rippling up her arms.

George’s half-shadowed face was blushing a deeper red than King Edward’s footstool in the Palmers’ window as he described how he’d turned away from the woman and gone to look out at the view to the west, doing a bit of a commentary.

Over there in the west, behind those hills, that’s towards Knighton, see, which is in Radnorshire – and that’s Wales. Not many folks know that Ludlow, although it’s in England, used to be the main administrative centre for Wales – the military capital.’

When he’d stopped talking, there had been no sound from behind him, no rustling of her papery frock. When he turned, she was nowhere in sight. Ludlow was spread out far below them, like a model village, and his heart had lurched and he’d shouted, in alarm, Bell!

And heard her laughing again, a dry, brittle, chattering sound. Looking down in horror to see her coiled on the stones at his feet, those arms and hands weaving in and out of his legs like white serpents.

‘Serpents,’ George spat.

There was an inviting-looking gift shop at the foot of the vast nave, with cards and all the books and pamphlets about Ludlow and its church. Merrily went to stand there while George stood in the nearest aisle, with his feet together and his head hanging down, like a victim of self-crucifixion.

Of course, it went without saying that he’d never behaved like that in his life before, not even when he was a young man, before he’d been married to Nancy.

Well, no.

George was… the epitome of Old Ludlow… An honourable man. Conservative in every conceivable sense of the word.

‘And on the church.’ A bony hand tightening on a pew end. ‘Of all places, on the tower itself, where…’

Where nobody could see them but God.

As if they were putting on a show for Him.

‘On the Monday,’ George said. ‘I formally handed in my resignation as senior churchwarden. Said I was not able to perform the duties as assiduously as was necessary, due to my impending mayoral year. And this, I’m afraid, is the first time I’ve been in here since, apart from services. And even then I feel dirty… soiled. Every Sunday, soiled, a disgrace.’

‘I’m the first person you’ve told?’

‘Other than in my prayers.’

Merrily didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t exactly a huge surprise. There had to have been something. She wondered if Susannah had actually known, from Bell, or if she’d just suspected.

‘George,’ she said. ‘Bell… well, she’s a bit of an expert at this sort of thing. Knows how to…’

‘There can be no excuse!’ George’s knuckles shone like marbles. ‘If I hadn’t already been mayor-elect I’d have turned that down as well.’

‘But surely you realize it was…’

But how could he? How much could he possibly have known or even surmised about Bell’s behaviour?

Not for her to explain to him the probable truth about why Belladonna had seduced him… here…

… That the tower was the spindle in the centre of the wheel of Ludlow and he was its human equivalent. Bell gathering in all her magic, her charisma, and spraying it out in what Jon Scole had called blue sparks. Spraying her sparks all over poor George Lackland, first citizen.

Sympathetic magic , Huw Owen had said. All magic’s sympathetic magic.

‘George…’ Merrily moved away from the table of books. ‘Erm… it was… just the once, wasn’t it?’

George sprang away from the pew. ‘Good God, Mrs Watkins, what do you take me for?’

‘A bloke, George.’ She smiled. ‘You’re just a bloke.’

And, for all his local-government guile, a very naive bloke, even for his generation. He hadn’t seen it coming: the innocent Edwardian dress, the childlike glee at being in his town. And then his sudden exposure, on the top of his world, to this scented siren from another planet.

And what else was there besides the guilt and the shame at betraying his wife, his church, his status and his town? Had he also fallen – hopelessly, disgracefully, unforgivably – just a little in love with Mrs Pepper?

Or maybe more than a little. Oh God, yes.

I don’t go looking for her, Mrs Watkins.

‘You can’t bear to be near her, can you, George?’ she said gently.

George walked out of the aisle, his back to the high altar.

A whisper: ‘Can’t bear to see her.’ It seemed to spiral like smoke to the timbered ceiling.

The prostitutes in this town… they knows their place. And you will agree that place is not, for instance, St Leonard’s graveyard.

Could be that nothing of that nature had ever occurred in St Leonard’s graveyard. George, perhaps, had been expanding Bell’s myth for his own reasons. And always living in fear of it coming out.

‘You want her to leave.’

‘I need her to leave,’ he said. ‘She…’

Was still possessing him, like a dark spirit.

And his town as well. Did he know that?

George and Bell fighting for possession of the essence of Ludlow.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

‘Yes, we better had.’ Maybe Lol would be waiting.

He stepped back for her to go past. She wanted to do something vaguely priestly, if it was only patting him on the shoulder, but that would make him freeze up. So she just walked out.

As he stepped down after locking the church, an elderly man was walking up from the direction of the old college, with a German shepherd on a lead, the narrow street a valley of shadows around him.

‘Can’t hardly credit it, can you, George?’

George spun round. ‘Oh… Tom.’

‘Half of them’s touched, you ask me. Youngsters. Drugs, most likely. You ask me, this girl in the castle’s on drugs. That’s what they’re saying about the other one.’

‘Yes,’ George said. ‘I… I’ve heard that, too. Do you know Mrs Watkins, from the diocese? This is Mr Tom Pritchard. Has the hardware shop just down from us.’

‘Got broke into couple of months ago,’ Tom said severely, to Merrily. ‘Drugs again, I reckon. I hears a noise now, I don’t think twice, I sends this young feller in first.’ He patted the dog. ‘Suppose I’ll get sued if one of ’em gets bit, but I reckon I’ll risk it. Gotter protect yourself, ennit?’ He looked up at the Mayor. ‘Town’s not what it was, George. Our shop’s opened every morning, bar Sundays and Christmas, since the War, come snow, flood, flu, you name it. That boy gets drunk of a night, shop’s shut all day.’

‘What’s that, Tom?’ George pocketed the bunch of church keys.

‘Scole. Calls himself a shopkeeper. Makes you laugh.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Merrily said. ‘Jon Scole’s shop’s not been opened all day?’

‘They got too much money, these days, that’s the thing.’ Tom tugged on the lead. ‘Come on, Tyson.’

‘They’re… always called Tyson, aren’t they?’ Merrily said, as Tom disappeared into the alley to the Buttercross.

Her gaze met George’s.

‘We better take a look,’ George said.

STANDING WITH HIS back to the sandstone, he might have been a Norman baron, his beard like fine chain mail around his face. A baron addressing a serf. Barons, Lol imagined, would seldom actually look at serfs.

And then, when the name of Lord Shipston came out, Saltash did look at him. Really looked at him, for all of a second: at the little round glasses, the too-long hair, the sweatshirt from some minor rural service industry.