‘I thought they were always set in East Anglia.’
‘Sorry to complicate matters, lass.’ No engine rattle now; he’d parked up somewhere. ‘But it seems that James – Monty, as he was known –
came to relate to rural Herefordshire extremely well. You could even say it became a refuge for him.’
‘You didn’t know this before?’
‘Of course I didn’t, else I’d’ve mentioned it.’
‘How come you know it now?’
‘How does any bugger know owt these days? I Googled Montague Rhodes James and found an unusually erudite website called
Ghosts and Scholars
, devoted entirely to the man. How much do
you
know about him?’
‘Hardly anything. He was an academic, wasn’t he?’
‘Divided his career between Eton – his old school – and King’s College, Cambridge. Son of a clergyman, brought up in the parish of Livermere in Suffolk – moody sort of place, apparently, very inspirational. In later years, he reckoned there was only one area to match it.’
‘Let me guess.’
‘Aye. Specifically, the countryside around Kilpeck and Much Dewchurch. Four miles from Garway? Five?’
‘Thereabouts.’
‘The trail, however, does lead to Garway itself.’
Merrily pulled her cloak over her knees, wanting a cigarette. Watching an unexpected sunbeam stroking a mossy headstone. Where was this going?
‘Monty never married,’ Huw said. ‘But he did have a close, though presumed platonic, female friend called Gwendolen McBryde. Widow of his good mate James McBryde, a talented artist, illustrated some of the early stories. Gwen was pregnant when he died, very young, and gave birth to a daughter. Mother and daughter moved to Herefordshire.’
‘As youngish widows with daughters sometimes do.’
Oh, sod it
. She pulled her bag onto the bench, found the cigarettes. ‘Seems Monty would visit Gwen on quite a regular basis,’ Huw said. ‘Finding the countryside much to his taste, like I said. Monty was very fond of old churches and extremely knowledgeable about them. No big surprise that he’d visit Garway.’
‘If you say so.’
‘This is the point. After Monty’s death, Gwen published a collection
of his letters –
Letters from a Friend
. In one of them, James recalls a particular visit to Garway in, I think, 1917. Actually, there are two mentions of Garway, but one just in passing. The one you need to know about … Well, I’ve already emailed it to you. Best if you read it when you get back home.’
‘Huw, for heaven’s sake—’
‘The woman who edits the website, Rosemary Pardoe, says Monty appears to have had, quote,
a peculiar experience
at Garway, the nature of which is, quote,
tantalizingly unclear
, but which he writes about with
typical spooky Jamesian humour
.’
‘Saying …?’
‘Read it when you get back. I don’t want you thinking I’m embroidering it, winding you up. Some places just attract this kind of thing.’
‘
Huw
—’
‘Have to be off, anyroad. I’ve work to do, and so have you.’
And then he wasn’t there, the bastard.
But if he’d thought it was
so
important, surely he’d have told her.
A
FTER THE SERVICE
, when everybody else, even Shirley West, had gone, Merrily had a furtive cigarette with Gomer Parry behind the tower. Asking him what the feeling was in the village about the resurrection of the old stones in Coleman’s Meadow. Maybe most people would actually prefer a new estate of executive homes?
‘En’t so much that, vicar,’ Gomer said. ‘Few more fancy houses en’t the argument. Tip o’ the muck-heap. It’s who’s in bed with Lyndon Pierce. Who wants to see the village turned into a town? Supermarkets and posh restaurants. And who’s on young Janey’s side.’
‘And yours, Gomer. Let’s not forget that.’
‘Ar. I’ll be doin’ my bit, sure to, to see Pierce gets his arse kicked, vicar.’
The light was back, big time, in Gomer’s wire-rimmed glasses, his white hair topping his weathered brown face like the froth on beer. Councillor Pierce had said Gomer Parry was halfway senile, an old joke who ought to be in a home. Gomer would need to be a long way into senility to forget that.
‘Harchaeologists needs a JCB and a driver,’ he said. ‘Won’t be no charge from me.’
‘That’s very generous of you, Gomer. I’m sure Jane’ll see it gets back to the right people. Erm … you know Felix Barlow?’
‘Barlow …’ Gomer adjusted his cap, screwed up his eyes. ‘Builder?’
‘From Monkland. Knows Danny.’
‘Ar. Met the feller a few times over the years. He don’t build no mock-Tudor rainbow-stone crap. Don’t build nothin’ new at all, far’s I can see.’
‘Good bloke?’
‘Oh, straight, I reckon. Liked a drink at one time, so I yeard. That’d be when he was married.’
‘When was that?’
‘Eight years, nine … I lose track. But I remember his wife. Oh, hell, aye, I remember her, all right.’
It started to rain. Merrily leaned into the base of the tower.
‘You know Lizzie Nugent?’ Gomer said. ‘Widow, up by Bearswood?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Husband left her with two kids and a twenty-acre smallholdin’. I was over attendin’ to some ditchin’ one day, early March it’d be, when the gales blows the roof off Lizzie’s cowshed. Smashed to bits. So I calls a few people, see if we could get some galvanized, cheapish, and somebody puts me on to Felix Barlow. He comes round in his truck that same day, with these sheets off a shed he’s took down, and we fixed the ole roof between us. Took us n’ more’n a few hours, and when he found out Lizzie en’t got no insurance he was very reasonable about it, was Felix, no question ’bout that.’
Gomer ignited his roll-up, hands cupped around it.
‘We’re havin’ a cuppa with Lizzie afterwards when up comes this bloody great white BMW. Woman inside leanin’ on the horn till Felix goes out. Givin’ him hell, we could all of us year it. Folks in the next village’d likely year it – all this, what you doin’ yere when you oughter be up at Lady So-and-So’s? What you think you are, bloody registered charity?’
‘This is Mrs Barlow?’
‘Good-lookin’ woman, mind. But it en’t everythin’, is it?’
‘Erm … no. I suppose not.’
‘Barlow goes around helpin’ too many poor widows, where’s the next BMW comin’ from?’
‘You met the woman he’s with now?’
‘The hippie? Never met her, no, vicar.’ Gomer waved his ciggy. ‘Feller’s a bit alternative hisself, mind. Builder as en’t into cheating his clients, that’s alternative for a start, ennit?’
Merrily laughed.
‘Knows the job, too. Could be in an office, collar and tie, directin’
operations. But he knows that money en’t everythin’, no more’n a goodlookin’ woman is.’
‘She
is
a good-looking woman, as it happens.’
‘The hippie?’
‘And not much more than half his age.’
‘Oh well.’ Gomer shrugged, teeth crushing the ciggy. ‘Just cause a feller spends all his time shorin’ up ole buildings, don’t mean all his tools is obsolete.’
Merrily blinked.
Merrily didn’t know what M. R. James had looked like. The only face she could see in her mind was Huw’s, framed by hair like dried-out straw, mounted on an age-dulled dog-collar and settling into a complacent conjuror’s smile.
We must have offended somebody or something at Garway, I think.
‘I
wondered
why you were so anxious,’ Jane said, ‘to borrow the M. R. James.’
Always a danger with emails. She’d been on the computer in the scullery, researching some aspect of stone rows, when Huw’s mail had come through. She’d read it, looked up the references, been into the
Ghosts and Scholars
website.
‘You couldn’t make it up,’ Jane said, still sitting at the desk.
Impressed, excited. Merrily walked to the window.
Oh hell
.
‘Mr James
could
make it up, though, couldn’t he? I mean, that was what he did.’
‘Oh, Mum. It was a letter to his friend. Someone who obviously knew exactly what he was on about. He doesn’t spell it out, does he? He knows she understands his point of reference.’
‘Mmm. Possibly.’
Merrily read the rest of it.
Probably we took it too much for granted, in speaking of it, that we should be able to do exactly as we pleased. Next time we shall know
better. There is no doubt it is a very rum place and needs careful handling.
No, the kid was right. You
couldn’t
make it up. She could see why Huw had insisted on emailing the whole page from the
Ghosts and Scholars
website. Something had happened to M. R. James at Garway. Either something faintly curious which James’s serpentine imagination had inflated into something disturbing. Or something
seriously
disturbing which James, in this otherwise routine letter to a female friend, was deliberately making light of.
The editor of the website had made a kind of pilgrimage to the area to track down the settings for the main Herefordshire story ‘A View from a Hill’. Although the story seemed to be set in the general area of Garway, the village itself didn’t appear to feature, even under a different name.
‘I love this guy.’ Jane was glowing. ‘Greatest ghost-story writer ever. Because he just … well, basically, he just … he didn’t do ghosts.’
‘What did he do, then?’
‘Entities. He did entities. Creeping things. Indefinable things, exuding … malevolence. In traditional settings, like old churches and deserted shores and places with burial mounds. According to the website, he once said there was no point at all in writing about the supernatural if it wasn’t evil.’
‘Doesn’t that kind of invalidate the Bible?’
‘He meant fiction, Mum.’
‘Wow,’ Merrily said, ‘
there
’s a step forward for you.’
‘I mean
complete
fiction. Anyway, he wasn’t exactly anti-religious. His old man was a vicar, in Suffolk. He was brought up in the Church. He might even have gone that way himself if he hadn’t got into academic research and teaching and stuff.’
‘And did
you
know he came to this area?’
‘Well, no! I just
didn’t
! It’s incredible.’
‘But you’ve read all the stories.’
‘Erm …’ Jane fiddled with the mouse. ‘Not
all
of them, to be completely honest.’
‘You totally love him, but you haven’t read all his stories.’
‘OK … mainly, I’ve just seen the TV versions.’
‘I don’t remember us watching them.’
Remembered them being
on
. Usually around Christmas, and mostly before Jane had been born.
‘Erm … I didn’t mean
us
.’ Jane’s face had clouded. ‘I saw them at Irene … Eirion’s. His dad had a complete set of the videos, and we watched most of them one night, one after the other. It was … it was pretty good. We were on our own and we scared ourselves silly.’
‘That must’ve been a long night. Watching them all.’
‘Not that long.’ Jane looked away. ‘They only lasted half an hour each. Or a bit longer.’
Oh, Jane, Jane …
Merrily guessing they’d watched them tucked up together in Eirion’s bed, when his parents were out.
‘Anyway,’ Jane said. ‘The TV versions were obviously set in East Anglia or somewhere. To be honest, I bought the book but I only got round to reading a couple. And I didn’t read the foreword, otherwise I’d’ve known about him coming here. Obviously, I’m now going to read everything. I’m going to find a biography. It’s amazing.’
‘Mmm.’
It was certainly a complication. Did Fuchsia know M. R. James had been to Garway? It was not unlikely.
‘So …’ Jane sat back, hands behind her head. ‘What’s your angle on this, Mum?’
‘Oh, it … it’s just somebody else who scared themselves silly.’
‘In a house belonging to Prince Charles?’
‘Did I tell you that?’
‘Not directly, but I just happened to click on
history
…’
‘And found the Duchy of Cornwall website.’ Merrily nodded, resigned. ‘Right.’
‘Didn’t mean to snoop, but this one was interesting. And you know it never goes any further, with me. Not any more.’
‘I’d’ve told you all about it, if you’d asked.’
‘I know, but … Anyway. Sorry. So, like, the house is at Garway,
then. With the Knights Templar church. How did you get on to M. R. James?’
‘Because … there’s a mention of a Templar preceptory in one of his stories – “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”.’
‘That one is
really
scary. In the TV version, this professor, he’s not what you’d call sociable and he just goes around kind of mumbling to himself on this grey beach, and then he—’
‘Do you know of any more? Any more stories mentioning the Knights Templar?’
‘No, but I could email this website and ask this Rosemary Pardoe, who obviously knows, like,
everything
about M. R.’
‘OK,’ Merrily said. ‘Why not?
Whatever had happened to M. R. James at Garway, he didn’t
appear
to have used it in a story, but perhaps he had, in some less obvious way. If he’d been at Garway in 1917, it would have to be one of the later ones.
And Fuchsia … whatever Fuchsia had seen or imagined or invented at Garway, she’d linked it to a story set in East Anglia, albeit with a Templar connection.
James had talked of next time.
Next time we shall know better
.
You sensed a residual fascination.
‘
Holy shit …
’
‘Jane—’
‘Look at
this …
’
Jane had read further down, to where Rosemary Pardoe was passing on her own observations about Garway Church and its environs. Merrily leaned across.
‘The dovecote?’
‘Mum, did you
know
about this?’
‘Sophie mentioned it. It’s apparently the finest of its period in the country.’
‘Oh, yeah, that too … Now, read the rest. Go on.’
‘It was built by the Knights Templar?’
‘Probably. And then rebuilt by the Hospitallers who took over at Garway. Go on … read it.’