The Cure of Souls (10 page)

‘Al was here, too?’

‘For a while.’

‘That was how you met?’

‘Romanies can be charming.’ She didn’t smile. ‘Also infuriating.’

Lol peered at a picture showing a girl lying in one of the hop-cribs, laughing and helpless, men standing around.

‘Cribbing,’ Sally said. ‘When the picking was almost over, an unmarried girl would be seized and tossed into the crib with the last of the hops. The unspoken implication was that she, too, might be picked before next year’s bines were high on the poles.’ She looked solemn. ‘Al and I met when I was… drawn to the Romany ways. I’ve been planning to write a book. Well, I
was
planning to. In the end, I gave all my material to Mr Ash, for
his
book. I suppose this place is better than a book, in the end. More interactive, as they say. And Al, like most Romanies, is suspicious of the written word.’

‘Doesn’t seem to have done Mr Ash much good either,’ Lol said hesitantly, ‘in the end.’

She looked at him thoughtfully, as if deciding how much to say. ‘No,’ she agreed eventually. ‘Stewart was the last casualty – we all hope – in an unhappy chain of events at Knight’s Frome.’ She nodded towards the next doorway. ‘Go through.’

No hop-bines hung in the third and smallest room. It was also the darkest, with no windows and few lights. A long panel in a corner was spotlit. It was a painting on board, in flat oils, or acrylics, of a stark and naked hop-yard at night, with pole-alleys black against a moonlit sky, a tattered bine hanging from one of the frames. Halfway down the central row, hovering above the bare ground, was a woman in a long dark dress, like Sally’s, billowing in the wind. The caption read:
The Lady of the Bines: a ghost story
.

If Sally noticed he’d gone quiet, she didn’t comment on it.

‘The hop-farmer’s angel of death,’ she said with a curator’s jollity.

There was a half-smile on the face of the woman in the picture.

‘Who painted it?’

‘I did,’ Sally said.

‘It’s really good. It’s as if—’

‘As if I’ve actually seen her?’ She laughed lightly. ‘Perhaps I have. Sometimes I can imagine I have.’

Lol was glad it was dark in here. This was unreal – the sequel to a dream.

‘I expect there’s a story,’ he said.

‘She was the wife of some local lord or knight – maybe the original knight of Knight’s Frome, for all I know. And she couldn’t give him a son. So he sent her away.’

‘Like you do.’

‘Like you
did
, apparently. What was the point of having the king give you a few hundred acres of stolen land if you couldn’t found a dynasty? Anyway, he threw her out. Gave her some money to go away, and then settled down with his mistress. But the poor, spurned lady pined for the valley. Pined all night long in the fields and the hop-yards.’

‘Is this true?’ It sounded like the theme of a traditional folk song.

‘Until one morning, one beautiful midsummer morning, with the hops ripening on the bines,’ her voice hardened, ‘they found the poor bitch hanging from one of the frames.’

‘When was this?’

‘Don’t know. No one does. It’s a legend. I suppose, if it had any basis in fact, the story couldn’t have dated back earlier than the sixteenth century because hops weren’t grown for brewing in this country until 1520. The postscript is that, from the night she died, the knight’s hops began to wither on the bines and his yard was barren for many years. And if you see her ghost, then your crop will also wither… or someone’s will.’

Lol recalled the shrivelled old hop-garland hanging from the gibbet-like arrangement of poles. He didn’t want to think about the naked woman in the hop-yard. He found himself wanting her to have been a ghost. Ghosts were simpler.

‘She’s become a metaphor for Verticillium Wilt,’ Sally said. ‘And, before that, for red spiders, aphids, white-mould… all the scourges of the hop. Wilt, particularly, renders a hop-yard virtually sterile for a number of years. Perhaps you should write a song about her, Lol.’

‘It’s a thought,’ he said uncertainly – although he knew he could. If he knew what he was writing about.

‘Perhaps we could have it playing softly in this room.’ Sally Boswell laughed. Lol thought she didn’t seem to have much sympathy for either the knight or the Lady of the Bines.

‘She still seen?’

‘Depends who you believe. It’s certainly said she was widely observed in the sixties.’ She nodded towards a black and white photograph of a man with a heavy moustache, who looked a bit like Lord Lucan. ‘But then, people would say that – in the last days of the Emperor of Frome, when all was darkness and chaos.’

She was poised to go on, but for Lol, the darkness and chaos could wait.

He hadn’t planned to ask it. He just did. ‘Does she always have a dress on?’

Sally Boswell’s face was gaunt with shadows. From two rooms away, there was a skimming of strings: the legendary Al stowing away his creation.

‘What an extraordinary question,’ she said coldly.

M
UFFLED SOBBING GAVE
way to those time-honoured battle-cries from the generation war.

‘
Leave me alone! Just go away! It’s nothing to
do
with you!
’

The clouds were a deep luminous mauve now, and the sky looked like a taut, well-beaten drum-skin through the long window pane in the front door.

It was stifling in the small, rectangular hall with its beige woodchip and wall-lights with peeling coppery shades. Merrily stood under a print in a chipped gilt frame: Christ on the Mount of Olives. Opposite her was a cream door with a little pottery plaque on it.

Amy’s Room

The door was closed, but its plywood panels were not exactly soundproof. Merrily thought David Shelbone, historic-buildings officer, was unlikely ever to see his own home listed, except as a classic example of 1970s Utility. How did the Shelbones spend their money? Probably on their adopted child? Perhaps long, educational holidays.

‘
Amy. Please
.’

‘
I… am… not… going… anywhere! Do you understand? There is nothing wrong with me! And… and if there is, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s nothing to do with
her.
Just get her out of the house. Please. This is… disgraceful
.’

Please? Disgraceful?
Comparatively speaking, this was a
restrained, almost polite response. In extreme situations, kids were rarely able to contain extreme language.
You sad old bitch
had sometimes been Jane’s starting point, before things got heated.

Hazel Shelbone murmured something Merrily didn’t catch.

‘
No!
’ Amy screamed. ‘
You… How dare you make out there’s something wrong with me?
’

‘
Amy, do you really think you’d be in any position to judge, if there was?
’

‘
What do
you
know? What do you know about the way I feel? How can you understand? You’re not even
—’

Merrily willed her not to say it. This was not the time to say it.

‘
—my moth
—’

Then the unmistakable and always-shocking sound of a slap. Merrily closed her eyes.

An abyss of silence. Jane would have been composing a response involving the European Court of Human Rights.

Amy just started to cry again, long hollow sobs, close to retching.

But this was surely not the first time she’d thrown out the not-my-mother line. There had to be something additional to have provoked Hazel, the seasoned foster-mother, the reservoir.
And when I look into her eyes
…

With no windows you could open, it was hard to breathe in here. Merrily ran a finger around the inside of her dog collar, walked away towards the front door. She felt like an intruder. She felt this was becoming futile. She looked across into the placidly glowing face of Jesus in the picture, and Jesus smiled, in His knowing way.

Merrily closed her eyes again, let her arms fall to her sides, stilled her thoughts.

Mrs Shelbone was saying, ‘
Oh, my darling, I’m so sorry, but you
—’

‘
Go away. Just
go away.’

‘
We only want to
—’

‘
You
can’t
help me. Nobody can help me
.’

‘
The Good Lord can help you, Amy
.’

Another silence. No sniffles, no whimpers. Then, as Merrily straightened up, Amy said,

‘
There’s no such thing as a Good Lord, you stupid woman
.’

‘
Amy!
’

‘
It’s all just a sick, horrible joke! There’s nobody out there who can protect us. Or if… if God exists, he just totally hates us. He watches us suffer and die and he doesn’t do a thing to help us. He doesn’t help us, ever, ever, ever! He enjoys watching us suffer. You can plead and plead and plead, and you can say your prayers till you’re b–blue in the face and nobody’s going to ever save you. It’s all a horrible sick lie! And the Church is just a big… a big
cover-up.
It’s all smelly and musty and horrible and it’s full of dead people, and I don’t… I don’t want to die in
—’

Merrily leaned back against the wall. Christ gave her a sad smile. The door of Amy’s Room opened. Hazel Shelbone stood there, stone-faced. ‘Mrs Watkins? Would you mind—?’

‘
Don’t you dare bring her in here! I’m not talking to her, do you understand?
’

Merrily took a step back along the hall. Something
had
happened to this kid. If not a sneering boyfriend, what about some cool, compelling atheistic teacher?

She whispered, ‘Hazel, I… think, on the whole, it might be better if Amy came out, and—’

‘
I’m warning you, if she comes in here I’ll smash the window. Do you hear me? I’ll smash the window and I’ll get out of here for good! I’ll throw the chair through the window. Can you hear—?
’

‘I’m sorry.’ Mrs Shelbone pulled the door closed behind her, new lines and hollows showing in her wide, honest face. ‘I don’t know what to do. She’s never been quite like this before, I swear to you.’

‘
You just keep lying to me. Lies, lies, lies!
’

Merrily opened the front door and stepped down to the flagged garden path, followed by Amy’s mother.

The bungalow was detached but fairly small, with a bay
window each side of the door. There were other houses and bungalows either side of the country lane, well separated, with high hedges and gardens crowded with trees and bushes.

The sky was the colour of a cemetery. In contrast, a small yellow sports car, parked half up on the grass verge, looked indecently lurid.

‘Hazel, what does she mean by lies?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve told you, this is not my Amy. I don’t know how she can say these things about God.’

But she looked away as she spoke, and Merrily thought perhaps she
did
know… knew
something
, anyway.

‘What’s she been like at school?’

‘Well behaved, always well behaved. Her teachers have nothing but praise for her.’

‘Do you know her teachers?’

‘Most of them. We’ve always made it our business to know them. As good parents.’

‘What about her friends?’

‘She’s…’ A sigh. ‘She’s never had many friends. She’s very conscientious, she studies hard. She’s always felt she had to, because… well, she’s bright, but she’s no genius. Because she’s adopted, I think she feels she has to make it up to us. Make us proud, do you see? Good children, children who study hard, they aren’t always very popular at school these days, are they?’

‘Has she been bullied, do you think? Picked on?’

But after that one small confidence, Mrs Shelbone had tightened up again. ‘Look, Reverend Watkins, this isn’t what I expected at all. I think she needs an infusion of God’s love, not all sorts of questions.’

Merrily sighed. ‘I’ll be honest with you. I’m not really sure how to handle this. Can’t take it any further without talking to her, and if I go in there, it’s likely to cause a scene, isn’t it? The last thing I want is to upset her any more. I mean… I suppose I could start by taking off the dog collar.’

Mrs Shelbone’s brown eyes hardened. ‘What’s the point of
that
? You’re a priest. Aren’t you?’

Merrily stared hopelessly at the close-mown lawn, at the well-weeded flowerbeds. Demonic evil was something you could sense, like a disgusting smell – sometimes precisely that. The only identifiable odour in this house had been floor-cleaner wafting from the kitchen. All she’d sensed in there were confusion, distress… and perhaps something else she couldn’t yet isolate. But it wasn’t evil.

In the end, all she had – the only universally accepted symptom of spiritual or diabolic possession – was the mother’s suggestion of a sudden, startling clairvoyance.

‘You said she knew things. Things she couldn’t have known.’

‘I’m sorry I said that, now.’ A nervous glance back at the house, as though a chair might come crashing through the window. ‘It’s nothing I can prove.’

‘
What
things?’

‘This isn’t the time, Mrs Watkins.’

‘What kind of… intrusion do you think might be affecting her?’

‘Isn’t that for you to find out? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to—’

‘Help me,’ Merrily said.

Amy’s mother stared over the low hedge, across the lane. ‘The spirit of a dead person.’

Merrily didn’t blink. ‘Specifically?’

There was a movement at the window of a room to the left of the door. The child stood there, not six feet away. She wore a white, sleeveless top. Her fair hair hung limply to her shoulders. She looked maybe twelve. She looked stiff and waxen. The room behind her was all featureless dark, like the background to a portrait.
It’s so cold now. There’s a sense of cold. The cold you can feel in your bones
.

Merrily tried to attract Amy’s gaze, but the kid was looking beyond her.

She turned. Nothing. Nothing had changed in the lane. There was nobody about; even the yellow sports car was pulling away.

It began to rain – big, warm, slow drops. When she looked back at the bungalow, the girl had vanished.