Authors: Phil Rickman
20
Transition
A
FTER DARK, SHE
carried the first of two suitcases of clothes, toiletries and food across Church Street to Lol’s cottage.
The silence of the living room – no bleeps, no strings – felt softer, no longer dispiriting. Merrily switched on the wall lights and the ceiling shone a vibrant orange between chocolate beams. It felt like –
be careful –
coming home.
She fell back into the sofa, thinking about Peter Rector’s room, with the Zoroastrian rugs, the erotic drawings, the books on ritual magic and some not obviously related subjects. In her mind, the room now had an atmosphere of intense serenity so ingrained it was like a perpetual hum. Until you shook a photocopy from a book about religious life in the Black Mountains.
She’d only been once before to Capel-y-ffin, on a late-winter’s afternoon, finding it remote and bleak, residual snow caught like pockets of plaque in the teeth of the rocks.
She wondered about Bliss and the physical problems that were blighting his working life and could still end it prematurely. Had he thought of trying natural therapy? Would he have the patience? Could she help in any practical way?
Shoulders fitted into a corner of the sofa, Merrily stretched out her legs, with a guilty sense of detachment. Could never quite achieve this state at the vicarage. Living, as it were, over the shop, in a too-big house that had to be a refuge, twenty-four/seven, for anybody troubled.
Nobody yet knew where she was. Only Lol. She listened to his
voice in her head, thought of the M-word, a pleasant pre-sleep lethargy setting into her leg muscles.
No time for this. She rolled off the sofa to tug one of the suitcases up the stairs to the bathroom, unload soap and flannel, toothpaste, electric toothbrush, deodorant, towels, underwear. Zipped up the case to take home with her and refill. Maybe one more trip before bedtime – didn’t want to keep going back to the vicarage next week to trouble Martin Longbeach for essential items she’d left behind.
Standing in Lol’s doorway, she felt held in an odd, airless state of transition. Neither here nor there. It was not a particularly warm night – there’d been none so far this summer – but at least the rain was holding off and the cobbled square was mellowed in the yellow-pink glow of the fake gaslamps while a flat, waxing moon dangled like a medal above the church steeple.
Six cars and two Land Rovers were parked on the cobbled square. The council was trying to turn it into a mini pay-and-display car park, and the village was fighting it. Quite right, too, if the Council was prepared to wreck tourism for short-term gain. Visitors hated an unexpected charge in some olde worlde village. It created ill-will against a community which had done nothing to deserve it.
Always some battle in Ledwardine, probably no bad thing.
Ochre lights burned blearily behind the leaded mullioned windows of the Black Swan. She’d have to go across there tomorrow, tell Barry she wouldn’t be at the vicarage next week but Martin Longbeach would. And then she’d have to tell Gomer Parry, who could perhaps keep an eye on Martin because… well, who knew?
When she was locking Lol’s front door behind her, there was a movement on the square: someone in a long mac and a hat coming out of a grey car on the edge of the cobbles, walking over to the market hall to stand uncertainly by one of its corner oak pillars, looking across at the vicarage.
Merrily paused. The man moved slowly across the cobbles,
still glancing up, after every couple of paces, towards the vicarage where the security light was splintered by overhanging trees. Merrily stepped quietly back into the shadow of the Church Street terrace.
There was something about that walk that wasn’t…
Oh God
.
The figure had passed under one of the fake gaslamps, and she’d seen white hair, long neck, cheekbones so high they looked painful for the skin. She’d seen Sylvia Merchant, now decisively crossing the road to the vicarage, vanishing under the moon-dappled ash tree beside the gate.
Bloody hell
. Sylvia Merchant coming to visit? Normal reaction would be to walk boldly over, invite her in for a cup of tea and a chat. Ask her – diplomatically, at first – where exactly she’d got the idea that a few prayers constituted an attempted exorcism.
But there was Sophie…
…
had to call Ms Merchant back and tell her that I’d forgotten you were on holiday
.
George Curtiss, Cathedral canon, was supposed to have gone to talk some sense into Sylvia Merchant. Diplomatic George. What had happened to that idea?
Merrily slipped back inside Lol’s cottage, shut the door and returned to the living room, keeping the light out. Watching from the window, opening it slightly, in time to pick up, from across the silence, the echoing
thock, thock
of a knocker on old oak.
Evidently, Ms Merchant had been given reason to think the vicar was
not
on holiday. But if she wanted to talk, rather than file a complaint, why didn’t she phone first?
After a couple of minutes, Ms Merchant emerged from under the trees and seemed to be talking to someone, rather crossly. Nobody there, of course. Nobody on the square except Ms Merchant, her coat hanging open, the end of the belt swinging.
Mutter, mutter
.
Ms Merchant stood looking around the village square. The only sounds were the distant hiss and thump of the juke box in the Ox, down the bottom of Church Street. Normality.
For a shivery moment, Merrily was reminded of Big Weale, the Mid Wales solicitor whom Eileen Cullen, the nursing sister from Hereford Hospital, had sworn she’d seen emerging from the hospital mortuary, where his dead wife lay, followed by… an
indistinctness
. Big Weale had been very dangerously disturbed. Probably nothing like that happening here. People
did
chat to the recently departed. Nothing wrong with that. Part of the process of letting go.
Ms Merchant didn’t immediately return to her car but walked a few yards up to the church lychgate, looking up at the moon over the steeple. Stayed there for a couple of minutes before presumably deciding, by the absence of interior lights, that Merrily wasn’t in the church either, then walked back to the square.
The light from a fake gaslamp, as she passed under it, showed she was smiling, rather grimly, as she unlocked the car with the bleeper and then went around to the passenger door and held it open for the empty air.
PART THREE
The night sky looked pale and
strange. Reflected in the window
I saw a glimmer of flame…
‘Join the ranks of the homeless,’
remarked a hippy standing next
to me.
Richard Booth
My Kingdom of Books
(1999)
21
An extremely brief affair
‘A
ND WHERE, PRAY
, is Robinson today?’ Miss White asked sweetly. ‘Are you an
ex-item
, as they say? Has he tired of your piety and your wearisome soul-scouring and found himself a new home between the thighs of some cheery little whore?’
She was crouching behind her Zimmer like a cat in a cage. None of the other residents was in this particular lounge. Occasionally a wizened face would peer around the door at the far end of the room and then vanish when it discerned the occupant.
‘Athena,’ Merrily said, ‘I’m awfully afraid that… Robinson is working. But he sends his…’
‘Regrets? I doubt it.’ Miss White was sitting in a strong, supportive armchair with the Zimmer in front of it. She peered over the frame, curious. ‘You didn’t call me Anthea. You must want something. How exciting. What’ve you brought me?’
‘Left your chocolates with Mrs Cardelow to share among the other old ladies.’
Poor Mrs Cardelow, who, on arriving at The Glades, must have thought her worst problems would be linked to dementia. As distinct from a malevolent, alien intellect in a bushbaby’s body.
Miss White’s eyes narrowed. Was she wearing heavy mascara or were they just becoming more satanic? Merrily pulled out one of the harder chairs and sat down a safe distance away, her black hoodie unzipped to expose the pectoral cross.
‘So… when will you be back on your feet? I thought people were supposed to do a fair bit of walking after hip replacement.’
‘Never walked anywhere without a specific purpose, Watkins, as you know.’
‘I thought that
was
the purpose.’
Miss White scowled.
‘Felt compelled to discharge myself soon after surgery. No one warned me that the art of being a patronizing little shit is now part of the core curriculum at medical schools. On which basis…’ She lifted the Zimmer to one side, exposing her cuddly mauve jersey dress ‘… I suppose I should greet you like a breath of fresh air.’ She sniffed. ‘No, that’s not right, either. Never mind. Why did you leave my chocolates with Cardelow?’
‘Mmm…’ Merrily looked out of the window, across the grounds to the Radnor hills, dark with impending rain. Actually she had the overpriced Belgian chocs in her bag. ‘If what I’ve heard is correct, you can now afford to buy your own. Also the finest thirty-year-old malt.’ Turning back to Miss White. ‘In quantity.’
Taking care not to smile. It was a gamble, but the odds were very much against the old vampire bat ever lowering herself so far as to ask how Merrily knew about the Cusop inheritance.
‘Watkins, I should say at the outset that if you’ve come about your pathetic steeple fund or the… parish orphanage, or some such—’
‘Wouldn’t be so crass, Anthea. I’ve come about Peter Rector. A man even older than you. Whose mental decline can only be measured by the way he’s disposed of his assets.’
You didn’t drop your guard and you didn’t give an inch. But her palms were moist and she had to clear her throat.
‘Hard as it is for me even to frame the question,’ she said, ‘does this mean that you might have been the, erm, love of his life?’
Miss White frowned, but her voice was tiny and kittenish.
‘Try harder.’
‘All right. Ruling out the possibility of some enormous, back-dated blackmail payoff, we’re probably looking at something that
would take a long time to explain to someone without an extensive knowledge of the dark arts. Closer?’
No reply.
‘Of course, you don’t have to tell me anything. Or even the police.’
‘Watkins, you wouldn’t
dare
deprive me of the pleasure of demoralizing a detective.’
You had to accept that even the appearance of an Armed Response Unit fanning out across the lawn would elicit no more from Miss White than a faintly scornful smile. But now, quite suddenly, she was serious.
‘Seems to me, Watkins, that the only way you could know of my… well, you might think of it as good fortune, but at my age it’s no more than a tedious responsibility… is, indeed, from the police. Who aren’t yet ruling out the possibility that Peter Rector was murdered. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And who, perforce, must now dip their clomping boots into unfamiliar waters. So some superintendent approaches his masonic brother, the Bishop of Hereford, with a view to obtaining some assistance from his appointed “advisor on the paranormal”…’
‘
No!
Hell… the Bishop’s not even in the Masons…’
At least, not any more.
Merrily pulled her bag onto her knees.
‘Do they allow smoking in here, Athena?’
‘Of course. They also allow the snorting of decent-quality cocaine and a limited amount of oral sex. Help me up. We’ll go outside.’
The lawn slanted down to a golden row of laburnums and a teak bench, with a dedication plate, on which they sat, with the Zimmer alongside, as the smoky clouds crept up on them.
‘One cop,’ Merrily said. ‘A friend. No inquiry. Just suspicions. And I’m not even at work. I’m on holiday.’
Miss White peered at her from a corner of the bench.
‘Do I believe you?’
‘I’m a Christian.’
Miss White turned away and gazed, through a gap in the trees, at the modest grey twin-bell tower of Hardwicke Church in the middle distance and the hills of Radnor on the other side of the hidden Wye.
‘Very well. I’ll go this far with you. I’ll concede a difficulty in accepting that my friend Peter Rector died as a result of what the coroners used to call misadventure.’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Forty years.’
‘Did you see him often?’
‘Saw him hardly at all.’
‘What bothers… some people… is that Mr Rector seems to have had visitors only hours before his death. I suppose it could save a lot of trouble if you were able to explain to me, so that I can explain to my friend, what they might have been doing there.’
‘And did some nosy neighbour report that one of them was on a Zimmer?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘That’s probably because I wasn’t there. So how would I know about his possibly apocryphal visitors?’
‘Well, maybe you wouldn’t, but I was thinking you might know why he was living there, under a spurious name, and… essentially, I suppose, what he was up to.’
Athena White adjusted herself on the bench.
‘Let’s be clear about something. There are – always have been – things I know about but can’t discuss. Any more than I could, in my former occupation, break the Official Secrets Act.’
Merrily didn’t really know what her former occupation had been, other than that it had included a period at GCHQ, the government communications centre at Cheltenham. You assumed it involved ciphers and the linguistics of espionage. But
for all anyone really knew she might have been Head of Accounts.
‘I take it you know why Mr Rector left you his house and contents and… all his money?’
‘Not
all
his money. He has a daughter in Canada or somewhere. She’ll get half the money. And of course I know why I’ve been left the house. I also know I’m not obliged to tell anyone. And I won’t.’
‘And who will
you
leave the house to?’
‘That’s an interesting point. And pertinent. I don’t yet know. But to return to the first part of your original questions, I imagine he moved here for the same reason he moved to Wales. Now he’s dead, I can admit that I first encountered him while on secondment to the Security Service during the early seventies.’
‘MI5?’
‘Call it what you like if it gives you a
frisson
. There were worrying elements of neo-Nazism around at that time, even down to the pathetic little urban skinheads with swastikas tattooed on their skulls. Rector’s book was quite subtly written, from the wartime Nazi point of view, to show how magical thought – even when corrupted, or perhaps
especially
when corrupted – could damage the physical world. Some factions found it terribly exciting in a contemporary sense.’
‘Neo-Nazis?’
‘Rector’s book was a considerable influence on extreme right-wing activists. It suggested there was what you might call a dark energy just waiting to be tapped into again. It suggested he knew even more than he’d put into the book. We needed to know – to begin with – who his sources were and to what extent the… darkly inspirational effects of the book were intentional. I was asked to… look into him. Chosen, I suppose, for my knowledge of… certain allied matters.’
‘So your employers knew about your interest in the esoteric.’
‘Well, of course. Would’ve been futile to try and conceal something
they could, occasionally, use in the national interests. In this instance, it amounted – initially – to little more than attending Peter’s lectures and working out where he was coming from.’
‘And that was…?’
‘Oh… Peter Rector had a great developed talent for what one might call magical empathy. He could project himself into other people’s consciousness, see through their eyes. Whether you want to believe this was simply the application of advanced visualization is up to you. It’s something which, in future years, he was able to pass on to pupils – especially writers – with considerable success.’
‘You’re saying that when he wrote the book he was allowing himself to empathize with the Nazi shamans or whatever—’
‘Precisely. Entirely factual material, but the presentation was a creative exercise. Never entered his head that he’d be seen as a sympathizer. By the time I was following him around he’d become a latent hippy, growing his hair, and experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs. He was giving talks and interviews about Nazi occultism only because his publishers were making him. And for the money, of course. He was also becoming alarmed about the kind of people who were pursuing him.’
‘Pursuing?’
‘Writing long letters to him, waiting for him after his lectures. Tracing him to his hotel. Sitting next to him on trains. My own masters, of course, by this time, were now far more interested in
them
. Which is how I came to befriend him.’
‘You were told to.’
‘Well, of
course
I was told to. He just wanted to run away, but the service was keen for him to stick around and quietly encourage these individuals so that they could be identified and kept under surveillance. My job was to get him to cooperate.’
Well, well…
‘You’d have been about… my age, then?’
‘I would imagine.’
And doubtless very sexy.
‘And, erm… did you succeed?’
‘For a limited period. And, before you ask, I have no intention of going further down that particular thoroughfare.’
‘Heavens, Athena, you were a
honey trap
?’
Miss White gazed into the hills, expressionless.
‘Remove that foolish grin from your face,’ she said, quite mildly, ‘before I’m compelled to slap it. It was never going to be a long-term thing. Peter hated playing a double game and hated, even more, having to associate with these wall-eyed maniacs in their leather coats.’
‘But he rather liked you.’
Miss White sighed.
‘In that sense, it was an extremely brief affair. A certain mutual respect remained, however, and we kept in touch, mostly by telephone. We, as they say,
looked out
for one another. When he moved to the mountains, he asked if I’d like to be involved in his study centre. I declined. The thought of all those ghastly people in search of spiritual fulfilment… besides, I knew it wouldn’t last. These things never do.’
‘But when you retired, you came here.’
‘Some years
after
I retired, I came here. I like the air.’
‘Do you remember when Rector came to Cusop under the name David Hambling?’
‘Of course I remember. It was about a year after he phoned me one night and said, “Why do they keep coming back? Why are they doing this to me?”’