Authors: Phil Rickman
8
No strings
W
HEN SHE PUT
down the phone, an emphatic echo clanged in the air, as if something had shut her out.
This phone was good at finality: 1950s black Bakelite, heavy as a small barbell. A present from Jane. Useful for keeping the bills down, the kid had said – you couldn’t wait to hang up.
That was when she
was
a kid.
In the scullery office, silvery early light was draped in the window overlooking the narrowest part of the garden and the churchyard wall. The scullery ceiling was supported by a sixteenth-century beam, gouged and pitted, the colour of old tobacco. Too big for the job now, it had probably been central to whatever the vicarage had been in its young days.
She’d never thought about that before. Never had time.
Guessed you’d be up
, Jane had said just now, on the phone.
I’m just, like, ringing to see if you’re OK?
Merrily telling her she was every bit as OK as she was last night, when Jane had last rung. Asking what the weather was like down there in West Wales.
Crap, but that’s all right. They can’t get started anyway. Still waiting for the geofizz
.
Merrily smiling to herself, knowing how long the kid had been waiting to talk like an archaeologist. Smiling to herself because there was nobody else to smile to. There’d been a change of plan. Jane had gone for the West Wales dig instead of Wiltshire because they’d agreed to take Eirion as well, for a month.
The only difference was it had meant leaving a week earlier. Not a problem for Eirion, who was at university. Not a problem for Jane who’d missed her final two weeks at high school… and thus the appalling Prom.
Slight problem for Merrily.
Back to the kitchen and into the main hall, to the front door, past the framed print of Holman Hunt’s
Light of the World
. Housewarming present from Uncle Ted, the head churchwarden, to whom she’d been a disappointment, a neglecter of the parish. Here was Jesus Christ with his lantern, outside the kind of weathered old door you found here in Ledwardine, his eyes baggy with sorrow, compassion and a hint of – what – disillusion? Disappointment? Him too?
Avoiding the eyes, she went out and stopped herself from locking the front door behind her. This was Ledwardine. Whoever locked their doors in Ledwardine?
Everybody, now.
A wave for Jim Prosser, cutting the string on the morning papers dumped outside the Eight Till Late – Jim, who kept announcing that he and Brenda were getting out, going back to Wales, somewhere bleak and stony where no incomers came in demanding lychees and fresh figs.
On the edge of the market square, now, opposite the crab-like, oak-pillared market hall, mostly used these days as a bus shelter. Nobody sheltering there from today’s intermittent rain. The cobbles glistening muddily on the square, old guttering dribbling around the roofs of the black and whites.
Ledwardine: an old slapper who could look after herself. She’d be there when they were all long dead, probably looking much the same despite the efforts of various developers and the whisper of money slid under council tables.
Not yet eight a.m. Merrily crossing Church Street to Lol’s terraced cottage, letting herself in to an empty hush, no bleeps from the answering machine. When Lol was merely out,
temporarily, you’d walk in here, and the draught when you shut the door would cause a shivering of strings from the Boswell.
But the guitar stand was abandoned, an upturned V of black metal, empty padded rests. No vibration. No strings.
Picking up the mail from the mat: all junk. Fuel-saving offers, insurance deals. Carried them through to the recycling bin, which had been made by a firm called SimpleHuman.
Jesus, if only. She’d be doing this day after day. And next week, she was on holiday. A lonely holiday she couldn’t get out of.
In front of the cold stove in the inglenook, she came close to weeping for a moment before scowling it away and opening a window to let in some street sounds. What she wasn’t going to do again was wander upstairs, lie on Lol’s bed and sob into his pillow.
Jane would have told her how daft and pathetic she was being. But Jane had driven off with Eirion Lewis, the two of them looking like a grown-up couple.
Eirion, yeah
– Jane on the phone to Neil Cooper, the archaeologist –
my partner
. Partner? Jesus wept, at which stage did Eirion become her
partner
? They were
kids
. Could never have called Lol her partner. A loose, casual, cowboy word, no real commitment involved.
No strings.
When she got back, Ethel was mewing in legitimate protest; if Jane had been here, she’d have been fed by now.
‘Sorry, Ethel… sorry, sorry, sorry…’
She forked out half a tray of Sheba, the expensive stuff, the special treat food, and then made herself some breakfast, honey and toast. Tried to eat it sitting at the refectory table and suddenly had a picture of herself as if from above, CCTV from the ceiling: one small person at one end of a long, communal table.
The vicarage was vast. It had seven bedrooms, two of them used as stockrooms for the gift shop in the vestry. Maybe she should start taking in battered wives, asylum seekers…
She was stupidly relieved when the old phone jangled and she had to carry the plate through to the scullery office, half a slice of thick toast and honey clenched between her teeth.
‘You didn’t come in yesterday,’ Sophie said.
‘Oh…’
Monday. Yesterday had been Monday. Traditionally a vicar’s day off, hers always sacrificed on the altar of Deliverance, the little extra job. Monday was the weekly meeting with Sophie at the gatehouse office to go through the Deliverance database, reply to any queries from parish priests, many of whom found this aspect of their role distasteful and couldn’t unload it fast enough. Also, to see who might require aftercare. What Uncle Ted called neglecting the parish. But if it wasn’t for the little extra job she’d probably have seven parishes by now and he’d be lucky to see her every other week.
‘Yes, well, something…’ Putting the plate on the desk, dropping the toast on it ‘… something came up. Sorry, Sophie. Could we possibly make it this afternoon?’
Sophie would be arranging her chained glasses to consult the diary.
‘The Bishop should be on the train to London by then, so… yes, I suppose so.’
Small clink: the glasses rejoining the pearls on Sophie’s chest. Her primary function was as Bishop’s lay secretary, so the Bishop was always going to come first. Actually, that wasn’t true; with Sophie, the Cathedral came first… although this was possibly a metaphor for something more amorphous at the ancient heart of Hereford.
‘Good. Excellent. Thanks.’ Merrily picked up the slice of toast, bit off a small piece. A good day to get out of here. Maybe they could grab some lunch in Hereford, her and Sophie. ‘Erm… anything I need to know about, meanwhile?’
Sophie would never ring out of pique, just because a meeting had been missed.
‘It’ll wait.’
‘No…’ Call it intuition. ‘Go on…’
‘You’re probably not going to like this, Merrily.’
Merrily put down the toast.
‘It’s Ms Merchant, isn’t it?’
‘Must’ve rung very early this morning. Evidently exasperated at getting an answering machine. As if we ought to be operating a twenty-four-hour service.’
‘And Ms Nott? Ms Nott is still with her?’
‘If I play the message to you now, you might want to consider your options on the way here.’
Sophie must have had the message already wound back. Ms Merchant’s voice was as low and calm as ever but carried, in Merrily’s head, like a barn owl’s screech.
‘
Mrs Hill, I’m afraid your young woman didn’t do what I wanted her to do. In essence, Ms Nott is not smiling any more.’
Merrily sat down.
‘I thought this would come.’
This was how the working day began.
With a blossoming madness.
9
Old habits
F
ROM THE DOORWAY
, Betty watched Robin sleeping in the chair, sprawled diagonally like some spent warrior, in the only position his wounds would allow. He’d been growing his hair again. She recalled the day he’d found a small tuft of grey, attacked his Lord Madoc tresses in disgust.
But he was asleep again, that was the main thing. The past two nights he’d lain awake, stricken with back pain and anxiety: oh, this was all a mistake, the shop would fail; in this bleak new age of atheism, paganism was passé.
If it had been meant, Robin said, they would’ve sold the damn bungalow.
Yes, that was a bummer. Betty had set herself to cleaning and rearranging and making the bungalow look good for the market and not too scary. Taking down the framed star-charts and the green man, lifting the goddess from her niche behind the door and packing her in straw in a wine box.
In just under a month, five couples had been to view the place. None of them had stayed long. Yesterday, the estate agent had phoned.
‘Mrs Thorogood,’ he’d said, tentatively, ‘if I could suggest… have you thought about perhaps finding somewhere to store your books?’
Good point. You never thought when you lived with them day to day, but books on pagan magic seldom came with muted covers.
The supermarket had given her dozens of strong cardboard boxes. They’d spent all morning packing up all the books which would fill the truck maybe ten times before they were all gone.
But the shop in Back Fold was nearly ready for them, with a new midnight blue ceiling on which Robin had painted a full moon and stars in formation. It was starting to look right.
Even if didn’t feel right. Why? Why, why, why?
Betty went quietly into their small bedroom with the mobile, sat on the end of the bed and made her call.
‘I don’t understand,’ Mr Oliver said. ‘You think I’m hiding something?’
Betty saw she’d left the bedroom door open a crack and got up to shut it. Thin walls, cheap doors; voices carried in the bungalow. In Robin’s up-and-down state, best not to involve him in this. Not yet, anyway.
‘You said you bought the shop as a retirement business but found it too time-consuming.’
‘That was…’ Mr Oliver cleared his throat ‘… perhaps an oversimplification.’
‘And yet, by all accounts, you weren’t doing much business at all. I’m sorry – just passing on what I’ve heard… from a number of sources.’
They’d talked to nobody apart from Paramjeet Kapoor, but if you had good reason to believe something was true, it was morally acceptable to pursue it.
Morally
. Funny how this had become increasingly important to her. In pagan theologies, morals, if they played any part at all, tended to be naive and simplistic.
She heard Mr Oliver drawing a long breath.
‘Mrs Thorogood, these people, booksellers… they’re not what you think they’re going to be – not what I expected, certainly. And the worst kind of gossips. This town’s full of gossip. My wife hasn’t been well, that’s why we’ve had to keep closing the shop for days at a time.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Betty said. ‘You couldn’t find anyone else to work there part time?’
‘You can’t just have someone on a string. They want something solid, need to know which days they’re working.’
‘You see, we didn’t ask to look at your books – business accounts, I mean, anything like that, because our business would be different. But what I—’
‘You’d have learned nothing meaningful. All shops are going through a difficult time.’
‘I was also told…’ Another guess ‘… that the shop had changed hands quite a lot in quite a short period.’
‘That’s not uncommon in Hay. Never has been. Not everyone adapts easily. It isn’t London and it isn’t Oxford.’
He’d sounded as if he’d hoped it would be. Even Robin wasn’t that naive.
‘And presumably you’re only offering the shop for rent because you’ve tried to sell it?’
‘Anyone in the town would have told you – and I expect they did – that it was for sale for several months.’
‘You said – which I thought was very honest – that nobody else had wanted to actually live there.’
‘That’s not
exactly
what I said, Mrs Thorogood.’
‘Is it possible that these premises have… a reputation?’
‘Goodness, what
have
those people—? It’s an old building, it’s not in the best of condition. And it can get cold in the winter. That’s why we’re not overcharging. If there are any underlying problems with the plumbing or the electrics that I’m not aware of, you may be sure they’ll be put right as soon as I’m notified.’
‘That’s not really what I meant. Are you aware of anything that happened there in the past, which might have cast—?’
‘Like what?’
‘Something that…’
Careful now
. ‘Something which might be thought to have left… an atmosphere?’
It could be a smell. Mothballs might bring on an image of an old woman moving around, counting the dresses in the
wardrobe, a sense of sadness, regret, missed opportunities. Most people could do this if they spared the time, and the more they did it the stronger the sensations would be, the more vivid the images.
‘Mrs Thorogood, if you’re asking what I think you’re asking, I’ve heard that some poor chap once hanged himself in Back Fold, but not on my premises. That’s the only unnatural death I’ve heard of here.’
‘Who was there before you?’
‘It was an antique shop… well, more of a junk shop. Already empty when the agent took us to view. I thought that in turning it into a bookshop again I was doing something to reinforce the foundations of Hay.’
‘Why had it closed?’
‘Why do any of them close? I was told they needed bigger premises. Mrs Thorogood, I’d be most displeased if any unfounded rumours were to spread. And just to be absolutely clear, when I said no unnatural death, I meant people. More or less the whole of Back Fold had a single purpose at one time. Slaughter.’
Betty said nothing.
‘Of animals,’ Mr Oliver said.
‘When was this?’
‘Until comparatively recently, I believe. Seems to have gone back
many
years. Centuries. It would have been the castle abattoir. Right below the walls, so there’d always be fresh meat close to hand in the event of a siege or insurrection.’
‘Perhaps that’s it,’ Betty said. ‘We’re vegetarian.’
She watched Robin shifting uncomfortably in his sleep. There was a time when he’d slept like a dog slept, growling delightedly in pursuit of rabbits and squirrels.
She sat down on the sofa opposite his chair in a modern living room which, when they’d moved in, had had an atmosphere of anger and bitterness. If the middle-aged couple who’d sold them
the bungalow weren’t divorced by now, Betty would be quite surprised.
Not that she’d ever tried to find out. She’d consulted some people and certain books and got down to softening the place. Making sure she and Robin hadn’t slept in the so-called
master bedroom
, which had become his studio, a place where he could safely fight with himself.
She’d looked in there this morning while he was taking a shower and found about a dozen photos of Hay taped to the walls, the basis for some watercolour sketches on a side table. All the pictures had been taken from Back Fold, mostly from low angles, looking up at the castle and the crinkly red chimneys of the Jacobean mansion which the medieval building had nurtured like a big cuckoo chick.
Robin did most of his work on a trestle table, but now the table had been removed, the trestles used to accommodate the sound part of a broken oak floorboard Robin had found in a reclamation yard. He’d sawn off the splintered end and gone to work with a plane on the surface, until it was ready for the black paint. Now it was a sign, waiting to be varnished. A sign that looked as if it had been a sign forever.
Thorogood Pagan Books.
She wondered if there’d be enough light for a studio. Pictures not as good as Robin’s best were on sale for hundreds, even thousands in Hay, drawing on an international market, tourists who’d fallen in love with the booktown, who wanted a piece of Hay on their wall. Why not an alluring Thorogood nocturne, woolly lights against softening stone? She could see Robin’s paintings eventually stealing window-space from the books.
A foothold to something better. As long as there were some books… enough to keep him in the system.
Robin’s eyelids jittered like moths’ wings, his eyes opened.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Betty said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
* * *
Later, when Robin went back to work on his sign, Betty took the laptop into the bedroom and Googled antique dealers in Hay. Began emailing them, one by one, asking if they were the people who used to have a shop in Back Fold.
As the sun went down behind the pink-brick estate, she opened the oak chest in the corner, where the goddess lay in her box, along with the Green Man and the tarot cards, the remains of her crown of lights head-dress and a box of candles.
She found a bent green candle, the size of a courgette, set it down in a tray in the window, and concentrated.
Old habits…