The Cold Calling

her experiences?

Or indeed, despite the enormous congregation, here in the church? For there was no response from within the oaken casket or from the damp, steaming atmosphere in the little nave. As the congregation began to sing, the hymn underpinned by tuneless baritones and frilled by elderly, fractured sopranos, Cindy tried again.

Where are you?

A sudden, sharp breeze made the rain rattle on the stained glass.

Out there?

No audible, tangible, or in any way perceptible answer.

Why won’t you come in?

Cindy looked at Marcus, singing quietly and out of tune, Marcus whose public humiliation had been accomplished with consummate, professional skill, leaving him looking peevish and curmudgeonly and Falconer tolerant and generous.

The hymn ended; the congregation sat. Cindy spotted Falconer across the aisle, between two village ladies, Women’s Institute types, who kept glancing at him with undisguised awe.

What a vindictive man he must be. Here he was, with his wealth, his fame and his academic credibility, going to the trouble of attending a small, village funeral for, it would appear, the sole purpose of publicly crushing an elderly nobody who had dared to question his motives in a publication he’d probably never previously even heard of.

Ah, there was more to it. There had to be more to it.

‘It was a long life,’ the red-faced vicar said, his voice rising and falling as if he was still leading prayers, ‘and, in the most traditional sense, a good life. And although most of it was spent away from here, although most of us only knew Joan when she was already advanced in years, I’m sure I speak for the village when I say …’

And so went the eloquent but mindless eulogy to Mrs Willis. How popular she had been in the village. How she’d belonged to the WI, supported local charitable events, was caring towards the sick, always cheerful when you met her, had — quite remarkably — continued to work into her ninetieth year.

Ninety? She was as old as that?

Well, of course she would be.

And caring towards the sick? Surely, even if her true identity was not revealed, the man was going to mention the healing?

But the vicar’s high, fruity voice intoned not a word to suggest that Mrs Willis had been any more than an averagely dedicated parishioner. He expressed sympathy for her nieces, named, and for her employer, unnamed.

And suddenly Cindy saw the interior of the church as perhaps Bobby might have seen it: the rose-tinted wall hardening to a flinty grey and the members of the congregation rigid as stones. A conspiracy of silence.

The stained glass rattled with rain. In his phoney, bloated baritone, the vicar said, ‘And so, before we go into the churchyard for the interment … we will sing hymn number …’

A shuffling of hymn books. But Marcus Bacton was on his feet ahead of the rest of the congregation.

Oh no. ‘Marcus! ‘ Cindy hissed.

Marcus’s shoulders were shaking with rage, his hands gripped the prayer-book shelf until his knuckles blanched, and when he spoke it was in a voice rather louder and certainly more resonant than the vicar’s.

‘You hypocritical fuck! ‘

Black Knoll.

Jesus.

An avenue of stones no more than two or three feet high on either side. An open passageway, curving towards the caved-in chamber.

There was a fine, discreet English rain which very politely soaked you to the skin inside a couple of minutes. I could shelter, Grayle thought. I could shelter under the big stone.

And then she thought, Are you kidding?

Standing, dismayed, at the entrance to what had once been a covered passageway, the whole thing once concealed inside an earthmound, but now bleakly exposed, like the abandoned skeleton of a whale.

She wanted to cry.

This was it? She crossed an ocean for this? Like, she was supposed to believe the stark, ruined shell held some kind of key to the transformation of Ersula?

It was nothing. It had no grandeur at all. Maybe it was impressive at sunrise but now, on this damp, cooling October afternoon under low, spongy cloud, it was just… derelict… meaningless.

She strained to see the green and yellow in the grass, the pink in the soil and the little plants growing on the small stones of the passageway.

The Offa’s Dyke Path which more or less marks the boundary between England and Wales is close … I can sense a converging of separate energies.

Energies?

This place just sapped you.

Was that the path, that bare track behind the bushes? Was this the boundary? Between waking and dreaming, the known and the unknown, sanity and madness?

Scary fun, Grayle?

Was she missing something?

She tried to picture Ersula, in her sky-blue ski-jacket, making notes on a clipboard, lining up a picture with her Canon Sureshot — no sky on it, no flowers, no people; all Ersula’s pictures were for reference only — Oh, Grayle, what is the point of piling up pictures of people you see every day?

For when they’re not there, Ersula. When they’re not there any more.

A curtain of rain separated her from the big stones. She told herself, If I go through that fine curtain, she’ll be there. She’ll be waiting for me.

‘Aw come on! ‘ she howled aloud. ‘You’re fucking crazy!’

Crazy as Cindy the goddamned Celtic shaman. Crazy as Adrian Fraser-Hale with his cassette tapes of the number one Neolithic rap band. Like, what the hell are you doing here? You know where Ersula is? She’s back home with some guy, is where. You read stuff into her letters that was never there. You created a mystery because you’re still Holy Grayle and you’re never gonna change!

She sobbed. She looked at her watch. It was nearly three p.m. She would go back to the crappy hotel and she would call up her father and he would say, Sure she’s back in town, hell, your planes probably passed each other over the Atlantic. Hey, never mind, Grayle, at least it pushed you out of that cruddy little tabloid job.

She stared at the wet, grey stones and she sobbed again, and soon the air was full of sobs, heavy and soggy like the goddamned English clouds. She felt weak and walked through the curtain of rain to sit on one of the flat stones; she couldn’t get any wetter.

Which was when she realized they weren’t her sobs. That she wasn’t alone up here.

This figure was coming towards her off the stones, a figure in blue. ‘Ersula?’ she whispered, in spite of herself, although she knew it couldn’t be.

And yet she had to know. She tried to move forward but it was as if her sneakers were stuck in the red mud. ‘Ersula! ‘ she screamed into the rain.

And then — ohmygod — the girl was running towards her, in a skimpy cotton dress with blue flowers on it. The girl had braided hair and she was running hard, although the distance between Grayle and the stones was no more than a couple of yards, so it was as though the girl was running on a treadmill and the stones were some kind of back-projection.

Which was not possible, and Grayle was disbelieving and confused and then scared, more scared than she’d ever been in her whole life, and she started to hyperventilate.

A vivid distress vibrating in the grey air. The girl was a blur of threshing, graceless child-limbs. Running hard at Grayle.

Yet not reaching her. Never quite reaching her, but always coming on in a bumpy, flashing pattern, like those