though to friends, about his adoption by a rich and pious woman who recognized in him an intelligence, a longing and a purity of spirit so rare it required special nurturing.
He had everyone’s attention. The world of Wil Williams. But he spoke boastfully, and that wouldn’t go down well. Herefordshire people were generally laid-back and self-effacing.
All around her, Merrily felt a cloudy, ancient atmosphere, but when she looked at Stefan she saw ... an actor.
Why? She rubbed her eyes. Was it jealousy, because they were never so silent, so attentive to her? She went and stood against the back wall of the nave, next to the heavy curtain covering the entrance to the vestry, and listened to Stefan telling of his introduction to Traherne. How Traherne, with, perhaps, financial assistance from Hopton, had secured Wil’s acceptance to his old Oxford College, Brasenose.
Merrily felt very strange. She felt a tightness in her chest. She leaned against the wall, took deep breaths until it subsided.
Stefan was saying something about him and Traherne being two halves of the same apple. Traherne was a poet and a mystic, Wil was deeply sensitive, a natural psychic, a visionary in the most direct sense. When Wil walked out on the hills or into the oak woods, the spirits came to him like the birds and animals to St Francis. He was a wild child, possessed of a raw, exciting beauty.
Where was this leading? Traherne’s rough trade, or what?
Merrily felt that alarming tightening in the chest and this time she couldn’t make it go away. She held on to the curtain to the vestry to prevent herself falling to her knees. When she began to wheeze, heads turned.
Oh no, not again. Not again, no way.
Merrily walked out.
‘Mum?’
Jane stood in the porch, watching her anxiously.
Merrily took gulps of air. All around her, the graves were washed amber-pink by the moon.
‘You’re not ill again, are you?’
‘Sorry, flower, I think it’s the fumes from all those candles. You go back. Stefan’ll think we don’t like it.’
‘I don’t. Do you?’
‘I’ll tell you when it’s finished. Just go back, Jane, OK? There’s nothing to worry about. I’m just going to have a cigarette, OK?’
‘God,’ said Jane. ‘You can’t go an hour without one, can you?’
She gave her mother one final disapproving glance before disappearing into the porch.
Merrily turned away and leaned her arms over a tall gravestone as a red speck came up from behind another stone.
‘Sorry, Vicar, went and hid, I did. Thought it was gonner be my Minnie.’
His cigarette end made a glowing triangle with the twin moons in his glasses.
‘Hello, Gomer.’
‘Lost track of time in there. En’t allowed to wear my watch tonight. Digital, see, gives a bit of a bleep on the hour. Minnie says, What’s that gonner sound like in the seventeenth century, eh? Had to sit at the back, too, on account of not havin’ a proper fancy-dress costume.’
‘Still. You came. I’m glad.’ Out here, the pain in her chest had dulled to a throb.
Gomer took a pull on his cigarette. ‘En’t workin’, is it?’
‘What en’t? Sorry.’
‘Thought ‘e was gonner hit the spot, that young feller, when he got on to cider, but it went by, see.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The cider house. Got me thinkin’, that did, so I come out to think sumore. Does a lot o’ thinkin’ these days. Too much time.’
‘The cider house?’
‘Where the Bulls took their women. Not their wives, like, you know. Their women. Them as was old enough to qualify as women.’
‘Their mistresses?’
‘Not even their mistresses, Vicar. The ones they used for their sport, you might say. The ones as didn’t count for shit, ‘scuse my language.’
‘There were more like this ... Janet?’
‘I should say. God bless you, Vicar, it were cheaper than fox ‘untin’, and no hounds to feed.’ Gomer shook his head sadly. ‘You looks in need of a ciggy. I got a few yere, ready rolled.’
‘Thanks, but ... Oh, sod it ... if you can spare one.’
Gomer produced a skinny roll-up and lit it for her.
‘When you’re retired, see, God damn it, you gets to hangin’ around and dwellin’ on things and all the folk you ever worked for or had a pint or two with, and they all gets jumbled up in your memory, and then a coupler things rolls out when you en’t expectin’ it, and you thinks, well bugger me. Why’d ole Edgar Powell shoot ‘isself ...
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ll tell you, you got time. I’m sick of keepin’ it all up yere. ‘Cause I don’t understand, neither, and I reckons it’s time we did.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, you start with the ole cider house. That’s the Powell cider house now, see. The Bulls originally, but the Powells, they had it off ’em, way back when the Bulls got rid of all that ground. Interestin’, when you works out just how much Bull ground’s now Powell ground. I reckon it’s gotter be ...’
Gomer stopped talking. Merrily followed his gaze towards the lych-gate, through which they could see car lights.
‘You notice when you come in, Vicar, them cars parked on the edge of the square just across from the church.’
‘So many these days. Why?’
‘Miserable Andy Mumford in one, coupler young fellers in the other usually wears uniforms, but plain clothes tonight. Mind if we just ...?’
Gomer set off towards the lych-gate, Merrily following.
‘They’re on to somefhin’, I reckon. Don’t waste manpower on that scale, less they got somefhin’ in mind. And that lady copper in the church? They’re lookin’ for somebody. Or they got somebody in mind. Where’s your friend Mr Robinson tonight?’
As they approached, one of the parked cars had put on its lights and pulled out to make way for another vehicle which took over its space just left of the lych-gate. The new vehicle was a battered blue Land Rover with a torn canvas. The driver’s door opened as the wheels gritted to a halt.
Gomer put a hand under Merrily’s arm and pulled her into the trees beside the gate, as James Bull-Davies stepped down and ducked quickly under the lych-gate, slamming the Land Rover door behind him.
Both front doors of the parked police car opened. Mumford and another man followed Bull-Davies at a distance.
Gomer looked at Merrily.
‘Not my place to ask, mabbe, but they clear this with you, the police? Stakin’ out your church and whatnot?’
She could hear Bull-Davies’s voice crackling into the answering machine.
‘No,’ she said. ‘They bloody didn’t.’
‘You better get back in there. Wouldn’t be anythin’ I could do, would there?’
‘I think there would.’
From the apple trees next to the porch, Jane watched James Bull-Davies go in, followed by the two detectives.
The Eternal Bull. It could start to get interesting at last. Sadly, she couldn’t stay for it. She waited for Mum to come back – on her own and looking pretty fired up – before she slipped away.
