The Wine of Angels

apple. It’s a not-so-rare blending of paganism, as we’re forced to call it, and Christianity. The church being, for much of its history, in the very centre of the orchard. Which came first, I wouldn’t like to say, though I suspect the orchard. Perhaps there was a pre-Christian shrine where the church now stands, we can’t say, we can but speculate.’

‘Oh, w—’ Jane swallowed. Waited. Lucy detached one of the tiny fairies from a shelf edge, held it up to the light.

‘Translucence, you see. That’s the essence of it. As fine as air. Spirits of the air. The spirits of the earth, goblins and things, are denser. The tree elves are brown and green. They’re the protective and motivating forces in nature. Some of them are of limited intelligence but, like us, they evolve. I find it impossible to explain the phenomenon of life without them.’

‘Mum might not be sympathetic’

Lucy thought for a moment, her lips becoming a tight bud.

After a while she said, ‘The great mystery of life can be approached in terms of pure physics – the electronic soup of atoms and particles. And also in religious terms. Terms, that’s all it is, Jane. Traherne never speaks of elves or devas, but he refers all the time to angels. Cherubim and seraphim and cupids who pass through the air bringing love. Traherne is full of coded references – we know of his interest in the ancient occult philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus, we know from the writings of John Aubrey that Traherne was psychic.

But in those days, as you know, one had to be extremely cautious.’

‘Or you ended up like Wil Williams?’

‘Precisely, Jane. Williams, we know, was Traherne’s protege as well as his neighbour. I think Wil was a little too incautious in his attempts to walk with the angels.’

Jane said, ‘Mum doesn’t have much to say about angels. Angels are not cool in today’s streetwise Church. I mean ...’

‘Angelic forces correspond to what are called devic presences. The devas are the prime movers, if you like, in the structure. A deva may control a whole area, a whole sphere of activity, or an ecosystem.’

‘Like an orchard?’ Jane said automatically.

Lucy positively purred with pleasure. ‘You’re making the leaps. You’re receiving help. The channel was opened – you know when.’

‘I thought it was just the cider.’

‘Oh, the cider’s very much a part of it. The cider’s the blood of the orchard. It’s in your blood now. I felt at once that it had to be one or both of you.’

‘Us?’

‘You and Merrily.’

‘She won’t want to know,’ Jane said.

Jane returned just before six. She said trade had not been exactly brisk, but a nice Brummie couple with a corgi had bought a set of four hand-painted apple-shaped cups and saucers for sixty-four pounds.

‘Thank heavens for people with no taste,’ Jane said.

Merrily noticed she had with her a copy of the Penguin edition of selected poems and prose by Thomas Traherne.

‘You bought that with your wages?’

‘Lucy gave it to me. I refused to take any wages. It’s fun playing shop.’

‘You going to actually read it?’

‘Of course I’m going to read it. Traherne’s cool’

‘Oh. Right. Should’ve realized. Why is he cool?’

‘Because he could see that we were surrounded by all this beauty, but we didn’t appreciate it, and we were quite likely to destroy it. Which was pretty prophetic thinking back in the mid-seventeenth century, when there was no industry and no insecticides and things.’

‘Fair enough,’ Merrily said.

‘And he said we should enjoy the world. Get a buzz out of it. Get high on nature. Like, God wanted us to be happy.’

‘Like have parties and things?’

‘You know,’ Jane said, ‘you kind of make me sick sometimes. You’re so smug.’

Merrily said nothing. Oh, dear. One of those moods.

And yet – thinking about it – she hadn’t been at all sullen or sulky of late. Just distant, more self-contained. As if there was something going on inside her. Which, of course, there would be at her age, all kinds of volatile chemicals sloshing about.

A boy?

Possibly. But why would she hide that? She’d never hidden it in the past. No, this was something to do with Miss Devenish. Twice Jane had disappeared, twice she’d turned up with Lucy Devenish.

But I rather like Lucy Devenish.

Merrily lit a cigarette. Should she go and talk to the old girl?

Jane went up to her apartment to work on her Mondrian walls. This apparently involved painting the irregular rectangles between the oak beams in blue, black, red and white. The Listed Buildings inspector would probably come out in the same colours if he ever saw it. Still, as even Merrily wasn’t allowed to see it ...

What the hell ... Sometimes kids should be allowed – even encouraged – to behave bizarrely. Merrily finished her cigarette then went to put some supper together.

When Jane came down to eat, she dropped the big one.

‘I’ll probably go to church tomorrow.’

‘Sorry?’ Merrily turned from the Aga, dropping a slice of hot focaccia in shock. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I think you heard.’

‘All right, flower,’ Merrily said calmly, ‘you go and lie down, I’ll call the doctor.’

‘Very funny.’

Jane walked over to the kitchen window. There was a sunset blush on the lawn. Merrily gazed out, a little bewildered, unsure how to handle this development. She’d made a point of never exerting any pressure to get the kid into a service. Admittedly, it would be politic for the minister’s daughter to be present at her mother’s official installation ceremony with the bishop next Friday, and to persuade Jane to come, she’d planned a small deal – after the service, she could go on to Colette Cassidy’s birthday party, no restrictions.

It looked as if no deal would be needed. Who was the influence? Thomas Traherne? Miss Devenish, more like. She should be delighted, but somehow she felt rather offended.

She took in a big breath. ‘Jane.’

‘Huh?’

‘What happened the day you didn’t go to school?’

Jane looked at her, almost through her. The dark blue eyes were completely blank. She’d seen eyes like that on kids a year or two older than Jane, up in Liverpool; they were usually on drugs.

Merrily tried not to panic. ‘Tell me what happened, Jane.’

‘She told you,’ Jane said almost wildly. ‘Lucy told you.’

‘I want to hear it from you.’

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘You haven’t told me anything not to believe.’

A shadow seemed to pass between them. She remembered how, as a small child, Jane would conceal small things – an old tennis ball, once, that she’d found in the garden – for fear they would be taken away from her if her mother found out. At the age of ten, she’d got hold of a thick paperback by Jilly Cooper, hiding it under a panel in the floor of her wardrobe like it was real hard porn.

‘You’re all the same.’ The kid’s face suddenly crumpled like a tissue. ‘You think you know everything.’

‘What ...’ Merrily moved towards her. ‘What’s wrong, flower?’

‘You ...’ Jane backed away, something inflamed about her eyes. ‘You stand up there in your pulpit, Mrs sodding Holier-than-thou, and you drivel on about the Virgin Birth and the Holy bloody Ghost, the same stuff, over and over and over again, and—’

‘Jane? What’s all this about?’