The Wine of Angels

skin. There was a tightness around her chest.

Another footfall. And then another, closer. And then a flurry of them before two final, emphatic steps, like someone taking up a position directly over her bed.

And then silence. What the hell’s she doing up there?

‘No. I slept really well, thank you. Didn’t get up once.’ Wrapped in her yellow towelling robe, Jane spread sunflower marge on crispbread. ‘I don’t get up in the night unless I’m ill, you know that. What time was this?’

‘I don’t know.’ Merrily carried bread to the toaster; she didn’t want any toast, just a night’s sleep. ‘After midnight, before dawn.’

‘Oh, Mum, do you remember me ever getting up in the night?’

‘Well yes, as a matter of fact, the first night we spent here you got up to go to the loo.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Jane, I’m trying to be patient. You did.’

‘No, I said I wanted to go when I first got into the sleeping bag, and you said forget about it, it’ll go away and so I did and it did.’

‘You got up in the night, flower,’ Merrily said through her teeth. ‘You wanted me to go with you. You were tugging on my hand.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Jane threw down the butter knife. ‘Where do you get this crap from? You were dreaming, for God’s sake! All right. Look. I should’ve told you. I was throwing this wild party last night. Yeah, we had this all-night binge with masses of booze and hard drugs. I’d’ve invited you, but I knew you wanted a good night’s sleep before your initiation ceremony. Christ, Mother!’

‘So you’re saying you didn’t hear anything at all last night,’ Merrily said in a small voice, bent over the toaster, her back to Jane. There was a dull ache far behind her eyes.

Jane made a clicking noise, beyond exasperation. ‘I sleep, as you used to keep pointing out, the sleep of the innocent. Perhaps it was a ghost.’

Merrily dropped hot toast.

Jane grinned slyly. ‘Place is old enough. Yeah, bound to have ghosts. Maybe you should do an exorcism. We have the book, we have the candles, don’t know about the bell, would a bicycle bell do? Hey, did you have, like, mock-hauntings at college to practise your technique?’

‘We didn’t do exorcism. The only ghost that ever got a mention was the Holy Ghost.’

‘I can’t believe it. They didn’t teach you anything useful at that college, did they?’ Jane crunched her crispbread thoughtfully. ‘Er, do you think it’s him?’

‘What?’ Merrily shovelled her toast on to a plate and brought it to the table. She didn’t want to talk about this any more. One of them was going a little mad. What did it mean when half your night seemed to be spent in some ungodly no man’s land between reality and dreams? How could you be suffocated by a house this big?

‘Wil.’ Jane smiled wistfully.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Hey, if I’d known I could’ve invited him to my party. There’s no decent totty in Ledwardine these days.’

‘All right. Let it go. And talking of parties, will you be coming to mine?’

‘The initiation? That’s what you call a party, is it?’

‘I know, very sad. But the Cassidys are laying on a buffet afterwards in the church itself. Should be over by about half-nine or ten. But perhaps you could slip away, get changed and drift over to Colette’s thing, up in the restaurant?’

Jane met her eyes. The kid could always recognize a deal.

‘What makes you think I want to go to Colette’s party?’

‘Don’t you?’

Jane shrugged. ‘What time would I have to be home?’

Merrily shrugged.

‘Really?’

‘I trust you to be careful. And to remember that you’re not sixteen yet.’

‘So don’t get shagged is what you mean.’

Merrily held the kid’s brazen gaze. ‘Something like that.’

‘Well. Like I said ‘ – Jane smiled ruefully, looking suddenly and disturbingly older – ‘there’s no worthwhile totty around here these days, is there?’

When Jane had left for school, Merrily sat for a while, staring at the cold, uneaten toast, and then she dragged the phone over to the table.

An admission of defeat, but what could she do? Jane, as usual, had touched a nerve. Merrily tapped out the college number from memory.

‘Is it possible to speak to Dr Campbell?’

The switchboard said David Campbell was on the phone; Merrily said she’d wait. David was the only one of her old tutors she figured would be any help. He was a liberal, but he’d also been High Church in his time, an incense-burner.

We didn’t do exorcism. The only ghost that ever got a mention was the Holy Ghost.

She felt more than a little stupid about this. Once, in Liverpool, one of her prozzies had asked Merrily what she could do about her flat, which was haunted. The flat had been supplied by the woman’s pimp, who owned the building; Merrily had interpreted this as a cry for help, found her a room in a shelter, but she’d gone back to the flat and the pimp after a week, never made contact again.

‘Putting you through,’ the switchboard said.

‘Merrily Watkins! How are you, love?’

‘Hello, David.’

‘Installation day, right?’

‘Tonight. How did you know?’

‘Word gets around. You won’t mind if I don’t come, I hate bloody parishes, as you know.’

‘I remember. David, are you alone?’

‘One always hopes not.’

He meant God. Merrily pondered the get-out option: asking him about some aspect of installation-night protocol. But she let the silence hang too long.

‘What’s the problem, love?’ David said quietly.

‘OK. I think ... Oh, Jesus, it sounds so—’ Her head thumping away.

‘Go on.’

‘All right. I think my vicarage is haunted, and I don’t know how to handle that.’

David said, ‘I see.’ She imagined him in his office, his metal-stemmed pipe sticking out of the pen-pot on the desk.

‘I’m glad you see,’ she said, ‘because I don’t. According to my Uncle Ted, churchwarden and oracle, the last incumbent had no problems in that department. And that was over about thirty-five years.’

‘What makes you think it’s haunted?’

Was she imagining a shift in his voice, a reserve setting in?

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘usual stuff. Or what I understand is usual. Footsteps in the night. Seeing things that ... that can’t be there. It isn’t imagination, although the experiences do seem to be interwoven with dreams. What I mean ... some of it happens in actual dreams – sometimes I think I’m awake when I’m really dreaming and maybe the other way around, too. And I ... Look, I know what you’re thinking, and I have been overworking a bit and things have been very fraught, what with living out of a pub and then moving into an old house that’s far too big and ... What?’

‘Hold on. Steady.’

‘I’m perfectly steady. I mean, this morning, my daughter’s saying to me, didn’t they teach you how to do an exorcism in college, and I have to say no, we didn’t even touch on it. Why didn’t we touch on it, David?’

‘How is Jane?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘She’d be ... what? Fourteen?’