56
Corrupt
Jane sprayed torchlight at the church porch door, watching Mum recoil.
Heartsick. That word on her church…
Mum had been upstairs in the bedroom, dressing for the gig — cashmere and the black velvet skirt, the last cigarette half-smoked and then carefully pinched out. She’d flung on her cape to cover the skirt, but nothing was totally protected in this weather. Pools were already forming around their wellies, and the splashing of the rain made it hard to hear what she was mumbling.
‘… come off. Everything comes off, somehow.’
Not easily. It was old wood. Eirion had reckoned they might wind up having to sand it down. She’d sent Eirion to the Swan. Nothing he could do now. It was evidence, anyway.
‘I’ll… have a go later if you like,’ Jane said.
‘… Think I’m inclined to leave it till after Christmas. Let everybody see it. That was the idea, presum—’ Mum broke off, her eyes unnaturally wide in the torch beam. ‘My God, what did I just say?’
‘Makes sense to me. Let everybody see what she’s done.’
‘And then they can all cross the road when she walks up the street? Use another post office?’
‘Saves having to listen to a lot of born-again bollocks.’
‘Talk about her behind her back? And maybe some kids will go and spray-paint her front door, thinking they have an excuse for it now?’
‘She’d love it. Make her feel like a real martyr.’
Jane played the torch beam through a wall of rain like gilded splinters to the white-sprayed words
‘What does it mean, anyway?’
‘It means exactly what it says. After gradually stripping away traditional Christianity in Ledwardine in favour of a kind of neopaganism, I’m now going all the way… Jane, its—’
‘No, go on…’
‘Conspiring with the satanic baptist Mathew Elliot Stooke to celebrate, on the stroke of midnight, not the holy birth but some demonic intrus— I can’t even say it.’
‘They truly believe that?’
‘Who knows? Maybe she thinks this will deter people from coming tonight. Perhaps it will.’
‘Somebody has to stop her.’
‘I can’t do anything.’ Mum numbly shaking her head, shoulders slumped. ‘In the absence of the police — and they’d be unlikely to come before Christmas anyway — I’m not going to be… judge and jury.’
‘Mum…’
‘And the truth is, we don’t even know it’s her, do we?’
‘Oh, come
‘There are supposed to be other members of her… church around. Jane, let’s just go home and get— We’ve got ten minutes before Lol starts, right? So let’s just get a bucket, some det—’
‘Mum…’
Mum looked at Jane who turned away, tearful. She’d looked so pretty in her best clothes and… kind of glowing. As if tonight at the Swan, with the Boswell and everything, would be the start of a new phase for her and Lol. Maybe even the prospect of…
‘Mum, listen, she — whoever it is — is mentally ill. This has nothing to do with religion. Nothing to do with
‘There’s more, right?’
‘Yeah.’
Jane shone the torch at the ring handles, but Eirion had left the doors slightly ajar anyway. She pushed one open with the end of the rubber torch and followed Mum inside.
To where the chairs and pews arranged for the meditation service had been tipped over, thrown into disarray, a couple of the lighter chairs smashed…
… Along with the bottom left-hand corner of the Eve stainedglass window with its red apple that always caught the sunset. A hole punched in it, glass gone, lead strips twisted, rainwater exploding on to the sill down the wall to spread over the flags.
Mum stood and looked up, past the organ, up towards the chancel and, as if her gaze had been guided, to the rood screen.
Sixteenth century. With those exquisitely carved-out apple shapes at the bottom.
The ancient wood chopped out around them, the delicate tracery of the screen cracked and splintered.
You could still almost feel the frenzy, hear violent echoes from the stone.
It wouldn’t have taken long, with a hammer or a hatchet. Nobody came across to the church at this time of day.
Certainly not in this kind of weather, and there weren’t that many people left in the village anyway.
And nobody outside would hear the hacking through the noise of the rain.
Lol looked up from his tuning in some surprise. It wasn’t so much the noise as…
… The hush, when he played a couple of experimental chords, the Boswell plugged into the old Guild acoustic, a basic E-minor as thrilling and visceral in this crowded, tarted-up Jacobean alehouse as a pipe-organ in an empty church.
He looked around bemused. A swirl of faces. Could be a hundred or more, seated at tables pushed together round the walls, some groups standing in the alcoves. He’d heard them coming in, thought they were just going for drinks. Kept his head down, concentrating on preparing a guitar he’d never played before. No need, really, the tuning was perfect and stayed perfect — in the small accessories compartment in the Boswell case he’d found a note from Al saying the guitar had been strung three days earlier, lightweight strings tuned daily, played once for four minutes, retuned.
Was
Like Al had known about this.
The rain hissed and rattled in the leaded windows. He sat in a corner, unobtrusive like a sideshow. Couldn’t see Jane, or Merrily or anyone he really knew, but Barry was here, leaning over, whispering.
‘Whole bunch of people up from Hereford, did the full two-mile walk across the footbridge, over the fields… Coach party. Someone said it was like a pilgrimage.’
‘For
‘Bigger than you thought, mate.’
He recalled Jane this morning in deserted Church Street:
‘And Merrily says, don’t forget, not a word,’ Barry murmured. ‘Whatever that means.’
It was the last thing she’d said to him before she’d pushed him out of the vicarage, the way Moira Cairns had pushed him on stage that terrible night at the Courtyard in Hereford, the kick-start of his solo career.
Barry grinned.
‘We’re in profit after all. You ready, mate?’
‘Hang on—’
Lol leaned into the amp, gave it a little extra concert-hall depth, the merest hint of reverb, tapped the voice
