To Dream of the Dead

Merrily went into the church, up into the chancel, to meditate… pray.

Taking off Jane’s red wellies and sitting, thick-socked, in the old choirmaster’s chair. Hands palms-down on her knees, eyes almost closed, breathing regulated. This was how she went about it now, when she was on her own. Less liturgical, more meditative. Feeling for answers… truth.

Feeling for anything, actually, today, as the rain tumbled on the roof, rushed into the guttering, roared inside her head — a punishing noise. Her reward, probably, for opening The Hole in the Sky at random.

… understand this: Christianity has already entered its final phase. By the end of this century, ‘Jesus Christ’ will be nothing more than a mild oath, the origins of which will be a mystery to most people under the age of seventy.

She’d put the book down. Not thrown it down, just laid it next to the sermon pad.

It was not the issue. It was meaningless, like the arrival in Ledwardine of Mathew Stooke. No significant coincidence here — all the picturesque backwaters, forget it, the guy had to live somewhere.

This was not the reason she needed to go into the church.

Merrily had spent about twenty minutes mentally laying out the real issue, walking all around the house and ending up in Jane’s attic apartment where there were stacks of old magazines: back copies of Pagan Dawn, Pentacle, White Dragon, other homespun journals representing Wicca, Druidry and all pagan points in between. Bought and absorbed by thousands of people far too shy to dance naked around a woodland fire.

And people who weren’t. And people who did.

A long-established subculture was renewing itself, Jane would insist, while Christianity withered, in these days of industrial abuse, greed, neglect and consequent climate change. As the Earth bled, paganism was the only practical belief system and if the Church wanted to survive it needed to alter its remit accordingly.

Jane’s view of it was rose-tinted, of course — paganism just this all-embracing term for Earth-related green spirituality, a striving for oneness with the elements, sometimes personified as gods and goddesses, the male and female energies in nature. Pagans were more aware of their immediate environment, more connected to the land — this land, these hills, these fields. And when the land was raped and its ancient shrines desecrated by secular governments, pagans felt the pain, almost physically. Felt the violence. A spear into our spiritual heart, as the Irishman, Padraig Neal, had put it.

But this wasn’t some enlightened, half-faerie super-race. Pagans and green activists were just more flawed human beings, prone to anger, frustration, irrational hatreds, mental imbalance… and firing off inflammatory emails.

Emails were not like letters. Emails were shot from the hip and, by the time you’d realised you’d gone too far, it was too late, you’d sent it. Sure, there was a lot of anger about, but there was a big difference between sending a knee-jerk email and going out there with a knife or a machete.

And yet…

you will — be assured — have local by-elections within the year.

What was she supposed to do about this?

Perhaps sit down tonight with Jane and have a long discussion in the hope of convincing her that they should go through the entire correspondence of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society, compiling a list of possibly dangerous extremists. Which would take most of the night.

And then what?

What?

What if there was another killing?

At lunchtime, when she got the call on her mobile, Jane was still smouldering.

Last day of term, and in morning assembly they’d all had to stand up and do a minute’s silence for Councillor Clement Ayling, who had apparently been Chairman of Education. Morrell paying a sincere tribute to Ayling’s vision and all that crap. Meaningless to the little kids at the front of the hall. Jane, at the back, glowering down at her shoes, thinking, What a total hypocritical scumball.

Another Catcher in the Rye moment. Been getting them a lot lately. This was the situation: Morrell — who insisted his job title was School Director — was the worst kind of New Labour, and Ayling had been this lifelong worst kind of Old Tory. Not only that but he was one of the guys behind the plan to close down a whole bunch of Herefordshire schools, primary and secondary.

Well, not close them down, merge them — that was the get-out term. What you did was to put two fairly successful small secondary schools under one big roof.

Thus creating a massive new sink school where nobody learned anything except where to get good crack, and they had to lower the academic goalposts and fiddle the results and the cops spent so much time on the premises you might as well set up a permanent incident room on the playing field.

And why was Morrell quietly supporting this? Why had Morrell — whose party claimed to stand for education, education, education — been up Ayling’s bum? Simple. This school had a lot of land, and fields all around, perfect for expansion. So, if Ayling’s scheme went through, while some other bastard might be out of a job, Morrell could find himself director of an operation twice the size, with a much bigger salary.

That was how much of a socialist Morrell was. Right now, curled up on the rescued sofa in a corner of the sixth-form leisure suite, Jane just couldn’t wait to leave this lousy place for good.

‘You thinking about sex again, Jane?’

Sweaty Rees Crawford chalking his snooker cue, getting in some final practise for this afternoon’s Big Match, the final of the Sixth Form Championship in which he was playing Jordan Hare — Ethan Williams taking bets on the outcome. Jane couldn’t decide.

‘Look,’ she snarled, as her mobile went off inside her airline bag. ‘Don’t you go projecting your sad fantasies on me, Crawford. You screw that thing around much faster, there won’t be any chalk left. Who’s this?’ Snapping into the phone.

‘You don’t sound too happy, Jane.’

‘Coops?’

‘Oh, Coops,’ Rees Crawford said, leering at her, and Jane gave him the finger.

‘It is OK to call you now, is it?’ Neil Cooper said. ‘Your lunch break, right?’

‘Sure.’ Not like it would matter anyway, the way she was feeling. ‘It’s fine.’

‘Only I said I’d keep you up to speed. It’s starting tomorrow.’

‘The dig?’ Jane gripping the phone tight. ‘The dig’s happening?’

‘Officially starting tomorrow.’

‘So Bill Blore…’

‘He’s here. Don’t say wow. Please do not say wow.’

‘He’s in the village?’

‘He’s actually been over a few times, doing geophysics, making sure we haven’t got it all wrong and what’s under there are concrete lamp-posts or something. You, er… want to meet him?’

‘Me?’ Jane lowered her feet to the floor. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Actually,’ Coops said, ‘he wants to meet you.’

‘Stop taking the piss. I’m not in the mood.’