To Dream of the Dead

‘No way,’ Jane had said. ‘That would just make you look like…’ the kid had found the first and last smile of the night ‘… one of us.’

It wasn’t going to be Stonehenge, Merrily said, but even a few modest standing stones re-erected after many centuries — so many centuries that they’d vanished from recorded history — would inevitably be a presence in the village.

‘Even if they’re not as high as me, we’re looking at a significant ancient monument. So was this a pagan monument, buried because it had been seen as anti-Christian? Or because this was a nice flat field and the stones were getting in the way of somebody’s plough? OK, let’s deal with pagan. What do we mean by pagan?’

Quick sweep of the congregation. No significant reaction. Shirley West was no longer looking at her. Shirley was hunched, her head bowed, still as an obelisk.

‘The dictionary tells us — just to be sure, I looked it up this morning — that the word comes from the Latin, paganus, meaning a rustic or peasant. Meaning ordinary people. Like the people who lived here, in this community, before the time of Jesus. Pre-Christian. And what does that mean? Means they didn’t have the benefit of having known about Jesus Christ, who introduced the human race to a new dimension of love, a new understanding of what love can mean. This was sophisticated stuff, and maybe their society wasn’t ready for it.’ Merrily stood on tiptoe on the hidden hassock, leaned over the battlements of the play-fort.

‘But does that mean they were bad people who lived in darkness and sin, with no possibility of eternal life? I don’t think so. I look at where these stones were positioned, possibly to catch the first rays of the midsummer sun when it rose over Cole Hill. These were people who had no doctrine to follow, no commandments. Only their feelings. And their feelings told them to reach for the light. And that’s good enough for me.’

She looked across at the stained-glass window of Eve with the apple, still, unfortunately, brown and unlustred. Bloody rain.

‘I’m not inclined to worry about pagans, past or present. They at least represent some kind of spirituality. The Bronze Age people were aware of higher forces, which they responded to. These were the people who first developed this community, then kept it going, fed it, tended livestock, planted the first orchards… created what our old friend Lucy Devenish, taking her cue from the poet Thomas Traherne, used to call the Orb.’

She looked up at the apple shapes outlined in the filigree of the rood screen.

‘What did Lucy mean by that? I think she was talking about the idea of Ledwardine as a living organism sustained by an energy and an intelligence beyond ours. Don’t know about you, but I’d tend to call that God.’

Down at the bottom of the nave, the latch went up on the main door, with a clank, and rain swept in, bringing with it Gomer Parry in his old gabardine mac that was soaked through and tied at the waist with baler twine. Gomer shut the door behind him, took off his flat cap, drips falling onto the worn skull indented into the memorial stone of John Jenkyn, d. seventeen hundred and something. Gomer and the stone spotlit from above.

‘All I know for certain,’ Merrily said, ‘is that this — this church — became and remains the centre of the Ledwardine orb. So I’d say let’s do it. Let’s raise the stones, because they’re about the dawning of spirituality in Ledwardine — that first reaching for the light. I think they can only strengthen us.’

She looked down at the sermon pad, which she hadn’t consulted once. She saw Shirley West stand up, as grey and still as the pillars.

‘Can we sing number fourteen in your carol book. “In the Bleak Midwinter”. Softly wind made—’

‘You are disgusting.’

Shirley’s forefinger quivering, before she turned and went scuttling down the aisle, pushing past Gomer to get to the door, and Edna Huws hit the opening chords.

Gomer shambled up the aisle as Merrily came down from the pulpit. They met at the bottom of the chancel steps.

‘Quick word, vicar,’ Gomer said under some ragged, nervy singing. ‘Only I needs to get back, see.’

In the old days, the bells would have been rung.

Clanging down the valley, peeling through the rain, to be echoed by the bells of Weobley and Dilwyn and Pembridge and Eardisland. A chain of warning, ley lines of alarm spearing across the county.

Merrily went back into the pulpit. Let them finish. Stay calm. James Bull-Davies had seen Gomer. He was looking watchful, not singing. An Army man.

In the old days, the Bulls would have known what to do.

Shirley West’s outburst… in a couple of minutes even that would be forgotten.

Merrily let the old carol soak away into the sandstone.

‘Erm… something you should all know.’

There needed to be a prayer, but would anyone bother to stay for it?

36 Out

Jane stood near the top of Church Street, on the edge of the cobbles, and watched him coming out.

There was this huge, almost peaceful sense of… relief? Beyond the amplified drumming of the rain on the hood of her parka, everything was awesomely silent.

An almost religious hush. A transformation.

It was as if he’d known this had always belonged to him and now, having repossessed it, was turning it into a different place: a drowned dreamscape, an alternative village, Ledwardine-on-Sea.

The village-hall car park was like a harbour, litter bins three-parts submerged like lobster pots. A couple of guys were dumping sandbags around the hall’s entrance, Uncle Ted in fisherman’s waders quietly directing operations, the swollen scene doused in shades of grey and brown.

Jane, at first, was stunned and then dismayed.

It had all happened within a couple of hours… on the first morning when self-pity had sapped her will to go down at first light and talk to the river.

Even last night with Eirion had just been an excuse to get out of the house; there’d been no contact. Guilt — it was ridiculous but it was there. She’d released something huge, by default. Broken off contact, and now he was out.

Like he’d come looking for her.

She said to Eirion, ‘I suppose you’ve seen all this before?’

‘Common enough in the Valleys, Jane.’

‘Not here.’

OK, it wasn’t exactly a tsunami, and the water hadn’t reached any houses yet, and you could still just about see where the river ended and the flooding began. But it was scary. You could smell it, too, she was sure you could smell it. Something dank. The river had always looked clean; this wasn’t.

No traffic noise — that explained the hush. No motorists attempting to leave the village, from the south anyway. Well, they couldn’t. Across the street Lol had appeared in his doorway, casual, hands in the pockets of his jeans. Raising a hand to Jane and Eirion as an elderly guy Jane didn’t recognise started bawling at him through the rain.

‘Anybody informed the authorities?’

‘Probably, but they could be overstretched,’ Lol said. ‘If it’s happening here, it’s happening all over the county.’

‘But it’s not supposed to happen here.’ The man was struggling with an umbrella. ‘We were formally assured it never happened here. We’ve come down for Christmas, brought everything… wine, turkey…’

One of the second-homers, who’d pushed up house prices. Jane’s sympathy dissipating.