To Dream of the Dead

‘You’re not going to out us, are you?’

‘That would be unchristian.’

Leonora smiled briefly, stood up and walked over to the tomb, making eye contact with Tom Bull.

‘Bizarre. First person in this village I get to talk to without having to watch what I say, and it’s the vicar in the bloody church. A vicar and a dead lech.’

‘Some irony here that escapes me?’

‘I’m from a solid Church family.’

‘Ah.’

‘Went to Church schools, all the bullshit that goes with that. Why are you nodding?’

‘Your reaction to being in here was… somehow, not the reaction of a lifelong atheist.’

‘Do not…’ Lensi levelled a finger ‘… get too clever.’

Merrily smiled.

‘My father worked for the diocese, in an administrative role. My mother was a Sunday School teacher. Not many of those left, even then. Village in Buckinghamshire, not so unlike this one. My old man became increasingly, insufferably devout. Anglo-Catholic. Hounding the local vicar into installing a statue of the Virgin. Then finally, in middle age, he was ordained himself, and it all became seriously stifling. I used to walk around our church, as an adolescent, muttering obscenities, just for the thrill of the guilt, the almost erotic joy of blasphemy.’

‘You’re trying to shock me?’

‘Hell, no.’ In the ice-white light, Leonora’s skin looked thin, almost translucent. ‘I’ve met a lot of priests. They don’t shock. They simply become lofty and disapproving.’

‘But you were trying to shock your parents.’

‘You wouldn’t believe how many honourable God-fearing, High Church public-school boys were around, even fifteen years ago, and I must’ve been introduced to every one of the genuflecting tossers. Which is why I threw myself at Elliot. Good-looking, ten years older than me. Worldly, married, and a bloody atheist. My God.’

‘When was this?’

‘When I was still at university. London. He was a reporter with the Guardian then. I was always attracted to the media, but I didn’t particularly want to start off on some provincial rag, so I used to hang around their pubs. He was married but I made myself… you know, hard to resist. Don’t ask.’

‘You threw yourself at a religious-affairs correspondent?’

‘Well, he wasn’t, then. Just a general news reporter. That came later, when their religious-affairs guy was off sick and they asked Elliot to stand in. Guardian reporters get a fair bit of leeway on how they handle a story, and Elliot… well, you can imagine. Good writer, very funny… and Guardian readers are liberal, and liberals tend to be atheist…’

‘Not invariably.’

‘Well, a higher proportion of them are. You must know that’s true. Anyway, shortly after that, he was poached by the Independent.’

‘And of course the Independent doesn’t exactly do religion, does it? Or at least not from the normal perspective.’

‘If the Indy was going to have a religious-affairs correspondent it had to be an atheist, yeah.’

‘I can see the logic.’

‘Still a while before people started to get the joke. And even then, it’s not the biggest-selling paper on the rack. It was quite funny — my parents, when they found out what he did, they actually thought I was coming to my senses at last.’

‘When did they find out?’

‘About the same time as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office, I’d guess. Filtered down, and then the doors started closing. The religious establishments build high walls very quickly. Centuries of practice. By the time it was common knowledge where he was coming from, the damage was done, they’d all been on the end of Elliot’s harpoon. Unfortunately, by that time my father was too old for it to be much fun any more. I never actually threw it in their faces — hey, I’m marrying the Emperor of Unbelief, suck on that — but we… haven’t spoken for some time. Not since the book appeared, anyway.’

‘The book, I suppose, being inevitable.’

‘It was — looking back — very much the only way to go. An aggressively atheist religious-affairs correspondent was always going to have a limited lifespan.’

Merrily said nothing for a while, beginning, at last, to see where the Stookes were coming from.

The Emperor of Unbelief. The awful banality of it flagged up against the flaky, fake piety of the Bull Chapel.

38 Wounded Bird

Outside, Eirion, naturally, had to ask.

‘So did he…?’

‘No!’

‘No, I wasn’t suggesting he actually — I mean, he never even made, like… an overture?’

‘He’s an archaeologist, not a bloody composer. And two days ago I’d never even met him.’

The rain was mist-thin, clinging to Jane’s face like cold sweat as they walked away from Gregory’s caravan through coils of chilled mud they couldn’t avoid.

‘I suppose if he…’ Eirion took Jane’s cold hand. ‘I suppose he’d leave you alone if he had you lined up from the start as a sacrifice to the god of TV ratings. I mean, personally, I cannot imagine anyone who would not want to—’

‘What is this? Let’s stop Jane from slashing her wrists before Christmas? Look, it’s clear that, if you’re a woman, with Blore you’re going to get stuffed one way or the other.’

Jane looked back at the excavation. Somewhere a bird was chirping, but Coleman’s Meadow was unrecognisable as the place where, on a golden morning in high summer, Eirion had photographed her cupping the sun.

‘It’s dead, Irene.’

‘Just the way it looks now, work in progress.’

‘No, something’s gone. I don’t want to remember it like this.’ Jane zipped her parka. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘I can’t get anything right today, can I?’ Eirion said.

‘It’s not you, it—’

Down on the edge of meadow a car door slammed.

Someone called out through the murk.

‘Jane!’

Neil Cooper was waiting for them down near the wicket gate, where his car and a white van, probably Gregory’s, were parked. The ghost of Cole Hill was embossed on the clouds like a pale bell on a minimalist wedding card.

‘I’m sorry, Jane — about what happened, I really am. I wasn’t able to say much yesterday, and I didn’t like to phone you at home.’

He looked older. He hadn’t shaved. He wore a patched camouflage jacket and a woolly hat. He was drenched, his jeans dark with damp, like he’d been walking through high undergrowth.

‘Not as if you didn’t warn me, Coops,’ Jane said.

‘For what it’s worth, if somebody’d warned me, I wouldn’t’ve taken any notice either. Is this…?’

‘Eirion Lewis,’ Eirion said.