To Dream of the Dead

and sitting down at the desk in front of the black Bakelite phone. She took a breath, let it out slowly, then dialled Huw Owen’s number in the Brecon Beacons.

Engaged. She’d wait. This was potentially political. Not a good idea to take it any further without advice from her spiritual director.

She made some tea, picked up The Hole in the Sky. Opened the cover, held it up to the window and peered through the hole. All the way to hell?

nothing… what did you expect?

It made a lot more sense now. Merrily started on page one, twenty minutes of fast-flipping taking her through the entire book.

‘God’ telling the Yorkshire Ripper to kill fallen women and advising George W. Bush to take Iraq. The Spanish Inquisition, the sectarian horrors in Northern Ireland, all the bloodied roads to 9/11.

Nothing new — how could there be? Not even Stooke’s delight in old-fashioned blasphemy. Giving God a good kicking with steel toecaps, trampling on taboos. The Christian God and Jesus Christ, as was the custom in this country, getting a bigger kicking than Allah and The Prophet Mo, as Stooke called him with something close to a condescending affection. Apart from the recycled interviews with unsuspecting religious leaders — Rowan Williams was a good one — there was little here not already covered by Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, a more distinguished hack than Stooke.

The relishing of blasphemy… when you thought about it, that seemed more characteristic of Leonora than Stooke himself who seemed to have no personal axe to grind against the Church.

She turned to the final chapter.

Predictions? Hardly.

… within fifty years, cathedrals will be art galleries, theatres and concert halls, churches quaint medieval grottoes available for secular weddings and civil partnerships.

The clergy? What remains of it will be unpaid. Little pretence that it’s promoting anything more than the first pulp fiction.

The Church of England? Now, what on earth will be remembered of that beyond its origins in the need to legitimise a fat king’s leg-over? Future historians will struggle to explain how it managed to go on for so long, flabby with hypocrisy and conceit…

Merrily dialled Huw’s number again. This time it was the machine. Well, it was Sunday and he had a bunch of isolated churches.

‘I’m not in. If it’s owt important you’d best leave a message.’

‘Huw, it’s me,’ Merrily said. ‘I have a problem.’

She put the phone down and before she could take her hand away, it rang.

‘Gorra favour to ask, Merrily.’

‘Frannie. A favour. That’s not like you.’

‘Ho ho. Listen, that nursing sister at the hospital, your mate, what was her name? Belfast woman, indiscreet.’

‘I’d be more inclined to see her as a woman of conscience with a fairly flexible loyalty to the Hereford health authority. Eileen Cullen.’

‘Could you get her to find out something for me? Nothing contentious. Just I don’t want to be connected with it.’

‘But it’s OK if I’m connected with it?’

‘Nothing contentious, Merrily.’

‘Your drug thing pan out?’

‘Better than expected, as it happens. Yes, indeed. I just need a bit of information that your friend should be able to provide very quickly.’

‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’

Silence.

‘All right, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll try and get hold of Eileen Cullen, explain what an essentially decent person you are, underneath, and give her your number. That way you can tell her what you want and she can decide if it agrees with her conscience’

Bliss thought about it. Merrily could hear traffic noise.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Do that. Give her the mobile. If I don’t hear from her in an hour, I’ll call you back.’

‘It’s that urgent?’

‘My whole life is urgent, Merrily.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In the car. The car’s me office now. A privacy issue.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeh, I’m rediscovering me faith.’

In the pause, she heard an angry car horn.

‘When I was a little lad,’ Bliss said, ‘I had a hard time separating God from Santa Claus. Our priest, Father Flanagan, used to come round on Friday nights with his bets for me dad to put on for him. And this particular Friday — I was a cocky little twat — I said, Father. I’ve decided I’ll not be coming to church on Sunday, and he goes, Why is that, Francis? And I say, Because I’ve just turned nine, Father, and I’m too old to believe in God. And Father Flanagan’s creased up laughing. One day, Francis, he says, when you least expect it, you’ll look up, and there above you you’ll see what is unmistakably His face. And when that happens… when that happens… you’ll remember this moment.’

‘And you were suitably chastened?’

‘No, it was a bit of an anticlimax. I thought he was gonna tell me something interesting.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Anyway,’ Bliss said, ‘I looked up, and it wasn’t the big feller, it was a face called Steve Furneaux. But I finally saw what Father Flanagan was on about. There is a God.’

‘And is he on your side?’

‘I frigging hope so, Merrily, because no other bastard is.’

* * *

A few minutes later Jane and Eirion came back and Merrily cobbled together a seriously late lunch of cheese omelettes and hot mince pies — not good enough, but nobody seemed hungry, the combination of darkness and flood making Ledwardine seem, for the first time, like a perilous place to be. And she kept thinking of Father Ellis and the dark brew of piety and perversity that had poisoned a valley.

Jane was more animated now, but in an agitated way. Her eyes flickering as she ate. There was a thin streak of red mud down her face that looked disturbingly like a knife wound.

They listened to the flood update on Radio H & W. Roads all over the county were being closed, even major roads, east — west routes particularly affected. Merrily had to collect a guitar and was apprehensive. There were few places in the county further east than Knights Frome.

‘We’ll come,’ Jane said. ‘Eirion would love to see Al Boswell’s workshop, wouldn’t you, Irene?’

‘I would, Jane, but I told Lol we’d go round to his place tonight, see what he wants us to do for this back-projection at his concert. And the recordings?’

‘I’d forgotten. Mum, listen, it’s not safe out there. Can’t you like go tomorrow?’

‘Christmas Eve? Not a chance.’

‘Or we’ll go tomorrow.’

‘No, I need to try. If it looks bad I’ll turn back.’

‘It’s just that if I’m going to be an orphan, I’d prefer it didn’t happen at Christmas. That would be just so Dickens. Do I have time for a quick shower? I feel…’ Jane flapped her arms ‘…