To Dream of the Dead

‘First I yeard of it,’ Gomer said, ‘was when ole Harold Wescott was renting the land from Maggie Pole, and he put his beasts in there, and they made that much noise at night as Maggie, up at Cole Farm, her couldn’t get no sleep, so her makes Harold transport the beasts two mile to his own barn. That was how it become a tractor shed, see. Tractors don’t moan.’

‘Never knew about that,’ James said. ‘Live and learn.’

‘I done some drainage work there once, for Harold,’ Gomer said. ‘Or tried to. Beggar of a job. Nothin’ went right. Sometimes you finds ground don’t wanner be shifted, see.’

‘What made you think that?’

‘You just gets a feel that a place is tellin’ you summat.’

‘Like bugger off?’

‘Mabbe. Ole digger… ole digger broke down twice — well, I’m saying ole digger, her was new back then, and we never had no real trouble with her since. I goes back to Harold Wescott, I says Harold, en’t there nowhere else you can put this drain? Well, I knowed there was, see, but it’d be longer, and Harold, he was always bloody tight like that, so I told him I’d do it for the same price, and that was that. Sorted.’

‘This was near Cole Barn?’ Merrily said.

‘Twenny yards? There was no front on him then, the ole barn, so I’d keep the digger in there while I was on that job.’

‘And, erm… that wouldn’t have been when you couldn’t get her started, by any chance?’

‘You’re ahead of me there, vicar.’

‘Not been back since?’

‘Not likely to, either. Gerry Murray got his own digger, as we all bloody know.’

‘Sore point,’ James said. ‘Murray was hired to do the preliminary ground-stripping for the archaeological dig. Pierce obviously fixed it.’

‘Bent bastards,’ Gomer said.

The Eight Till Late had only just opened. It was empty.

Apart from Shirley West behind the till.

In the front of the shop, this was. Not in the post office which still had its blind down, concealing the public information posters, the clock and even the iron cross which Shirley had hung very prominently, as if she, definitely not Merrily, was God’s representative in Ledwardine. As if the post office was the centre of the real faith.

Merrily looked into the smoky eyes below the coiled hair, summoning a smile.

‘Morning, Shirley. Jim not in?’

‘Getting his breakfast,’ Shirley said. ‘He stayed open half the night, the poor man. What do you want?’

Charming as ever.

‘What’s going to happen with the post office today, Shirley?’

‘May not open. No mail going in or out. I’m waiting for instructions from head office.’

‘Difficult situation.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t suppose they’ve had this problem before.’

‘No.’

‘And all my fault, apparently,’ Merrily said.

Good a time as any.

47 Beacon

Shirley wore an outsize denim shirt with epaulettes, no make-up, no jewellery. Since acquiring the status of village postmistress she’d put on weight, shed femininity. Something ageless about her now, and monolithic.

Merrily stood in front of the counter, small but immovable.

Yes, well…

‘A short chat, Shirley?’

Shirley had her fingers entwined below her chest, her eyelids half lowered. Her efforts to avoid scented soap and shampoo had left her smelling like a clinic.

‘It’s just that people keep saying to me, if Mrs West is a member of this other church in Leominster, why does she keep coming to yours? While making it fairly clear that she doesn’t like the way you do things. Never really know what to tell them.’

‘You can tell them it’s none of their business,’ Shirley said.

‘And I’d happily do that if you hadn’t put on a floor show for them yesterday.’

Shirley said nothing, but the fingers of her right hand, ringless, began flexing on the counter, next to the till.

‘Not that I haven’t been impressed with what the other place has done for you,’ Merrily said. ‘The confidence. That sense of certainty.’

Along with a refusal to compromise, a blindness to grey areas and a tendency to regard all other spiritual paths as highways to hell.

Welcome to fundamentalism.

‘It’s a bigger organisation than I’d thought, too.’

‘Worldwide.’ Shirley actually smiled. ‘And growing day by day. What can I—?’

‘But its headquarters are in America?’

‘What can I get you, Mrs Watkins?’

‘Or in cyberspace. Possible to build a big congregation on the Net.’

‘Our congregation is growing day by day,’ Shirley said. ‘As we approach the Endtime.’

‘Ah… right. It all comes back to that, doesn’t it?’

‘Look around you,’ Shirley said.

‘The flood?’

‘Read the Book of Daniel.’

‘I’ve read it. Not an easy one.’

‘And does not Daniel say that the flood will take the Antichrist? Before the Rapture?’

‘He does?’

Maybe it wouldn’t help to get pedantic over whether Daniel ever had much to say about the Rapture.

’Before we meet the Lord, in our bodies of light,’ Shirley said.

American cults had traded heavily on the Rapture. Mass suicide one result.

‘Do you… have a particular mission, Shirley?’

‘Each of us carries the Light of the Lord, and if we remain steadfast the light will grow within us until we become light.’

Shirley West becoming light?

Dear God.

An enigma, though, this woman. Nobody could say she was unintelligent. Former bank branch-manager — good head for figures, presumably, extensive knowledge of business and personal finance, ability to keep customers happy.

What happened?

‘We are to keep a vigil at the doorways and raise our lights above them.’

‘Which doorways are those?’

And why was this like trying to tease really obvious information out of a class of small children?

‘In latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. Many doorways to hell, look.’

‘And there’s one here? A doorway here in the village? Is that what you’re saying? Are we talking about Coleman’s Meadow? Do you have a mission in connection with Coleman’s Meadow, Shirley?’