A Crown of Lights

‘We don’t know. It was left on the doorstep.’

‘What an odd thing to do.’

‘Yes, it was odd, which is why we’d like to find out who did it. I was hoping you might be able to tell me who you gave the box to when you... gave it away. Do you remember, by any chance?’

‘Well, Bryan saw to that, of course. Bryan always knew where to take things, you see.’

‘Would there perhaps have been... I don’t know, a local historian or someone like that who might have had an interest in old documents?’

‘Hmmm.’ Mrs Wilshire pursed her tiny lips. ‘There’s Mr Jenkins, at the bookshop in Kington. But he writes for the newspapers as well, and Bryan was always very suspicious of journalists. Perhaps it was the new rector he gave it to.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not that he was terribly fond of the rector either. We went to one of his services, but only once. So noisy! I’ve never seen so many people in a church – well, not for an ordinary evensong. They must have come from elsewhere, like football supporters. And there were people with guitars. And candles – so many candles. Well, I have nothing against all that, but it’s not for the likes of us, is it? Are you a churchgoer, Mrs Thorogood?’

‘Er... No. Not exactly.’

‘And your husband? What is it your husband does for a living? I’m sure I did know...’

‘He’s an artist, an illustrator. He does book covers, mainly.’

‘Bryan used to read,’ Lizzie Wilshire said distantly. ‘He’d go through periods when he’d read for days in his sanctum.’ Her big eyes were moist; Betty thought of parboiled eggs.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘is there anything I can do, while I’m here? Vacuum the carpet? Clean anything? Prepare you something for tea? Or is there anywhere you need to go? You don’t drive, do you?’

‘Bryan never wanted me to use the car. He always said rural roads were far more dangerous because of the tractors and trailers. And we have a local man, Mr Gibbins, who runs a sort of part-time taxi service. He takes me into Kington twice a week and carries my shopping for me. You mustn’t worry about me, my dear, with all the work you must have on your hands, getting that old place ready to move into.’

‘We moved in last week, actually.’

Mrs Wilshire’s small mouth fell open. ‘But it was an absolute hovel when—’

She stopped, possibly remembering that her own estate agent had preferred phrases like ‘characterful and eccentric’.

‘It’s still got one or two problems,’ Betty said, more cheerfully than she felt, ‘but it doesn’t let the rain in. Well, not in most of the rooms. Mrs Wilshire, is there anyone else apart from the rector that your husband might have handed that box to – or even told about it?’

Mrs Wilshire shook her head. ‘He brought it back here to examine it, but he didn’t keep it very long, I know that, because I wouldn’t have it in the house – so dirty. I do rather remember something, but...’

Betty sighed. ‘Look, let me wash up these cups and things, at least.’

‘No dear, I can manage.’ She fumbled her cup and saucer to the coffee table, but the cup fell over and spilled some tea, which began to trickle over the edge of the table onto the carpet. Betty snatched a handful of tissues from a box nearby and went down on her knees.

Mopping, she glanced up at Lizzie Wilshire and saw years of low-level pain there, solidified like rock strata. And then, as sometimes happened when observing someone from an oblique angle, she caught a momentary glimpse of Lizzie’s aura. It was not intact and vibrated unevenly. This woman needed help.

Betty gathered up the cups and saucers. ‘Are you having treatment for the... arthritis?’

‘Oh, yes, Dr Coll. Do you know Dr Coll?’ Betty shook her head. ‘Dr Coll says I shall need a new hip, soon, and perhaps a new knee. But that may mean going all the way to Gobowen. Sixty miles or more! In the meantime, I’m on a course of tablets. Can’t have new hands, unfortunately, but Dr Coll’s been marvellous, of course. He—’

‘Steroids?’

Mrs Wilshire looked vague again. ‘Cortisone, I believe. And something else – some different pills. I have to take those twice a day. I haven’t been taking them very long. Just since after Bryan died... It seems to have got so much worse since Bryan died. All the worry, I suppose.’

‘Mrs Wilshire... I hope you don’t mind me asking, but have you ever tried anything... alternative? Or complementary, as some people prefer to say.’

‘You mean herbs and things?’

‘Sort of.’

‘I would be very wary, my dear. You never know quite what you’re taking, do you?’

Betty carried the cups and saucers into a large kitchen – made pale, rather than bright, by wide windows, triple-glazed, with a limited view of a narrow garden, a steep, green hillside and a slice of unkind sky. At the bottom of the garden was a shed or summer house with a small verandah – like a miniature cricket pavilion.

Betty’s compassion was veined with anger. Lizzie Wilshire was happily swallowing a cocktail of powerful drugs, with all kinds of side-effects. An unambitious woman who’d let her husband handle everything, make all her decisions for her, and was now willingly submitting to other people who didn’t necessarily give a shit.

When Betty came back, Lizzie Wilshire was staring placidly into the red glow of the oil heater.

‘Are you going to stay here?’ Betty asked.

‘Well, dear, the local people are so good, you see... You youngsters seem to flit about the country at whim. I don’t think I could move. I’d be afraid to.’ Mrs Wilshire looked down into her lap. ‘Of course, I don’t really like it at night – it’s such a big bungalow. So quiet.’

‘Couldn’t you perhaps move into the centre of the village?’

‘But I know Bryan’s still here, you see. The churchyard’s just around the hillside. I feel he’s watching over me. Is that silly?’

‘No.’ Betty gave her an encouraging smile. ‘It’s not silly at all.’

She walked out to the car feeling troubled and anxious in a way she hadn’t expected. That unexpected glimpse of the damaged aura suggested she was meant to come here today. Prodding the little Subaru out onto the long, straight bypass, under an already darkening sky, Betty decided to return soon with something herbal for Mrs Wilshire’s arthritis.

It would be a start. And she was getting back that feeling of having come right round in a circle. It was as a child in Llandrindod Wells, fifteen or so miles from here, that she’d first become fascinated by herbs and alternative medicines – perhaps because the bottles and jars containing them always looked so much more interesting than those from the chemist. There was that alternative shop in Llandrindod into which she was always dragging her mother then – not that she was interested.

They were both teachers, her parents: her mother at the high school, her dad in line for becoming headmaster of one of the primary schools. Betty was only ten when he failed to get the job, and soon after that they moved to Yorkshire, where he’d been born.

Teaching? Until she left school, she didn’t know there was any other kind of job. Her parents treated it like a calling to which they were both martyrs, and it was taken for granted that Betty would commit her life to the same kind of suffering. As for those ‘flights of imagination’ of hers... well, she’d grow out of all that soon enough. A teacher’s job was to stimulate the imagination of others.

Her parents were unbelieving Anglicans. Their world was colourless. Odd, really, that neither of them was sensitive. If it was in Betty’s genes, it must have been dormant for at least two generations. One of her earliest memories – from a holiday up north when she was about four – was her grandma’s chuckled ‘Go ’way wi’ you’ when she’d come up from the cellar of the big terraced house in Sheffield and asked her who the old man was who slept down there.

Betty drove slowly, feeling the countryside. The road from New Radnor cut through an ancient landscape – the historic church of Old Radnor prominent just below the skyline, like a guardian lighthouse without a light. Behind her, she felt the weight of the Radnor Forest hills – muscular, as though they were pushing her away. At Walton – a pub, farms, cottages – she turned left into the low-lying fertile bowl which archaeologists called the Walton Basin, suggesting that thousands of years ago it had been a lake. Now there was