A Crown of Lights

‘Look,’ Prentice said. ‘You were more or less outed – if I can use that term – on a TV programme watched by millions of viewers. I’d guess you’re going to be hearing from a lot of other journalists over the next few days. And I mean tabloid journalists.’

‘Isn’t that what you are?’

‘We like to call ours a compact paper. There’s a difference.’

‘Don’t make me laugh, Richard.’

‘Robin... look... what we have in mind – and this would be for Monday’s paper, so we’d have a whole day to get it absolutely right – is a serious feature explaining exactly what your plans are for this church, and why you believe you’re no threat to the community.’

‘Somebody say we’re a threat to the community here?’

‘You know what local people are like, Robin.’

‘Out,’ Robin said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Go, Richard.’

‘Robin, I think you’ll find that we can protect you from the unwanted intrusion of less responsible—’

‘Leave now. Or I’ll, like, turn you into a fucking toad.’

‘That’s not a very sensible attitude. Look, this was probably a bad time. I can tell something’s happened to upset you. We’re going to be staying in the area tonight. I suggest we come back in the morning. All right?’

Robin stepped out of the porch. Through the trees, he could hear the racing of the Hindwell Brook.

‘OK,’ Prentice said, ‘that’s your decision.’

And if they’d gone at that moment, things might all have been so much less fraught.

Unfortunately, at this point the porch and Robin were lit up brightly, and Robin realized the younger guy suddenly had a camera out.

The rushing of the brook filled his head. Cold white noise. Robin thought of silent Betty with her back to him in the sack. He thought he heard, somewhere on the ether, the rich sound of Kirk Blackmore laughing at his artwork.

Robin made like Lord freaking Madoc.

22 Wisp

MERRILY COULD SEE the battlemented outline of Old Hindwell church tower over the bristle of trees, and the spiteful voice cawed in her head.

I can show you a church with a tower and graves and everything... which is now a pagan church. You don’t know what’s happening on your own doorstep.

If these pagans had been around for a while, it would explain why Ellis had adopted Old Hindwell – extremes attract extremes. The only other abandoned Anglican church she could think of in the diocese was at Llanwarne, down towards Ross-on-Wye, and that was close to the centre of a village and open to the road, a tourist attraction.

But whether this was or wasn’t the alleged neo-pagan temple was not the issue right now. What she needed to make for was the former rectory, which was not ruined, far from abandoned... but about to accommodate its first grave.

She would probably encounter Sophie’s car along the way.

And Barbara Buckingham?

That grumbling foreboding in her stomach – that was subjective, right? Merrily walked faster, aware that the only sound on the street was the soft padding of her own flat shoes. She walked into the centre of the village, where there was a small shop and post office – closed already – and the pub had frosted windows and looked inviting only compared with everywhere else.

In one of the cottages, a dog howled suddenly, a spiralling sound; maybe it had picked up a distant discordant wailing emanating from the village hall. Something which was not, perhaps, quite human.

The pub car park was still full. With the cars – of course – of outsiders. The singing in tongues should have given it away: many people in today’s congregation were not, in fact, family mourners or friends or long-time clients of J.W. Weal, but core members of Nicholas Ellis’s church.

And the tongues was not a spontaneous phenomenon; for them it had become routine, a habit, almost an addiction, a Christian trip. She’d learned that while at theological college when a bunch of students, well into the born-again thing, had persuaded her to join them at a weekend event known as the Big Bible Fest, held in a huge marquee near Warwick. Two long days of everybody smiling at everybody else and doing the ‘Praise Him!’ routine like kids with a new schoolyard catchphrase, and by the end of the first day Merrily had been ready to swing for the next person who addressed her as ‘sister’.

It had been Jeremy, one of the faithful, who’d told her that the cynical bitch persona was simply concealing her fear of complete surrender to the Holy Spirit. He was challenging her to go along that night with an open mind, without prejudice, without resistance. Praise Him! So, OK, she’d attended a service where all the hymns had been simple, rhythmic pop anthems, sung by happy people in Hawaiian shirts and sweatpants – and all ending in tongues.

Tongues was the gift of Christ, originally granted to a select few. The Bible did not spell out what tongues actually sounded like, its linguistic roots, its grammatical structure, but modern evangelical Christians insisted it was a way of talking directly to God, who Himself did not necessarily speak English.

Not entirely convincing, but for the first two hymns she’d held out. After all, hadn’t her own formative mystical moment occurred in total silence, lit by the blue and the gold, alone in a little hermit’s cave of a church?

And then – Praise Him, praise God! – her mouth had been open like everyone else’s, and out it all came like those flimsy coloured scarves produced by conjurers. Words which were flowing and lyrical and meant nothing, but sounded as if they ought to. Lush, liquid worship. Dynamic, wordless prayer. A disconnecting of the senses. A transcendent experience, up there around the marquee’s striped roof.

She could, in fact, still bring it on when she wanted to, could summon that wild Christian high, simple as popping a pill, as though just doing it that once had been a lifetime’s initiation. It was easy.

Maybe too easy.

She wondered to what extent the locals had joined in. Were slow-speaking farmers now singing in tongues? Did they say ‘Praise God’ when they met by the sheep pens on market day, instead of the time-honoured ‘’Ow’re you?’

You couldn’t rule that out. After all, it was in Wales that traditional church worship had been massively abandoned in the rush to build stark, spartan Noncomformist chapels. So how far down the charismatic road did Old Hindwell go? Was it like the Toronto Blessing, with people collapsing everywhere? Were they discovering Galilean sand in the palms of their hands and gold fillings in their teeth?

But how appropriate was this at a funeral?

Merrily scanned the cars by the pub. Was one of them Barbara’s? What make had Barbara been driving? Merrily didn’t know.

She turned and walked on down the darkening street, a headache coming on, although it was dulled by the cold. Beyond the village shop and a lone bungalow with a 1970s-style rainbow-stone porch, the grass verge came to an end, so Merrily walked in the road, down into a conifered valley which would eventually open out to the hill country of Radnor Forest.

Soon afterwards, she heard the low mutter of approaching vehicles, and then dipped headlights began to cast a pale light on the road, and she pressed close to the hedge as the cortege came past.

As the mourners had started coming for their cars, Gomer had moved to the pub window to look out for Gareth and Judy Prosser. Chances were the Prossers would be on foot, but they’d still have to come this way. Most of the people picking up their vehicles Gomer didn’t recognize.