A Crown of Lights

Jane was not happy. Jane was deeply frustrated. She telephoned Eirion from the scullery.

‘They’ve found out where that church is! The pagan church? I had completely forgotten about it! The one that woman was going on about on Livenight? I’d forgotten about it. Like, you apparently lose all these brain cells when you have a bump, and I just didn’t remember that stuff, and then bits started coming back, and I knew there was something vital, but I couldn’t put my fing— Anyway, it’s all over one of the papers. It’s somewhere just your side of the border. And she’s just raced off over there... on account of there’s this major scene going down.’

‘Major scene?’ Eirion said.

‘And I’m, like, I have got to check this out! But would she let me go with her? Like, she’s even taken Gomer with her. But not me – the person who is profoundly interested in this stuff? And, like, because of the other night there is, of course, not a thing I can do about it. She just puts on this calm, sorrowful expression and she looks me in the eyes, and she’s like, “You’re going to stay here, this time, aren’t you, flower?” I am completely, totally, utterly stuffed.’

Eirion said calmly, ‘So how are you now, Eirion? How’s the whiplash? Is there any chance your car isn’t a complete write-off?’

‘Ah.’ Jane sat down at the desk. ‘Right. Sorry, Irene. You have to understand that self-pity is, like, my most instinctive and dominant emotion.’

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah, slept a lot. Still feel a bit heavy when I first get up, but no headaches or anything. No scars at all. Like I said, some things I can’t remember too clearly. About that programme and stuff. But... yeah. Yeah, I’m OK.’

‘My stepmother spoke to your mother. I’ve been feeling I ought to ring her, too. Do you think she’d be OK about that?’

‘With you she’d be fatally charming. So is it a write-off?’

‘Interesting you should ask about the car before asking about me.’

‘I know you’re OK. Your stepmother told Mum you were OK.’

‘I might have subsequently suffered a brain haemorrhage in the night.’

‘Did you?’

Eirion paused. ‘Yes, it is a write-off. A car that old, if you break a headlamp, it’s a write-off.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I loved that car. I worked all summer at a lousy supermarket for that little Nova. I should get just about enough on the insurance to replace it with a mountain bike.’

‘Irene, I’m really, really sorry.’ Jane felt tears coming. ‘It’s all my fault. Everything I touch these days I screw up. I don’t suppose you want to see me ever again, but one day – I swear this on my mother’s... altar – I’ll get you another car.’

‘What, you mean in fifteen years’ time I’ll come home one day in my Porsche and find a thirty-year-old Vauxhall Nova outside my penthouse?’

‘In my scenario,’ Jane said, ‘you’re actually trudging home to your squat.’

‘Let’s forget the car,’ Eirion said. ‘You can sleep with me or something instead.’

‘OK.’

Silence.

Eirion said, ‘Listen, I’m sorry. That just came out. That was a joke.’

‘I said it was OK.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Eirion said. ‘I don’t want it to be like that.’

‘You don’t want to sleep with me?’

‘I mean, I don’t want it to be like... like you shag first and then you decide if you want to know the person better. I don’t want it to be like that. It never lasts. Most of the time that’s where it all ends.’

‘You’ve done a lot of this?’

‘Well... erm, I was in a band. You get around, meet lots of people, hear lots of stories. It’s just not how I want it to be with us, OK?’

‘Wow. You don’t mess around on the phone, do you?’

‘Yeah, I’m good on the phone,’ Eirion said. ‘Listen... It’s been weird. I can’t stop thinking about that stuff. I’ve just been walking round the grounds and turning it all over and over—’

‘Oh, the grounds...’

‘I can’t help my deprived upbringing. No, I was thinking how close we came to being like—’

‘Dead?’

‘Well... yeah, it really bloody shakes you up when you start thinking about it.’

‘Brings your life into hard focus. Unless you’ve had concussion, when it seems to do the opposite most of the time.’

‘I started thinking about your mum, what that would’ve done to her, with both her husband and her daughter – and it doesn’t matter what kind of shit he was, he was still her husband and your dad – like, both her husband and her daughter wiped out on the same bit of road. And maybe her, too, if she hadn’t stopped in time – these pile-ups can just go on and on in a fog. And... I don’t know what I’m trying to say, Jane...’

‘I do. It was like when I said to you in the car – I remember this because it was just before it happened. I said, do you never lie in bed and think about where we are and how we relate to the big picture?’

‘I just don’t lie in bed and think about it, I tramp around the grounds and the hills and think about it.’

‘That’s cool,’ Jane said.

‘And I was thinking how, when we were talking to Gerry earlier... you remember Gerry, the researcher?’

‘Gerry and... Maurice?’

‘That’s right. You remember Gerry saying, before the show started, that he wouldn’t be surprised if one of them – one of the pagans in the studio – tried some spooky stuff, just to show they could make things happen?’

‘He said that?’

‘He said spooky stuff. And I said, “What? What would they do?” And Gerry said a spell or something, just to prove they could make things happen. It was just after he was going on about your mum, and how your dad was killed and maybe she felt guilty—’

‘Oh yeah – the bastard.’

‘And you jumped down his—’

‘Sure. I mean, where did he get that stuff?’

‘He got it from that guy Ned Bain.’

‘Ned...? Oh, the really cool—’

‘The smooth-talking git,’ Eirion said. ‘But that whole thing was getting to me. Because they didn’t do anything, did they? There was no spell, no mumbo-jumbo, no pyrotechnics; they were all actually quite well behaved. But somehow Gerry had got it into his head that they were going to pull some stunt. So, anyway, I rang him this morning. You know... how I’m that bloke who wants to be a TV journalist? So I’m writing a piece on my adventures in the Livenight gallery for the school magazine...’

‘You’re not!’

‘Of course I’m not. It’s just what I told Gerry to get him talking. I told him I was explaining in my piece how the programme researchers get their information, and there were things I didn’t have a chance to ask him there on the night.’

‘And where do they get it?’

‘Cuttings files, obviously. But they also talk to the guests beforehand. Like this Tania talked to your mum... and Gerry talked to Ned Bain and a few others. But Gerry reckoned it was Bain had provided all this detailed background on the Church of England’s first woman diocesan exorcist.’

‘Gerry just told you that?’

‘It took a bit of digging, actually, Jane. After which Gerry said how he thought I had a future in his