A Crown of Lights

mean hours. Said she’d got talking to people. First time she’d really talked to anybody since we come here.’ He scowled. ‘Including me.’

‘She’d never been before?’ Merrily said. ‘To church – to the hall?’

‘Nah. Not to any kind of church. See, what you gotta realize about Marianne – and I’ve never told a soul round here, and I would bleedin’ hate for anybody—’

‘Not a word, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘Not a word from us.’

‘She got problems.’ Greg’s voice went down to a mutter. ‘Depression. Acute depression. Been in hospital for it. You know what I mean – psychiatric? This is back in London, when we was managing a pub in Fulham. She was getting... difficult to handle.’

Merrily said nothing.

‘Wiv men and... and that.’ Greg waved it away with an embarrassed shake of the head. ‘Ain’t a nympho or noffink like that. It was just the depression. We had a holiday once and she was fine. Said she was sure she’d be fine the whole time if we went to live somewhere nice, like in the country.’ He snorted. ‘Country ain’t cheap no more. Not for a long time.’

‘’Cept yere, mabbe,’ Gomer said.

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s a trap, Greg, boy.’

‘Tell me about it. I’ve had people in here – incomers, you can pick ’em out from the nervous laughter – still lookin’ for strawberries and cream on the village green and the blacksmith taptappin’ over his forge. Be funny if it wasn’t so bleedin’ tragic.’

‘That was you, was it?’ Merrily said softly. ‘When you first came here?’

‘Her – not me. I ain’t a romantic. I tried to tell her... yeah, all right, maybe I did fink it was gonna be different. I mean, there’s noffink wrong with the local people, most of ’em...’

‘I coulder tole you, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘You come to the wrong part o’ the valley. Folks back there...’ he waved a hand over his shoulder, back towards New Radnor. ‘They’re different again, see. Bit of air back there. Makes a difference.’

‘So your wife went to church again yesterday?’ Merrily prompted.

‘Yeah. Off again. Up the village hall. Couldn’t get out this place fast enough. I didn’t want this. Sure, I wanted her to make friends, but not this way. I said, come on, we ain’t churchgoers and it’d be hypocritical to start now.’

‘Without the hypocrites, all our congregations would be sadly depleted,’ Merrily admitted. ‘But she went anyway. And came back all aglow, right?’

Greg didn’t smile.

‘Made lots of new instant friends,’ Merrily said. ‘People she’d only nodded to in the village shop hugged her as she left. She realized she’d never felt quite so much at home in the community before.’

‘Dead on,’ Greg said sourly.

‘And she wants you to close the pub and go to church with her next week.’

‘Says it’s the only way we’re gonna have a future. And I don’t fink she meant the extra business. It won’t...’ He looked scared. ‘It won’t last, will it, Miss...?’

‘Merrily.’

‘It can’t last. Can it? She’s not a religious person. I mean... yeah, I coulda foreseen this, soon as people starting whispering about the new rector, what a wonderful geezer he was, how their lives was changed, how he’d... I dunno, helped them stop smoking, straightened out their kids, this kind of stuff. All this talk of the Holy Spirit, and people fainting in church. And Marianne kind of saying, “Makes you fink, don’t it? Never had no luck to speak of since we moved in. Wouldn’t do no harm, would it?” ’ Greg looked at Merrily’s collar. ‘Not your style, then, all this Holy Spirit shite?’

‘Not my style, exactly...’

Gomer said, ‘Don’t do any good to let your feet get too far off the ground, my experience.’

‘Why did they want you to close the pub today?’ Merrily asked.

‘Aaah.’ Shook his head contemptuously. ‘You seen the paper. He told ’em all yesterday this was coming off. Got bloody Devil-worshippers in the village and they gotta be prepared. Bleedin’ huge turnout. Standing room only up the hall, ’cording to Marianne, when I could get any sense out of her. People hanging out the doors, lining the bloody steps.’

‘This is local people or... newcomers?’

‘Mainly newcomers, I reckon. A few locals, though, no question. And apparently Ellis is going...’ Greg threw up his arms. ‘ “There’s a great evil come amongst us! We got to fight it. We are the chosen ones in the battle against Satan!” ’ Satan is this Robin Thorogood? All right, a Yank, a bit loud – in your face. But Satan? You credit that?’

‘You know him, then?’

He shrugged. ‘Americans. Talk to ’em for half an hour, you know ’em. His wife’s more down to earth. I didn’t know they was witches, though. They never talked about that. But why should they?’

‘You were going to tell us why you’d closed the pub.’

‘He don’t want any distractions. He wants concentration of faith.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Merrily said. ‘Why?’

‘Mondays he holds his healing sessions,’ Greg said. ‘Up the village hall.’

‘So?’

There was a lot of pain and bewilderment in his eyes.

‘I can help,’ Merrily said. ‘Just tell me.’

Greg breathed heavily down his nose. ‘Last night, she says to me, “I’m unclean.” Just like that – like out the Bible. “I’ve been tempted by Satan,” she says.’

‘En’t we all, boy?’ Gomer said.

‘By Thorogood. Suddenly, she’s being frank all the time. She’s telling me stuff I don’t wanna know. Like she was... tempted sexually by Robin Thorogood, agent of Satan. She was possessed by his “dark glamour”. She wanted to sh— sleep wiv him. She comes out wiv all this. To me.’

‘Wanted to sleep with him?’

‘Ah, noffink bleedin’ happened. I’m sure of that. He ain’t been here two minutes. Plus she’s ten years older than what he is, gotta be, and if you seen his wife... Nah, I doubt he even noticed Marianne. It’s just shite.’ Greg shook his head, gutted. ‘I’ll go get your coffee.’

‘Greg, hang on... “Possessed by his dark glamour”?’ This wasn’t his wife speaking, this was Ellis. ‘Did she actually use the word “possessed”?’

‘I reckon, yeah. To be honest, I couldn’t take no more. I was knackered out. I went to bed. This is totally stupid. This don’t happen in places like this. This is city madness, innit?’

‘And she’s up at the hall now?’

Merrily slid from her stool, picked up her scarf.

30 Handmaiden

OUT IN THE pub car park, she was ambushed.

‘Mrs Watkins – Martyn Kinsey, BBC Wales. I gather you’re speaking for the diocese today.’

‘Well, I am, but—’

‘We’d like to knock off a quick interview, if that’s OK.’

He’d probably recognized her from Livenight. She asked him if there was any chance of doing this stuff later. From where she stood she could see the top of the cross on the village hall, and it was lit up, and it hadn’t been lit before.