A Crown of Lights

what was so obviously needed.

‘We should close her eyes,’ Merrily said, ‘don’t you think?’

She put out a hesitant hand towards Mrs Weal, thumb and forefinger spread. The times she’d done this before were always in the moments right after death, when there was still that light-smoke sense of a departing spirit. But, oh God, what if the woman’s eyelids were frozen fast?

‘You will,’ Mr Weal said slowly, ‘leave her alone.’

Merrily froze. He was standing sentry-stiff. A very big man in every physical sense. His face was broad, and he had a ridged Roman nose and big cheeks, reddened by broken veins – a farmer’s face. His greying hair was strong and pushed back stiffly.

Without looking at her, he said, ‘What is your purpose in being here, madam?’

‘My name’s Merrily.’ She let her hand fall to her side. ‘I’m the... vicar of Ledwardine.’

‘So?’

‘I was just... I happened to be in the building, and the ward sister asked me to look in. She thought you might like to... talk.’

Could be a stupid thing to say. If there ever was a man who didn’t like to talk, this was possibly him. Between them, his wife’s eyes gazed nowhere, not even into the beyond. They were filmed over, colourless as the water in the metal bowl on the bedside table, and they seemed the stillest part of her. He’d pulled the bedclothes back up, so that only her face was on show. She looked young enough to be his daughter. She had light brown hair, and she was pretty. Merrily imagined him out on his tractor, thinking of her waiting for him at home. Wife number two, probably, a prize.

‘Mr Weal – look, I’m sorry I don’t know your first name...’

His eyes were downcast to the body. He wore a green suit of hairy, heavy tweed. ‘Mister,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh.’ She stepped away from the bed. ‘Right. Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you... any further.’

There was a long silence. The water bowl made her think of a font, of last rites, a baptism of the dying. Then he squinted at her across the corpse. He blinked once – which seemed, curiously, to release tension, and he grunted.

‘J.W. Weal, my name.’

She nodded. It had obviously been a mistake to introduce herself just as Merrily, like some saleswoman cold-calling.

‘How long had you been married, Mr Weal?’

Again, he didn’t reply at once, as though he was carefully turning over her question to see if a subtext dropped out.

‘Nine years, near enough.’ Yerrs, he said. His voice was higher than you’d expect, given the size of him, and brushed soft.

Merrily said, ‘We... never know what’s going to come, do we?’

She looked down at Mrs Weal, whose face was somehow unrelaxed. Or maybe Merrily was transferring her own agitation to the dead woman. Who was perhaps her own age, mid to late thirties? Maybe a little older.

‘She’s... very pretty, Mr Weal.’

‘Why wouldn’t she be?’

Dull light had awoken in his eyes, like hot ashes raked over. People probably had been talking – J.W. Weal getting himself an attractive young wife like that. Merrily wondered if there were grown-up children from some first Mrs Weal, a certain sourness in the hills.

She swallowed. ‘Do you, er... belong to a particular church?’ Cullen was right; he looked like the kind of man who would do, if only out of tradition and a sense of rural protocol.

Mr Weal straightened up. She reckoned he must be close to six and a half feet tall, and built like a great stone barn. His eyebrows met, forming a stone-grey lintel.

‘That, I think, is my personal business, thank you.’

‘Right. Well...’ She cleared her throat. ‘Would you mind if I prayed for her? Perhaps we could—’

Pray together, she was about to say. But Mr Weal stopped her without raising his voice which, despite its pitch, had the even texture of authority.

‘I shall pray for her.’

Merrily nodded, feeling limp. This was useless. There was no more she could say, nothing she could do here that Eileen Cullen couldn’t do better.

‘Well, I’m very sorry for the intrusion.’

He didn’t react – just looked at his wife. For him, there was already nobody else in the room. Merrily nodded and bit her lip, and walked quietly out, badly needing a cigarette.

‘No?’ Eileen Cullen levered herself from the wall.

‘Hopeless.’

Cullen led her up the corridor, well away from the door. ‘I’d hoped to have him away before Menna’s sister got here. I’m not in the best mood tonight for mopping up after tears and recriminations.’

‘Sorry... whose sister?’

‘Menna’s – Mrs Weal’s. The sister’s Mrs Buckingham and she’s from down south and a retired teacher, and there’s no arguing with her. And no love lost between her and that man in there.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t ask. I don’t know. I don’t want to know.’

‘What was Menna like?’

‘I don’t know. Except for what I hear. She wasn’t doing much chatting when they brought her in. But even if she’d been capable of speech, I doubt you’d have got much out of her. Lived in the sticks the whole of her life, looking after the ole father like a dutiful child’s supposed to when her older and wiser sister’s fled the coop. Father dies, she marries an obvious father figure. Sad story but not so unusual in a rural area.’

‘Where’s this exactly?’

‘I forget. The Welsh side of Kington. Sheep-shagging country.’

‘Charming.’

‘They have their own ways and they keep closed up.’

The amiable, voluble Gomer Parry, of course, was originally from the Radnor Valley. But this was no time to debate the pitfalls of ethnic stereotyping.

‘How did she come to have a stroke? Do you know?’

‘You’re not on the Pill yourself, Merrily?’

‘Er... no.’

‘That would be my first thought with Menna. Still on the Pill at thirty-nine. It does happen. Her doctor should’ve warned her.’

‘Wouldn’t Mr Weal have known the dangers?’

‘He look like he would?’ Cullen handed Merrily her bag. ‘Thanks for trying – you did your best. Don’t go having nightmares. He’s just a poor feller loved his wife to excess.’

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ Merrily said. ‘I think he’s going to need help getting his life back on track. That’s the kind of guy who goes back to his farm and hangs himself in the barn.’

‘If he had a barn.’

‘I thought he was a farmer.’

‘I don’t think I said that, did I?’

‘What’s he do, then? Not a copper?’

‘Built like one, sure. No, he’s a lawyer, as it happens. Listen, I’m gonna have a porter come up and we’ll do it the hard way.’

‘A solicitor?’

Cullen gave her a shrewd look. She knew Sean had been a lawyer, that Merrily herself had been studying the law until the untimely advent of Jane had pushed her out of university with no qualifications. The difficult years, pre-ordination.

‘Man’s not used to being argued with outside of a courthouse,’ Cullen said. ‘You go back and find your wee