A Crown of Lights

‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’

Not, Oh, Mother! which she only said, still self-consciously, at times of minor crisis.

Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh no...’

There was a small click and wall lights came on, cold and milky blue.

‘Go and look at her, if you like,’ said Dr Coll. ‘I think you ought to.’

He walked over to the fireplace, stood with an elbow resting on the mantelpiece.

‘You aren’t afraid of death, are you, Mrs Thorogood? Just a preliminary to rebirth, isn’t that what you people believe?’

Betty found she was trembling. ‘What happened to her?’

Dr Coll raised an ironic eyebrow. ‘Among other things, it seems you happened to her.’

Betty edged around the sofa, keeping some distance between her and the doctor. When she reached the window, a movement outside made her look out. Another car had parked next to the Range Rover. A policeman and a policewoman were coming up the path.

Betty spun and saw Lizzie Wilshire, rigid and slightly twisted in her chair with a little froth around her bluing lips and her bulbous eyes popped fully open, as if they were lidless.

Dr Coll stepped away from the fireplace. He was holding up a round, brown bottle with a half-inch of liquid in the bottom.

‘Is this your herbal potion, Mrs Thorogood?’

33 The Adversary

FROM OFF, THEY were, nearly all of them, Gomer reckoned. He’d told Merrily he could never imagine too many local people sticking their heads above the hedge, and he was right. There were maybe fifty of them – not an enormous turnout under the circumstances – and the ones Merrily could hear all had English accents.

Two TV crews had stayed for this; they were pushing microphones at the marchers as they came to the end of the pavement, a line of lamps, moving on into the lane past Annie Smith’s place, bound for the Prosser farm and St Michael’s. Telly questions coming at them, to get them all fired up.

‘But what are you really hoping to achieve here?’

‘Do you actually believe two self-styled white witches can in some way curse the whole community?’

‘Don’t people have the right, in the eyes of the law, to worship whatever they want to?’

And the answers came back, in Brummy, in Northern, in cockney London and posh London.

‘This is not about the law. Read your Bible. In the eyes of God they are profane.’

‘Why are there as many as five churches around the Radnor Forest dedicated to St Michael, who was sent to fight Satan?’ A woman in a bright yellow waterproof holding up five fingers for the camera.

There was a central group of hardcore Bible freaks. This was probably the first demonstration most of them had ever joined, Merrily thought. For quite a number, it was probably the first time they’d actually been closely involved with a church. It was the isolation factor: the need to belong which they never realized they’d experience until they moved to the wild hills. And the fact that Nicholas Ellis was a quietly spoken, educated kind of fanatic.

‘It’s true to say,’ a sprightly, elderly woman told ITV Wales, ‘that until I attended one of Father Ellis’s services I did not truly believe in God as a supernatural being. I did not have faith, just a kind of wishy-washy wishful thinking. Now I have more than faith, I have belief. I exult in it. I exult. I love God and I hate and despise the Adversary.’

For a moment, Merrily was grabbed by a sense of uncertainty that recalled her first experience of tongues in that marquee near Warwick. Whatever you thought about Ellis, he’d brought all these people to God.

Then she thought about his slim, metal crucifix.

Ellis himself was answering no questions tonight; gliding along, half in some other world, no expression on his unlined, shiny face. Self-belief was a great preserving agent.

Hanging back from the march, Merrily rang to check on Jane, walking slowly with the phone.

‘It was on the radio,’ the kid said. ‘That Buckingham woman’s probably dead, isn’t she?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘But if she is, you don’t think she topped herself, do you?’

‘That’s something the police get to decide, flower.’

Jane made a contemptuous noise. ‘The police won’t do a thing. They don’t have the resources. The only reason this area has the lowest level of crime in southern Britain is because half the crimes don’t even get discovered, everybody knows that.’

‘So cynical, so young.’

‘I read the story in the Mail. Totally predictable right-wing stitch-up.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yeah. Mum... Listen, the truth, OK? Have you spoken to Irene since we were in Worcester? Like, him telling you all about me conning him into taking me to Livenight by saying you knew all about us going and it would help his career. And then – like, in his role as a Welsh Chapel fundamentalist bigot – asking if you knew how seriously interested I was in alternative spirituality, and maybe that what I secretly wanted was to get to know some of those people – the pagans – and then you both agreeing that this was probably a spiteful teenage reaction against having a mother who was a priestess and into Christianity at the sexy end.’

The kid ran out of breath.

Merrily said, ‘Was this before or after Eirion said to me, “Oh God, I’m so sorry, this is all my fault, what if she’s got brain damage?” And I said, “No, it’s all my fault, I should never have agreed to do the bloody stupid programme”? Was it after that?’

Jane said nothing.

‘Look,’ Merrily said, ‘after the initial blinding shock of seeing you in the middle of the motorway, it didn’t take a lot of creative mental energy to form what looked like a complete picture of how you and Eirion came to be in the neighbourhood of Birmingham anyway. Complete enough to satisfy me, anyway, without any kind of tedious, acrimonious inquest. I mean, you know, call me smug, call me self-deluded, but the fact is – when you really look at it – I’m actually not that much older than you, flower.’

Silence.

‘Shit,’ Jane said at last. ‘OK, I’m sorry.’

‘I know.’

‘Er, might that have been the Long Talk, by any chance?’

‘I think it might.’

‘Phew. What time will you be back?’

‘Hard to say.’

‘Only, that nurse phoned.’

‘Eileen?’

‘Said whatever time you get back, could you ring her? She sounded weird.’

‘Weird how?’

‘Just not the usual “Don’t piss me about or I’ll take your bedpan back” voice. Kind of hesitant, unsure of herself.’

‘I’ll call her.’

‘Yeah,’ Jane said. ‘Somehow, I would if I were you.’

When the procession reached the Prosser farm, Merrily saw two people emerge discreetly from a gate and join it without a word: Judith Prosser and a bulky, slab-faced man.