The Cure of Souls

Three times that evening, Merrily tried to call Hazel Shelbone. Twice it was engaged, the third time there was no answer.

When she’d got home, there’d been a message from Jane on the answering machine. Merrily replayed it twice, trying to detect the subtext.

‘Well, we got here. All of us. The whole family. It’s quite a big place, an old whitewashed farmhouse about half a mile from the sea, near an old quarry, but you can see the sea from it, of course. So it’s… yeah… cool. And the whole family’s here. Everybody. So… Well, I’ll call you. Look after Ethel and, like… your little self. Night, night, Mum.’

Hmm. The whole family, huh?

The shadows of apple trees meshed across the vicarage garden. In the scullery, Merrily switched on the computer, rewrote her notes for tomorrow’s sermon and printed them out. It was to be the first one in – well, quite a long time – that she’d given around the familiar theme of Suffer little children to come unto me. A complex issue: how should we bring kids to Christ? Or was it better, in the long term, to let them find their own way?

Merrily deleted a reference to Jane’s maxim: Any kind of spirituality has to be better than none at all. Dangerous ground.

We never pressed the Church on her, David and I, Hazel Shelbone had said. Never forced religion on any of our children.

Bet you did, really, Merrily thought, gazing out at the deepening blue, whether you intended to or not.

She recalled Hazel saying, in answer to her question about what might have got into Amy, The spirit of a dead person, in a voice that was firm and intense and quite convinced.

Now she had a question for Hazel: who is Justine?

She reached out for the telephone and, as often happened, it rang under her hand.

He said his name was Fred Potter. It was a middle-aged kind of name, somehow, but he sounded as if he was in his early twenties, max.

He said he worked for the Three Counties News Service, a freelance agency based in Worcester, supplying news stories to national papers. He said he was sorry to trouble her, but he understood she was the county exorcist.

‘More or less,’ Merrily admitted.

‘Just that we put a story round earlier,’ Fred said, ‘but a couple of the Sundays have come back, asking for a quote from you or the Bishop, and the Bishop seems to be unavailable.’

‘Let’s see… Saturday night? Probably out clubbing.’

‘What? Oh.’ He laughed. ‘Listen, Mrs Watkins, if I lay this thing out for you very briefly, perhaps you could see if you have any comments. I’ve got to be really quick, because the editions go to bed pretty early on a Saturday.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Right. This chap’s convinced his house is badly… haunted. He and his wife are losing a lot of sleep over this. It’s an old hop-kiln, a man was murdered there. Now they say they’re getting these, you know, phenomena.’

‘I see.’

‘Wow,’ said Fred, ‘it always amazes me when you people say “I see” and “Sure”, like it’s everyday stuff.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Wow,’ Fred said. ‘Brrrr.’

‘Is this person living in the diocese?’

‘Of course.’

‘Just I haven’t heard about it.’

‘Well, this is the point,’ Fred said. ‘Our friend gets on to his local vicar and asks him if he can do something about this problem. And the local vicar refuses.’

‘Just like that?’

‘More or less.’

‘What did the vicar say to you?’

‘He said, “No comment”.’

Odd.

‘So what do you think? Do you think it’s a genuine case of psychic disturbance?’

‘Hey, that’s not for me to say, is it? What I wanted to ask you was, what is the official policy of the diocese on dealing with alleged cases of, you know, ghostly infestation, whatever you want to call it. Like, if you get something reported to you—’

‘We help where we can,’ Merrily said.

‘And how common is it for you to refuse?’

‘I didn’t refuse. It’s never been referred to me.’

‘No, I mean—’

‘Let me tell you the normal procedure with Deliverance, which is the umbrella term for what we do. A person with a psychic or spiritual problem goes to his or her local priest and explains the situation, then the priest decides whether to handle it personally or pass it on to someone like me, right?’

‘Do they have to tell you about it?’

‘No. I’m here if they need me. Sometimes they’ll just ring up and ask for a bit of advice, and if it’s something I can tell them I do… or maybe I’ll need to seek advice from somebody who knows more about a particular type of… phenomenon than I do.’

‘So, if I say to you now, have you had a call or a report from the Reverend Simon St John, at Knight’s Frome, about a plea for help he’s received from a Mr Stock…?’

‘No, not a word. But the vicar doesn’t have to refer anything to me.’

‘Even if he’s refusing to take any action?’

‘Even if he’s refusing to take any action.’

‘Doesn’t it worry you that there’s someone in the diocese who’s plagued by ghosts and can’t get any help from the Church?’

Merrily had dealt with the media often enough to recognize the point where she was going to be quoted verbatim.

‘Erm… If I was aware of someone in genuine need of spiritual support, I would want to see they received whatever help we were able to give them. But I’d need to know more about the circumstances before I could comment on this particular case. I’m sure the Reverend St John has a good reason for taking the line he’s taken.’

There was a pause, then Fred Potter said, ‘Yep. That’ll do me fine. Thanks very much, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Whoa… hang on. Aren’t you going to give me this guy’s address, phone number…?’

‘Mr Stock? You going to look into it yourself?’

‘Just for the record, Fred.’

‘Oh, all right. Hang on a sec.’

She wrote down Mr Stock’s address. Afterwards, she looked up the number of the Rev. Simon St John. She didn’t know the man, but she thought she ought at least to warn him.

No answer.

Lately, everywhere she tried, there was no answer. Jane would explain this astrologically, suggesting Mercury was retrograde, thus delaying or blocking all forms of communication.

Bollocks.

… Always amazes me when you people say ‘I see’ and ‘sure’, like it’s everyday stuff.

Merrily gathered up the printed notes for her sermon and walked into the lonely, darkening kitchen.