The Cure of Souls

brown hair, with tufts of gold, and warm eyes. ‘No hurry. Give me time to get to know this boy.’

‘I’ll get these,’ Lol offered.

Isabel glared at him. ‘Sit down, you!’

Simon headed for the bar, still in plain clothes – the jeans, the crumpled collarless shirt. Vicar’s night off. It was gone nine p.m., the Hop Devil three-quarters full. Lol sat down.

Isabel’s black top was low-cut and glittery. Over one shoulder strap and a handle of the wheelchair, he caught a glimpse of Gerard Stock, sitting in the shadow of the bellying chimney breast. So the landlord had let him back in.

Stock was on his own, except for a pint of Guinness and a big whisky. He was leaning back against the wooden settle, with an empty smile and an arm extended along the top of the back rest like he was claiming an invisible girlfriend. Lol thought suddenly of the Lady of the Bines and felt uneasy for a moment.

‘You a Catholic, Lol?’ Isabel inquired loudly. ‘Only I’ve decided it’s time I went to Lourdes, but you’ve gotta go with a Catholic, isn’t it, or it doesn’t work.’

‘Is that true?’

‘What?’

‘That you need to be accompanied by a Catholic?’

‘Well, he won’t take me, anyway. And his lot’s rubbish at healing.’ Isabel pouted. Then she laughed. ‘I fell off a high wall, Lol, is what it was. A long time ago. So, that gets that out of the way. Now – what’s a nice-looking boy like you doing all on his own?’

Simon had said he and his wife had made a practice of going to the pub on Monday nights, making it known that this was when the parishioners could get to them without making an official visit out of it – and therefore when delicate issues could be raised informally.

He’d asked Lol to join them, explaining that Isabel liked to meet new people; she didn’t get out much.

So Lol had back-burnered his usual reservations about country pubs. Tonight, he felt he owed Simon several drinks. The first analogue recording they’d made of the River Frome song – Lol humming the bits where the lyrics were incomplete – had been so much stronger, more atmospheric, more ethereal than the demo playing in his head. And this was all down to the cello, of course. The cello – dark, low-lying, sinuous – had become the spirit of the Frome.

Simon had sat there, listening to the playback with his arms folded, wincing at the cello parts and then remarking shrewdly, ‘Somehow, you can’t settle anywhere, can you, Lol? You’re the kind of guy who really needs a proper home, but you don’t know where it’s safe for you to be.’

‘Huh?’

‘Rejected by the born-again parents, shafted by the shrinks, dumped by the girlfriend in Ledwardine. You want to trust, but you’re scared to trust people. And then you fetch up here, and the first thing you latch on to is a sad little river.’

‘Very perceptive of you, vicar,’ Lol told him. ‘But I’ve learned how to psych myself now, thanks.’

* * *

Isabel leaned her head close enough for Lol to smell her shampoo. ‘Expecting trouble, he is,’ she murmured.

‘Simon?’ Lol wiped condensation from his glasses.

‘Needs you for back-up,’ Isabel confided.

‘Me?’

‘And me. Who’s going to assault a clergyman minding a short-sighted songwriter and a cripple?’

Lol grinned. He loved the way she said crip-pel and troubel. Now Isabel had turned away and was loudly advising a woman who didn’t look pregnant to get the christening booked before she missed the boat. The woman looked alarmed for a moment, then dissolved into giggles and tossed Isabel an oh you kind of gesture on her way into the toilets. Lol thought that maybe the vicar’s wife had already become more a part of this community than the vicar was ever going to be.

‘There’s a reason someone would want to assault him?’

‘Oh, always someone who’d like to.’ Isabel grimaced. ‘Some people here, they’d do anything for Simon. Others… well… Trouble is, he doesn’t care, see. Doesn’t give a toss, not about himself nor who he offends. One reason I had to marry him. Give him a reason to keep himself alive.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re not one of those men who says “sorry” all the time, are you?’

‘Sor—no.’

‘Good. Play well for you today, did he?’

‘It was almost spooky.’

‘You want to hear him on electric bass. Always be a fallback for him, when they chuck him out of the Church.’

‘There’s a danger of that?’

‘He tries,’ Isabel said.

Lol stood up to help Simon with the drinks: lagers and something golden-brown for Isabel. The atmosphere in the pub was like in the days before ventilators and smoking restrictions. Thin fluorescent bars glowed mauve between the beams, as Isabel jogged her neckline to and fro to fan the air on to her breasts. Lol tried not to look.

‘Stock’s over there,’ he remarked.

Isabel pushed her wheelchair back to see. ‘On his own, too, poor dab. She’s a funny one, his wife. Adapted to that dreary hole like a bloody barn owl. Invite him over, shall I?’

‘This woman is a liability,’ Simon said to Lol, then he turned to his wife, and spoke as to a child. ‘Isabel, Stock has probably been in here three hours, at least. Do you know how drunk that makes him?’

Lol said, ‘Why exactly are you expecting trouble?’

‘After a while, you learn never to ask him that,’ Isabel said. ‘Never tempt fate.’

Trouble came, just the same. It came with the arrival of Adam Lake and a lovely young woman with a wide, sulky mouth and short hair the colour of champagne.

‘His wife?’ Lol wondered.

‘Fiancee,’ said Isabel. ‘Amanda Rae. She’s got a discreet little chain of tiny fashion shops in Cheltenham and Worcester, places like that. Not Hereford, mind – they wouldn’t pay those prices for that tat in Hereford.’ She sipped her drink. ‘Don’t much in Cheltenham, either, I reckon. That’s why she’ll always need someone like him. Shallow, pointless people, they are, supporting each other’s public facades.’

‘My wife the social analyst,’ Simon murmured.

‘They’ll’ve come out for the first time today, I reckon,’ Isabel told Lol. ‘All these press people about the place, see, and the wrong kind of press. Rip off all their clothes for a centrefold in Horse & Hound, but the buggers’ll lie low till this one’s over.’ She smiled slyly at Simon. ‘Bit like him. Taking off before ten in the morning with his cello case.’

Simon glanced uncomfortably at Lol. Lol thought about the magical enhancement of the River Frome song. It was an ill wind.

It was getting very warm in the bar. He noticed that all the tables had been taken except for the one in front of Stock, who sat there motionless, still smiling. See, I don’t have to talk to people, if I don’t want to. It’s a rare skill and I’m good at it, man. I can be very relaxed, very cool, sidding quietly, saying nothing. The level of Stock’s pint had gone down a couple of inches, though, like he was taking it intravenously.

‘Lake usually come in on a Monday night, too?’ Lol asked Simon.

‘More often than not. Meets his friends from the hunt. He’s taken up the cause – a crucial part of the salvation of his birthright. Just become local organizer for the Countryside Alliance, so called. Leads demonstrations to London.’

‘Hypocritical bastards, they are,’ Isabel growled. ‘Still the Norman overlords, isn’t it? All the countryside’s their hunting ground. It is a class thing, whatever anyone says. But they also grow to enjoy killing. I’ve seen it. Doesn’t have to be like that.’