The Cure of Souls

Tell her to throw some holy water around and leave by the back door. She wondered if Bernie Dunmore would even remember saying that.

The phone rang.

She turned slowly. Perhaps this was Bernie himself, fresh from the conference on Transsexuality and the Church, disturbing gossip having reached him while he sat nursing his single malt in the bar of Gloucester’s swishest. Casually approached by some journalist, perhaps, as he debated with the Bishop of Durham how best to react to an archdeacon’s new breasts.

She started to laugh, and let the phone go on ringing.

A clattering on the stairs. Sophie rushed in. ‘Don’t touch that.’

‘Wasn’t going to.’

Sophie sat down behind her desk, took two calming breaths and picked up the phone.

‘Diocese of Hereford, Bishop’s Palace. Sophie Hill speaking.’

Lol came in, looking a little brighter; Sophie could do this. Don’t depress Merrily.

‘No,’ Sophie said, ‘I’m afraid she’s on holiday. Is there anything I can do for you?’

She? The only two women working from this office were Sophie and Merrily.

‘When?’ Sophie said. ‘Well, I don’t know, precisely. I know she was supposed to have left yesterday, but I believe she delayed her departure for some reason… No, I couldn’t. I’m afraid that’s not the sort of personal information I’m permitted to give out.’

Merrily held her breath and moved away from the window: they could be out there somewhere, on a mobile.

‘No, I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. You’d have to ask Mrs Watkins herself about that sort of thing… No, the Bishop’s away at a conference. He’ll be back on Thursday night… Look, I’m sorry, but I’m only a secretary. I’m really not party to that kind of information. I should try our press officer tomorrow. Goodnight.’ Sophie hung up. ‘The Daily Telegraph.’

‘Why am I on holiday, Sophie?’

‘For the sake of your health.’

‘Not good enough.’

‘For the health of the Christian Church, then,’ Sophie snapped. ‘Look, I’ve just been asked if you conducted an exorcism today at the home of Gerard and the late Mrs Stephanie Stock. What would you have said if you’d been asked that question?’

‘I’d have explained that it wasn’t exactly an exorcism.’

Sophie and Lol exchanged glances.

‘Yeah, I know. And they wouldn’t have believed a word of it.’ Merrily reached for her cigarettes, glared from one to the other of them. ‘I’m supposed to run away?’

‘Yes,’ Sophie said. ‘For the moment. At least until such time as the police charge Gerard Stock with murder and the media are formally gagged until after the trial.’

‘What about the Bishop?’

‘I’ll phone Gloucester and advise him to stay in his hotel room and lock the door.’

‘And where am I spending my holiday? Learning Welsh in Pembrokeshire with Jane?’

‘You can stay at my house tonight.’

Sophie lived with her husband in one of the streets behind the Castle Green.

‘Which would implicate you,’ Merrily said. ‘Thanks, but forget it. Anyway, I have to go home and feed the cat.’

‘Don’t throw up silly barriers,’ Sophie said irritably. ‘Phone Gomer Parry. He has a key to the vicarage, doesn’t he?’ Sophie knew everything. ‘Or Mr Robinson has an alternative suggestion,’ she said.

In the fields to either side, cut and turned hay lay like a choppy green sea. The road and the fields and the woods lay in shadow, but the Malverns above them were caught in the sunset, their foothills glowing as if lit from underneath, like a Tiffany lamp.

It was serenely beautiful. And yes, she had to agree, it was the last place anyone would think of looking for her.

Eye of the storm. Merrily lit a cigarette. She felt a little scared, actually. Trepidation – or the electric, arm- bristling fear of another imminent revelation.

Lol had driven her back to Ledwardine Vicarage, and she’d packed a case and phoned Gomer Parry. Gomer had been round in minutes: how about he move in tonight, feed the cat, keep the newshounds off the premises? He’d caretaken once before, when Merrily and Jane had been armlocked into a family wedding in Northumberland. Now widowed and restless, he liked being the guy who looked out for them both… which also brought him closer to the action. Good old Gomer.

‘A holiday.’ Merrily inhaled and leaned her head over the torn back of the Astra’s passenger seat and closed her eyes. ‘So what’s that like, exactly?’

‘Boring,’ Lol said, ‘as I recall.’

‘We had a few odd days, when Jane was younger. Not for a while, though.’

‘How is she?’

‘Raging. Eirion’s stepmother seems to think she enjoys being a nanny to her youngest kids.’

‘Taking a risk there.’

‘And can she even begin to know how much of one?’ Merrily closed her eyes. ‘Don’t really want to get there. I want to drive through the night talking inane crap. Like when we were young.’

‘That’s a holiday. I remember now. Inane crap with bits of sex in between.’

‘You and Alison?’

‘Once. Five days in Northern France. You ever see Alison in the village?’

‘Well, she’s still with James Bull-Davies, if that’s what you mean. They say she’s really taken him and his decrepit house in hand. But they don’t come to church.’

‘So who sits in the Bull pew now?’

‘Nobody. People are so superstitious, aren’t they?’

She felt the car slow and turn, and when she opened her eyes the road had become an alley between rows of short wooden pylons. Entwined around them, luxuriant growth seemed to be surging towards the awakening stars.

It was Lol who was shivering. He pushed his compact body back into the seat to stop it, but she felt the tremor and she knew his hands were tightening on the wheel.

‘Time to abandon The Prince of Wales Guide to Making Stupid Conversation, I think.’ Merrily caught some ash in the palm of her hand. ‘What haven’t you told me?’

Lol watched the road winding between the hop-yards, put on his headlights. ‘So exactly how long have you been a vicar?’ he said.

She recognized the church, embedded in shadow, fusing with the bushes above the river bank. There was a light on in the vicarage, just one. It was the kind of light you left on when you went out for the night, to create an illusion of habitation.

The Astra crawled through the village, if you could call it that. There were several cars on the forecourt of the pub. One was a station wagon with its rear hatch flung up, a man pulling out a black tripod.

‘Didn’t take them long, did it?’

Lol drove slowly past. He even managed to give the man a suspicious glance, like a true local in his battered old car. Subtle. There are rooms at Prof’s studios, he’d said. It’s not finished yet, but it’s quite respectable. Who else would be there? Only me, in a loft, out in the stables.

The road curved out of the village, up a slight incline and down again. The Malvern Hills disappeared and reappeared, undulating with lights like gems mounted on a jeweller’s velvet tray.

‘Is this going to help?’ Merrily said. ‘Us coming here?’

‘Trust me, I’m a drop-out trainee psychotherapist.’

‘Well, I’m not any kind of psychotherapist.’ She squeezed out her cigarette, turned to look at him, her back resting against the passenger door. ‘But I’ve learned enough about your little ways in the