The Cure of Souls

‘Well, I know that. And you quite like women, too – I realize this is an inexact analogy. I’m talking about women with problems. Weird women. They tend to come on to you like cats. And you put out a tentative hand, and then experience tells you to back off.’

‘I’m not proud of backing off.’

‘I don’t like to imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t.’ Merrily poured the tea. ‘Could she have been stoned?’

‘Or was she ill?’ Lol wondered.

‘What? Something long-term? Schizophrenia? Could that have been why Stock kept her apart from the community? Was he drinking to excess to cope with it? The mad woman in the isolated kiln? But you can’t really do a Mr Rochester these days, can you? You can’t keep this kind of thing secret any more – if she was on medication, for instance… and schizophrenics are almost invariably on medication.’

‘And she apparently went out to work.’

‘Yeah, but did she?’

‘She said she was temping for a car-dealer in Hereford.’

‘But was she?’ Merrily leaned her head against the side of the bed. ‘All this will have to come out.’ She looked at Lol. ‘That night in the hop-yard – was she aware of you?’

‘Yes.’ Lol drank some tea. ‘And no.’

‘Good answer. Helpful.’

‘It was dark.’

‘She was aware of you in the bedroom, though. And she was certainly aware of you downstairs before we began.’

‘Well… coming on to me like I used to be this big rock star – what kind of crap was that? She’d probably never heard of me until Stock mentioned I was staying at Prof’s. But she gave absolutely no sign of recognizing me from the hop-yard. Not then, anyway.’

‘But you recognized her?’

‘Wasn’t sure at first. Not till we were upstairs together and she was on the bed and you and Stock had gone… and then suddenly she was.’

‘Because of the hop-bine?’

‘The Lady of the Bines? Who never existed? Who is an invented ghost?’

‘Remind me about that again.’

Merrily lit a cigarette; she’d smoked it by the time he’d finished.

‘So the museum woman made it up. You been back to ask her, Lol?’

He shook his head.

‘Hops.’ Merrily tapped the tea tray with her fingertips. ‘Think hops.’

‘Hop-pillows? Stock said hop-pillows were supposed to give you a better night’s sleep. But not in this case.’

‘Hops as a turn-on? The first time you saw her, she was naked and winding a hop-bine around her. And up in the bedroom, she was playing with an old hop-bine again – a hop-bine, which she was again using in a… lubricious fashion. How did you feel?’

‘Embarrassed. Scared.’

‘And maybe just a bit…?’

‘I’ll stick with scared and embarrassed.’

‘Basic nymphomania?’ Merrily wondered. ‘That can be a mental illness, can’t it? I mean, people have a good laugh about it. Men in pubs always like to pretend they wish their wives would catch it, but it’s a mental illness, isn’t it?’

Lol considered. ‘I don’t even think it’s a clinical term. There are no criteria to back it up. It’s applied to women who want “too much sex” – but how much is too much? And what do you call a male nymphomaniac? Could be a purely sexist term, because a woman who lives for sex is a slut, while a man who can’t get enough is a role model.’

‘Wow,’ Merrily said, ‘you really have been on a course.’

He looked uncomfortable at that. He pulled off his glasses and began to polish them on the hem of his T- shirt. Merrily slid down to the rug and leaned back against the side of the bed, her bare arms around her knees. She was aware of the irony of being alone in a bedroom talking about sex with a man she’d always found attractive, but in circumstances that rendered the whole subject forbidding. Like going into a tobacconist’s to discuss emphysema.

‘We’re going round in circles, Lol.’

He told her about the odd words uttered by Stephie in the bedroom, the foreign language which definitely wasn’t French, might have been Welsh. And then Don’t say no to me…

‘As if someone else had been saying no to her? Well, Stock’s a lot older than she was and probably close to being an alcoholic, which—’

‘—is no cure for impotence,’ Lol said. ‘And I think I’m right in saying the number one reason for men killing their wives is being drunk and on the receiving end of taunts about not being able to perform. And Stock’s an arrogant guy. Very, very hard for someone like that to admit to sexual inadequacy. And if he doesn’t say another word to explain why he did it, that’s probably what they’ll put it down to.’

‘If,’ Merrily said heavily, ‘there hadn’t also been what they will insist on describing as an exorcism.’

They were both silent. It occurred to Merrily that she might have done rather better if Lol had accompanied her as a psychologist, part of her putative Deliverance team.

He stood up and leaned against the window sill next to the lamp. ‘How about if I go back to Bliss and tell him about Stephanie?’

She looked up at him. ‘You’d hate to have to do that.’

‘It might alter the direction of their inquiries. And it’s the truth.’

She went and stood next to him. ‘They wouldn’t believe you.’

‘You did.’

‘Also, Howe would take enormous pleasure in bringing up your… past record.’

He smiled. ‘Hazey Jane Two?’

They looked at one another; she saw his face soften. It was the kind of confluence of gazes that might normally have progressed rapidly to a meeting of mouths.

But the moment passed, and Merrily went and sat on the bed.

‘Call this a vague guess,’ she said, ‘but it’s my feeling that if there’s one person who could explain much of this, it’s Simon St John.’

Lol used a phone plugged into the wall next to Prof’s garden recliner. The call was answered in seconds.

‘Who’s this?’

‘It’s…’ He always found it hard to identify himself. ‘It’s Lol.’

A sigh. ‘Sorry, mate. Thought you were the media. About to tell you to fuck off.’

‘You said that to the papers?’ He really didn’t care, did he? What must it be like not to care? ‘Had many calls tonight?’

‘Not as many as I expected.’ Simon sounded tired, though, like he’d been doing a lot of talking.

‘But the police have been round?’

‘Briefly.’

Lol said, ‘So you know everything.’

‘This is the English countryside,’ Simon said. ‘Everybody within a six-mile radius knew everything by teatime.’

‘You don’t sound surprised.’

‘I’m getting over it.’

‘The thing is,’ Lol said, ‘Merrily Watkins is here.’

‘Good for you.’

‘It’s not looking good for her.’