Midwinter of the Spirit

Fashionable, he’d been about to say. Until it became fashionable, Mick Hunter would have kept very quiet on the issue. Merrily was trying to see him as Jane saw him, but it wasn’t easy; Mick’s blue eyes were clear and blazing with a wild integrity. He had a – somehow unepiscopal – blue jaw. He smelled very lightly of clean, honest, jogger’s sweat and of something smokily indistinct which made her think, rather shockingly, of what a very long time it had been since she’d last had sex.

‘Your late husband was a lawyer, wasn’t he?’ he said, startling her upright, tea spilling.

‘Yes.’ She was blushing. ‘I… me too. I mean, I was going to be one too. Until Jane came into the picture, and a few other things changed.’

‘Shame,’ the Bishop said. ‘Road accident, wasn’t it?’

‘On the M5. He… he hit a bridge.’

They hit a bridge. Sean and Karen Adair, his clerk and girlfriend and accomplice in a number of delicate arrangements with iffy businessmen. Dying flung together in a ball of fire, at the time when Merrily was balancing an inevitable divorce against her chances of ordination, and Jane was just starting secondary school. How much of this did the Bishop know? All of it, probably.

‘Look,’ she had to say this, ‘the thing is, Huw’s position on the ordination of women doesn’t extend to Deliverance ministry – did you know that? He doesn’t think we’re ready for all that yet.’

His eyes widening. She realized he’d probably sent her on this particular course precisely because he knew Huw was sympathetic to women priests.

‘Not ready for all that?’ The eyes narrowing again. ‘All what?’

‘He doesn’t feel that we have the necessary weight of tradition behind us to take on… whatever’s out there.’

‘Which is a little bit preposterous’ – Mick Hunter leaned back – ‘don’t you think?’

‘It’s not what I think that matters.’

‘No, quite. At the end of the day, it’s what I think. The Deliverance consultant’s responsible to the Bishop, and only to the Bishop. And I think – without any positive discrimination – that, if anything, this is a job a woman can do better than a man. It demands delicacy, compassion… qualities not exactly manifested by Dobbs.’

‘I’ve… I’ve been trying, you know, to work out exactly how you do see the job.’

Mick Hunter stirred his tea thoughtfully. Two tables away, a couple of well-dressed, not-quite-elderly women were openly watching him. Beefcake bishop – a new phenomenon.

‘OK, right,’ he said. ‘While you were in Wales, we had some basic research carried out. Quick phone-call to all the parish clergy: a few facts and figures. Did you know for instance that in the past six months, in this diocese alone, there have been between twenty and thirty appeals to the Church for assistance with perceived psychic disturbance?’

‘Really? My God.’

‘And rising.’ Mick smiled. ‘If the Church was a business, we’d be calling this a major growth area.’

The Bishop then talked about apparent psychic blackspots revealed by the survey – the north of the diocese was worst – and Merrily thought about how fate pushed you around, all the unplanned directions your life took. Whether she would ever actually have become a lawyer had she not become pregnant while still at university. If she would ever have become a priest had Sean not died when he did and if she hadn’t discovered he was a crook. If she would ever have been drawn into the strange shadow-world of Deliverance, had her own vicarage in Ledwardine not been tenanted by an essence of something which no one else had experienced.

She felt targeted, exposed. She wanted to leap up from the table and run to the car and smoke several cigarettes.

Instead she said, ‘What exactly are we talking about here?’

The Bishop shrugged. ‘Mostly, I suspect, about paranoia, psychiatric problems, loneliness, isolation, stress. Modern society, Merrily. Post-millennial angst. We’re certainly not talking about the medieval world of Canon Dobbs. Nor, I think, should we be sending the local vicar along just to have a cup of coffee and intone a few prayers, which is what happens in most cases now.’

She began to understand about the office. He would want one that actually said DELIVERANCE CONSULTANT on its door. He wanted to bring the job out of the closet.

‘I’m glad the awful word Exorcism’s been ditched,’ he said, ‘though I’m not entirely happy with Deliverance either. A less portentous term would be “rescue”, don’t you think?’

Rescue Consultant? Spiritual Rescue Service? SRS? She raised her cup to mask a smile. He didn’t notice.

‘It would still be part of the parish priest’s role to deal, in the initial stages, with people who think they’re being haunted or little Darren’s got the Devil in him or whatever. But the public also need to know there’s an efficient machinery inside the Church for dealing with such problems, and that there’s a particular person to whom they can turn. And I don’t want that person to look like Dobbs. We need to be seen as sympathetic, non- judgemental, user-friendly. You’ve read Perry’s book on Deliverance?’

‘The set text, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a start. I find Michael Perry rather too credulous, but I like his insistence on not overreacting. The job’s about counselling. It’s about being a spiritual Samaritan – about listening. You notice that Perry seldom seems to advocate exorcizing a place?’

‘He suggests a Major Exorcism should primarily be focused on a demonically possessed person, and then only when a number of other procedures have proved ineffective.’

Mick Hunter put down his cup. ‘I never want to hear of a so-called Major Exorcism. It’s crude, primitive and almost certainly ineffective.’

Merrily blinked. ‘You don’t think that in the presence of extreme evil…?’

‘Evil’s a disease,’ the Bishop said. ‘In fact it’s many diseases. If we’re going to deal with it, we have to study the symptoms, consider the nature of the particular malady, and then apply the correct treatment with sensitivity, precision and care. The Major Exorcism, quite frankly, is the kind of medieval bludgeon which in my opinion the post-millennial Church can do without. Are you with me here?’

I don’t know, Merrily thought wildly. I don’t know…

‘It’s hard…’ She took a breath to calm herself. Mick Hunter’s enthusiasm picked you up and carried you along and then put you down suddenly, and you didn’t know where you were. ‘It’s hard to express an opinion about something you’ve really had no experience of. I don’t think anyone can possibly—’

‘Merrily…’ He put his hand over hers on the white tablecloth. ‘One of my faults is expecting too much of people too soon, I realize that. But I know from my predecessor that you’ve proved yourself to be a resourceful, resilient person. The appalling Ledwardine business – I know you don’t like your part in all that to be talked about…’

‘No.’

‘But you’ve shown you have nerve and wisdom and you can think on your feet. OK, I’m aware that we’re breaking new ground here, but it’s the direction I believe every diocese will be going in within five years.’ He paused. ‘I’ve had a word with Gareth, by the way.’

‘The Archdeacon?’

‘Under the reorganization, you were due to be awarded two extra parishes before the end of the year. I pointed out to Gareth that, under the circumstances, that would be far too much of a burden.’

‘You mean it’s either the Deliverance role or two more parishes to run?’

‘The two parishes would be a lot easier, Merrily – a quieter life.’

‘Yes.’

‘If it’s a quiet life you want?’

What she wanted was a cigarette, but she knew the Bishop hated them. What she wanted was for Huw Owen to have been proved wrong, but everything Huw had forecast had been dead right. She would wind up with her picture in the Hereford Times, although probably without the crucifix.

‘I’m going to have to play this slowly and diplomatically,’ Mick Hunter said. ‘Dobbs won’t go until he’s too shaky to hold a cup of holy water, and as long as he’s here he has the support of the Dean’s cabal. Well, all right,