Midwinter of the Spirit

need this, I really didn’t need this. Everything comes at once, don’t you find that? Now I discover I have to find a room for my mother.’

‘Must be a problem, if you run a home like this and your mother gets to the age—’

‘Oh, it’s not like that. Mother’s fitter than me. She’s lost her job, that’s all, and her home – she was someone’s housekeeper. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.’

‘Merrily Watkins.’

‘Merrily. And you’re the new diocesan exorcist. I was in quite a quandary, Merrily, so I rang the Diocese. I said, “Could you send anybody but Dobbs.” ’

Dobbs? Merrily still had his one-liner in her bag: The first exorcist was Jesus Christ. Hence, Jesus must be our role model, and Jesus was not a woman. ‘Why didn’t you want Canon Dobbs?’

‘This problem… I was very loath at first to think it was a problem – your kind of problem, anyway. Old people can be such delinquents. They’ll break a teapot because they don’t like the colour, wet the bed because they don’t like the sheets.’

‘This is a volatile… er, poltergeist phenomenon?’

‘Oh no, the point I was making is that, when one of the staff complains of strange things happening, I immediately suspect one or other of the residents. In this case, neither I nor – so far, thank God – any of the residents have seen or heard a thing.’

‘So who has?’ Merrily still hadn’t received an answer to her question about Dobbs. Was this another of his set-ups, another attempt to show her why she, as a woman, was unfit to follow in the footsteps of Jesus?

‘Chambermaids,’ said Mrs Thorpe. ‘Well, domestic careworkers, actually, but we do try to make it seem like a hotel for the sake of the residents, so we call them chambermaids. The other week, one simply gave in her notice – or rather sent it by post, having failed to return after a weekend away. Gave no explanation other than “personal reasons”. It was only then that my assistant manager told me the woman had rushed downstairs one evening white as a sheet and said she wasn’t going up there again.’

‘Where?’

‘To the third floor.’

Merrily tensed, thinking of her own third-floor problem, currently in remission, at the vicarage. ‘Did she elaborate?’

‘No, as I say, she simply left and we thought no more about it and took on a replacement, a local woman who didn’t want to live in but was prepared to work nights. Well, at least she couldn’t just bugger off without an explanation.’

‘She’s had the same experience?’

‘We presume it was the same. Do you want to talk to her?’

‘If that’s possible.’

‘She’ll be coming in with the coffee in a minute.’ Mrs Thorpe pulled a half-crushed cigarette packet from between the sofa cushions. ‘Does smoke interfere with whatever it is you do?’

‘I hope not. Have one of mine.’

‘I’m terrible sorry – with all the persecution these days, one assumes other people don’t smoke. Have you met Canon Dobbs?’

‘Kind of.’

‘He’s going out of his mind, you know.’

‘Oh?’

‘Always been a very, very strange man, but it’s been downhill all the way for the past year. The man ought to be in a… well, a place like this, I suppose. Not this one, though.’

‘So you know him quite well then.’

Susan Thorpe lit up and coughed fiercely. ‘Sorry, thought I told you: my mother was his housekeeper.’

‘Dobbs’s housekeeper? In Hereford?’

‘For five years. When his wife died he moved out of his canonry with about twenty thousand books. Bought two houses in a nearby terrace, one for the housekeeper – and more books, of course.’

‘This is in Gwynne Street?’

‘That’s it. Quite a nice place to live if you like cities. Mother rather wondered if he might do the decent thing and leave it to her when he shuffled off his mortal coil, but then, a couple of days ago, absolutely out of the blue, he just tells her to go, leave. Gives her five thousand quid and instructions to be out by the weekend – that’s today. “Why?” she says, utterly dumbfounded. “What have I done to you?” “Nothing,” he says. “Don’t ask questions, just leave, and thank you very much.” What d’you make of that?’

‘Weird,’ Merrily said. ‘I—’

I don’t understand… What have I been doing wrong? She heard the words, with their long, cathedral echo, saw a woman of about sixty, distressed, walking away in her sensible boots, her tweed coat, her…

‘Mrs Thorpe, does your mother ever wear a green velvet hat, sort of Tudor-looking?’

Go away. Go away, Canon Dobbs had hissed. I can’t possibly discuss this here.

Oh my God, Jane thought. They are. They really are. An item!

In the corner cafe, she and Lol had a slab of chocolate fudge cake each, which they had to take turns in forking up because the table had one leg shorter than the other three.

‘So, like, this is serious, right? You and Moon.’

‘We’re just…’

‘Good friends?’

‘Kind of.’ He seemed uncomfortable discussing Moon. She must be a good ten years younger. Not that that mattered, of course. Jane was a good twenty years younger than Lol, and she quite…

Anyway.

‘So you’re kind of looking after her flat here, while she’s doing up this barn?’

‘Sort of. Her family came from Dinedor Hill and she’s always been keen to move back. Er… how’s your mum?’

‘Oh, you remember her? How sweet. She’s OK. In fact she’s actually working a couple of days a week out of an office just a few hundred yards from here.’

‘Really?’ He looked up.

‘In the Bishop’s Palace gatehouse. I haven’t been there yet, but I gather it’s cool.’

‘What’s she doing there?’

‘Not so cool. She’s been appointed Deliverance minister. You know – like used to be called exorcist? Like in that film where the kid’s head does a complete circle while she’s throwing up green bile and masturbating with a crucifix? Mum now gets to deal with people like that. Only, of course, there aren’t many people like that, not in these parts – which is why it’s such a dodgy job.’

Lol put down his cake fork. He looked concerned. ‘Why would she want to do it?’

‘Because she thinks the Church should be in a position to give advice on the paranormal, and there was nobody around to give her advice when she needed it.’

‘I remember.’

‘The question you should be asking is why would they want her to do that? And I think it’s to put a pretty face on a fairly nasty, reactionary business. Like, for instance, they’d say that the reason there isn’t much about ghosts in the Bible is that God doesn’t want us to mess with ghosts, or study our own inner consciousness, that kind of thing. God just wants us to toddle off to church on a Sunday, otherwise keep our noses out.’

‘That wouldn’t necessarily be bad advice for everybody,’ Lol said, and she could sense he was thinking about something in particular.

‘That’s the wimp’s attitude, Mr Robinson.’

‘Absolutely. And somebody’s who’s been banged up with mad people, and even madder psychiatrists.’