Midwinter of the Spirit

‘But it’ll probably freeze on top. That’s rather treacherous – and it’s always a little warmer in the city. Look, why don’t you stay with us tonight? We always keep a room prepared, and Andrew will have hot chocolate ready.’

‘Well, thanks. But there’s Jane at home. And tomorrow’s services.’

‘I do feel so guilty about bringing you here.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t fall asleep at the wheel. I’ll smoke.’

‘Hmm,’ Sophie said disapprovingly.

‘Good night, Sophie.’

Watching Sophie walk away towards warmth and hot chocolate, Merrily felt damp and chilled inside her thinning fake-Barbour. She saw the police car pulling away into Broad Street, and George Curtiss had already gone.

Fatigue had induced detachment. She didn’t want to be detached. She remembered how, when she and Sophie and George had first entered the Cathedral tonight, the urge to pray had washed over her like surf, a tide of need. Dobbs’s need?

That had gone now; her prayers weren’t needed – or not so urgently. She ought to have obeyed that call, fallen to her knees, and the whole bit.

Bloody Anglican reserve. The Church of the Stiff Upper Lip.

Abruptly, Merrily went back into the Cathedral, to pray for Dobbs, before it was all locked up again. Knowing she would make for the place where George had kicked down a partition door: the Cantilupe fragments.

What did she know about Cantilupe? Bishop of Hereford in the late thirteenth century. Born into a wealthy Norman baronial family. Educated for the Church. A political career before he came to Hereford in middle age, in the reign of Edward I. A row with the Archbishop of Canterbury which got him excommunicated. Reinstatement, then death, then sainthood. Then the miracles, dozens of miracles around the shrine: the tomb that no longer had a body in it, and that was now in pieces.

The aumbry light still shone: a relic of the medieval Church, seldom needed now. Tonight another medieval relic had required the last rites.

Merrily realized she very much did not want Dobbs to die. She went down on her knees, on the hard coldness, before the aumbry light itself. Let him live. Please God, let him survive. Build some kind of bridge between us. Throw down some quiet light. Let there be…

Useless, incoherent – she was just too tired. She couldn’t find the words to explain herself.

‘Merrily.’

She opened her eyes.

‘I’m sorry I was so abrupt, Merrily. It wasn’t you – it was me, I’m sorry. I felt excluded.’

The late-night DJ voice, resonant, burnt-umber. She should have realized he’d still be here. Perhaps she had.

‘Hello, Mick.’

The Bishop extended a hand. He was very strong, and suddenly she was on her feet again.

‘You look very tired,’ Mick said. ‘I hear you’ve been working hard tonight.’

‘Finding it hard, that’s all.’

‘As you’re bound to.’ His lean face was crinkled by a sympathetic, closed-mouth smile. He surveyed her in the mellow light. ‘It’s a very taxing role: social worker, psychotherapist and virtuoso stage-performer, all rolled into one.’

‘Stage-performer?’

‘We’re all of us actors, Merrily. The Church is a faded but still fabulous costume drama.’

‘Oh.’

‘And, to survive, it has to be considerably more sophisticated these days. Poor Dobbs is strictly Hammer Films, I’m afraid. He should retire, if he recovers, to one of those nice rural nursing homes for ageing clerics. There to write his memoirs, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know what I think.’

‘You’re overtired,’ Mick said. ‘Poor baby, I’m not going to let you drive home, you realize that.’

‘It’s only twenty minutes.’ He was offering to drive her?

‘In these conditions? At least an hour – and requiring rather more attention than I suspect you’d be able to summon. Consider this an executive ruling. Come to the Palace. We’ve lots of spare rooms I always feel guilty about. Perhaps we should make some available to selected homeless people, what do you think?’

‘I think it would be very much an unnecessary imposition on Mrs Hunter.’

‘What, accommodating the homeless? Or accommodating you? Either way, not a problem. Valentina’s away for a couple of days, visiting her ageing parents in the Cotswolds. Old Church, Val’s father – yesterday’s Church. We have endless and insoluble theological arguments, so these days I tend to plead pressure of work.’

Merrily smiled. ‘Look, it’s very kind of you, Mick. It’s just—’ She moved self-consciously towards St John’s door.

‘You’ – he followed her – ‘need all your strength. Just let others look after you sometimes. We can get you back in good time for tomorrow’s services, if that’s what you’re worried about. We have a wonderful old Land Rover at our disposal.’

‘There’s Jane, you know?’

‘Jane?’

‘My daughter.’

She thought he blinked. ‘She’s not a child any more, is she? She must be getting quite used to your nocturnal comings and goings.’

‘I suppose she is.’

‘Well, then…’

He put his hands on her shoulders, as he had on Sophie’s earlier. His hands were big and firm and warm.

‘Merrily, you have to stop shouldering the problems of the world. Besides, it would be a good opportunity for us to talk about the future. It’ll be impossible to keep this out of the papers, you know, especially if the old guy dies on us. We need to be ready, hmm?’

As Mick Hunter lowered his arms from her shoulders, his head bent quickly, and she was sure his lips touched her forehead just once, on the hairline.

‘This means we can stop quietly phasing you in and officially announce the establishment of a Deliverance consultancy. We need to discuss how we’re going to handle that.’

‘But not tonight.’

‘Oh no, not tonight. Tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘Over our breakfast, perhaps.’

The way he said our breakfast. The way he had his arms by his sides now, but had not stepped back. The way he seemed to be closer than when his hands had been on her. She felt an awful compulsion to fall forward, collapse into that strong, muscular episcopal chest.

‘Up to you, of course,’ he said. ‘Coincidentally, we’ve just had a guest suite refurbished. Bathroom with shower, small sitting room – that sort of set-up. You may find you have to overnight in Hereford quite often as your role expands. Consider it available at any time. As you’ll be reporting exclusively to me, it would seem like an arrangement with considerable… possibilities, you know.’

She stayed silent, giving him an opportunity to qualify that, but he didn’t. He just stood there gazing at her, and after a moment he calmly folded his arms – sometimes a defensive gesture, but not this time.

No, this couldn’t be? Couldn’t possibly be how it sounded.

‘Everything’s changing, Merrily,’ Mick said easily. ‘This is a time of transition when traditional values, old restrictions, should be allowed to drift away. We should stop presuming to know what God wants of us.’

Merrily backed against the door, needing cold air, space.

‘We should be prepared to experiment,’ Mick continued calmly, ‘until the waters settle and we know where we are again. For a while.’

He followed her out of the Cathedral, leaving the door for the verger to lock. Outside, an unreal mauvish mist was gathering around white roofs, over white pavements, the grey-white road. A Christmas-card Hereford, out of time. Mick Hunter, in his purple tracksuit, seemed part of the picture. Part of the illusion. Not real.