Midwinter of the Spirit

‘This is Major Weston, area organizer for the Redundant Churches Fund. I make no apologies for calling you before eight. I find it ridiculous that I should have to call you at all. I wanted the local man to deal with it. Bizarrely, the local man tells me all matters of this nature have to be referred directly to you.’

‘What’s the problem, Major?’ She wasn’t aware that the Redundant Churches Fund even had an area organizer.

‘Desecration is the problem, Mrs Watkins. At the Church of St Cosmas and St Damien at Stretford. Do you know where that is?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘I expect you’ll manage to find it. The police already have, for what they’re worth.’

‘What kind of desecration?’

‘What kind? Satanic desecration, of course.’

Jane was furious.

‘You can’t do this to Lol! Whatever it was, you promised him.’

‘I have to. It’s—’

‘Your job – yeah, yeah. You know what I think? I think you’re empire-building.’

‘Flower, it’s not me! I didn’t even know about this, but apparently every vicar or rector or priest-in-charge in the diocese has received an edict from the Bishop’s office to say that anything arising in their parishes possibly related to Deliverance should be referred initially to me. Through the Deliverance office, naturally, but this Major Weston’s obviously had an earful from a local vicar happy to wash his hands of it, and so the Major’s made a special point of finding my home number and getting me up nice and early in the morning. What can I do?’

‘You don’t have to go now.’

‘I do have to go now. They’ve got to get the place cleaned up. It’s a disused church supported by this charity.’

But she was annoyed. Neither Mick nor Sophie had mentioned this memo going out to all the priests. Yes, it did look like empire-building, and whilst a few vicars would be secretly relieved, the majority would resent it. She would have resented it.

‘I’ll call Lol,’ she said.

23 Strawberry Ice

THE MAIN ROAD was a brown channel between banks of snow. The Cathedral – usually seen at its most imposing from Greyfriars Bridge – skulked uneasily in half-lit mist.

Beyond the bridge, the car slid alarmingly towards the kerb where there was a pub called the Treacle Mine. This was not promising. The hill might still be a problem – like the other night.

White hell, then. Not ten minutes out of the city, but the snow had lain undisturbed for longer. Denny’s monster Mitsubishi would, for once, have been useful. Don’t even try the steep bit, Moon had said. You’ll just get stuck. I can walk down from here.

Oh, it’s hazardous out there, Moon. Snow-blindness. Hypothermia.

Lol, the hill’s only five hundred and ninety-five feet above sea level.

Sometimes her humour-vacuum was almost endearing. Ever since they’d left the shop – Moon, in her green padded skijacket, snuggling into his shoulder – Lol had been thinking: I was wrong, I’m crazy. There’s nothing weird going on. All she needs is love.

Anyway, he couldn’t stop now; there was nowhere to turn the car around.

This morning, with no further snow, things were better.

Someone must have been up the hill with a tractor, perhaps even a snowplough. He made it without too much revving and sliding, as far as the little car park for visitors to the ancient camp.

The desolation of the day was getting to him. He’d been looking forward to bringing Merrily up here. But Merrily couldn’t make it. Second thoughts, maybe, about loopy Moon – and loopy Lol, too. He’d misunderstood her.

From the back of the car, he pulled his wellies and his old army combat jacket. The snow around here was untrodden, lying in big drifts. Even where it hadn’t drifted, it was four, five inches deep.

Lol ploughed through. The earth steps had disappeared, becoming a deceptive white ski-run. Lol stopped. He’d imagined the barn below would be winter-picturesque, but it was like a short, blackened toadstool under its snow-swollen roof. Neglected and charmless, most of its windows shrunken by snow.

On Saturday night, a gauzy moon had been nesting in the snow-bent treetops, and Moon had walked across where the patch of garden would be and looked all around like she wanted to establish a memory of how the barn and the surrounding trees looked in their moonlit winter robes.

And Lol had then thought, this is it. Dick whispering in his ear, You do find her attractive, don’t you? Think she doesn’t fancy you? Oh, I think she does, old son. I think she does. And then Denny. I would do anything, give anything to get her away from there. Meanwhile, if she’s not alone, that’s the best thing I could hope for under the circumstances.

Lol crunched carefully down the long earthen steps. It was fully light now, or as light as it was going to get. He knocked on the front door, set into the glassed-over barn bay, long curtains drawn on either side.

There was no answer. After a minute, Lol stepped back on to the snow-shrouded garden and looked around.

A big man was striding out of a wall of conifers on the other side of the barn. He stopped. ‘Hello. Can I help?’

‘I’m looking for Kathy Moon.’

‘Yes, this is where she lives.’ He had a high, hearty voice – not local. He wore a shiny new green Barbour and a matching cap. ‘I’m from the farm. Tim Purefoy.’

‘Lol Robinson. I’m a… friend of hers.’

‘Yes, I’m sure she’s spoken of you.’ Tim Purefoy looked down at Lol, recognition dawning. ‘I know… you were here helping Katherine move in, yes?’ He ambled across to the glassed-over barn bay, squinting through a hole in the condensation. ‘Bit odd – she’s usually up and about quite early. Cycles into town, you know.’

Lol explained about driving Moon home on Saturday, and the bike being still at the shop.

‘Well, I don’t know what to say,’ said Mr Purefoy. ‘Gone for a stroll maybe? Perhaps she wanted to see what the hill was like under snow, before it all vanished. Bit of a romantic about this hill, as you probably know. Anyway, can’t be far away. Come and wait at the farmhouse if you like, and have a coffee.’

‘Actually,’ Lol said, ‘I don’t suppose I could use your phone? It’s possible her brother got worried about her being up here in the blizzard. Maybe he’s collected her.’

‘No problem at all. Follow me.’ Tim Purefoy beat his gloved hands together. ‘Like midwinter already, isn’t it?’

The Dyn farmhouse was unexpectedly close – no more than fifteen yards behind the tight row of Leylandii. It was these conifers that deprived the barn of its view, but when you passed between them…

Lol almost gasped.

They were standing on a wide white lawn sloping away to a line of low bushes which probably hid the road. But it might as well have been a cliff edge.

Below it, the city – a timeless vision in the mist.

‘Startling, isn’t it?’ Tim Purefoy folded his arms in satisfaction. ‘Best view of Hereford you’ll get from anywhere – except from the ramparts of the hillfort itself.’

The snow had made Hereford an island and softened the outlines of its buildings, so that the new merged colourlessly with the old. And because the city had somehow been bypassed by the high-rise revolution of the sixties and seventies, it might all have been seventeenth-century, even medieval,