Midwinter of the Spirit

The wind whined in the rafters and the flame of the oil lamp shrank back, as though it was cowering.

Cool!

The church was now lit by two oil lamps supported on brackets, three candles and a hurricane lantern on the central pulpit. It looked deceptively cosy. Huw Owen was there with a curlyhaired, jutting-jawed, youngish minister, who backed away from Merrily in her cloak, as if she was a vampire, throwing up his hands in mock defence.

‘Mrs Watkins, I beg forgiveness.’

‘From me?’

‘I’m Jeffrey Kimball, from Dilwyn. Major Weston approached me this morning, to perform the necessary, and I’m afraid I threw a tantrum and gave him your home number, which I looked up in the telephone book. It was pure pique on my part after that memorandum from the Bishop on the subject of Deliverance, and I’m sorry to have taken it out on you.’

‘I can understand your—’

‘To be quite honest, Mrs Watkins, I tend to object to more or less anything this particular bishop does. I do so hate blatantly political appointments of any kind. Absolutely everyone thought Hereford should have gone to Tom Armstrong – a canon at the Cathedral for five years before he went to Reading as Dean… Immensely able man… and they used a very minor heart problem as an excuse to give it to Hunter. I make no secret of my feelings, and I realize you—’

‘Happen you can save that till after, lad,’ Huw Owen said.

‘Oh.’ The Rev. Kimball let his arms fall to his sides. ‘Yes, of course. I should have thought.’

‘Merrily needs a bit of quiet,’ Huw said.

‘Yes, I shall leave you alone and go out to contemplate the moonlight on the snow.’

‘Aye, give us quarter of an hour, there’s a good lad.’

‘I know his type,’ Huw said as the latch dropped into place behind Kimball. ‘Gets to the age when the bishops are looking younger. How are you, lass?’

She hugged Huw. It was the first time they’d been together since the Deliverance course. He wore what looked like an airforce greatcoat and a yellow bobble-hat.

‘You all right for this, Merrily?’

‘Sure.’ She looked around, sniffed the air, could only smell disinfectant.

‘Who cleared it up?’ Huw asked.

‘I did. Couldn’t ask anybody else, could I? Buried the… remains… just over the wall. Little ceremony.’

‘Hands and knees wi’ a scrubbing brush, eh? What you got in mind for tonight?’

‘We’re looking at minor exorcism.’

‘Never go over the top.’

‘A cleansing. Holy water.’

‘Go right round it, I would. Take one of them coppers with you. Never had a copper at one of mine. Right, make a start? You want to pray together first?’

‘That would be good.’

They sat side by side on the pew nearest the pulpit. ‘I’ll keep it simple,’ Huw said, ‘then we’ll have a bit of quiet. Lord, be with us in this tainted place tonight. Help this lass, Merrily, to repossess it, in Your name, from whatever dark shadows may still hang around it. Protect her this night, amen.’

‘Amen,’ Merrily added.

And, during the ensuing period of quiet, she felt nothing – at first.

When she closed her eyes, she saw neither the blue nor the gold, nor the lamplit path. She saw nothing but a swirling grey untinged by the lamps and the candles.

She was not comfortable on the strange, sloping pew. Found she was squirming a bit, her cassock feeling clammy again. She was actually sweating; she felt damp down her spine. Come on, calm down. She undid the cloak, let it slip from her shoulders. Opened her eyes, but lowered the lids, letting them relax. Shifted position again, and was aware of Huw’s brief sideways glance.

Lamplight flushed the sandstone faces of the knight and his lady, raised only inches above the floor to her left. They were believed, she now knew, to be John and Agnes de la Bere. The de la Beres were lords of the manor for much of the Middle Ages. John wore armour and carried a shield; his wife was gowned and wimpled, slim and girlishly pretty. Another knight, probably John’s father, Robert, lay in the sub-chancel in front with his wife Margaret. Some effigies were terrifying, but these were courtly and benign and truthful. John de la Bere was stocky, had narrow eyes and a big nose.

In other words, she felt OK about them. And about the church. So why was she so uneasy?

She closed her eyes again, pressed her hands formally together, like the hands of John and Agnes de la Bere, and murmured St Patrick’s Breastplate in her mind. She smelled the pine disinfectant she’d borrowed from the farm, and ignored the slow-burning itch which occurred in the palm of her left hand and then the right, as though transmitted from one to the other.

Huw was watching her openly now. She was absolutely desperate for a smoke. She shifted again. The itch in her hands was worse; she couldn’t ignore it, had to concentrate hard to stop herself pulling her hands apart and rubbing her palms on the edge of the pew.

When she could bear it no longer and yearned for relief, she was at last given some help.

Scritch-scratch.

The tiny bird-claw, the curling nail on a yellow finger. The smell of disinfectant had grown sweet and rancid, and was pulled into her nostrils like thin string and down into her throat.

Cat faeces and gangrene.

A rough cough came up like vomit. Merrily began to cough and cough and couldn’t stop. She folded up on the pew, arms flailing, eyes streaming. She felt Huw’s arms around her, heard him praying frantically under his breath, clutching her to him, and still she couldn’t stop coughing and slid down his legs to the stone floor, and he pulled away from her and she heard him scrabbling about.

‘Drink,’ he said urgently. Then a hard ring of glass pushing at her lips, chinking on her teeth.

She gripped it and sucked and Huw held it there.

Merrily fell back against the pew, holy water dribbling down her chin, the lamps and candles blurring into a blaze. Huw brought her gently to her feet and put her cloak around her shoulders.

‘Out of here, lass,’ he said mildly. ‘Don’t come back, eh?’

28 Crone with a Toad

LOL SAW THAT Dick Lyden had become aware of deep waters and was now backing into the paddling area. Dick poured Glenmorangie for Lol and himself. He still looked shaken: not terribly upset exactly, more like unnerved. Almost certainly this was the first time a client of his had taken her own life.

An unexpected minefield then, psychotherapy.

Dick sat down behind his desk lamp, some art-deco thing with a cold blue shade. It created distance.

‘And the police, Lol… the police are saying what?’

‘Keeping the lid on it. No crime, no guilty parties. Probably doing their best to disregard the bizarre bits.’

Dick had finally got through on the phone, demanding Lol should come round at once. Needing to know, for his peace of mind and his professional security, everything that had happened and how it might rebound on him.

This was no longer jolly old Dick revelling in his newfound status as analyst, delightedly knitting strands of experience together into some stupid woolly jumper.

Lol said, ‘As I understand it, they don’t particularly want to know if it’s the same sword, basically.’

‘That’s quite understandable. A suicide is not a murder. This… this wrist-cutting is still not uncommon, I