Midwinter of the Spirit

mover. So she never did learn how he’d discovered the kid had become involved with something called the Pod, which met above a cafe in Hereford. It could be worse, however, Lol said: women only, nothing sexual. Self- development through meditation and spiritual exercises. Progressing – possibly – to journeys out of the body.

Oh, was that all?

When she went back to the drawing room, Jane had put on the stereo and it was playing one of the warmest, breathiest, Nick Drake-iest songs on the second and final Hazey Jane album. The one which went, Waking in the misty dawn and finding you there.

Merrily lay on the sofa and listened to the music, her thoughts tumbling like water on to rocks.

During the remainder of the evening, the phone rang twice. Merrily said the machine would get it, although she knew it was still unplugged.

The last caller, she’d discovered from the bedside phone, was Huw Owen. She fell asleep trying to make sense of him and Dobbs.

She lay there, half awake for quite a while, dimly aware of both palms itching, before the jagged cold ripped up her, from vagina to throat, and then she was throwing herself out of bed and rolling away into a corner, where the carpet was still damp from holy water, and she curled up dripping with sweat and terror and saw from the neon-red digits of the illuminated clock that the time was four a.m., the hour of his death in Hereford General.

Across the room, with a waft of cat’s faeces and gangrene, a shadow sat up in her bed.

34 A Party

THE BULKHEAD LIGHT came on and the back door was tugged open.

Somewhere deep in the stone and panelled heart of the Glades a piano was being plonked, a dozen cracked sopranos clawing for the notes of what might have been a hymn.

‘Ah.’ Susan Thorpe stepped out in her Aran sweater, heathery skirt, riding boots. ‘Splendid. We were beginning to think you weren’t going to venture out.’

No ‘How good of you to turn out on a night like this’. Mrs Thorpe appeared to think Deliverance was the kind of local service you paid for in your council tax.

The singing voices shrilled and then shrank under a great clumping chord.

‘I can never say no to a party,’ Merrily said.

She shed her fake-Barbour in the hall. Underneath, she wore a shaggy black mohair jumper over another jumper, her largest pectoral cross snuggling between the two layers. Susan Thorpe looked relieved that she wasn’t in a surplice. But her husband Chris obviously thought she ought to be.

‘This is a proper exorcism, isn’t it?’ He was extremely tall, with a shelf of bushy eyebrow and a premature stoop.

His wife glared. ‘They aren’t all bloody deaf in there, you know.’

‘Let’s get this clear,’ Merrily said. ‘It isn’t going to be an exorcism at all. An exorcism is an extreme measure only normally used for the removal of an evil presence.’

‘How d’you know it isn’t that?’

‘I don’t know what it is yet, Mr Thorpe.’ Yet – that was optimistic. ‘If it does turn out to be, er, malevolent, we shall have to think again.’

Believe me, if you had real malevolence here, you would know…

‘Always believed in belt and braces, myself,’ Chris Thorpe said gruffly. ‘Go in hard. If you’ve got rats, you put down poison, block all the holes.’

Merrily smiled demurely up at him. ‘How fortunate we all are that you’re not an exorcist.’

‘Let it go, Chris.’ Susan Thorpe pushed him into the passage leading to the private sitting room, held open the door for Merrily. ‘The truth is, my husband’s a sceptic. He teaches physics.’

‘Oh, where?’

‘Moorfield High,’ Susan said quickly. Oh dear, a mere state school. The Thorpes were no more than late- thirties, yet had the style and attitudes of people at least a generation older. You couldn’t imagine this was entirely down to living with old people. More a cultivated image over which they’d lost all control.

The sitting room was gloomily lit by a standard lamp with an underpowered bulb, but it was much tidier tonight – possibly the work of the plump woman who sat placidly sipping tea. On her knees was a plate with a knife on it, and cake crumbs.

‘This is my mother, Edna Rees. This is Mrs Merrily Watkins, Mother. She’s Dobbs’s successor.’

The former housekeeper to the Canon had raw red farmer’s cheeks and wore her hat indoors; how many women did that these days? She put down her cup, and studied Merrily at length, unembarrassed.

‘You seem very young, Mrs Watkins.’

‘I’m not sure which way to take that, Mrs Rees.’

‘Oh, I think you are, my dear.’ Mrs Rees’s accent was far more local than her daughter’s – Hereford-Welsh. ‘I think you are.’

Merrily smiled. How do I get to talk to her in private?

Susan Thorpe frowned. ‘I don’t know how long this operation normally takes you, Merrily. But our venerable guest of honour is usually in bed by ten.’

‘So there’s going to be nobody on that floor until then?’

‘Nobody living,’ said Mrs Rees blandly.

Chris Thorpe glanced at Merrily’s shoulder-bag. ‘You have some equipment?’

‘We don’t have to be near any power points, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Chris, why don’t you go and do something else?’ Susan said through her teeth.

‘It’s my house. I’ve a right to be informed.’

‘But I don’t feel you really believe it’s going to achieve anything,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s just that normally we like to do this in the presence of people who are a bit sympathetic – a scattering of actual Christians. I mean, are there any practising Christians around? What about the woman who saw… him? Helen?’

‘Supervising the party,’ Susan said. ‘Making sure it doesn’t get too rowdy. Anyway, she doesn’t want to be involved. Christians? No shortage of them but they’re the ones we’re trying not to alarm. You’re on your own, I’m afraid, Merrily. Can I offer you a fortifying cigarette?’

‘Thanks. Afterwards, I think. If you could just point me at the spot.’

‘Don’t fret.’ Mrs Rees put down her cup and saucer. ‘I’ll go with you.’

Excellent.

‘Did you ever go with Canon Dobbs, Mrs Rees?’

‘Oh no.’ Mrs Rees stood up, shaking cake crumbs from her pleated skirt. ‘Wasn’t woman’s work, was it?’

Jane and Rowenna ordered coffee and doughnuts at the Little Chef between Hereford and Leominster. Jane nervously stirred an extra sugar into hers. ‘I didn’t even tell her I was going out tonight. It’s come to this: separate lives.’

Rowenna was unsympathetic. ‘You’re a woman now. You live by your own rules.’

‘Yeah, well…’ Jane looked through the window at the car park and a petrol-station forecourt. She kind of liked Little Chefs because they sold maps and stuff as well, giving you a feeling of being on a journey. They weren’t travelling far this time, however.

Only to the pub where the psychic fair had been held – there to meet with the gracious Angela. Jane felt like Macbeth going for his second session with the Weird Sisters. Like, face it, the first meeting had changed Jane’s life.

She hadn’t seen much of Rowenna over the past couple of days. Then, this morning, the lime-green Fiesta had slid into Ledwardine market square while she was waiting for the bus.

She’d immediately wondered whether to tell Rowenna what Dean Wall had said. If somebody was spreading that kind of filth about you, you had a right to know. But the minute she got in, Ro was like: ‘Guess who called