Midwinter of the Spirit

expensive they are these days, bulbs. We tried those economy things – cost the earth, take an age to come on, but they’re supposed to last ten years. Not in that house, they didn’t.’

‘What else happened?’

‘Some nights…’ Edna pulled her skirt down over her knees, ‘… you just couldn’t heat that place to save your life, even with all the radiators turned up, the living-room fire banked all day. Wasn’t even that cold outside sometimes, see. And yet, come the night, just when you’d think it’d be getting nicely warmed up…’

Cold spots?

This passage had five doors, all closed. Closed doors were threatening. Doors ajar with darkness within were terrifying. Merrily guessed she just didn’t like doors. Otherwise, there was no sense of disturbance, no cold spots – and certainly nothing like the acrid, soul-shrivelling stench which had gathered around…

Stop!

She turned briskly to Edna. ‘Are you saying that he… brought his work home?’

Edna looked at Merrily from under her bottle-green velvet hat. Her eyes were brown and shrewd, over cheeks that were small explosions of split veins.

‘My dear, his work followed him home.’

She froze. ‘He told you that?’

‘He never talked about his work,’ Edna said. ‘Not to me; not to anyone, far as I know. But when he came back sometimes, it was like Jack Frost himself walking in.’

‘What did he do about that?’

‘Not for me to know, Mrs Watkins.’

‘No,’ Merrily said, ‘obviously not. I… saw you with him the other week, in the Cathedral.’

‘Yes,’ Edna said calmly, ‘I thought it was you.’

‘He was telling you to go away. He said there was something he couldn’t… couldn’t discuss there.’

‘Sharp ears you have.’

‘Is it none of my business?’

‘You must think it is.’

‘Why “here”? Why did he want to get you out of the Cathedral?’

‘For the same reason he wanted me out of his house, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Which is?’

‘Why are you asking me these questions?’

‘Because I can’t ask him. Because he’s lying in hospital apparently incapable of speech. Or at least he doesn’t speak to the female nurses.’

Edna smiled.

‘Any more than he’d speak to me before his stroke. He froze me out, too, on the grounds that I wasn’t fit to do his job. His sole communication with me was a cryptic note saying that Jesus Christ was the first exorcist. There. I’ve told you everything, Edna.’

It was what she wanted.

‘Merrily… Can I call you Merrily?’

‘Please do.’

‘Merrily, this began… I don’t know exactly when it began, but it did have a beginning.’

‘Yes.’

‘I started to hear him praying, very loud and… anguished. I would hear him through the walls: sometimes in what sounded like Latin – the words meant nothing to me. He would shout them into the night. And then, backwards and forwards from the Cathedral he’d go at all hours, in all weathers. I would hear his footsteps in the street at two, three in the morning. Going to the Cathedral, coming from there – sometimes rushing, he was, like a man possessed. I don’t mean that in the…’

‘I know.’

‘And this was when he began cutting himself off: from men too, but especially from women. Would not even see his own sister. He would put her off – I was made to put her off – when she wanted to visit. He would not even speak to her on the telephone. Or to his granddaughters – he has two granddaughters. One of them brought her new baby to show him. He saw her coming down the street and made me tell her he was away. It made no sense to me. He’d been married for forty years.’

‘Does it make sense now?’

‘I have been reading,’ Edna said, ‘about St Thomas of Hereford.’

‘Thomas Cantilupe?’

‘He would not have women near him, either.’

She fell silent.

‘But that was then,’ Merrily said. ‘That was the Middle Ages. Cantilupe was a Roman Catholic bishop. They weren’t allowed to have…’

‘I know that, but where did the Canon go when he went into the Cathedral? Where did he have his stroke?’

‘Cantilupe’s tomb.’

‘I can’t tell you any more,’ Edna said. ‘You had better do what you came for.’

In fact, the routine for this kind of situation usually involved blessing the entire house, room by room, starting at the main entrance, the blessing thus extended to all who passed in and out. But Susan Thorpe was hardly going to permit that.

If you couldn’t tie down a haunting to a specific incident in the history of the house, then you at least should ask: What’s causing it to happen now? Is it connected to the present function of the house, the kind of people living here? Old people feeling unwanted, neglected, passed-over? Confused, their senses fuddled…? Yet Susan Thorpe wouldn’t accommodate that kind of client. Any signs of dementia, they have to go. We aren’t a nursing home.

You could spend days investigating this, and then discover it was a simple optical illusion. Merrily moved a little closer to the dead bulb’s bracket.

‘I don’t know what your son-in-law expected, but—’

‘Stuffed-shirt, he is,’ Edna said. ‘I hope I die, I do, before I have to go into a place owned by people like them. Pretend-carers, they are.’ Out of her daughter’s earshot, Edna’s accent had strengthened. ‘Poor old souls. Grit my teeth, I will, and stay here until I can find a little flat, then you won’t see me for dust.’

‘Good for you,’ Merrily said.

It was quiet. No wind in the rafters. They stood in silence for a couple of minutes and then Merrily called on God, who Himself never slept, to bless these bedrooms and watch over all who rested in them.

35 Sholto

HER HANDS TOGETHER, head bowed.

Even the piano was inaudible up here, and in the silence her words sounded hollow and banal.

‘… and ask You to bless and protect the stairs and the landings and the corridors along which the residents and the workers here must pass to reach these rooms.’

She was visualizing the old ladies gathered around the piano two floors below, so as to draw them into the prayer.

‘We pray, in the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, that no spirit or shade or image from the past will disturb the people dwelling here. We pray that these images or spirits will return to their ordained place and there rest in peace.’

This covered both imprints and insomniacs, although she didn’t really think it could be an insomniac. There’d surely be some sign, in that case,