The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Hot spots?’ Lol said.

‘ “Hot spot” is the term for a dangerous configuration of transmitters, pylons, what-have-you which renders an area… let’s say difficult to reside in. Cody’s computer plant came to the area on account of a development grant and a derelict site going for peanuts, and now they want to… but you know all this.’

‘I’m a stranger,’ Moira said. ‘I don’t know any of it.’

Sam Hall looked hard at her in the dimness. Moira folded her arms in her wrap.

‘We have a complex situation,’ Sam said. ‘The small industries which once built up Underhowle into a community with three, four pubs, a bunch of shops and its own school went to the wall long ago. By the mid- nineties, the shops had all gone out of business, the school was threatened with closure, and the village wasn’t pretty enough to attract the cottage-hunters from London – specially with these damn pylons like watchtowers around Belsen and Auschwitz.’

It was almost night now and growing cold. Somewhere at the back of his mind Lol could hear Prof Levin saying, The one thing you, of all people, do not need at this stage is to get in with crazies.

Biggest disease in Underhowle, when I came back from the States, was apathy,’ Sam Hall said. ‘I didn’t mind. I just wanted a place I could afford and where I’d be left alone to be a crank and a pain-in-the-ass idealist, sustain my fantasy that we could live without the goddam mains services run by fat cats who’d watch us die one by one, to stave off wasting-disease of the wallet.’

Lol wondered if Sam saw himself as the new Reverend Price, who’d chosen to live and fight in the plague hot spot.

‘At first, I was as pleased as anyone,’ Sam said, ‘when, like the recipient of a touch of magic, Underhowle began to undergo a small revival.’

Two things happened, almost simultaneously, he told them. Two new elements of growth that fed one another, two men with compatible dreams. Fergus Young, a teacher with real vision, took over a dying primary school, down to fourteen pupils. And Chris Cody, this computer whizz, brought in enough employees with young families to fill it up again.

‘I like Fergus. He’s evangelical, like me. Gave up a lot for that school – even his marriage, in the end. Hell, I even like Chris. Fergus knows how to inspire kids, he was getting incredible results very quickly, but I guess it was the computer input that revolutionized everything.’

‘They provided computers for the school?’ Lol recalled the Efflapure owner, Mike Sandford, telling him about the children’s computers they were manufacturing – for four-year-olds, three-year-olds, two… younger.

‘They donated computers,’ Sam Hall said. ‘Not only to the school, but to every household in the catchment area with a small kid. Time the kid reaches school, it’s computer-literate, with all the educational benefits that brings. Plus most of them could read and write by age five or earlier. So between them, at this run-down school in a run-down village, Fergus and Chris have already created a generation of very smart kids.’

Lol recalled Mike Sandford again: Might look run-down, but this place is the future.

‘This been publicized?’ Moira wondered.

‘In all the right journals. Result: Cody’s kiddie computers are starting to sell, internationally – so yet more jobs. Parents squeezing themselves into the catchment area to get their kids into Fergus’s school. Property prices rising. Place still isn’t pretty, but it’s changing fast – two shops reopened in the past year, one by Cody, as a retail software outlet, but the other sells food. And we have a hairdresser, we have the refurbishment of the village hall as a sophisticated community centre. And – you know – so far, so good. We were all getting along together fine on the Underhowle Development Committee. Till we fell out.’

Sam said that although he’d been less enthused than some by the idea of Underhowle becoming a blueprint for rural regrowth, he’d kept quiet about the aspects that worried him. Until the demands for better communications began bringing results. Until the growing complaints about the poor mobile- phone signals in the valley and the bad quality of TV reception began to have enough relevance for the fat cats who ran the networks to act on them.

When the Development Committee had voted to express its approval of a plan for a new and powerful mobile-phone transmitter on the side of Howle Hill, along with a TV booster less than half a mile away, Sam had quit the committee in an atmosphere of serious acrimony. Now the booster was up and shooting signals at Underhowle, the new phone mast only awaiting the green light from the council. And no groundswell of opposition to get in the way. Only Sam, the crank, the fruitcake.

‘I expected support from the newcomers, but hell, with the village taking off the way it is, they’re scared to be seen as blocking progress. In most cases, their jobs depend on it. But it’s… with the number of goddam power lines we already got intersecting here, it’s my absolutely unswerving belief we’re in for one hell of a hot spot. Health problems – and mental health problems – on a scale you can’t imagine. Signs are there. I can give you a long list of people who died prematurely – people living too close to 140,000 volts. When that damn mast goes up, it’s gonna be electric soup. But… I got no proof and no back-up.’

Lol was thinking Sam was going to need more than a rally and protest song to raise any. He didn’t know what to say.

Sam said, ‘Sure, I have friends outside – links with Green organizations. But Green activists, they tend to be gentle people. They don’t have maybe the blind rage needed to tackle what is one enormous ecological problem and – I would venture to suggest, Reverend – a spiritual one.’

Moira said, ‘Huh?’

‘I can explain this aspect, if you’ll give me some time. If we can meet this week, perhaps, I can explain it in detail. But, essentially, our local minister, Reverend Banks, is a man with – and, as someone who’s at least half a Christian, I make no apology for this – a man with a small, closed mind, who refuses to absorb or even to consider—’

‘Mr Hall, I wouldnae doubt that he is, but if I could—’

‘I realize your position’s bound to be sensitive, where another clergyperson’s concerned. But there are some things I need to get aligned in my own mind, and I could use some advice from someone… such as yourself.’

He stood at the foot of the Plague Cross, shoulders slumped, sagging a little, looking more like his age. He unshouldered his knapsack, as if it had suddenly become too much of a burden, and laid it on the bottom step.

‘Sam,’ Lol said gently, ‘I think…’

Lol drove around the island and back onto the A40, from which the town of Ross glittered in the early night, like a birthday cake, across three lanes of traffic and the river. He drew a fold of paper from his jacket pocket.

‘Gave me this just as we were walking back into town. I guess it’s the poem. The song. He took it out of his bag almost like an afterthought, just before we went our separate ways.’ He handed the paper across to Moira. ‘Sorry, the interior light doesn’t work, but there’s a torch in the glove compartment.’

‘I suppose I ought to feel flattered,’ Moira said. ‘This could be the first time in ma whole life I was ever mistaken for a good and devout person.’

There was only one way this misunderstanding could have come about: Sam had talked to Frannie Bliss, and Bliss had disclosed Lol’s close friendship with the diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Lol had introduced Moira to Sam only by her first name. Moira – Merrily? It was an honest mistake.

‘I don’t think he’s crazy,’ Lol said. ‘But he certainly seems less stable than he did the other night. Or maybe it’s me who’s more stable than I was then.’

‘Well…’ He heard the snap of the torch switch. ‘I don’t think he’s crazy either, but he sure is no poet.’

‘Not good?’

‘It’s like he just scribbled it down, off the top of his head, before he came out.’

‘Maybe he did.’

‘Aye.’

In the darkness of the car, Lol was aware of Moira’s scent; it made him think of deserted sand dunes in the Hebrides. Or maybe that wasn’t the scent at all. Her voice came back, low.

‘He doesnae want you at all, Laurence. Or your talents. It was a wee ploy and not a very convincing one. He wants your friend. He wants an exorcist. It’s why he asked you to bring your lady.’

‘Yes.’