The Lamp of the Wicked

Lol looked at Merrily and saw her bite her lip.

The door of the lounge opened suddenly, and Mrs Pawson’s whole body jerked.

A man in a dark suit said cheerfully, ‘Are you all right in there? Anything I can get you?’

‘Fine,’ Mrs Pawson said. ‘Everything’s… fine.’

38 Bit Player in a Fantasy

THE ROYAL HOTEL was tucked into the side of the Ross churchyard, and they went up into it, then followed the path down towards the Plague Cross. The cross was edged with cold moonlight.

Lol said, ‘You didn’t really push her on dates.’

‘No point. I think we both knew what we might have been talking about,’ Merrily said. ‘If she knew for a fact that Lynsey Davies was dead by then, how would that help her to sleep? I slipped her a card on the way out, whispered I could maybe help if anything happened again.’

‘I don’t think she wants to go down that road. She just wants out.’

‘No wonder she’s staying in the hotel. I’m not sure I’d want to be in that house on my own, even now.’

Lol looked up at the Plague Cross. The cross itself was quite small, like a fist on the end of an upthrust arm, representing the triumph of mere survival.

‘The picture that’s coming over of Lynsey Davies is not really the image of a victim, is it?’

‘Nothing I’ve heard about her so far makes her terribly endearing,’ Merrily said. ‘Dumps her kids, probably breaks up Roddy’s relationship with someone who might have helped him and tries to lure an already nervous woman into three-in- a-van sex.’

Do you want to know more about her? Would that help?’

There was no one else in the churchyard. The street-front opposite – now mainly offices – was hushed, but the air around them was vibrant with the sharp spores of frost.

‘Lol, why aren’t you rehearsing? Why aren’t you getting an early night before the gig?’

‘Because I’d start thinking it was important. And if I start thinking it’s important, I’m… Anyway, there’s someone here, in Ross, who knew Lynsey well – someone Gomer and I met on the tank dig. If you wanted to come with me, we could maybe—’

‘I can’t. I’ve left Huw Owen in The Man of Ross, trying to find a pint and a pasty. We’re going over to Underhowle. He’s decided he wants to be involved, which is not, frankly, as reassuring as you might think.’ She looked up at the cross. ‘So this is Sam’s symbol.’

‘“The insidious wind which blows through skin and tissue and bones”.’

‘He said that?’

‘It’s the only good line in his song, and even that sounds more than a bit reminiscent of Dylan’s “Idiot Wind”.’

‘Electromagnetic waves,’ Merrily said, ‘radio waves… ghost waves… alien waves… soft porn blowing through the church steeple. It’s a wonder any of us can breathe.’

‘Prof says we’re mutating into it. One day we’ll become electric beings, just light and sparks. That’s a better line, maybe I’ll use that instead.’

Merrily said, ‘Huw wonders if there’s the remains of some satanic cult still out there. I wouldn’t know what to do about it if there was. It’s not even against the law any more.’

‘Killing people is.’

‘And the known killers are dead, so the police aren’t interested.’

‘No. Listen…’ Lol turned away from the cross. ‘There’s no good time to say this, but I don’t imagine there’ll be a better one.’

He saw her stiffen.

He said, ‘When I was here with Moira, something happened.’

Merrily said sharply, ‘No. Maybe this isn’t a good time.’

‘‘If I don’t talk about it now…’ She didn’t look at him. ‘Sam Hall was telling us about how the bodies were buried, without coffins, all that… and later Moira said she’d experienced what she described as a loathsome, curling sensation in her gut. She talked in an oblique way about evil. She—’ Lol shrugged. ‘That’s it.’

Merrily looked at him and he thought she almost smiled. ‘That’s it? That’s what you had to tell me?’

‘I know how you feel about clairvoyance. Just thought I ought to tell you about this. Even if you scoffed. But if you do accept this sort of thing, you might think she was getting it not so much from the cross and this situation as from… Sam.’

‘Lol—’

‘I’m worried about this, that’s all. Underhowle, Lodge, West. Worried about you. Sorry. Also, Eirion came to see me last night. On his own.’

‘Oh God,’ Merrily said. ‘They’ve split up, haven’t they?’

‘She told you?’

‘Didn’t need to. I like Eirion a lot – the kind of guy she needs to meet in ten years’ time. At Jane’s age I suppose you need to split up a few times.’

‘He may even be prepared to wait. He…’ Lol breathed out. ‘He also said Jane thinks I’m sleeping with Moira Cairns.’

‘Did he?’

‘The way we musicians do. When we’re not shooting heroin into our arms.’

‘I’ve heard that, too.’

‘About Moira?’

‘And the heroin, but I think that’s exaggerated in your case. Look… we’re OK, aren’t we?’

Lol nodded. He kissed her slowly, both hands in her hair. ‘I hope.’ And then they walked down, towards the not-very-bright lights of the town.

Jane snatched her fleece from the peg and ran out of the front door, catching up with Jenny Box on the edge of the square.

I’m sorry…’

Jenny Box turned. Her scarf fell away. Her red-gold hair shone under one of the fake gaslamps.

‘Mrs Box, I’m really sorry, OK? I should not have said that stuff.’

‘Jane—’

‘It’s not my place to be judgemental. I’m immature for my age and I’m probably becoming right-wing and moralistic and—’

‘Jane,’ Jenny Box said, ‘if you want to continue the conversation, fine.’

‘Do you want to… come back to the vicarage?’

Jenny Box looked around the square. ‘I think I’d rather walk, if you don’t mind. Sitting there facing each other across a table, that can be a little fraught. Besides, there’s less opportunity for me to try and seduce you out here on the street.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jane said, eyes still full of tears. ‘I don’t know what to believe any more. About anything.’

Merrily took the Walford road out of Ross, turning left when the headlight beams penetrated the tight steel compound that was the base of the first big pylon in the great chain.

‘I’ve never come into the Forest of Dean from this end,’ Huw said. ‘Always come down from Gloucester before.’

‘It’s strange. Like a frontier.’ She drove slowly along the narrow valley road, the full beams occasionally finding one of the pylons gripping the hillside like the skeletons of steel-clawed eagles. ‘The Forest’s a different country. You assume it must have different laws, and you wonder if you might be breaking one of them without knowing it.’

‘You feel insecure?’

‘Bit.’