The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Only, Huw reckoned he was mad,’ Merrily said.

Since the days when hundreds of medieval pilgrims had dragged their crippled limbs to the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral, the Church had become increasingly uncomfortable about healing. You prayed for sick people, you might even light a candle, and if there was a cure you thanked God. Beyond that, a certain wariness crept in. Not strictly our thing.

In which case, what was the Church’s thing? The way congregations were crashing, it was clear that this was a question not going unasked. While Jane was changing out of her school gear, Merrily dug out the report: ‘A Time to Heal: A Contribution towards the Ministry of Healing’. In his introduction, George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, referred to ‘Our Lord’s injunction to heal the sick,’ and suggested that the report might be studied and reflected upon and considered for action ‘as appropriate in dioceses and parishes’.

As appropriate. Merrily smiled.

In relation to parishes, the report recommended that clergy involved in healing should consider combining their resources with those of doctors, community nurses and carers operating according to a ‘working theology’ of the Ministry of Healing.

Oh, sure. Like Kent Asprey and Lorraine Bonner, the district nurse, who maintained she’d seen too much of life to be anything but an atheist.

The report was sniffy about some healing services. Lack of preparation, misunderstandings, unjustified claims and emotionalism leading to subsequent disappointment. It was more supportive of what it called Intercessory Groups, in which a number of ‘instructed persons’ met regularly to pray for the sick.

Laying-on of hands, by the minister, in the context of a normal service or Eucharist was also accepted, as were Services of Penance, underlining the healing benefits of forgiveness.

Merrily looked up Canon Llewellyn Jeavons in the phone book. There was a Jeavons L.C.D. at Suckley.

Mad, Huw had said, without explanation.

She knew where Suckley was — a rambling hamlet not far over the Herefordshire border and not far at all, in fact, from the Frome Valley where Lol Robinson was still living out of suitcases in the granary at Prof Levin’s recording studio.

Merrily sometimes caught a frightening image of herself in twenty years’ time. It was in sepia: this small, monklike person in the bottom left-hand corner of the huge old vicarage, hunched over the desk. Dark. Chilly. Cramped. Very much alone.

She saw it quite often these days. Sometimes it was so detailed, and yet so stark, that it was almost like an engraving.

That night, building a fire of apple logs in the sitting-room inglenook, Jane said, ‘You don’t make fires like this when I’m not here, do you? Like last weekend, for instance.’

‘I was busy.’

‘I think you probably didn’t come in here even once. I could almost smell the damp.’

‘Saturday night, I wrote the sermon. Sunday night, we had the service and then the Prossers came to tell me about Ann-Marie. Wasn’t really worth it afterwards.’

The paper and the kindling flared yellow. Jane, on the hearthrug in her jeans and an overstretched white sweater, looked like a little girl again. Seventeen now — scary.

‘It’s just…’ The kid positioned a small log over a mesh of thorny kindling. ‘I like this job. I like Stanner Hall. You get to meet people — different kinds of people. I just don’t like to think of you all alone here. Like everywhere dark, except the kitchen and the scullery.’

‘I’ve got the cat. And, of course—’

‘Let’s keep Him out of this,’ Jane snapped. ‘The point is, in under two years I’ll probably be gone, whether it’s university or… whatever. But I might be gone for like… for good. And you’ll be kind of lodged down in that scullery like the last Jelly Baby in the jar, writing your sermons into the empty night.’

Actually, it was going to bed that was the worst time: putting out the bedside light, knowing that the attic apartment directly above you was empty. Thinking of all the empty rooms and all the people who had been and gone. Jane’s dad, long gone. Jane’s dad — that was how she thought of Sean now, as though Jane was the best thing he’d done in his foreshortened, corrupted life.

Biting her lip, she stood over Jane and bent and kneaded the kid’s shoulders. ‘Two years is still a long time.’

‘I used to think that, but it isn’t.’ Jane looked up at her. ‘You’ll be nearly forty then. Have you even thought about that?’

‘Too old for sex?’

Jane pulled away. ‘Stop it.’

‘It was a joke. How are things at the hotel?’

‘Don’t change the subject. You’re here in this mausoleum, on your own every weekend, and Lol’s twenty miles away with no real home at all, and he can’t get near half the time because of appearances and the Church and all that hypocritical bollocks. I mean, if you were gay — if you were a lesbian — nobody would—’ Jane broke off, blushing, probably remembering a certain misunderstanding.

‘And there’s the question of restarting Lol’s career,’ Merrily said. ‘The album out in March, the chance of a tour…’

The kid smiled maliciously. ‘And groupies.’

‘Do they have groupies any more?’

‘Just trying to inflame the situation. Groupies and Lol doesn’t arise.’ Jane looked up again, an apple glow on her face. ‘But you have to do something soon. Face it, most people know about you and him now, anyway.’

‘Yeah, but cohabiting in the vicarage might just be a step too far. And I don’t think he’d want that anyway. Now that he’s finding his feet.’

‘You’re so… unimpulsive. You piss me off sometimes.’

‘It’s what I’m here for,’ Merrily said.

Later, just before nine, she left Jane in front of the TV and slipped away to the scullery. On the blue blotter on her desk, next to the sermon pad, was a folded copy of the property section of the Hereford Times. Just above the fold, an advert, encircled, said:

LEDWARDINE

Church Street — exquisite small, terraced

house, Grade Two listed, close to the centre

of this sought-after village.

It could be the answer. Tomorrow, she’d call the agent. Tonight, she lifted the phone and tapped in the number of Canon Llewellyn Jeavons.

So he was mad. Maybe she could use some of that.

4 The Room Under the Witch’s-Hat Tower

The pines were matt black against the blood-orange sky when Jane was walking up the hotel drive. Friday, late afternoon, and here it came again — that shivery anticipation, her senses honed as sharp as the air, as the cold tide of night swept in towards the Border.

The Border. It was right here. She could actually be standing on it now. The hotel was in England, but the rocks it was named after were in Wales. And here, where the track divided, was where it all coalesced in a burst of sunset.

Letting her school case and her overnight bag slip to the ground, Jane stopped at the fork. The independent working woman, on the Border.