The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘What goes through your mind?’

‘Sorter question’s that?’

‘I don’t know, it just came into my head. Nobody ask you that before? The doctors?’

‘Why would they?’

‘I’d just like to know what it’s like.’

He stared at her defiantly. ‘It’s like you’re drinking a glass of milk, and it turns into fuckin’ concrete halfway down your throat. That’s what it’s like.’

‘Thank you.’ Sounded like an image that went way back. A childhood image.

‘Don’t you get me going,’ Dexter said. ‘If I starts thinkin’ about it, I’ll get stressed.’

He wasn’t much more than a big silhouette now — wide shoulders, a pointed head. It was dark enough to put on the lamp. She reached out automatically, then paused, with a finger on the button of the Anglepoise.

‘And I don’t want people talkin’ about me in the church,’ Dexter said. ‘She said you was just gonner… I dunno, just do the healin’.’

‘It wouldn’t be like that, Dexter — people talking about you. It’s just, you know, to give me some guidance. Everything you tell me is totally confidential. Just between the two of us.’

‘Nothing to tell.’

‘Have you really not been in a church since your christening? No weddings? Funerals?’

He didn’t reply. In the silence, she thought his breath had coarsened. She tapped the Anglepoise button, still didn’t press it down. The directional light might make this seem too much like an old-style police interrogation. She thought of the basement interview rooms, opposite the cells at Hereford police headquarters, the ventilator grilles high on the walls, no windows. You didn’t need to be asthmatic to feel you couldn’t breathe down there.

‘You ever been in bother with the police, Dexter?’

It just came out, on the back of the thought.

‘Eh?’

‘Look, I’m sorry if that was—’

‘I fuckin’ knew it.’ Dexter was pushing back the chair.

‘I’m sorry.’ With difficulty, she didn’t move. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

a feeling — or a word — sometimes drops into our minds.

Dexter was on his feet, a terrifying rattle in his breath.

‘It was out of order,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I dunno…’ Dexter moved clumsily to the door. ‘Dunno what she’s been tellin’ you, that ole bat.’ He had his inhaler out. ‘But fuck this for a game of soldiers.’

When Eirion tried to ease Jane back onto the bed, she just couldn’t go for it. Not with Mum two floors below, doing what she was doing. Doing the business, doing the priest bit, whatever she perceived that was today.

‘I really worry about her now.’ Jane sat on the edge of the bed, with her elbows on her knees.

‘It’s probably reciprocated tenfold,’ Eirion said.

‘I’m serious. The Jenny Box thing, that whole affair, it really messed her up — this woman in desperate need of support, sitting on awful secrets, and Mum not being there for her when it came to a head.’

‘She couldn’t know, though, Jane, could she?’

‘It doesn’t matter, she still feels responsible. Male priests can be aloof from it all — if they can get a few bums on pews then they feel they still have a role and a bit of status. Women, everything that goes wrong they take it as their fault.’

‘Isn’t that slightly sexist?’ Eirion said.

‘And with Mum you’ve got this constant self-questioning — all this, “Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing to try and fill His bloody sandals?” ’

Eirion came and sat close to Jane, bending forward to peer into her face.

‘I’m not upset,’ Jane said, ‘just in case you were thinking I might be in need of a groin to cry on.’

‘So what is she doing?’

‘Huh?’

‘Down there, with this bloke.’

‘I think she’s been invited to cure whatever it is that’s causing him to keep sucking his inhaler.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘OK.’ Jane let him take her hand. ‘It started with Ann-Marie Herdman. It’s all round the village that Ann- Marie Herdman was cured of something very nasty — that she may or may not have had — after Mum prayed for her. Now, if it had been a regular prayer for the sick, in the course of a normal service, nobody would’ve said a word. But because it was at one of the mysterious new Sunday-night sessions where there are weird things like — woooh — meditation… then it must be… you know?’

‘She’s teaching meditation now?’

‘In a simplistic Christian way. Nothing esoteric. I didn’t realize how far it had got until I went down the shop a couple of hours ago for some stuff for sandwiches, and there were these two women talking about it to Brenda, who’s Ann-Marie’s mum. I mean, I knew about Ann-Marie, but I thought it was just another NHS cock-up. I didn’t realize Mum was in the frame as… God, I can’t bear it. And if I can’t bear it, how does she feel?’

‘They’re saying she has healing skills?’

‘It’s the way people are, that’s all. Always desperate for evidence of miracles. It’s like when all these idiots form queues to worship a potato with the face of Jesus. One of the women said Alice Meek had brought her nephew in to have the vicar pray for him to be healed, and I’m imagining some little kid, and I’m thinking, Oh God, this is terrible, that’s all she needs. Then Mum turns up with this big jerk with the inhaler who keeps leering at me and accidentally rubbing his leg against mine under the table. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so… not funny.’

‘So what exactly is she doing?’

‘If she’s got any sense, Irene, she’s explaining to him that she’s unfortunately become the focus for a load of superstitious bollocks put about by old women with nothing better to occupy their minds. And then maybe suggest to this guy — Dexter, for heaven’s sake — that they say a quick prayer together but don’t expect to be throwing his inhaler into the river just yet.’

Eirion thought about this. He was Welsh; a large number of them still took religion seriously. ‘But she’s a priest,’ he said.

‘Er… yes.’

‘Don’t you see? She has to acknowledge at least the possibility of miracles. She has to accept that God can do it, and that she could be a channel for it. She can’t just walk away from it if anybody thinks there’s a small chance. You know?’

Jane sighed. ‘It’s a fine line.’

‘It’s not that fine, Jane.’

‘The big joke…’ Jane stared at the Mondrian walls — big plaster squares in the timber framing that she’d painted in primary colours. ‘The big joke is that women think getting ordained was some huge coup for their sex. The fact is, it’s the crappiest job there is, and it’s getting worse all the time, as society gets more and more secular and cynical. It’s obvious that the ordination of women was actually a subtle conspiracy by the male clergy, desperately searching for fall guys as everything around them collapses into some like… pre-Armageddon bleakness.’

‘I thought you were over that.’ Eirion stood up and walked to the window. It had started snowing: not much, but it always looked worse from up here, especially at dusk, white on grey.

‘I have the occasional relapse,’ Jane said.

Eirion sighed. ‘So, do you want to know how to work this video camera, or what?’

Maybe Merrily should have realized that something was spinning out of control. Maybe, if she hadn’t been thinking about Dexter Harris, she would have been curious about the extra cars on the village square. She didn’t even notice them.

It was becoming unexpectedly cold — she was aware of that. She saw snowflakes