The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

clustered like moths around the fake gas-lamps on the square. As soon as she slid into church, wearing Jane’s old duffel coat over jeans, her black cashmere sweater and her smallest pectoral cross, she made sure that the heating was on full — checking that Uncle Ted hadn’t crept in and turned it down.

He hadn’t, for once, but she still felt a need to do more and lugged the little cast-iron Calor-gas stove out of the vestry, wheeling it to the bottom of the chancel steps. It wouldn’t make much difference, temperature-wise, but a glimpse of real, orange flames kind of warmed the soul.

She felt domestic about the church tonight, wanting to turn the House of God into a big kitchen.

How she felt about Dexter Harris — that was different. The fact that he was so charmless and unresponsive somehow made it more important to try and help him. The fact that he didn’t want to be helped made it complicated: if there was something in his past that had caused or advanced the asthma, did she have any right, let alone responsibility, to try and find out about it?

Responsibility: where did it begin and where did it end?

Sitting alone in the choir stalls, she cleared Dexter from her mind, closed her eyes and became aware of her breathing, allowing it to regulate itself. A short meditation had become an essential preliminary to the Sunday- evening session. When she sat down here, twenty minutes before the start, she would usually have no real idea at all what form it would be taking. But when she stood up again, that no longer mattered.

It was the sounds of movement that brought her out of it. Too much movement. She knew her church; she knew her congregations and the sounds of them, familiar coughs and whispers.

When she came back into the body of the church, standing next to the faintly hissing gas stove, it was like she was in some other parish, staring out at faces she didn’t recognize: a woman with a baby, two teenage girls. And in the aisles, two wheelchairs, one occupied by a boy of about eleven and the other by a woman in her fifties with a tartan rug over her knees.

There was a shuffling quiet in the church, everybody looking at Merrily, in her black sweater and her jeans, and she felt small, bewildered, desperate.

Fraudulent.

It was snowing so hard that Eirion had to leave. Jane had been hoping he wouldn’t notice until it was too late, so he’d have to spend the night, but he’d borrowed his stepmother’s car again, needed to get it back to Abergavenny.

Jane stood at the front door, cuddling Ethel the cat and watching through the bare trees as he drove away, red lights reflected in the half-inch of unsullied snow on Church Street. Much of what he’d told her about the camera she was sure she hadn’t really taken in, but she’d made notes. She ought to practise with the gear before she went back to Stanner. In normal circumstances she could ask Mum to help, perhaps record an interview with her, with the external mike plugged in. Except that, because of the nature of what she might be shooting up at Stanner, it wasn’t wise even to mention it.

Christianity was a minefield. You could talk about spirituality but not spiritualism, open yourself to spiritual healing but never spirit healing. If she told Mum about the White Company, she’d be letting herself in for one of those long, serious talks, ending with the usual warnings: Well, it’s up to you, you’re intelligent and old enough to make up your own mind about what you get involved in, but…

The rest unsaid, the word ‘betrayal’ never passing between them.

The phone was ringing. Normally, she’d let the machine grab it, but she felt like talking to somebody. She stepped back inside and shut the front door, putting Ethel down and dashing through the kitchen into the scullery to snatch up the receiver.

‘Ledwardine Vicarage.’

‘Mrs Watkins?’ Female voice.

‘No, she’s in church. Can I help?’

‘Oh… no… It’s all right, I’ll call back.’

‘Can I give her a message?’

‘No, it’s all right, really.’

The caller hung up, just as Jane recognized the voice. Was sure she’d recognized the voice.

She dialled 1471.

‘You were called at seven-fourteen today. The caller withheld—’

Jane hung up. Two chairs were pulled away from the desk, as if Mum and Dexter had left in a hurry. Jane sat down in one.

Talk about betrayal…

Danny tried to listen to some music, but The Foo Fighters made his headache worse. It was the first time this had happened; normally, the heavier the music the more it relaxed him. In the end he watched telly with Greta, listening to Heartbeat with his eyes shut, identifying the sixties numbers on the soundtrack until he fell asleep.

And Greta woke him again, with the cordless phone.

‘No,’ Danny mumbled. ‘Please, God.’

‘Gwilym Bufton, it is. I told him you wasn’t well, but he said you’d want to hear this.’

‘Gwilym?’ Danny struggled to a sitting position. First time he’d had a call from the feed dealer since he’d given up livestock, which Gwilym saw as an act of treachery.

‘’Ow’re you, boy?’

‘Half dead.’

‘That’s good. Looks like we’re in for some snow, ennit?’

‘Sure t’ be.’

‘Not a problem for you n’more. In fact, it’ll be contract work with the council, you and Gomer. Got your plough fitted?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Good business, Gomer’s.’

Danny waited, his head throbbing. Bloody trouble with Border folk, took for ever to get to the point. For ever later, Gwilym gets there.

‘What you been doing to Sebbie, then?’

‘What have I been doing—?’

‘You and the Berrows boy.’

‘What’s he saying we done?’

‘En’t said a thing. Havin’ a go at him, though, wasn’t you? Not a happy man in the pub afterwards.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

‘Just wonderin’ what else you might’ve yeard.’

‘Like?’ This needed care; Sebbie was a valued client of Gwilym’s.

‘Worried man, Danny.’

‘Din’t look worried to me.’

‘Well, he don’t, do he? All bluff and bluster. You remember Zelda? Zelda Morgan, from the Min of Ag, as was?’

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘Sebbie been giving Zelda one for quite a while,’ Gwilym said. ‘Her lives in hope, poor cow. Distant relative of my good lady, see.’

‘I’d make it even more distant, her becomes Mrs Dacre.’

Gwilym laughed, just a bit. ‘He don’t sleep much.’

‘Zelda’s complainin’?’

‘Zelda’s bothered, Danny. Wakes in the night, there’s Sebbie, bollock-naked at the window. Shaking. Shaking like with the cold. And it is cold in Sebbie’s bedroom, but it never bothers him as a rule.’

‘Mabbe not as much as the price of heating-oil.’

As well as feed, Gwilym was the agent for an oil depot in Hereford.

‘So he’s going — this is Sebbie — he’s going — “Look, look…” Drags Zelda out of