The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Jane,’ she said sullenly.

‘Ah yes.’ As if he’d known that all along and was just making sure that she knew who she was. ‘Jane, have you a granny who’s passed?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

Hardy smiled his bank manager’s smile. He had a gold filling. ‘She’s definitely with you, my dear.’

‘And you’re sure she hasn’t got Alzheimer’s?’

He kept on smiling, which was unnerving. He was supposed to lose his temper with her; spiritualists had no sense of humour, everybody knew that.

‘Property,’ Alistair Hardy said. ‘She has a message for you relating to property.’ His right hand seemed to be vibrating, fingers clawed.

‘I don’t deal much in property these days.’

‘She says… tell them not to give up on the house.’

Jane shrugged. Usual banal crap.

‘She’s taller than you,’ Alistair Hardy said. ‘As tall as me. Formidable, I think would be the word. She has… rather sharp features — strong would be a better word. Not someone to trifle with, certainly. And she’s wearing… a shawl? Quite a large, thick shawl.’

‘Don’t know anyone with a shawl. Well, my mum has an old black one that she—’ Jane shut her mouth. It was like with fortune tellers: you never went along with it, never fed them information they could build on. She looked beyond Alistair Hardy into the sepia shadow-stain around the bulb that had blown.

‘It’s not quite a shawl, it’s — help me here, somebody — what do you call one of those garments that became very popular for a while back in the seventies? South American origins.’ He lifted his good arm, started to snap his fingers in the air. ‘Somebody… what’s the word? Come on, this is quite significant.’

‘Oh,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘You mean…’

The word had burst in Jane’s brain before it was uttered. She kept on staring into the blown bulb, like her consciousness was being drawn into its fog, and the broken filament inside the bulb was the size of a dead tree, her hands going numb around it. She felt insubstantial, grey and vague, barely feeling her legs give way.

‘You mean a poncho,’ Mrs Pollen said.

Over the clanking of the van, Gomer said, ‘It don’t sound right to me, boy. Sounds like he was handing you a barrow-load of ole bullshit.’

‘He was always full of it,’ Danny admitted.

‘ “Bands of brigands roaming by night”?’ Gomer and Danny were both staring through the windscreen at the lightless fields beyond Walton, sloping up to Radnor Forest. They were going to pick up young Jane Watkins at Stanner before Gomer dropped Danny off at home, else she’d think Gomer had forgotten about her.

‘That’s what he said. He d’reckon it’s the only way the farmers gonner keep the fox population under control when the Government bans huntin’ with hounds.’

‘Ah well,’ Gomer said, ‘I can understand Sebbie comin’ out with that ole wallop when he’s got the MP round his place for cocktails — put the frighteners on the politicians kind of thing. But not to the likes of we.’

‘So what was them bloody Welshies doin’ in Jeremy’s yard, then? They had his barn all staked out, Gomer, like they’d got the fox trapped up in there. All it was was Jeremy’s ole sheepdog. They’d’ve bloody shot that dog if the kiddie hadn’t run in. Shot the dog out of sheer spite, I reckon.’

‘Should’ve called in the law, boy. Let them sort it out.’

‘He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do it, Gomer.’

‘Then you oughter be asking why he wouldn’t.’

‘That was what Sebbie said. That we oughter be asking why Jeremy didn’t want the cops round. And then the bastard was asking me if I was still doin’ dope. Like as if Jeremy didn’t want no cops round for the same reason I never did.’

‘You en’t still—?’

Danny coughed. ‘Bit of home-grown. Strickly for personal use. And only a bit.’ Giving Gomer a nervous glance on account of, to Gomer’s generation, a twist of wacky baccy could put you on the down-escalator into hell and blacken the name of Gomer Parry Plant Hire for ever. ‘Pigs don’t do you for that n’more, see, long as you en’t dealin’.’ He was being a bit careful, though, since Dacre had dropped the little phrase ‘Drug Squad’. He might be full of bullshit, but he did have contacts.

Gomer drove on steadily, said nothing. Good ole boy.

‘So this woman,’ Danny said. ‘Miz Natalie Craven. Two ways of lookin’ at that, Gomer. On the one hand, blokes is like, Lucky devil, what’s he got we en’t? Whereas women’s sayin’ she’s bewitched him, the slag.’

‘And Sebbie Dacre?’ Gomer wondered. ‘What’s Sebbie think about her?’

‘Sebbie’s had his share,’ Danny said.

‘Zelda Morgan, ennit, now?’

‘Zelda, aye. Off the boil a bit, what I yeard. Zelda mabbe fig-urin’ it wasn’t worth the candle — Sebbie’s moods.’

‘Or mabbe Sebbie’s thinkin’ he can do better than Zelda,’ Gomer said. ‘Mabbe lookin’ for a woman of means, way he got fleeced by the missus in the divorce court.’

‘Have you…’ Danny hesitating, as they rattled out onto the Kington Road. ‘You yeard anythin’ about Sebbie goin’ strange, Gomer?’

‘What way?’

‘Well… the Welsh shooters. Settin’ ’em on Jeremy. Like he’s got an obsession with Jeremy, now Jeremy’s got hisself a serious woman. Anything, really.’

‘You reckon it’s to do with the woman?’

‘Dunno.’

They drove on in silence for a while, then Danny said, ‘Sometimes, it feels like everything’s filled up with some’ing, and it’s only a matter of time ’fore it bursts. I thought it was the snow — you know that feeling you get when there’s snow on the way. But it en’t just snow.’

Gomer looked at him. ‘Well, if you feel that way, think what it’s like for Jeremy Berrows…’

Nat had taken Jane down to the kitchen.

There was an old flowery-patterned sofa under one of the high windows, and they sat there and Jane drank hot, sugary tea. In the opposite corner, Clancy’s homework was spread over a card table; when it was established that Jane was OK, Clancy had gone back to it. She was working quietly, underlining things with a ruler.

‘It’s never happened to me before.’ Jane shuffled to the edge of the sofa, glaring into her cup. She felt furious now at having personally created one of those moments for Alistair Hardy. Could imagine the Harry Potter creep relaying the story to his anorak mates, or — worse — keying it into some global spiritualist chat-room: the story of the girl who was determined to slag everything off just keeling over with the shock of the proof.

‘It happens,’ Natalie said, next to her.

‘It doesn’t happen to me. I never faint.’

Natalie said nothing. She hadn’t asked the obvious question. Nobody had, not even Alistair Hardy.

‘Where are they?’

‘In the bar,’ Nat said. ‘He’s still looking for what he calls a point of contact.’

‘Where’s Amber?’

‘I don’t know. Amber’s in a state.’

‘Wishing she’d never seen this place.’

‘Something like that.’

Jane said quickly, ‘When we first moved to Ledwardine, I had a very good friend who ran a shop that was devoted to the history and folklore of the area and the poetry of Thomas Traherne.’

‘Look, you don’t have to tell me,’ Natalie said. ‘Your past, above all things, is your own. You’re not obliged —’

‘I want to. It’s going to drive me insane otherwise, and I can’t tell Mum for obvious reasons. She was called Lucy Devenish, and she was killed on the road. Knocked off her moped. She was elderly and thin, and she had a