The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘And what if everybody don’t want the truth out?’

Merrily didn’t reply. Alice shouted, ‘We all wants the truth!’

‘Well, mabbe Darrin don’t! Mabbe the truth en’t what Darrin wants at all, look.’

Nobody spoke for a while. Chairs creaked, small movements of unrest. Then Dexter started mumbling. Lol couldn’t make out any of it. Then Alice said, raw-voiced, ‘What’s this? You never—’ And Dexter mumbled some more, and Alice said faintly, ‘No. Dear God.’

Dexter’s voice came in again, no longer gruff, raised up in panic.

‘He’s like, “Get your fuckin’ foot down, you big useless—” ’

‘Dexter!’

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘Go on. Please.’

‘I was bigger than Darrin, but he was real nasty, look. Stuck his knife in the back of my hand once. Had an airgun, shot a robin in the garden. Things people thought were nice, he’d wanner destroy. So like, when we gets into the Fiesta, there’s a kiddy’s picture book on the seat, and he picks it up and rips it in half, throws the bits out of the window. Roland, he starts crying, Darrin’s leanin’ over him and pinchin’ him, telling him we’re going to London. We en’t stopping till we gets to London, and we en’t never comin’ back. Never see his mam and dad again.’

‘Oh God in heaven, Vicar, stop him!’

‘Weren’t no stoppin’ him, Alice. More the kid’s screechin’, more he’s gettin’ off on it. Excited! Gettin’ more excited the further we goes. I’m like, “Don’t you wanner go back now? How we gonner get back if we goes too far?” Darrin’s goin’, “Keep your fuckin’ foot down, you fat wanker, we’re goin’ on the motorway, we’re goin’ to London.” ’

Alice was moaning, ‘Oh, dear God, no, oh dear God.’ Lol sensing a rhythm, as if she was rocking backwards and forwards, doubled up in anguish.

‘So Roland, he’s gettin’ real hysterical, starts pulling at the door handle, and Darrin’s goin’, “You get away from that door or I’ll give you a smacking.” So like Roland waits till Darrin turns round again and I can year him fiddling with the handle, and then Darrin whips round, sudden-like, and whangs him in the face, bang! Cops is behind us by then, look, blue lights going and that, and Roland’s sobbin’ away, and that’s when I decides I’m gonner go across the road and up this little turning, then the cops’ll be able to get us. And that… that’s how it was.’

Silence, except for creaking chairs, small sounds of unrest. Then Alice started to weep. Routine parochial issue. Lol tugged his wet wellies onto his bare feet.

Merrily said, ‘You didn’t tell the police about… any of this. Did you?’

‘How could I? But you see why Darrin en’t gonner want none of it out.’

‘Or your parents? You tell your parents anything?’

‘They know what Darrin’s like. Alice knows.’

Another silence.

Then a jagged wail.

‘Oh my God, that poor little child… his own brother…’ Like Alice’s voice was bleeding. ‘Oh my God, and then he died! He— My God, I never knew none of this.’

‘’Course you never knew,’ Dexter snapped. ‘Darrin en’t never gonner tell you, was he?’

‘Gets worse, gets worse all the time.’

‘You made me, Alice, I didn’t wanner—’

‘How’m I gonner tell my sisters?’

‘Can’t, can you?’ Dexter said flatly. ‘No way.’

A chair creaking, someone standing up, footsteps going nowhere on the kitchen flags.

Then Alice said, ‘We surely needs it now.’

‘Eh?’

‘I can’t live with this. Knowing that child’s out there.’

‘He en’t out there, Alice, he’s f— He’s gone.’

‘We needs it now, more than ever — the Holy Spirit, the holy Eucharist.’

‘No way!’

‘Like a big white bird.’

‘This is an end to it!’

‘How do we organize it, vicar? How soon can we do it?’

‘Well, you know, that’s up to—’

‘No!’ Sound of a big fist smashing into the table; Lol leapt up. ‘I don’t wannit!’ Dexter roared. ‘I don’t wannit to happen, you understand me? Why you gotter—? You’re a fuckin’ ole meddler, Alice, nobody assed you to start all this shit. I only told you to fuckin’ stop you, for fuck’s sake!’

Putting his right eye to the crack in the door, Lol saw a bulky guy with a petulant lower lip and a shaven head, standing in the middle of the kitchen. He looked marginally nearer to tears than to violence, but his fists were bunched, and he was breathing through his mouth. He unclenched a fist and started feeling in a pocket of his leather coat. Lol put a hand on the door, ready to wrench it open.

Dexter brought his hand up to his mouth. There was a vacuum gasp.

‘You’re stressin’ me out. Leave it. Fuck it! All right?’

Dexter walked out, banging the kitchen door hard enough to make pans rattle on shelves.

‘Alice,’ Merrily said, from out of Lol’s view. ‘Let him walk it off in the cold air.’

Now she was hunched in the office chair, hands limp between her knees. She looked bloodless. Lol’s white high had evaporated. It was a powerful reminder, this episode, of how vulnerable the clergy were, feeling they had to be there, for everybody, whether it was wanted or not.

Including the dead? Even the dead?

‘I don’t even know how bad he is, you see,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t know enough about asthma. What if he’s out there on the square and he can’t get his breath?’

‘Does Alice live far away?’

‘Three minutes’ walk.’

‘Not a problem, then.’

‘Let’s hope not.’ She stood up and came and sank down beside him on the rug. They sat there in front of the electric fire, with their backs to the wall, their shoulders not quite touching, and she told him about the death of the kid called Roland Hook and seventeen years of corrosive bitterness inside a family.

‘I don’t get it,’ Lol said. ‘In a way I can understand Dexter’s problem with this. Is it normal, to have some kind of belated funeral service, in the hope that it’s going to make everything all right?’

‘Jeavons,’ Merrily said.

‘The loose canon.’

‘It’s not just Jeavons. There’s a movement inside Healing and Deliverance which argues that some illness, particularly chronic illness, can be the result of something unresolved in the family’s past. Or the victim being in the grip of some aberrant ancestor.’

‘Your ancestors are haunting you and you don’t know it?’

‘It makes a certain kind of sense, but that’s the trouble, isn’t it? We’re finding hauntings where there are no actual phenomena… other than an illness, or an emotional crisis. We — the Church of England.’

‘So, by calming the spirit of this poor kid, who died in a state of terror, you can, in theory—’

‘I can’t.’

‘Sorry, forgot the protocol. By organizing this Requiem for the dead kid, you can, in theory, open the way for God to cure not only Dexter’s asthma, but also to heal the rift in his wider family?’

‘Er… yeah.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Lol said, dismayed. ‘You go along with this, you could be spending every day of the rest of your life doing complicated Eucharistic services for people laying all their problems on their ancestors. Sure, let’s all blame the dead.’

Merrily shrugged.

‘The Church of England authorizes this? And healing?’