The Smile of a Ghost

—’

‘Sit down, Andy,’ Ange said, real quiet.

34 Old Stock

When the singing stopped, Merrily was aware that the warm night and the foliage had come alive, but not with foxes or badgers or bats or rats.

Unease made her stop on the edge of the path, looking all around her. Over her shoulder the top of the church tower was visible, its weathercock spiking a cluster of mushroom-coloured night clouds. And somewhere, although the singing had stopped, she could hear voices, rushing through the undergrowth like blown leaves. When a giggle crept up behind her, she spun round. Shadows were moving among the bushes, skidding feet.

A girl’s voice squeaked, ‘No, Nez, don’t!’

What sounded like a beer can bounced off the castle wall, and somebody shouted after it, ‘Mad ole slapper!’ and Merrily became aware of a bunch of them at the side of the track, about ten yards away. She felt a glow of very basic fear. But it couldn’t be the women who had attacked Bell; these were just kids.

Just kids.

We had some awesome laughs with Robbie.

‘What do you want?’ Her voice coming out cracked and coarsened by twenty years of smoke. She started to cough, muffled it with an arm.

A kid said, ‘Whossat?’

‘Police,’ Merrily said, with determination. ‘This path is closed. Now push off, the lot of you, or you’ll be banged up for the night.’

‘Aw, get lost, you’re not the police.’

‘Then you’ll be able to pretend in the morning that you’re not having your breakfast in a cell.’ Remembering the mini-Maglite torch she’d stuffed into a pocket of her jeans before leaving the car, she started fumbling under her fleece. ‘Now, do you want to go in the van or—’

The little torch was bugger-all use for hitting anybody, but it was very bright. She flashed it at head height, found a girl in a shocking-pink top who looked about thirteen, and the girl squealed and backed off, stumbling.

A boy said, ‘You’re never protecting that mad ole slapper, are you?’

Then, ‘Oh, no!’ the girl was wailing. ‘My heel’s gone! Nez, you bloody wuss, I told you I didn’t want to come down here.’

‘I’ll carry you…’

‘Oh, get—’

‘What’s going on?’

Outrage and a yellow light, probably from one of the cottages in The Linney.

‘Shit,’ one of them whispered. ‘It’s my grandad. Sorry, OK? We’re off now. We just wanted to see if it was true, all right? We’ll leave you to it. Goodnight.’

‘Erm… yeah… Goodnight.’ Merrily smiled.

She switched off the flashlight, waited until it was quiet again and the light in The Linney had gone out. We just wanted to see if it was true. How often did this happen?

She put the torch on again, twisted the neck until there was just a thin beam, directing it at the ground, following it along the track until it found the fat bole of Marion’s yew tree. And Bell Pepper sitting under it, in silence now, with something across her knees, her elbows resting on it and her face between her hands, a small light at her feet.

‘I don’t want protection,’ she said.

‘You’ve been getting it, anyway.’ Merrily switched off the torch. ‘For a long time.’

‘Oh.’ Bell Pepper turned her head. ‘I thought I… it’s Mary, isn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry, I followed you. Didn’t like to think of you going back out there after what happened.’

‘It was very stupid of Jonathan to phone you.’

‘He was worried, too. Can we talk?’

Merrily sat down next to her, between the roots. The space under the yew’s dense canopy was lit like an earthen grotto by the candle in the lantern, and she could make out Belladonna’s once-famous patrician profile, recalling an album cover where her face had been sprayed with creamy white plaster, eyes calmly closed, like a death mask.

‘Children,’ Bell said. ‘I expect I was some kind of goddess to their parents. Now I’m a mad old slapper.’ She gazed out between the trees towards the invisible river. ‘When they’re spraying your name three feet high on walls, you never imagine that one day you’ll be…’

Normal, Merrily thought. Ordinary. It was odd — she’d always thought that Lol was the exception in his line of work because he seemed, in spite of everything, so normal. Odd how you could be taken in by the intentional mythologizing of rock musicians.

‘Maybe in ten years’ time those kids’ll think you’re a goddess, too,’ she said. ‘Tastes change rapidly in music. And then they bounce back again.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I was a fan. I came to one of your gigs once. And my boyfriend’s in the business.’

‘Business?’

‘Music. He plays. Writes songs.’

‘You poor cow. Would I have heard of him?’

‘I don’t know. Lol Robinson? OK if I smoke? Tobacco, that is. I’m feeling a bit…’

‘Go ahead. Christ, I remember Lol Robinson. Hazey Jane? They put him away, didn’t they?’

‘Psychiatric hospital.’ Merrily found the Zippo and the Silk Cut packet, crushed, in her fleece. ‘He fell into the system.’

‘OK now?’

‘He always was.’ Merrily held out the cigs to Bell. ‘You do nicotine these days?’

‘Only vice I’ve ever given up, Mary.’

Merrily lit up, inhaled and let out the smoke on the back of a sigh. It was not comfortable, sitting in the dirt at the foot of the yew.

‘But not, I assure you,’ Belladonna said, ‘because I didn’t want to die. That would be…’

‘Positively hypocritical, in your case.’

Bell laughed. ‘Am I right in thinking you and Jonathan are…?’

‘God, no.’

‘That was emphatic.’

‘I told you, I have a boyfriend.’

‘How quaint. Is he as quaint when he’s on tour?’

‘He’s so quaint that old ladies want to buy him.’

‘I see.’

‘You?’ Merrily lowered the cigarette; the smoke was making her bad eye smart.

‘Me, what?’ Bell said.

‘Jonathan?’

‘Makes you think that?’

‘I think he’s awfully interested in you.’

‘Most men are. But some are also frightened, and he, I suspect, is frightened.’

‘Jon?’

‘Just because he looks like a mad biker with a taste for rape and plunder… Actually, on reflection, most men are scared. And most women hate me. And children peer at me from behind the bushes.’

‘Except…’ Merrily snatched a shot of nicotine and went for it. ‘Except for Robbie Walsh?’

Belladonna looked at her, full face in the shivering candlelight, and Merrily saw that her mouth was slightly