Remains of an Altar

‘Minor exorcism, mainly – Requiem Eucharist for the unquiet dead, variations on that. Never had to stop a small child abusing herself with a crucifix, never been sprayed with green bile. Although, naturally, I live in hope.’

You got this all the time. A recent survey had shown that more people in Britain believed in ghosts than in God. Whereas parish priests still tended to believe in some kind of God but often had a problem with ghosts. Even more of a problem with exorcism, last refuge of anachronistic misfits in the desperately modern C of E.

Spicer didn’t smile. Behind him, on the Rayburn, the kettle hissed.

‘So what qualifies for a minor exorcism?’

‘Usually, an unhappy atmosphere that doesn’t respond to concentrated prayer. Would you like me to lend you a book? That’d take care of the consultant bit.’

‘I think I need the personal service.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘I’m just … not sure, frankly, about where you…’

Merrily sighed. That other familiar barbed hurdle.

‘My spiritual director is a bloke called Huw Owen. Runs deliverance training courses in the Brecon Beacons?’

‘Yeah, I know the area.’

His small, passive eyes said, too well. Curious.

‘At the end of the course he gave me the regulation warning. Told me ordained women were becoming the prime target for every psychotic grinder of the satanic mills who ever sacrificed a chicken. Therefore a woman exorcist might as well paint a big bull’s-eye between her … on her chest.’

‘Maybe you saw it as a bit of a challenge.’ Spicer, decently, didn’t look at Merrily’s chest. ‘A chance to carry women’s ministry into a dark and forbidden area.’

‘Well, no, the point I’m making … I’m not a militant feminist, I’m not a post-feminist, I’m not pioneer material and I’m not—’

‘Honestly.’ He held up his hands. ‘I don’t have a problem with women priests. Nor even women deliverance consultants. In principle.’

‘So the problem is?’

The kettle came whistling to the boil.

‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘taking it seriously, as you’re bound to do – being comparatively new to the job and with the side issue of the women’s ministry still having something to prove – it occurs to me you might not be up for what could be a PR exercise.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘I mean if I, as Rector of Wychehill, were to ask you, as official diocesan exorcist, to perform a public ceremony of, shall we say, spiritual cleansing, whatever you wanna call it, simply to make the community feel happier – take some pressure off?’

‘Off whom?’ Merrily reached down to her shoulder bag: cigarettes.

‘Off me, for a start.’ Spicer poured boiling water into a deep brown teapot. ‘See, these people who say they had an accident because they swerved to avoid a spectral figure on the Queen’s Highway … I’m having difficulty with it. They’re decent people, but…’

‘That’s OK.’ Merrily brought out the Silk Cut and the dented Zippo. ‘Really.’

To a stranger, the road was the least ghostly aspect of Upper Wychehill. It glided down the valley in a long, slow slope, with the wooded hills hunched behind it like a giant’s shoulders. As many of its dwellings were invisible, it had been hard to make out where the village began and where it ended.

The reason why many of the homes were invisible was that they were on different levels, with rows of houses above and below the road. The ones above were set back into the hill and the ones falling away below it, all you could see of them as you drove past were hedges, walls and gates. They seemed to be mainly bungalows with colonial verandas or flagged patios with sundials and statuary, barbecues and big views across Herefordshire.

The few grey buildings at road level were weighted by the church, this immense neo-Gothic barn, probably late-Victorian, screened by two substantial oak trees either side of the entrance. Further down, built of the same stone, with a dramatic view of the Beacon, was the rectory. A big family house with a home-made swing in the front garden. From what Merrily understood from Sophie, the Spicer kids had been long past the swing stage. But it still looked starkly symbolic of loss, with its peeling frame and one side of the wooden seat fallen off its chain.

When they were inside, she’d asked Spicer, without thinking, if he had help in the house.

‘What? A cleaner? A housekeeper?’ He’d laughed. ‘Do you?’

Point taken. No private income.

‘I get occasional offers,’ he’d said. ‘We’ve got several nice ladies in Upper Wychehill. The Ladies of Wychehill? That sound like a book? Listen. First rule for the solo priest. Don’t give anybody room for gossip. My wife left just over three months ago. Since then, I’ve done all my own cleaning, cooking, gardening, painting, the lot, plus keeping three parishes on the go. Which makes for a long day.’

He’d looked at her, his soft-toy’s eyes unmoving.

‘But a mercifully short night.’

Outside the bay window, the still-shadowed long back lawn was tidily mown and trimmed but had no flowers. It ended where a bank of fir trees lifted the land into the hills.

‘I can give you a list of people to talk to, so you can make up your own mind.’ Syd Spicer crossed to the Rayburn. ‘You want some toast? Or I can do full English. I’m fairly capable.’

‘I can see that. Tea’ll be fine, thanks.’

He brought two white mugs to the table, and then sugar and milk.

‘Point is, Mrs Watkins, country areas—’

‘Merrily, do you think?’

‘Yeah, OK. Country areas, Merrily, are superstitious, just like they’ve always been – you know this. Where are you based, North Herefordshire?’

‘Ledwardine. ’Bout an hour from here.’

He nodded. ‘Only nowadays the superstition comes from a different direction. The locals might be less credulous than their grandparents were, but your city-bred incomers always include the kind of people who’re living in the sticks because they want to get back to a primitive belief system. They’re the ones who organize the wassailing and stuff at Christmas, dangle charms off their porches.’

‘Everything except go to church,’ Merrily said. ‘But if you have an accident black spot, they’ll be the first to suggest the area might be haunted?’

Spicer shook his head sadly.

‘I’ve got three parishes and the others are a healthy mix of locals and new blood. In Upper Wychehill, a real local person is somebody who’s been here twenty-five years. It didn’t really exist until the 1920s, when the church was built – gesture of apology by the owner of one of the quarry firms mutilating the Malverns.’

‘He must have been very sorry.’

‘Yeah, big, innit? Especially in the middle of a few farms and not much else, as it was then. The bloke saw it as a concert hall as well, however – strictly religious, of course. Same time, he had this house built for the minister, and a sum of money donated to the Church, to pay him – long exhausted, of course but, by then, more housing had gone up and it was a legit parish.’

‘So, what you’re saying, it’s not—’

‘Not a real village, no. Just a mess of mixed-up dwellings either side of a road with no pavement. So people never walk about and they rarely meet each other. Some are weekend cottages. Bloke died in one last year, wasn’t found for three weeks. That’s the way it is. No village shop, no cosy pub. Just a church that was always too big and people who move here for the views.’

Spicer had taken a folded piece of notepaper out of his cassock. He opened it out and placed it on the table in front of Merrily.

Dear Rector,

I am sorry to bother you, and I never thought I would write a letter like this, but I am worried sick about my daughter who as you know is a district nurse and has to go out at all hours in her car. I am terrified that something will happen to her on that road. These stories are hard to credit, but something is wrong here. I do not get to church as often as I would like since I have become disabled but I beg of you to take whatever measures are