The Fabric of Sin

Well, no. This was the nation’s last bit of official glitter, a face from commemorative investiture plaques, Royal Wedding mugs on your gran’s dresser. Merrily feeling slightly ashamed that, although she’d known it was most unlikely that the Man would be here today, she was wearing her best coat. Her mother would have agonized, changing tops, changing shoes, inspecting her hair many times in the car mirror, just in case.

‘Who is it safe to talk to, then? Who’s actually living in the house?’

‘Well … nobody. I’m trying to explain, this came from the builder. Canny fella, normally. Or so I thought till he’s ringing us up — Adam, man, I think you’re going to have to find somebody else for this one. I’m going, What?’

Eastgate walked to the darkening window, glanced out briefly, unseeing, turned and came back.

‘We’re good employers, Merrily. In some ways, the best. Never short of tenders and once they’re allocated we don’t get jobs chucked back at us. Doesn’t happen.’

Merrily nodding. They’d be a fairly significant name on a builder’s CV. But it worked both ways, Eastgate said. This builder had a rare feel for an old property. And the Master House itself …

‘See, normally, we’re not interested in anything less than about two hundred acres, and this is, what, ninety-five? But it’s a forgotten bit of old England, right down there on the very edge of Wales. Not much you find these days completely unrestored, hardly touched in over a century. We get to tease out the past. Plus, I’m thinking craft workshops in the barns, the stables, the granary … a little working community, new economic life. And green. Very green. Woodburners, rainwater tanks, sheep’s-wool insulation …’

‘Oh, he loves all that, doesn’t he?’

‘The Man? It’s his number one, and it influences us all, naturally.’ Eastgate shook his head. ‘I’m going, come on, Felix, what is this really about? You sick? Domestic problems? Adam, he says to us, maybe this is an old place that doesn’t want to be restored. His words. Hostile. That was another. One of his team had a powerful feeling they were not wanted.’

‘He pulled out of the whole project because one person thought he—?’

‘It’s a she, Merrily.’

‘Oh.’

The sun had gone, leaving a raspberry hue on the room, but you could still make out the shapes of the fields and the fuzz of hedgerows on the side of Garway Hill.

‘I’m going to leave it in your hands, all right?’ Eastgate gathered up the plans into a black cardboard folder. ‘You take these, they’re only copies. See what he’s putting in jeopardy.’

‘The bottom line being you’d like him back on the job ASAP.’

‘Only if he’s normal. Look, if you want to ask a few questions locally, go ahead. We’ve nothing to hide. Bought in good faith, and what we have in mind is going to be good for the community. I’d just say exercise a bit more discretion than usual.’

Merrily nodded.

‘My watchword, Adam.’

She had a headache.

They walked into the forecourt, deeply shadowed now. Not quite six, and everyone seemed to have gone home. Maybe Adam Eastgate had timed their meeting for the tail-end of the working day so he wouldn’t have to explain any of this to the staff.

All the leaves were still on the trees and it was still warm — too warm. A long, flooded summer and the planet in the condemned cell. At least the nights were drawing in now, the tindery musk of autumn on the air as Eastgate walked with Merrily to the old Volvo. It had been nicked last summer — in the dark, obviously — and then swiftly abandoned, presumably after they’d heard the engine.

‘So — just to get this right — what exactly will you do at the house, Merrily, to, ah …?’

‘Depends what it is.’

‘You work on your own?’

‘I … like to think not.’ She smiled wearily; he didn’t get it. ‘OK, there are a few advisers I can call on, if necessary. Usually when there are people involved who might have particular problems — psychological … psychiatric? When you’re looking at an empty … that is, a house not lived in, as such …’

Oh, the way you shaped and trimmed your glossary of terms when addressing ingrained scepticism. Adam Eastgate cleared his throat.

‘Only I didn’t think you’d be so …’

‘Small? Female?’

‘I was going to say, matter-of-fact about it.’

Meaning, like it’s real.

‘I don’t do it all the time. There’s also a parish — weddings, funerals, rows with the churchwardens.’

‘I suppose medieval was the word I was groping for.’

‘I’m medieval?’ She looked up at him through the fast-thickening air. ‘You’re working for an institution dating back, if I’ve got this right, to thirteen—?’

‘Thirty-seven. Duchy was created by Edward III, to provide an income for his son, the Prince of Wales. The king’s father having been the first to hold the title.’

‘Well … the first Englishman.’

‘And by that you mean … what, exactly, Merrily?’

‘Well, they …’ Flinching at the sharpness of Eastgate’s glance. ‘They had their own, didn’t they? The Welsh. For a long time.’

And even after the princes of Wales had become English there was Owain Glyndwr, in the fifteenth century, still trying to get it back. But maybe mentioning this would not be very tactful.

‘Not my subject, Welsh history. Thank God.’ Eastgate straightened up. ‘Anyway, you’ll keep us up to speed, I hope.’

‘Obviously tell you what I can. Without, you know … breaking any confidences that might arise.’

Not that this was likely. It didn’t seem to be any more than what Huw Owen would call a volatile or a delinquent: the wonky fuse box, the dripping tap — Deliverance-lite.

Merrily unlocked the car.

‘It’s an empty house. If anything’s happening, nobody has to live with it day-to-day. So we’re looking at … probably, prayers, a room-by-room blessing. Or, if a particular and persistent personality is identified, maybe a Requiem Eucharist involving the people most closely involved, present and — where possible — past. Nine times out of ten, this is enough to restore a kind of calm. Adam, why’s it called the Master House?’

‘If anybody was able to explain that,’ Eastgate said, ‘they didn’t want to. Maybe the main house when there were subsidiary farms. Or the local schoolmaster used to live there?’

‘Mmm.’

She had a last look at the hill, where isolated white lights had appeared, its big sisters, the Skirrid and the Sugarloaf fading, uninhabited, into the dried-blood sky.

Adam Eastgate said, ‘Ever get scared yourself, Merrily?’

‘Me?’

Merrily laughed, an unconvincing hollow sound in the stillness. An early owl picked it up, or seemed to, and flew with it as she got into the car.

2 Lament

‘Then he was back on the phone,’ Merrily told Lol in the pub. ‘Soon as I got in. Barely had time to put the kettle on.’

‘The Duchy guy?’