The Fabric of Sin

I grew up. He’d packed it in, but it never goes away. It’s a calling, like they say. I believe that, Merrily. If you answer the call, you may receive gifts.’

‘It’s as well to be careful about gifts,’ Merrily said. ‘You can never be too sure who they’re from.’

Fuchsia crouched in front of the stove and opened up its vents, pale flames spurting in the glass square. On a shelf to the left of the stainless steel flue, Merrily read titles from a stack of paperbacks. The Gap in the Curtain, The Secrets of Dr Taverner, The Flint Knife, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary.

‘Where did you grow up, Fuchsia?’

‘West Wales. Cardiganshire.’ Fuchsia watched the flames. ‘I was born there.’

No Welsh accent, though. Through the caravan window, Merrily saw a man in a hat coming out of the mist.

‘Felix was there, too,’ Fuchsia said.

‘In Cardiganshire?’

‘In the place where I was born. He was there when I entered the world.’ Fuchsia smiled, her face reflected, stretched and warped, in the shiny flue. ‘Felix cut my cord, Merrily.’

Merrily blinked.

‘Which makes for a lifelong connection,’ Fuchsia said.

Something you learned as a deliverance minister: whatever ghosts were, there were people who saw them and people who wanted to see them, and they were seldom the same people.

Put it this way: if whatever had happened at Garway had happened to Felix Merrily would have been more inclined to believe it.

He was a big, untamed-looking man in a leather waistcoat. Long red-grey hair in a rubberbanded ponytail, a wide smile through a stubble like sharp sand. He’d left his wellies at the bottom of the caravan steps, and she saw that his woollen socks had been darned. How often nowadays did socks get darned?

‘Didn’t really want this, Mrs Watkins.’ He lowered himself with a sigh into the sofa opposite her; he had to be a good twenty years older than Fuchsia. ‘I just wanted off the job, and that would be an end to it, but Adam … he’s like a terrier, is Adam.’

‘He likes you. Trusts you to get it right.’

‘He should know better.’ Felix pulled out a dented cigarette tin and Rizlas. ‘All right if I …?’

‘Please do. In fact …’ Merrily reached gratefully down to her bag, bringing out the Silk Cut and the Zippo. ‘And he doesn’t want to see you lose the contract, if something can be … cleared up.’

‘I never asked for this. I want you to know that. I said to Adam, leave it. It’s just one of those things.’

‘But then he told me,’ Fuchsia said, ‘and I realized you must be meant, Merrily.’

‘Meant,’ Merrily said.

‘It’s a matter of metaphysics.’

Merrily looked at Felix, who said nothing, and back at Fuchsia whose wide-eyed gaze met hers full-on.

‘That house is diseased, you see. We need spiritual antibiotics.’

‘You know a bit about these things, then.’

‘I know that this is about good and evil, Merrily,’ Fuchsia said, ‘and I’ve experienced the evil.’

‘OK.’ Merrily lit a cigarette. ‘Do you want to tell me?’

4 Nearest the Scissors

Dust sheets?

Mostly heavy-duty plastic, Felix explained. They’d laid them on the floor where the damp and sunken stone flags had been taken up. This was after the roof had been made safe. First things first. They’d spread the dust sheets on the floor, so they could make a start on the walls.

‘Lime-plaster,’ Fuchsia said. ‘I love it.’

‘You should see her,’ Felix said. ‘She moves like a dragonfly.’

‘Not that day.’ Fuchsia moved closer to the wood stove. ‘There was no air that day. It was close and heavy outside, but still damp inside the house. My wings …’ She giggled bleakly, a sound like pills rattling in a jar. ‘My wings were drooping.’

‘It was the first time she’d been there, see,’ Felix said. ‘I have three blokes in the regular team, they’d made a start on the roof.’

Fuchsia watched the flames.

‘I was looking forward to it. It seemed a lovely area. It has two personalities, Merrily. Long, light views on the English side, and then deep green and full of drama as it swoops down to the Monnow Valley and Wales.’ She gripped her knees. ‘All spoiled now.’

Felix looked at her, worried, then he turned to Merrily.

‘So … Ledwardine, eh? You know Gomer Parry?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled. ‘Very well.’

‘Danny Thomas?’

‘Not quite as well. I didn’t meet him until he became Gomer’s partner in the plant-hire.’

‘I was in Danny’s band in the Seventies,’ Felix said. ‘Bass. Fingers always too messed up for anything more delicate than a bass guitar, and a bit clumsy at that. I think we did one gig, and I wouldn’t say folks was actually walking out the door—’

‘It was full of death,’ Fuchsia said. ‘The cold, white, waxy stillness of death.’

Merrily saw Felix grit his teeth, turning away from Fuchsia, whose elongated reflection in the stainless-steel flue was starting to look like Munch’s Scream.

‘I didn’t know whether it wanted me out or it wanted me dead, Merrily.’

‘Stop it, girl.’

Felix’s fingers gripping his knees. Merrily knelt down next to Fuchsia on the rug.

‘What made you think that something wanted you dead?’

Fuchsia shrugged.

‘I tried to work — I went out, I came back, I went out again. And then I went back. I am a professional.’ She stared defiantly at Merrily. ‘Felix went back on his own the next day, and when he came home it was like it was all over him. I made him shower and then I burned all the clothes he’d been wearing. Just out there, Merrily. I poured petrol on them.’

Merrily nodded. Very early in her deliverance career she’d been advised to do something similar, to draw a line under a particular situation. Some things it was easier not to question.

‘You said you went back.’

‘It was under the dust sheets.’

‘What was?’

‘I tried to ignore it, but all the time I could hear the dust sheets behind me, wriggling and rippling and whispering. The air was really thick and heavy and I wouldn’t let myself turn round.’

‘Felix wasn’t there?’

‘I was checking out the granary,’ Felix said. ‘Working out how many steps could be repaired. Heard her screaming, started running …’

Fuchsia was staring down at her hands, mumbling something. Merrily bent to her.

‘I’m sorry …?’

‘A face of crumpled linen,’ Felix said. ‘She’s said that a few times.’

‘That’s what you saw?’

Fuchsia nodded her head violently and bent forward as if she had awful stomach-ache, and Felix looked depairingly at Merrily, and then Fuchsia said, ‘Can we do it in the church?’

‘The blessing. Don’t see why not. But I’d need to clear it with the vicar.’

‘No. There’s no need, Merrily.’

‘Well, it’s what we usually do, but …’ At least she was on fairly good terms with the minister at Monkland;