The Fabric of Sin

she could get away with it. ‘If you’d rather not make a thing out of it …’

‘Not this church,’ Fuchsia said.

She’d insisted on changing first, into something white.

The old-fashioned way. All due ceremony.

Merrily went back across the field, through the clearing mist, to the car and brought the blue case out of the boot. Inside it were the holy water and oil for anointing. Borrowed from Roman Catholicism but it was sometimes helpful. Partly theatre.

She waited in the field, with Felix.

‘Those books on the shelf near the stove — are they yours or Fuchsia’s?’

‘I don’t read much nowadays. Half a page and I fall asleep. If they en’t technical books, they en’t mine.’

‘I meant the ghost stories.’

‘Oh. Aye, she likes the old ghost stories. Sometime she’ll read one aloud and it scares the pants off me, but she just giggles. Finds them comforting, mabbe. The old houses, the formality, the stiff way people talk. Stilted. Sometimes she says she was born out of time. Wrong place, wrong time.’

‘Where was she born?’

‘She didn’t tell you?’

‘She said Cardiganshire.’

‘Well, that …’ Felix half smiled. ‘That’s more or less right. You heard of Tepee City?’

‘Blimey, is it still there?’

‘I reckon. Likely the longest-surviving alternative community in Britain by now. I was there about a year, as a young feller. Gap year, as you might say. Nice folks, in the main. Had to pull your weight, mind, or you wouldn’t be welcome for too long.’

‘So you were a tepee dweller.’

‘Bender, in my case. You know — the ole bent-over sapling kind of thing?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Only there a year, like I say, but I never regretted it. When you eventually graduate to building and rebuilding proper houses, if the first ones you ever put together was benders you’ve probably got your priorities right — make it warm, watertight and use natural insulation.’

‘Fuchsia said you, erm …’

‘Cut her cord? Aye, she likes to tell people that.’

‘Is it true?’

‘It is, actually.’ Felix squeezed his prickly jaw. ‘Childbirth in the valley, it could be like a communal event. I just happened to be nearest the scissors. Afterwards, Mary asked me to be her … godfather, kind of thing. Though we never went to church, just down the wood. Where we lit a fire, asked the gods to bless the child … bit pagan, sorry about that, but they did, kind of … you know, they included Jesus.’

Merrily smiled faintly.

‘Then we played some music, smoked some weed, and I held the child for a bit and made some vows in the smoke.’

‘So you and Fuchsia’s mother — I’m sorry for asking personal questions but it helps to know a few basics …’

‘No,’ Felix said. ‘Me and Mary, that never really happened. I wanted it to, at the time, I en’t denying that. She was beautiful. Thin. Fragile. Didn’t have much to say. Needed looking after. When she turned up at Tepee City, she was already pregnant. Said the father’d buggered off to America to go on the road in a pick-up truck. I suppose I got closer to her than anybody, but not as close as I’d’ve liked, you know? She stayed a few months, and then she … she just left.’

‘With the baby?’

‘No, she left the baby in the Valley. With another family.’

‘Just like that?’

‘More or less. Rachel, the woman who took Fuchsia, she was this earth-mother type, done it before. I mean, it was that kind of place. Fuchsia was a child of the tribe, kind of thing. We thought Mary was gonner come back — she said she’d been offered a job, good money and she’d be back for the kid. The social services tried to find her, got nowhere. So it ended up with Rachel adopting Fuchsia, or fostering her, whatever. And I kept in touch, kind of thing. Helped out. Sent money.’

‘You left when it was clear that Fuchsia’s mother wasn’t going to come back?’

‘No, no, what happened, my ole feller died suddenly, I had to sort things out. He had a builder’s yard, my dad. I sold it after a bit, went to work for a firm of conservation builders. Learning the trade, kind of thing. Then went on my own, built up a business. Got married, got divorced. Then Fuchsia showed up.’

‘What, just appeared?’

‘We’d put her through art college, see.’

‘You had?’

‘Had the money by then, Mrs Watkins. Why not? I mean, I never meant for this … for us to be like, you know, how it’s turned out. She just arrived one day, and she was interested in what I was doing, the conservation work, and she hadn’t got a job …’

‘She went to work for you, before there was any … relationship?’

‘That was how it started, aye.’ Felix wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. ‘I call her my plasterer — what she does really is mouldings, recreates original colours, experiments with limewashes. She just loves the feel of plaster.’

‘I see.’

‘Look, Mrs Watkins, I’m under no illusions about how long it’s gonner last, but we’re rebuilding that—’ Felix nodded towards the barn. ‘It was a ruin, and I’m determined to make it into a proper home for her. Like an ancestral home, kind of thing, for the ancestry she’ll never have. She reads all these stories about folks living in country houses, and if I can give her that, things might be … good. For a while.’

‘You never heard from her mother again?’

‘Not a word.’

‘You’d never tried to find her?’

‘Didn’t know where to start. No idea where she was from. She had a bit of a Brummie accent, I remember, and she was mixed race — one of them must’ve been black. Fuchsia reckons she’s dead.’

‘Why does she think that?’

‘Just a feeling. There’s this kind of tribal mysticism in Tepee City, and she had a period of building fires in a clearing in the wood and looking for Mary in the smoke. Now she just mopes around ole churches and reads ghost stories. I was hoping, when the barn was finished, it’d be some kind of stability.’

Merrily looked at him, saying nothing. There was a sadness here. A longing, but also a realistic suspicion that it wasn’t going to work out.

‘If you can take away the fear,’ Felix said. ‘If you could just do that … you know?’

‘You think it’s more than just this place — the Master House.’

‘Look, I don’t know. I believe something happened to her in that place, I just don’t know if it’s … in her mind. I don’t know, Mrs Watkins. I accept that these things go on.’

‘What I mean is, you have a feeling for houses, but nothing seems to have … I mean for you …’

‘It didn’t have anything to say to me, good or bad. What I usually do, if a place is blocking me, is I’ll spend a night inside, in a sleeping bag. You wake up in a house, you can somehow get a proper feel of it. I might’ve got round to that, but … she didn’t want me to. Look, I know what you’re thinking, but … it’s just a job. Just money.’

‘Right. Erm … why’s it called the Master House, do you know?’

‘Not really. Bloke I spoke to said it goes back to the Templars who built Garway church. They had masters and grand masters, apparently. It could be old enough, I found fourteenth-century bits, maybe older.’

‘Did you ask anybody if it was supposed to be haunted? Anybody locally?’

‘A woman we talked to said it wouldn’t be a surprise. Said it hadn’t been a happy house.’