Midwinter of the Spirit (11 page)

‘Hmm?’

‘Her father – a dream? Or an invention?’

‘Well, good God, man,’ Dick threw up his arms, ‘what the hell
else
could it have been?’

9

Clerical Chic

D
RIVING HOME
, M
ERRILY
hardly noticed the countryside: the shambling black and white farms and cottages, the emptied orchards. Over it all, as though bevelled in the windscreen glass, hovered the unchanging, weathered face of the archaic monument that was Canon T. H. B. Dobbs.

That silent confrontation in the Cathedral had erased time. She could no longer remember praying in Bishop Stanbury’s beautiful chantry – only the stumbling in and the creeping out. The interim was like an alcoholic haze.

But she had her answer.

Didn’t she just?

In the late afternoon the wind had died, leaving the sky lumpy and congealed like a cold, fried breakfast. Beneath it the historic village of Ledwardine looked sapped and brittle, the black and white buildings lifeless, as indeed several now were. Nothing remained, for instance, of Cassidy’s Country Kitchen except a sign and some peeling apple-transfers on the dark glass; and five
For Sale
signs had sprouted between Church Street and Old Barn Lane.

The village looked like it needed care and love and a shot of something – an injection of spirit. Of God, perhaps? Introduced by a conscientious, caring priest without selfish ambitions she wasn’t equipped to fulfil?

Confess: you were stimulated. You’d had a meaningful brush with the paranormal and you wanted to know more. In fact – admit it – it was you that Huw Owen was addressing when he said prospective Deliverance ministers should analyse their motives, consider if they needed evidence of life after death to sustain their faith, proof of the existence of supernatural evil to convince them of a power for good
.

Huw had been full of foreboding. Jane had been dismissive. Only Mick Hunter was enthusiastic, and Mick Hunter was a politician.

And now God had arbitrated, signalling – in the silence of Canon T. H. B. Dobbs – His unequivocal negative.

Of course, that could have been pure coincidence – if we’re being rational about this
.

But the compulsion to rush into the Cathedral, the waiting chantry, Dobbs being right there when she emerged? She’d wanted a sign, she’d received a sign. End of story. Later this evening she would phone the Bishop and tell him what wasn’t, after all, going to happen.

Mature trees seemed to push the old vicarage back from the village centre. Beneath them was parked a lurid luminous-green Fiesta.

Which had to be something to do with Jane. If it was a boyfriend, Merrily only hoped he was under twenty.

Because of the size of the house, Jane had taken over the entire top floor, formerly attics, as her private apartment, and had finally re-emulsioned her sitting-room/study as the Dutch painter Mondrian might have envisaged it – the squares and rectangles between the timbers in different primary colours. If the Inspector of Listed Buildings ever turned up, the kid was on her own.

She wasn’t on her own up there now, though, was she? Merrily edged the Volvo around the little car and parked in the driveway. Although she talked a lot about ‘totty’, Jane’s relations with boys had been curiously restrained. You waited with a certain trepidation for The Big One, because the kid didn’t do things by halves, and the first stirring of real love would probably send her virginity spinning straight out of the window.

So Merrily was half-relieved when she opened the front door to find Jane in the hall with a girl in the same school uniform.

An older girl, though not as vividly sophisticated as Jane’s last – ill-fated – friend, Colette Cassidy. This one was ethereal, with long, red, soft-spun hair which floated behind her as she gazed around.

‘Oh, hi. I was just going to show Rowenna the apartment.’ Jane gestured vaguely at Merrily. ‘That’s the Reverend Mum.’

The girl came over and actually shook hands.

Jane sat down on the stairs. ‘Rowenna’s dad’s with the SAS.’

‘With the Army,’ Rowenna said discreetly. ‘This is a really amazing house, Mrs Watkins. Wonderfully atmospheric. You can feel its memories kind of vibrating in the oak beams. I was just saying to Jane, if I lived here I think I’d just keep going round hugging beams and things. Our place is really new and boring, with fitted cupboards and wardrobes and things.’

‘I bet it’s a lot easier to heat and keep clean, though,’ Merrily said ruefully. ‘You live locally, Rowenna?’

‘Well, you know, up towards Credenhill, where the base is.’ Rowenna wrinkled her nose. ‘I wish we
were
down here. It’s on a completely different plane. The past is real here. You feel you could just slip into it.’

‘Right,’ Merrily said. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘Yes.’ Rowenna didn’t blink. ‘Most of the time, yes.’

Merrily thought it was a sad indictment of society when young people wanted not so much to change the world as to change it
back
– to some golden age which almost certainly never was.

‘Oh, hey, listen to this!’ Jane sprang up. ‘Rowenna’s dad goes running – right? – with Mick Hunter.’

‘Well, not exactly.’ Rowenna looked a bit uncomfortable. ‘The Bishop has this arrangement to go along with the guys on some of their routine cross-country runs. It’s kind of irregular, apparently. I’m not really supposed to talk about it.’

God
, thought Merrily,
he’d just have to go training with the SAS, wouldn’t he
?

‘Isn’t that just so cool?’ Jane drawled cynically.

Merrily smiled.

‘She’s not what I expected at all.’ Rowenna went to sit on Jane’s old sofa, staring up at the Mondrian walls. ‘Most of the women priests you see around look kind of bedraggled. But with that suit and the black stockings and everything, she makes the dogcollar seem like… I don’t know, a fashion accessory.’

‘Clerical chic,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t tell her, for God’s sake. She only stopped wearing that awful ankle-length cassock because this guy was turned on by all those buttons to undo.’

‘Which guy?’

‘Her former organist, creepy little git.’

‘No special person in her life?’

‘Only the Big Guy with the long beard – and the Bishop.’

Rowenna shot her a look.

‘Hey, just professionally,’ said Jane, ‘I
hope
. Sure, the first time I saw him, I thought, wow, yeah, this is the goods. But then I couldn’t believe I’d been that shallow. Besides, he’s got a wife and kids.’

‘Whatever that counts for these days.’

‘Yeah, he’d probably quite like to get his leg over Mum. If you can keep it inside the priesthood, it probably saves a lot of hassle. I just hope she’s more sensible. You want a coffee?’

‘No thanks, I have to be off in a minute.’ Rowenna stood up and moved across to Jane’s bookcase. ‘You’ve got it all here, haven’t you? Personal transformation, past-life regression, communicating with Nature spirits…’

‘Yeah, I’m a sad New Age weirdo. Don’t spread it around.’

‘It’s not weird to be interested in what’s going to happen to us. Do you do anything like, you know, meditation or anything like that?’

‘I’ve thought about it after… when I once had a couple of odd things happen to me.’

Rowenna sat down again. ‘Go on.’

‘It was probably just imagination. I mean, you can make something out of everything, can’t you? Like, Mum, she reckons she sometimes gets these images of blue and gold when she’s saying her prayers, and so she connects it with God because that’s like the container she’s in. But it could be anything, couldn’t it?’

‘So what happened to you?’

‘I don’t talk about it much. I reckon if you try to analyse this stuff it just evaporates.’

‘Not around me, kitten.’

‘OK, well, I just feel this intense connection to some places. Like you were talking about hugging beams, I feel I want to hug hills and fields and—Hey, this is really, really stupid. It’s just hyper-imagination.’

‘Oh, Jane! Don’t stop
now
.’

‘Sorry. OK, well, like time passes and you’re not aware of it. It’s like you’re here but you’re
not
here, and then you’re here again – some kind of shift in reality. Maybe it happens to everybody but most people disregard it. There was an old woman in the village I used to be able to talk to about this stuff, but she’s dead now.’

‘I think there’s another side to all of us we need to discover,’ Rowenna said. ‘Especially us… I mean our generation. We’re growing up into this awesome millennial situation where all the old stuff’s breaking down… like political divisions and organized religion. That’s not knocking your mum or anything.’

‘It’s OK,’ Jane said. ‘She knows it’s all coming to pieces. She got these quite sizeable congregations at first on account of being a woman, but the novelty’s wearing off already. When the Church is just surviving on gimmicks you know it’s the slippery slope. Go on.’

‘All I was saying is that we shouldn’t pass up on the opportunity to expand our consciousness wherever possible.’

‘I’ll go along with that. What sort of stuff have you done?’

‘Oh, I’ve just kind of messed around the edges.’ Rowenna flicked the pages of a paperback about interpreting dreams. ‘Like, when we were in Salisbury I had this friend whose sister did tarot readings, and she showed me two layouts. I was doing it at school for a few weeks. It was really incredible how accurate it was. Then I did this reading for a girl who was getting to be quite a good friend, and it came out really horrible and she got meningitis soon afterwards and nearly died, and she never came back to school – which kind of spooked me.’

Jane shrugged. ‘That doesn’t mean it was the cards gave her meningitis. Can you still remember how? Would you be able to do a reading for me?’

‘Mmm… don’t think so. Rather not.’

‘Wimp.’

‘Maybe. Tell you what, though, I saw this poster down the health-food shop, right? There’s a psychic fair on in Leominster next weekend.’

‘Cool. What is it?’

‘You’ve never been to one? There are loads about.’

‘Rowenna, my mother’s a vicar. I lead this dead sheltered life.’

Rowenna smiled. ‘Well, actually I’ve just been to one and it was seriously tacky and full of freaky old dames in gypsy clobber, but good fun if you didn’t take it too seriously. We could check it out.’

‘OK,’ Jane said. ‘I suspect I’d better not tell Mum.’

‘I suppose she wouldn’t be cool about that stuff. Alternative spirituality – subversive.’

‘Actually, she’s pretty liberal. Well, to a point. Things could be just a tiny bit dicey at the moment, though. So I wouldn’t want to, you know…’

Jane thought about the soul police. Then she looked at Rowenna and saw that this was someone intelligent and worldly and kind of unfettered. Someone she could actually share stuff with.

‘I mean, I guess Mum feels that any kind of spirituality is better than none at all,’ Jane grinned, ‘which I suppose is how I feel about the Church of England.’

That night, Merrily and Jane made sandwiches and ate them in front of a repeat of an early episode of
King of the Hill
. And then Jane said she’d go to her apartment and have a read and an early night. So Merrily returned, as she usually did, to the kitchen.

She always felt more in control in the kitchen. It was a bit vast, but they’d had lots of cupboards put in, and installed a couple of squashy easychairs and some muted lighting. Recently, she’d converted the adjacent scullery into an office. She supposed this was
her
apartment.

Which meant that, with just the two of them, huge areas of the vicarage remained unused. Stupid and wasteful. No wonder the Church was selling off so many of its old properties, and installing vicars in modest estate-houses.

At least Merrily was no longer so intimidated by all those closed bedroom doors, which had played their own sinister role in the paranormal
fluctuations
that might – if she’d then heard of him – have sent her to consult Canon Dobbs. It had been quiet up there for several months now. A day or two ago she’d caught herself thinking she would almost welcome
its
return: a chance to study an
imprint
at close hand.

But, then, probably not. Not now.

It was ten fifteen. The Bishop had given her his private number, with instructions to call anytime, but she never had. This was probably too late.

Don’t be a wimp
.

Merrily went through to the scullery, switched on the desk lamp. The answering machine had an unblinking red light; for once, nobody had called. On the desk sat the Apple Mac she’d bought secondhand. God knows what was being installed in the Deliverance Office. If she didn’t stop it now.

She pulled down the cordless phone and stabbed out the number very quickly. It rang only twice before Mick Hunter came on. The late-night DJ voice.

‘Hi. Val and Mick are unavailable at the moment. Please leave a message after the tone. God bless.’

Merrily hesitated for a second before she cut the line. She’d do this properly tomorrow: call his office and make an appointment. She was aware that when you came face to face with Mick Hunter, your doubts and reservations tended to be tidal-waved by his personality, but that wasn’t going to happen this time.

She thought of calling Huw Owen at his stark stone rectory in the Brecon Beacons. But to say what?

Realizing, then, that the only reason she would be calling Huw at this time of night was some tenuous hope that he’d changed his mind about the suitability of women priests for trench warfare.

Unhappy with herself, she switched out the lights, and went up to bed, Ethel the black cat padding softly behind her.

The bedside phone bleeped her awake.

‘Reverend Watkins?’

‘Yes.’ Merrily struggled to sit up.

‘Oh… I’m sorry to disturb you. It was your husband I wanted. Is he there?’

‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’ Merrily squinted at the luminous clock, clawing for the light switch over the bed, but not finding it.