The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (49 page)

Ethel strolled over the open book, sat down on the lamp-base and began to wash her paws – Ethel who used to be Lol’s cat, back when he was living in Ledwardine. Who was now the official vicarage cat, while Lol was still just an occasional visitor, trying to help out.

‘Something must be done,’ Lol said to the cat.

Read what? Something from the Bible? The full text of the Roman Catholic Rite of Exorcism?

The detail suggesting an actual local character. But no names, no dates.

The time is nearly up.

Lol leaned back. ‘How nearly is nearly, Ethel?’ A thousand years would take the story back pre-Norman Conquest. And yet Black Vaughan was said to have been mortally wounded at the Battle of Banbury, during the Wars of the Roses, in 1469. And furthermore, according to Mrs Leather:

But a devil? And when did the Hound fade into the picture? No suggestions of a big black dog accompanying Black Vaughan’s ghost, pre-exorcism.

Lol flipped to the second index sticker.

Said by whom? Lol went through to the kitchen, overlaid with Aga-throb, and into the passage to the narrow back stairs, ducking his head for the low oak beam at the bottom, although he was short enough, just, to walk underneath it. He felt uncomfortable here without Merrily. He didn’t belong, and the vicarage knew it. He switched on the upstairs lights and went up to the first landing: crooked walls patched with old doors.

One of them to Merrily’s bedroom.
Sleep there if I’m not back
. Kissing him in front of Gomer, which had been reassuring. But he’d still come creeping up by the back stairs, because he wasn’t worthy, and the vicarage knew.

‘Only, time’s nearly up,’ Jeremy Berrows said.

His face was haloed by the fire, like a monk’s face in an illuminated manuscript. Like a martyr’s face.

Time nearly up
. Merrily wondered where she’d heard that phrase recently.

Jeremy let out a deep sigh, as though a decision had been made for him.

‘Farm’s on a lease, see.’

‘This farm? I thought you owned it.’

‘Folk do.’ Jeremy fingered his throat. ‘Me too, when my dad was alive.’

He’d started to talk to her, in a half-apologetic way, as though ashamed at the ungraciousness of his early responses. Danny had rescued him from himself, therefore Danny was owed, and Danny had brought in this woman to help. Perhaps a concession was needed.

And so Jeremy had conceded that the time was nearly up.

The lease was nearly up? Was his suicide attempt linked to a fear – a fear he’d felt unable to share, even with his best friend – that he was about to lose his beloved home? Farmers had hanged themselves for far less.

Merrily glanced at the Welsh dresser, with its mugs and picture plates and a gilt-framed, faded photo of two children, a boy and a girl, both fair-haired, like brother and sister. It looked as if little or nothing had altered in here in thirty or forty years. What would Jeremy do when
goin’ quietly on
was no longer an option?

‘I... heard that Mr Dacre might have been putting it around that he... has some rights to The Nant.’

Jeremy shook his head just far enough for it to hurt.

‘No?’

‘Always reckoned it
should
be his, on account of he owns the rest of the valley.’

‘It’s said he’s been behaving in a threatening way. Hiring men with guns, Gomer says.’

‘He’s scared.’

‘What’s he scared of?’

‘He’s scared of what they took on. His family. What was give to ’em.’

‘The Chancerys? Your family were tenants of the Chancerys, right?’

He nodded, and then – evidently relieved that he could at least do this without pain, that it didn’t hurt to be positive – he nodded again. Merrily wondered if Gomer and Danny were following this from the other side of the closed door.

‘What did the Chancerys think had been given to them?’

Jeremy looked at her, like,
Do I have to go into this?

She thought she knew, anyway: a tradition, roots. Gomer had told her how the Chancerys had sought to buy into the Welsh Border heritage. Not the most stable foundation on which to build a new dynasty.

Jeremy said, ‘Don’t suppose you seen Nat’lie?’

‘We came straight from Ledwardine. I haven’t been up to Stanner yet.’

‘Her won’t be there.’

‘Where will she be?’

He didn’t answer. He looked down at his knees, between which Flag had wedged his head. Jeremy placed his hands either side of the sheepdog’s head, as if in benediction. Merrily let the silence hang for maybe half a minute before trying to catch his gaze and failing and then feeling her way back into the mystery of Natalie Craven.

‘People talk. People like to gossip when somebody new turns up.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘They’re only curious. They don’t realize what damage it can cause when things get twisted around.’

‘No.’ Jeremy lifted his hands and placed a palm either side of his face, as if to stop his head from shaking.

‘And if your friends don’t know the truth either, they can’t help you. They can’t put a stop to it.’

‘No.’

‘Who exactly is she, Jeremy?’

Jeremy shifted to grip the dog’s fur. The silence from the other side of the door was like a balloon blown up to bursting point.

‘Her’s my landlord,’ Jeremy said.

The door handle rattled slightly as if somebody had just let go of it.

‘
She
owns The Nant? Natalie?’

He nodded. ‘Her name’s not Nat’lie... din’t use to be.’

‘So that would make her...’

‘Paula’s daughter. Brigid. Paula inherited The Nant from her mother.’

‘Hattie.’

Jeremy nodded.

‘So, is Paula dead now?’

‘Aye. Long time.’

‘So Natalie came back to... claim her inheritance?’

‘And mabbe find out some... things.’

Merrily thought of what Gomer and Jane had both said about Jeremy and Natalie: such an ill-matched couple. Perhaps they weren’t a couple at all. Was one of them a kind of... lodger?

‘Paula...’ Jeremy looked at Merrily. ‘... Not many folks know this, but Paula was sick, see. Her growed up sick. In the head. When Hattie and Robert died, her was still young, eight or nine, and Margery was only three. Things wasn’t too good between the kids, so Hattie’s uncle who come down to sort things out, he decided it was best if—’

‘How do you mean, things weren’t good?’

‘Oh. Well, they reckoned Paula was always jealous of Margery and when they... Well, there was a bit of an incident when... I think Paula tried to drown her in the bath one time – they was only little.’

‘God.’

‘Well, see, Robert had a sister up north, and they took her in. They had to sell Stanner on account of the debts, so Paula got the only house left, which was The Nant, as was rented then to my ole man. Paula had the rent. In trust. But Paula... her wasn’t right. Got took into homes, early on. They figured her wasn’t safe. Set fire to the house once.’

‘Oh.’ This did not sound good.

‘Margery, the Dacres adopted her, and she got left a couple hundred acres of land and some money, and her growed up and married the Dacre boy, Richard. Keepin’ it all in the family, kind of thing.’

‘These things happened...’

‘And they had Sebbie ten year before Paula was even married, even though Paula was five years older. Met a feller in hospital. Male nurse. Paula was real good-lookin’, he... fell in love, I s’pose. ’Ventually, he convinces the authorities to let her out. Short stretches at first, and he looked after her, and there was no problems. Then Paula was discharged and they got wed. Her’d be well into her thirties by then. But her... wasn’t right, see. Should never’ve been let out, they reckoned.’

‘She had a baby...’

‘Then... died. Brigid growed up with her dad. They’d come yere on holiday, on the quiet – never wanted nobody to know about Paula, how she’d turned out. One stage, see, they offered to sell The Nant to my ole man, but he didn’t have the money, nowhere near. So they negotiated another lease, for twenty-five years. So like, both sides agreed it be better if they let it get round they’d sold us the farm. Keep Richard and Sebbie off dad’s back.’

‘But now, you think Sebbie perhaps... knows the truth?’

Jeremy looked at Merrily at last. ‘It’s possible. Deal was done at the time through Big Weale, the solicitor, in Kington. And when he... when he died, sudden, leavin’ his whole business in a big tangle, this other firm come in to sort it all out. ’Course, Sebbie’s a magistrate, knows all the lawyers for miles around. Things gets mislaid. Documents. Can’t always trust lawyers, can you?’

‘And the lease...’

‘Lease is nearly up.’

‘Dacre thinks he has a chance of getting you out and buying The Nant?’

‘Can’t say what he thinks. Dacre’s in a funny state. Things he done lately en’t been that rational.’

This from a man who’d just tried to hang himself. But Merrily’s understanding of that was hardening up in the light of what she was learning about Jeremy’s weakening grip on everything he held dear.

‘So the future...’ She didn’t know how to put it.

‘No.’ Jeremy shook his head so hard that Merrily winced. ‘It en’t about
that
.’ The agony of it made his eyes water and come out like marbles. ‘En’t about money, nor ground. I love The Nant, course I do, every square inch of it, only...’

Merrily looked up at him. Her knees were starting to ache.

‘When we was kids, see – twelve, thirteen – her come to stay with her dad. They had a posh caravan. Me and her, we like... we got fond. Wrote to each other for years. All them years, I’m dreaming mabbe... mabbe her’ll come back. And praying, I s’pose. Prayed a lot, truth be told. Prayers she’d come back.’

‘And then she did come back... twenty-five years later?’

‘Aye.’

‘All that time—’

‘Things happened, see. In her life.’

Merrily reached out and took one of his hands, squeezed it gently.

‘I seen the van parked... where they used to put the caravan. I was scared. I seen Clancy at first in the lower field in the early morning – it was like seein’ Brigid, like her’d come back near enough the same as when I last seen her. I was scared... couldn’t go there. I called up Danny, and he come down. Then we seen this woman... and her hair was dark – thought it wasn’t her, after all, see. And then...’

Tears rolled down Jeremy’s face. Tears coming without any change of expression, like a crying doll’s.

Merrily thought,
But she stayed. She moved in, with her daughter. She put her daughter into a local school, got a job at the hotel, the house her family used to own
...

There were big gaps in this story. Big issues that he wasn’t telling her about. She thought about the note that Danny had shown her when she arrived, Jeremy’s prosaic farmer’s farewell.

Please deal with the sale of my stock, and see they go to the right kind of place or keep everything yourself for nothing. Natalie will understand.