To Dream of the Dead (28 page)

‘Who do we have here, then?’ Lol wondered. ‘Hawking?’

‘You really see a very seriously disabled man as the Antichrist?’

‘I don’t.
They
might. Black humour’s a key tool of the prince of darkness. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. What about Dawkins?’

‘Doesn’t have the charisma.’

The Antichrist will create marvels, but will insist that
they are not of supernatural origin.

‘Got him,’ Lol said. ‘It’s that Derren Brown.’

‘You’re bloody well enjoying this, aren’t you?’

‘It’s interesting watching you getting all embarrassed by your own—’

‘This is not
my
—’ Merrily caught his smile on its way out. ‘Sod.’ Lowered her head wearily to an arm, looking up at him sideways. ‘Lol, what are we doing?’

‘We’re uncovering the motivational psychology of Shirley West. It’s worth knowing. Ah . . .’

The New Labour government, elected in Britain
in 1997, was largely a product of spin and the
manipulation of the media. Nobody seemed
even to be aware of its policies, responding only
to its apparently clean and youthful image,
its demolition of the reputation of the existing
government and its promise that ‘things can only
get better’. In the same way, the Antichrist has his
own spin doctors, men and women skilled in
the craft of communication, lending their services
to Satan in the same way that the journalist
Campbell made his available to New Labour.
In line with the Endtime prophesies, these men
are already amongst us, one of them the author of a
book which sneers openly at God. Doubters may
care to count the number of letters in each of his
names.
MATHEW ELLIOT STOOKE.

Merrily sat up slowly.

In this context, it is pertinent to ask why he chose
to drop the second T from Matthew, if not to embrace
his destiny.

Lol said, ‘It
is
a bit curious, isn’t it?’

‘It’s
crap
.’

Merrily abruptly killed the images on the laptop. Stood up and walked over to the window overlooking the garden and the churchyard wall, the rain slanted by a rising wind. She felt twisted up inside. Behind her, Lol’s chair scraped on the flags.

‘Merrily, it’s only a—’

‘I wonder if he knows about this.’

‘Of course he knows,’ Lol said gently. ‘There must be five pages
of links to this garbage on Google alone. He’s had threats, hasn’t he? That’s why he’s here.’

‘And I wonder if
she
knows.’

‘Shirley?’

‘If she knows he’s here. Or at least suspects he might be somewhere in the vicinity.’

‘Why would she?’ Lol’s hands on her shoulders. ‘We don’t
know
there’s a link between the website and Shirley’s church. And she’d hardly think that because you bought his book . . .’

‘If I hadn’t bought it, Amanda Rubens wouldn’t’ve reordered so fast. Extra copies? The same day? Which she puts at the front of the window?’

‘Maybe she thought you were going to slag off Stooke in a sermon, thus generating a few extra sales.’

‘Whatever, I wish I’d left it alone. And I wish I’d . . .’ Merrily stared out over the wall at the dulled sandstone of the church ‘. . . never met him.’

‘Oh Christ . . .’ Lol backed off. ‘You
didn’t
. . .’

‘Frannie Bliss said much the same as you. Leave well alone. Stooke eats vicars for breakfast.’

‘So naturally you had to rise to the challenge.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Or maybe it was. She turned away from the church and the rain. Everything seemed to be out of control. Everything was futile. Stooke was looming larger in the great scheme of things than he ought to have done. And Bliss saying,
All the picturesque villages in all the world and he has to pick yours
.

‘No coincidence,’ Lol said. ‘Wherever he ended up, there was always going to be a vicar.’

‘Anyway, we had a talk. Me being careful not to suggest I knew who he was.’

‘Wouldn’t the very fact of you turning up at his house convey that impression?’

‘I didn’t. Or rather I did, but he wasn’t in, and in the end I ran into him in Coleman’s Meadow. Checking out the dig. And got chatting, as you do.’

‘Not me.’

‘Yeah, well, in my profession, you can’t
afford
to be a recluse. And he was curious about what I did. I mean deliverance. Or rather he
knew about it and he wanted to know more, and if I’d shown any reluctance, it would’ve looked . . .’

‘No, it wouldn’t. It’s the Bishop’s secret service. You keep saying that, and you don’t like giving talks to the WI, so why should you feel obliged to talk about it to a guy you just met in a field?’

‘It was how I felt at the time, because he wasn’t . . . what I expected. You read his book, you sense this colossal self-righteous rage. I mean, why, for God’s sake? Guy writes an angry book, we think he spends his life smashing things and beating up his wife?’

‘Nice person, then,’ Lol said.

‘Relaxed, balanced . . . almost charming. Don’t look at me like that, I’m being objective. With hindsight.’

‘You liked him.’

‘I . . . yeah, I probably did. It was an odd situation. I knew who he was, he didn’t
know
I knew, but he knew what I did. And then afterwards it’s all turned full circle and I’m annoyed with myself, I’m thinking, you idiot, he’s probably writing his follow-up to
The Hole in the Sky
. Am I going to be in it now, or what? The loopy exorcist with the pagan daughter?’

‘Bit of a comedown from the Dalai Lama.’

‘Oh God . . .’ Merrily started to laugh. ‘I
could
, on the other hand, be going just a little crazy, but it . . .’

Somewhere beyond the scullery a door banged.

‘. . . It all
fits
, doesn’t it? I was expecting anger, I got mildness. I was expecting monstrous ego, I got . . . almost self-deprecating. If I was Shirley West . . .’

‘Don’t even imagine what that would be like.’

‘No, listen. The atheist is an angry man, but Satan’s spin doctor is a charmer, who puts you at your ease, allays your susp—What’s the
matter
with that door?’

Banging again in the wind. It sounded like the side door to the yard, by the back stairs. Like something coming in and slamming it behind . . . Oh God,
never
log on to a born-again Christian website.

‘Excuse me a minute.’

Merrily went through into the low passage leading to the back stairs, where she caught the side door about to slam again in the wind. It hadn’t been closed properly. But then it shouldn’t have
been open, rarely was these days since Jane had stopped regarding it as the private entrance to her apartment.

Odd.

She shut it firmly, locked it at the catch and stood there for a moment, listening.

‘Jane?’

No reply. Back in the scullery the phone was ringing. She heard Lol going through, picking up.

‘No, I’m sorry, she’s not here at the moment. Could I—? Oh . . .’

Merrily went quietly up the narrow back stairs to the main landing. No sound up here but the rain. The glass in the window at the top of the main stairs was in freeflow. She went up the second, narrower, stairs to the attic apartment.

Its door was ajar. She stopped outside, thought she could hear a faint snuffling.

‘Jane, is that . . .?’

Hesitated for just a moment before going in and seeing – heart-lurch – Jane lying face down on the bed. Fully dressed, with a damp pillow bent around her head.

‘L
OL,’
E
IRION SAID.
‘Wow. Amazing.’

Standing in the entrance to the vicarage drive, bags either side of him on the wet gravel. His red and white baseball sweater looked too big. He’d lost weight. Less stocky, less archetypal-Welsh.

‘Bad down there?’ Lol said.

‘The Valleys – terrible,’ Eirion said. ‘It’s like somebody’s trying to turn them into reservoirs. I was thinking if I didn’t come today I might not get here at all. Tried to call Jane about six times. What’s the point of having a mobile if you keep it switched off? So I thought I’d better ring Mrs Watkins, make sure it was all right.’

Eirion looked around in the damp air. Lol sensed his nerves about meeting Jane again, more than three months since their lives had divided.

The light was still on in the attic. Not knowing any better, Lol had told Eirion on the phone that Jane was still out at Coleman’s Meadow, but they were expecting her back any minute. Putting the phone down just as Merrily had come briefly downstairs. Jane was up there. Jane had been badly upset. They needed some time.

‘So,’ Eirion said. ‘How are you, man? You’re looking well. Bit tired, maybe.’

‘Late nights.’

‘You’re working on something?’

‘And time’s running out.’ Lol picked up one of Eirion’s bags. Maybe take him in the parlour, get him something to drink. ‘Actually—’

‘So how did it
go
, Lol? I couldn’t believe it when Jane told me. When’s it on?’

‘When’s what—? Oh, yeah, sorry. New Year’s Eve.’

‘What they need to do is erect a big flat-screen TV . . .’ Eirion looked back towards the square and all the bulging, crooked black and whites leaning over it. ‘Over there. By the Christmas tree.’

‘Eirion, it’s
one song
. Might even get cut.’

‘No way.’ Eirion rubbed his hands. ‘Strange, it is, coming back here. I’ve dreamt about it, Lol. Couple of times recently. One of those places that come up in dreams. Perhaps because it never changes.’

‘No.’

‘Anyway, I’m glad I’ve seen you first. Got presents in the car. Nothing much, but I was wondering, would it be OK if I left them at your place?’

Lol looked back at the vicarage. The light in the attic had gone out. ‘No problem at all,’ he said. ‘In fact, why don’t we do that now?’

In the scullery, the rarely used third bar of the electric fire was glowing neon-red and making these little zinging noises, like open nerves. Merrily lit a cigarette and carried her tea to the window overlooking the dank Decembered garden.

‘Have you ever thought of leaving here?’ Jane said.

‘Not really. Well . . . once or twice. Have you?’

Surely not. Surely never in a million years.

Jane, sitting on the old sofa, expressionless, made no reply. Not since Lucy . . .

No, that wasn’t the same. When Lucy was killed, Jane had lost control, pulling her hair and screaming abuse at God, even Merrily failing to realise at the time how big a death this was. But Jane had been a kid then and Merrily a nervous, novice parish priest, and their relationship was on a permanent cliff-edge.

‘I . . . heard Bill Blore on the radio at lunchtime,’ Merrily said. ‘They’d been asking him about Clement Ayling’s murder.’

Jane said nothing. She’d insisted on washing her face before she came down. Washing it over and over, with cold water.

‘It struck me that he might’ve had to delay your interview. Or even call it off?’

She’d been thinking that Lol might be the one to reach Jane. Lol with his sixth sense for humiliation and despair. But when she’d slipped downstairs, Lol had whispered that Eirion was on his way, a day early because of the floods. Everything happened at once in this
house. She hadn’t told Jane who, when the front-door bell rang, had still been on the edge of the bed, body language screaming, Leave me alone, like
for ever
.

‘He didn’t want to talk about it,’ Jane said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Blore. Wanted to get on with his excavation. Naturally,
they
– the media – didn’t want to talk about anything else.’

‘And that put him in a bad mood? I was thinking maybe he’d kept putting you off and you were hanging around the site getting cold and wet and nothing happening.’

‘If only.’

‘Flower . . .’ Merrily on her knees by the sofa, picking up Jane’s left hand. ‘Just because Blore didn’t want to talk to you today . . .’ Watching the nails of Jane’s right hand sinking into the cushion. ‘There’ll be another opportunity. He clearly needs you for his programme, if he’s going to—’

Merrily held Jane’s hand firmly in both of hers. No, of course. It was worse than that, wasn’t it?

‘You don’t understand.’ Jane’s hand was gripping Merrily’s fiercely, tears pooling. ‘You weren’t listening. I’ve been stupid.
Unbelievably
stupid.’

Eirion had the Takamine on his knee. He’d worked out some chords to Sufjan Stevens’s ‘Chicago’. He seemed to have improved a lot. He looked around at the whitewashed walls, the orange paint that Jane had insisted should be applied between the beams in the ceiling.

‘You’ve got this place fantastic, Lol. Is that your mother?’ Nodding at the picture over the inglenook.

‘It’s Lucy Devenish,’ Lol said. ‘The only known photograph. For which she seems to have been determined not to pose. Hence the blur.’

‘Ah.
That
’s her, is it? That blur over the face makes her look a bit . . . unearthly.’

‘Mostly, she was very earthly. I always hear her saying . . . after Alison had left and before I met Merrily, when I was really low and a bit deranged, she said . . .’ Lol did the voice ‘“
You really are a sick, twisted little person, aren’t you, Laurence?
” Never dressed things up.’

Eirion laughed.

‘Then she gave me Thomas Traherne to read to straighten me out. “
Have to learn to open up, Laurence. Go into the village on your own and go in smiling. That’s what Traherne did. Discovered felicity
.”’

‘Did it work?’

‘Eventually.’ Lol opened a couple of bottles of Westons cider. ‘That and a few other things. Always presuming I
am
straightened out.’

‘This was her place, wasn’t it?’

‘Still is. Lucy’s house, my mortgage.’

‘Jane talks to her,’ Eirion said. ‘At her grave. Is that healthy, do you think?’