He went back out to the square, to where he could see the body of the church through the lych-gate, the bunched shadows of people drifting through to an evening service with no hymns, psalms, lessons or sermon.
A vaporous glow from the church-door lantern. About to walk down, glancing back at the vicarage, he saw a blur of white, someone emerging from the gate, crossing the cobbles towards Church Street.
Lol made tea, and Jane seized her mug with both hands, carrying it through to the parlour with the burnt-orange ceiling, where Lol switched on the parchment-shaded desk lamp, leaving the curtains open, his initial relief burning away.
‘You mean she’s ill?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jane’s eyes glassy and anxious. ‘Maybe.’
‘Jane—’
‘We were in a hurry, Lol. We got back late. I said I’d get on the computer, try and get some background.’
‘On what? She is in the church?’
‘Yeah. She dashed straight across. Left me to put the car away and feed Ethel and stuff.’
‘So what’s wrong with her?’
‘Lol, I just … I don’t know, all right? Maybe it’s been coming on for a while. OK, it’s been a heavy year, all the death, all the things she couldn’t prevent. All the stuff that came to nothing. I don’t know.’
‘OK.’ Lol sat down in the chair facing Jane on the sofa, a chill on the room. ‘Tell me. In sequence.’
And she tried to, but most of it he couldn’t really take in. The number of the beast and the pubs with the cosmic names, the spooky woman with the dog. And the farmhouse.
‘When we came out, honest to God, Lol, she was white as … as a surplice. Like, trying to be normal – kind of, let’s not worry Jane. Which only made it worse because it was so obvious. Like I’m going to be worried? Me? The pagan?’
‘Worried about what?’
‘And then we go into this field, and I get the full blessing bit. The spiritual body-armour, at sundown on the edge of a field? Like, huh?’
‘She ever done that before?’
‘No. But then I don’t usually go with her on these jobs, do I? She said it was routine. Quite normal. Yeah, right.’
‘And she’s gone ahead with the meditation?’
‘Mmm.’ Jane nodded. ‘I mean … maybe that’ll help?’
Lol got her to tell him again – about the pubs and the dovecote and M. R. James.
‘After you came out of the house, what exactly did she say?’
‘She looked at her watch, and she’s like, “Oh my God, we’re not going to make it back in time.” But you could tell that wasn’t what was really bothering her, and if we were late why was she wasting time with all this blessing crap? Like, I’m an idiot? And all the way back she was like talking about other things – trivial things, in this brisk, practical way. Like she was trying to screen something out. Like she’d seen something in there, or realized something she didn’t want to face up to.’
‘And when you got back, was she still …?’
‘Upset, yeah. That was obvious.’ Jane drank some tea. ‘She looked totally out of it, like someone who’d been in a car crash. But when we were actually looking around the place, she was fairly dismissive, a bit annoyed, like she’d been set up. She hates that, people treating her like she’s some dim … vicar.’
Jane finished her tea, still looking starved and unhappy and maybe even resentful that some dim vicar might have picked up on an aspect of otherness that she’d missed out on.
‘Lol …’ Catching him looking at her. ‘I think I’ve changed quite a bit the past year. I’d like to think I could help her. But she’s still wary, you know?’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ Lol said.
Lol padded past the font, unseen. Not difficult at the Sunday-evening meditation, when the front pews were arranged in a circle, and the only light was candlelight, vast shadows ghosting the sandstone walls.
About two dozen people had come – about normal. When the rumours of healing had been circulating, there would have been as many as a hundred, but it had calmed down now.
‘… Idea that prayer’s as much about listening … means we have to think about what we mean by listening.’
No priestly trappings, no ceremonial. No smoke, no mirrors, no applause, no stamping for encores.
Merrily’s gig.
She was sitting on the edge of the circle in her black jeans and sweatshirt, hair tied back. Never a pulpit person.
‘Because, when you think about it, we hardly ever really do it.’
Lol sank down a couple of rows back, in deep shadow, his eyes closing momentarily in relief. Feeling her voice: low, soft, conversational, unassuming, intimate. Half-guiltily fancying the hell out of her.
‘If we’re holding a conversation with somebody, even if we think we’re taking in what they’re saying to us, what we’re actually doing is filtering it … putting it through this sieve of our own needs, desires, fears. Thinking of what we want them to be saying, and also of what we’re afraid they might really be saying. We’re processing the words, analysing, alert for any subtext. Our minds are taking an active role, in other words. We’re not listening. Does that make sense?’
Murmured assent. The people who came here on a Sunday evening were, by and large, not the ones who came to the family service in the morning. This was post-watershed.
‘OK, then,’ Merrily said. ‘Do you think we should try listening tonight? Without filtering, without questioning or intellectualising? Without any attempts at interpretation.’
Someone said, yeah, they should go for it, and Merrily moved her wooden chair a little forward, into the candlelight.
‘First, we need to go into the contemplative state, opening ourselves up. So …’ laying her hands, palms down, on her knees ‘… if we start with the relaxation exercise, beginning at the feet. Becoming aware of our feet. Curling our toes …’
The scraping of a pew.
‘Merrily … I want to ask …’
Merrily looked up.
‘Shirley.’
‘Is this in the Bible?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Does the Bible tell us we should be opening ourselves up to … messages?’
‘Well … I think you’ll find it’s all over the Bible in one way or another. But when you say messages, I’m not sure we’re talking about the same—’
‘Messages from beyond? Is that in the Bible?’
‘I could find you some examples, Shirley, but this wasn’t really intended to be a Bible-study session as much as—’
‘Only, it’s what the spiritualists do, isn’t it? Go into a trance and wait for something to come through. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you’re trying to do something different here, Merrily, to bring some of these people into the fold, but I’m an old-fashioned Christian, and I keep asking myself, is the church the right place for it?’
Merrily sighed, her breath fluttering a candle flame.
‘Shirley, I take your point, but there’s a subtle difference between spirituality and spiritualism – spiritism. What I’m— No, actually the difference is not that subtle at all, it’s something entirely—’
‘How do we know that what’s coming through is from God? That it’s not a dead person?’
Merrily’s face was tilted into the candlelight, and now Lol saw the furrows and the strain.
‘Or something evil,’ this Shirley said.
Restive murmurs from around the circle. A groan. Lol just sighed. A fundamentalist – all she needed.