‘I was thinking of going back to nursing, but that’s a thankless task nowadays. NHS hospitals are like meat-processing plants.’
Beverley switched on the dishwasher and then, mercifully, dimmed the lights. She stood looking out of a small square window towards the glowing of distant farms. Telling Merrily how she’d started going to church, helping out, spending time with the rector. Much as Merrily had when her own marriage had been coming unstitched. The difference being that it had led Merrily into a personal calling and Bev into a project called Teddy.
‘His workload was becoming ridiculous, poor man. Four large parishes in Gloucestershire, and the phone never seemed to stop ringing. And then the main church was broken into five times in two years. You get that, too, I imagine.’
‘Not so far.’
‘Then you’ve been very lucky. The final straw was a wave of absolutely awful vandalism. Well, not just vandalism – desecration. Gravestones pushed over, defaced, strange symbols chiselled into them. And one night someone broke in and actually defecated in the church, which was horrible, horrible, horrible …’
‘And a police matter, surely?’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? It’s only when it actually happens that you find out that, unless the damage is very serious or someone’s been hurt, the police really aren’t interested in the slightest. They might show up and take a statement, looking rather bored, but you never hear from them again.’
‘How long did this go on?’
‘Couple of months, intermittently. There was supposed to be a neighbourhood watch in the village, but they were only interested in protecting their own homes. Teddy would be out patrolling the churchyard himself at all hours of the night. One night, he almost caught someone and was knocked to the ground. What is happening in our society? Sometimes they’re killed. Priests killed outside their own churches!’
‘We’ve been lucky in this part of the world. So far.’
‘I suppose that’s one advantage of a place where everyone knows everyone else. But, to cut a long story short, he more or less had a breakdown. Constantly tired – you’d see his hands trembling, dropping the prayer book at service. When the graves were desecrated, some people in the parish were talking about – well, it was inevitable, I suppose …’
‘What – Satanism?’
‘That sort of thing. Whatever it was, it wasn’t pleasant. It left a nasty taste. Teddy seemed to age about ten years. I … found myself looking after him. It’s what I’m good at, I suppose.’
‘He, erm … he wasn’t married then?’
‘His wife had died some years before. Car accident. The Church was his life, if you could call it a life. And in the parish … the nerve of people. The way some of them reacted when they found out I was divorced! I mean, it was hardly a major scandal. One night, I said, for God’s sake, why don’t you pack in this stupid, stupid job, and let’s move to somewhere they don’t know us and start a guest house. I did know what I was doing, by the way – my parents were hoteliers.’
‘He got early retirement?’
‘After I threatened to go to the press. Overworked, overpressured, underpaid and under threats of violence?’
‘Literally?’
‘There were threatening phone calls. Didn’t I say? Untraceable these days, people make them from cheap mobiles. But … he got early retirement, and we wound up here. Not quite my idea of an idyll, but the people are OK, they don’t judge. “Bev and Rev”, that’s what they call us in the pub. We thought of having it on the sign outside, but that would be a little too cosy.’
‘He seems OK, now.’
‘I tease him about his walks, but it’s really done him the world of good, the four years we’ve been at Garway. Learned all the history, guides people around, leads expeditions, and able to keep his hand in with the church. Just our bloody luck that the vicar would have to leave and there’d be an unexpected hiatus before the next one takes over, and Teddy would feel obliged to stand in full-time. And that it should coincide, God help us, with this madness.’
It wasn’t clear whether she meant the Master House problem or the Templar service. Maybe both.
‘What sort of service is he going to give them?’
‘We still haven’t given up hope that someone else might take it on.’ Beverley looked at Merrily, eyes steady. ‘I don’t suppose …?’
‘Beverley, most of what I know about the Knights Templar I got from Teddy the other day. All he needs is an ordinary service with a couple of customized prayers, a sermon about the need for religious tolerance and … I dunno, “Onward Christian Soldiers”? Beverley, would it be OK if I—?’
‘Your exorcism service … someone prone to stress-related problems, that could be damaging, couldn’t it?’
‘Well, it … it’s been known. But in the vast majority of cases it—’
‘So if you do need an extra minister at your, whatever you call it, deliverance, perhaps you could call in another … exorcist or something?’
Merrily nodded wearily.
‘Sure.’
She’d end up doing it on her own in the dim, mould-smelling room, the atmosphere swollen with historic hostility, the Baphomet grinning in the inglenook.
‘Is that all right?’ Beverley said.
‘Of course. Would it be OK if went to bed. I’m feeling a bit …’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, you must be absolutely exhausted. It’s obviously been a difficult couple of days.’
‘Just a bit tiring,’ Merrily said.
As always when you were feverish, there wasn’t much sleep that night. Strange bed, a hard, fitness-freak mattress. Getting up around two a.m., feeling hot, and leaning out of the first-floor window. Cold air on bare arms, murky night obscuring distance so that the end of the cigarette, feebly glittering against the moonless sky, was like the tail light of a passing plane.
Before bed, Merrily had called Jane on the mobile. Jane said Siân Callaghan-Clarke had been very friendly, not at all what she’d imagined. They’d actually talked for a couple of hours, about Siân’s time as a barrister and Jane’s problems finding the right career plan.
‘Erm … great,’ Merrily said.
‘Hey, Mum, it’s not my fault she wasn’t being a bitch.’
‘I never said a word …’
‘That meaningful pause said it all.’
‘You remembered to feed Ethel?’
‘Like Ethel would let me forget? Mum, don’t—’ Small hiss of exasperation. ‘How’s it going there?’
How was it going? Merrily peered down the valley, into vague dustings of light. There was a prickling of fine drizzle now, on her arms. She pulled them in, stubbing out the cigarette on the stone wall under the windowsill, feeling cold now, and hollow and disoriented. No sense of where she was in relation to the top of the hill with its radio mast or the hidden valley of the church, the rum place where M. R. James believed he’d caused some offence.
This was not an easy place.
Jacques de Molay had located it, though.
In 1294, the last Grand Master of the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon had sailed from France, then ridden across southern England to visit the remote preceptory at Garway. According to Jane’s internet research, nobody appeared to know why he’d come or what he’d done here. And if there were no crazy theories on the net, last refuge of the extreme …
She shut the window, groped her shivery way back to bed. Please God, not some bloody bug.