Jane froze up, Thomas Bull smiling at her, and she wanted to kick his smug face in. The despicable, small-time viciousness of this village. Anyone who really knew Lol. But they didn’t want to, did they? They just watched from behind their curtains and muttered and fantasized.
She wanted to storm out there, snatch this bitch out of her pew, point out that people like her were the reason the Church was dying on its Celtic foundations, losing what was left of its real spirituality. Haul her to the door and throw her out.
‘And the smoking. It’s not nice, is it? There’s no excuse any more, all the help that’s available. It’s a sign of weakness. I’ve seen her smoking in the churchyard, with the gravedigger. It’s a public place. I could have them arrested.’
Jane let her face fall into her hands.
‘… And you do know, I suppose, that she’s supporting these people who want to reinstate a pagan temple?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Siân said. ‘A pagan temple?’
‘In the field where they were going to build a housing estate? Starter homes for our young people.’
Executive homes, you ignorant …
‘Nobody can tell me that those stones were not buried for a good reason.’
‘Oh, the stones,’ Siân said. ‘I see.’
‘You would expect our parish priest to oppose that on principle.’
No reply from Siân. She must surely have realized by now the level of insanity she was dealing with here.
‘And if it wasn’t for the daughter …’
‘Jane?’
‘The daughter – well, that explains a lot.’
‘You’ve rather left me behind here, Shirley.’
Shirley.
Shirley West. Mum had talked about this woman a few times, Jane only half-listening because this had been Mum as doormat: feeling obliged to help someone whose attentions had become kind of smothering. Just another vicar-hugger, Jane had figured. And all the time, behind Mum’s back …
‘Put it this way,’ Shirley West said. ‘How often do we see the daughter in church?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘Never!’
Jane had to hold on to the screen to prevent herself from walking out there and going, Not quite never.
‘Believe me, Canon Clarke, she’s had a terrible time with that girl. Hated the idea of her mother becoming ordained and has just … gone out of her way to make her life a misery. Impossible to control, absolutely no respect … and this is not gossip, Canon, I’ve had this from a respected public figure. This girl and that old man who digs the graves and smokes, they were very nearly arrested for vandalizing the buildingsite in Coleman’s Meadow, did you know that? She was in a kind of hysterical frenzy.’
‘Shirley, I …’ Siân paused. ‘Regrettable as all this might be, I’m afraid you’d probably find similar situations in the homes of over half the clergy in this diocese. Most teenagers go through a period of rebellion against their parents’ values. The only consolation being that if children are left to make up their own minds, without being pressurized, they will often find their own way into what we still like to think of as the fold.’
‘But is it?’
‘I’m sorry …’
‘Is it a rebellion? Because Merrily is involved with the other business, isn’t she? Ghosts and the demonic.’
‘You mean deliverance.’
‘Which is to do with the occult. I’ve been in the vicarage, Canon Clarke, I’ve seen the occult books on the shelves.’
‘Well, she’s had to study all that, Shirley. She’s had to go into areas of study that many people would find distasteful.’
‘But does she?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Does she find it distasteful? I’ve talked to people about this. I have many Christian friends all over the country. My information is that this is a job that’s always been done by men before. She was probably the first woman exorcist in the country, that’s my information. And she’s also the first that I – or any of my friends in the church – have known to introduce this so-called meditation. This opening up of a congregation to unseen presences.’
‘I don’t think you’ll find it’s that uncommon nowadays. As for deliverance being a male preserve, just a few years ago, the whole ministry—’
‘I think we have to look at all these things together – the interest in exorcism … the meditation … the pagan temple … and the near-Satanism practised by the daughter. And see what it adds up to. I think it adds up to a terrible danger.’
The silence was so absolute that Jane could hear her own breathing. Jesus, this was not a joke.
She made eye contact with Tom Bull, his bearded face openly malign. Jane thought of the green man and Baphomet, anger giving way to a kind of fear of the unknown. Fear for Mum, out there on the unknown border, Lol gigging somewhere miles away. Their little nucleus fragmented, and she was alone here, in this supposedly sacred place, this sanctuary, watching the poison dripping into the chalice.
Shirley West said, ‘I think before Merrily goes around encouraging people to open themselves up, she needs to take a good look inside her own family. Don’t you?’
And then Siân, who so far had been displaying a reasonable attitude to this insanity … Siân blew it.
‘You’d better tell me everything,’ she said.
33
Turn Over Stones
OVER DINNER – RAIN rolling down the dairy’s main window, silent as tears of old grief – Merrily asked the Murrays how much they knew about the Grays and the Gwilyms.
‘Our friends either side of the great divide,’ Teddy said.
Lifting his wineglass, as if in a toast, his silhouette a magic-lantern show on the white wall behind him in the lamplight.
‘Not that you’d know it,’ Beverley said. ‘They sound exactly the same. Not as if the Gwilyms have Welsh accents, let alone speak Welsh. Well, certainly not … Oh, I never know how to pronounce that man’s name.’
‘Sycharth, Bevvie. We’re inclined to say Sickarth, but it’s Suckarth. Yes, it’s an odd thing. If someone lives just a few yards over the border in what might seem to be a very English part of Wales they become determinedly Welsh Welsh. Perfectly affable chap, though.’
‘Not that we see much of him,’ Beverley said, ‘since his business has become more Hereford-based. Rich enough now to have a farm manager.’
‘And his family owned the Master House,’ Merrily said.
‘Since medieval times, I believe.’ Teddy nodding. ‘I can certainly tell you something about that.’
His version tied in with Mrs Morningwood’s. As a result of the sudden death of the head of the family, the house had been sold around the turn of last century. The wife, embittered at the way she’d been treated over the years, had got rid of it almost before anybody noticed.
‘Causing an awful fuss, but there was nothing the Gwilyms could do,’ Teddy said.
‘But the Master House is in England.’
‘Well, yes, Merrily, but a part of England that seems to have been more Welsh, in its time, than many parts of Wales. In religious terms, particularly. Both early Welsh Christianity and Welsh Nonconformism in the nineteenth century have their roots hereabouts. And, of course, if Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion had been successful in the fifteenth century, the border would have been redrawn, putting this whole area in Glyndwr’s new, independent Wales. You do know about Glyndwr’s connection with this area?’