‘When it’s quiet, Merrily. When there’s nobody to say I don’t belong.’
‘Why would you think you don’t belong?’ Merrily said. ‘Nobody has to sign anything.’
‘I’m neither one place nor the other. That’s how I feel.’
‘I see.’
Everything had turned around. This was no longer just about an empty house with a presence. Now there was a human dimension, complicating matters in a way the Duchy of Cornwall wouldn’t have anticipated.
… There are a few advisers I can call on, if necessary. But that’s usually when there are people involved who might have problems – psychological … psychiatric?
Like an apparently intelligent woman with the manner of a small child – repeatedly clutching your name like a mother’s hand in a bewildering department store.
‘I’ve thought of joining the Catholic Church, Merrily, but they haven’t got the old churches any more, and I like the old churches. Especially St Cosmas and St Damien. It’s open all the time. I can go in at night … at dawn, whenever.’
‘And what do you do there?’
‘Just sit there. It’s a place of healing.’
‘How long have you felt you needed healing?’
‘Oh, it’s not for me. It’s for my mother.’
‘You … won’t remember your mother.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘But you were only a baby, when she …’
‘I’m sure I do remember her. Part of her’s in me, isn’t it?’
‘Have you … ever tried to find her? Maybe the internet?’
‘I did once. There was another Mary Linden. It just got confusing.’
‘Would you like me to … include your mother in the prayers?’
‘It’s too late, Merrily.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I just want you to make my aura strong, please,’ Fuchsia said.
The mist was low and white among the pines around the little sandstone church. There might have been a proper village here once but it barely qualified as a hamlet now. A couple of dwellings sat fairly close, one of them a farm.
The church of St Cosmas and St Damien had a squat body and a timbered bell-tower, and its churchyard was raised like a cake stand. Supported by the Churches Restoration Trust, it apparently held just one service a year.
Felix left the truck at the side of the track and locked it. With the sun muffled like a coin in a handkerchief, Merrily, uncloaked and chilly, opened the gate into the churchyard.
‘Perhaps we should tell someone we’re here.’
‘Nobody ever disturbs me.’ Fuchsia handed her the bag. ‘They probably take one look at me and think I’m a mad person.’
Shouldering the bag strap, Merrily saw Felix wince.
‘Look,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll stay outside, yeah? Explain to anybody who shows up.’
‘You sure?’
His look confirmed it. Merrily nodded, and Fuchsia drifted ahead of her, like a ghost in the mist, around the church to the arcaded wooden porch.
Is this safe? After several recent cases of exorcism turning up the jets under something combustible, you were forced to ask.
But this wasn’t an exorcism; Fuchsia knew enough not to be asking for it. She’d wanted a blessing which was exactly what Merrily, under the circumstances, would have been offering, so no problem. Really, no—
‘Fuchsia, before we go in …’
Fuchsia stopped just inside the porch, the mist hanging in shining strings from the Gothic points of its deep and glassless windows. Merrily caught her up.
‘I want to get this right. Is it your feeling you might have brought something with you, out of the house at Garway?’
Fuchsia stood for a while, moistening her lips with her tongue.
‘Something found me.’
‘Something which … knew you already, do you think?’
Fuchsia said nothing. Her eyes gave nothing away.
Merrily said, ‘When you talked about evil and also a feeling of death …’
The owl eyes didn’t blink or flicker, the skin around them softly lucent.
‘And about something moving … under the dust-sheets?’
‘You mean, was I talking about something subliminal?’ Fuchsia said.
‘Something under the surface of my own mind? Are you asking if I’m mentally ill, Merrily?’
Merrily found a smile from somewhere.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not asking that. Let’s go in.’
She remembered its intimacy, emphasised by the central pulpit, the two chancels like cattle pens. She remembered the harmonium and the discreet domestic medieval tomb of John and Agnes de la Bere, praying effigies modestly separated by John’s shield.
Found herself picturing stone images of herself and Lol with his Boswell guitar between them.
‘Candles.’ Fuchsia held up a brown paper bag she’d found inside the pulpit. ‘They’re still here.’
‘Yours?’
‘Three left. And a stub. Sometimes I light them on one of the altars.’
‘You have a preference?’
‘The left-hand one. Because it’s furthest from the door.’
‘All right. Shall we make it just the one candle?’
‘Oh – I haven’t brought matches.’
‘I’ve got a lighter.’
They didn’t use the candlesticks provided, instead placing the candle stub in a tin tray, and Merrily lit it, praying within herself for assistance. They sat side by side, facing the altar from benches just inside the rood screen, Fuchsia in white, Merrily black-cassocked. It was less cold than she’d expected.
‘You OK, Fuchsia?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You know what I’m asking?’
‘There’s nothing here now. There never is, in here. It’s a holy site. A healing place.’
Merrily nodded, stood up.
‘Shall I kneel down, Merrily? Before the altar?’
‘OK.’
It didn’t take long. Hands-on, very gentle.
‘Father, I ask you now to cleanse and make new all things within the heart and soul of Fuchsia. To restore her to new life and a new relationship with you. To … make her welcome.’
The lids were down over the owl-eyes. Wings of white light opening up in the window over the altar.
There was a small rustling from behind them, in the left-hand nave. Churches were full of small sounds. Merrily didn’t look towards it, but was suddenly thinking of dust sheets wriggling and rippling like something malevolent under the skin, and it—
It needed more. Something – a vibration in the solar-plexus – telling her that.
She left Fuchsia kneeling there, the white dress tucked under her knees, the shawl hanging loose over her shoulders, keeping her in view as she moved quickly back to the bench and her bag, feeling for the smoothness of glass and bringing out the most Roman Catholic item in there.
The oil. Olive oil, extra-virgin, blessed by the Bishop, in a brown screw-top vial.
Fuchsia’s forehead shone. Merrily bent and, with a forefinger, inscribed on it a cross, in oil.
‘And if you could open your hands …’
On the left palm, another cross.
‘Oil of wholeness and healing …’
And then the right, Fuchsia drawing a slow breath, eyelids fluttering.
‘Watch over her, in the name of all the angels and saints in heaven. Keep guard over her soul day and night.’
All very solemn and slightly surreal. Merrily shivering slightly as Fuchsia’s eyes opened and she was looking back through the chancel screen towards the harmonium and the doorway.
‘Who is this?’ Fuchsia whispered. ‘Who is this who’s coming?’
And laughed as lightly as her harsh child’s voice could manage.