‘Beverley, you’re—’
‘Goes through periods when he hardly looks at me. Hardly seems to know I’m there. We even have separate bedrooms when there are no guests. Oh certainly, if it helps you get a better night’s sleep, Bevvie …’
Beverley looked away, out of the window. Almost dark now.
‘Other times – phases – he becomes almost frighteningly demanding. Rough. Animal. Well, I was quite flattered at first. This gentle, diffident clergyman. As if it was me bringing something out. I’ve never been very … you know. Men found me passably attractive, but not …’
A wind was rising, leaves blown against the glass.
‘And then, you see … at some point …’ Beverley swallowed too much coffee, choked, slapped her chest hard. ‘Don’t know how it took me so long to notice. Me with my genteel, suburban … At some point, after we’d been here a while, it became obvious that at … at those times … it wasn’t anything to do with me. Wasn’t me at all. Sometimes, I’d see his eyes above me in the moonlight. His wild, enchanting blue eyes. Wide open. And somewhere else.’
Merrily looked into Beverley’s eyes and saw loneliness.
Thinking back to Beverley begging her not to involve Teddy in whatever she was planning for the Master House. Not taking it in as well as she might have, self-pity taking over instead.
She’d been ill that night, and desperately tired. Missing the whole point. It wasn’t Teddy who was overstressed, vulnerable …
His workload was becoming ridiculous, poor man. Four large parishes in Gloucestershire, and the phone never seemed to stop ringing.
Didn’t tally with the man she’d first met in the shadow of Garway Church who’d said he’d never been a particularly pastoral sort of chap. You could get away with a lot in the Church, ignore things. Especially if you were a man. Men were seldom doormats.
‘Beverley … when you said he was playing you like a fish …’
‘Seems all too clear to me now. Although I don’t want to believe it. The implications of it are more disturbing than I can bear to think about for long. I lie in my bedroom and I stare at the ceiling, and I think, you’re wrong … you have to be wrong. It’s all too … elaborate. Machiavellian.’
The final straw … a wave of absolutely awful 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 …
Merrily had begun warming her hands on her coffee cup, the implications forming like a numbness on her skin.
57
The Turning
HALF A MILE or so out of Garway village, Jane slowed right down: roadside cottage lights up ahead, a row of them curtained by a tingly kind of mist. This place was called The Turning, Mrs Morningwood said. She was winding down her window, annoyed.
‘Rather thought it would still be fully light when we arrived, but you’re a more careful driver than I expected, Jane.’
‘A lot of people have accidents in their first year on the road.’ Jane held the Volvo on the footbrake at The Turning, flattening the clutch. ‘You still want me to go down here, or what?’
‘Don’t think I said anything about going down here, did I?’
‘Well, seeing you nicked the key to the Master House from the rack at home, I just thought …’ Jane turned to her. ‘Like, was it something I said? About the green man or the Baphomet behind the inglenook? You have an idea what that’s about?’
‘I would have liked to see it,’ Mrs Morningwood admitted. ‘I’m not too sure about going now, though.’
‘Would you go if I wasn’t with you?’
‘Possibly. However … Look, Jane, don’t hang around, there’s a vehicle behind you. Keep going.’
‘Right. OK.’
Jane thought, Sod it, turned left into the downhill lane that led to the church, Mrs Morningwood sighing down her nose and mumbling something about thanking God she’d never had a child.
‘You want me to pull in by the church, so we can can follow the footpaths, like we did on—?’
‘No, that would take for ever. There’s a track a few hundred yards further on that leads to within a stone’s throw of the place. Broken white gateposts. Bit rough, but you should be all right, if you go carefully. You have a torch anywhere?’
‘It’s behind the seat at the back. Ah!’
‘Jane, for—!’
A rabbit had appeared up ahead in the dipped headlights, Jane slamming the brakes on, Roscoe falling into the well between the seats, and there was a tortured scream. Not Roscoe, not the rabbit … this was somebody’s brakes right behind them.
The Volvo stalled.
Oh no. It had to happen, didn’t it? This was where the guy in whatever vehicle had nearly rear-ended them would come leaping down, total road-rage situation, bawling her out.
‘It’s all right.’ Mrs Morningwood looking over a shoulder. ‘He hasn’t hit us. And he isn’t getting out. Just carry on.’
Jane turned the key and the engine coughed and …
‘Oh sh—’
… Died.
‘Try again.’
Mrs Morningwood still looking over her shoulder and her voice was lower and toneless, like with tension, like she was controlling something.
‘What’s wrong?’
No sound from the vehicle behind. Looked like a Land Rover. No blasts on the horn, just its headlights on full beam so you couldn’t look in the rear-view mirror and keep your sight.
‘Try again.’
The engine fired. Jane went carefully into first gear, let out the clutch, crawled away, looking for the entrance to the track.
‘Keep driving, Jane.’
‘I thought you said—’
‘Go! Keep on. I’ll direct you.’
‘But the track—’
‘Forget the bloody track.’
‘OK … whatever.’
Jane speeded up, put the headlights on full beam, the hedge springing up all white like a mesh of tangled bones.
‘OK, what’s the matter?’
‘Carry on to the bottom,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Then go right.’
‘Is there something wrong?’
When they reached the bottom of the road there were no headlights in the mirror.
‘Was that somebody you know?’
‘We’ll go to my house,’ Mrs Morningwood said.
It was like there was a ritual maze all around Garway Hill, marked out in lanes worn into the landscape over centuries. The rule was: high hedges low ground, low hedges or barbed wire meant that you were climbing. But it was impossible to tell one way or the other at nightfall in the mist. How many years did you have to live here before you knew where the hell you were?
‘Left,’ Mrs Morningwood said.
‘Here?’
‘This, Jane, is where I live.’
‘We just did a complete circuit? I thought we’d be halfway to Monmouth by now.’
‘Stop here. Anywhere.’
The mist had thinned quite a bit. Jane saw a row of low houses without lights. They looked unnatural, all the windows black.
When they got out of the Volvo, Mrs Morningwood put up a hand and laughed.
‘Wind from the White Rocks.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Blown a tunnel through the mist.’
That made sense?
Mrs Morningwood went to the front door but didn’t open it, just shook the handle.
‘Now we’ll go round the back.’