‘This is the woman whose car apparently went out of control and hit a camper van.’
But, again, there was nobody in. Merrily felt that, even before Lol let the knocker fall twice against its steel plate, the clunks echoing inside the barn like footsteps in an empty ballroom. She stepped back.
‘Not my night, obviously.’
‘Maybe it’s the wrong house.’
‘So which other one couldn’t we miss?’
Lol knocked again.
‘Maybe they’re in the choir.’
‘A whole village of brilliant, classically trained singers?’
Merrily moved back towards the lane which, beyond the barn, became a dirt track.
‘It’s like someone we can’t see is laughing at us.’
Maybe Syd Spicer. Maybe the Rector of Wychehill was laughing at them. Laughing silently, lying in some ditch, covered with branches, his face streaked with dark mud, like in the old days.
He should be here, as back-up. The protocol was that the local priest came with you, the first time, didn’t just throw the addresses at you and leave you to get on with it.
Merrily went to the edge of the lane and looked down into a bucolic kaleidoscope: swirls of woodland and cider-apple orchards and maybe vineyards, around sheep fields which glowed like emerald and amber stained glass as the sun began its scenic dive into the Black Mountains forty miles away.
By the time they’d walked back towards the church, the chant had stopped.
‘Maybe the whole community turns out to listen.’ Lol walked into the entrance, along the gravel path bordered with yew trees, turning to look back at Merrily. ‘You’re allowed.’
‘I don’t know that I am, to be quite—’
‘Pardon me?’
A blur of movement. Merrily turned slowly. A woman had appeared out of the trees by the entrance. She wore a pale sleeveless dress so long that it completely covered her feet, and it seemed somehow as if she’d risen from the ground.
‘You’re looking for someone?’
‘Well, we—’
‘Is there a concert on?’
Lol had wandered back. The woman smiled at him.
‘Choir practice, is all.’
She had a loose, wide mouth and big, deep-sunk eyes that seemed swirlingly aglow.
‘You’re in the choir?’
‘I don’t sing, although I have an interest. I was taking some air during the break. I live in a cottage back there. Wyche Cottage? Like the Wyche in Wychehill, which means salt, only, the real-estate guy in Ledbury, when he told me the name on the phone, I thought it was witch, and I’m like … woooh.’
She shook her tumble of brown curls.
‘Disappointing, really,’ Lol said.
‘How so?’
‘That it just means salt.’
‘Yeah. I guess. I changed it, anyway. Starlight Cottage now. Look—’
She came forward, stumbling over the dusty hem of her dress, coming up very close to Lol and peering at him. Contact lenses, Merrily thought.
‘Pardon me,’ the woman said to Lol, ‘I don’t want to appear … but I think I know who you are?’
He took a pace back. Occasionally he was recognized, usually by someone who’d bought a Hazey Jane album nearly twenty years ago and was mildly pleased that he hadn’t killed himself like Nick Drake. He never relished it.
‘OK…’ The woman gazed hard at Lol. ‘Listen, I may have this totally wrong, but see, I’m not so stupid. I was expecting an old guy in a big hat with like a black bag, and it’s no business of mine, really, but you should know that some people in this place are just a little crazy.’
‘How so?’ Lol said.
‘Not so simple. Like, you’re talking about something, you know, sacred?’ She looked down and brushed a leaf from her dress. ‘I’m sorry. This is not my place. But there’s something here that must never be parted, you know what I’m saying? Like, you can walk out on the hills at twilight and you can sense his nearness. It’s a strange and awesome thing.’
‘Yes,’ Lol said. ‘I can imagine it would be.’
‘So, like, you know, I mean no disrespect here, but the whole idea of exorcizing this … wonderful, magical thing – from the Malvern Hills, of all places – that’s gotta be a bone of contention, right?’
This was the third time they’d stood outside a front door getting no response, but Merrily had heard the radio playing inside the house and she kept her finger on the bell.
It was still more than a minute before the door opened and Spicer stood there, unsmiling, in jeans and a black clerical shirt.
‘A word, Syd.’
He stared at her without expression, then looked at Lol. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, as if he’d been dealing with one of those household tasks he performed privately to prove he had no need of outside help.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She’d pulled down the zip of her fleece to reveal the collar, show him she was kitted out this time.
Spicer said, ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘I realize local loyalty is a good thing,’ Merrily said, ‘and crucial for a parish priest, I accept that. But there’s also the question of loyalty between people who share a … a calling? So you give me half a story, set me up to appear in front of the entire parish—’
‘It won’t be the entire parish. It won’t even be half the parish. Who’s your friend?’ he asked again.
‘This is Lol Robinson. He’s standing in as witness, back-up, second opinion. All the roles normally filled by the particular parish priest who’s requested assistance. If the parish priest can be bothered.’
‘I’m sorry, Merrily, I just assumed you’d prefer to check things out on your own.’
‘No, you didn’t. You just didn’t want, for some reason, to reveal the alleged identity of the alleged presence.’
‘Look,’ Spicer said. ‘The people out there who wanted an exorcist called in, I thought it was down to them to explain exactly why. I just went through the motions. I told you I had reservations, but I didn’t think it was right to spell them out to you before you’d had a chance to check out the situation for yourself.’
‘Maybe you wanted me to come back this evening to hear the music, just to underline it a little?’
‘I didn’t know you’d be coming back at all before the meeting. That’s why I set it up. For God’s sake, Merrily—’
She turned away in frustration. The evening sun threw an unearthly light on Herefordshire Beacon so that it looked like a cake aflame on a hot-plate.
‘I mean … Elgar?’ She swung back to face him. ‘That Elgar?’
13
Another Sphere of Existence
Oh shit, surely not this one? Please don’t let it be this one.
The late sun was bleeding into a false horizon of cloud, an old tractor coughing and retching across a field somewhere.
Jane standing in Virgingate Lane, radiating dismay.
She’d looked up Councillor Pierce in the phone book. The address was given as Avalon, which had been kind of promising: anyone who’d named his house after the legendary land of apples in the west, where King Arthur had been laid to rest, must have some kind of a soul.
Yeah, well…
There obviously had been apple trees here, in the days when Ledwardine was almost entirely surrounded by productive orchards. In fact, you could see a few of their sad stumps in the shaven piece of former field through which a tarmac drive cut like a motorway intersection, all the way to the triple garage.