‘The message spelled out tonight by Mr Holliday is that it’s all superstitious rubbish. And he was thoughtful enough to put all that on my answering machine earlier today, when he phoned to advise me not to bother coming.’
A few murmurs at last. She could see Holliday, stiff-faced, in a left-hand pew, second row.
‘Now what I’m gathering from what’s been said is that Mr Holliday had earlier considered that the alleged phenomenon might have been useful as a publicity gimmick … to focus attention on his campaign against what’s happening at the Royal Oak. Get the protest into the national papers. Maybe on TV.’
Merrily paused again, looking over to where she’d last seen Holliday, giving him a warm smile – the pompous, duplicitous git.
‘You can see the TV reports now, can’t you? Long shot of the hills at sunset, overlaid with some suitably serene pastoral music written by … the cyclist.’
Preston Devereaux’s chair creaked.
‘Mrs Watkins, I think—’
‘And then it goes dark,’ Merrily said. ‘And we see the Royal Oak throbbing with purple strobe lights and a blast of drum-’n’-bass all over the forecourt. And then Mr Holliday steps into shot with a grim face and a petition to the council.’
‘Mrs Watkins.’
‘All right … I’m sorry.’ Putting up her hands, turning to Preston Devereaux. ‘Mr Chairman, I take it that you were tacitly informing us a few minutes ago that in the moments before that horrific crash you did not see a strange light or a strange cyclist. But where are the people who insist that they did? Is Mr Loste here tonight, for instance? Because I’d’ve thought if this meeting was to make a decision it ought to hear all the evidence. Mr Loste?’
She peered into the lights. Silence.
‘Well … thanks, Mr Chairman. That’s all I wanted to say, really. Just didn’t want anyone to think that, having been invited, I’d failed to show up. Thank you.’
Merrily shouldered her bag amid a rush of whispers. Preston Devereaux said nothing. She slid around the table and walked away, out of the spotlight pool, down into the shadows of the left-hand aisle, aware of hushed discussions opening up on both sides, like a small motor coming to life, and then the scuffling sound of someone standing up.
‘Wait…’ A tall woman, black top, spiky red hair, standing sideways in the pew space.
Merrily stopped and leaned against a pew-end.
‘I saw it,’ the woman said. ‘This fully formed man on a bike – high up on his bike, this great, black…’ she stared around the church ‘… pulpit of a bike. Right there in front of me. And I wasn’t drunk, whatever people are saying. I hadn’t been drinking. When they gave me a breath test, it was totally negative. But I’m telling you I saw him. He was there. Absolutely and totally … bloody there.’
‘You’re…’ Merrily felt a small worm of excitement uncurling in her spine. ‘You’re Mrs Cobham, right?’
‘Correct. I swerved and he vanished and I went into this bloody camper van about half a second later.’
‘How did you feel at that moment?’
‘Feel? Mixture of … shock and … just sheer, primitive terror. I thought I was actually going to die. Die of shock, you know? All I remember after that was being out of the car and just standing at the side of the road, shivering. They wouldn’t come near me, the people in the camper, they wouldn’t leave their vehicle, I must’ve looked—’
‘Was there any … change in the atmosphere when you saw the cyclist? The temperature?’
Merrily saw that the focus of the room had altered, people drifting to the ends of pews on either side, two semicircles forming and Preston Devereaux on his own by the chancel, sitting upright, his long sideburns like the chinstrap of a helmet. Stella Cobham gripped the pew in front of her.
‘I felt cold. Whether that was just the shock … Couldn’t seem to keep a limb still until daylight. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think of anything else. Kept seeing him again and again in my head. I can see him now.’
‘Mrs Watkins…’ Preston Devereaux was on his feet. ‘This is neither the time nor the place…’
Merrily just kept on talking to Stella Cobham, a damped-down silence around them, the windows in the nave filled with a dull purple half-light that didn’t go anywhere.
‘Could he see you, do you think?’
‘I don’t think he could see anything. His eyes were … somewhere in the distance. It was the eyes I remember most. It was the eyes that … there’s a photo of him on the back of one of these books we bought – it’s called Elgar, Child of Dreams – and it’s one of those double exposures with his face superimposed on the hills, and his eyes are looking away, into some sort of infinity? You know? And there are these pinpoints of light in his eyes. Where’s … where’s Tim Loste?’
‘Gone,’ a man said. ‘Or he didn’t come.’
‘Well, can somebody get him back? Because he’ll be able to tell you—’
‘Leave him alone.’ Helen Truscott had appeared in the aisle next to Merrily. ‘He’s not well.’
‘Oh God, the fount of all medical bloody knowledge. I’m trying to give him a chance to unload it.’
‘And you think he’ll be happy to have his beloved Elgar exorcized? There, I’ve said the forbidden name, too. You don’t understand about Tim, do you?’
‘I understand what I saw, Mrs Truscott…’
‘You don’t understand what state that man’s in. You leave him alone.’
‘Look, I was told people would say I was sick or mental or drunk, like Loste, and I … I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Merrily.’
‘Well, Merry, whatever they’re saying.’ She swung her head angrily from side to side like a gun turret. ‘I’m telling you there is something wrong here. The cyclist … Jesus.’
In the swollen silence, Merrily looked around and saw … individuals. All these people together but essentially still pews apart. Maybe they knew one another by sight, by name, by reputation, but they were no more than a cluster of islands with separate climates, separate cultures.
Isolation. Midsummer Eve, and a chill in the air in a too-big church.
‘Excuse me.’ Preston Devereaux was brushing past. ‘I suspect this meeting is now over. Would the last lunatic out of the building please turn off the lights?’
‘Yeah, you go, Mr Devereaux!’ Stella Cobham snarling at his back. ‘You piss off. You keep nice and quiet about whatever you saw. You play it down. You weren’t for playing everything down when the fox-hunting thing was on, were you?’
Devereaux stopped. ‘That’s over. It’s over and we lost. You move on.’
Which was what he did. He walked out. At the same time, Merrily saw Leonard Holliday and three or four other people moving down the second aisle towards the main door … and more faces were swimming towards her.
‘If this—’ She took a breath, inspiration coming. ‘If this is really an issue, I’d just like to point out that the possibility of me or anyone attempting to exorcize Sir Edward Elgar … that is very much not an option. And even if there was a connection with Elgar—’
‘You can take it from me,’ Helen Truscott said, ‘that the connection was entirely in one unbalanced mind.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘And the devious heads of a few opportunists, who I hope have now seen the error of their ways.’