‘Even that might be counter-productive.’
‘So you have this general policy of non-intervention, unless there’s a clear threat to the patient’s mental health.’
Patient. God.
‘Something like that,’ Merrily said.
She hated this. She hated it when lofty consultants exchanged viewpoints at the foot of the bed, like the third party was already brain-dead.
‘I have a lot to learn, don’t I?’ Saltash said. ‘On which basis, if you go to see this lady, might I perhaps tag along?’
She could see Mumford was uncomfortable about this. Saltash evidently picked up on it, too, smiling down at him.
‘Andrew, old boy… I’m retired, OK, like you? This is observation only.’ He was doing this windscreen-wiper gesture with both hands. ‘No reports, no referrals.’
‘I’ll talk to her about it.’ Mumford seemed less than reassured, which was quite understandable.
‘I’ll call you, Andy,’ Merrily said.
Coming up to midnight, she was lying full-length on the sofa at Lucy’s old house, with Lol sitting at one end, her head in his lap. Low music was seeping from a boombox beside the glowing hearth.
‘I suppose I’m going to have to do something,’ Merrily said, ‘before it all falls apart on me.’
The sofa, delivered that day, was the only furniture in the parlour. It was orange, like the too-dark ceiling – never trust Jane in Linda Barker mode.
‘Psychiatrists,’ Lol said.
The weight of his own experience turned the word into some kind of lead sarcophagus full of decomposing remains.
‘I think I want to kill him,’ Merrily said.
The sofa smelled of newness and showrooms, but the scent from the fire in the inglenook was of applewood, the kindest, mellowest aroma in the countryside.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘You know…’
Oh, he knew… She was thinking of ‘Heavy Medication Day’, the only angry song on the new album. It was about his experiences on a psychiatric ward with a doctor who… over-medicated. Someone has to pay, now Dr Gascoigne’s on his way. A lot of residual bitterness there.
Last year, before they were a unit, he’d enrolled on a training course for psychotherapists, with the feeling that he could maybe, in some way, alter things from the inside. Discovering fairly soon that mere psychotherapists weren’t anywhere near the inside and, like all therapists and crisis-counsellors, they were ten-a-penny nowadays. And so Lol had walked away from it, back into music.
He slid a hand under her hair. ‘How necessary are they?’
‘Shrinks?’
‘I mean in Deliverance.’
Merrily thought about it. ‘You could probably say they’re only actually essential when you’re dealing with someone who thinks he or she is possessed by something… external. A psychiatrist would be able to detect symptoms of, say, schizophrenia.’
‘Symptoms of schizophrenia don’t necessarily prove the person actually is schizo,’ Lol said.
‘No, but it’s something that needs to be eliminated.’
‘How often have you had a case of demonic possession, then?’
‘Never. As you know. Never had a case where it was down to schizophrenia, either.’
‘So the idea of having a psychiatrist as a permanent part of your Deliverance group…’
‘Could be overkill,’ Merrily said. ‘If you consider that most of what we’re dealing with are what you might call non-invasive psychic phenomena… then if you have your resident psychiatrist insisting that it’s always down to delusion, hallucination, comfort chemicals in the brain, et cetera…’
‘… Then what’s the point of people like you?’
‘Listen to us, we’re finishing one another’s sentences,’ Merrily said. ‘How cosy is that? What’s this music?’
‘Elbow. Cast of Thousands.’
‘It’s lovely.’
‘It’s bloody terrifying. I don’t know why I bother.’
‘Never mind, they were probably influenced by you.’
‘You vicars can be so patronizing.’
Merrily looked around in the firelight, among the paint cloths and the ladders, for a clock. Jane was out with Eirion, as usual on a Friday night. By agreement, she was always home by one.
There wasn’t a clock anywhere yet. She guessed she’d been here about an hour and a half.
‘So, anyway, I called Andy before I came out,’ she said. ‘I’m going over tomorrow to see his mother. Not being much help around here, am I?’
‘You’re crap at painting anyway. You told the shrink you’re going?’
‘I really don’t know what to do. I mean, this is routine pastoral stuff. I wouldn’t be going if it wasn’t Andy Mumford – I’d refer it to local clergy. It doesn’t need a psychiatrist, so why set a precedent? You’re right, it’s overkill. All this belt-and-braces stuff, the Church covering its back, never sticking its neck out…’
‘Can you cover your back and stick your neck out at the same time?’ Lol bent and kissed her, one hand pushing her face into his, the other hand…
‘Mmmmph…’ It suddenly struck her that there were no curtains in this room and one window overlooked Church Street.
‘You’ve gone stiff,’ Lol said.
She sat up. ‘You should talk.’
‘We could go upstairs, take some cushions. Merrily, people know…’
‘I need to get home. Jane’ll be back. Besides, if you’ve got to drive back to Knight’s Frome—’
‘I’m going to sleep here on my nice new sofa,’ Lol said. ‘There’s this guy from Q magazine coming tomorrow, quite early.’
‘He’s coming here?’
‘Prof didn’t want him poking round the studio. We’ve got Tom Storey in, mixing his album. Prof’s a very private producer, Tom hates the media. I won’t say a word about you, you know that.’
‘It shouldn’t be like this.’ Merrily stood up and straightened her sweater. ‘I’m sorry. I mean, there’s probably no real reason for…’
‘We’ll get there,’ Lol said.
Would they? Within a few weeks, when his intermittent tour was over, he was going to be living here permanently. She supposed that what the new-home cards on the window sill were saying was that it was time to stop being coy and covert.
‘Oh hell, Lol, let’s – I don’t know – put a notice in the window at the Eight till Late or something.’
‘Uh…’ Lol went over to the window where the cards were. ‘You should know about this.’
Handing her a folded paper. She took it to the hearth and opened it out. It wasn’t hard to read it by the firelight. Big letters.
FIND YOUR WAY IN THE DARK?
‘Oh.’ Not a universal welcome, then.
‘I’d have said it was somebody having a laugh,’ Lol said, ‘but I can’t think of anybody… I mean, it’s not that funny, is it?’
She refolded the paper, annoyed. ‘You might as well tell the guy from Q. It would at least end this kind of stuff.’
‘Not in the context in which they’d run the story. It’d have to be from my side… the arrest, the loony bin. My Years of Hell. Now finding happiness at last, with a good woman in every sense, and letting it all come out in the music.’
‘God.’ Merrily shuddered. ‘Let me think about this.’
When she left, she went by the back door, reaching Church Street via the alley. Keeping to the shadows until she was approaching the square, where security lamps lit the front of the Black Swan and only two cars were still parked.
What was coming back was what Huw Owen had said.
Had your picture in the paper once too often.
He was right, of course. Deliverance was the Church’s secret service. Essentially low-level. Publicity was seldom helpful. No room at all for the cult of personality.