‘It’s not…’ She caught his arm on the rebound. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Look, Mrs Watkins, I got a long night…’ He turned away. ‘Long night ahead of me.’
Sounding like what he was really talking about was the rest of his life.
Someone helped Merrily back over the walclass="underline" the Bishop.
‘Saw a chap I knew. Merrily, this is beyond all—’
‘Aye,’ Mumford said, calm again, as if that one slam of the fist had been like a pressure valve.
‘Andrew. Look… where’s your father?’
‘One of the cars, last I seen. With Zoë – policewoman. Dunno which one it is.’
‘I’ll find it. I’ll talk to him.’
‘Only I’d leave God out of it, if I were you, Bishop,’ Mumford said and turned to Merrily. ‘These accidents will happen, won’t they? Ole women shouldn’t play by the river at night.’
Merrily thought, Accident?
As they stepped onto the pavement, several people were trailing past and, as they faded into the lights, she saw that they were wearing old-fashioned evening dress, two women in long black frocks and two men in tailcoats and top hats. She thought of posh restaurants, the new and affluent Ludlow, Phyllis Mumford dying alone, on the edge of all this.
‘Need to call the wife.’ Mumford had his mobile out. ‘Pick up the ole feller, take him back to our place.’
‘I could—’
‘I’ll see to him. You get off home.’
She wanted to scream, For God’s sake, you’re not a copper now, you’re one of us!
‘Come over to the car, Andy,’ Steve the policeman said. ‘We better sit down, sort some things out.’
Merrily was left alone. The party in evening dress had stopped, gazing down to where a knot of police and paramedics were concealing the body. They were not what she’d thought, these decadent revellers. A ruby glistened like a bubble of blood in the cleft of the chin of one of the women and one of the men in top hats wore eye make-up and his hat had ribbons hanging behind, like an old-fashioned undertaker.
‘Come on…’ A policewoman came over, arms spread wide. ‘Don’t hang around, please.’
‘Is she dead?’ one of the girls said, like she was asking about the time of the last bus.
‘You can read about it tomorrow. Come on.’
‘I won’t be here tomorrow.’
‘Good,’ the policewoman said.
‘Was it suicide?’
This was an older, quieter voice. Merrily saw that there was a fifth person in the group, this woman wrapped in a grey cape so long that it was touching the pavement.
The policewoman said, ‘Do you have anything to tell us about this incident, madam?’
The woman smiled faintly, with a shake of the head, as the blue beacon light passed over her face, brushing like a strobe effect over an eagle nose and causing a glistening like hoar frost in hair that was like strands of tarnished tinsel. And Merrily recognized her. Partly from Mumford’s description, but mainly…
Pale arms outstretched, fingers clawed, sleeves of a black robe slipping back. A copper bangle like a snake…
Merrily froze, hands clasped, catching a long-ago devilish reflection of herself in a mirror: white lipstick and a black velvet hat and mascara caked on like chocolate. Heard her own mother, appalled: You’re not walking out of this house looking like that…
‘No, I thought not,’ the policewoman said. ‘So would you mind not blocking the footpath, please?’
She’s quite distinctive, Mr Osman had said, with the varying colours of her hair and the way she dresses.
And then Andy Mumford in the car: If her name turns out to be Marion, what we gonner be looking at then?
From what Merrily could remember, her name had never been Marion.
She saw Mumford getting into the back of a police car with his friend Steve, heard the church clock strike almost softly. Ten o’clock and all so very far from well.
She stood in the middle of the road, the dog collar under the zipped-up fleece tight to her throat like a stiff admonishment. Furious at herself for failing to foresee something like this and, to a lesser extent, at Saltash whose flip diagnosis had probably been right, although it could be no more proven now than the existence of ghosts.
11
Nightshades
MERRILY DIDN’T FEEL any better in the morning, Sunday. She awoke with the light and lay watching the red dawn surfing the ceiling, where the oak beams were like beach barriers. Wondering what difference it would make to a suicidal world if she just didn’t bother to get up.
Unless anyone specifically asked, she hadn’t been in Ludlow last night, and neither had Bernie Dunmore. They’d agreed this as she dropped him, around one a.m., at the Bishop’s palace in Hereford.
Bernie had told her about his time with Reg Mumford. He’d taken Reg to the Angel, in Broad Street. ‘As a damn bishop, you get out of it,’ Bernie said. ‘Out of real people. You’ve forgotten the conclusions you once came to about what this job’s about – not preaching, just pure, concentrated listening.’
In the bar, he said, Reg had been remembering his wife as she used to be and a lot of other people Bernie didn’t know. Memories dripping into the beer, most of them from a long time ago.
Reg hadn’t mentioned his wife’s death – as if that was something he wasn’t yet ready to process, Bernie said.
As for Robbie, Reg didn’t understand how the boy had come to get himself killed, didn’t see any use dwelling on it. Kids did daft things, and sometimes they ran out of luck, and that boy… face it, he wasn’t entirely normal. Reg never knew how to talk to him, never had since he was little. Phyllis, however…
Reg had been trying to lose himself in daytime telly. Looking up every so often and seeing Phyllis gazing into the mirror, where she’d found a new channel of her own: the Robbie Channel. Robbie still sitting scrunched up over the table, drawing his black and white buildings, hands all black with charcoal – holding up his hands, Phyllis said, and grinning at her through the mirror. Phyllis weeping through her mad world, which had reflections of Robbie everywhere. Sometimes trailing aimlessly around the shops – Reg embarrassed, striding ahead, then looking back and seeing Phyllis staring in some window. Look, there he is again… do you see him? Reg buying her bits of things in the shops – it was only money – but when they got home the packages were never opened.
Would have destroyed Reg, too, if he’d given in to it. But Reg had seen too much death in his time, and he’d lost all patience with her – only so much a man could take. It was Reg who, in a fury, had turned the mirror to the wall before the Bishop came, because he hadn’t wanted the Bishop to see Phyllis going insane. Only it hadn’t been the Bishop at all, it had been Andy and some strangers and Reg didn’t want to meet any more strangers. This bloody smiley feller coming up to him in the street, all chatty, then asking who his doctor was – what right did they have, treating you like a kid?
Merrily got out of bed and knelt under the window, with its view over the village towards wooded Cole Hill, under a shiny salmon sky, and prayed for Reg and whatever remained of Phyllis and Robbie. When she stood up, her eyes were wet, and she found herself thinking, irrationally, of Lol and had this image of herself running down the drive and across the cobbles in her nightdress and banging on the cottage door, screaming, Let me in! for all the village to hear.
At breakfast, Jane said, ‘Mum, you look like sh—’
‘I know, all right?’
‘You turn up for Communion looking like that, they’ll all lose their faith.’
‘Oh hell, what time is it? And what are you doing up so early?’