Gareth Prosser was loading hay or silage or whatever the hell they called it in these parts onto a trailer for his sheep out on the hills. He was panting out small balloons of white breath. He didn’t even look up when Robin strolled over, just muttered once into the trailer.
‘’Ow’re you?’
Robin deduced that his neighbour was enquiring after his health.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, although he still felt like shit after the Blackmore put-down. ‘Nice morning. Specially after all that fog last night.’
‘Not bad.’
Gareth Prosser straightened up. He wore a dark green nylon coverall and an old discoloured cap. Behind him, you could hardly distinguish the grey farmhouse from the barns and tin-roofed shacks. There was a cold mist snaking amongst a clump of conifers on the hillside, but the sun had risen out of it. The sun looked somehow forlorn and out of place, like an orange beachball in the roadway. It was around eight-fifteen a.m.
‘Wonder if you can give me some advice,’ Robin said.
Gareth Prosser looked at him. Well, not in fact at him, but at a point just a couple degrees to his left, which was disconcerting — made you think there was someone behind you with an axe.
‘Firewood,’ Robin said. ‘We need some dry wood for the stove, and I figured you would know a reputable dealer.’
Gareth Prosser thought this over. He was a shortish, thickset guy in his fifties and now well overweight. His face was jowly, the colour and texture of cement.
Eventually, he said, ‘Mansel Smith’s your man.’
‘Ah.’ Robin was unsure how to proceed, on account of, if his recollection was accurate, the dealer who had sold them the notorious trailerload of damp and resinous pine also answered to the name of Mansel Smith.
‘You get your own wood from, uh, Mansel?’
Prosser slammed up the tailgate on the trailer.
‘We burns anthracite,’ he said.
‘Right.’ If Mansel Smith was the only wood dealer around, Robin could believe that. And yet somehow he thought that if Gareth Prosser did ever require a cord of firewood from Mansel it would not be pine and it would not be wet.
‘Well, thanks for your advice.’
‘No problem,’ Prosser said.
Right now, if this situation was the other way about, Robin figured he himself would be asking his neighbour in for a coffee, but Prosser just stood there, up against his trailer, like one of those monuments where the figure kind of dissolves into uncarved rock. No particular hostility; chances were this guy didn’t know or didn’t care that Robin was pagan.
Well, this was all fine by Robin, who stayed put, stayed cool. If there was one thing he’d learned from the Craft it was the ability to become still, part of the landscape like an oak tree. Prosser stayed put because maybe he was part of the landscape, and Robin figured they could both have stood there alongside that trailerload of winter fodder until one of them felt hunger pains or he — unlikely to be Prosser — burst out laughing.
But after about five seconds, the farmer looked up when a woman’s voice called out, ‘Gareth! Who was that?’
Prosser didn’t reply, and she came round the side of one of the sheds onto the half-frozen rutted track.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘Hi there,’ Robin said.
The woman was a little younger than Gareth, maybe fifty, and a good deal better preserved. She wore tight jeans and boots and a canvas bomber jacket. She had a strong, lean face and clear blue eyes and short hair with, possibly, highlights.
‘Good morning,’ the woman said distinctly. ‘I’m Councillor Prosser’s wife.’
‘Hi. Robin Thorogood. From, uh, next door.’
‘Judith Prosser.’
They shook hands. She had a firm grip. She even looked directly into his eyes.
‘I’ve got some coffee on,’ she said.
‘That would be wonderful.’
‘I’ll be in now,’ Gareth said.
Robin had learned, from Betty, that when they said ‘now’ they meant ‘in a short while’. So he smiled and nodded at Gareth Prosser and gratefully followed Judith up the track toward the farmhouse complex. In the middle distance, their two teenage sons were wheeling their dirt bikes out to the hill. There was a sound like a chainsaw starting up and one of the boys splattered off.
‘Be an international next year, our Richard,’ Judith Prosser said proudly. ‘Had his first bike when he was four. All Wales Schoolboy Scrambling champion at eleven. Perfect country for it, see.’
‘Doesn’t it mess up the fields?’
‘Messes up the footpaths a bit.’ Mrs Prosser smiled ruefully. ‘We gets complaints from some of the rambling groups from Off. But not from the local people.’
Robin nodded.
‘Councillor Prosser’s boys, see,’ Mrs Prosser said, like it was perfectly reasonable that being a councillor should automatically exclude you from certain stifling social impositions. Robin didn’t detect any irony, but maybe it was there.
‘I see,’ he said.
‘This is Juliet Pottinger.’ An efficient and authoritative Scottish voice. ‘I’m afraid I am away this weekend, but you may wish to leave a message after the tone. If you are a burglar uninterested in thousands of books which are essentially old rather than antiquarian, then I can tell you that you are almost certainly wasting your time.’
Betty thought she sounded like a woman who would at least give you a straight answer — if not until Monday.
Bugger. She cleared away the breakfast things, ran some water for washing-up. Whatever Robin learned about the Reverend Penney from the Prossers, she didn’t trust him not to put some pagan-friendly spin on it, and it was important to her now to find out the truth. What had Penney done to cause ‘weeping and wailing’ in the village? Why had the local people hushed it up? Did the priest, Ellis, know the full story and did this explain why he was so determined to subject the site to some kind of exorcism? She’d never settle here until she knew.
The phone rang, had her reaching for a towel before the answering machine could grab the call.
‘Oh, my dear, I’m sure it’s working already!’
‘Mrs Wilshire?’
‘I have had what, without doubt, was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in months!’
‘That’s, er, wonderful,’ Betty said hesitantly, because the likelihood of her arthritis remedy kicking in overnight was remote, to say the least.
‘I can bend my fingers further than… Oh, I must show you. Will you be in this area today?’
‘Well, I suppose…’
‘Marvellous. I shall be at home all day.’
‘Er… you didn’t stop taking your cortisone tablets, did you? Because steroids do need to be wound down slowly.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t take any chances.’
‘No.’
It was psychological, of course, and Betty felt a little wary. Mrs Wilshire was a woman who could very easily become dependent on people. If Betty wasn’t careful, she’d wind up having to call in to see her every other day. Still, if it hadn’t been for Mrs Wilshire they would never have got onto the Penney affair.
‘OK, I’ll drop in later this morning if that’s all right. Er, Mrs Wilshire, the papers you kindly let me take — about the church? There was one from a Mrs Pottinger, relating to the Reverend Penney. Do you know anything about that?’
‘Oh, there was a lot of trouble about him, my dear. Everyone was very glad when he left, so I’m told.’
‘Even though the church was decommissioned and sold soon afterwards?’
‘That was a pity, although I believe it was always rather a draughty old place.’
‘Er, do you remember, when you bought the house — and the church — did the Reverend Ellis come to visit you there?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I was hardly ever there. It was Bryan’s project. Bryan’s house, until it was finished. Which I confess I really rather hoped it never would be.’
‘So you don’t know if the Reverend Ellis went to see Bryan there?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t. Though I’m sure he would have mentioned it. He never mentioned Mr Ellis in connection with that house. I don’t remember him ever mentioning Mr Ellis.’
‘No suggestion of Mr Ellis wanting to conduct a service in the church?’
‘A church service?’
‘Er… yes.’
‘Oh no, my dear. I’m sure I would have remembered that.’
Just us, then.
The first thing Mrs Judith Prosser asked him was if they would be keeping stock on their land. Robin replied that farmers seemed to be having a hard enough time right now without amateurs creeping in under the fence. Which led her to ask what he did for a living and him to tell her he was an artist.
‘That’s interesting,’ Mrs Prosser said, though Robin couldn’t basically see how she could find it so; there wasn’t a painting on any wall of the parlour — just photographs, mainly of men. Some of the photos were so old that the men had wing collars and watch chains.
As well as chairman’s chains. Robin wondered if ‘Councillor’ was some kind of inherited title in the Prosser family — like, even if you had all the personality of a bag of fertilizer, they still elected you, on account of the Prossers knew the way to County Hall in Llandrindod.
Mrs Prosser went through to the kitchen, leaving the door open. There was a black suit on a hanger behind the door.
‘We have a funeral this afternoon,’ she explained.
‘I guess councillors have a lot of funerals to attend.’
She looked at him. ‘In this case, it’s for a friend.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We all are. Sit down, Mr Thorogood.’
The furniture was dark and heavy and highly polished. The leather chair he sat in had arms that came almost up to his shoulders. When you put your hands on them, you felt like a dog begging.
Funerals. Was this an opening?
‘So it’s, uh, local, this funeral?’ Boy, how soon you could grow to hate one simple little word.
‘In the village, yes.’
‘So you still have a graveyard — despite no church?’
Mrs Prosser didn’t reply. He heard her pouring coffee. It occurred to him she hadn’t commented on him being American. Maybe ‘from Off’ was all-inclusive; how far ‘Off’ was of no major consequence.
He raised his voice a little. ‘I guess there must’ve been problems with funerals when the old St Michael’s Church was in use. What with the creek and all.’ OK, it might not be in the best of taste to keep on about funerals, but it was his only way into the Reverend Penney, and he wasn’t about to let go.
‘Because of the brook, no one’s been buried there in centuries.’ She came back with two brown cups and saucers on a tray.
‘Thank you, uh, Judith. Hey, I met the vicar. He came round.’
‘Mr Ellis is a good rector.’
‘But not local,’ Robin said.
‘You don’t get local ministers anywhere any more, do you? But he brings people in. Very popular, he is. Quite an attraction.’
‘You like to see new people coming in?’
She laughed: a good-looking woman, in her weathered way. ‘Depends what people they are, isn’t it? Nobody objects to churchgoers. And the collections support the village hall. They’re always very generous.’
‘Just Nick doesn’t seem your regular kind of minister,’ Robin said.
‘He suits our needs,’ said Mrs Prosser. ‘Father Ellis’s style of worship might not be what we’ve been used to in this area, but a breath of something new is no bad thing, we’re always told. Jog us out of our routine, isn’t it?’
‘I guess.’ He tasted the coffee. It was strong and surprisingly good. Judith Prosser put the tray on a small table and came to sit on the sofa opposite. She was turning out to be unexpectedly intelligent, not so insular as he’d figured. He felt ashamed of his smug preconceptions about rural people, local people. So he went for it.
‘From what I hear, this area seems to attract kind of off-the-wall clergy. This guy, uh… Penney?’
‘My,’ she said, ‘you have picked up a lot of gossip in a short time.’
‘Not everybody finds themselves buying a church. You feel you oughta find out the history.’
‘Or the lurid bits, at least.’
‘Uh… I guess.’ He gave her his charming, sheepish smile.
‘Terry Penney.’ Judith sipped her coffee. ‘What’s to say? Quiet sort of man. Scholarly, you know? Had his study floor-to-ceiling with books. Not an unfriendly person, mind, not reclusive particularly. Not at first.’
‘He didn’t live at the farmhouse — our house?’
‘Oh, no, that was always a farm. No, the rectory was just out of the village, on the Walton road. Mr Weal has it now — the solicitor.’
Robin recalled the name from someplace. Juliet Pottinger’s letter?
‘So…’ He put down his coffee on a coaster resting on the high chair arm. ‘The, uh, lurid bit?’
‘Restrain yourself, Mr Thorogood, I’m getting there.’
Robin grinned; she was OK. He guessed the Christ is the Light sticker was just the politically correct thing to do in Old Hindwell.
‘Well, it was my husband, see, who had the first inkling of something amiss — through the county council. Every year Old Hindwell Church would apply for a grant from the Welsh Church Acts Committee, or whatever they called it then, which allotted money to old buildings, for preservation. Although the church was in the Hereford diocese it’s actually in Wales, as you know. However, this particular year, there was no request for money.’
She turned on a wry smile. She was — he hadn’t expected this — enjoying telling this story.
‘The Reverend Penney had been yere… oh, must have been nearly eighteen months by then. Thought he must have forgotten, we did, so Councillor Prosser goes to see him. And Mr Penney, bold as you please, says, oh no, he hasn’t forgotten at all. He doesn’t want a grant. He doesn’t think the church should be preserved!’
Robin widened his eyes.
‘The church is wrong, says Mr Penney. It’s in the wrong place. It should never have been built where it is. The water’s not healthy. The fabric’s rotten. Parking’s difficult. Oh, a whole host of excuses. He says he’s written to the diocese and whoever else, suggesting that they dispense with St Michael’s at the earliest possible opportunity.’
Robin was fazed. ‘He called for them to get rid of his own church? Just like that?’
‘Just like that. No one could believe it.’
‘Wow.’ Robin was thinking furiously. Had Penney realized this was a powerful pagan site? Was it that simple? Had he made some kind of discovery? He tried to hide his excitement. ‘Was he mad?’
‘Perhaps he’d always been a little mad,’ said Mrs Prosser. ‘But we just never saw it until it was too late.’
‘So, like… what did he do?’
Judith Prosser put down her coffee. ‘No one likes to talk about it. But, as the owner now, I suppose you have a right to be told.’
One of the few good things about living here was that the post usually arrived before nine; in some rural areas you couldn’t count on getting it before lunchtime.
Today’s was a catalogue from a mail order supplier of garden ornaments — how quickly these people caught up with you — and a letter addressed to ‘Mrs’ Thoroughgood with a Hereford postmark.
That ‘Mrs’ told her what this was going to be.
She sat down at the table with the letter in front of her. Usual cheap white envelope. They’d received two when they were living in Shrewsbury. They said things like: We Know About Your Dirty Nude Ceremonies Worshipping Heathen Gods. The Lord Will Punish You.
How had they found out? Who’d told them? Had Robin been indiscreet?
Betty felt gutted. The sick irony of this was that she hadn’t practised as a witch since they moved here and, the way she was feeling now, never would again — at least, not in any organized way.
She contemplated tossing the letter in the stove unopened. But if she did that it would dwell in her, would be twice as destructive.
With contempt, Betty slit the envelope.
She read the note three times. Usual capitals, usual poor spelling.
But otherwise not quite what she’d expected.
YOU HAD BETTER TELL THAT LONG HAIRED LOUT THAT IF HE WANTS TO GO HELPING HIMSELF TO THE FAVOURS OF THE BIGGEST HORE IN THE VILLAGE HE OUGHT TO BE MORE DISCREAT ABOUT IT.