Her hands together, head bowed.
Even the piano was inaudible up here, and in the silence her words sounded hollow and banal.
‘… and ask You to bless and protect the stairs and the landings and the corridors along which the residents and the workers here must pass to reach these rooms.’
She was visualizing the old ladies gathered around the piano two floors below, so as to draw them into the prayer.
‘We pray, in the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, that no spirit or shade or image from the past will disturb the people dwelling here. We pray that these images or spirits will return to their ordained place and there rest in peace.’
This covered both imprints and insomniacs, although she didn’t really think it could be an insomniac. There’d surely be some sign, in that case, some pervading atmosphere of unrest.
‘Amen,’ Edna said.
Merrily held her breath. It had been known, Huw Owen had said, for the spirit itself to appear momentarily, usually at the closing of the ritual, before fading – in theory for ever – from the atmosphere.
Mind, it’s also been known to appear with a mocking smile on its face and then – this is frightening – appearing again and again, bang-bang-bang, in different corners of the room…
Although it was hard not to flick a glance over her shoulder, Merrily kept on looking calmly in front of her under half-lowered eyelids, her body turned towards the darkness at the end of the passage. From which drifted a musty smell of dust and camphor which may not have been there before.
She waited, raising her eyes to the sloping ceiling with its blocked-in beams, and the filigree pouches of old cobwebs over the single curtained window. She straightened her shoulders, feeling the pull of the pectoral cross.
It was darker – well seemed darker. As though there’d been a thirty per cent decrease in the wattage of the bulbs. Possibly something was happening, something absorbing the energy – something which had begun as she ended her first prayer. A mild resistance was swelling now.
Merrily began to sweat, trying not to tense against the ballooning atmosphere. She wondered if Edna was aware of it, or if she herself was the only focus, her lone ritual beckoning it. When she spoke again, her voice sounded high and erratic.
‘If there is a… an unquiet spirit… we pray that you may be freed from whatever anxiety or obsession binds you to this place. We pray that you may rise above all earthly ties and go, in peace, to Christ.’
That sounded feeble. It lacked something. It was too bloody reasonable.
Belt and braces, said the awful Chris Thorpe, stooped like a crane and sneering.
Yes, OK, there was something. Now that she was sure of that, there should perhaps be a Eucharist performed for the blessing of the house. It could be conducted by the local vicar, held under some pretext where all the residents could be invited. Those who were churchgoers would accept it without too many questions.
The atmosphere bulged. She felt a sudden urgent need to empty her bladder.
‘May the saints of God pray for you and the angels of God guard and protect you…’
Either the air had tightened or she was feeling faint. Resist it. She fumbled at the mohair sweater to expose the cross. As she pulled at the sweater, her palms began to ‘Mrs Watkins.’
Merrily let go of the sweater; her eyes snapped open. Edna Rees was pointing to where, at the top of the three shallow steps, a figure stood.
‘Please, there’s really no need for this,’ it said.
Angela turned over six cards in sequence and then quickly swept the whole layout into a pile.
But not before Jane had seen the cards and recognized three of them: Death… The Devil… The Tower struck by lightning.
‘I can’t do this,’ Angela said. ‘I’m afraid it’s Rowenna’s fault.’
It was the same pub where the psychic fair had been held, but this time they were upstairs in a kind of boxroom. Pretty drab: just the card table and two chairs. Rowenna had to perch on a chest of drawers, her head inches from a dangling lightbulb with no shade.
‘I’m sorry, Angela,’ she said. ‘I really didn’t realize.’
Angela looked petite inside a huge sheepskin coat with the collar turned up. She also looked casually glamorous, like a movie star on location. But she looked irritated, too.
‘I suppose you weren’t to know, but it’s one of my rules in a situation like this to know only the inner person. I don’t like to learn in advance about anyone’s background or situation, because then, if I see a problem in the cards, I can know for sure that this information comes from the Source and is not conditioned by my personal knowledge, preconceptions or prejudices. I’m sorry, Jane.’
Jane heard the rumble of bar-life from the room below.
‘Angela,’ she said nervously, ‘that’s not because you turned up some really bad cards and you don’t think I can take it?’
Angela looked cross. ‘Cards have many meanings according to their juxtaposition.’
‘Looked like a pretty heavy juxtaposition to me,’ Rowenna said with a hint of malice. Angela had already done a reading for Rowenna – her future was bound up with a friend’s, needing to help this friend discover her true identity – something of that nature. Rowenna had seemed bored and annoyed that the emphasis seemed to be on Jane.
Jane said, ‘What was it Rowenna told you?’
‘I told her what your mother was, OK?’ Rowenna said. ‘On the phone last night. It just came out.’
Priest or exorcist? Jane was transfixed for a moment by foreboding. ‘That reading was telling you something about me and Mum, wasn’t it?’
Angela straightened the pack and put it reverently into the centre of a black cloth and then folded the cloth over it. ‘Jane, I’m not well disposed towards the Church. A friend of mine, also a tarot-reader, was once hounded out of a particular village in Oxfordshire because the vicar branded her as an evil infuence.’
‘Vicars can be such pigs,’ Rowenna said.
‘However,’ Angela looked up, ‘I make a point of never coming between husbands and wives or children and parents.’
‘Please, will you tell me what-?’
‘Jane.’ Angela’s calm eyes held hers. ‘When I look at your inner being, I sense a generous and uninhibited soul. But if your mother’s burden is to be constrained by dogma and an unhappy tradition, you really don’t have to share it.’
‘Well, I know, but… mostly we get on. Since Dad died we’ve supported each other, you know?’
‘Admirable in principle.’
‘Like, she’s pretty liberal about most things, but she’s got this really closed mind about… other things.’
‘All right, my last word on this…’ Angela began to exude this commanding stillness; you found you were listening very hard. ‘It might be wise, for both your sakes – your own and your mother’s – for you to keep on walking towards the light. Don’t compromise. Don’t look back. Pray… I’m going to say it… pray that she follows in your wake.’
‘You mean she needs to get out of the Church.’
‘These are your cards, Jane, not hers.’
‘Or what? What’s going to happen to her if she stays with the Church?’
‘Jane, don’t put me in a difficult position. Now, how are things going at the Pod?’
The shadow on the stairs spoke in a surprising little-girly voice.
‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Mrs Rees?’
‘This,’ Edna said with an overtone of resignation, ‘is Miss Anthea White.’
‘Athena!’
‘Miss Ath e na White. Why aren’t you at the party, then, Miss White?’
‘At the piano with all those old ladies? One finds that sort of gathering so depressing.’ Miss White moved out of the shadows. She was small, even next to Merrily, wearing a long blue dressing-gown which buttoned like a cassock.
Very tiny and elflike. Not as old as you expected in a place like this – no more than seventy.
‘This is Mrs Watkins,’ Edna said.
Miss White inspected Merrily through brass-rimmed glasses like the ones Lol Robinson wore, only much thicker. ‘Ah, there it is. You keep the clerical collar well-hidden, Mrs Clergywoman. I say, you’re very very pretty, aren’t you?’
‘Thank you,’ Merrily said.
‘One had feared the new female ministers were all going to be frightful leather-faced lezzies. Come and have a drink in my cell.’
‘Now,’ Edna said, ‘you know you’re not supposed to have alcohol in your rooms.’
‘Oh, Mrs Rees, you aren’t going to blab to the governor, are you? It’s such a frightfully cold night.’ Light seemed to gather in her glasses. ‘ Far too cold for an exorcism.’
‘Perhaps you could excuse me,’ Edna said.
‘Oh, do you have to leave?’
‘I rather understand that I do,’ Edna said tactfully.
‘How did you guess?’ Merrily asked, feeling tired now.
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’ Miss White handed her an inch of whisky in what seemed to be a tooth glass. ‘You were hardly here to conduct a wedding.’
Her room was an odd little grotto up in the rafters, with Afghan rugs on the wall, an Aztec-patterned bedspread. And a strange atmosphere, Merrily sensed, of illusion. Twin bottles of Johnnie Walker lurked inside an ancient wooden radio-cabinet. There were several free-standing cupboards, with locks. The room was lit by an electrified pottery oil-lamp on a stand.
Athena White went to sit on the high wooden bed, her legs under her in an almost yogic position, her dressing-gown unbuttoned upwards to the waist. No surgical stockings needed here. Merrily was sitting uncomfortably on a kind of camping stool near the door. It put her head on a level with Miss White’s projecting knees. Miss White seemed relaxed, like some tiny goddess-figure on a plinth.
‘Now then,’ she said. ‘What are you trying to do to Sholto?’
She let the name hang in the air until Merrily repeated it.
‘Sholto?’
A mellower light gathered in Miss White’s glasses. ‘Weren’t you able to see him?’
Merrily made no reply.
‘Come on, young Mrs Clergyperson, either you did or you didn’t.’
‘Let’s say I didn’t.’
‘That’s a shame. Perhaps you were erecting a barrier? That’s what your Church does though, isn’t it? Very, very sad – throwing up barriers, wrapping itself in a blanket of disapproval. And yet’ – Miss White’s head tilted in mild curiosity – ‘you are afraid.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh yes, I can always detect fear. You’re not afraid of Sholto, are you?’
‘Am I to understand Sholto is your ghost?’
‘How perceptive of you to apply the possessive,’ said Miss White. ‘I must say, it’s an awful job you have, Mrs Clergyperson. I never thought to see a woman doing it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Is it a specialist thing, or have you simply been commandeered as Thorpe’s prison chaplain?’
‘Miss White-’
‘Your Church is like some repressive totalitarian regime. Everyone has a perfectly good radio set, but you try to make sure they can only tune in to state broadcasts. Whenever the curtains accidentally open on some sublime vista, you rush in and snap them shut again. That’s your job, isn’t it?’
‘The soul police,’ Merrily said. ‘You should meet my daughter.’
‘Ye gods, are you old enough to have a daughter?’
‘Let’s drop the flattery, Miss White. What are you trying to tell me?’
‘What I am telling you’ – Miss White turned full-face to Merrily, and the light in her glasses became twin pinpoints – ‘is to leave him alone.’
‘Sholto?’
‘Have you any idea what it’s like in one of these places, where all is grey and faded, and romance resides solely in one’s memory?’
‘This room’s hardly grey and faded.’
‘You like my eyrie?’
‘It’s very cosy.’
‘Cosy!’ said Miss White in disgust. ‘Pah!’
‘But to get back to Sholto – that’s your name for him, is it?’
‘That, my dear clergyperson, is his name.’
‘You know his history? Some things about him?’
‘There’s nothing I don’t know about him. He’s a randy sod sometimes, and a frightful lounge lizard, but very, very charming. A look of Ronald Colman, but I suppose you’re too young-’
‘No, I’ve seen some of those old films. And you… have seen him, I take it.’
‘What a stupid question.’
‘And the other residents?’
‘Well, I can’t speak for all the hags. Sholto’s quite choosy – won’t pinch the flabbier old buttocks.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t look like that, girl. He was a man of his time. Men used to pinch bottoms.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Merrily was feeling cramped on the stool. ‘But what exactly are we talking about here? Who… what exactly do you think Sholto is?’
‘What do I think he is?’ A vaguely malevolent elf now, white light spearing from her glasses. ‘What do you think he is?’
An imprint? An insomniac? A volatile? This is the terminology of the Deliverance Age, Miss White.
‘I’ll tell you what he isn’t, Mrs Clergygirl.’ A finger wagging, the face narrowing, and the eyes almost merging behind the glasses. ‘He isn’t doing any harm. So you should go away and forget about him. In this museum of memories, Sholto is necessary.’
Merrily drank more whisky to moisten her mouth. ‘Would you mind if I had a cigarette?’
‘Certainly I would! Pull yourself together. If you don’t realize the importance of willpower in your job…’ Miss White’s neck extended, birdlike. ‘What is the matter with you, child?’
Willpower.
Merrily went cold. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Something was trying to stop me administering the blessing. That was you, wasn’t it? Exercising your… willpower.’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ Miss White sniffed, delighted.
‘Please,’ Merrily said wearily, ‘no more bullshit, Athena.’
A self-satisfied smile escaped beneath a little portcullis of teeth. ‘Why don’t you just ask yourself… What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Merrily.’
‘Well, ask yourself, Merrily, was what you were doing appropriate? Was it polite?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Did you ask permission? No, you didn’t. It was like a police raid: the way they always go in at dawn and bash someone’s door down. It’s disgraceful – we’re not criminals, even if we are in prison. And what has Sholto done wrong?’
‘Well, he… he’s dead. He shouldn’t be here.’
Miss White’s magnified eyes glowed.
She’s mad, Merrily thought. ‘Look,’ she said reasonably, ‘shouldn’t he be free to move on? That’s what matters. And what keeps him here – that matters, too. Because if what keeps him here is only-’
‘The undying pull of the flesh, one presumes. Perhaps we’re part of his karma. Broke a lot of young hearts in his time, I’d guess. Now all he has to amuse him is a bunch of raddled old bags with their tits round their waists. For him, that’s Purgatory, to use your terminology. But we’re all of us far too old to be corrupted. Sholto is needed here to feed people’s fantasies. He’s not only harmless, he’s essential, and that’s an end to it. I’ll keep him in order, don’t worry. You can tell Thorpe you’ve got rid of him. Now… let’s examine your own problem, which I would guess is a good deal less benign. What are you carrying around with you?’
‘What?’
‘Look at you, all hunched up against the cold. You’re cowering.’
Merrily instinctively straightened as best she could on her camping stool.
‘Oh, stop it! You’re cowering inside. You can’t hide that from me. Come here.’
Merrily found herself standing up.
‘Come and sit on the bed. Come on, I’m not going to touch you up!’ Athena White slid from the bed and leaned, in her tubular robe, over Merrily, peering closely into her eyes. ‘Ye gods, you are buggered up, aren’t you?’
Merrily’s legs felt suddenly quite weak.
‘Don’t struggle,’ Miss White said.
‘This is not right.’
‘It’s not right at all. Look at me – no, focus on me, girl. That’s better. I want to see the inner person. I feel you’re normally quite strong, but he’s certainly depleted you.’
‘Who?’
‘You tell me. Go on. Tell me his name.’
‘I don’t know what you-’
‘Tell me his name: that ball of spiritual pus that’s attached itself to you. What is his name?’
‘Denzil Joy.’
‘That’s better,’ said Miss White.