In Their Proper Place
It had been Merrily’s plan to go into her own church before lunch, when it was quietest. Find a cool place in the chancel and lay all this out, the whole Wychehill mess. To ask the question, Is it time to leave this alone, walk away? An in-depth exchange with the Management on this issue was long, long overdue.
So what was she doing in Lol’s bed?
‘Oh hell…’ She gazed into his unshaven face. ‘This is a bit like adultery.’
‘In what way, exactly?’
Lol rolled off her. He looked almost hurt.
‘ No, I…’ She trapped one of his legs between hers. ‘I just meant… cheating on the Church. The parish. Sorry. All I need is to offend you, and that’s virtually nobody left still speaking to me.’
He smiled. Maybe he hadn’t looked hurt a moment ago. Maybe she’d conjured that out of her own hurt.
Lol’s bedroom had a three-quarter bed in it. That was all. It was a very small room with no space for a wardrobe. He said he needed to sleep here because it had a view across Church Street to the vicarage – they could see each other’s lights at bedtime. Which was nice. But she’d sometimes wondered if he wasn’t just a little timid about using the bigger bedroom where Lucy Devenish had slept.
Whatever, this room was bare without being stark, a sanctuary, a space out of time. One day, perhaps, she might even get to spend a whole night here.
‘Then, at the same time,’ she said, ‘I get the feeling that I’m neglecting you.’
‘Some feelings you should listen to,’ Lol said. ‘This could be God telling you that you’re neglecting me.’
‘Dangerous to blaspheme in front of a vicar.’ Her fingers paddling over his thigh. ‘Especially when naked.’
He gripped her hand. They laughed, and when they stopped laughing she told him everything. About Winnie Sparke and Tim Loste and their beautiful secret and her own dismal morning.
‘I’m tired. I can’t get a handle on it any more. People’s attitudes change overnight. They want me to do something, then they don’t. They want to talk to me and then… Winnie Sparke, particularly. It was as if she’d picked a fight just to wind up the conversation because I was asking the wrong questions. Like mentioning the blow-up photo of Elgar.’
‘Let me get this right. Who’s seen Elgar, other than Loste?’
‘Stella Cobham. Who no longer wants to have anything to do with it because they’ve suddenly decided to move. Well, nobody just decides overnight to emigrate. Must’ve been very much on the cards when she came to the meeting in the church and poured it all out, thus burning her boats with Preston Devereaux who, according to Spicer, nobody likes to offend because he’s Old Wychehill…’
Lol sat up against the pillow, retrieved his little brass-rimmed glasses from the floorboards, and put them on.
‘But for a couple of things,’ he said, ‘I’d be suggesting that Elgar might be a psychological projection by Tim Loste.’
‘Well, me, too. Although, if we step over the threshold… sometimes, if the personality behind it is strong enough, a psychological projection may be perceptible to a third party.’
‘Musicians can be obsessive.’
‘No kidding.’
‘Um…’ Lol hesitated.
‘What?’
‘Anything I can do about this?’
‘I don’t like to interrupt your work.’
Lol laughed.
‘What it comes down to,’ Merrily said, ‘is the only person I haven’t spoken to, can’t get at and may never get at.’
‘Loste.’
‘Who now seems to be the key to both mysteries, that is, the Elgar thing and the killing on the Beacon, whether he did that or not – and the circumstantial evidence is impressive. But the key to Tim Loste is Winnie Sparke, who isn’t talking. I don’t think she ever planned to say much, and yet she wanted to check me out. Why? I still don’t really know these people or what they’re doing.’
‘There must be other ways in,’ Lol said. ‘For instance… a lot of singers in a choir.’
‘You know any? I don’t.’
‘Not yet. But musicians can be obsessive. Leave this with me.’
‘Thank you, Lol. And thanks for keeping an eye on Jane, which I… I’m not getting anything right, am I? I’m a lousy mother, a lousy girlfriend, an inept exorcist and an incompetent parish priest.’
‘But at least you don’t suffer from low self-esteem,’ Lol said.
They went downstairs and shared half a loaf, a pot of hummus and a box of cress, and Merrily resolved to spend the rest of the day in penance, dusting and polishing the church furniture, finding sick parishioners to visit before…
… A last assault, tomorrow, on Wychehill. Or, more specifically, on Winnie Sparke.
‘And I want to look at Coleman’s Meadow.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Why does Jane think Lyndon Pierce has some secret scheme to expand the village?’
‘Probably because he has. Don’t worry. Gomer’s looking into it.’
‘That’s reassuring.’ Merrily sat on the sofa and smoked half a cigarette. ‘Or maybe not. Pierce used to shoot blue tits, apparently. Nothing he could do for Jane to acquit himself after that. What if Sparke’s right and Loste didn’t kill that guy?’
‘Then Annie Howe will find out for herself. She’s not an incompetent detective, she just doesn’t like you. And your mind’s gone like a TV remote control switching from one channel to another.’
‘Too many channels nowadays,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s the problem.’
The grave was marked by a low wedge of sandstone and overhung by an apple tree from the old orchard over the wall. It was arguably the smallest, least ostentatious memorial in the churchyard.
Jane could have found it blindfolded.
Lucy Devenish.
The lettering tiny, and no dates. Lucy’s will had requested no dates, and somehow Mum had been able to comply, probably against all the regulations. And if this wasn’t a sign that Lucy had believed herself to be an eternal presence in Ledwardine, no date for her arrival, no date for her passing…
This always made Jane shiver, but with a kind of delight.
Underneath the name were the lines Lucy had chosen from Thomas Traherne (his dates were given: 1637-74), Herefordshire’s greatest, most mysterious poet.
No more shall clouds eclipse my treasures
Nor viler shades obscure my highest pleasures.
All things in their proper place
My Soul doth best embrace.
All things in their proper place. That spelled it out, really, didn’t it?
Jane placed her hands on the top of the stone for a moment. It always, even in winter, felt warm.
She stood up and looked back towards the church. Lucy’s grave was at the very end of the churchyard, right beside the path which led, through a small wooden gate, to the orchard, which had once virtually surrounded the village. Ledwardine – The Village in the Orchard – some guidebooks still called it that. And this was the coffin track. No doubt about it.
Way back, corpses would have been carried in, ceremonially, through the orchard. There was a long, flat, backless bench, probably the successor to generations of wooden benches on which the bearers had rested the coffins. The lych-gate at the front of the church had been a comparatively modern addition.
Jane looked towards the steeple and imagined what Lucy might have seen – might be seeing now: the churchyard like a circular clearing in the orchard. Perhaps there’d once been a circle of stones around where the steeple now soared.
Jane remembered the day Lucy had cut an apple in half and showed her the five-pointed star, the pentagram at the heart of every apple. An indestructible symbol of the paganism at the heart of Ledwardine. In those days – the days when she’d painted the Mondrian walls – Jane had seen paganism as the real religion, Christianity as a pointless distraction from the Middle East, Mum as misguided.
It didn’t seem as simple now. The church steeple was a powerful symbol and far more effective than a stone circle at indicating, from long distances, the alignment with Cole Hill. Now Jane felt – and arrangements like this underlined it – that paganism and Christianity had often walked together on the same straight path. She was sure that this was what Alfred Watkins had instinctively felt when archaeologists were slagging him off for including medieval churches in the otherwise Neolithic ley system.
Have I done the right thing? She still didn’t know.
Jane walked through the churchyard, past the south door and out through the lych-gate into the market place. Perhaps an old cross or an outlying marker stone might have stood here.
Across into the alley, through the broken gate and into the derelict orchard behind Church Street, past the hump of the burial mound, if that was what it was. And so to Coleman’s Meadow – the meadow of the earth-shaman – to Cole Hill, the sacred hill, the mother hill.
She felt choked up with emotion now, remembering the night she’d got drunk on cider with poor Colette and had started hallucinating in the orchard. Cider’s the blood of the orchard, Lucy had said later, and Jane could still hear her sharp headmistressy voice. It’s in your blood now. I felt at once that it had to be one or both of you… you and Merrily.
This had to be the right path.
Jane began to drift and, as on the night of Colette and the cider, could hardly feel the grass beneath her feet. When she stepped onto the ley it was as if she was floating on sunlit air-currents, and she saw Lucy waiting for her as she began to walk towards the steeple and the holy hill beyond.
‘Hi,’ Lucy said. ‘Are you Jane?’
Jane stood there, blinking. The woman wore not a poncho but a kind of denim smock with lots of pockets, and there was a square metal case at her feet.
‘Sally Ferriman. For the Guardian?’
‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Hi.’
‘You ready, Jane?’
Jane looked at Sally Ferriman, then up at Cole Hill, discovering that she had one of her own hands pressing down on top of her head as if she was trying to stop some part of it floating away.
‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘I think so.’
Merrily reached the church door and then turned back.
She wasn’t ready. She went back to the vicarage and sat in front of the list of people whom she needed to tell about the idea for a requiem on Sunday. Crosses against Mrs Cookman and Stella Cobham. She tried the number for Sonia Maloney’s parents: still no answer.
One more name on the list. She’d agonized about this one, had wondered whether to consult Syd Spicer – or even Bliss – about it first.
She rang Bliss’s mobile. Switched off, but he rang back within a minute from outside the building.
‘They’ve still got Loste, and they may make an application to hold on to him, but there’s been no charge. They may still be waiting for forensics. However… it doesn’t look good from his point of view. They now have a witness who’s identified Loste as someone seen conducting what may have been a transaction on the side of the Beacon with a black man in a woolly hat.’
‘Loste bought drugs from Wicklow?’
‘That’s what it looks like. Usual rules, of course, Merrily.’
‘Not a word to anyone.’
‘So,’ Bliss said, ‘what do you have for me?’
‘Erm… another question?’
‘Jesus, Merrily, I can’t believe how one-sided this relationship’s become.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. This probably isn’t something you can answer, anyway.’
‘Fair enough. I’ll see you around, then-’
‘It’s probably a Traffic matter.’
‘In that case, all the abuse I’ve thrown at Traffic over the years, no chance.’
‘It’s my Wychehill road accidents. I just – this is stupid – just want to be sure they actually happened as they were described to me. Or indeed happened at all. Loste had a crash that wasn’t reported to the police, so I can’t do anything about that. But there was a lorry driver supposed to have gone into the church wall.’
‘Name?’
‘No idea.’
‘Date?’
‘Can’t give you an exact… Never mind, it was just a thought.’
‘Merrily, even a brilliant investigator like myself…’
‘The only one where I do have a name, although I gather there was no charge in the end, so it may not be instantly accessible either… Stella Cobham? And it was early this month. Could you possibly get anything from that…?’
She heard the sound of grinding traffic and the gasp of air brakes.
‘Frannie?’
‘The doughnuts are on you, Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘Probably for the rest of your life.’
And she’d forgotten to ask him about the final name on the requiem list.
But then, why should she ask him? Or Spicer. Spicer had unequivocally opted out of the requiem, and she wasn’t a goddamn stoolie for the cops. Not officially, anyway.
Merrily switched on the computer to check the emails and, while it was booting up, stared at the phone. Should she?
Sod it. What was there to lose? She went into Yellow Pages for the number and then rang the Royal Oak at Wychehill and asked to speak to Mr Rajab Ali Khan.
Some guy said he wasn’t there, mostly he worked out of his offices in Worcester and Kidderminster, and what did she want and could he take a message?
Merrily said yes, he probably could. No hurry. She merely wanted to invite Mr Khan to a church service.
The emails came up. Piece of spam offering her guaranteed penis enlargement and – wow – one from Wychehill Rectory.
Dear Merrily
IN CONFIDENCE – you might find something here. Couldn’t scan it – too faded – so I’ve copied it, for speed. It’s in the parish records, a letter, dating back to 1926, apparently forwarded to Longworth, who seems to have preserved it as some kind of corroboration of his choice of site for Wychehill Church. I don’t know who it’s from or who he’s talking about – in fact, for all I know, it could be a forgery – but Winnie was certainly impressed, so I’m guessing one of them’s Elgar. Also note that Winnie changed the name of her house to Starlight Cottage.
Spicer hadn’t even signed the email. But then, what had she expected – love, Syd?
Merrily scrolled up the letter. It was something that he’d taken the trouble to send it.
My dear Sirius
How are you? We seem hardly to have spoken since the utterly devastating loss of poor Electra, and so I was delighted to receive your letter… and further delighted to confirm that your Hereford friend is absolutely right as regards the significance of the Wyche Hill site. My researches tell me this would be a most propitious place to build a church or temple. As we once discussed, there is a tradition of worship in the Malvern Hills long predating Christianity yet absorbed by the early Church, and also, as recorded in the Triads of Wales, a most inspiring, long-lost tradition of sacred music-making. It is my belief – and wonderful to think it could be so – that there may be no area of southern Britain more conducive to the creation and performance of music of the most exalted power than this. Your own work is surely ample testament to its extraordinary influence .
Please tell me if I can be of any further assistance to any of you, and I look forward to experiencing the church if ever it is built. But we must get together before that.
With every good wish,
Starlight
PS Some of my old, as Electra would say, ‘out of the world’ associates are inclined to think your friend’s interpretations of his remarkable discovery tend toward the prosaic, but I suppose his provincial background is a bit of a constraint!
That night, Jane went out with Eirion and Merrily went over to Lol’s. They set off to walk to Coleman’s Meadow, and she showed him the email.
‘If one of them’s Elgar, it’s probably going to be Sirius.’
It was a warm night, the northern sky still a shimmering electric blue. Lol said that the weather forecast had suggested tomorrow would be the hottest day of the year so far.
‘So Electra…?’
‘Would be Alice, who’d died some years earlier.’
‘Music of the most exalted power,’ Merrily said. ‘What does that say to you?’
‘I think it says, even with a Boswell guitar don’t get any ideas.’
Coleman’s Meadow was empty. Lol said there’d been Hereford cattle last time he was here, but now only a few rabbits bobbed around on the eastern fringe, by the thorn hedge.
The path through the middle of the meadow was strikingly evident, even among the shadows. Even when it disappeared through the gate and into the undergrowth, you could feel it burrowing like a live cable to light up the summit of Cole Hill, which, at nearly ten p.m., was ambered by an almost unearthly sunset afterglow.
‘What do you think?’ Lol said. ‘Worth saving?’