A Crown of Lights Read online

  ‘Jeeeeeeez!’ Robin tossed back his head and howled at the newborn moon. ‘I do not understand you! One minute I’m over reacting – which, OK, I do, I overreact sometimes, I confess – and this is some harmless old guy making his weary way home to his humble fireside... and the next, he’s like dumping ten pounds of Semtex or some shit—’

  ‘Just put it down, Robin.’

  Exasperated, Robin let the bag fall. It clumped solidly on the stone. Robin unlocked the back door.

  Betty waited for him to enter first. She wouldn’t touch the bag.

  It was knotted at the top. She watched Robin wrench it open. A sheet of folded notepaper fell out. He spread it out on the table and she read the type over his shoulder.

  Dear Mr and Mrs Thorogood,

  In the course of renovation work by the previous occupants of your house, this receptacle was found in a cavity in the wall beside the fireplace. The previous occupants preferred not to keep it and gave it away. It has been suggested you may wish to restore it to its proper place.

  With all good wishes,

  The Local People

  ‘ “The Local People”?’

  Robin let the typewritten note flutter to the tabletop. ‘All of them? The entire population of Old Hindwell got together to present the newcomers with a wooden box with...’ He lifted the hinged lid, ‘... some paper in it.’

  The box was of oak. It didn’t look all that old. Maybe a century, Betty thought. It was the size of a pencil box she’d had as a kid – narrow, coffin-shaped. You could probably fit it in the space left by a single extracted brick.

  She was glad there was only paper in there, not... well, bones or something. She’d never seriously thought of Semtex, only bones. Why would she think that? She found she was shivering slightly, so kept her red ski jacket on.

  Robin was excited, naturally: a mysterious wooden box left by a shadowy stranger, a cryptic note... major, major turn-on for him. She knew that within the next hour or so he’d have found the original hiding place of that box, if he had to pull the entire fireplace to pieces. He’d taken off his fleece and his mirrored fez. The warrior on the battlements had been replaced by the big schoolboy innocent.

  He flicked on all the kitchen lights – just dangling bulbs, as yet, which made the room look even starker than in daylight. They hadn’t done anything with this room so far. There was a Belfast sink and a cranky old Rayburn and, under the window, their pine dining table and chairs from the flat. The table was much too small for this kitchen; up against the wall, under a window full of the day’s end, it looked like... well, an altar. For which this was not the correct place – and anyway, Betty was not yet sure she wanted an altar in the house. Part of the reason for finding a rural hideaway was to consider her own future, which – soon she’d have to confess to Robin – might not involve the Craft.

  ‘The paper looks old,’ Robin said. ‘Well... the ink went brown.’

  ‘Gosh, Rob, that must date it back to... oh, arguably pre-1980.’

  He gave her one of those looks which said: Why have you no basic romance in you any more?

  Which wasn’t true. She simply felt you should distinguish between true insight and passing impressions, between fleeting sensations and real feelings.

  The basic feeling she had – especially since her sense of the praying man in the church – was one of severe unease. She would rather the box had not been delivered. She wished she didn’t have to know what was inside it.

  Robin put the paper, still folded, on the table and just looked at it, not touching. Experiencing the moment, the hereness, the nowness.

  And the disapproval of his lady.

  All right, he’d happily concede that he loved all of this: the textures of twilight, those cuspy, numinous nearnesses. He’d agree that he didn’t like things to be over-bright and clear cut; that he wanted a foot in two countries – to feel obliquely linked to the old worlds.

  And what was so wrong with that? He looked at the wild and golden lady who should be Rhiannon or Artemis or Titania but insisted on being called the ultimately prosaic Betty (this perverse need to appear ordinary). She knew what he needed – that he didn’t want too many mysteries explained, didn’t care to know precisely what ghosts were. Nor did he want the parallel world of faerie all mapped out like the London Underground. It was the gossamer trappings and wrappings that had given him a profession and a good living. He was Robin Thorogood: illustrator, seducer of souls, guardian of the softly lit doorways.

  The box, then... Well, sure, the box had been more interesting unopened. Unless the paper inside was a treasure map.

  He pushed it towards Betty. ‘You wanna check this out?’

  She shook her head. She wouldn’t go near it. Robin rolled his eyes and picked up the paper. It fell open like a fan.

  ‘Well, it’s handwritten.’ He spread it flat on the tabletop.

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ Betty said. ‘You can fake all kinds of stuff with computers and scanners and paintboxes. You do it all the time.’

  ‘OK, so it’s a scam. Kirk Blackmore rigged it.’

  ‘If it was Kirk Blackmore,’ Betty said, ‘the box would have ludicrous runes carved all over it and when you opened it, there’d be clouds of dry ice.’

  ‘I guess. Oh no.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It’s some goddamn religious crap. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses or one of those chain letters?’

  ‘OK, let me see.’ Betty came round and peered reluctantly at the browned ink. ‘ “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen, amen, amen...” Amen three times.’

  ‘Dogmatic.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Betty read on in silence, not touching the paper. She was standing directly under one of the dangling light-bulbs, so her hair was like a winter harvest. Robin loved that her hair seemed to have life of its own.

  When she stepped away, she swallowed.

  He said hoarsely, ‘What?’

  ‘Read.’

  ‘Poison pen?’

  She shook her head and walked away toward the rumbling old Rayburn stove.

  Robin bent over the document. Some of it was in Latin, which he couldn’t understand. But there was a row of symbols, which excited him at once.

  Underneath, the words in English began. Some of them he couldn’t figure out. The meaning, however, was plain.

  In the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost Amen Amen Amen...

  O Lord, Jesus Christ Saviour Salvator I beseech the salvation of all who dwell within from witchcraft and from the power of all evil men or women or spirits or wizards or hardness of heart Amen Amen Amen... Dei nunce... Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen.

  By Jehovah, Jehovah and by the Ineffable Names 17317... Lord Jehovah... and so by the virtue of these Names Holy Names may all grief and dolor and all diseases depart from the dwellers herein and their cows and their horses and their sheep and their pigs and poultry without any molestation. By the power of our Lord Jesus Christ Amen Amen... Elohim... Emmanuel...

  Finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might that we may overcome all witches spells and Inchantment or the power of Satan. Lord Jesus deliver them this day – April, 1852.

  Robin sat down. He tried to smile, for Betty’s sake and because, in one way, it was just so ironic.

  But he couldn’t manage a smile; he’d have to work on that. Because this was a joke, wasn’t it? It could actually be from Kirk Blackmore or one of the other authors, or Al Delaney, the art director at Talisman. They all knew he was moving house, and the new address: St Michael’s Farm, Old Hindwell, Radnorshire.

  But this hadn’t arrived in the mail. And also, as Betty had pointed out, if it had been from any of those guys it would have been a whole lot more extreme – creepier, more Gothic, less homespun. And dated much further back than 1852.

  No, it was more likely to be from those it said it was from.

  The Local People – whatever that meant.

  Truth was they
hadn’t yet encountered any local local people, outside of the wood guy and Greg Starkey, the London-born landlord at the pub where they used to lunch when they were bringing stuff to the farm, and whose wife had come on to Robin one time.

  Betty had her back to the Rayburn for warmth and comfort. Robin moved over to join her. He also, for that moment, felt isolated and exposed.

  ‘I don’t get this,’ he said. ‘How could anyone here possibly know about us?’

  2

  Livenight

  THERE WERE FOUR of them in the hospital cubicle: Gomer and Minnie, and Merrily Watkins... and death.

  Death with a small ‘d’. No angel tonight.

  Merrily was anguished and furious at the suddenness of this occurrence, and the timing – Gomer and Minnie’s wedding anniversary, their sixth.

  Cheap, black joke. Unworthy of You.

  ‘Indigestion...’ Gomer was squeezing his flat cap with both hands, as if wringing out a wet sponge, and staring in disbelief at the tubes and the monitor with that ominous wavy white line from a thousand overstressed hospital dramas. ‘It’s just indigestion, her says. Like, if she said it enough times that’s what it’d be, see? Always works, my Min reckons. You tells the old body what’s wrong, you don’t take no shit – pardon me, vicar.’

  The grey-curtained cubicle was attached to Intensive Care. Minnie’s eyes were closed, her breathing hollow and somehow detached. Merrily had heard breathing like this before, and it made her mouth go dry with trepidation.

  It’s rather a bad one, the ward sister had murmured. You need to prepare him.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ Merrily plucked at the sleeve of Gomer’s multi-patched tweed jacket.

  She thought he glanced at her reproachfully as they left the room – as though she had the power to intercede with God, call in a favour. And then, from out in the main ward, he looked back once at Minnie, and his expression made Merrily blink and turn away.

  Gomer and Minnie: sixty-somethings when they got married, the Midlands widow and the little, wild Welsh-borderer. It was love, though Gomer would never have used the word. Equally, he’d never have given up the single life for mere companionship – he could get that from his JCB and his bulldozer.

  He and Merrily walked out of the old county hospital and past the building site for a big new one – a mad place to put it, everyone was saying; there’d be next to no parking space except for consultants and administrators; even the nurses would have to hike all the way to the multi-storey at night. In pairs, presumably, with bricks in their bags.

  Merrily felt angry at the crassness of everybody: the health authority and its inadequate bed quota, the city planners who seemed bent on gridlocking Hereford by 2005 – and God, for letting Minnie Parry succumb to a severe heart attack during the late afternoon of her sixth wedding anniversary.

  It was probably the first time Gomer had ever phoned Merrily – their bungalow being only a few minutes’ walk away. It had happened less than two hours ago, while Merrily was bending to light the fire in the vicarage sitting room, expecting Jane home soon. Gomer had already sent for an ambulance.

  When Merrily arrived, Minnie was seated on the edge of the sofa, pale and sweating and breathless. Yow mustn’t... go bothering about me, my duck, I’ve been through... worse than this. The TV guide lay next to her on a cushion. An iced sponge cake sat on a coffee table in front of the open fire. The fire was roaring with life. Two cups of tea had gone cold.

  Merrily bit her lip, pushing her knuckles hard into the pockets of her coat – Jane’s old school duffel, snatched from the newel post as Merrily was rushing out of the house.

  They now crossed the bus station towards Commercial Road, where shops were closing for the night and most of the sky was a deep, blackening rust. Gomer’s little round glasses were frantic with city light. He was urgently reminiscing, throwing up a wall of vivid memories against the encroaching dark – telling Merrily about the night he’d first courted Minnie while they were crunching through fields and woodland in his big JCB. Merrily wondered if he was fantasizing, because it was surely Minnie who’d forced Gomer’s retirement from the plant hire business; she hated those diggers.

  ‘... a few spare pounds on her, sure to be. Had the ole warning from the doc about that bloody collateral. But everybody gets that, ennit?’

  Gomer shuffled, panting, to a stop at the zebra crossing in Commercial Road. Merrily smiled faintly. ‘Cholesterol. Yes, everybody gets that.’

  Gomer snatched off his cap. His hair was standing up like a small white lavatory brush.

  ‘Her’s gonner die! Her’s gonner bloody well snuff it on me!’

  ‘Gomer, let’s just keep praying.’

  How trite did that sound? Merrily closed her eyes for a second and prayed also for credible words of comfort.

  In the window of a nearby electrical shop, all the lights went out.

  ‘Ar,’ said Gomer dismally.

  Through the hole-in-its-silencer roar of Eirion’s departing car came the sound of the phone. Jane danced into Mum’s grim scullery-office.

  The light in here was meagre and cold, and a leafless climbing rose scraped at the small window like fingernails. But Jane was smiling, warm and light inside and, like, up there. Up there with the broken weathercock on the church steeple.

  She had to sit down, a quivering in her chest. She remembered a tarot reader, called Angela, who had said to her, You will have two serious lovers before the age of twenty.

  As she put out a hand for the phone, it stopped ringing. If Mum had gone out, why wasn’t the answering machine on? Where was Mum? Jane switched on the desk lamp, to reveal a paperback New Testament beside a newspaper cutting about the rural drug trade. The sermon pad had scribbles and blobs and desperate doodles. But there was no note for her.

  Jane shrugged then sat at the desk and conjured up Eirion. Who wasn’t conventionally good-looking. Well, actually, he wasn’t good-looking at all, in some lights, and kind of stocky. And yet... OK, it was the smile. You could get away with a lot if you had a good smile, but it was important to ration it. Bring it out too often and it became like totally inane and after a while it stopped reaching the eyes, which showed insincerity. Jane sat and replayed Eirion’s smile in slow motion; it was a good one, it always started in the eyes.

  Eirion? The name remained a problem. Basically, too much like Irene. Didn’t the Welsh have some totally stupid names for men? Dilwyn – that was another. Welsh women’s names, on the other hand, were cool: Angharad, Sian, Rhiannon.

  He was certainly trying hard, though. Like, no way had he ‘just happened to be passing’ Jane’s school at chucking-out time. He’d obviously slipped away early from the Cathedral School in Hereford – through some kind of upper-sixth privilege – and raced his ancient heap nine or ten miles to Moorfield High before the buses got in. Claiming he’d had to deliver an aunt’s birthday present, and Ledwardine was on his way home. Total bullshit.

  And the journey to Ledwardine... Eirion had really spun that out. Having to go slow, he said, because he didn’t want the hole in his exhaust to get any bigger. In the end, the bus would’ve been quicker.

  But then, as Jane was climbing out of his car outside the vicarage, he’d mumbled, ‘Maybe I could call you sometime?’

  Which, OK, Jane Austen could have scripted better.

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ she’d said, cool, understated. Managing to control the burgeoning grin until she’d made it almost to the side door of the vicarage and Eirion was driving away on his manky silencer.

  The phone went again. Mum? Had to be. Jane grabbed at it.

  ‘Ledwardine Vicarage, how may we help you? If you wish to book a wedding, press three. To pledge a ten-thousand-pound donation to the steeple fund, press six.’

  ‘Is that the Reverend Watkins?’

  Woman’s voice, and not local. Not Sophie at the office. And not Mum being smart. Uh-oh.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s not available right now,’ Jane said. ‘I’m sor
ry.’

  ‘When will she be available?’

  The woman sounding a touch querulous, but nothing threatening: there was this deadly MOR computer music in the background, plus non-ecclesiastical office noise. Ten to one, some time-wasting double-glazing crap, or maybe the Church Times looking for next week’s Page Three Clerical Temptress for dirty old canons to pin up in their vestries.

  ‘I should try her secretary at the Bishpal tomorrow,’ Jane said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The Bishop’s Palace, in Hereford. If you ask for Sophie Hill...’

  Most of the time it was a question of protecting Mum from herself. If you were a male vicar you could safely do lofty and remote – part of the tradition. But an uncooperative female priest was considered a snotty bitch.

  ‘Look.’ A bit ratty now. ‘It is important.’

  ‘Also important she doesn’t die of some stress-related condition. I mean, like, important for me. Don’t imagine you’d have to go off and live with your right-wing grandmother in Cheltenham. Who are you, anyway?’

  Could almost hear the woman counting one... two... three... through gritted teeth.

  ‘My name’s Tania Beauman, from the Livenight television programme in Birmingham.’

  Oh, hey! ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously,’ Tania Beauman said grimly.

  Jane was, like, horribly impressed. Jane had seen Livenight four times. Livenight was such total crap and below the intelligence threshold of a cockroach, but compulsive viewing, oh yeah.

  ‘Livenight?’ Jane said.

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Where you have the wife in the middle and the husband on one side and the toyboy lover on the other, and about three minutes to midnight one finally gets stirred up enough to call the other one a motherfucker, and then fights are breaking out in the audience, and the presenter looks really shocked although you know he’s secretly delighted because it’ll all be in the Sun again. That Livenight?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tania said tightly.

  ‘You want her on the programme?’