The Fever of the World, page 15
‘What happened to them? Did they just fade away?’
‘No. I did. I don’t actually remember backing away from them, until I found myself sitting there, where you’re sitting, with my ears kind of popping. Thinking I must have been having a mild stroke or a brain haemorrhage or something. That’s what I was afraid of. We’re no longer brought up to be actually scared of the supernatural, are we, as much as what our own bodies or our minds are doing to us, medically?’
‘I’ve heard that.’ Merrily realized she was now more than half believing Maya. ‘What did Arlo Ripley say? You did tell him everything?’
‘He was… the word would be “sympathetic”, but I’m not sure he believed me. He asked if I wanted him to pray with me. I said I was uncomfortable with all that, and he said…’
She stopped speaking.
‘He said what?’
‘He said…’ Maya Madden looked embarrassed, set down the stone at her feet. ‘He asked how I thought William Wordsworth would feel, and I said, I thought he’d be slightly uncomfortable about it.’
Maya leaned back, half-smiling. She stood up, moved to a cupboard on the wall behind Merrily, opened it and backed away, holding a picture in a pine frame.
‘Of course that would depend on when he was asked. If it was around the time he was in this area, he’d be less comfortable about accepting a blessing from you because – I’m sorry – as a young man, he didn’t do God.’
‘Who did he do?’
‘Nature,’ Maya said. ‘He did Nature.’
‘Mother Nature? We all do her, in our own ways.’
‘He didn’t mention Nature as maternal, but I do think he saw her as female.’
Merrily said, ‘My… daughter goes that way. Nature as a female deity. She liked Wordsworth more when she saw him as a possible pagan, paying homage to an ancient goddess.’
‘A druid, even?’ Maya opened her arms. ‘In an early version of The Prelude, the long poem which charts the development of Wordsworth’s poetic mind, he refers to himself as a youthful druid taught primeval mysteries in shady groves. He got rid of that opinion later, but when he was a young man it seemed to suit his purposes.’
‘Jane would lead you down these lanes and point out the actual shady groves where druids might have gathered,’ Merrily said. ‘She, erm… she accepts paganism. The kind that doesn’t harm anybody. I hope.’
‘But you’re—’
Merrily felt herself blush.
‘We’ve worked it out between us… to an extent. Things were a bit fraught for a while, when she was younger. But we came to an understanding.’
Why did she have to keep explaining this to people? Surely, all daughters gave you problems to overcome.
‘I could probably do that, too,’ Maya said. ‘Find you some druid groves. This area in fact may be more druidic than Wordsworth’s native Westmorland. The wooded hill up there – the Doward – was a significant ritual centre in the Dark Ages. With all these tight little lanes and ancient earthworks, I suppose it remains slightly sinister. And I want to convey that in my programme on Wordsworth at this crucial point in his life.’
‘Crucial, why?’
‘All the experts agree that it was the time when he was writing his most important work. What was empowering him then? A number of people have asked that in various books, but this will be the first time the connection has really been made visually – on TV. I’m excited. And I can show you why.’
She held the framed photo in front of Merrily. It was actually a reproduced engraving, a famous portrait of Wordsworth as a young man, with thin face and thinning hair. He was wearing a double-breasted jacket of the kind worn by some of the more stylish rock musicians in the 1960s.
‘Are you going to bring him alive with an actor?’ Merrily asked.
‘Mmm… it’s not really my decision.’ Maya lowered the picture. ‘Depends on what kind of budget we have. A drama-documentary would probably get us a better spot for the programme. We have some decisions to make… and time to make them.’
‘With the pandemic?’
‘It’s on hold, of course. I’m using the time to plan a holding programme.’
‘And deal with your… ?’
‘Manifestation. How do you think it should be approached?’
‘Depends on how much you believe,’ Merrily said.
Maya looked uncertain.
‘You mean if I believe I genuinely saw something…?’
‘And – perhaps more importantly – if you believe there’s some way you can deal with it. Possibly by using someone like me.’
‘What do you feel?’
Merrily sighed, decided to be honest.
‘I’m… not at my best, I have to say. A friend appears to have virus and may have to be taken into hospital, and I spent a lot of time with her yesterday. I feel all right, but…’
‘Get yourself tested.’
‘Yes. I’d better do that. And my daughter… and some other people.’
Then she remembered what Huw Owen often said about not leaving a possibly haunted house without doing something and offered Maya a blessing. Routine. Wasn’t it?
Then she had a call on her mobile from the Archdeacon, and it wasn’t.
27
Burial at sea
SHE LOOKED DOWNRIVER, towards a distant frill of rapids and then up at the steamy sky and the crag that reared behind the village like a chimney stack, taller than any church steeple and… oh bugger.
…this was the wrong place. This was surely Symonds Yat East and didn’t have an obvious church. The minor road from Goodrich, where she’d been a few days ago, crossed a single-track metal-caged bridge that put Merrily in mind of some rural part of the USA. But this was British rich folks’ country: pricey farmhouses projecting from the wooded hills rising in green tiers from a river racing towards weirs and cliffs and heart-stopping moments of pure spectacle. The river drew you into all that quite gently, the road diving into the trees, and a tight bend, and then the riverside village was below her under an emboldened summery sun.
This was the place where English sightseeing was born in the eighteenth century, according to Sophie.
In hospital with the virus? Which, you kept hearing – oh God – tended to have lethal designs on people of Mrs Hill’s age. The doctors were convinced she needed to be within signing-in distance of Intensive Care.
There was a pub, the Saracen’s Head, then a car park next to a place where you could hire canoes, and the hand-ferrie where you could cross the water in a flat-bottomed boat with the help of a pulley and a wire.
It was all here, only this was Symonds Yat East and if you were in a car, it was probably a dead-end. And it didn’t have a church. Hell, she knew that. She needed Symonds Yat West, which was, as she recalled, a whole lot different.
Merrily slowed the Freelander to stalling-point.
Reversing into a cramped parking area, she sent it crawling back up to the bridge and then – no option, this time – onto the A40, the rumbling river of metal that brought tourists here at speed from the motorway network, dragged urban commerce through once-tranquil countryside and sliced the parish of Whitchurch brutally in two. The dual carriageway had also introduced urban ways. Merrily remembered reading about armed robbers holding up the High Noon services – with a name like that, you could be accused of inviting it – before burning rubber on the A40 and not getting caught.
If you didn’t have a boat, a couple of minutes in the blast of traffic seemed to be the way into Symonds Yat West, where cultures continued to collide and Siân Callaghan-Clarke had said she’d be waiting.
‘The church of St Dubricius at Whitchurch. Do you know it?’
‘Erm… no.’
‘It’ll only take you a few minutes to get there.’
Merrily slowed. In the West, she saw an ancient inn and then a holiday caravan park, now entering its last weeks of out-of-season silence before this village was turned into Herefordshire’s little Blackpool with its riverside bar and an amusement hall rattling with rides and gaming machines and rows of neon lights singeing the sky. As spring set in, a big wheel known as the Wye Eye would be erected to offer panoramic views of the valley. Until then, Symonds Yat West in the parish of Whitchurch would be sunk into its winter coma: flat, grey and mainly deserted. A small sign directed her away from the ranked caravans and into a narrow, tree-darkened lane. It led, sooner than expected, to a cluster of trees and a small church with a compact bell-tower, built of local stone and sitting like a fledgling cygnet at the river’s edge.
The church of St Dubricius had a history close to legend, as she’d just read on her phone. Dubricius was the illegitimate son of the daughter of Peibio, the king of the early medieval Welsh kingdom of Ergyng. When he knew she was pregnant, his grandfather threw his mother into the Wye but she somehow escaped drowning, the unborn baby, too.
Dubricius was eventually born in Madley, the other side of Hereford. He and his mother were somehow reconciled with Peibio and the child became precociously brilliant. By the time he’d grown up he was already known as a scholar throughout Britain. Dubricius founded local monasteries, became the teacher of Welsh future saints, healed the sick through the laying on of hands and was appointed Bishop of Ergyng. At the end of his distinguished career, he retired to the sacred Bardsey Island in North Wales where, like many other saints, he was eventually buried, before his body was transferred to Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff in 1120. According to legend, he’d crowned King Arthur who himself only existed according to legend.
If this was Dubricius’s main church, appropriately alongside the River Wye, was this where his pregnant mother was said to have been thrown in? The crude barbarity of it came home to Merrily for the first time, standing between her car and the Archdeacon’s red Mazda, empty and the only other vehicle in the church’s small parking area.
‘Merrily…’ Siân Callaghan-Clarke walked down from the puddled church porch, pulling on her cloche hat. ‘I can’t get in, but the churchwarden told me the worst on the phone.’
‘You’re saying it’s had a flood?’
Must have read about it in the Hereford Times, but there’d been no real relevance then.
‘Worst in two hundred years,’ Siân said. ‘Won’t be back in use for several months. That’s why I wanted you to read the history.’
‘Legend, surely?’
‘In this area, it’s all the same. History doesn’t go away.’
‘Let’s not overreact.’
‘Overreact?’ Siân spun to face Merrily. ‘Did that come from you?’
Lines in her face had suddenly deepened. As if to hold water, Merrily thought, saying nothing. She felt nervous, wondered what was coming.
‘I realize that what I’m asking is irregular and possibly short-notice,’ the Archdeacon said. ‘Consider it a favour. These are not normal times, as we all keep saying…’
‘Erm, does whatever it is involve breaking the lockdown?’
‘Like all services that can’t be postponed, it will be taking place outside the church. Because of the virus restrictions, there’ll only be a handful of people attending. So, no, it won’t be breaking the lockdown. I hope.’
‘I… don’t understand.’ Merrily saw that Siân Callaghan-Clarke was dressed for work – not her current work, not a priest, more like the barrister she used to be.
‘The funeral’s next week. It would have been the biggest funeral this year in the diocese,’ she said. ‘But not now, with attendances limited to a handful of people, even in the countryside… and that includes a TV crew…’
Merrily backed away. TV…?
‘They’ll probably want just a short clip of video. He wasn’t that famous outside the area.’
‘Is this Peter Portis, the climber?’
‘It is.’
‘So why are you telling me?’
‘There might eventually be a memorial service,’ Siân said. ‘When this pandemic is out of the way. You’ll just have a short service at the graveside here with about half a dozen people.’
‘Me? You want me do the funeral? I didn’t know him.’
‘Merrily, you’re discreet and efficient. And you know the background.’
‘No, I don’t!’
There was nobody else here. No movement, no voices, no traffic sounds, although the A40 wasn’t too far away. The houses nearby were probably holiday homes, empty. The Archdeacon leaned against the car door and lowered her voice.
‘The funeral would’ve been conducted here by Arlo Ripley. Maya Madden will tell you why it won’t now be him. Why he’ll be leaving this parish, quite abruptly.’
‘He’s leaving?’
‘I wanted you to hear it first from Maya.’
‘Maya?’
‘They’ll be working together when Arlo plays the part of William Wordsworth in her forthcoming TV production.’
‘What?’
Siân frowned.
‘It’s not a conspiracy, Merrily. But I think we’d both prefer to see him resume his acting career. Which means he’ll be leaving the Church quite quickly – which the pandemic will help. If we don’t want a mass of press attention, it has to be done quickly and quietly.’
Siân looked around, patting her coat, as if in need of a cigarette.
‘Personally, I just want him out of this diocese, but Maya’s more specific. Very much wants him as her William Wordsworth – simply because he’s perfect for the part. I’m not supposed to know this, but she’s been after him since the first time she saw him in the next parish.’
‘Which she’s now admitting?’
‘If she gets him, I suspect his career will soar and hers will… progress. And I myself… well, I shall feel a lot safer with what I know.’
Merrily said nothing. Felt she was in the middle of something that was suddenly drawing several unlikely people together.
The Archdeacon said, ‘I’m also aware – and this troubles me considerably, even though my role in deliverance has receded – that the position of diocesan exorcist no longer exists for this bishop. And your only hope of survival here is for him to move out. Am I making sense?’
Unexpectedly she was, even if you accepted that the Welsh border was one of the few areas where deliverance, in the old sense, still appeared relevant.
‘With the pandemic closing in,’ Siân said, ‘it’s difficult for any major decisions to be taken and followed through. At the moment, you’re the only person I can trust to quietly relieve the Rev. Ripley until it’s too late for the Bishop to intervene. The funeral has been arranged for next Wednesday, late afternoon.’
Tap-tap. The ghost-briar in Merrily’s head unaccountably sped up as another vehicle pulled into the car park, pulling a trailer carrying a cream canoe.
*
‘Worshippers used to arrive by boat,’ Adrian Fenn, the churchwarden, said. ‘Essential in the days when flooding was almost routine.
‘Even today, when the churchyard gets swallowed by the river, a funeral can be like a burial at sea.’
He was fresh-faced, with springy white hair, and, as he told Merrily, two canoes. He pointed to the grassy bank, which was neatly aligned with the silvery River Wye. He said he thought Peter Portis would have liked the idea of the river enlivening his last resting place.
They were standing outside the church porch at the foot of a preaching cross. The tufted grass around it looked squashy but not too flooded to cross.
‘The service will take place around the prepared grave, close to the Wye,’ Adrian Fenn said. ‘They want to complete it fairly quickly. There could be more floodwater coming down, and they won’t change the grave. Peter was very protective about the risk element. Estate agents are supposed to be keen on more and more development, but he relished the sense of danger here. Loved the rocks and the rapids, if not the, ah, candyfloss side.’
‘This is where the word “picturesque” was first coined,’ the Archdeacon said. ‘But it didn’t mean chocolate-box in those days, it meant awe-inspiring.’
Adrian Fenn sandwiched the view between his arms as if he was accepting control of it.
‘Peter liked the valley to be respected, not treated as a sideshow. Said it was a place to measure yourself against, physically and, ah…’
‘Spiritually?’ Merrily said.
‘He did say that it challenged the spirit, but I’m inclined to think he meant that in an endurance sense.’
It seemed he knew the Archdeacon. He presented Merrily with an envelope.
‘Copies of press reports about Peter Portis’s climbing history.’ He turned and pointed at a hill that was like a shadow on the sky beyond the village of Symonds Yat West. ‘He lived privately up there, near the Seven Sisters. But his attitude wasn’t just a not-in-my-backyard thing. He campaigned – sometimes behind the scenes – to prevent some of the more expensive housing projects, while supporting economic new housing for first-time buyers. He was well-liked for that, locally. And, of course, respected as a sportsman.’
‘How long had you known him?’ Siân asked.
‘Since my wife and I came here. More than three years ago. Peter had always been a generous patron of this church. He…’ a hesitant chuckle… ‘he offered to give me basic climbing lessons. Said that would put me in touch with the area – hauling oneself up to crevices known only to peregrine falcons. Had to admit I just didn’t have the head for it. I said would canoeing do? And he laughed and said it was the next best option.’
In the past few minutes two or three canoeists had gone gliding past, glimpsed between trees and bushes, the only sign of where the churchyard ended and the river began.
‘He knew I wanted to be useful to the area,’ Adrian Fenn was saying. ‘I’d always wanted to retire while still physically fit enough to make a meaningful contribution. I was honoured to be asked to be churchwarden… feeling I could really help, as a former chartered accountant.’
