The Smile of a Ghost (Merrily Watkins 7), page 41
‘Famous viewpoint,’ Merrily said, ‘I’d guess.’
‘Spectacular. See for miles. But it’s a long old haul – couple of hundred steps, and it seems like more. Bell said would someone like to go up with her? Nancy said, no, thanks, once was enough, and her legs ached for days afterwards. Susannah wasn’t particularly interested either, so I said – because, I suppose, I didn’t want her to think I was an old man – I said, Aye, I’ll go. I’ll go up with you.’
George turned his back on the door. He said the steps were very narrow and twisty, so it was necessary to go up in single file. There was a rope that you could hold on to, to help pull yourself up.
Bell went first. You can catch me if I fall, George, she said.
‘She didn’t fall. She was very light on her feet.’
‘Oh yes.’ Merrily recalled the stage act – split black skirts, bare feet.
‘I tried to leave a bit of space between us, see, but when you’re on a tight spiral the person in front’s apt to disappear around a bend. You know what I mean?’
‘Mmm.’ Vicars knew about church spirals.
‘So, three or four times, Bell would come to a sudden stop on a bend, and I’d go bumping up against her. Which was embarrassing for me, but she’d just laugh. That laugh that she has, far back in her throat.’
George wouldn’t look at Merrily while he was talking. His gaze was raised to the Palmers’ window, as if he was wishing he could sail away to the Holy Land or anywhere. Merrily felt that the closer George’s story took them to the top of the tower, the more it was plummeting to the bottom of his own deepest well.
He’d refused to tell her about this in the street, insisted on coming into the church, knowing it was about to close for the night, as if it was part of his penance to unload it all before God and a woman young enough to be his daughter, who also happened to be an ordained priest.
George in purgatory.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘when we finally emerged at the top, Bell starts dancing around, with her arms thrown out. Well… there’s not much room up there – big sort of pyramid coming out the middle with the weathercock sticking out the top.’
Such a proud cock, Bell had said and giggled outrageously, the sleeves of her dress rippling up her arms.
George’s half-shadowed face was blushing a deeper red than King Edward’s footstool in the Palmers’ window as he described how he’d turned away from the woman and gone to look out at the view to the west, doing a bit of a commentary.
Over there in the west, behind those hills, that’s towards Knighton, see, which is in Radnorshire – and that’s Wales. Not many folks know that Ludlow, although it’s in England, used to be the main administrative centre for Wales – the military capital.’
When he’d stopped talking, there had been no sound from behind him, no rustling of her papery frock. When he turned, she was nowhere in sight. Ludlow was spread out far below them, like a model village, and his heart had lurched and he’d shouted, in alarm, Bell!
And heard her laughing again, a dry, brittle, chattering sound. Looking down in horror to see her coiled on the stones at his feet, those arms and hands weaving in and out of his legs like white serpents.
‘Serpents,’ George spat.
There was an inviting-looking gift shop at the foot of the vast nave, with cards and all the books and pamphlets about Ludlow and its church. Merrily went to stand there while George stood in the nearest aisle, with his feet together and his head hanging down, like a victim of self-crucifixion.
Of course, it went without saying that he’d never behaved like that in his life before, not even when he was a young man, before he’d been married to Nancy.
Well, no.
George was… the epitome of Old Ludlow… An honourable man. Conservative in every conceivable sense of the word.
‘And on the church.’ A bony hand tightening on a pew end. ‘Of all places, on the tower itself, where…’
Where nobody could see them but God.
As if they were putting on a show for Him.
‘On the Monday,’ George said. ‘I formally handed in my resignation as senior churchwarden. Said I was not able to perform the duties as assiduously as was necessary, due to my impending mayoral year. And this, I’m afraid, is the first time I’ve been in here since, apart from services. And even then I feel dirty… soiled. Every Sunday, soiled, a disgrace.’
‘I’m the first person you’ve told?’
‘Other than in my prayers.’
Merrily didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t exactly a huge surprise. There had to have been something. She wondered if Susannah had actually known, from Bell, or if she’d just suspected.
‘George,’ she said. ‘Bell… well, she’s a bit of an expert at this sort of thing. Knows how to…’
‘There can be no excuse!’ George’s knuckles shone like marbles. ‘If I hadn’t already been mayor-elect I’d have turned that down as well.’
‘But surely you realize it was…’
But how could he? How much could he possibly have known or even surmised about Bell’s behaviour?
Not for her to explain to him the probable truth about why Belladonna had seduced him… here…
… That the tower was the spindle in the centre of the wheel of Ludlow and he was its human equivalent. Bell gathering in all her magic, her charisma, and spraying it out in what Jon Scole had called blue sparks. Spraying her sparks all over poor George Lackland, first citizen.
Sympathetic magic, Huw Owen had said. All magic’s sympathetic magic.
‘George…’ Merrily moved away from the table of books. ‘Erm… it was… just the once, wasn’t it?’
George sprang away from the pew. ‘Good God, Mrs Watkins, what do you take me for?’
‘A bloke, George.’ She smiled. ‘You’re just a bloke.’
And, for all his local-government guile, a very naive bloke, even for his generation. He hadn’t seen it coming: the innocent Edwardian dress, the childlike glee at being in his town. And then his sudden exposure, on the top of his world, to this scented siren from another planet.
And what else was there besides the guilt and the shame at betraying his wife, his church, his status and his town? Had he also fallen – hopelessly, disgracefully, unforgivably – just a little in love with Mrs Pepper?
Or maybe more than a little. Oh God, yes.
I don’t go looking for her, Mrs Watkins.
‘You can’t bear to be near her, can you, George?’ she said gently.
George walked out of the aisle, his back to the high altar.
A whisper: ‘Can’t bear to see her.’ It seemed to spiral like smoke to the timbered ceiling.
The prostitutes in this town… they knows their place. And you will agree that place is not, for instance, St Leonard’s graveyard.
Could be that nothing of that nature had ever occurred in St Leonard’s graveyard. George, perhaps, had been expanding Bell’s myth for his own reasons. And always living in fear of it coming out.
‘You want her to leave.’
‘I need her to leave,’ he said. ‘She…’
Was still possessing him, like a dark spirit.
And his town as well. Did he know that?
George and Bell fighting for possession of the essence of Ludlow.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘Yes, we better had.’ Maybe Lol would be waiting.
He stepped back for her to go past. She wanted to do something vaguely priestly, if it was only patting him on the shoulder, but that would make him freeze up. So she just walked out.
As he stepped down after locking the church, an elderly man was walking up from the direction of the old college, with a German shepherd on a lead, the narrow street a valley of shadows around him.
‘Can’t hardly credit it, can you, George?’
George spun round. ‘Oh… Tom.’
‘Half of them’s touched, you ask me. Youngsters. Drugs, most likely. You ask me, this girl in the castle’s on drugs. That’s what they’re saying about the other one.’
‘Yes,’ George said. ‘I… I’ve heard that, too. Do you know Mrs Watkins, from the diocese? This is Mr Tom Pritchard. Has the hardware shop just down from us.’
‘Got broke into couple of months ago,’ Tom said severely, to Merrily. ‘Drugs again, I reckon. I hears a noise now, I don’t think twice, I sends this young feller in first.’ He patted the dog. ‘Suppose I’ll get sued if one of ’em gets bit, but I reckon I’ll risk it. Gotter protect yourself, ennit?’ He looked up at the Mayor. ‘Town’s not what it was, George. Our shop’s opened every morning, bar Sundays and Christmas, since the War, come snow, flood, flu, you name it. That boy gets drunk of a night, shop’s shut all day.’
‘What’s that, Tom?’ George pocketed the bunch of church keys.
‘Scole. Calls himself a shopkeeper. Makes you laugh.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Merrily said. ‘Jon Scole’s shop’s not been opened all day?’
‘They got too much money, these days, that’s the thing.’ Tom tugged on the lead. ‘Come on, Tyson.’
‘They’re… always called Tyson, aren’t they?’ Merrily said, as Tom disappeared into the alley to the Buttercross.
Her gaze met George’s.
‘We better take a look,’ George said.
44
Lab Rat
STANDING WITH HIS back to the sandstone, he might have been a Norman baron, his beard like fine chain mail around his face. A baron addressing a serf. Barons, Lol imagined, would seldom actually look at serfs.
And then, when the name of Lord Shipston came out, Saltash did look at him. Really looked at him, for all of a second: at the little round glasses, the too-long hair, the sweatshirt from some minor rural service industry.
Enough for Saltash to avert his eyes, having dismissed him, Lol guessed. Having chosen to forget that Lord Shipston had ever been mentioned, because the one-second inspection had told him that this couldn’t be a contest.
‘I don’t think I know you at all, do I?’ Saltash said.
The Inner Bailey, enclosed in stone, was more extensive than a prison exercise yard but, with police on the gate, just as secure. And it reminded Lol of the psychiatric hospital, although that had been Victorian. But Victorian Gothic, and so just as dominating as the castle, with one tower at least as high as the Keep.
‘I’m Lol Robinson,’ Lol said.
In the hospital, daring to be a person had always been the most difficult part. Remembering you were a person, not just a file, a subject for assessment and monitoring, a lab rat for the multinational pharmaceutical industry.
‘No,’ Saltash said, smiling, starting to walk away across the great courtyard, throwing out ‘Sorry’ in his slipstream.
And if he reached the gatehouse, where two police officers stood, there would be no second chance.
‘All right.’ Lol moved in front of him. ‘If you want to take the scenic route, let’s talk about Gascoigne.’
Saltash expelled a hiss of exasperation.
‘Look, my friend, you probably know that there’s a young girl in there, threatening to take her own life. I don’t have time to talk to you or anyone, about anything. If you want to make an appointment to see me, that might be arranged.’
Only one PC on the gate now, but he was watching them. Vital to keep Saltash down here. If they reached the gate-house and the police, Saltash would have him thrown out, or maybe even…
… Detained.
Don’t go thinking you’re ever going to leave here, Mr Robinson. You see that door? One day, when I’ve been long retired to the south of France, you’ll be straining to get your Zimmer frame through it.
But Gascoigne had not retired to the south of France.
‘Didn’t know…’ Something throbbed in Lol’s gut, and he started talking, too fast, to quell it. ‘Didn’t know, until today, that he’d gone to the Department of Health. And the House of Lords, now… a health spokesman. Bloody hell.’
‘Lord Shipston,’ Saltash said, ‘is a fine psychiatrist and a former pupil of mine. Now, I don’t know how you—’
‘And a good friend?’
‘A very good friend, which is why I don’t propose to discuss him any further with a stranger. Excuse me.’
Saltash pushed Lol. But he’d been half-expecting it and moved in front again.
‘Only, I’m not a stranger.’
‘If you don’t—’
‘Not to him, anyway. Used to see each other every day, once.’
‘Ah. I see.’ Saltash smiled. His mouth smiled. ‘A patient.’
‘Makes you think that? Might have been a psychiatric nurse. Could have been a porter.’
‘You could not have been anything other than a patient. Are you in what some people still like to call the care of the community now?’
‘No, I’m one of the few people lucky enough to leave Dr Gascoigne’s ward almost as sane as when I went in.’
Saltash’s mouth kept smiling but his eyes frowned. Off balance. Lol remembering what he’d learned about facial signals in his period assisting the Hereford therapist, Dick Lyden. You’re in. Keep going.
‘And I was like… so impressed with my treatment that I wrote this song – it’s what I do; bit sad really, but we can’t all… Anyway, it’s about this guy who’s dispensing unnecessary medication like he has shares in the industry, which he probably has, and I… didn’t bother to change the name in the song. Not imagining that Gascoigne would ever hear it or I’d ever record it. It was just’ – Lol grinned – ‘therapy. And then suddenly, there it was on the CD, without me really thinking of the implications. But you knew about that, anyway.’
Saltash didn’t react. A woman came out of the castle, carrying a tray with mugs on it, as if there was nothing going on in there except minor conservation work.
‘I mean, it was bound to get back. It’s had a few reviews, and of course the reviews tend to mention the singer’s history, and a couple referred to that song specifically because it’s the only explicit loony-bin song on the album. Maybe it’s been followed up on the Net, I don’t know. Maybe another of Gascoigne’s ex-patients picked up on it. Maybe several. Things spread so much faster these days, don’t they? Who was it played you the song, Saltash? Gascoigne himself? Or maybe you just heard about it from young Fyneham.’
‘If you actually think…’ Saltash’s smile went into an incredulous slant as he shook his head. ‘If you think that a man in Lord Shipston’s position has time to even listen to some piffling pop record, you’re not exactly supporting your assertion of sanity, Mr—’
‘Robinson. It’s the name on the album.’
‘Well, get out of my way, now, please, Mr Robinson, I’ve listened to enough of this drivel.’
‘Anyway, some friends of mine… they had a long chat with the Fynehams. The Fynehams, of Breinton? Who produce a magazine in which it appears that you have a stake, along with its founder, Lord Shipston?’
Saltash sighed. ‘You’re on such thin ice, my friend.’
‘I’ll be honest,’ Lol said. ‘I don’t quite know what you’re doing, but then I’m not sure you do either. But I strongly suspect Gascoigne, as a public figure now, would feel a lot happier if my recording career ended here and neither Merrily nor I retained any kind of respect or credibility…’
‘This is—’
‘A start. A complete loss of respect in the eyes of the community would be a start, wouldn’t it? Just in case it ever got out.’
‘Do you—?’
‘And I’m guessing – because this is not the kind of smear campaign that Gascoigne, or even you, would want to be involved in – that you helped finance Jack’s little business venture and left the details to him. Sadly, he’s nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is.’
‘And neither are you,’ Saltash said.
‘No? I think I’ve become a fairly harsh judge of my own limitations.’
Saltash looked at him again. His eyes were like stone, but not this stone, not sandstone, colder than that.
‘Mr Robinson, do you know how easy it would be for me to have you removed to a… place of safety? I mean removed now. This evening. We have most of the people for the preliminaries we need close at hand. And I can tell them whatever I consider to be pertinent.’
Memory jolt. Gascoigne, who must have been quite young then – no more than late thirties – murmuring, In here, I can say what I like about you, never forget that, Laurence, and everyone here listens to me and acts accordingly, and no one will listen to you.
And Gascoigne had said many things, and written them too, and had them duplicated, passed them into the heart of the system: reports, assessments. If Gascoigne hadn’t moved on first, Lol sometimes wondered if he might still be there, on Victoria Ward, on extra medication.
‘I could tell them, for instance,’ Saltash said, ‘about your personal grudge, amounting to dangerous obsession, against people in my profession. And I can tell them about your absurd – but clinically quite explicable – suspicion that I had seduced your lady friend…’
Lol stepped back. ‘I’m sorry? What did you just say?’
‘… Your very attractive lady friend, already under immense strain after being appointed to a post for which she was quite clearly emotionally unsuitable. As a result of which I and my colleague, a senior cleric, had been unofficially assigned to try and advise her and perhaps restrain her from the kind of erratic behaviour that—’
‘You really are psychotic, aren’t you?’ Lol said.
The policeman by the gatehouse looked up.
Saltash smiled. ‘Oh, no, Mr Robinson. I’m not the one who, consumed by jealousy and a sense of inadequacy, attacked my girlfriend, causing at least one serious facial injury. For which, with regard to her social position, she will no doubt have attempted to concoct a plausible explanation, but, of course, it fools nobody in her parish, certainly not my good friend Dr Asprey. Do you think that policeman’s about to come over?’
No need to go back into town, George Lackland said, there was a quicker way to Jonathan’s place. He led Merrily through the churchyard, down a path with yew trees either side, six of them, through a garden with the small stones of the cremated, flowers everywhere, and the ancient Reader’s House opposite.
