‘Ned Bain,’ Fallon said, ‘you’re the high priest of a London coven – can we use the word “coven”? – and also a publisher and an expert on ancient religions of all kinds. I want you to tell me, simply and concisely, why you think paganism is, today, more relevant and more important to these islands than Christianity.’
And Edward Bain had sat, one leg hooked casually over the other like... like Sean had sat sometimes... a TV natural, expounding without pause, his eyes apparently on Fallon, but actually gazing beyond him across the studio. His eyes, in fact, were lazily fixed on Merrily’s... and they – she clutched her chair seat tightly – they were not Sean’s.
‘Well, for a start, they’ve had their two millennia,’ he said reasonably. ‘Two thousand years of war and divison, repression and persecution, torture, genocide... in the name of a cruel, despotic deity dreamed up in the Middle East.’
From the seats tiered behind Merrily came the swelling sound of indrawn breath, like a whistling in the eaves. Part awe, part shock, part admiration at such cool, convincing blasphemy.
‘Two thousand years of the cynical exploitation, by wealthy men, of humanity’s unquenchable yearning for spirituality... the milking of the peasants to build and maintain those great soaring cathedrals... created to harness energies they no longer even understand. Two thousand years of Christianity... a tiny, but ruinous period of Earth’s history. A single dark night of unrelenting savagery and rape.’
There was a trickle of applause. He continued to look at Merrily, his mouth downturned in sorrow but a winner’s light in his eyes. The space between them seemed to shrink, until she could almost feel the warm dusting of his breath on her face. On a huge screen above him was projected the image of a serene, bare-breasted woman wearing a tiara like a coiled snake.
‘Now it’s our turn,’ he said softly. ‘We who worship in woods and circles of rough stone. We who are not afraid to part the curtains, to peer into the mysteries from which Christianity still cowers, screaming shrilly at us to come away, come away. To us – and to the rest of you, if you care to give it any thought – Christianity is, at best, a dull screen, a block. It is anti-spiritual. It was force-fed to the conquered and brutalized natives of the old lands, who practised – as we once did, when we still had sensitivity – a natural religion, in harmony with the tides and the seasons, entirely beneficent, gentle, pacific, not rigid nor patriarchal. The Old Religion has always recognized the equality of the sexes and exalted the nurturing spirit, the spirit which can soothe and heal the Earth before it is too late.’
The trickle of applause becoming a river. John Fallon standing with folded arms and his habitual half-smile. Someone had dimmed the studio lights so that Ned Bain was haloed like a Christ figure, and when he spoke again it might have been Sean there, being reasonable, logical. Merrily began to sweat.
‘The clock of the Earth is running down. We’ve become alienated from her. We must put the last two thousand years behind us and speak to her again.’
And the river of applause fanned out into a delta among not only the myriad ranks of the pagans, but also the shop-floor workers and the wages staff and the middle and upper management of the paint factory in Walsall. The claps and cheers turned to an agony of white noise in Merrily’s head and she closed her eyes, and when she opened them, there was the fuzzy boom-mic on a pole hanging over her head, and the camera had glided silently across like an enormous floor-polisher and John Fallon, legs apart, hands behind his back, was telling her and the millions at home, ‘... really a fair bit of sense in what Ned’s saying? Well, Merrily... isn’t there?’
She’s frozen, Jane thought in horror, as two seconds passed.
Two entire seconds.... on Livenight! A hush in the bear pit.
‘Come on, love.’ Gerry’s hands were chivvying at the monitors. ‘You’re not in the bloody pulpit now.’
Maurice, the director, said into his microphone, ‘John, why don’t you just ask her, very gently, if she’s feeling all right?’
Jane wanted to haul him from his swivel chair and wrestle him to the ground among the snaking wires. But then, thank Christ, Mum started talking.
It just wasn’t her voice, that was the problem. She sounded like she’d just been awakened from a drugged sleep. Well, all right, it was going to be a tough one. Ned Bain was a class act, a cool, cool person, undeniably sexy. And Jane admittedly felt some serious empathy with what he was saying. Like, hadn’t she herself had this same argument with Mum time and again, pointing out that paganism – witchcraft – was a European thing, born in dark woodland glades, married to mountain streams. It was practical, and Jane didn’t even see it as entirely incompatible with Christianity.
The camera was tight on Mum – so tight that, oh no, you could see the sweat. And she was gabbling in that strange, cracked voice about Christianity being pure, selfless love, while paganism seemed to be about sex at its most mechanical and... feelingless.
Feelingless? Jesus, Jane thought, is that a real word? Oh God.
‘This is bloody trite crap, especially after the pagan guy,’ Maurice told John Fallon. ‘Let’s come back to her when, and if, she gets her shit together.’
‘All right.’ John Fallon spun away, a flying smirk. ‘That’s the, ah, Church of England angle.’
Someone jeered.
Oh God! When she was sure the camera was away from her, Merrily dabbed a crumpled tissue to her forehead, knowing immediately what she should have said, how she could have dealt with Bain’s simplistic generalizations. Now wanting to jump up and tug Fallon back. But it was, of course, too late.
From halfway up an aisle between rows of seats, she caught a glance from Steve Ewing, the producer, his mouth hidden under a lip-microphone as used by ringside boxing commentators. It was as if he was ironically rerunning his pre-programme pep talk: ‘... you’ll be kicking yourself all the way home because you missed your chance of getting your argument across on the programme.’
From the adjacent seat to her left, a hand gently squeezed her arm: Patrick Ryan, the sociologist who was supposed to have shagged half the priestesses in the southern counties while compiling his thesis on pagan ritual practice. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ he whispered.
She nodded. She sought out the eyes of Ned Bain, but they were in shadow now; he seemed to be looking downwards. He appeared very still and limp, as though his body was recharging. She thought, He was staring at me the whole time. And afterwards I couldn’t do a thing.
‘... gonna talk to Maureen now,’ John Fallon was saying, back on the other side of the studio floor, just across the aisle from Ned Bain. ‘Maureen, your teenage daughter was into all this peaceful, New Age nature worship. But that was only the start, because Gemma ended up, I believe, in a psychiatric unit.’
Oh, sure... blame Bain for your own deficiencies. Merrily shook herself, furious. Blame poor dead Sean.
‘She’s still attending the unit, John.’ Maureen was a bulky woman, early fifties, south London accent. ‘Apart from that, she won’t hardly leave the house any more, poor kid.’
‘She became a witch, right?’
‘She became a witch when she was about seventeen, when she first went to the tech college. There was a lecturer there like... him.’ Maureen jerked a thumb at Ned Bain, who tilted his head quizzically. ‘Smooth, good-looking guy, on the make.’