Robin flicked on the porch light. Overweight guy with a beard, and a thinner, younger guy in a leather jacket. Double-glazing, Robin figured; or travelling reps from some company that would maximize your prospects by investing the contents of your bank account in a chain of international vivisection laboratories.
‘We both work for the Daily Mail newspaper,’ Prentice said. ‘If it’s convenient, I’d like a chat with you – about your religion.’
‘About my...?’ Robin glanced at the case. Of course, a camera case.
‘I understand you and your wife are practising witches.’
Robin went still. ‘How would you have come to understand that?’
Relax. No camera around the thin guy’s neck.
Prentice smiled. ‘You didn’t happen to watch a TV programme called Livenight, by any chance?’
‘We don’t have a TV.’
‘Oh.’ The man smiled. ‘That would certainly explain it. Well, Mr Thorogood, you and your wife were referred to on that programme.’
‘What?’
‘Not by name – but your situation was mentioned. Now, it sounds as though we’re the first media people to approach you. And that’s a good thing for both of us, because—’
‘Hold on a moment,’ Robin said.
‘If, as you say, we are witches – which, in these enlightened times, I’m hardly gonna deny... Why are you interested? There are thousands of us. It’s, like, the fastest growing religion in the country right now. What I’m saying is, what kind of big deal is that for a paper like yours?’
‘Well, I’ll be straight with you, Robin, it’s primarily the church. How many witches have actually taken over a Christian church for their rituals?’
‘Well, Richard,’ Robin said, ‘if I can reverse that question, how many Christian churches have taken over pagan sites for their rituals?’
Richard Prentice grinned through his beard. ‘That, my friend, is an excellent point, and we’d like to give you the opportunity to amplify it.’
‘I don’t think so, Richard.’
‘Could we come in and talk about it? It’s perishing out here.’
‘I really don’t think so. For starters, my wife—’
‘Look,’ Prentice said. ‘You were more or less outed – if I can use that term – on a TV programme watched by millions of viewers. I’d guess you’re going to be hearing from a lot of other journalists over the next few days. And I mean tabloid journalists.’
‘Isn’t that what you are?’
‘We like to call ours a compact paper. There’s a difference.’
‘Don’t make me laugh, Richard.’
‘Robin... look... what we have in mind – and this would be for Monday’s paper, so we’d have a whole day to get it absolutely right – is a serious feature explaining exactly what your plans are for this church, and why you believe you’re no threat to the community.’
‘Somebody say we’re a threat to the community here?’
‘You know what local people are like, Robin.’
‘Out,’ Robin said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Go, Richard.’
‘Robin, I think you’ll find that we can protect you from the unwanted intrusion of less responsible—’
‘Leave now. Or I’ll, like, turn you into a fucking toad.’
‘That’s not a very sensible attitude. Look, this was probably a bad time. I can tell something’s happened to upset you. We’re going to be staying in the area tonight. I suggest we come back in the morning. All right?’
Robin stepped out of the porch. Through the trees, he could hear the racing of the Hindwell Brook.
‘OK,’ Prentice said, ‘that’s your decision.’
And if they’d gone at that moment, things might all have been so much less fraught.
Unfortunately, at this point the porch and Robin were lit up brightly, and Robin realized the younger guy suddenly had a camera out.
The rushing of the brook filled his head. Cold white noise. Robin thought of silent Betty with her back to him in the sack. He thought he heard, somewhere on the ether, the rich sound of Kirk Blackmore laughing at his artwork.
Robin made like Lord freaking Madoc.
22
Wisp
MERRILY COULD SEE the battlemented outline of Old Hindwell church tower over the bristle of trees, and the spiteful voice cawed in her head.
I can show you a church with a tower and graves and everything... which is now a pagan church. You don’t know what’s happening on your own doorstep.
If these pagans had been around for a while, it would explain why Ellis had adopted Old Hindwell – extremes attract extremes. The only other abandoned Anglican church she could think of in the diocese was at Llanwarne, down towards Ross-on-Wye, and that was close to the centre of a village and open to the road, a tourist attraction.
But whether this was or wasn’t the alleged neo-pagan temple was not the issue right now. What she needed to make for was the former rectory, which was not ruined, far from abandoned... but about to accommodate its first grave.
She would probably encounter Sophie’s car along the way.
And Barbara Buckingham?
That grumbling foreboding in her stomach – that was subjective, right? Merrily walked faster, aware that the only sound on the street was the soft padding of her own flat shoes. She walked into the centre of the village, where there was a small shop and post office – closed already – and the pub had frosted windows and looked inviting only compared with everywhere else.
In one of the cottages, a dog howled suddenly, a spiralling sound; maybe it had picked up a distant discordant wailing emanating from the village hall. Something which was not, perhaps, quite human.
The pub car park was still full. With the cars – of course – of outsiders. The singing in tongues should have given it away: many people in today’s congregation were not, in fact, family mourners or friends or long-time clients of J.W. Weal, but core members of Nicholas Ellis’s church.
And the tongues was not a spontaneous phenomenon; for them it had become routine, a habit, almost an addiction, a Christian trip. She’d learned that while at theological college when a bunch of students, well into the born-again thing, had persuaded her to join them at a weekend event known as the Big Bible Fest, held in a huge marquee near Warwick. Two long days of everybody smiling at everybody else and doing the ‘Praise Him!’ routine like kids with a new schoolyard catchphrase, and by the end of the first day Merrily had been ready to swing for the next person who addressed her as ‘sister’.
It had been Jeremy, one of the faithful, who’d told her that the cynical bitch persona was simply concealing her fear of complete surrender to the Holy Spirit. He was challenging her to go along that night with an open mind, without prejudice, without resistance. Praise Him! So, OK, she’d attended a service where all the hymns had been simple, rhythmic pop anthems, sung by happy people in Hawaiian shirts and sweatpants – and all ending in tongues.
Tongues was the gift of Christ, originally granted to a select few. The Bible did not spell out what tongues actually sounded like, its linguistic roots, its grammatical structure, but modern evangelical Christians insisted it was a way of talking directly to God, who Himself did not necessarily speak English.
Not entirely convincing, but for the first two hymns she’d held out. After all, hadn’t her own formative mystical moment occurred in total silence, lit by the blue and the gold, alone in a little hermit’s cave of a church?