'The project will be based at sixteenth-century Crybbe Court, for which Mr Goff is believed to have paid in excess of half a million pounds. It's expected to be a major boost to the local economy, with…'
'Whoah, whoah,' Elton shouted in the cans. 'What are you doing, Fay?'
'What?'
'You're distorting.'
'Huh?'
'How close are you to the mike?'
'I…'
Fay tasted metal.
'Oh…!'
Her eyes widened, a movement went through her, like an earth tremor along a fault line. Her hands thrust the microphone away, revolted.
The mike fell out of its stand and over the end of the table where it dangled on its flex. Fay sat there wiping the back of a hand over her lips.
'What the hell…?' said the voice in the cans. 'Fay? Fay, are you there?'
'Oh Lord, we humbly beseech you, look down upon us with compassion…'
Eyes tensely closed, Murray was trying to concentrate. He could still smell bleach from the bathroom, although they were downstairs again now, in the sitting-room that was full of repressed emotions, deep-frozen. In the shadow of the pulpit-sideboard.
Churchlike. More churchlike, anyway, than a bathroom.
But the Church was not a building. He, in this dark little parlour, at this moment, was the Church.
Two feet away… an eighteen-year-old girl in holed jeans and a straining tank top. A girl he didn't think he liked very much any more. A girl with a glistening dab of sweat over her upper lip.)
And, because there was nothing to help him in The Book of Common Prayer, he must improvise.
'… look down with compassion, Lord, on our foolish fancies and fantasies. Lift from this house the burden of primitive superstition. Hold up your holy light and guide us away from the darkened recesses of our unconscious minds.,.'
His voice came back at him in a way he'd never experienced before in prayer. Not like in church, the words spinning away, over the congregation and up into the rafters. Or muted, behind bedside screens, against the chatter and rattle and bustle of a hospital ward.
Here, in a room too crowded with still, silent things for an echo, it all sounded as slick and as shallow as he rather suspected it was. He was stricken with isolation – feeling exposed and raw, as if his veneer of priestly strength was bubbling and melting like thin paint under a blowlamp.
Murray ran a damp finger around the inside of his clerical collar. He realized in horror that the only ghost under exorcism in this house was his own undefined, amorphous faith.
As if something was stealing that faith, feeding from it.
His collar felt like a shackle; he wanted to tear it off.
He knew he had to get out of here. Knowing this, while hearing his voice, intoning the meaningless litany.
'Bring us, Lord, safely from the captivity of our bodies and the more insidious snare of our baser thoughts. Lead us…'
Her voice sliced through his.
'I think it likes you. Vicar,' Tessa said sweetly.
His eyes opened to a white glare. The girl was holding the cracked shaving mirror at waist-level, like a spot lamp, and when she tilted the mirror, he saw in it the quivering, flickering image of a cowering man in a dark suit and a clerical collar – the man gazing down at his hands, clasping his rearing penis in helpless remorse, in a tortured parody of prayer.
Murray screamed and fled.
A few moments later, when he tumbled half-sobbing, half-retching into the street, he could hear her laughter. He stood with his back to a lamppost, sob-breathing through his mouth. He looked down and felt his fly; the zip was fully fastened.
He felt violated. Physically and spiritually naked and shamed.
A door slammed behind him, and he still thought he could hear her laughing. At intervals. As if whatever had got into her was sharing the fun.
CHAPTER V
THE bitch doesn't get in here again. Not ever. Under any circumstances. You understand?'
Max was pulsing with rage. Rachel had seen it before, but not often.
Offa's Dyke Radio had run the item on its lunchtime bulletin – from which, Rachel had been told, the story had been picked up by a local freelance hack and relayed to the London papers. Several of which had now called Epidemic's press office to check it out.
And Goff s secretary in London had phoned Goff in time for him to catch the offending Offa's Dyke item on the five o'clock news.
'That report… from Fay Morrison, our reporter in Crybbe,' the newsreader had said unnecessarily at the end.
'Fay Morrison? Guy Morrison?' Goff said.
Rachel shook her head. 'Hardly likely.'
"Yeah,' Goff accepted. And then he spelled it out for her again, just in case she hadn't absorbed his subtext. When he wanted the world to know about something, he released the information in his own good time. He released it.
'So from now on, you don't talk to anybody. You don't even think about the Project in public, you got that?'
'Maybe,' Rachel said, offhand, tempting fate, 'you should fire me.'
"Don't be fucking ridiculous,' Max snapped and stormed out of the stable-block to collect his bags from the Cock. He was driving back to London tonight, thank God, and wouldn't be returning until Friday morning, for the lunch party.
When she could no longer hear the Ferrari arrogantly clearing its throat for the open road, Rachel Wade rang Fay, feeling more than a little aggrieved.
They shouted at each other for several minutes before Rachel made a sudden connection and said slowly, 'You mean Guy Morrison is your ex-husband?'
'He didn't tell you? Well, of course, he wouldn't. Where's the kudos in having been married to me?'
Rachel said, thoughtlessly, 'He's really quite a hunk, isn't he?'
A small silence, then Fay said, 'Hunk of shit, actually.'
'Max was right,' Rachel said. 'You're being a bitch. You did the radio piece as a small act of vengeance because your ex had pushed your nose out.'
'Now look…'
'No, you look. Guy's programmes wouldn't have affected anything. You'd still have had the stories for Offa's Dyke Radio, and you'd have had them first. I do actually keep my promises.'
Fay sighed and told her that the truth was she was hoping to do a full programme. For Radio Four. However, with a TV documentary scheduled, that now looked like a non-starter.
'So I was cutting my losses, I suppose. I really didn't think it'd come back on you. Well… I suppose I didn't really think at all. I over-reacted. Keep over-reacting these days, I'm afraid. I'm sorry.'
'I'm sorry, too,' Rachel said, 'but I have to tell you you've burned your boats. Max has decreed that you should be banned from his estate forever.'
'I see.'
'I can try and explain, but he isn't known for changing his mind about this kind of thing. Why should he? He is the deity in these parts.'
In the photograph over the counter, Alfred Watkins wore pince-nez and looked solemn. If there were any pictures of him smiling, Powys thought, they must be filed away in some family album; smiling was not a public act in those days for a leading local businessman and a magistrate. It was perhaps just as well – Alfred Watkins needed his dignity today more than ever.
'Don't forget,' Powys said, 'he'll be watching you. Any joss-sticks get lit, he'll be very unhappy.'
'No he won't,' Annie said. Annie with the Egyptian amulet, still living in 1971, before the husband and the four kids. 'He fancies me, I can tell by the way he smiles.'
'He never smiles.'
'He smiles at me,' Annie said. 'OK, no joss-sticks. If you're not back by tomorrow I'll open at nine, after I get rid of the kids.'