‘Can’t say anyone’s said anything to me,’ Teddy said. ‘Apart from you, of course, Bevvie.’
‘Well, they wouldn’t, now, would they?’
‘Blimey,’ Merrily said.
She ate slowly, aware, it seemed, of every spice in the roast. Aware of herself eating – that element of separation which sometimes came with extreme physical tiredness when the senses, for some reason, were still alert.
Gossip. There was, unfortunately, a place for it; it was often the most direct route to … if not the truth, then something in its vicinity. She looked at Beverley.
‘Who are we talking about, then? Mrs Morningwood and … who?’
‘Oh dear.’ Beverley pouring herself some water from a crystal jug. ‘I wish I’d never …’
‘Ah, now you’ve started …’ A slightly sinful sparkle in Teddy’s blue eyes. ‘Can’t not tell us now, Bevvie.’
He knew, of course. Merrily watched their eyes. They must surely have had this discussion before. Now they were having it again for her benefit, passing on something they thought she ought to be aware of. Especially if submitting to further reflexology.
‘Farmers. I was told,’ Beverley said.
‘Farmers plural?’ Merrily blinked. ‘I mean … how plural?’
‘Well … at least two, certainly. I suppose she has that sort of rough … edge that I imagine a certain kind of man would find attractive. Admittedly, always farmers living alone. And it never seems to lead to anything. No evidence that she’s after anyone’s money, if you see what I …’
‘An independent sort of woman,’ Teddy said. ‘Was she ever married? I’m never quite sure.’
‘In London,’ Beverley said. ‘She was in London for over twenty years. Long enough to lose her local accent, certainly. But she came back, unmarried, re-adopting her maiden name, and whatever she gets up to … is a question of roots, I suppose. They go back many generations in Garway, the Morningwoods. Whatever they do is accepted.’
‘Whatever they do?’
‘Well, her mother … oh, I hate this.’
Beverley drank some water. Teddy leaned back.
‘It’s all right, I know. The family has quite a history of what are now known as alternative remedies. Folk remedies. What were known as wise women. There’s an old tradition of nine witches of Garway, and her mother and grandmother were more in that mould. Allegedly.’
‘They were …’ Merrily looked up ‘… considered to be witches?’
‘They dispensed herbal remedies. They were also said to – no way to dress this up, I’m afraid, Merrily – assist girls who got themselves into trouble.’
‘Oh.’
‘Used to be a local social service, didn’t it? No great need for it now.’
Merrily remembered Gomer Parry’s uncharacteristic reticence on the subject of Mrs Morningwood.
Beverley looked down at her plate.
Lord Stourport – Lol was surprised to find out that he did know him. Well, knew of him, mainly – they’d met, briefly, maybe a couple of times.
‘I never realized,’ he said on the phone to Prof Levin. ‘Jimmy Hater.’
He’d called around nine p.m., when Prof habitually took a coffee break from whatever album he was mixing. Often, he would work through midnight, the cafetière at his elbow. An addictive personality, but caffeine was safer than the booze of old.
Lol said, ‘I remember he always sounded kind of upper-class, in comparison with most of the others.’
‘Real name James Hayter-Hames,’ Prof said. ‘If you were rock ’n’ roll management in the punk era, that was not a good time to let it get out that your family was even posher than Joe Strummer’s. Hayter on its own, however – that was a strong and impressive name to have. Especially if you left out the “y”.’
‘I didn’t even know about the “y” for a long time.’ Lol recalled a stocky, strutting guy, Napoleonic. ‘I used to think it was a completely made-up name, like Sid Vicious. You ever produce anything for any of Hayter’s bands?’
‘Produced, no.’
‘Engineered?’
‘For my sins. Post-punk death-metal. Not my favourite period, Laurence. Bearable at the time, with three or four bottles of red wine, God forbid, on the mixing desk. That era, I like to draw a curtain across it. Death metal – mostly foul. Jimmy Hayter – a twat.’
‘Still?’
Prof said, ‘Once a twat …’
‘Where does he live? I mean, is he accessible?’
‘Yes and no. He inherited the pile eventually, of course. It’s a responsibility. Nobody wants to besmirch the coat of arms. On the other hand, the family seat gobbles wealth. And farming, even big-time farming, doesn’t pay half the bills any more. So the earl, whatever he is now, he keeps his hand in, and when the roof falls in on the orangery or something he puts on a festival. On the very fringe of his estate, naturally. The house a mere dot on the horizon.’
‘Where is the house?’
‘I dunno, someplace south of Brum. Stratford way, possibly. I could find out.’
‘Death metal,’ Lol said. ‘A lot of occult there?’
‘Generally pseudo. Guys on Harleys, with skull rings and slash-here neck tattoos. So … occult … this would be a Merrily inquiry, would it?’
‘Would he talk to her, do you think? Say, on the phone?’
‘On the phone, Laurence, he won’t say anything worth the price of a cheap-rate call. And, frankly, the last thing you want is to expose a woman as appealing as little Merrily, with or without the dog collar, to Jimmy Hayter. Especially with his lovely wife, her ladyship, living a lavishly subsidized life in France, her physical role in his life complete … and, from what I hear, bloody grateful for that.’
‘Would he speak to me, do you think?’
‘Why should he do that?’
‘Maybe in the interests of … I don’t know … keeping the past where it belongs?’
Lol had the map book open on the desk in the window, marking out the route to a village he didn’t know, outside Gloucester. Tomorrow night’s concert: a big pub with a folk club, the kind of intimate gig which, on the whole, he preferred. He pushed the page under the lamp. How far from Stratford? Forty miles, fifty?
‘The situation is, Prof, that in his youth Jimmy Hayter seems to have been part of a commune. In a farmhouse down on the Welsh Border. Some of what they might have got up to … it would help Merrily to know about that.’
‘Might have got up to?’ Prof said. ‘What’s that mean? Do I like the sound of that? I don’t. What does Merrily say?’
‘She says it gives her a bad feeling.’
‘Never dismiss a woman’s feelings, good or bad,’ Prof said, and Lol could hear the clink of the beloved and necessary cafetière, the slurping of the brown elixir. Then a silence, then, ‘Jesus, Lol, you need to understand, you must not threaten this man.’
‘Don’t take the glasses off, then?’
‘Laurence, listen to me. Jimmy Hayter … stately home, dinner parties with the gentry, but the guys with the skull rings and the slash-here tattoos, they still dig his garden, you know what I’m saying?’
34
Shaman
TEDDY WAS RIGHT, it had once been an accepted rural service, like blacksmithing, and there had been an opportunity for Muriel Morningwood to talk about it and she hadn’t.
My mother would awake in the morning to hear her throwing up. Coming to the obvious conclusion. Which she put to Mary.
Merrily lay on the bed, gazing up at the wardrobe. Just a wardrobe, mesh over its ventilation slits, nothing like Garway Church.