‘It was very stupid of Jonathan to phone you.’
‘He was worried, too. Can we talk?’
Merrily sat down next to her, between the roots. The space under the yew’s dense canopy was lit like an earthen grotto by the candle in the lantern, and she could make out Belladonna’s once-famous patrician profile, recalling an album cover where her face had been sprayed with creamy white plaster, eyes calmly closed, like a death mask.
‘Children,’ Bell said. ‘I expect I was some kind of goddess to their parents. Now I’m a mad old slapper.’ She gazed out between the trees towards the invisible river. ‘When they’re spraying your name three feet high on walls, you never imagine that one day you’ll be…’
Normal, Merrily thought. Ordinary. It was odd – she’d always thought that Lol was the exception in his line of work because he seemed, in spite of everything, so normal. Odd how you could be taken in by the intentional mythologizing of rock musicians.
‘Maybe in ten years’ time those kids’ll think you’re a goddess, too,’ she said. ‘Tastes change rapidly in music. And then they bounce back again.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I was a fan. I came to one of your gigs once. And my boyfriend’s in the business.’
‘Business?’
‘Music. He plays. Writes songs.’
‘You poor cow. Would I have heard of him?’
‘I don’t know. Lol Robinson? OK if I smoke? Tobacco, that is. I’m feeling a bit…’
‘Go ahead. Christ, I remember Lol Robinson. Hazey Jane? They put him away, didn’t they?’
‘Psychiatric hospital.’ Merrily found the Zippo and the Silk Cut packet, crushed, in her fleece. ‘He fell into the system.’
‘OK now?’
‘He always was.’ Merrily held out the cigs to Bell. ‘You do nicotine these days?’
‘Only vice I’ve ever given up, Mary.’
Merrily lit up, inhaled and let out the smoke on the back of a sigh. It was not comfortable, sitting in the dirt at the foot of the yew.
‘But not, I assure you,’ Belladonna said, ‘because I didn’t want to die. That would be…’
‘Positively hypocritical, in your case.’
Bell laughed. ‘Am I right in thinking you and Jonathan are…?’
‘God, no.’
‘That was emphatic.’
‘I told you, I have a boyfriend.’
‘How quaint. Is he as quaint when he’s on tour?’
‘He’s so quaint that old ladies want to buy him.’
‘I see.’
‘You?’ Merrily lowered the cigarette; the smoke was making her bad eye smart.
‘Me, what?’ Bell said.
‘Jonathan?’
‘Makes you think that?’
‘I think he’s awfully interested in you.’
‘Most men are. But some are also frightened, and he, I suspect, is frightened.’
‘Jon?’
‘Just because he looks like a mad biker with a taste for rape and plunder… Actually, on reflection, most men are scared. And most women hate me. And children peer at me from behind the bushes.’
‘Except…’ Merrily snatched a shot of nicotine and went for it. ‘Except for Robbie Walsh?’
Belladonna looked at her, full face in the shivering candlelight, and Merrily saw that her mouth was slightly twisted, blots of dried blood on her jawline, dirt still scraped across one cheek, a pinkening lump on her forehead above the proud, aquiline nose.
Ludlow is my heaven.
Oh God, something was very wrong here. This woman was not normal. Merrily became aware of the garment that Jon Scole had described as a nightdress. It was probably satin. Shapeless as an operating gown. She glimpsed a ribbon under one of Bell’s arms.
Merrily tightened up, gripping her knees.
Bell said slowly, ‘Who told you about Robbie and me?’
‘Couple of people who saw you with him. Around the castle.’
‘I gather some people have been saying he committed suicide. And therefore I must have helped him nurture his depression.’
‘Who’s saying that?’
‘He wasn’t depressed. Absolutely not. Robbie Walsh would walk these streets in a state of near-ecstasy. Jonathan’ll confirm that. He was happier than any child I ever saw.’
‘While he was here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because he was here. He had a passion for history.’
‘A passion for Ludlow. And your interest in him is…?’
‘I have a friend who was his uncle. He feels he… he feels more than a bit responsible.’
‘We all feel that.’
‘Did Robbie come here with you? To this tree?’
‘Oh yes. I think he was very much in love with Marion.’ Bell leaned her head back against the tree, stretching her neck. The garment was torn on one shoulder, strands of the white fabric making loops. ‘Schoolboy crush. If Robbie was going to have his first crush, it would have to be someone from the Middle Ages, wouldn’t it? Only a small part of him was living in the present. You know what I’m saying, don’t you?’
‘I think we’ve all experienced it.’
Bell let out a small, exasperated hiss. ‘I don’t know about you. Only what Jonathan’s said, and Jonathan’s prone to the most awful hyperbole.’
‘I think,’ Merrily said carefully, remembering Jane’s advice, ‘that we all have heightened experiences in a town this close to its own history.’
‘Yes.’
‘And although I never met Robbie Walsh…’
‘He’d describe scenes to you… like a sighted person interpreting for the blind. He’d read the names on all the plaques outside the old houses so many times that he knew them all off by heart – by heart, Mary, the town was in his heart. He knew who’d lived in every house, and he’d describe them to me. And he’d come here and he’d describe Marion.’
‘Oh? What did she look like?’
‘Quite small. Brown hair, brown eyes – passionate, angry eyes. Robbie was an adolescent boy, he wasn’t sophisticated, his terminology was simple. He was in love with Marion because she was everything you rarely find any more. She was… all feelings. All strong passion and impulse, in comparison with all the apathetic, jaded kids he had to mix with. Can’t you feel her, Mary? Now? Here?’
‘I can feel her confusion,’ Merrily said, and it was true. ‘I can feel her uncontrollable rage. And her despair.’
‘This was possibly the time of night she did it… hacked the bastard down and took a dive. Out of the window just above us. No tree here then, just stones. Marion plummeting down with a scream of terminal anguish. Her body bouncing as it lands, breaking, finally coming to rest—’
‘Coming to unrest,’ Merrily said.
‘—Where we’re sitting now, blood issuing from her mouth.’ A fluid thrill, like oil, under Bell’s voice now. ‘Oh, you do understand, don’t you?’
‘I understand Marion. Marion’s easy. She was both the betrayed and the betrayer. She’d let the enemy in. She didn’t see a way out, except through one of these windows. Jemima Pegler, however… that’s much more complex. And so’s Robbie Walsh. This friend of mine, he took me to see his mother, Robbie’s gran. Because she said she was seeing him around the house and around the town…’
‘He asked you to help her, as a psychic.’
‘Something like that. She said she was seeing Robbie reflected in mirrors and shop windows. And… in the water.’
‘She drowned…’
‘I was there that night,’ Merrily said. ‘And you came down to the river, with a bunch of… goths, it looked like.’
Bell stared at her, her arms in the ragged sleeves lifting what had lain on her knees – a black instrument case, too big for a violin, too small for a guitar.