December (21 page)

      
'I'm sure. Which is obviously why it's left you looking so
shattered.'

      
'Leave it, Malcolm.'
      
'Will you contact this man?'

      
'No.'

      
And she meant no, by Christ she did.
      
'Then ...' Malcolm lifted his
telephone index and sent the five-foot-long fax billowing into the air, 'what
about
this
man?'
      
She pushed her chair back from the
desk as the fax tumbled over her knees, straightening her legs and letting it
fall to the thin carpet. She felt truly exhausted. What she really wanted was
to leave the paper where it lay and scurry to the furthest corner and burrow
there like a mouse, with her arms over her face.

      
Malcolm had on his magistrate's face. 'You have led me to
believe, Moira, that this Reilly is a rejected suitor who would not accept no
for an answer and to whom your whereabouts must never be divulged.'

      
'Please, I
have
asked you to leave this.' She was looking across at his filing cabinet,
remembering the day she'd made all the drawers come shooting out, from
approximately six feet away. But she'd been younger then and full of fury.

      
Wouldn't work with Malcolm again, even if she could cut it.
      
'And I was willing to accept that,
why not?' he said. 'What business is it of mine? He sends his letters to this
office, I pass them on or destroy them unopened, according to your
instructions.'

      
'For his own good,' she mumbled. 'Believe this.'
      
'But a fax, you see, is essentially
a public document. Plus, it arrived with a personal note to me saying please to
give her this - very, very important. Read it if you like. And then a lot of
spiel about an enormous power cut in Liverpool and John Lennon. It doesn't make
a great deal of sense, indeed it suggests a condition bordering on dementia.'

      
'Aye.' Moira sighed.

      
'But it does have an urgency about it I find hard to ignore,
so don't ask me to destroy it this time. You may shred it yourself, Moira, if
you wish, but not in my office please. This time you take it with you.'

      
He glared down at her as she bent and gathered up the fax.
'Must've been shorter Dead Sea Scrolls than this, Malcolm.'

      
'And none more portentous, I don't doubt,' Malcolm said.
      
'Look, there's another point...'

      
From entering the office, she'd known what was coming.

      
'If you
do
communicate with Mr Reilly, perhaps you'd give him another address to write to.
Nothing personal, Moira, but ... Well, I don't think I'm prepared any longer to
be a clearing house for the Nostradamus-like outpourings of your strange
friends.'

      
Moira nodded. There was nothing to be said about this. She did
have strange friends.

      
They looked at each other in silence for a few seconds and
then he looked down at his desk and she said, 'Malcolm, are you saying you'd
rather not represent me
any more
?'

      
'Look ...' He sighed. 'Moira. With all the goodwill in the
world, I can't truly see that there is very much left to represent.'

      
'No,' she said. 'I understand that. Besides, the witchy woman
aspect ...'

 
'It's not
that
.'

      
'No. Of course not.' She shouldered her bag. 'Well.' Gathered
up armfuls of fax paper. 'Bye, then, Malcolm. Thanks for everything.'

      
'Come back, won't you,' he said, 'when your affairs are
unravelled.'

      
But she left the office doubting it. Feeling red raw inside
and embarrassed as hell, and all the more ridiculous for being swathed in fax.'

      
On your own now
,
Donald the gypsy had said.
On your own
now and naked.

Another day, another dusk.
The afternoon was seeping away when they brought the vicar to the church.

      
He'd been asleep in his living-room, in an easy-chair with its
back to the window, the Bible on his knees, for the weight of it and that fact
that the Bible -
this
Bible, old,
brass-bound - seemed to prevent dreams. In bed, he sometimes slept with the
bible across his legs, but occasionally it rolled away and the dark mirror of
the night splintered into images.

      
The feeling of security the old Bible brought had evaporated
in seconds when he'd found Eddie Edwards at the door with a wispy little woman
called Helen Harris, who cleaned the church every third week.
Trouble, Vicar. Something very strange.
And they'd brought him to the church, practically pulling him up the few steps
into the churchyard, cold dusk setting in around the mottled gravestones,
bringing with it a spattering of rain, the vicar still shaky with sleep.

      
And then the candles.

There were ancient cowsheds
grander than Ystrad Church. Which was fine by Eddie Edwards.

      
Not that he was particularly Low Church or a Puritan or any of
that Nonconformist nonsense. Just that a church like this one, you didn't need
to lock it up between services, which was how a church should be - open,
available. The place was like a block of stone, rock of ages; all that you
could prise off and take away were slates from the roof.

      
And, from inside, candles.

      
A necessity, for the church had no electricity and no gas.
Also candles were cheap and Ystrad folk thrifty. For as long as anybody local
could remember there'd been two candles in tin dishes on the altar, big fat,
white candles.

      
Never anything like this. Mr Edwards had never seen - or
smelled -
anything
like this in his
life before.

      
He pulled a pencil from his breast pocket and tapped at the
wax ... not wax, tallow, anybody could sense that. Congealed, nauseous, like
something out of an old chip pan abandoned for many weeks.

      
And brown-black, like ancient earwax.

      
'It makes no sense,' Mr Edwards kept repeating. 'What kind of
sense does this make?'

      
And yet he'd never imagined that the vicar, the irreverent
reverend, would have appeared quite as disturbed as this. Not his style at all.

      
Simon St John had sunk back into a front pew, the greying
light from the dusty window over the altar shining on the outbreak of sweat
across his forehead. Only once before had Mr Edwards seen him like this - the
other day, in the shadow of the Abbey, when he'd turned away, used the F-word.

      
'Thank you, Helen,' Mr Edwards said. 'No need for you to hang
around.'

      
And the poor woman went gratefully, and Mr Edwards said, 'I do
not like this, Vicar.'

      
'Mrs Harris found them?' It was as if the vicar was trying out
his voice, seeing if he could still speak. The teatime light flashed pink on
the whitewashed walls.

      
'All of a dither, she was,' Mr Edwards said, 'because they
were new candles, new this morning - they'd had to replace the old ones, see,
not wanting to, they were hoping they'd last out until Christmastime.'

      
Was it conceivable that these
were
the new candles, that something was wrong with them, that when
exposed to cold air they could kind of ... decay?
      
It was not possible.

      
A full twelve inches high, these candles had to be. But …
emaciated. Shrivelled and twisted, full of holes and notches, like sweating,
putrid cheese, withered to a thickness of no more than half an inch in places.

      
And yet hard. Hard as old bones.
      
'Have you ever seen the like?'

      
The vicar didn't reply. He came to his feet and stumbled to
the door and stood in the arched doorway, which opened directly onto the
churchyard, breathing in the darkening air, exposing his face to the rain.

      
Without turning round, he asked Mr Edwards, 'Were they alight
when she found them?'

      
Mr Edwards was saying, 'Is this a joke, do you think? And if
it is, why? And who? Who would want to come in here and replace our new candles
with these raddled old things?'

      
'Eddie, were they alight?'

      
'Nonsensical, this is. Well... she told me ... poor woman, the
shock of it ... that when she came into the church the candles were not alight
and she did not notice them, but when she was getting on with the dusting -
that back pew there, presumably, where the mat has been removed - suddenly
there was a hissing in the air,
spssss
!
And then a flaring from the altar. Wild, white flames on the end of both
candles! Oh, hell, I do not know what she really saw, Simon, I'm just telling
you what she told me. A state of terror she was in, certainly, when she arrived
at my door. When we returned, all I can say is the candles were out. Only the
smell in the air. You tell me, is this
some kind of a joke?'

Fucking things are black. You call that a bleeding
joke?

      
There was one tiny gleam of white between the closing clouds,
like a mocking candle in the sky. Simon felt cold in his thin cassock. He was
shaking with it and with fatigue and also revulsion.

      
Fourteen years ago he could handle this, no problem. He
remembered Tom Storey knocking one of the old, brown candles to the floor with
the neck of his guitar and the flames igniting a pile of Dave's lyrics sheets.
How he'd
so
casually stamped out the
flames, thinking,
got to stay calm, can't
have Storey throwing another wobbly.

      
The difference then was he felt in control, thought he was
beginning to understand. Felt that, within himself, he was already a priest,
possessed of the essential priestly calm which allowed him to wander across and
coolly sump out burgeoning hellfire.

      
But the sudden shock of it penetrating his world again, after
all these years. For God's sake, these could be the very same candles. Candles
from the Abbey. Candles from the time of Aelwyn.

      
He began to mumble a prayer, conscious that Eddie Edward, was
watching him, but he couldn't help that

      
'Oh, Father … Please. Don't let me fuck up. Let me get it
right this time.'

      
Mr Edwards wandered across, patted him on the shoulder. | 'Go
home, Simon. I'll deal with them.'

      
'Deal?'

      
'I'll throw them away.'

      
'Of course,' Simon said. 'Thank you. But I'll stay until it's
done, if you don't mind.'

      
He watched Mr Edwards pick up a large duster Helen Harris had
left behind and fold it over his hand to prise the candles out of their
holders. They were surprisingly stiff.

      
'Bugger,' said Mr Edwards. 'How long have they been here, for
heaven's sake? It's as though they've been burning for hours and the wax has
expanded.'

      
He wrapped the stinking, brown candles carefully in the duster
and they both took them around to the dustbin at the rear of the church.

      
'Bloody kids,' said Mr Edwards. 'Though where they got them
from I cannot imagine. Do you want to lock up the church tonight?'

      
'I don't think so,' Simon said wearily, lifting the dustbin
lid. 'I don't think it would help.'

      
Mr Edwards glanced at him with curiousity. The candles did not
land softly in the bin but clanged as if in protest.

      
When they were walking away, there was another resounding
clang from the bin.
      
'Bloody things,' Mr Edwards said.

When he and the vicar had
gone their separate ways, Mr Edwards took Helen's big duster from his pocket
and returned the dustbin.

      
It was dark now. Too dark to see inside the bin. He had to put
his whole arm inside, reaching down to the very bottom before one of the
discarded candles slid greasily into his palm.

      
He brought it out - just one would do - and wrapped it in the
duster.