Read Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi Online
Authors: John Grant
Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi (7 page)
Downstairs again, she took a slug of whisky from the drawing-room bottle, just to steady her nerves, then grabbed up her handbag (No, it wasn't
her
handbag: it was Aunt Jill's handbag. Joanna had lost her own handbag somewhere on Dartmoor while the wolves had been filling the skies with their song. But
in a way
it was her handbag, because when Aunt Jill had died the kind old bird had left her everything, and it wasn't unreasonable to assume that "everything" included this handbag. So Joanna didn't feel like a thief or anything using it.) (Besides, Aunt Jill would have wanted her handbag to be at Jas's funeral, wouldn't she?) and made for the door.
The bells had stopped. She could hear voices joined in a hymn – "Be Thou My Vision" – as she scurried up the path that wound from the churchyard gate to the church itself. She'd been wrong to think that there'd be a small turn-out to say a last farewell to Jas: from the sound of it there must be forty or fifty, quite an assembly for a small place like Ashburton. She wondered if she should turn back, since her absence would hardly be noticed, but then the thought of Aunt Jill and those two pints of Royal Oak drove her on. She pushed her fingers through her hair, yelping as she tugged on a knot, and wished that she'd thought to bring a hip-flask or something in case the Reverend James Daker guffed on for ages at the grave-side.
The church doors seemed to be locked, like those of a theatre once the play's started and the auditorium's full. She knew that St Leonard's had another entrance round the back somewhere, because she'd seen it from the vicarage garden once when Mrs Daker, during a weekend when her husband was away at a conference, had invited Aunt Jill and her visiting niece across for tea. But her recollections of it were vague, and she wasn't about to start stumbling through the rose-bushes looking for it.
Thwarted, she stood back from the doors and looked upwards at the sheer sandstone façade of the church.
There was someone on the roof, leaning over and peering straight back down at her.
She flinched, then recovered herself. It was only a gargoyle, its hideous face twisted into a malicious sneer.
Qinmeartha, the Insane God,
she thought. She was panting rapidly, unsteadily, and she could feel her heart echoing her breath.
Get a grip on yourself, Joanna lass. The Insane God Qinmeartha belongs in that
other
world, the irrational one he created: not
here
, not here in good old Ashburton-by-the-Moor, prettiest village in South Devon, winner of seven major tourist-industry awards and blah-de-blah-de-blah-blah. That's just a gargoyle that the good Christian souls of the parish of St Leonard's clubbed together five hundred years ago to erect as a symbol of their ... Of their
what
? Hardly as an image of their god, surely. The Judaeo-Christian Jahweh was a benign face with a long white beard, a sort of poor man's Santa Claus, not a malevolent sadist like the Insane God Qinmeartha who tormented the Wardrobe Folk's world.
Wasn't he?
In front of her the church doors suddenly opened, so that she was hit by a burst of song. The hymn seemed to have been going on for a very long time. Perhaps the Reverend James Daker had decided that a single rendition was insufficient to express the respect in which old Jas was held in the community, or perhaps the organist had brought only the one piece of sheet music with him. It was still "Abide with Me", which Joanna had always regarded as one of her favourites; but surely it wasn't right that it should be repeated over and over, like this week's hit on a pub juke-box.
She stepped forwards, hoping she'd be able to slip in quietly among the congregation without being noticed. A flutter of movement behind her made her turn her head, and she saw that a single crow had come down to walk up the path, parodying a human being as it rocked its shoulders from side to side.
Is that what I looked like to anyone who was watching me?
she thought.
She dragged her eyes away from the creature, and inched forwards into the church's gloom.
At first she couldn't see anything at all, although she was aware of the presence of a mass of people. Instinctively she looked in the direction of the altar, expecting to see at least a few candles, but once again there was only darkness. This was coming to remind her too much of the night on Dartmoor, but she kept her nerves curbed: it was just a coincidence, that was all; these old country churches had been built with thick walls and narrow windows, so it was often gloomy inside them. She hummed along with a few bars of "Jerusalem", wondering how long the choir had been singing it before she'd heard them from her window.
Windows. Yes, the windows of St Leonard's were quite narrow, which no doubt accounted for the lack of light in the church. There was some fine stained glass in those windows.
The doors silently fell shut behind her, closing off the rectangle of sunlight that had failed to spill over the threshold.
The windows weren't all
that
narrow. There should be a matrix of glowing colour falling across the congregation.
There should be candles at the altar.
And suddenly the whole of the interior was flooded with light, brighter even than her recollections of the sky of the Wardrobe Folk's world. She reeled back against the unyielding doors, holding her arms up to cover her face, dropping her handbag and hearing, despite the lusty hymn, the echoes as her possessions flew away in all directions across the cold stone floor. She knew she'd feel better if she screamed, but some misplaced remnant of decorum forbade her to do so: she was in a church, after all.
The light pulsed, impossibly, even brighter, and then dwindled.
Cautiously, Joanna lowered her arms. The church was illuminated as if by spring daylight. She could see that the glass of the two windows in the long wall opposite her had been blasted out of the frames; strips of lead hung twisted in place.
St Leonard's was empty, except for herself.
No, there was somebody else there, standing alone among the pews, hands clasped reverentially across her chest.
Tony Gilmour looked blankly at her for a moment, then opened her mouth to launch into the next verse of "When the Saints Come Marching In".
7: Friendly Pariah
She opened her eyes. The church was full of people, one or two of whom were smiling kindly in her direction. The windows opposite were intact. Candles flickered merrily in their holders around the altar. In the gilt pulpit the Reverend James Daker was holding forth about his namesake, who'd run the pub across the road.
Joanna looked for Tony Gilmour's face, and saw the girl standing where she'd seen her only a moment ago, but this time surrounded by the rest of her family and much of the rest of the village.
Tony smiled at her shyly, as if uncertain of how Joanna would react.
No one was singing.
Joanna took a step forward to grip the end of the nearest pew. She imagined that the Reverend James Daker paused momentarily in his homily, as if he disapproved of her late arrival – which he quite probably did. She needed to sit down, urgently, but all the pews seemed to be full.
She looked towards the Reverend James Daker, and he smiled at her.
This time there was no imagining that he hesitated. The beefy man stopped entirely, and beckoned her forward towards him. Obediently she moved along the aisle, aware that every eye was on her. She became aware, too, of the rich gamey smell that hung on her: the sweaty jeans, the unwashed bottom, the socks that she'd been wearing awake and asleep for more days than she could remember. She put a hand to her face and found a little crust of dried food at the corner of her mouth.
"Come on, dear friend," said the Reverend James Daker, kind but firm. "We can't wait all day for you."
There was a solitary chair placed in a space of its own directly in front of the altar. It was to this that he was pointing. Gratefully Joanna tiptoed towards it, knowing that it would make just as much sense to walk normally, since everyone was anyway watching her progress, but wanting to go through the pantomime of courtesy.
Once seated, she lit up a cigarette and began to relax.
The Reverend James Daker continued his flow mid-sentence, as if there had been no interruption. Jas Paisley – it was the first time Joanna had known the landlord's name, although it must have been staring her in the face over the lintel every time she went into the Blue Horse – had shared many of the same fine qualities as her Aunt Jill, if the vicar was to be believed: he had been sober and upstanding – rare qualities in a publican, remarked the Reverend James Daker with a condescending smile – and the community had been fortunate to have such an outstanding person in its midst.
There was much more of the same, and Joanna fished out a second cigarette. Yet again she wished she'd had the foresight to equip herself with a hip-flask. The little chair on which she'd perched herself was not overly comfortable, as if it had been designed for the use of penitents, and she shifted around in it, trying not to make it creak. She ground the butt of her first cigarette out beneath her heel, and put its replacement in her mouth, sucking on the unlit tobacco while she burrowed in her pockets for her matches.
"... and now," the Reverend James Daker was saying, "we have here before us our old friend Jas for one final time ..."
The man seemed incapable of saying anything briefly. Joanna toyed with the idea of getting to her feet and interrupting him, of reeling off a far terser oration that she knew would much better summarize the character of Jas Paisley, the intolerant old bastard, than any of the vicar's kind words could do, but she restrained herself.
There was no coffin.
It wasn't the sort of thing you expected to notice at a funeral – the fact that one of the most vital pieces of the whole rigmarole had been forgotten – but it was the case. She was closest to the front of the church so she had the best view, and it was a certainty that the coffin was missing. She twisted right around to try to see over the heads of the congregation in case the box had been put somewhere at the back, but it didn't appear to have been. She felt her cheeks twitch, and wondered if she'd started grinning like an imbecile.
This is going to be something to laugh about later,
she thought,
over a couple of drinks in the Blue Horse.
Near the rear of the church sat Rupert, the longest-serving of all the pub's regulars and possibly the closest friend the dead man had possessed. Tears were flowing down the wrinkled cheeks; the eyes were like a pair of stagnant ponds. Rupert, too, had begun to lose a lot of weight.
You're going to be the next,
Joanna thought.
First there was Aunt Jill, and then came the landlord, and the third on the list is going to be you, old man.
Unless, of course, there had been others before Aunt Jill. It was something she had never thought to ask, and no one – certainly not Dr Grasmere – had volunteered the information.
"... I'm sure our good comrade Jas wouldn't be averse to giving us a last song, if we all asked him," concluded the Reverend James Daker above her.
She turned to the front again. This was the most bizarre funeral service she could remember attending, but at last it seemed to be wending its way towards its close. She realized she hadn't got a hymn-book, and hoped that the concluding psalm would be one of the few she knew well. She peeked into her crumpled cigarette packet and discovered that she'd got only three left: enough to get her through the rest of the service, certainly, and with luck also the ceremonies at the grave-side. If need be she could always cadge a couple from one of the other mourners.
"Please, a song, Jas," said the Reverend James Daker insistently.
Joanna, glancing around, suddenly realized that he was looking directly at her.
There was a rustle of voices from elsewhere in the church. "Yes, Jas – come on – just one more song for old times' sake – buy you a pint afterwards, har har."
"Please don't keep us waiting all day," said the Reverend James Daker, a hint of annoyance coming into his voice. He was not a man who took kindly to having his wishes ignored, as Aunt Jill had discovered during her disputes with him over the Bloody Bells. "It's the least you can offer us in return for this splendid service we've been holding for you."
Now his stare was certainly fixed on her.
"But," Joanna piped, "there must be some mistake. I'm not Jas. I'm Joanna."
Several of the villagers chuckled, but the Reverend James Daker's face became severe.
"This is surely neither the time nor the place for jest, Jas," he said. "All of us here can recognize you. Even the newcomers, like the Gilmours, know you well enough not to mistake you for that bitch Jill Soames's tart of a niece. Sing us a song, if you please – and preferably a respectable one, such as befits the occasion."
She could hear her voice winding higher. "But I'm
not
Jas Paisley!" she protested. "I'm Joanna Gard, I tell you. I'm nothing like old Jas at all. I'm a
woman
, for God's sake!"
"God moves in mysterious ways," murmured Rupert from the back. "His wonders should perform."
"Stop this!" she yelled, standing up, so that the cigarette packet shot out from her lap and slid under the step in front of the altar. "The joke isn't funny! Leave me alone, won't you! Stop doing this to me!"
"It seems," said the Reverend James Daker with heavy irony, "that our dear, deceased friend declines to give us this last little pleasure. Well, that must remain a matter to be settled between himself and his Maker; it is not for us to be his judges. So in the mean time there's nothing left for the rest of us to do but bury him."
Pews screeched and squawked on the floor as they were pushed back. Joanna could hear the clumsy crowd movements of the congregation getting to its collective feet.
"Wait!" she cried. "There's a mistake! You're making a dreadful mistake!"
"The grave's already
dug
, Jas. Surely you're not saying we should let all the sexton's hard work just go to waste?"
"But
I'm not Jas!
Can't you understand that?"
The Reverend James Daker looked exasperated. He shut the book in front of him with a loud slam, and turned away from her, raising his hands as if to appeal directly to the Almighty. "Jas, I'm certain you've told more lies to your God in your lifetime than all the rest of the village put together, but surely you must realize that
now
, of all times, there's no point in keeping up the pretence any longer. Maybe you'd be able to get away with this sort of nonsense in one of the big cities, like Newton, but not among a small, close-knit community like ours. I
appeal
to you to abandon your lies at this turning point in your existence."
The words that came out of Joanna's mouth weren't the ones she'd intended to say. They tasted strange, as if they belonged to someone else.
"You're quite right," she said. "I'm Jas. And I'll sing you a song."
"Glory be!" cried the Reverend James Daker sarcastically. "The man's come to his senses at last! And what's your song going to be, Jas? `Three German Officers Crossed the Rhine'? `The Ball of Kirriemuir'? `'Twas on the Good Ship
Venus
'? Something in keeping with the way you lived? Or are you going to honour us with a testament to your new, repentant soul?"
His concluding shout died away in echoes.
"The Lord is my shepherd," Joanna sang, "I shall not want ..."
As she continued, other voices raised themselves in chorus alongside hers, so that, in later verses where she grew less certain of the words, her stumbles were able to pass unnoticed. The organist, unseen somewhere among the rafters, joined in with both his instrument and his voice – a booming bass, hitting each note to perfection. Up in the pulpit, the Reverend James Daker rocked his shoulders from side to side, moving his body in time to the music. His red face beamed at her.
The psalm ended in a triumphant peal from the organ, and hush crept slowly across the space. Joanna stood with her head bowed, trying to look contrite, portraying – she hoped – the image that Jas would have wished to project.
"And now," whispered the Reverend James Daker at last, "it is time to proceed with the burial."
There was a buzz of excitement from the congregation.
This can't be happening,
thought Joanna. It seemed to be the leitmotif of her stay here.
Singing a song was one thing, but surely they can't really be intending to
bury
me, for Christ's sake?
The Reverend James Daker descended the pulpit steps in stately fashion, his hands folded across his belly – no longer so ample, Joanna noticed distractedly, as it had used to be – and crossed the floor of the church towards her. "Come along with me, my child," he said amiably, "for we are all children in the eyes of the Lord."
"Hallelujah!" someone shouted, and others took up the cry.
"I am only a child," Joanna responded dutifully.
"We are
all
only children," stressed the Reverend James Daker.
"Yes!" She recognized Rupert's voice again. "Let's scrag him, lads!"
She tugged herself away from the Reverend James Daker and threw herself towards the side of the church.
"All those years," bellowed Rupert, tears choking his voice, "all those years he was pretending to be my friend he was short-pinting me, the bastard! Every effing pint! And he knew I'd never say anything about it, because I'm not that sort, so he just kept on doing it."
"
And
," said someone different, "he was always cheating in the cricket. That time he gave me out lbw, I knew it was just because the ..."
"He told all his customers I put poisonous potions into my flapjacks so that they'd die if they dared to eat in the Crafts Centre ..."
"He ran over my dog in 1972 ..."
"
Please!
" roared the Reverend James Daker, lifting up his hands to cow the mob. "Please, my friends. This is the house of the Lord. Let us not permit anything unseemly to occur between these walls! One at a time, for the mercy of Christ! Rupert – you were the closest to him, so you must have suffered his evils the most. You can lead the way to the cemetery. Put a rope around Jas's neck so that he does not stray from the path."
There was already a rope around Joanna's neck, she discovered – a rope made of plaited seaweed. She couldn't remember putting it on in her bedroom, but then she'd been in such a rush to try to get here on time.
The organist struck up a new tune, and it took her a moment to identify it. It was the grotesque
Dies Irae
from the fifth movement of Berlioz's
Symphonie Fantastique
, but played in the style of Scott Joplin. Some of the villagers were linking arms and beginning to dance together. Rupert, implacable, was stalking towards her, his face twisting furiously, spittle dribbling from the corners of his lips. The heavy arm of the Reverend James Daker fell across her shoulders, pinning her in position.
Rupert grabbed the free end of the seaweed rope. "Every effing pint," he grunted at her, and then he spat in her eyes.
She broke.
Her hand clawed across Rupert's face, the long nails digging deeply into his flesh. She felt the edge of his eye tear. She knew she was screaming something, but they weren't words and they weren't under her control. She kicked Rupert hard in the knee, breaking something of her own – a toe – in the process, but she didn't feel any pain. The old man was crumpling up in front of her, his face a curtain of blood.
"Unseemliness in the house of the Lord," thundered the Reverend James Daker. "Is our esteemed old friend possessed by demons? Drive out the demons, my friends! Drive out the implements of evil!"
And then the whole congregation was upon her, hurling her to the stone floor and kicking at her, jabbing at her with their walking-sticks and umbrellas, beating down on her with weighty handbags.
"
Stop!
" came a voice, louder than even the Reverend James Daker's. "Stop that! Leave her alone."
A last few kicks, and then the people were pulling back from her.
"Are you wild animals?" said the unidentified voice. "Have you gone mad? Leave the child be!"
"That's no child," said the Reverend James Daker. "That's Jas. Dead Jas. We all know him as Jas."