The House of Susan Lulham (Kindle Single) (2 page)

‘Her mother told me that one neighbour claimed to have heard her laughing. I suppose saying
laughter
, rather than cries of pain might have been an excuse for not going over to find out what was happening.’

‘Zoe didn’t mention that. As such.’

like laughing… throaty laughing. Jonno said that was the pipes…

‘As a teenager, if she didn’t get her own way over something, she’d take a… blade of some kind to an arm or a thigh. Even her mother thought she was long over that, though when she went out, it seems she would take a knife with her. With a retractable blade - Stanley knife, or similar. And then the cut-throat razor - tool of the trade. In her bag. Protection? I don’t know.’

‘In Hereford?’

Sophie shrugged.

‘Who knows what kind of people she was mixing with. Certainly none of them came to her funeral.’

‘
You
were there?’

‘Crematorium. Very small, very swift. The eulogy brief and dishonest. What else could they do under the circumstances? The cathedral and a horse-drawn hearse?’

‘Husband’s an atheist,’ Merrily said. ‘Zoe’s, that is. Presumably with all the layers of disbelief that go with that. An educated man, and she….’

‘Not a teacher?’

‘Part-time dinner lady at his last school.’ Merrily sighed. ‘What I should be doing now is finding previous tenants. The guy who bought the house was
smart enough to use it as rental accommodation for a couple of years, let the history fade.’

‘The former tenants could be anywhere, now. And so you find them and they say it was a perfectly peaceful home, what then? How did you leave it? What did you do?’

3. The night job

There was a terrace or a patio, grey and white concrete flags, and then a steep slope down to the road, made easier to maintain by a formal rockery with tufty, ground-hugging evergreen bushes, steps down the middle.

Where the woman had been standing. Short, red leather jacket, red leggings. Solid as you or me.

See,
that
was convincing. People who saw them usually described something solid, quite normal-looking. With people who invented them, it was hazy, see-through.

Merrily had stood on what might be the spot. From the steps, you had a good overview of the estate: very small and exclusive, not much more than this cul-de-sac, all the houses detached, guarded by mature trees.

Place memory, imprint?

Not when you put it together with all the rest. This might be what Huw Owen, her spiritual director, would call an
insomniac
.

Unquiet spirit. The restless essence of someone who’d died here, and not peacefully in bed. For the re-homing of which there was an established sequence of responses aimed at gently but decisively breaking earthly ties and obsessions. Even discounting the actor from
EastEnders
, there’d have to be a stack of those with Susan Lulham. In theory, a case for the full Requiem. A calming, the replacement of anger, bitterness and resentment with love and sympathy and pity. But a Requiem usually required a congregation of more than one, especially if the one was Zoe Mahonie.

Love and sympathy and pity?

No way is that bitch driving me out of my house
.

Perhaps some way to go with Zoe. Who should’ve been down here, part of this, but who had consented to observe from the doorway while she did what you usually did on a first visit when you were unsure: the basic blessing. Zoe had stood, po-faced, nursing her mobile phone, maybe ready to call the police if this got out of hand.

You’re not gonna make a big show of this, are you?

I’ll be as discreet as possible
.

This being a discreet upmarket estate with well-foliaged space between homes. No obvious curiosity, but who knew? Merrily bending her head, setting extraneous thoughts adrift, lowering her eyelids, letting a familiar breath-pattern develop, thankful when it happened.

Birdsong from the tall trees behind the house, the crunching of stop-start traffic from the main road cresting Aylestone Hill. A scent of wet grass cuttings, an image of herself as if from above: small woman in black with a tiny cross round her neck, a mini New Testament in one hand and the airline bag on the step by her feet. Jane kept saying she should get a better bag, with a solid frame. A proper exorcist bag, meaningfully black, like on the old film-posters. A holdall styled for what Jane, smirking, used to call the Night Job.

A flask of water had been blessed this morning in Ledwardine Church. Zoe looking on with disapproval as she’d taken it from the airline bag. Damn, should have pasted a label across it saying
weed killer
.

Merrily had stifled the laugh like a hiccup. But it had been enough for something to blow inside her, a fuse no thicker than a hair, and a huge black shutter had came down,
clack
, and she’d been staring, blankly faithless, at the insanity of enacting a medieval ritual, toned-down for a woman who was buggered if she was going to let that bitch drive her out of her home even it meant employing a stupid throwback she’d pulled from the Net.

Shocked at herself, she’d stumbled and kicked the flask and nearly fallen over to grab it before it toppled from the step and smashed. Catching it in time but half-wishing she hadn’t, because something inside her hadn’t wanted another chance at this.

Zoe had watched from the doorway, clutching her smartphone, as Merrily stood in the rain and murmured. Very discreet, no histrionics, nothing that might upset a neighbour. Once round the house, then up to the master bedroom: expensive, but too dark and leathery for Merrily’s taste. Another long window with a view of a small field with two ponies in it and a tarmac pathway vanishing into shrubbery.

…make the seasons to take their course and our days to end in sleep… Guard with your continual watchfulness all who rest within these walls
.

No sprinkling of water in the bedroom. Some priests would have made it a condition that the husband should be here, too. Or the wife. Or the civil partner, whatever. But if this guy was away on a course and an atheist anyway…

She’d left the living room till last.

No feeling of menace, but nobody who knew what had happened here could be entirely comfortable, particularly a woman. Coming home in the dark and flinging on all the lights. That sharp, involuntary intake of breath when you opened the door from the hall into the silence of the room where Susan Lulham
had died. Even on a psychological level, what remained of Suze could be complex and upsetting.

….sanctify this house, that in it there may be joy and gladness, peace and love, health and goodness, and thanksgiving…

You were told that it wasn’t the words that mattered, no precision of delivery, no sense of incantation. It should be about knowing what you wanted to get across, aligning yourself with the Source.

* * *

‘And then,’ she told Sophie, ‘I suggested, she might like to wander down to the cathedral. Sometime. Just to… you know…’

‘Didn’t go down well?’

‘Like if she was feeling frightened or oppressed, she could maybe just sit there. Forget prayer, maybe just sit at the back for a few minutes, try to empty her head… and she’s looking at me like I’m some crazy evangelical screaming at her to come to God, throw herself on His mercy. “I don’t like old - didn’t you get that?”’

And all she’d done was a first-stage blessing. Cupboards opened, mirror covered, TV unplugged, sprinkling of holy water, prayers.
Sanctify this house, that in it there may be joy and gladness…

Covering your back. Knowing you might still wind up looking stupid or naive, part of something obsolete. Some deliverance consultants avoided contact with the public, when possible, preferring just to offer technical advice to priests approached by parishioners disturbed by what they believed were paranormal phenomena - the third reason for remembering the clergy, after weddings and funerals. The one rarely spoken of in a secular society.

Except, it seemed, on Facebook. Merrily shook her head.

‘She kept saying, “You have to exorcise me.” They all know that word. I’m trying to explain that exorcism applies only to something considered malevolent and essentially non-human. She said, “What do you think fucking Suze is?”’

This had been outside, in a warm, desultory rain, both of them standing on the steps where Zoe had said the woman in the leather jacket had been visible. Merrily murmuring about peace and love, health and goodness, Zoe looking contemptuous. This was it? A bit of a blessing? Pat on the head?

‘I didn’t tell her a major exorcism needed permission from the Bishop, and a visit from a psychiatrist. How would you even approach that? Zoe, if you don’t mind, I’d like someone else to meet you?’

Hadn’t told Zoe the truth of it.
I’ve never done one. Never done a major exorcism. Most of us never have. It doesn’t get that far
.

But the fact that Zoe had said exorcise
me
… that at least indicated an awareness of where the problem might lie.

‘What exactly did she say when she first rang?’

‘Just… can I talk to the exorcist, please.’

‘She used that word? Not deliverance or advisor on the paranormal, or…?’

‘Exorcist,’ Sophie said. ‘
Might
she be deluded? Or is she hiding some emotional problem?’

‘Don’t know. You can never be sure. I told her if it continued, we could raise our game all the way to a Requiem Eucharist. But that would need more people, preferably including someone who’d known Susan Lulham personally.’

‘The Requiem would be for Susan?’

‘She didn’t seem to get that at all. It was like she expected the garlic and the crucifix. Driving Suze out of her house. I asked if there was someone she could stay with until her husband came home. She said she had a sister but they didn’t get on.’

Sophie placed a mug of tea in front of Merrily.

‘I don’t think you’re entirely convinced by Mrs Mahonie are you?’

‘Oh God, she’s standing there in the rain, under an umbrella like she’s waiting for a bus. She doesn’t do churches or any old places. And she got my number from a woman on Facebook. And you know what was missing, Sophie? Fear. When it’s there, you can smell it, slightly sour, like… fresh sweat.’

* * *

She remembered Zoe, when they were in the leathery master bedroom, looking as if she wanted to hit somebody - like Merrily, who was smaller and who was there and who thought there was something not quite right about this.

Can I explain?

Zoe saying nothing, her thick arms folded. Merrily not moving. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the aggression. Not too long ago, on a bank of the River Wye, she’d stared into the face of someone and seen only evil and, against everything she was supposed to stand for, had wanted only to…

God, God, God…

‘Zoe, listen to me… where something like this happens, a living person is usually involved. Whether he or she knows it or not. Sometimes you can be just the vehicle… you can be driven to do something you wouldn’t normally do, or to see something you wouldn’t normally see, by the conditions in a particular place. And afterwards you think you couldn’t possibly have done it.’

Zoe’s pale blue eyes had been cold.

‘I’m not mad.’

‘No. Of course you’re not.’

‘You didn’t like her,’ Sophie said.

‘Not a very Christian reaction, is it? Another reason I can’t let it go.’

‘Best not to obsess over it. It’s what she wants.’ Sophie looked up. ‘Laurence - is he still on tour?’

‘Lol? No, that’s over. I mean the tour. But he’s not here, anyway.’

Sophie’s gaze sharpened.

‘Nothing—?’

‘No, no. Nothing… like that. We’re OK. I think. He’s just doing some session work at Prof Levin’s studio. With Bell Pepper. First album in years. If Kate Bush could do it, etcetera… Bell, the old mystic, she likes to record in the hours before dawn, so he has to stay there. In his old flat over the granary. Until summoned.’

Sophie’s eyebrows rose above her glasses and not with any sense of wonder.

‘They don’t change, these people, do they?’

‘Most people don’t,’ Merrily said, ‘I find.’

4. Mostly old people

Aftercare.

She phoned Zoe’s house six times that night. Answerphone. A man’s recorded voice delivering the message in a clipped, impatient way. Maybe Zoe had gone to her sister’s after all. Twice Merrily left messages, waiting in the scullery office, watching her own face, grey, in the screensaver.

Forty next year, a daughter out there in the adult world. How long could she keep this up? How to deal with change: a TV turning itself on in the night, spirit messages in the hard disk, phantoms on Facebook, firewalls breached by the demonic.

A level of scepticism was essential, but how far should you allow it to rise before you felt obliged to throw on all the lights and walk away from the Night Job?

She phoned Jane’s mobile. Voicemail. There was rarely an adequate signal around the Pembrokshire dig where Jane was doing her gap year as a gopher for archaeologists. She left a message.

‘No pressure, flower. Just wondered if you remembered a physics teacher at Moorfield called Jonathan Mahonie.’

The absent Jonno was important. Coming between a wife and a husband was never good, but an
atheist
husband… and she’d gone behind his back. An atheist husband and Susan Lulham.

She’d gone into Google and found another of Suze’s claims to fame. The year before her death, she’d done a daytime TV slot, discussing new hairstyles and how to achieve them in your own bathroom. No YouTube sequences from that, just the razor picture of Suze with blurred eyes, lavish, white smile exposing gums the colour of offal. On full-screen you could read the brand name on the razor:
Bismarck
. The only other pictures were from a magazine feature which had not been in Sophie’s portfolio: Suze showing off her new home, the living room looking much as it had this morning, same pale colours, even a mirror in the same position. A shot of the house from outside had been
taken from a low angle in bright sunlight, and its walls looked hard, like bone. Savagely modern when it had been built, decades earlier, but now somehow just very Suze.