The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (23 page)

‘And you’re a faded old hippy full of pathetic, drug-induced conspiracy theories.’ Sebbie stopped at the pub door. ‘I’ll give
you
a question, now. Why did Berrows call to
you
for help? Why didn’t he call the police, hey? Give that some thought, I would, Mr Thomas, and be sure to hide your
stash
somewhere safe, because you can expect a visit in the early hours from the Dyfed-Powys Drug Squad. Good day to you.’

Then he went into the pub, and Danny saw the curtains twitching along the street and found he was shaking, like with cold turkey.

15

W
HEN
M
ERRILY
BROUGHT
Dexter Harris into the kitchen, Jane had already made soup and sandwiches – not many big Sunday lunches in
this
household – and they’d shared them with Dexter, who at first was all shy and shambling, twice using his inhaler.

He ate steadily, glancing at Jane and occasionally at Merrily, something evidently on his mind. It took both cans of Stella to bring it out.

‘They, er, they reckons you’re the whatsit – county exorcist.’

‘Well, nowadays, they don’t...’ Merrily’s shoulders sagged. He’d have seen the movie on DVD – explanations were useless. ‘Yeah, kind of. Alice told you?’

Dexter shifted uncomfortably. Maybe he was expecting her to toss holy water at him, thrust a cross in his face, instructing the demon of asthma to vacate his system. Maybe that was a course of action Lew Jeavons might even advise.

In which case, one of them was in the wrong job.

‘It’s probably not what you think,’ Merrily said.

But what
was
she going to do? What did Alice actually expect of her? She smiled nervously at the big guy wedged into a dining chair with his leather jacket over the back. She felt worse than inadequate, she felt like someone recruited into a fraudulent enterprise, a trainee on a travelling medicine show.

And while the lager had loosened Dexter up, it didn’t make the situation any more promising. He was eyeing Jane now, and claiming that today was the first time he’d been inside a church since his christening. Tell the truth, he was only doing this to shut Alice up – her nagging him and his ma about it. Dexter lived at home with his ma and his younger sister in the Bobblestock area of Hereford. Useful to have somebody around if he had an attack, look. Also it was cheaper, and most of his girlfriends had their own flats or houses, so
that
was all right.

Suppose he had an attack here, what then? Merrily looked at Jane. If Dexter’s breathing changed rhythm, any laying-on of hands would take place only while they were waiting for the paramedics to get here.

Dexter started asking Jane which clubs she went to in Hereford at weekends. Jane named four, Merrily seriously hoping that she was lying. Dexter smirked at the last one, telling Jane he’d probably see her there sometime. Maybe he didn’t think of himself as being twice as old.

At about two-thirty, they heard a car pulling into the vicarage drive and Jane sprang up, conspicuously relieved.

‘It’s Eirion.’

‘Jane’s boyfriend.’ Merrily stood up, too, moved to the door of the scullery. ‘Let’s leave them to it, huh, Dexter?’

‘Boyfriend?’ Dexter looked like he’d been short-changed.

Merrily held open the office door. She was still in her dog collar and the Morning Worship kit, minus surplice, and this was probably for the best – too much informality could well convey the wrong impression to an overweight, dough-faced man of probably thirty-plus who seriously imagined someone Jane’s age could fancy him.

They went in and sat down, facing one another across the desk, like one of them had come for a job. On the desk: computer, answering machine, phone, Bible, sermon book.

Now what, Lew?

This... is at the heart of spiritual healing – taking the time to know people, making small deductions. How many doctors have the time or the patience to do that now – talking and considering and leaving time for small leaps of inspiration?

She had a cigarette half out of the packet when Dexter blandly shook his head, making wiping motions with his hands, his lower lip projecting like an outlet pipe. She pushed the cigarette back into the packet, wondering how he survived in the clubs. Putting the Silk Cut packet out of reach.
We suffer
, Jeavons had said.

An hour passed. It was growing dark.

Dexter was talking about the collapse of his engagement two years ago – how it had really knocked him sideways to learn that his girlfriend, Farah, had been seeing another bloke for months, apparently weighing up which of them was the best bet and then deciding, for some weird reason of her own, that it wasn’t Dexter.

Bitch. Made you stop trusting women, Dexter said. Made you want to start scoring a few points of your own. Dexter had hit the clubs. Shagger Harris, the foreman started calling him, down the tyre depot. Dexter grinned, looking down at the Bible on Merrily’s desk.

If we take the time to absorb what people are telling us about themselves, directly and indirectly, and we are in a suitable state of relaxation – a contemplative state – then the clues they come together and a feeling – or a word – sometimes drops into our minds
.

‘How old are you, Dexter?’

‘Me? Twenny-nine, now. Soon be thirty. Yeah, I know I look younger.’

‘Nobody special since Farah? Just casual stuff?’

‘Just casual sex,’ Dexter said.

‘Doesn’t the asthma...?’ Merrily broke off, embarrassed.

Dexter wasn’t. ‘Naw, they reckons it’s stress brings it on, look. Well, I only gets stressed-out when I en’t having no luck. Most times I can go all night, know what I mean? Don’t get no problems that way.’ He smiled at her. ‘Funny thing, that, ennit?’

Merrily leaned back. ‘You don’t really think this is going to help you, do you?’

Dexter sniffed. ‘Like I say, if it keeps the old woman quiet, it’s something. No offence meant. I’m not much of a believer. Can’t help that, can I?’

‘No. If you try and force yourself to believe, that only causes... stress.’

‘Doctor says I’ve gotter avoid that. People gives me stress, I don’t bother with ’em no more.’

‘Do you remember the first one?’

‘You what?’

‘The first asthma attack you ever had.’

He shook his head. ‘Dunno.’

‘Do you remember how old you were? Or has it always been a problem?’

‘’Bout twelve, thirteen.’ He didn’t look at her. She felt a tightening of the air between them. ‘Do it matter?’

‘I was just wondering what might’ve brought it on. If there was a particular... emotional problem that might’ve caused it. I mean, I don’t know what Alice told you, but I’m not any kind of medical expert. I’m just looking for... maybe something we can focus on in our prayers.’

‘Prayers?’ He looked at her now. ‘Strange, a nice-looking woman like you being a vicar and going on about prayers and that.’ He looked down at her breasts. ‘You must’ve been quite young when you had your daughter.’

‘What do you think about when you’re having an asthma attack?’

‘Eh?’

‘What goes through your mind?’

‘Sorter question’s that?’

‘I don’t know, it just came into my head. Nobody ask you that before? The doctors?’

‘Why would they?’

‘I’d just like to know what it’s like.’

He stared at her defiantly. ‘It’s like you’re drinking a glass of milk, and it turns into fuckin’ concrete halfway down your throat. That’s what it’s like.’

‘Thank you.’ Sounded like an image that went way back. A childhood image.

‘Don’t you get me going,’ Dexter said. ‘If I starts thinkin’ about it, I’ll get stressed.’

He wasn’t much more than a big silhouette now – wide shoulders, a pointed head. It was dark enough to put on the lamp. She reached out automatically, then paused, with a finger on the button of the Anglepoise.

‘And I don’t want people talkin’ about me in the church,’ Dexter said. ‘She said you was just gonner... I dunno, just do the healin’.’

‘It wouldn’t be like that, Dexter – people talking about you. It’s just, you know, to give
me
some guidance. Everything you tell me is totally confidential. Just between the two of us.’

‘Nothing to tell.’

‘Have you really not been in a church since your christening? No weddings? Funerals?’

He didn’t reply. In the silence, she thought his breath had coarsened. She tapped the Anglepoise button, still didn’t press it down. The directional light might make this seem too much like an old-style police interrogation. She thought of the basement interview rooms, opposite the cells at Hereford police headquarters, the ventilator grilles high on the walls, no windows. You didn’t need to be asthmatic to feel you couldn’t breathe down there.

‘You ever been in bother with the police, Dexter?’

It just came out, on the back of the thought.

‘Eh?’

‘Look, I’m sorry if that was—’

‘I fuckin’ knew it.’ Dexter was pushing back the chair.

‘I’m sorry.’ With difficulty, she didn’t move. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

a feeling – or a word – sometimes drops into our minds
.

Dexter was on his feet, a terrifying rattle in his breath.

‘It was out of order,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I dunno...’ Dexter moved clumsily to the door. ‘Dunno what she’s been tellin’ you, that ole bat.’ He had his inhaler out. ‘But fuck
this
for a game of soldiers.’

When Eirion tried to ease Jane back onto the bed, she just couldn’t go for it. Not with Mum two floors below, doing what she was doing. Doing the business, doing the priest bit, whatever she perceived
that
was today.

‘I really worry about her now.’ Jane sat on the edge of the bed, with her elbows on her knees.

‘It’s probably reciprocated tenfold,’ Eirion said.

‘I’m serious. The Jenny Box thing, that whole affair, it really messed her up – this woman in desperate need of support, sitting on awful secrets, and Mum not being there for her when it came to a head.’

‘She couldn’t know, though, Jane, could she?’

‘It doesn’t
matter
, she still feels responsible. Male priests can be aloof from it all – if they can get a few bums on pews then they feel they still have a role and a bit of status. Women, everything that goes wrong they take it as their fault.’

‘Isn’t that slightly sexist?’ Eirion said.

‘And with Mum you’ve got this constant self-questioning – all this, “Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing to try and fill His bloody sandals?” ’

Eirion came and sat close to Jane, bending forward to peer into her face.

‘I’m not upset,’ Jane said, ‘just in case you were thinking I might be in need of a groin to cry on.’

‘So what
is
she doing?’

‘Huh?’

‘Down there, with this bloke.’

‘I think she’s been invited to cure whatever it is that’s causing him to keep sucking his inhaler.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘OK.’ Jane let him take her hand. ‘It started with Ann-Marie Herdman. It’s all round the village that Ann-Marie Herdman was cured of something very nasty – that she may or may
not
have had – after Mum prayed for her. Now, if it had been a regular prayer for the sick, in the course of a normal service, nobody would’ve said a word. But because it was at one of the mysterious new Sunday-night sessions where there are weird things like –
woooh
– meditation... then it must be... you know?’

‘She’s teaching meditation now?’

‘In a simplistic Christian way. Nothing esoteric. I didn’t realize how far it had got until I went down the shop a couple of hours ago for some stuff for sandwiches, and there were these two women talking about it to Brenda, who’s Ann-Marie’s mum. I mean, I knew
about
Ann-Marie, but I thought it was just another NHS cock-up. I didn’t realize Mum was in the frame as... God, I can’t bear it. And if
I
can’t bear it, how does
she
feel?’

‘They’re saying she has healing skills?’

‘It’s the way people are, that’s all. Always desperate for evidence of miracles. It’s like when all these idiots form queues to worship a potato with the face of Jesus. One of the women said Alice Meek had brought her nephew in to have the vicar pray for him to be healed, and I’m imagining some little kid, and I’m thinking, Oh God, this is terrible, that’s
all
she needs. Then Mum turns up with this big jerk with the inhaler who keeps leering at me and accidentally rubbing his leg against mine under the table. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so... not funny.’

‘So what exactly is she doing?’

‘If she’s got any sense, Irene, she’s explaining to him that she’s unfortunately become the focus for a load of superstitious bollocks put about by old women with nothing better to occupy their minds. And then maybe suggest to this guy –
Dexter
, for heaven’s sake – that they say a quick prayer together but don’t expect to be throwing his inhaler into the river just yet.’