The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (40 page)

At first, idly browsing the
Cwn Annwn
passages from Mrs Leather, Lol wasn’t aware of what Merrily was saying, just the soft and muted colours of her voice. Luxuriating in the proximity of her, recalling an old Van Morrison song from
Tupelo Honey
, about a woman in the kitchen with the lights turned down low.

It was quite a while before raised voices began to suggest that there was unpleasantness here.

‘No, what’s she’s saying,’ Alice from the chippy said, ‘is that we needs a proper funeral for the boy. With the full rites.’

Merrily said, ‘Well, not—’

‘That’s fucking creepy!’

‘
Dexter!
’

‘Funeral for a kid that’s already been in his grave for near twenty year?’

‘It’s not—’

‘You’re telling me that en’t creepy?’

‘It’s not a funeral,’ Merrily said, ‘and I honestly don’t think you’d find it creepy. However, it’s only an idea, a possibility.’

‘You got no right. Should never’ve gone round askin’ questions, rakin’ it all up. It’s in the past.’

‘It’s in
you
!’ Alice shrieked. ‘Don’t you see that?’ Her voice steadied. ‘Been like this all night, he has, vicar. I don’t know what’s the matter with him.’

Merrily said, ‘Dexter, first of all, we don’t have to do this, not if you don’t want to. And we don’t even have to do it in a church.’

‘Then where’s the bloody point?’

‘All I’m trying to say is that the Eucharist – communion – is a very powerful way of tackling these things, in which... we believe that Jesus himself is personally involved. And it can sometimes draw a line under things, create order and calm, where there’s been long-term unrest, ill feeling, distress... conflict.’

‘Yes,’ Alice said, ‘this is what we want.’

‘Alice asked me if there was any way I could help, and I’m sorry if it isn’t what either of you were expecting. If you don’t think it’s the right thing, you don’t have to have anything to do with it.’

‘But,’ Alice said, with menace, ‘you’ll be letting your family down if you don’t.’

‘
No!
’ An ache in Dexter’s voice. From the scullery, Lol could feel him wanting to beat his head on the table.

Alice said, ‘En’t no reason the rest of us can’t go ahead without him, is there, vicar?’

‘Well, we
could
, but that wouldn’t—’

‘What about Darrin?’ Dexter said. ‘He gonner be there?’

‘It might also help Darrin a lot,’ Merrily said. ‘It would be good if everyone was there, from both sides of the family. It can bring things out. In my experience.’

‘Bring out the truth?’

‘Well, it... it can bring peace.’

‘And what if everybody don’t want the truth out?’

Merrily didn’t reply. Alice shouted, ‘We all wants the truth!’

‘Well, mabbe Darrin don’t! Mabbe the truth en’t what Darrin wants at all, look.’

Nobody spoke for a while. Chairs creaked, small movements of unrest. Then Dexter started mumbling. Lol couldn’t make out any of it. Then Alice said, raw-voiced, ‘What’s this? You never—’ And Dexter mumbled some more, and Alice said faintly, ‘
No. Dear God
.’

Dexter’s voice came in again, no longer gruff, raised up in panic.

‘He’s like, “Get your fuckin’ foot down, you big useless—” ’

‘
Dexter!
’

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘Go on. Please.’

‘I was bigger than Darrin, but he was real nasty, look. Stuck his knife in the back of my hand once. Had an airgun, shot a robin in the garden. Things people thought were nice, he’d wanner destroy. So like, when we gets into the Fiesta, there’s a kiddy’s picture book on the seat, and he picks it up and rips it in half, throws the bits out of the window. Roland, he starts crying, Darrin’s leanin’ over him and pinchin’ him, telling him we’re going to London. We en’t stopping till we gets to London, and we en’t never comin’ back. Never see his mam and dad again.’

‘Oh God in heaven, Vicar,
stop him
!’

‘Weren’t
no
stoppin’ him, Alice. More the kid’s screechin’, more he’s gettin’ off on it. Excited! Gettin’ more excited the further we goes. I’m like, “Don’t you wanner go back now? How we gonner get back if we goes too far?” Darrin’s goin’, “
Keep your fuckin’ foot down, you fat wanker, we’re goin’ on the motorway, we’re goin’ to London.
” ’

Alice was moaning, ‘Oh, dear God, no, oh dear God.’ Lol sensing a rhythm, as if she was rocking backwards and forwards, doubled up in anguish.

‘So Roland, he’s gettin’ real hysterical, starts pulling at the door handle, and Darrin’s goin’, “
You get away from that door or I’ll give you a smacking
.” So like Roland waits till Darrin turns round again and I can year him fiddling with the handle, and then Darrin whips round, sudden-like, and whangs him in the face,
bang!
Cops is behind us by then, look, blue lights going and that, and Roland’s sobbin’ away, and that’s when I decides I’m gonner go across the road and up this little turning, then the cops’ll be able to get us. And that... that’s how it was.’

Silence, except for creaking chairs, small sounds of unrest. Then Alice started to weep.
Routine parochial issue
. Lol tugged his wet wellies onto his bare feet.

Merrily said, ‘You didn’t tell the police about... any of this. Did you?’

‘How could I? But you see why Darrin en’t gonner want none of it out.’

‘Or your parents? You tell your parents
anything
?’

‘They know what Darrin’s like. Alice knows.’

Another silence.

Then a jagged wail.

‘Oh my God, that poor little child... his own
brother
...’ Like Alice’s voice was bleeding. ‘Oh my God, and then he
died
! He— My
God
, I never knew none of this.’

‘’Course you never knew,’ Dexter snapped. ‘Darrin en’t never gonner tell you, was he?’

‘Gets worse, gets worse all the time.’

‘You made me, Alice, I didn’t wanner—’

‘How’m I gonner tell my sisters?’

‘Can’t, can you?’ Dexter said flatly. ‘No way.’

A chair creaking, someone standing up, footsteps going nowhere on the kitchen flags.

Then Alice said, ‘We surely needs it now.’

‘Eh?’

‘
I
can’t live with this. Knowing that child’s out there.’

‘He en’t out there, Alice, he’s f— He’s gone.’

‘We needs it now, more than ever – the Holy Spirit, the holy Eucharist.’

‘No way!’

‘Like a big white bird.’

‘This is an end to it!’

‘How do we organize it, vicar? How soon can we do it?’

‘Well, you know, that’s up to—’

‘
No!
’ Sound of a big fist smashing into the table; Lol leapt up. ‘I don’t wannit!’ Dexter roared. ‘I don’t wannit to
happen
, you understand me? Why you gotter—? You’re a fuckin’ ole meddler, Alice, nobody assed you to start all this shit. I only told you to fuckin’ stop you, for fuck’s sake!’

Putting his right eye to the crack in the door, Lol saw a bulky guy with a petulant lower lip and a shaven head, standing in the middle of the kitchen. He looked marginally nearer to tears than to violence, but his fists were bunched, and he was breathing through his mouth. He unclenched a fist and started feeling in a pocket of his leather coat. Lol put a hand on the door, ready to wrench it open.

Dexter brought his hand up to his mouth. There was a vacuum gasp.

‘You’re stressin’ me out. Leave it.
Fuck it!
All right?’

Dexter walked out, banging the kitchen door hard enough to make pans rattle on shelves.

‘Alice,’ Merrily said, from out of Lol’s view. ‘Let him walk it off in the cold air.’

Now she was hunched in the office chair, hands limp between her knees. She looked bloodless. Lol’s white high had evaporated. It was a powerful reminder, this episode, of how vulnerable the clergy were, feeling they had to be there, for everybody, whether it was wanted or not.

Including the dead? Even the dead?

‘I don’t even know how bad he is, you see,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t know enough about asthma. What if he’s out there on the square and he can’t get his breath?’

‘Does Alice live far away?’

‘Three minutes’ walk.’

‘Not a problem, then.’

‘Let’s hope not.’ She stood up and came and sank down beside him on the rug. They sat there in front of the electric fire, with their backs to the wall, their shoulders not quite touching, and she told him about the death of the kid called Roland Hook and seventeen years of corrosive bitterness inside a family.

‘I don’t get it,’ Lol said. ‘In a way I can understand Dexter’s problem with this.
Is
it normal, to have some kind of belated funeral service, in the hope that it’s going to make everything all right?’

‘Jeavons,’ Merrily said.

‘The loose canon.’

‘It’s not
just
Jeavons. There’s a movement inside Healing and Deliverance which argues that some illness, particularly chronic illness, can be the result of something unresolved in the family’s past. Or the victim being in the grip of some aberrant ancestor.’

‘Your ancestors are haunting you and you don’t know it?’

‘It makes a certain kind of sense, but that’s the trouble, isn’t it? We’re finding hauntings where there are no actual phenomena... other than an illness, or an emotional crisis. We – the Church of England.’

‘So, by calming the spirit of this poor kid, who died in a state of terror, you can, in theory—’

‘
I
can’t.’

‘Sorry, forgot the protocol. By organizing this Requiem for the dead kid, you can, in theory, open the way for
God
to cure not only Dexter’s asthma, but also to heal the rift in his wider family?’

‘Er... yeah.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Lol said, dismayed. ‘You go along with this, you could be spending every day of the rest of your life doing complicated Eucharistic services for people laying all their problems on their ancestors. Sure, let’s all blame the dead.’

Merrily shrugged.

‘The Church of England authorizes this? And healing?’

Merrily said, “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to Him, and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick
.
”

‘What’s that?’

‘Matthew’s Gospel, linking healing and deliverance.’

‘You’re not Jesus Christ,’ Lol said. ‘Healing could make you ill.’

‘Do I look ill?’

‘You look tired.’

‘I’m fine. Really.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’m awfully glad you’re here.’

Their shoulders touched. Lol took a long breath.

She laid her head wearily on his shoulder. ‘I’m all mixed up. Rumours – just
rumours
– of healing, and I’m getting the size of congregation I always dreamed of. And it makes me sweat. A hint of miracle cures, and suddenly you’re on the way to becoming someone with a big voice and disciples.’

‘Scary.’

Yes, it was. It was the very place he would hate for her to go, because of his parents, the born-again Pentecostalists, who used to attend Bible Belt-type healing services conducted by some crazy pastor who shook people till the sickness dropped out of them. But even the pastor, as far as Lol knew, hadn’t sought to heal the living through the dead.

Merrily said, ‘I mean, I really, really want it to happen for people... for the sick. I just don’t want it to be me who’s seen as the significant channel. It’s too early. It’s somehow too early for the women’s ministry. Certainly too early for me. How selfish is that? How
cowardly
is that?’

Lol felt the wetness on her cheeks and put an arm around her and held her, as chastely as he could bear. He tried to think of something he could say that didn’t sound soothing or patronizing or argumentative. On one level, he simply empathized. The idea of being a Major Artist still scared him, and the thought that he would soon be too old to scale the lowest available peak was almost comforting. But there was a big difference between a career and a calling, where you had to keep asking not what you or the audience needed, but how
God
wanted you to play it.

It was a lousy, thankless job. Jane would sometimes tell Lol how much she hoped that her mum would one day see the light and, slamming the church door behind her, start running.

Merrily said, ‘Lew Jeavons said this was a very interesting case, and he’s distressingly right. More right than he could know. And it’s all valid, even on a psychological level. I mean, some priests believe that if, say, your great-grandfather was a Satanist or a heretic or even a Freemason a century ago, it could be affecting your health today. Well, yeah, sure... But
this
case – even if the Requiem is no more than symbolic, it still might help. I mean, look at what it’s brought out tonight.’