The Bishop’s residence was a substantial, 1920s red-brick house at the edge of the town, backing onto fields. It looked more like the home of a successful stockbroker than a man of the cloth. As he drove in through the gates and onto the gravel driveway, Jason was a little surprised to see a Harley-Davidson motorbike propped on its stand near the front door, beside a couple of modest saloon cars.
As he walked towards the porch, he was shaking with nerves. Pressing the imposing doorbell, he stood, trying to compose himself and not sound like a total idiot.
A stern-looking woman opened the door and peered at him suspiciously.
‘May I help you?’ she asked.
He decided to play the librarian ticket. ‘Yes, my name’s Jason Danes.’
From her blank expression it clearly didn’t register. No fan here.
‘I’m a local artist – a painter.’
‘I see,’ she said. Clearly not seeing.
‘I have a problem and wondered if it was possible to have a very quick word with the Bishop.’
‘I’m afraid he’s an extremely busy man, is he expecting you? I don’t have any appointments in his diary for this morning.’
‘I have a really urgent situation, could I ask you a favour? I’ll wait here – please go into your office and google me and you’ll see that I’m not a nutter. And then ask the Bishop if he could just give me five minutes. Please. It’s really important, I need his advice very urgently.’
Something in his voice must have touched a nerve in her, because she softened a little.
‘Would you like to tell me what exactly you need to see him about?’
‘Honestly, I badly need some advice about our house – we’ve just moved into the area, and my wife and I are very seriously concerned by something that’s going on. If I could just see him face to face. Five minutes. That’s all. Please.’
To his relief, she invited him in.
He followed her across an imposing, oak-panelled hallway and through a doorway into a reception area that reminded him of a doctor or dentist’s waiting room. A row of mismatched chairs were arranged around a table on which copies of the Church Times, the Diocesan News and an assortment of other ecumenical periodicals were lined up. Bidding him take a seat, she went through into what looked like a tiny office and closed the door.
He had never before met a bishop. Was the Very Reverend Robert Parnassus going to be as stuffy as his name implied? Someone who would look at him contemptuously and dismissively, quote some biblical tracts at him, and send him packing? Or pat him on the head, sympathetically and condescendingly, and tell him to go home and take a couple of paracetamols?
Just as he was contemplating the options, the door opened, and a mellifluous and instantly likeable voice said, ‘Good heavens, I don’t believe this! My favourite painter in all the world is in my house!’
Jason looked up and saw a handsome man in his early fifties, with a receding hairline, cool glasses and fashionable stubble, dressed in a dog collar, baggy grey pullover and jeans. He jumped to his feet.
Two minutes later he was seated in the Bishop’s modest office which, to his astonishment, had two of his local landscapes on the wall. ‘Wow, you weren’t joking!’ he said.
‘My wife and I are your number one fans!’
Jason shook his head, almost in disbelief.
‘Maybe I could do your portrait one day?’ he asked.
‘I’d love it! Riding my Harley, perhaps?’
‘That’s yours, outside?’
‘My chariot!’
‘Nice machine.’
The woman brought them in cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits on a tray. When she left, Robert Parnassus spoke again.
‘So, what is this urgent problem you have?’
Jason gave him a brief summary of the events since they had moved into Lakeview Drive. The Bishop listened intently, occasionally jotting down notes on a pad. When he had finished, Parnassus sat silently for a while, his head bowed. Then he looked up.
‘OK, you seem a pretty rational fellow, Jason, what’s your own take on all this?’
‘If you’d asked me this question two weeks ago, I’d have said it was – basically – bollocks. Rubbish. Crap. But I can’t dismiss it as that any more.’
He steepled his fingers and leaned forwards. ‘So, we have a dead woman, Caroline Harcourt, that you and your wife have both seen. And a deceased vicar, Roland Fortinbrass, that just you have seen? I remember his name well, he died shortly before I was appointed here.’
‘Do you believe ghosts exist?’ Jason asked him.
‘Well, to be honest, that’s a bit like asking me if I believe air or water exist. I began life a physicist, long before I became ordained. One of the basic laws of physics is that matter changes but can never be eradicated. Whatever was, always will be. We humans are, among all else, balls of energy. If you were to stab me to death right now – please don’t – my energy would dissipate into the surroundings. Just like videotape, the ground beneath us and the walls and ceiling around us are full of carbon and other conductors of electricity. We need to separate, always, the physics – the physical – from the spiritual. This is one of the challenges the modern Church needs to address.’
‘And the Harley-Davidson is part of this?’ Jason said.
Robert Parnassus looked coy. ‘We all have to have our toys, don’t we?’
‘We do.’
The Bishop became serious. ‘So, tell me, how do you feel I can help? Or perhaps I should ask what help you would like from me?’
‘What I’ve learned from talking to locals, in the past few days since moving into our house, is that the site on which the development’s been built has a history of tragedy. I’ve had hints that it is cursed – not something I’d ever normally have believed.’
‘And you think this unfortunate fellow killed on the construction site, right in front of your eyes, is part of that – ah – curse?’
‘Honestly? I don’t know what to think. What I do know is that my wife and I are becoming increasingly scared. I know moving house is meant to be a far more traumatic experience than people realize.’ He shrugged.
‘That is very true. But what you’ve told me seems to go beyond that. Most intriguing – but perhaps that’s not the right word. I do have an interest in all areas of the paranormal, with my other hat on, as Diocesan Minister of Deliverance.’
‘Is that a more socially acceptable term than exorcist?’ Jason asked.
‘Well, to be honest, it’s a bit of a faff lugging around a bell, book and candle on a Harley.’ The Bishop smiled. ‘So, I prefer to look for the logical explanations for what appear to be hauntings, or instances of demonic possession, or disturbances such as apparent poltergeist activity.’ He sipped his coffee.
Jason drank some, too. ‘What would your initial logical explanation be for our apparent situation. A ghost that both my wife and I see – and one only I have seen?’
Absently fiddling with his ring, Parnassus said, ‘Well, where I always prefer to start is not by looking at the site where the haunting has occurred, but looking inside the minds of those who have seen it.’
‘Is that because Emily and I have both seen ghosts, so we must be crazy?’
Parnassus smiled. ‘Not at all, but we always need to remember the complexities of the human mind. Right back in the sixteenth century the Catholic Church was aware of this. The Vatican issued an edict that no exorcism was to be carried out on someone within two years of a bereavement.’
‘Really?’
‘It was because they felt that the balance of a bereaved person’s mind, in the immediate aftermath of their loss, could be disturbed,’ the Bishop said. ‘Now, please don’t take what I’m going to say to you the wrong way. In all of my experience, the overwhelming majority of seemingly paranormal occurrences can be explained by abnormal brain activity in people following a recent trauma in their lives. This is most common from a bereavement, but it can also be from moving house, which as you yourself recognize is far more traumatic than most people realize. Both of these situations can play havoc with mental states. May I ask if you or your wife, Emily, have suffered any such recent bereavement – the loss of a loved one?’
Jason shook his head. ‘Touch wood, no.’
‘Do either of you dabble in the occult at all – play the Ouija board, for instance?’
‘Never,’ he replied, emphatically. ‘Neither of us have ever been into anything like that. Although Emily’s business partner, Louise Porter, is a medium – or claims to be.’
The Bishop’s face clouded. ‘She is?’
‘I don’t know if you approve of mediums, or not.’
‘Well, there’s quite a number of negative passages in the Bible about them, but I don’t condemn them out of hand. In the right circumstances some do have a useful role.’
‘OK, well, she came to the house on Monday and went into a trance to try to see what might be happening. That was when the Reverend Fortinbrass appeared.’
Parnassus looked at him strangely. ‘And only you saw him?’
‘Correct.’
‘What did your wife’s business partner have to say about this lady you both saw – who you think might be Caroline Harcourt?’
‘She said something along the lines that she was getting a message for me from a woman. The woman said she was sorry that she damaged my painting, but she was angry that I put her portrait facing the wall.’
He expected a cynical response, but instead the Bishop gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘You saw the Reverend Fortinbrass and had a conversation with him, which your wife and this medium, Louise Porter, claim not to remember?’
‘Yes, correct.’
‘Caroline Harcourt you and your wife have both seen, and the medium has only received messages from?’
‘That’s right.’
Parnassus sat in silence for a while, seemingly immersed in his thoughts. ‘Jason, these things that you are telling me are usually, in my experience, triggered by stress, crises, relationship problems. Often it is this stress that seems to produce strange phenomena that brings echoes from the past. I’ve known couples move into their dream home, only to split up months later. Could any of this have a bearing on what you and your wife are experiencing?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jason replied. ‘I’m open to any explanation.’
The Bishop frowned. ‘This is not good timing, as we are coming into Christmas week; it’s one of the busiest times of my year. Apart from another half hour this morning, I barely have a free moment until after Boxing Day. But there’s a priest with considerable pastoral experience who works with me. May I suggest I ask him to come and see you and your wife – perhaps sometime this afternoon?’
‘I’d be enormously grateful. Any idea what time?’
‘I’ll see what commitments he has. Shall we say four o’clock, unless I let you know otherwise?’
Jason glanced at his watch. It was just coming up to 11.30 a.m. ‘Perfect.’
‘His name is Jim Skeet, he’s a good chap. Can you let me have your address?’
Jason gave it to him and he wrote it down. When he finished, he said, ‘Shall we pray together?’
The request startled Jason. He could not remember the last time he had prayed. Way back in his childhood. Blushing with embarrassment he mumbled assent, closing his eyes as Bishop Parnassus recited the Lord’s Prayer, and finished with a loud, clear, ‘Amen.’
‘Amen,’ Jason echoed.
Parnassus smiled beatifically at him, and for the first time, Jason saw more clergyman than laid-back biker in the bishop. ‘If you need me again, Jason, I am always here, or around. Everything will be fine, don’t worry. I’ll be here to make sure you and your wife have spiritual protection. And you look a pretty healthy chap to me – I think you’re going to live a few years beyond forty, whatever that old farmer who doesn’t like newbies in his village might tell you!’
Jason thanked him and left. As he headed home, he replayed the strange meeting in his mind. Did Parnassus really believe what he had told him, or was he just humouring him? Either way, the Bishop was sending a clergyman to their house. Jim Skeet. Maybe they could convince him.
Turning into the entrance of Cold Hill Park, he threaded his way along Lakeview Drive. Emily’s van wasn’t there. He’d give her a call in a minute, to make sure she was back well before Skeet was due to arrive. There was more activity at the Penze-Weedells’ house. An electrician’s van was parked outside, and there was a man in a parka and jeans halfway up a ladder propped against the wall, with both Mr and Mrs Penze-Weedell standing below, looking up anxiously. None of the lights were on and half of them seemed to have come away from the wall again and were strewn over the front lawn and plants. Jason couldn’t help smirking.
As he climbed out of his car, rays of sunshine broke from behind a cloud, and he felt filled with a sudden burst of optimism. Help was coming this afternoon. He liked the aura of calm around the Bishop. Perhaps the visit this afternoon would bring this same calm to the house. Everything was going to be fine, really it would be.