Severe stomach wound
MERRILY WAS THINKING that nowhere in Hereford had more of a sense of the living medieval than All Saints Church since they put a restaurant inside, reactivating the church as something noisy, vibrant, relevant and still a church. Wouldn’t work in Ledwardine but here at the bottom of Broad Street, the onetime heart of the city, it was right. And full.
Jane had won £25 on a scratchcard this morning and insisted on paying for lunch. They went upstairs to the gallery, overlooking the top of the nave and the chancel and almost directly underneath the little wooden man flashing his medieval parts.
‘Nobody seems to spot him.’ Jane nodding towards the other diners. ‘He’s got to be miffed. A seven hundred year hard-on and nobody notices? Does he have a name?’
‘Male exhibitionist,’ Merrily said. ‘Prosaic but accurate.’
‘I meant like Sheela-na-gig?’
‘Not that I know of. Although he does have a similar level of disproportion in his bits.’
‘Bits? If he was real he wouldn’t be able to stand up.’ Jane sat down, spreading her few packages. ‘Why did they do this in medieval churches? Think about it. All the porn – churches.’
‘We’re talking Kilpeck, right?’
‘We certainly are.’
Jane had been across to the city library, consulting a whole pile of local books in the search for Kilpeck and the history of Herefordshire morris dancing and finding no obvious connection. So she’d settled on the church, Kilpeck’s one claim to international fame because of its perfectly preserved collection of Norman Romanesque stone carvings, its unique medieval frieze. Also its Sheela-na-gig. The female exhibitionist.
Jane flicked a glance at the corner of the ceiling.
‘Thought to have had one like him as well at one time. Story is, there was this Victorian lady who may have owned the church and threw a wobbly when she realized what he had in his hand.’
‘That would figure.’
‘Had him removed, along with a few other carvings.’ Jane smiled, slightly eerily. ‘You’ll’ve noticed how I very carefully said “removed” rather than “pulled off”.’
‘Didn’t, actually, flower, but thank you. How come she spared the Sheela-na-gig?’
Remembering the Sheela from a visit some years ago. Notorious worldwide for her vacant, slightly orgasmic leer and something resembling the entrance to a railway tunnel between her little legs.
‘I think someone told the woman she was actually a bloke with a severe stomach wound from the war,’ Jane said. ‘Something like that. So naive, these Victorians.’
This frivolity, you could understand it. A determination not to dwell on what she’d seen in the churchyard. Not in public, anyway. Jane could be genuinely impressive sometimes.
The waitress brought up their veggie lasagnes. Jane waited till she’d gone.
‘So you phoned the vicar of Kilpeck?’
‘Rector of Ewyas Harold. Including Kilpeck. Yes, she does know Sir Lionel Darvill.’
‘Tweeds? Rides with the hunt?’
‘Certainly landed gentry. Baronet. Never quite sure what that means, except that he inherited the title. Norman name. Quite a few families of Norman descent along that part of the border.’
‘It’s a classic Norman parish church.’
‘Darvill seems to feel a certain responsibility for it,’ Merrily said. ‘He’s a significant patron. Not what you’d expect, though, according to Julie Duxbury. More old hippy than country squire. Though not old enough to have been an actual hippy.’
‘What’s that make him?’
‘Makes him a hippy’s son. Henry Darvill’s values – the old good-life ethos – got channelled into something significant. Eventually became one of the biggest organic farmers in the area. Though not without casualties.’
Jane’s knife and fork froze over her plate.
‘Iestyn Lloyd.’
‘Iestyn was appointed farm manager by Sir Lionel’s uncle, Peter – must be over thirty years ago. He came from a farming family with land spreading into Wales, but they’d had to sell up, and Peter gave Iestyn a job running his estate. I mean, really running it. As if it was his own. Made Uncle Peter a lot of money.’
‘Not exactly organic, though.’
‘Practically industrial.’ Merrily looked down at her vegetarian alternative. ‘Much like he is now, maybe more so. Battery chickens, huge pig sheds, clearance of fields for arable crops.’
‘Pesticides?’
‘Obviously. Hugely profitable, anyway. Henry Darvill, fresh from his studies into higher-consciousness, was appalled.’
‘Fires Iestyn…’
‘Not immediately. Henry does seem to have recognized Iestyn’s business skills. Didn’t want to lose that. He was an idealist not a farmer, so he tried to convert Iestyn to organic. Well… that wasn’t going to happen. You can’t just turn a hard-nosed businessman into a green-earth philanthropist. They rubbed along painfully for a while, but in the end, yes, Henry invited Iestyn to accept a substantial pay-off. Iestyn exploded and went down the industrial tribunal route. The eyes of the agricultural world were suddenly focused on Kilpeck, and Henry… according to Julie, Henry couldn’t face that.’
‘Bought him off? That’s what I read.’
‘For an undisclosed amount, far more than he’d imagined. Had to sell land.’
‘And that was how Ledwardine got Iestyn Lloyd?’
‘Well… he already had a share in Churchwood Farm – inherited, with his cousin, from an uncle. What he collected from Henry Darvill was enough to buy his cousin out. Rest is history. But… I didn’t know about the resulting feud between the Lloyds and the Darvills. You might argue that Iestyn’s better off now than when he was just a highly paid employee, but I don’t think that’s how he sees it. Unquenchable hatred – that’s Julie’s phrase. Wars have started over less.’
Merrily ate slowly, thinking about it. She’d had the impression Julie Duxbury was still holding a lot back. Maybe just reluctant to discuss it on the phone. She put down her fork.
‘According to Julie, Maryfields nearly went under. Iestyn wouldn’t have gone out of his way not to leave things in a mess. Also, he was well respected locally and seems to have put the knife in for Henry, whose only mates were other organic farmers, mostly out of county. Establishing an organic farm takes time. Getting rid of the chemicals, attracting the nutrients back into the soil. He got there eventually, but it finished him. Wrecked his marriage, his health. Broke his spirit.’
‘Bugger…’
‘Killed him in the end. He was on medication for depression, died quite suddenly. But… his legacy survives. As does the tradition of morris dancing he began in Kilpeck.’
Jane’s eyes widened.
‘Hey, you got there!’
‘If MI5 employed parish priests, flower…’
‘So the Kilpeck Morris doesn’t go way back?’
‘Sir Henry Darvill formed a morris side with local men, most of them working on his farm. His son continues it. They still perform at certain times around the immediate area. And it goes deeper than entertainment, whatever that means. That’s all I know.’
‘So now we have a serious link between the Darvills of Kilpeck and the Lloyds of Ledwardine. And a reason for…’
She looked around. There were people, too close. But, yes, they now had a reason for one family to despoil the grave of the heir to the other’s fortune. Dancing on the grave – you could just about explain that, on a drunken, boorish level, but the rest of it…
‘Sir Lionel Darvill.’ Jane lowering her voice. ‘Would he have been there on the night?’
‘He clearly wasn’t. The idea of Darvill being involved in this is appealing – if that word could be applied to this situation – except for one thing. He doesn’t dance any more. He’s in a wheelchair. Paralysed from the waist down.’
‘Oh.’
‘Nothing’s simple, flower.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He had a fall. Broke his back. They’re clearly not a lucky family, the Darvills.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Going over to see her. Julie Duxbury.’
‘When?’
‘We’ll work something out. She seemed quite glad I’d rung.’
‘What was your excuse for ringing? You didn’t tell her…?’
‘Course not. But I did say it was a deliverance issue, so she wouldn’t expect me to say too much about it. Though I may have to when we actually meet. All I said was that I was chasing a ghost. I gave her the name, Aidan Lloyd.’
‘You mention Lol and the festival?’
‘No chance, even if he was interested. Julie says she made the mistake of confusing the Kilpeck Morris with public entertainment, innocently inviting them to perform at a parish fete last summer. A serious social gaffe. They didn’t do village fetes.’
‘That’s what Darvill told her?’
‘She says she went red, apologized and backed off. When you’re in a new parish, you tend to pussyfoot for quite a while. Always worried about inadvertently tossing a brick into a quiet pool.’
Jane sat up.
‘Fuck that.’
Clapping a hand over her mouth as heads turned.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry… but I hate quiet pools.’
‘Jane…’ Merrily muttering, embarrassed, into her plate. ‘Could be this will turn out to be something… rather less dark than it seems.’
‘You reckon?’ Jane said. ‘You taking bets?’
Merrily glanced up at the little wooden flasher in the corner. You could almost hear him sniggering.