Tingle
THEY DIDN’T MAKE it to the Swan. Clive’s pies and mixed salad at the vicarage, in the end. Afterwards, left alone in the kitchen to wash the dishes – she usually found it relaxing – Merrily ended up searching the dresser drawers for the last packet of Silk Cut, dragging one out and lighting it.
Think…
Try to.
If you learned one thing from the night job, it was that spotting signposts, omens, portents – was rarely rewarding. There’d be times when everything appeared to be converging, when you could throw up your hands, say OK, this is what’s required of me. This is meant.
And then you were proved wrong. Time and again, circumstance lied. Occasionally there would be genuinely startling coincidences, but what were they beyond tantalizing hints of some grand design that, if it existed at all, was grandly designed to be ineffable?
Maybe only blank atheism didn’t give you sleepless nights.
She leaned back against the dresser, considered the options.
Two suggestions that she should lead a memorial service for Aidan Lloyd, coming almost simultaneously from two villages claiming parts of him. One was relatively straight-forward, the other more complicated. One was about closure, the other…
She looked down at the smoking cigarette. It was Jane who’d once pointed out that experts reckoned cigarette addiction was harder to break than heroin. Trying to make her feel like a junkie.
Well, maybe. She took two puffs and then stubbed it out in disgust. She needed help. She picked up the vape stick and went back to the front parlour, where Lol was building a fire in the dog-grate. He’d brought in a basket of fuel from the log shelter: softwood kindling, small apple logs and a slab of oak for later. Taking his time, grounding himself. Lol didn’t smoke, he built log fires.
He put a match to the newspaper bed in the grate and stood up, looking at Merrily then at Jane, down on the hearthrug with her laptop and Ethel. When Jane looked up, her eyes were sparkly.
‘Got it.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s so obvious when you know. Listen to this, Mum…’ She took a long breath. ‘Tetra…hydro… cannabinol. Did I get that right?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
Merrily came into the room and shut the door. Switched off the lamps so the only light was from the new flames in the hearth and sat down in the middle of the sofa.
‘THC, right?’ Jane said. ‘One of the principal constituents of marijuana. THC has some of the same properties as the chemicals used in inhalers. Asthma causes airways to narrow, sometimes with fatal consequences. Cannabis contains THC which is known to open up the airways.’
‘Even smoking it?’
‘May not work for everybody, and doctors are reluctant to publicize it because of the obvious side effects – and the fact that it tends to involve smoking. Sooner or later it’s going to have to be widely available on prescription.’
I know he’s dead, Lara had said eventually, but we were all asked to say nothing and none of us has. But if you think medicinal, it’s all on the Net.
‘You’re saying cannabis cured Aidan’s asthma?’
‘Maybe he’d’ve grown out of it anyway, but it does look like dope came at the right time.’
‘And he was introduced to it by…?’
‘Darvill,’ Lol said. ‘Darvill and weed make perfect sense, before and after his accident. Pain relief? And his dad, of course. Henry, who was at school with Nick Drake, sharing a spliff under the big stones at Avebury.’
Merrily lay back into the cushions and closed her eyes. Thought of Gareth Brewer walking out of Ledwardine Church into the star-spattery night. Out of the choking grave and into starlight, out of asthma into…
‘So much makes sense,’ Jane said. ‘Aidan Lloyd was never a big user. Even an ex-asthmatic wouldn’t push his luck. But cannabis was important in his life. Cannabis and Darvill. Darvill, the weed and the morris. And Kilpeck Church. And the Man of Leaves. It’s making me tingle.’
More likely the source of the tingle was the text from Eirion, the nervous tension that would go on building until Sunday night. Please God, not an anticlimax.
Merrily opened her eyes.
‘Why were so many people in the village saying he was a serious dopehead?’
‘It’s like somebody put that round,’ Jane said. ‘Why?’
‘Aidan Lloyd. The ghost still hovering over us all. Can we think about this? This vague, undemonstrative guy, such a big presence now. So important that two families want church services held in his honour. What do they really want? Iestyn Lloyd wanted a quiet funeral and got one. What’s changed?’
‘Julie Duxbury,’ Lol said, ‘looks like the catalyst.’
‘I’m ashamed. Julie took the trouble to pursue Iestyn. Did she get him? Did she invite him to Kilpeck? Would he want to go? No.’
Lol nodded.
‘So with Julie gone he sees his chance to turn that around. Sends his long-suffering stepson to set up a service in Ledwardine. Draw a line under it. His line.’
‘Yes. That would fit. I didn’t make any waves last time, did I? And Charlie Howe, perhaps soon to be the face of law and order in these parts, wants to do a eulogy, probably suggesting poor Aidan was a victim of inadequate policing in the sticks – you saw his campaigning stuff in the Hereford Times?’
‘Maybe he won’t want to come to Kilpeck,’ Jane said, ‘so that lets you off.’
‘Oh, I think he will – if we do Kilpeck. And as you bring that up…’ Merrily hunched forward, hands held out to the fire. ‘Darvill. What’s that about?’
‘It’s also about Julie Duxbury,’ Lol said. ‘She’d taken on the task of dealing with a long-standing situation which she felt was harmful. Get Lionel and Iestyn into a church together, let God take care of the rest.’
‘But what does Darvill want?’
‘He wants his Old Solstice ritual,’ Jane said. ‘In the magic church. It’s important to him. The turning point of the year. And it’s not been a good year. He lost his Man of Leaves. The guy whose asthma he seems to have cured. Aidan was important to him. Lol heard what he said at the church. Aidan told him what the Man of Leaves was.’
‘And what was the Man of Leaves?’
‘He wouldn’t say. Yeah, I know… But it’s clear that Aidan was very important to Darvill.’
‘Is he pagan?’
‘I think it’s bigger than that,’ Jane said. ‘Kilpeck church is bigger than that. Am I wrong?’
‘He’s disabled,’ Lol said. ‘Half of him doesn’t work. He doesn’t have the same… distractions. Everything he cares about is there, and it’s become – understandably – an obsession. I don’t think it’s about any particular religion, Jane’s right about that. But there’s a kind of spirituality at the core of it. And I think that comes out of whatever his dad was into. And the outward aspect of that is the morris.’
Jane said, ‘I suppose…’
Merrily sighed.
‘… doing the service at Kilpeck would also be a memorial for Julie,’ Jane said. ‘Wouldn’t it? Finishing something she started.’
‘And died for? Sorry.’ Merrily shook her head. ‘I’m tired. I’ll be better tomorrow.’