Awakening
THE SITE WAS called ANNALS OF THE DANCE, its home page decorated with line drawings of men in tights with feathers in their hats. One had a side drum, another played a flute. Merrie England type men, and women frolicking behind them in a circle.
All the fun was in the illustrations. Otherwise, it was all dense, tightly printed webpages which Merrily had landed on purely by Googling
SIR HENRY DARVILL, MORRIS DANCING
Sooner rather than later, she’d have to talk to somebody, probably the police, but she’d need to know exactly what she was talking about.
So little time, now. Yes, the Archdeacon had said firmly on the phone. Yes, if it gets this eccentric man off your back, please do it. We’ll be having a Julie-tribute at the Cathedral but not yet. Something local, meanwhile, would be not inappropriate, and I’m not aware that the Church has ever persecuted morris dancers.
No, it didn’t seem to have. Even in times when elderly herbalists and their black cats had been treated with ferocious barbarism, morris men had danced unchallenged.
Thursday morning. The weather forecasts had mentioned the possibility of snow. She’d taken a paracetamol for the headache and sat down here in the scullery with a pot of tea. Willing the phone to stay out of it, she’d written down on the sermon pad everything she could remember of what Gareth Brewer had told her in the church the night before last. Writing things down, by hand, with an old fountain pen, took time but it positioned your thoughts, allowing the memories to fall through.
Sir Henry Darvill and his severe depressions. On medication – against his religion, we thought, all that stuff.
What was his religion? What had he bequeathed to his son?
Sir Henry was on this specialist site purely because of his role in the development of morris dancing which, it seemed, he’d given tutorials on rather than written about. There was a picture of him sitting on a wall. Shoulder-length hair and a droopy moustache.
Darvill’s interest in the morris was first awakened at the College for Perpetual Learning, near Pershore in Worcestershire, an institution at which he studied for two years while also supporting it financially. The college had adopted a morris tradition which had begun in the 1970s at the former Academy for Continuous Education at Sherborne, Dorset, as a relaxing sideline to its major work on realizing human potential.
Intriguing connections had been found between the morris and dervish dances – part of the Sufi traditions studied at both these centres. This was around the time when the idea of the word ‘morris’ deriving from Moorish (referring to the medieval Islamic inhabitants of North Africa) had begun to be discredited. Henry Darvill, however, found the Moorish connection not only acceptable but necessary as a doorway for anyone wishing to penetrate the secrets of the dance as he was beginning to understand them.
Merrily Googled the College for Perpetual Learning, Pershore, and found very little of use. But the Academy for Continuous Education, Sherborne, was more illuminating. There was a photograph of some huge mansion with the suggestion that whatever had taken place there had ceased in 1974.
Continuous Education – it didn’t sound very sexy. It didn’t sound like a cult, but when she went into the pages of photographs she found men and women dressed in white judo-type kit engaged in what looked like formation dances, described only as movements. She saw people with their arms outstretched as if in praise, a man with one hand placed on his chest, the other arm making a right angle.
There were mentions of the study of the teachings of Gurdjieff. You didn’t go through even theological college these days without picking up odd references to the Armenian spiritual teacher – bald head, big moustache – who set up study groups in western Europe over the first half of the twentieth century. Like most twentieth-century mystics, he’d explored the wisdom of the ancient worlds, in his case mainly Sufism, the esoteric side of Islam.
Gurdjieff’s main premise: we exist in a state of sleep. Awakening was far from easy and required a lot of diligent work and some ‘conscious suffering’.
Awakening meant existing on a higher level of consciousness than our normal somnambulistic state.
If only…
The movements? She looked up dervishes, whirling themselves into ecstatic trance-states to find illumination, reach God. No obvious whirling in morris. Perhaps it was linked more to the earth.
She’d heard there was a Gurdjieff group in Hereford, but making meaningful contact with these people could take time, and she didn’t have that.
But she did know a Sufi.
Oh God…
Above the churchyard wall the sun was already giving up its token resistance to the tightening day. She had to keep going. Nobody else would investigate this. Nobody would see anything here worth investigating.
The shadows spread. Ethel appeared in the darkening doorway, just sat there and mewed. This would be about food, rather than a reminder of the Sufi fondness for cats.
Oh well…
Merrily picked up the phone. Raji Khan’s secretary said he was in a meeting and took a message. What kind of meetings did nightclub owners and suspected drug dealers attend in the middle of the morning? Never mind, move on.
She rang Churchwood Farm to talk about the need to switch the venue for Aidan’s memorial service, to include Julie, and got a woman who said that Mr Lloyd was unavailable. She pushed.
‘Is Mr Lloyd unwell?’
‘Absolutely not,’ the woman said sharply. ‘Someone will get back to you.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Wasn’t as if they’d agreed a date for an Aidan service. She’d try an approach from the other side.
The clouds glowered, then an irritable rain spattered the scullery window. She pulled open the bottom desk drawer, uncovering a stack of funeral leaflets. Aidan Lloyd’s Order of Service was on the top. Brief details inside: parents Iestyn Lloyd and Sarah… Baxter. She pulled out the local phone book, working her way through the Baxters. Is Sarah there? Could I speak to Sarah? And then…
‘Is that Sarah?’
‘Yes, it is. Who’s that?’
‘Sarah… formerly Sarah Lloyd?’
‘Who is that?’
‘Erm, my name’s Merrily Watkins. I conducted Aidan’s funeral. At Ledwardine.’
‘Yes. You did.’
Despite what they said, there actually was such a thing as a cold, clipped Hereford accent.
‘Wasn’t proud of it, Mrs Baxter.’
‘I shouldn’t have imagined pride comes into it for a minister conducting a funeral.’
‘Well… I thought it was a bit perfunctory and didn’t do what a funeral is supposed to do. Which is why—’
‘It got him buried.’
And that was enough? What kind of family was this?
Ex-family, now. She remembered Sarah in church, bareheaded, severe, on the opposite side of the aisle to Iestyn Lloyd.
‘Your son… Liam… on behalf of your ex-husband… has asked me to hold a memorial service to perhaps say some of the things that… perhaps ought to have been said at the funeral.’
‘And did he say what things?’
‘Liam didn’t tell you about this?’
‘I haven’t seen him this week. Anyway, you’ve told me now, and I won’t be coming. I’ve seen enough of Ledwardine.’
‘Erm… It now looks like it may not be held at Ledwardine. We’re thinking Kilpeck.’
A pause.
‘Iestyn wants you to do it there?’
‘Well, it was to have been conducted by the rector of Ewyas Harold who… died yesterday. Kilpeck was one of her churches and I believe it was her idea. Not sure if she spoke to you about it, but I believe she did try to see Aidan’s father.’
‘And he agreed to that?’
‘I don’t know, Mrs Baxter, I haven’t been able to speak to him.’
‘I very much doubt he did, Mrs Watkins.’
‘I did try to speak to him, and I’ll continue to try. I’d like this to be a proper tribute to Aidan.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Mrs Baxter said. ‘If it’s at Kilpeck, I may well be there.’
‘Oh.’
‘When will it be?’
‘So soon?’
‘If it’s to be done before Christmas. As you probably know, a memorial service is more than a funeral, so I’ll be expected to say quite a lot about Aidan. Various people have told me different things.’
‘I’m sure they have.’
‘Don’t want to put my foot in it. Easily done.’
‘Yes, and if you want to know the truth about my boy, then I’ll tell you. But not over the phone.’
According to the phone book, she lived in suburban Kingsacre, out on the road pointing at Wales. And Ledwardine, for that matter.
‘I can be there in under half an hour. If the traffic’s kind.’
‘No… come tomorrow,’ Mrs Baxter said. ‘I’ll call you. I need time to control my anger.’
Blimey.
With the black Bakelite phone back at rest, Merrily sat looking across the room through the window at the glistening lichened wall between the vicarage and the churchyard where Aidan Lloyd lay when he wasn’t being exhumed. She shuddered, picking up the phone to call Lol and ask him to turn his computer on so she could send him ANNALS OF THE DANCE, and almost cried out when the shudder seemed to transfer itself to the phone and she found she was connected before it could ring.
‘Mrs Watkins.’
‘Mr Khan.’ She found her breath. ‘Erm… some things I wanted to consult you about, if you had time.’
‘I’m quite busy today,’ Raji Khan said, ‘but it’s always delightful to talk to you and I could call you back later. Perhaps you could convey in a few words the nature of your enquiry..?’
‘I’ll try. Sufism… Gurdjieff… morris-dancing…’
‘Interesting.’
‘And the Darvills of Kilpeck.’
‘I can be with you in approximately thirty-five minutes,’ Mr Khan said.