The Loney Part 14

'Yes, Father. I will.'

'And then at least we may stand a chance of saving your soul.'

Chapter Twelve.

The b.u.t.terflies dispersed as the rain returned and began the next was.h.i.+ng of the land. Stone walls shone like iron. The trees bowed and dripped. The sullen countryside disappeared behind condensation and for a long time we could have been going anywhere until a low spire appeared on the other side of a cattle field, barely rising above the trees that surrounded it.

The Church of The Sacred Heart was an ancient place-dark and squat and glistening in the rain like a toad. The large front door was green with moss and over the years long sinews of ivy had wormed their way around the tower.

We crowded under the lych-gate to wait for a particularly heavy burst of rain to pa.s.s. Water leaked through the canopy onto the stone seats that had been worn into scoops over the years by the backsides of countless pallbearers or by people like us simply sheltering from the rain.

The churchyard itself was small but well stocked with the village dead-a second, more populous settlement bordering the first-all of them lying east-west as though the wind had combed them that way over the centuries. Gravestones listed against one another under the shade of several huge, dripping yew trees, one of which had been blasted by lightning at some point and had a new stem growing out of the blackened split.

'What do you think, Father?' said Mummer, nodding towards the church itself.

'Very atmospheric, Mrs Smith.'

'Fifteenth-century,' said Farther.

'Is that right?' Father Bernard replied.

'Some of it anyway. The stonework inside's all Saxon. They managed to escape the Reformation.'

'How's that?'

'I don't think they could find it, Father.'

The rain shower ended as suddenly as it had come. Water poured off the slate roof and along the lead flumes to spew from the mouths of gargoyles that had been weathered to lumps of stone. Father Bernard held open the gate and everyone went quickly up the path to the church before the rain came back, but Hanny stood looking up at the mangled grey demons, trying to pull his face to match theirs.

Inside, we took up a pew towards the back, shuffling along as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the silence. All around the church, the statues of saints had been covered up for Lent, like ghosts half hidden in the shadows of the alcoves. Now and then their drapes s.h.i.+vered in a draught. The wind was getting in somewhere and whistled like a seabird around the rafters.

Hanny held my hand.

'It's alright,' I said.

He glanced nervously at the nearest shrouded saint, the Archangel Michael by the sword sticking out of the sheet.

'Just don't look at them.'

Once everyone was settled, Farther inclined his head to Father Bernard.

'See the windows in the clerestory,' he said, pointing at the tiny arches high up on the wall, each of them letting in a trickle of red light. 'Look at the thickness of the mullions. And the gla.s.s, that's Romanesque.'

'Is that good?' said Father Bernard.

'It's about seven hundred years old.'

Father Bernard looked impressed.

'They should open this place for a museum,' he whispered to Farther. 'They must have kept everything they've ever owned.'

It was true. Nothing, it seemed, had ever escaped the oak doors or the castle-thick walls. Any light that had entered through the windows had been held captive and absorbed into the wood. Over the centuries the pews, pulpit and misericords had blackened to ebony like the beams which supported the roof-each one made from the fork of a huge oak tree, giving the congregation the sense of being inside an upturned boat.

The smells of benedictions and snuffed candles remained as steadfast as the gravestones that floored the central aisle. The doors to the aumbrey opened on hinges that had been forged at a time when they still dunked witches and died of plague. It was a place where wafer ovens, alms boxes and rush-holders remained as working tools; where there was a sanctuary knocker, a parish chest carved out of a single trunk of walnut, and a Table of Consanguinity attached to the wall above the font as a ready-reckoner to prevent interbreeding amongst the ignorant poor. Though I suppose by the time the child was being dipped into the water, it was rather too late.

At the end of pews were effigies of the Seven Deadly Sins, smoothed almost to anonymity by the countless hands that had gripped them during genuflection. But one could just make out Sloth curled up like a dormouse, and Gluttony vomiting on his own beard and Wrath beating his brother man with the jawbone of an a.s.s.

Between the nave and the chancel, the church still had its rood screen with its painted melange of saints at the bottom and the crucifixion at the top. Above it was part of a Doom painting, and though much of it had flaked off it was still a considerable size and sprawled like dark rot across the stone.

'It's the only one I've ever seen north of Gloucester,' said Farther, leaning close to Father Bernard again and pointing up to it. 'I mean it's got nothing on the ones at Patcham or Wenhaston, but still.'

'I wouldn't have it on my wall,' Father Bernard said.

'I don't know,' said Farther. 'It has a certain charm.'

'Rather you than me.'

When I was a child and I believed all that Father Wilfred said about h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation, the Doom gave me no end of sleepless nights at Moorings. I suppose because, in a sense, I already knew the place it depicted and that meant it might just be real.

It reminded me of the school playground with its casual despotism and the constant anxiety of never knowing which traits in a boy might be punishable with instant violence. Too tall, too small. No father, no mother. Wet trousers. Broken shoes. Wrong estate. s.l.u.ttish sister. Nits.

h.e.l.l was a place ruled by the logic of children. Schadenfreude that lasted for eternity.

In the painting, the d.a.m.ned were forced down through a narrow crack in the earth, crushed against one another, swimming headfirst through the soil, before they tumbled in a naked landslide towards the clutches of lascivious black-skinned demons who grasped their hair and drove red hot knives into their flesh. Yet, this was only the initial punishment. They had merely fallen on the welcome mat, where some of the old lags of Hades had gathered to pray for the souls of these newcomers in the vain hope of their own redemption, their faces upturned, their mouths wide open and desperate, like blackbird chicks.

From here, the wicked were collected in enormous cauldrons to be cooked for Satan, who squatted like a sort of horned toad and dipped into the pots with a fondue fork, impaling the squirming human worms and swallowing them down whole, presumably to slither through his bowels and out the other end to begin the whole process once more.

In other parts of h.e.l.l were tortures so vile they bordered on being funny, which in turn worried me even more. The mockery of h.e.l.l, I thought, would result in an even worse punishment if I ever ended up there.

In one dark corner a demon had its arm down a man's throat so far that it came out of his backside to throttle the woman cowering beneath him. People had their limbs torn off and were hung upside down by hooks through their privates. Some had their tongues nailed to trees and their bellies slit to feed the slavering dogs that obediently attended the devils. Eyeb.a.l.l.s were pecked out by things that looked like oversized starlings. Boiling lead was funnelled down throats. Severed heads were emptied of blood to irrigate the paddy fields of black weeds that grew up the sheer rock walls of h.e.l.l and broke through into the lush green pastures of the living to ensnare the sunflowers and the lilies growing there. It was all Father Wilfred had promised us it would be.

As we had always done when we'd come to the Tenebrae service in the past we doubled the congregation in one fell swoop. The few people kneeling with their faces in their hands were the same people that had always been there. And when they broke out of their prayers, they looked at us not as strangers but as people they half recognised even though it had been years since we'd last come.

'Isn't that Clement?' said Mr Belderboss, pointing to someone sitting alone in one of the side pews.

'Yes, I think it is,' Mrs Belderboss replied and she tried to attract his attention.

'His mother's not with him, though,' said Mr Belderboss. 'I wonder why?'

'Well, she's perhaps not up to church anymore,' Mrs Belderboss replied. 'She is getting on, I suppose.'

Mummer shushed them as the organist struck up a dirge and a miserable-looking altar boy, acned and gangly, brought out the hea.r.s.e, placed it on a low table and lit the fifteen candles with a taper. He went away again and came back with a small, fat candle that he lit and placed down under the altar out of sight.

The priest came in and we all stood up. He gave a brief introduction-his voice thudding around the stone walls and gathering into a boom-and then the two hour cycle of Matins and Lauds began-all in Latin of course-and after each a candle was extinguished by the altar boy until little by little the church darkened to match the encroaching gloom outside.

The wind continued to rise and fall. Whining and shrilling. It was as insistent as the priest, louder sometimes, preaching an older sermon, about the sand and the sea. Warning the faithful to stay away from The Loney.

Hanny fell asleep but no one bothered him, as Mr Belderboss had done the same, leaning his fluffy white head against my shoulder. In any case, Mummer was too engrossed in a contest with Miss Bunce as to who could be the most moved by the ceremony. At each increment of darkness, Mummer held her rosary tighter and prayed harder. Miss Bunce had tears in her eyes when Jesus called out to G.o.d and the candles on the hea.r.s.e were snuffed out in quick succession. She even managed a small, anguished wail of her own when in the darkness the altar boy went down the aisle and slammed the heavy church doors shut to symbolise the earthquake that had buckled Golgotha at the moment Jesus' human heart stopped beating.

Mr Belderboss woke with a start and clutched at his chest.

Once the service was over and the single candle that had been secreted under the altar had been brought out to symbolise the promise of resurrection, we filed out into the rain. The altar boy held an umbrella over the priest as he quickly clamped each cold hand in his and pa.s.sed on G.o.d's blessing. The regulars disappeared quickly, back to the sombre little houses hunkered down in the rain around the village green and as soon as the last person was out of the church, which was Mr Belderboss, rolling up and down on the cam of his bad hip, the priest went back inside and closed the door.

'Well,' said Mummer, as we walked back to the minibus. 'I thought that was a lovely service.'

She was talking to Farther but he had stopped several paces behind and was running his hand over the carvings worked into the stone around a side door.

'I say it was a lovely service,' she called over to him, but he either didn't hear her or he ignored her and moved his gla.s.ses to the end of his nose to better inspect the men and demons locked in mortal combat.

'It was,' said Mr Belderboss. 'It was.'

'What do you know, you great lug,' said Mrs Belderboss, batting his shoulder with the back of her hand. 'You missed most of it.'

'I did not,' he said, rubbing his arm and smiling. 'I was deep in prayer.'

'Cobblers,' said Mrs Belderboss.

'I think moving is probably the right word,' said Miss Bunce. 'It's meant to be quite a sombre service.'

David nodded in solemn agreement.

'Oh, I didn't enjoy it, as such,' said Mummer.

'I didn't say I didn't enjoy it,' Miss Bunce said.

'So where's this fish feller?' Father Bernard said, leading Mummer back to the minibus.

Mummer sat in the front with Father Bernard and directed him to a wooden shack in the middle of nowhere where a man with a face full of scars sat behind plastic trays of skate and mackerel and vicious-looking eels freshly pulled out of the Irish Sea. It had been a tradition in the time of Father Wilfred to stop here on Good Friday and Mummer was delighted to see that the shop was still there and the same man was still taking the money, using an old chum bucket for a till. The change came out greasy but Mummer didn't seem to mind.

We all waited in the minibus as Mummer and Farther chatted to the man while he wrapped up their fish in newspaper. A Land Rover went past us and pulled up next to the stall. It was Clement's. The same one that I had seen parked on the road down from Moorings. Parkinson, the bull man, got out first and looked at us, nodded at Father Bernard specifically, and then wandered over to the stall, followed by Collier and his dog. Freed from the cab but still on its chain, it went off sniffing and barking and then squatted in the middle of the road.

'Aren't those the men we saw on the way here, Father?' said Miss Bunce.

'Aye,' he said, with a look of irritation that Parkinson had singled him out.

'Where's Clement, I wonder?' said Mrs Belderboss.

'I don't know,' Mr Belderboss replied. 'Why?'

'That is his Land Rover, isn't it?'

'So?'

'Well, why have they got it?'

'How should I know?'

'Do you think he's lent it to them?'

'Don't be silly, Mary.'

'I'm not being silly, I should think they all muck in together round here, don't they?'

'Hardly,' said Mr Belderboss. 'If they've got his Land Rover, then it's because he's sold it to them. Or it's an exchange for something. I mean they don't always deal in money out here, but they don't give things away either. It's a tough life being a farmer. You can't afford charity.'

The elderly man got out last and coughing violently into his sleeve, he leant against the side of the Land Rover watching us.

'Toxoplasmosis,' said Mr Belderboss, nodding to him.

'Oh, give it a rest, Reg,' Mrs Belderboss sighed.

Parkinson and Collier went and stood by the side of the fish stall smoking cigarettes. Mummer said h.e.l.lo to them, these were her people, after all. The men listened as she tried to start up a conversation, but they didn't talk back. Rather, they grinned, Collier winding the chain around his forearm to keep the dog obedient.

'Who are they?' said Miss Bunce as Mummer and Farther got back onto the bus.

'Who?' said Mummer.

'Them,' said Miss Bunce, pointing out of the window. 'They don't seem very friendly.'

Mummer looked back at the men who were now selecting fish and laughing with the fishmonger, as the one with jaundice spluttered into his fist.

'Oh, Joan you really have lived in London too long,' she said. 'They just have different ways. Here, hold this.'

She handed the newspaper packet to Miss Bunce while she settled herself into her seat and we pulled away.

The men watched us leave, Parkinson nodding to Father Bernard and Collier saluting with his black mitten.

The smell of fish filled the bus and steadily bloomed as we ran along the lanes back to the house.

Miss Bunce held her hand over her nose. 'I think I'm going to be sick,' she said. David reached across and held her hand.

'Oh for goodness' sake, Joan,' said Mummer. 'Don't be so dramatic.'