Midwinter of the Spirit Read Online Free PDF Page B

and St Peter’s were more dominant. The Cathedral had long since lost its own spire, and sat almost modestly in a secluded corner between the River Wye and the Castle Green and a nest of quiet streets with no shops in them.
    ‘Tea?’ Merrily said desperately.
    ‘Whatever.’
    The late-afternoon sky was a smoky kind of orange. Merrily peered around for cafés, snackbars. She felt like a stranger, needing to ground herself.
    ‘The Green Dragon? They must do afternoon tea.’
    Jane shrugged. They crossed towards Hereford’s biggest hotel, nineteenth-century and the longest façade on Broad Street.
    ‘So you’ve learned about Thomas Cantilupe at school?’
    ‘Only in passing. He didn’t figure much nationally. Nothing that happened in Hereford seems to have made much of a difference to anything in the big world.’
    Useless arguing with Jane in this mood. The kid had consented to come shopping, a big sacrifice on a Saturday; it was now Merrily’s task to tease out of her what was wrong, and Jane wasn’t going to assist. Tiresome, timehonoured ritual.
    They found a window table in the Green Dragon, looking back out on to Broad Street, the Saturday crowds thinning now as the day closed down. Sometimes November could bring a last golden surge, but this one had seemed colourless and tensed for winter. Merrily was aware of a drab sense of transience and futility – nothing profound. Maybe just wishing she was Jane’s age again.
    ‘Cakes,’ she said brightly.
    ‘Just tea, thanks. Black.’
    Merrily ordered two teas and a scone. ‘Worried about our weight, are we, flower?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What are we worried about then?’
    ‘Did we say we were worried?’
    The bored, half-closed eyes, the sardonic tuck at the corner of the mouth. It was pure Sean – as when Merrily was trying to quiz him about some dubious client. You don’t see your daughter for a week, and in the interim she’s readmitted her father’s soiled spirit.
    Merrily tried again. ‘I, er… I missed you, flower.’
    ‘Really?’ Jane tilted her soft, pale face into a supportive hand, elbow on the table. ‘I’d have thought you had far too much to think about, poncing about in your robes and practising your Out, Demons, Out routine with the soul police.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘That’s what this is about – the soul police? You think I’m…’
    What? An anachronism? A joke? Though Jane was basically spiritual, she just didn’t believe the Church of England was. Bad enough to have your own mother walking around in a dogcollar, never mind the holy water and the black bag now. Was that it?
    That was probably too simple. Nothing about Jane was ever really simple.
    A man striding up the street towards All Saints glanced through the window, blinked, paused, strode on. Oh God, not him, not now . Merrily turned away from the window, stared across the table at Jane.
    The kid pushed back her tumbling hair. ‘OK, look…’
    Yes? Merrily leaned forward. A crack, an opening? Yes …
    Jane said, ‘I’m uncomfortable about what you’re doing, Merrily.’
    ‘I see.’
    Jesus. Merrily? A major development. Now we are sixteen, time to dump this Mum nonsense. We are two grown women, equals.
    This needed some thinking about.
    ‘I don’t think you do see,’ Jane said.
    ‘So tell me.’
    ‘They’re dragging you in, aren’t they?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The Church. It’s all political.’
    ‘Of course it is.’
    ‘All those fat, smug C-of-E gits, they’re worried about losing their power and their influence, so they’re appointing cool bishops: smooth, glossy people like Michael Hunter… Mick Hunter, for God’s sake.’
    ‘Bishops are still appointed by Downing Street.’
    ‘Yeah, well, exactly. Old mate of Tony Blair’s. I can just see them swapping chords for ancient Led Zeppelin riffs. Like, Mick’s superficially cool and different, but he’s really Establishment underneath.’
    ‘Phew,’ said Merrily theatrically. ‘Thank God, my