‘Yes.’

‘But that’s the tip of the iceberg.’

‘Rather than just a phase?’

‘Jesus,’ Huw said, ‘you know what I heard a woman say the other week? “We can handle it,” she said. “It’s no more hassle than nurses get, and women teachers.” A priest, this was, totally failing to take account of the… the overwhelming glamour the priesthood itself confers. It’s now a fact that ordained women are the prime target for every psychotic grinder of the dark satanic mills that ever sacrificed a chicken. And there are a lot of those buggers about.’

‘I’ve read the figures.’

‘Exaggerated – two million in Britain alone, that sort of level. I don’t think so. I’d guess no more than a thousand hard-liners and another five or six thousand misfit hangers-on. But, by God, that’s enough, in’t it? It’s a modern religion, see, masquerading as something ancient. I’ve not said much about it down there yet.’ Jerking a thumb towards the chapel. ‘I like to save it for the end of the course, on account of some priests find it harder to take seriously than spooks.’

A blur of white: an early barn owl sailing over on cue.

Merrily said, ‘What do you mean by a modern religion?’

‘Well, not in principle, though it got a hell of a boost in the eighties. All that worship of money and sex and wordly success – Lucifer as patron saint of greedy, self-serving bastards, the Lord of this World. Goes back to some of the old Gnostic teachings: God’s in His Heaven, while the other feller runs things down here.’

‘You can’t imagine people actually believing that.’

‘Why not? If you want to get on in the world, you have to join the winning team. That’s not evil, it’s pragmatic. It’s being levelheaded, recognizing the set-up. A jungle, every man for himself, that’s the manifesto. That’s the spin. Got this amazing charge in the eighties. Took off faster than mobile phones.’