The Chalice, page 13
Joe Powys hadn’t said a word. He was standing by the fireplace looking at the two photos. Ben looked too and …
‘Oh, fucking hell …’ His leg muscles turned to porridge. ‘You just did that. Didn’t you?’
Powys just looked sad.
Ben went up close. Peered, horrified, at the pictures. And then backed off with his hands out, like he’d opened a door and a blast of winter had hit him full in the chest.
He fell back on the sofa, hands on his knees as if glued there. ‘Tell me they aren’t,’ he said.
Joe went over to the pictures and carefully turned each one the right way up.
‘It’s OK. It’s happened before.’
Ben said, ‘You have to get out of here, Joe.’
‘No.’ Powys smiled. ‘I know where I am with this.’
‘Who are they? Those people.’
‘The old bloke with the beard is Fay’s dad, Canon Peters.’
‘Dead?’
‘And the woman was called Rachel.’
‘Girlfriend? She’s dead too?’
‘I didn’t know her long enough to put a label on it. We keep the pictures up there to remind us. In case we get blasé about certain things.’
Ben put his hands over his face, rubbed his eyes. ‘Where’s the dog?’
‘Under the table, on his rug.’
‘Maybe he upset the table, knocked the lamp off.’
‘Could be,’ said Powys.
‘No it fucking couldn’t.’ Ben found himself breathing hard again, closest he could remember ever being to hysteria. ‘And, anyway, why was he howling? He often howl like that?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Why d’you say, It’s over? Just now, on the stairs.’
He still felt too weak to get up from the sofa.
‘Hang on,’ Powys said. ‘What’s Arnold got?’ He got down on all fours, scrabbled about under the table, and came up with something.
A book. A big, fat, heavy book.
‘Now this is new,’ he said (nervously? Was that a quiver of nerves under the voice?).
‘This never happened before.’
He looked up and Ben followed his gaze to the very top bookshelf under a big, black beam-end to the left of the fireplace. There was just enough light to show up a gap in the middle of the shelf, the other books apparently stiff and firm to either side.
‘It fell off,’ Ben said. ‘It fell on to the lamp.’
‘Yeh. Looks like it.’ Powys’s voice was dry and flaky like the ash in the grate. He held out the book for Ben. It was a real doorstop, about three inches thick, probably over a thousand pages.
Ben couldn’t prise his hands from his knees to take it.
But he could see the title, in faded gold down the spine, the author’s name across it, the surname in big capitals.
POWYS.
And because he knew Joe had never written anything half that long, he figured this must be John Cowper Powys, novelist, mystic, nutter.
The title, in smaller lettering, confirmed it.
A Glastonbury Romance.
Ben was bewildered, spooked almost out of his head. A book, just one big heavy book, flies off the top shelf, a good nine feet across the fucking room, smashes a lamp. Smashes the only source of light.
‘What’s it mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ Joe Powys said. He put a hand on the mantelpiece (to stop the hand shaking?).
‘But it’s all harmless, isn’t it?’ he said.
TWO
Strange Place, but Good Fun
As Ben ate his breakfast in Joe’s living room, he kept glancing up at the bookshelves, searching out the middle of the top row.
You could read the lettering on the spine easily, at least the part that said
POWYS.
He buttered his toast, edging his chair a few inches to the left.
‘Let’s talk about John Cowper Powys.’
‘Oh,’ said Powys. ‘Uncle Jack.’
‘Uncle Jack? Uncle fucking Jack? You’re telling me after all these years that JCP …’
‘Well, I don’t know, that’s the truth. He had a complicated personal life.’
‘You can say that again.’
Ben had lain wide awake and cold for what seemed like hours thinking, on and off, about John Cowper Powys. He’d never actually read A Glastonbury Romance, but he’d read one of the shorter ones (not much credibility for a New Age publisher who’d never read much JCP) and found it actually not that bad for something published half a century ago. Joe being a descendant of the great man was just a possibility they’d hinted at in publicity for Golden Land and never taken that seriously.
‘He died in – what – sixty-five?’
‘Sixty-three,’ Powys said.
‘Lived in North Wales, his later years, with this woman who’d been his secretary or something, right? And you were born …?’
‘Wrexham. In theory, he could have been my father, but I don’t think he was up to it by then. My mother used to talk about an Uncle Jack who was a famous author, but in those days close friends of your parents were always aunties and uncles. And Jack was a common name then.’
‘You remember ever seeing the old guy when you were a kid?’
Powys shook his head.
‘You never ask about him, when you grew up?’
‘Once. Not long before my mother died. I asked her about this Uncle Jack, the famous author. I said – because I’d heard of Cowper Powys by then – was he, by any chance, possessed of a middle name beginning with C?’
Ben put down the marmalade. ‘And she said?’
‘She said, Uncle Jack? What Uncle Jack?’
‘Shit. But you could find out.’
‘Maybe. Who would it help?’
‘Listen.’ Ben glanced at the bookshelf, lowered his voice. ‘Suppose he wants you to.’
‘What?’
‘Establish the link.’
‘Get lost,’ said Powys. ‘You’re leaping to conclusions. A book falls off the shelf …’
‘Halfway across the room. And the dog howling.’
‘These things happen. Best thing is not to react.’
‘Stone me,’ Ben hissed at his toast in frustration.
‘It was only a book. Nobody got hurt.’
‘Not just a book, Powys. Not just a book. OK, what else we got? Glastonbury. When were you last in Glastonbury?’
‘Never been.’
Ben put down his knife in astonishment.
‘You’ve never been to Glastonbury? The world centre for earth mysteries? Glastonbury Tor and all the UFOs? Healing rays? The Abbey ruins? The St Michael Line?’
‘The St Michael Line’s spurious.’
‘You’ve never been to Glastonbury?’
‘Well, you know …’ Powys stood up and started gathering plates together. He seemed uncomfortable about this. ‘I read the Romance the first time when I was quite young. Much of it I didn’t understand.’
‘Isn’t it all about sex?’
‘Yeh, it is really. Mysticism and sex, and how they can both screw you up. It didn’t make me want to go to Glastonbury, made me want to avoid it. It’s a powerful book, though. Tells you a lot about JCP, things you might not want to know if there’s a possibility you were related.’
‘He had some funny ideas.’
‘But where did he get them?’ Powys said. ‘Did he force his ideas on Glastonbury or did it force them on him?’
‘Strange place. But good fun. We sell a lot of books there.’
‘As you would.’
‘Don’t knock it, it’s all har …’
Ben stopped himself and looked up at the shelf. Had it moved, just a fraction of a centimetre?
‘Keep on saying it,’ Powys said. ‘Maybe that’s best.’
No more than an hour after Ben had gone back to London, the phone rang, and it was Fay.
She’d said she was coming over this weekend, from Hereford. She was supposed to have come last weekend, but the bloke who owned Offa’s Dyke Radio had apparently arrived in town and she had to stick around for meetings. Powys had thought this was an excuse and that there was something else in the air she wasn’t telling him about.
Fay said now, ‘Joe …’
And when she said Joe, he knew it was going to be heavy. Most of the time she called him Powys; people did, it was a better name than Joe, had more resonance: whisper it and it sounded as if you were calling the cat.
‘Joe,’ Fay said, ‘it’s … I’ve been offered a job.’
At the BBC World Service. London wanted Fay back. There was what they called a six-month attachment for a features producer. Six-month attachments at the BBC were hard to come by these days, now it was run like ICI.
She said, what did he think?
He said – what was he supposed to say? – that he thought she ought to take it. He was about to say he was likely to be down in London himself soon, seeing this publisher, and maybe they could …
Or maybe they shouldn’t.
Joe Powys was feeling very alone. Fay was the only person who understood. Their relationship had involved a lot of comforting each other, of saying, Listen, you’re not out of your mind. And, in the end, the reassurances had themselves served as reminders of how bad it had been and reminders were useful, except for those involving books thrown from shelves.
Fay said they’d see each other properly, and Arnold and everything, before she went.
‘Well good God, you’re only going to London …’
‘Ah,’ said Fay.
It wasn’t just London. The World Service was planning some kind of trans-Global Christmas link-up under the working title Peace on Earth. Fay would be involved in producing the European end. From Brussels and places.
‘Ah,’ Powys said.
‘And then there’s a few other things. Paris. Amsterdam. Back in March,’ Fay said. ‘Probably.’
‘Sounds brilliant,’ he said, hoping she’d think the hoarseness was on the line. ‘Do it. Don’t look back.’
But, she said, what about him?
Fine, he said. Really. And he told her about the book.
The book that Ben Corby was passing on to this guy Frayne at Harvey-Calder.
Not the book which came off the shelf, sailed halfway across the room and smashed the lamp.
‘That’s wonderful, Powys,’ Fay said. ‘So you could be back in business, then.’ And there was a silence, and then the conversation became rather weepy.
Later that morning, Powys went for a walk with Arnold. They climbed to the top of the hill behind the longhouse, Arnold indignant at being carried part of the way. From here, you could see along Offa’s Dyke, the earthwork which used to mark the boundary between England and Wales but was only an approximation these days. The dyke itself was not exactly the Great Wall of China and probably never had been. It was just a symbol of an old division.
In The Old Golden Land, Powys had argued that borders were very sensitive places, where the veil – yes that veil – was especially thin. It was a place where you might expect to have extraordinary experiences.
So what was he still doing here?
‘Hiding,’ he said aloud. ‘Hiding out.’
But had something found him?
He had Arnold’s ball in his jacket pocket, and Arnold knew it. Usually, Arnold would race about after it, proving he’d never really needed four legs anyway. Today he stuck close to Powys.
It was Fay who’d rescued Arnold from the dog pound after Henry Kettle, the dowser, died in the car crash. Fay was small, like a terrier. She’d held on as long as she could. Now, in taking the London job, she had, in theory, cut Powys loose as well. He’d told Ben he was still here because it was Arnold’s home, and Ben had said that was a wonderfully New Age thing to say.
But it wasn’t really true.
He looked back down at the cottage. Mrs Whitney next door was hanging out towels on her washing line. Mrs Whitney had known Fay wasn’t coming back; he could tell by her expression.
‘Let’s go, Arnie. Home.’
Home?
When they got back to the cottage, Arnold stood in the doorway and growled. Powys made his senses go dead and uncaring, or, at least, that was the message he sent to himself. It’s nothing, it doesn’t matter, it’s irrelevant.
The big black book lay in the centre of the hearth this time, its spine split.
Part Three
On Wearyall Hill, the long, low spur jutting out into the marshes, the first firm ground between Avalon and the sea in those days, Joseph set foot on English land, and he drove his staff into the warm, red, Westland soil as he took possession of our islands for the spiritual kingdom of his Lord, a realm not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Dion Fortune
Avalon of the Heart
ONE
Mystery
Avalon Out, Says Candidate
A bitter attack on the ‘New Age subculture’ of Glastonbury has been made by the man chosen by South Mendip Tories as their next Parliamentary candidate.
The Hon. Archer Ffitch, son of local landowner Viscount Pennard, says the town will become a national joke unless it ‘stops encouraging cranks’.
Mr Ffitch won a standing ovation from constituency party members when he told them, ‘We must seize the future and stop mooning about our mythical past.’
He said the town had become saturated with pseudo-mystics, many of whom were blatantly pagan, and had become a Mecca for New Age travellers.
As a result, local house prices had dropped and businesses were reluctant to invest in the town.
Even the boundary signs identified Glastonbury as The Ancient Isle of Avalon in acknowledgement of ‘a probably bogus legend’.
Mr Ffitch said, ‘If the local authority wants a new slogan, I’ll give them one: Glastonbury FIRST, Avalon OUT.’
Mr Ffitch’s remarks followed his formal acceptance of …
‘You bastard,’ Jim Battle muttered, as dusk settled like mud around die red roofs.
His first thought was to screw the Evening Post into a ball and ram it into the nearest litter bin. Instead, he folded it into his saddle bag. He would show it to Juanita. If he could face her.
He’d waited until the end of the day before cycling into town. Nothing to do with not wanting to show his face in daylight for fear of people pointing at him: That’s him. That’s the bloke who was executed last night, ho ho. Where’s your hat, Jim?
Nobody would, of course. Nobody knew and nobody would find out. Even the buggering travellers had spirited themselves away. He wouldn’t have to face anyone. Except for Juanita and his own hatless head reflected in shop windows.
Perhaps his humiliation on the Tor had been a small payback for his self-indulgence in fleeing the city to reside amid ancient mystery. How bloody Pat would have enjoyed it: the invasion of Jim’s little idyll, a barbarian’s blade over his throat.
As it turned out, nobody commented even on the premature departure of the travellers. The report of Archer Ffitch’s speech had greater implications.
‘This is the kind of chap we need,’ said Colin Border in the off-licence, pointing to the Post’s picture of Archer looking severe but dynamic. ‘What I’ve been saying for years. How can you hope to attract new industry to a town where half the potential workforce appear to be pot-smoking sun-worshippers? Fourteen pounds 49p, please, Jim,’ wrapping Jim’s bottle of Scotch in brown paper.
‘Won’t be terribly popular down the street, though.’ Jim put his money on the counter. ‘Lot of New Age types running quite profitable businesses now.’
‘What, vegetarian sandwich bars and poky shops specialising in bloody overpriced gimcrack jewellery that’s supposed to have healing powers? Give me a Marks and Spencer any day. Not that Archer’ll be losing any support in that direction. Most of these halfwits throw away their votes on the Green Party and the rest are bound to be Labour, the odd one or two Lib-Dems. What’s he got to lose? Nailing his colours to the mast from the outset. I like that.’
‘Hmm,’ Jim said. Because of the way he dressed and his disapproval of thieving travellers, people like Colin assumed he must be as reactionary as they were.
‘I like this bit, Jim. Listen to this, “Glastonbury enshrines the idea of a strong English and Christian tradition within an established, solidly prosperous country town. It stands for the Old Values. Whereas Avalon, said Mr Ffitch, is a place which exists only in legends and folklore. It has been adopted by those who choose to turn their backs on the real world, to inhabit a drug-sodden cloud-cuckoo land where no one has to work for a living and traditional family values are laughed at.” ’
‘Yes,’ said Jim. ‘Quite.’ He picked up his bottle and got out of there before he exploded.
Outside, he looked down the street to where the lights of the New Age shops began. He saw a twinkling display of assorted crystals. He saw tarot cards and dreamy relaxation tapes and a lone twilight candle burning in the window of The Wicked Wax Co.
Well, all right, one or two of the windows were rather lurid; some of the owners a little, erm, eccentric. But that candle, for instance, symbolised something important, something close to the essence of it all. Something Archer Ffitch wouldn’t understand and many of his supporters wouldn’t realise until it was too late.
Jim folded the evening paper, jammed it under his arm and mooched off towards The George and Pilgrims. He needed a couple of drinks.
‘You bastard, Ffitch,’ he murmured. ‘Why must you murder the Mystery?’
The woman with hair the colour of old gold was drifting around the shop with her hands out – palms down, like a priest vaguely searching for children to bless.
‘I don’t quite know,’ she said. ‘I don’t quite know what I’m looking for.’
Diane thought that went for an awful lot of people in this town.
The woman was frightfully beautiful, in an ethereal sort of way. Must be wonderful to be ethereal. Being slim and elegant would, of course, be a start.
‘Juanita would know.’ The woman had a long, slender nose; she looked down it at Diane. ‘Juanita would know at once.’
