The Chalice, page 19
Nodding across the street to the crudely fashioned, unspeakably ugly female form, unsubtly spotlit in purple, with what looked like the entrance to a railway tunnel between its spread thighs. The window was cracked but intact.
‘Sheesh, that’s really gross,’ said Woolly. ‘No wonder the poor bastard lost his cool.’
‘He didn’t need to start hurling his works of art at everybody else’s windows, though. Must be fifteen or twenty panes gone.’
Who would pay? The Alternative Community was already withdrawing into itself. Juanita supposed repair bills would be settled quietly. She supposed she’d have her corner pane quietly replaced without seeking recompense from either the Dorrell-Adamses or the insurance company. As would most of the other New Age shopkeepers. Covering up, because this sort of incident just did not happen in sacred Glastonbury.
No wonder Griff Daniel had looked so happy.
Woolly shook his head in sorrow. ‘We had this whole range planned. My knowledge, Tony’s artwork. Good team, eh? I work out the concept, he makes ’em, she dumps ’em in the street, he smashes ’em. Gotter be a philosophical message there somewhere.’
‘The message’, said Juanita, ‘is Glastonbury buggers you up.’
‘Pixhill,’ Woolly said. ‘Don’t you go quoting Pixhill at me, Juanita. You’ll have me all paranoid again.’
‘How do you mean?’ Juanita asked, but Woolly had spotted Tony.
‘What’s he done to himself?’
‘Cut his hand on a shard of pot. That – what’s-his-name, Matthew, the herbalist guy – is sedating him the Natural way and anointing his wound with cowslip syrup or something.’
‘This is a real downer,’ said Woolly, the only living local councillor to specialise in understatement. A downer. Christ, it showed how basically rickety the whole community-structure was.
If Tony Dorrell-Adams, a steady, middle-class, terribly boring ex-teacher from the Home Counties, could behave like this, what did it say about some of the others?
She wondered where Jim was, turned to look for him.
It was strange: just turning around, just moving made her want to go on moving. There was something … a tingle in the air, an underlying vibration that was horribly exhilarating. The shockwaves had broken the Blight. People’s bodies were flexing as they moved about, the way they might emerging into a bright spring morning.
Something not at all right about this.
A single, undamaged plate with a glowing cup glazed upon it, rolled, as if from nowhere, on end down the pavement and fell flat at Juanita’s feet. It seemed awesomely symbolic, like the most innocuous things did when you were on acid.
There was a moment of charged-up silence, the plate wobbling on the flagstones. Juanita had time to think, This is Glastonbury, buggering us up …
… before it all began again.
She heard someone shout, ‘Hold him!’ as Tony Dorrell-Adams struggled to his feet, scattering the herbalist’s bottled preparations and screaming,
‘Biiiiiiitch!’
The scream seemed to splatter the white walls above the shops opposite like a gob of spit, and Georgian windows rattled with its agony. The air was alive, fizzing like soda. The streetlamps were flickering, one crackling – as though Tony’s scream had hit an electrical current and caused a short-circuit or something.
Tony sank to his knees, sobs coming out of him like ghastly, amplified hiccups. ‘I want to die … Just want to kill that bitch and die.’
Poor old Tony. One night he’s humping his wife in the shop window, like this was Hamburg or Amsterdam, and the next … well, this was how domestic murders happened, one of the classic scenarios: you mock a man’s prowess, his skills, it’s like trampling his balls.
Juanita’s tongue found the swelling on her lower lip, where the pilgrim had punched her and it all muscled in on her, everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours: small events in the great scheme of things – petty violence and humiliation and the unexplained death of a social reject Diane called Headlice.
Diane …
Where the hell was Diane? Who should have been padding around this bizarre street-scape, wide-eyed and worried and exuding that doe-like innocence.
‘Oh my God …’ On a night like this, she’d forgotten about Diane. Snatching out her key, Juanita ran for the door of Carey and Frayne.
‘Do it,’ Wanda Carlisle urged. ‘You won’t get another opportunity like this.’
‘I can’t,’ said Verity, ‘I really can’t.’
‘He can help you.’
‘It isn’t my place to seek help.’
‘You really are a martyr.’ Wanda swept her black and white chequered cape stiffly across her shoulder. ‘And you know what happens to them.’
The hall had nearly emptied. Only half the usual lights were on but it seemed to Verity that most people would have been happy to grope their way out in complete darkness. They had discovered an exciting new environment. Within it, they had meditated, they had touched each other’s features the way blind people did, reinventing themselves and their partners by discovering what Dr Pel Grainger had identified as their ‘shadow selves’. There had been some very effective visualisation exercises and it seemed that everyone’s world-view had, for tonight at least, been subtly altered.
Verity had been aware, at one stage, of someone coming in and muttering about some problem on the street, and one person – she thought it was Councillor Woolaston – had left quietly. But the interruption had been soon forgotten as Dr Grainger’s audience moved towards First-stage Tenebral Symbiosis.
Now Dr Grainger was sitting on the edge of the platform talking to a couple who’d stayed behind. ‘Why, sure,’ he was saying nonchalantly. ‘Just take out the bulbs first then you won’t be tempted to rush for the switches.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Verity. Who, precisely because it had all been so seductive, was wishing she hadn’t come. Dr Grainger was a very persuasive person, especially in the dark, but there was darkness and darkness, and she couldn’t help feeling that Meadwell’s dark was not the kind one might ‘bond’ with.
‘Fine,’ said Dr Grainger. ‘Good luck.’ He raised a hand to the departing couple, slipped down from the platform, and then – to Verity’s horror – Dame Wanda was upon him.
She didn’t bother to introduce herself, assuming, as she assumed with everyone, that he would recognise her and be flattered by her attention.
‘Dr Grainger, I should like you to meet a friend of mine who is, desperately, desperately in need of your help.’
The man in black smiled patiently.
Verity backed away. ‘Oh no, really …’
‘Verity, do not dare move.’ Wanda turned again to Dr Pel Grainger and said apologetically, ‘I am afraid my friend needs saving from herself.’
From where Jim stood, leaning on his bike, the lights of Glastonbury were too bright tonight, harsh with instability. At the tree-hung entrance to Wellhouse Lane, he paused, feeling cold without his overcoat. Without his hat.
Go on. It’ll be all right after the first few hundred yards. There’s nothing to be afraid of. They’ve gone. The travellers have all gone.
Never thought this would happen to him. Never thought he could feel fear in this place of ancient spirit.
But there was nothing to be brave for now. Not any more.
He kept thinking back to yesterday – only yesterday, it seemed like another life, another incarnation – when he was sitting in Juanita’s parlour, looking through his Laphroaig (the colour of dusk) at the woman whose skin was like the warmest, softest dusk you could imagine.
There was so much hope then. Well, not really, but you could kid yourself. You could believe in miracles.
And now there was no hope, and he had only himself to blame, doing what he’d always sworn to himself he would never do (stick to the banter, keep it light, never, never let her know for sure).
His hands felt clammy on the rubber of the handlebars. He’d seen what had happened in High Street, briefly assessed the situation – wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in Bristol – and edged quietly out of the picture. Hated rubberneckers and voyeurs and all this counselling nonsense. You should never interfere in people’s private tragedies.
Private tragedy.
His own had come in the very second that Griff Daniel had burst back into the bar to spread the good news about the man smashing the windows of the hippy shops.
He hadn’t meant this to happen. Hadn’t come out tonight with the least intention of making a suicide flight.
But something had got to him. Something – whatever had made Griff Daniel so manic – set Jim off.
He’d been watching Juanita’s eyes so closely. He knew precisely what he was doing, feeling strangely detached – in reality, probably as unstable as young Tony. And he knew that she knew where it was leading: Jim Battle burning all his boats, with a ninety-nine to one chance of total annihilation.
But that one per cent. The intoxication of running a wild, death-or-glory bet, the odds almost too high, for she was so beautiful and he was nearly twenty years older, twenty buggering years, and never had been what you’d call much of a catch, as bloody Pat would point out every other week.
Juanita, Juanita.
If he’d been a knight he’d have swum the moat for her, scaled the buggering tower. If he’d been a young man he’d have simply swung her on to the back of his bike and pedalled for the border. If he’d been a dog, he’d have lain down at her feet, rolled over and wagged his tail.
Better to be a dog than poor, buggering Jim Battle. Better a dog and get the occasional tickle, have his fur brushed.
He pushed his bike past the last house in Wellhouse Lane. The Tor was on his right. Somewhere. He couldn’t see the bastard thing. Maybe – God forgive him for even considering this – maybe Griff Daniel was right about the weird little hill, the hill of dreams, the hill of obsession. Maybe they’d all be better off without it.
And he would rather …
Jim swallowed this thought and went on pushing, feeling cold sweat in the small of his back, as though he was leaking like an old and rusting sump. Listening to the tick, tick of his bike chain, following the bleary beam of his battery-powered bike lamp.
Only the mystery. Only the mystery could save him now.
And yet mystery could betray you. He remembered the heat of bodies around him, the strength of the hands holding him down, exposing his throat. And he would rather …
Jim squeezed his eyes shut, trying so hard to summon the dusk, bring the old mellow warmth into his chilled, sagging body. No good. It wouldn’t come.
He would rather …
… rather have had that moon-bright sickle slice slowly through the skin and the sinew and the bones of his neck than to have seen the quick flickering of relief in Juanita’s eyes when Griff Daniel burst into the bar.
SEVEN
Synchronicity
Don Moulder had been up late doing his VAT return, last minute as usual, and it was while he was locking up for the night that he heard it.
Would’ve figured it was no more than his imagination – doing his VAT always made him a bit paranoid about people coming after him – if both sheepdogs hadn’t heard it as well and started to whimper.
‘Lord preserve us,’ muttered Don Moulder.
It came again: the echoey groaning and grinding of a clapped-out old gearbox, some distance off. One of the dogs crept between Don’s legs. ‘Oh aye, that’s right,’ Don growled. ‘You go’n hide yourself, bloody ole coward.’
When Shep joined Prince under the table, Don scowled at them and went to the boot cupboard where he kept the twelve-bore. ‘Got to protect me own stock, then?’ He glanced up at the plaster between the beams. ‘Forgive me, Lord, but I knows not of a better way to deal with these devils.’
Don decided to say nothing to the missus, who’d been in bed an hour and was most likely well asleep by now. Shots’d wake her, mind, if it came to that.
Warning shots only, more’s the pity. You blasted away at the beggars these days, professional rustlers or not, and they’d be straight down the police station, figuring to nobble a God-fearing farmer for damages, due to the trauma they’d suffered. Bloody ridiculous; got so’s a man couldn’t defend his own property no more. Well, Don Moulder played by the old rules: thou shalt not pinch thy neighbour’s ox, nor his ass nor his best Suffolk ram, and if thou triest it thou gets what’s coming to thee, mister, and no mistake.
Shrugging on his old Barbour, Don let himself out. He was halfway across the yard, gun under an arm, lamp in hand but switched off, when he had another thought.
Knackered ole gearbox noise. Lord, suppose it’s … Them …?
They’d paid him for three, four nights – via the Hon. Diane, bless her – then cleared off halfway through the first. All right, their decision, no pressure from Don Moulder. But what if they’d come back to claim the rest of their time? How did he stand there? Hadn’t given ’em no money back, not a penny; still he hadn’t been asked, and there was nothing on paper.
So what you did was you brazened it out. Only Godless hippies, they got no rights. And Miss Diane, nice enough girl but a few bales short of a full barn, so no problems there.
Don Moulder shouldered his gun like Davy Crockett and followed the hedge towards the bottom field.
The lights were still out in the shop when the door opened before Juanita could even get her key in the lock and Diane hissed, ‘Quick,’ and pulled her inside. She was so glad to find Diane still on the premises that she didn’t say a word until she arrived in the parlour and discovered the source of all the night’s excitement sitting coolly in her rocking chair looking like Arthur Rackham’s idea of a page-three girl.
‘Oh,’ Domini said. ‘Hello, sister.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Juanita stood in the doorway. ‘You’ve got a nerve.’
‘I was in need of sanctuary and Diana took me in.’
‘Diane,’ said Diane.
Juanita said to Diane, ‘Is she pissed or what?’
‘I certainly am not. If you must try to explain everything, I think I’m probably in a state of heightened consciousness.’
‘While your husband’, said Juanita sweetly, ‘is in a state of heightened stress, heightened bewilderment and heightened likelihood of being nicked for criminal damage. Plus he’s cut his hand rather badly breaking somebody’s window.’
Domini sniffed. ‘Not a terribly inventive response, all told. But not bad for a boring little turd of a primary school teacher.’ She uncrossed her legs and sat up. ‘Hey, come on, this is what it’s all about, Juanita. Change. No, don’t look at me like that. This is what Avalon does for us. Challenges all our preconceptions. Forces us to change.’
‘Get her out of here,’ Juanita said wearily.
‘Oh,’ said Domini. ‘It was different for you then, was it?’
‘What?’
‘When you threw your man out. When Carey and Frayne lost its Frayne.’
Diane said, ‘That’s not awfully fair …’
And then the phone rang.
‘Excuse me,’ Juanita said. Perhaps it was Jim. Perhaps he’d gone straight home. She hoped it was Jim. ‘I’ll take it upstairs.’
Juanita’s sitting room was directly above the shop and overlooked High Street. It appeared much quieter down there now. Nobody seemed to have called the police. She could see a light on over the restyled Holy Thorn Ceramics. Tony must have gone home. Well, there was no room for bloody Domini to sleep here.
She picked up the phone from the windowsill. ‘Hello, Carey and Frayne.’
All she could hear was some awful wheezing. Oh please, not a breather.
Through the window, she saw a large group of people drifting up the street from the Assembly Rooms where this utter dickhead Pel Grainger had been promoting his tenebral therapy. He’d been in the shop a couple of weeks back, suggesting she should place a major order for his forthcoming book, Embracing the Dark. Maybe she should, if he’d pulled a crowd that size.
‘Mrs Carey?’ A man. Not Jim. She was sorry. If Jim had been about to say tonight what she’d thought he was about to say, then they really needed to talk. Not in a pub.
Poor Jim. With his bikes and his brushes and all those paintings he was going to sell one day when he’d found his Grail. Poor buggering Jim, who she’d thought was just a Really Good Friend. Perhaps no man ever wanted to be just her friend; was that a compliment at her age?
‘Sorry,’ she said into the phone. ‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘Mrs Carey, I’m so sorry, I’m afraid I’m not awfully well. Little short of breath. It’s Timothy Shepherd. From the Pixhill Trust. Terribly sorry to telephone so late, I did try earlier but there was no reply.’
‘I’ve been out. Sorry. No problem, Major.’
‘You sound as if there is.’
‘Do I?’
‘You sound a little stressed.’
‘Sorry. It’s nothing. Nothing really. Look, Major, if you’re ringing to see how the book’s selling, I’m afraid not very well at all.’
Major Shepherd went into a prolonged coughing fit. God, what was the matter with him? Not just flu, that was for sure.
‘Don’t worry about the book,’ he said eventually. ‘Mrs Carey, I should like to see you, but I’m afraid I’m in no condition to travel to Glastonbury. Would it be possible for you to come up here?’
‘To Cirencester?’
‘I wouldn’t presume upon your valuable time if I didn’t think it was of some considerable importance. Could you come tomorrow?’
She thought about tomorrow’s already-unnerving agenda. Jim to sort out, with extreme tact and delicacy. And the problem of the swastika boy. Should she urge Diane to tell the police what she knew?
‘Major, quite honestly, tomorrow could be a problem.’
‘Will you try?’
‘I really don’t think …’
‘Friday, then. I beg you to try, Mrs Carey.’
‘Is there a particular problem? About the book?’
‘Forget the damn book.’ She could hear his voice going into a wheeze, and a woman in the background, exasperated, God’s sake, Tim …
