The Chalice, page 47
Even on top of the Aga, he was still cold. Moonlight fluttered in through the high window like the ribbons on a shroud.
This was an evil house. As black as the black bus.
He kept thinking about that bus. Was it his own private demon? Was it a representation of everything he most feared: the fast-breeding traffic monster which fed on the English countryside? Had that bus come out of his own head, bred from his own paranoia?
Woolly projected himself back … back into the car, coming down along Magdalene Street, seeing the tree lights. He remembered thinking how nice that was, what a really good vibe Christmas put into the town. Trying to see those lights in his mind before they all went up in the air and he saw the other lights, the wishy-washy yellow either side of a peeling grille.
Was there a driver? He peered harder down his dope-scarred memory.
Focusing on the headlights, on that grille that was like a lopsided, evil grin full of rusty teeth. Into the window. This really old-fashioned window, with a divider strip of rusting chrome.
His hands groping up the side of the Aga in the dark, the warm shiny metal, like he was climbing up on to the bonnet of the bus, peering in through that window. If he could only see the driver’s face, he’d know.
He could feel the engine throbbing now under his feet. Could see the street. Hang on, this was wrong, had to get down High Street from the top. Coming down from Chilkwell Street, left into High Street, down towards the Post Office and the zebra crossing, under the wash of amber streetlight, the big steering wheel vibrating under his hands, that loose spring irritating his bum, gotta patch that seat, glaring through the muck on the windscreen.
Driving the bus. Driving the black bus.
‘I never wanted children,’ Juanita said hoarsely.
She found she was talking to the purplespotlit pot goddesses in the window of the shop belonging to Domini Dorrell-Adams.
‘It was always going to be, you know, a wonderful place to bring kids into. Not just Glastonbury – the new world we were going to make. Everybody loving one another. We didn’t, of course. We still had our petty jealousies, prejudices, infidelities. But the fact that we felt it was possible for everyone to love each other. That we could aspire to it.’
The pot goddesses leered.
‘And when it all started to go down the drain I didn’t want to bring kids into it any more. That was why Danny left really. He wanted offspring. He wanted his own little Glastonbury family. But you can’t be an ordinary guy in Glastonbury, it’s not allowed.’
One of the purple spot-bulbs in the Goddess Shop window went out, with a little phut she could hear even through the glass.
Phut. Gone.
Like golden-haired Domini’s marriage. Like Jim Battle and his cottage and his paintings. Like Headlice.
How swiftly lights were snuffed in this small town. How quickly they were forgotten. All that energy going bad. No place to raise a child. And too late now, anyway.
She heard laughter behind her. Laughter as light as a ball of windblown paper.
She turned slowly.
In the middle of the road stood Ceridwen in darkest robes.
Juanita went very still.
There was a hazy light around Ceridwen. Her hair, like grey snakes, sprayed out into this light, which was purple like the spotlit goddess.
Well, she’d dreamed of this moment, the big confrontation.
But on her terms. By daylight. In Ceridwen’s tacky fortune teller’s booth. Or Wanda’s house, where there were things to smash, candles to knock over. When she wasn’t feeling sick and feverish and broken and …
Ceridwen laughed.
… and disillusioned and decaying, constantly chilled by the draught of death.
She began to pant, looking down at the hands she hadn’t been able to straighten out since they’d gripped the door handle. An old woman’s curling claws …
‘The goddess comes in three aspects,’ Ceridwen said, her voice echoing, as if the whole street, the town, the world was empty, apart from the two of them. She was looking past Juanita at the Goddess Shop.
‘Virgin,’ she said.
Juanita turned in time to see another purple bulb going pop, putting the smaller goddesses into darkness.
Now there was only one bulb remaining. It lit the largest of Domini’s pot goddesses, purpling her pendulous breasts. The obese idol squatted smugly on her swag of white satin and simpered.
While, from the large black hole at the top of her rough-glazed thighs, a dark fluid was dripping, making viscous rivulets on the white satin.
Juanita backed away. She could almost smell it. She tasted bile.
She looked up at the tower of St John’s, but it looked coldly down, spurning her. And the dark, taunting, menstrual blood of the goddess soaked into the satin.
‘Mother,’ Ceridwen hissed.
As the last bulb went out.
Phut.
Just like the baby Juanita had had aborted. Secretly. Danny’s baby. Danny becoming terrifyingly un-Danny when he heard. Danny throwing every book in the shop to the floor. Pushing over the shelf-units, smashing up the window display and walking out and never returning, never setting foot on the holy Isle of Avalon again.
Juanita turned to face the road and Ceridwen’s white, hazy pointing finger.
There was a moment of stillness. A moment of knowing it was not as it seemed. A smell of fumes, souring the apple-scented woodsmoke from the chimneys, bad energy forming a grounded cloud.
And then, with a sensation of pins and needles in both feet, the flush began.
The big one. The flush of flushes. She felt fire in her limbs, a fire that dried her blood and her juices. She felt her skin slacken, her breasts shrivelling into pockets of old leather, her mouth stretching into a scream which she knew would crack her face into a spiderweb of deep, blackening fissures.
‘Hag,’ Ceridwen said.
Juanita raised her hands like the claws they so much resembled and rushed out at her, shrieking hatred and despair.
But Ceridwen’s image went out like another lightbulb and there was nothing in the middle of the road but Juanita.
And the big black bus. Bellowing and farting smoke. With its radiator hanging off.
She felt the buildings tremble and wrapped her arms around her sagging body. As if that would hold her together.
TWELVE
My Goddess
Sam threw open the Bowermead gates, ran back and jumped back in the Mini.
‘Wayne hangs out with Darryl Davey,’ he said. ‘Of the Provisional Glastonbury First Brigade. If that yellow-toothed twat …’
‘Sam, he was lying. He was winding you up. I’m not even going to mention it to Juanita, the state she’s in already. It could, however, be a police matter. Whatever they did.’
‘You think the police got a better chance of finding her than we do?’
‘They could pull this Davey in.’
‘I could pull him in. Go round the pubs till I find him.’
‘And get filled in by his mates.’ Powys drove out of the Bowermead turning towards the lights of Glastonbury. ‘Time is it?’
‘Gone ten. What did you get out of Pennard?’
‘Too much whisky.’
‘Didn’t do you much harm when it came to dealing with Rankin. If we both went round the pubs …’
‘I’d rather you went to Meadwell, keep Woolly company. Because that’s where they’ll show up. Sooner rather than later.’
‘You think?’
‘I know. Sam, who else is in, The Cauldron apart from Ceridwen?’
‘Depends what you mean by “in”.’ Sam had Arnold on his knee, clutching the dog to his chest. ‘A whole lot of women go to the meetings.’
‘I mean the so-called Inner Circle.’
‘There’s a woman called Jenna thinks she’s well-in. I dunno.’
‘You see, we need to find out where the Inner Circle meets. That’s where she’ll be. I mean Diane.’
‘Wanda Carlisle’s, surely?’
‘It’s a front. Just like her. Nothing happens there. It’s somewhere else.’
‘I don’t get this, Powys. Surely they’re all going up the Tor with the Bishop for this Solstice dawn crap. They’ll be at Wanda’s.’
‘I think you’ll find they aren’t all going up. Wanda’s going alone with the Bishop. That’s a measure of how important they think it is. She’s about as half-arsed as he is. Two lightweights representing the great traditions of paganism and Christianity on the most powerful, hallowed site in Britain. It doesn’t make sense. And yet it’s got to. It’s bloody got to.’
Sam said, ‘Woolly’s coming out with all this stuff about the biggest blow against spirituality since 1539. I mean, what kind of blow was that really? The Roman Church was pretty bloody corrupt by the Reformation. The Popes were just more bent politicians in tall hats. Something had to give.’
‘It was a blow to Glastonbury. If you try not to get spirituality confused with organised religion, you find you can keep a better perspective. What about Archer Ffitch? Where might he be? He got any kind of apartment in Glastonbury? A girlfriend?’
‘You’re joking. Archer Ffitch … No, he’s got a place in London. Or maybe he shares somewhere with Oliver Pixhill. But nowhere in Glastonbury. Anyway, Diane wouldn’t be with Archer. Diane’s not been having good feelings about Archer.’
Powys glanced sharply at him. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘She said – and I was a bit cynical about this at the time – that she sometimes feels her hate for Archer has a life of its own.’
‘Say that again. Try and remember exactly what she said.’
Sam tried. Powys listened, transfixed, gripping the steering wheel hard, and tried not to crash the car.
He drove into Chilkwell Street, indicated left for the town centre. He needed to talk to Juanita. And he needed a copy of Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self-Defence. Fast.
‘I just want Diane,’ Sam said. ‘That’s all. If those scumbags …’
Halfway down High Street, Powys braked hard behind a stationary bus. A big, obviously decrepit black bus, stopped in the middle of the road.
‘It’s another accident,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t believe this.’
Powys pulled out alongside the bus, switched on his headlights. A woman in a blue coat was lying in the road.
He came out of the car so fast he lost his balance – effects of the whisky, shouldn’t even be driving – and pitched over in the road, hitting his head on the kerb and rolling over, buildings of brick and stone spinning overhead, lights coming on in windows over upside-down shop signs, pale amber streetlamps, a church tower with a dusting of weak stars around its crown of stone thorns.
The bus had huge, balding tyres. Bloody thing shouldn’t even be on the road. A few people were gathering. He kept hearing the words ‘not again’ again and again and again.
He crawled towards the wheels, pulling himself up. Saw a guy bending over the body. The body wrapped in the blue coat. She said she always wore something blue. Lucky colour. Nothing would happen to you if you wore blue.
‘… can’t credit it.’ The driver of the bus, presumably, fat guy in an anorak with a Castrol sticker. ‘I mean, I know this town. I know where Wellhouse Lane is. But I didn’t turn into Wellhouse Lane, did I? I come down here. If I’d got it right, she wouldn’t … But, like, anyway she just comes leaping out like … Christ, I never slammed on like that before, thought I was gonner have a heart attack.’
Powys stumbled to where she lay. She was very still. The coat had come loose. Her long neck shone light brown under the headlights, faintly freckled. Her eyes were fully open. Big brown eyes. One arm flung out.
The hand ungloved, a livid pink. ‘Powys.’ Nothing moving but her lips. ‘You’re crying.’
Woolly’s guts turned over and he threw up in the sink. He could smell smoke and diesel and burnt rubber.
He turned on the taps. Let the water, hot and cold, splatter down on his face and neck for over a minute, until the old pipes were snorting and gurgling like a bad case of dysentery.
Woolly washed his hands, wiped them on his jeans. That was it. He went and put on all the lights in the kitchen.
Just for a minute. Just to get rid of the image of Juanita’s face in the headlights before he trod the brakes, screaming out loud, praying to God, forcing his whole being into his feet and those brakes.
A lesson.
Never close your eyes at Meadwell.
She sat on the bed in the lamplight.
The lamp in the stone and timber-framed bedroom had a Tiffany shade almost matching the stained glass in the apex of the Gothic windows. The bulb in the lamp flickered, perhaps it would go out soon.
‘I don’t like bulbs that do that.’ Her arms were by her sides, held away from her body.
‘I’ll get them to change it,’ Powys said.
They were in his ancient, mellow, timbered room at The George and Pilgrims. Juanita wouldn’t go home, wouldn’t go back to the shop. It’s infected, she’d kept saying. She’d stood up shakily in the road. Unhurt. How can you be hurt by a phantom bus? Giggling hysterically. At least the driver was happy. Powys had handed his car keys to Sam: ‘Mead-well, quickly.’
Her blue coat lay on the floor by the bed. Arnold had curled up on it.
‘I couldn’t move.’ Her loose sweater had slipped down over one shoulder. ‘I didn’t want to move. It was very peaceful in the road. Can’t remember ever feeling as peaceful. I lay and I stared up at that torn radiator grille and I waited to die.’
He sat down next to her on the bed, looked hard into her dulled eyes. ‘How do you feel now?’
‘Not here. I feel like I’m not here.’
‘Listen. Juanita.’ He wanted to touch her. Didn’t know where it was safe to. ‘It was a real bus, OK? Sam talked to the driver. He’s a scrap-dealer from Taunton. He was delivering the bus to a Mr Moulder, who has a farm up Wellhouse Lane.’
The eyes wavered.
‘But he took the wrong turning. He doesn’t know why he did that because he knows Glastonbury very well, but he took a wrong turning. He came down High Street and there you were in the middle of the road. He said he braked so hard he nearly had a heart attack and still he thought he’d killed you. And I … me too, you know?’
Joe Powys’s head fell into Juanita’s lap. He felt brittle and exhausted like the Holy Thorn. No sap left. He knew more than his mind could handle about Pixhill and Dion Fortune and the dark heritage of the Ffitches. And yet he knew nothing. He’d very nearly murdered a man in a rush of mindless violence. He’d thought his dog had been killed. Also the woman he really …
He felt Juanita’s lips on his hair.
‘You were crying,’ she said. ‘You thought I was dead and you were crying.’
‘I shouldn’t have cried.’ He sat up. ‘It’s only a station between trains.’
‘What?’
He kissed her. Her cheeks were wet and hot, her lips dry and cracked. He moistened them with his tongue, felt her shiver. Her face at last moved under his and her arms went around him. Just her arms.
Powys hugged Juanita and they stayed like that, dazed and weeping, for several minutes. Only in Glastonbury. Who said that?
‘I’m a mess,’ she said. ‘It isn’t possible to be a bigger mess than me. I don’t even know what’s real. I don’t trust my eyes, I don’t trust my body …’
‘I’m real. I think.’
She pulled away from him.
‘Listen, I’m serious. Of all the things that’ve happened to me tonight, I don’t know which ones are real. You tell me that bus was real … an hour or two ago I saw that bus in a painting – that actual bus, with its radiator … and then I saw one of the Goddess Shop pots bloody well menstruating. And there was Ceridwen in her robes in the middle of the road. Talking to me. Instructing me that I was now officially a hag, which … which makes a lot of sense when you’ve had about two hundred hot flushes … I do mean two hundred very real hot flushes, which Matthew Banks will confirm. I’m a hag. A crone. Look at me.’
She wore no make-up. She was very beautiful. She was to die for.
‘Look at me.’ She began to cry.
He kissed her. His hands slid under her sloppy sweater. There was nothing there but warm skin.
‘Um, would you mind if …?’
‘You don’t want this kind of hassle, Powys.’
He could hardly breathe. He fumbled the sweater over her speckled shoulders, draping it over Arnold, who murmured but didn’t move.
‘OK.’ Juanita was looking down at herself. ‘It’s a relief. I thought they were going to be around my navel.’
Powys touched a brown nipple with his tongue. It had an aureole of freckles.
‘Dion Fortune would have understood.’ He tossed his sweater on Arnold and wriggled out of his jeans. ‘What you’ve been through.’
‘Mmm?’
‘Psychic attack, Juanita. Nobody but nobody has two hundred hot flushes out of the blue in a few hours.’ He unzipped her velvet skirt. ‘That woman really hates you. We’re going to have to break the spell.’
Guiding her back on to the bed, this creaky Victorian four-poster. The mattress was rather too high just to fall back on. He lifted her in his arms; she felt unnervingly light, a bit cold.
‘Say, I am very beautiful. Say, I am a goddess.’
Sliding her into bed.
She said, ‘I know what this is. You’ve seen that bloody picture of me, haven’t you?’
‘The Avalonian,’ Powys said. ‘Issue Six. And nothing’s changed.’
‘No?’ She lifted the sheet with an elbow. ‘This is where they took away the skin. To repair the hands. It means – this is the principal sick joke – it means I can’t take any pressure on my thighs.’
Juanita closed her eyes, laughing. Her arms wide open, a hand on each pillow. It was the first time he’d ever seen her relaxed.
‘Not a problem.’ His lips moving down to the scars where the strips of skin had been scraped away. ‘Too rough?’
‘Nnnnnn.’
And slowly up to the bush. Juanita moaned, her legs opening.
‘Turn on your side maybe?’
