The Chalice (17 page)

      
And then, ultimate surrealism and humiliating degradation -
the picture of Jim kneeling, getting his coughing over, wiping his face.

      
And then solemnly presenting the man who called himself Gwyn
ap Nudd with his soft tweed hat - the last appalling image Juanita saw before
they pulled the oily rag out of her mouth, put the lamp into her hand and
prodded her on to the stony path.

      
Halfway down she was violently sick.

      
Then, moments before the blind rage, came that disgusting,
craven sense of relief which almost amounted to being grateful to the bastards
for sparing them their lives.

      
The only sound was the Volvo's engine ticking over; Juanita
was always scared to switch off at such moments in case it wouldn't start again.
Now she slipped into second gear as Jim said precisely what she'd been
expecting him to say sooner or later.

      
'Swear to me, Juanita. Swear to me you'll never tell anybody
about this.'

      
'They shouldn't get away with it, Jim.' She touched the lump
in her cracked lower lip. 'They could be charged with assault. Robbery with
menaces.'

      
'One tweed hat?'

      
Would he ever recover his self-respect, get over his humiliation?
He hadn't backed down on the Tor, but God knows how it would look in the local
papers if it ever came to court.

      
'OK,' Juanita said. 'If you don't mention it, I won't either.'

      
He didn't reply. She guessed he was thinking about what they'd
done to her, convicting himself of cowardice, about to say, Bugger it, let's
nail the bastards.

      
She got in first. 'It never happened, Jim. That's the finish.'
She drove steadily out of town along Cinnamon Lane. To Bowermead.

Confrontation. It was all
confrontation tonight. And menace.

      
Gerry Rankin was an ex marines officer, hard, shrewd and
clothed for action in a Barbour and a leather cap.

      
'Then get him,' Juanita snapped.

      
'You really are wasting your time, Mrs Carey.'

      
The Hall hulked behind Rankin: a fortress, very few lights on.
But then, the place was better in the dark. The appeal of Bowermead Hall -
sixteenth century but brutally Victorianised - began and ended with its
misleadingly lovely name.

      
Juanita said, 'Oh come on, do you really want the police here?'

      
Rankin was smiling with closed lips, leaning casually against
a stone gatepost under a security light, a hard light on Jim, who was slumped
inside his overcoat like a refugee, keeping his promise to say nothing.

      
'The police?' Rankin shook his head in pained disbelief. 'To
investigate an allegation that Lord Pennard kidnapped his own daughter? Diane?
Mrs Carey, the police
know
about Diane.'

      
'What's that supposed to mean?' As if she couldn't guess.

      
'We all know what it means,' Rankin said affably. 'If that
girl was a commoner like you and me she'd be in a foam rubber boudoir in what's
politely called a Residential Home. She had a real chance to make something of
herself and reinforce this family.'

      
'You mean bring in some wealth and a couple of grandchildren
to consolidate the future.'

      
'I'm not going to discuss family business with you, Mrs Carey.'

      
'You're not "family", Gerry. Anyway, you've
confirmed she's here. Now go and get daddy. Tell him I'm offering his mentally
ill daughter some care in the community.'

      
Rankin said, 'You really don't understand, do you? Lord
Pennard doesn't
want
her in the
community. Not this community. For her own good, Mrs Carey.'

      
'Hmmph.' Jim shuffled inside his overcoat. 'Soul of compassion.'
Juanita glared at him.

      
Rankin stiffened. 'I don't know who you are, friend, but if
you want to be abusive about Lord P, this is not the place.'

      
Jim grunted and moved back into the shadows of the gatepost, Juanita
was quite glad Rankin didn't know him. He knew her, of course, because he'd once
been into the shop, assuming it to be a general bookstore and requesting the
lurid memoir of some SAS hero. There was silence. Then Jim whispered, 'Perhaps we
should come back in the morning.'

      
Rankin had good ears. 'Yeah, I'd strongly advise that course
of action.'

      
'I'm sure you would. God knows what you'd have done with her
by then.' Juanita strode over to the gatepost, where he lounged in his well-worn
Barbour, his leather cap shadowing his eyes. 'But I'll tell you one thing. If we
do come back tomorrow, it'll be with a bunch of reporters and a couple of TV
crews.'

      
He wasn't intimidated. 'Let me spell something out for you,
Mrs Carey You are not taking on the soft-bellied aristocracy here. This is a
business fighting for survival in a hard world. Two hundred acres and shrinking
fast. Lots of overheads. A real business, Mrs Carey, not spooky books and
incense burners and fucking tarot cards. We don't piss about. Am I making sense
to you?'

      
'Perfectly.' Holding her Afghan coat together at the neck,
Juanita stepped back into the full glare of the security light. 'But I do sound
rather authoritative on the phone, when you can't see my beads and my crystals.
They'll come, Mr Rankin. They'll all come, the papers, the radio, the television
They can't afford to take the chance. If there is a story, they won't want to
have missed it. I just have to wave my wand and utter the magic word ...
Pennard.'

      
He went very, very quiet. Quiet enough to hear a barn owl in
the distant woods. Rankin gave Juanita a look harder than a punch in the mouth,
and she almost recoiled. Then he turned tightly and walked away along the
drive. After about twenty yards he turned back to keep them in view, removing
something from a pocket. Juanita wondered, not altogether fancifully, if they
should take cover.

      
'Mobile phone,' Jim said. 'I think you've hit the right nerve.'

      
'Let's hope so.'

      
'But you haven't made a friend.'
      
'Who wants friends like that?'

      
'Equally,' Jim Battle said, 'who wants an enemy like that?'

It was almost midnight when
the Volvo turned into Chilkwell Street.

      
'I'm sorry.' Diane was wiping her eyes. 'I'm really, really sorry.
They're probably right. I mean, you never know it yourself, do you? Nobody
thinks
they're insane.'

      
'Shut up,' Juanita said.

      
Jim Battle sat behind them, hunched inside his muddied
overcoat. Juanita thought she should take him home without delay to his cottage
and his canvases. Turps and linseed oil acted on Jim like smelling salts. She
probably wouldn't see him for several days. He had a lot to paint out of his system.

      
With Diane, it had been surprisingly easy. Rankin had come off
the phone and they'd waited in silence until a familiar plump figure had
appeared on the drive. Juanita and Rankin had not looked at each other as Diane
had come slowly towards the gate. With the security light and everything, it
was rather like one of those Cold War movies, Soviet and Western spies being
exchanged at Checkpoint Charlie. And then the recognition and the tears, and a
final glance between Juanita and Rankin confirming that none of this had
happened.

      
Juanita thought,
The
longest night of my entire life and none of it happened
.

      
Diane was saying, 'It's just that - I'm sorry - I've just got to
know that Headlice is OK. If we could just perhaps go past the camp …'

      
She obviously meant the boy they'd had up against the tower,
who Jim had sort of rescued.

      
'Forget it, Diane. They'll all be back by now. I'm not going
into that field tonight, not after ...'

      
She heard the breath go into Jim, who'd insisted that even
Diane shouldn't be told they'd been on the Tor tonight.

      
'... I mean, after what happened to this guy, they're probably
blaming you. Anyway, if he's been badly hurt, what can you do about it?'

      
She was in no mood, anyway, to trust Diane's assessment of the
situation. This was the Diane who'd told her on the phone yesterday that the
bloody- travellers were frightfully nice people, once you not to know them.
Jesus.

      
'We're taking Jim home, OK? Then we're going back to my
place.'

      
Diane said, 'It's just that I'm sort of scared for him,
anyway. There was some sort of frightful ritual on the Tor. I mean with
hallucinatory drugs and things. I think they were using him in some way to ...
I don't know. He'd been sick. What I mean is, he was already in a bit of a
state
before
the Rankins attacked
him.'

      
'Shit,' Juanita said.

      
'Juanita ...' Warning rumble from Jim.

      
'He might look like a hard case,' Diane said, 'with the
swastika on his head and everything. But he's really quite, you know, naive and
vulnerable.'

      
The lights of Glastonbury ahead. Also the turning to Wellhouse
Lane. And to Don Moulder's bottom field.

      
'Fuck it,' Juanita said and spun the wheel.

      
At first she thought she really must be hallucinating when, at
the entrance to the bottom field, the Volvo's headlights found Don Moulder
himself with a big stick and a heavy-duty hand-lamp.

      
Moulder was wearing a bulky sheepskin jacket. Pyjamas showed
in the gap between the jacket and his Wellingtons.
      
He was shining the lamp across the
field.

      
Juanita pulled into the side of the lane, just short of the ditch.
'Stay,' she said sternly to Diane.

      
When she got out, feeling quite unsteady, Moulder had his back
to the hedge and his stick clutched under his arm, pointing down.

      
'Don't you be coming near me, I got a twelve bore.'

      
'What's it fire, acorns? Calm down, Don, it's Juanita Carey.'

      
Don Moulder relaxed. 'Don't waste no bloody time, do you, Mrs
Carey? Well, I'm telling you now, lady, 'twas their own decision. Can't say's I'm
sorry, mind, but a deal was struck and that's that, s'far as I'm concerned.
That don't entitle you nor Miss Diane to no money back is all I'm sayin'. They
coulder had the full rime. Man of my word, always have been.'

      
He marched over to the five-bar gate and shone his lamp triumphantly
into the bottom field.

      
'I don't understand,' Juanita said. 'Diane, no!'

      
Diane had rumbled from the car and pushed past them through
the gate.

      
'What's to understand?' Don Moulder said.

      
As far as the beam would go, the field was conspicuously
empty. No buses, no ambulances, not even debris, just a single white van with
pink spots.

      
Diane stood in front of the van, looking helplessly from side
to side.

      
'They're off my land and good bloody riddance,' Don Moulder
said. 'Just like they was never 'ere at all, look. Thought at least I'd 'ave
some shit to clean up.'

      
'Headlice?' Diane cried out. 'It's me. It's Molly.'
      
Her voice faded into the empty
night.
      
'I don't understand this,' Juanita
said. 'Where have they gone?'

      
'Thin air, Mrs Carey.' Don Moulder cackled. 'Just like one o'
them bloody UFOs, look.'

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