The Chalice (3 page)

       
And I can see why the natives still
don't trust us, because they think we're trying to take over the town. And
maybe we are, some of us. We say we're all for unity and the kindly pagans are
getting into bed with the Christians and everything, but basically we have very
different values and when some local issue arises it all erupts. Like the
proposed new road linking central Somerset into the Euro motorway network. Most
of the natives are in favour because it will relieve traffic congestion in the
small towns and villages, but the incomers see it as an invasion of their rural
haven, the destruction of miles of wonderful countryside. So whichever way it goes,
half of us are going to be furious.

       
It's not as if even the Alternative
Community is united. We pretend to be, of course - old hippies, part of that
great universal movement. But we're divided, factionalised: gay pagan groups,
radical feminist pagans like The Cauldron. Everything in Glastonbury inevitably
becomes EXTREME.

       
I lie awake, mulling over the old hippy
thing - why CAN'T we all live in peace together on what's supposed to be the
Holyest Erthe in all Britain?

       
And then I go back and read Pixhill's
Diaries, making myself doubly miserable because we 're the sole outlet for a
book nobody want to buy on account of his Nostradamus-like warnings of
impending doom, souls raging in torment, the rising of the Dark Chalice, etc.,
etc. Well, you just don't say things like that about Glastonbury. Because this
is a HOLY town and must therefore be immune from evil. The people who settle
here want to bathe in the sacredness like some sort of spiritual Radox - They
want to be soothed. They don't want anything to dent the idyll.
       
Anyway, you should see a copy, as
Carey and Frayne are the publishers. Let me know what you think. I'll go now. I
think I can see Jim Battle, my best male friend these days, wobbling down High
Street on what appears to be a new secondhand bike and looking, as usual, in
need of a drink.

       
Look after yourself, wish me luck with
Diane and be glad your posh London outfit doesn't have to publish anything like
the enclosed!

Love,

TWO

A Sound Thinker

Not knowing Archer Ffitch
all
that
well, Griff Daniel decided
on restraint.

      
'Dirty, drug-sodden, heathen bastards.' Griff scratched an
itchy palm on his spiky- grey beard. 'Filthy, dole-scrounging scum.'

      
Attached to the wooden bars of the gate at the foot of Glastonbury
Tor was a framed colour photograph of a lamb with its throat torn out. Over the
photo was typed,

KILLED BY A DOG NOT ON A
LEAD.

DOGS WHICH CHASE SHEEP CAN
BE SHOT BY LAW.

      
'What they wanner do, look,' said Griff
 
Daniel, 'is extend that bloody ole law. Tisn't
as if any of the bastards'd be missed by anybody. Double barrel up the arse
from fifty yards. Bam.'

      
'Appealing notion.' Archer Ffitch was in a dark suit and tie
and a pair of green wellies, even though it was pretty dry underfoot for
November. Not natural, this weather, was Griff's view. Too much that was not
natural hereabouts.

      
'Destroying this town, Mr Archer. Every time they come there's
always a few stays behind. Squatting in abandoned flats, shagging each other
behind the church, nicking everything that's not nailed down, and you say a
word to 'em, you gets all this freedom-of-the-individual baloney. Scum.'

      
'Quite, quite.' Archer with that bored, heard-it-all-before tone.
But Griff knew he'd have all Archer's attention in a minute, by God he would.

      
'And the permanent ones. Alternative society? Green-culture?
What's alternative 'bout pretending the twentieth century never bloody happened?
Mustn't have a new road 'cause it means clipping a few crummy trees down. Can't
have decent new housing 'cause it leaves us with one less bloody useless field.'

      
'I hear what you're saying.' Archer nodding gravely, like he
was being interviewed on the box. 'I'm appalled we lost a man like you from the
council, and I agree. A few changes in this town are long overdue.'

      
Griff sniffed. 'What they all say, with respect. Your gaffer, he's
been spouting 'bout that for years.'

      
'My father?'

      
'No, lad, the MP. Sir Larry.'
      
Archer went silent. He'd changed a
lot. Gone into his thirties still lanky, overgrown schoolboy-ish, suddenly he'd
thickened up like His Lordship, jaw darker, eyes steadier: watch out, here
comes another Pennard power-pack. Griff wished his own son was like this; it
pained him to think of the difference.

      
'What have you heard?' Archer's heavy eyebrows all but meeting
in the middle, like a mantelshelf, with the eyes smouldering away underneath.

      
Griff smiled slyly. 'Not a well man, our Sir Larry. Might be
stepping down sooner than we thinks? Make way for someone more ... vigorous?
That be a suitable word?'

      
'Radical might be a better one,' Archer said cautiously. 'In the
Thatcher sense, of course.'

      
'Ah.' Griff gave his beard a thoughtful massage. '
Could
be what the place needs. Depending,
mind, on what this ...
radical
newcomer is offering to us in the, er, business community.'

      
'I understand.' Archer was gazing past Griff, up the Tor to
where the tower was. Erected by the old monks back in the Middle Ages, that
tower, to claim the hill for Christ. Dedicated to St Michael, the
dragon-slayer, to keep the bloody heathens out. Pity it hadn't worked.

      
'Can't see a soul up there,' Archer said. 'You
are
sure about this. Griff?'

      
'Ah.' Griff decided it was time to dump his manure and watch
the steam. 'Got it a bit wrong when I phoned you, look. They're not here. Yet.
All camped down in Moulder's bottom field. Clapped-out ole buses and vans, no
tax, no insurance. Usual unwashed rabble, green hair, rings through every
orifice.'

      
'Sounds enough like mass-trespass for me.' Archer pulled his
mobile phone out of his inside pocket, flipping it open. 'OK, right. Why don't
I get this dealt with immediately, yah? Invoke the Act, have the whole damn lot
charged.'

      
'Aye.' Griff nodded slowly. 'But charged what with?'

      
The phone had played what sounded like the opening beeps of
Three Blind Mice before Archer's finger froze, quivering with irritation.

      
Griff leaned back against the gate and took his time re-reading
the National Trust sign:
Please avoid
leaving litter, lighting fires, damaging trees.

      
'Bastards are legal, Mr Archer. In Moulder's field with
Moulder's permission. In short, Moulder's been paid.'
      
'These vagrants have money?'

      
'One of 'em does. Young woman it was stumped up the readies,
so I hear. One as even Moulder figured he could trust.'

      
Griff leaned back against the gate, gave his beard a good rub.

      
'Quite a distinctive-looking young lady, they d'say.'

      
'Spit it out, man ' Archer was going to have to deal with the
tendency to impatience with the lower orders. MPs should be good listeners

      
'Of .. . should we say
generous
proportions? And she don't talk like your usual hippy rabble.'

      
Archer was hard against the light, solid and cold as the St
Michael tower.

      
'What are you saying, Mr Daniel?'

      
Looking a bit dangerous like he could handle himself, same as
his old man. Don't push it. Griff decided.

      
'Well, all right. It's Miss Diane. Come rolling into town with
the hippies. In a white van. Big pink spots on it.'

      
Archer said nothing, just loomed over him, best part of a foot
taller. Moisture on his thick lips now.

      
'Your little sister, Mr Archer.' Little. Jesus, she must be pushing
thirteen stone. 'She come in with 'em and she rented 'em a campsite so they
wouldn't get arrested. Don't ask me why.'

      
'If this is a joke, Mr Daniel ... Because my sister's …'

      
'Up North. Aye. About to get herself hitched. Except she's in
Moulder's bottom field. In a van with big pink spots. No joke. No mistake, Mr
Archer.'

      
Archer was as still as the old tower. 'How many other people
know about this?'

      
'Only Moulder, far's I know. Who, if any, like, action happens
to be taken, requests that he be kept out of it, if you understand me.'

      
No change of expression, no inflexion in his voice, Archer said,
'I'm grateful for this. I won't forget.'

      
'Well,' Griff said. 'Long as we understands each other I think
we want the same things for this town. Like getting it cleaned up. Proper shops
'stead of this New Age rubbish. Cranks and long-hairs out. Folk in decent
clothes. Decent houses on decent estates. Built by, like, decent firms; And, of
course, the new road to get us on to the Euro superhighway, bring in some proper
industry. Big firms. Executive housing.'

      
Archer nodding. 'You're a sound thinker, Griff. We all need a
stake in the twenty-first century.'
      
'Oh, and one other thing I want...'
      
Archer folded his arms and smiled.

      
'I want my council seat back off that stringy little hippy git
Woolaston,' said Griff.

      
Archer patted the leather patch at the shoulder of Griff's heavy,
tweed jacket. 'Let's discuss this further. Meanwhile, I have a meeting tonight.
With a certain selection committee. After which I may be in a better position
to, ah, effect certain changes.'

      
'Ah. Best o' luck then, Mr Archer.'
      
'Thank you. Er ...' Archer looked
away again. 'Diane's …illness ... has caused us considerable distress. It's
good to know she has chaps like you on her side.'

      
'And on yours. Archer,' Griff Daniel said. 'Naturally.'

As Archer drove off in his
grey BMW, Griff looked to the top of the unnaturally steep hill, glad to see
there was still nobody up there, no sightseers, no joggers, no kids. And no alternative
bastards with dowsing rods and similar crank tackle.

      
He hated the bloody Tor.

      
Not much over five hundred feet high when you worked it out.
Only resembled some bloody green Matterhorn, look, on account of most of the
surrounding countryside was so flat, having been under the sea, way back.

      
So nothing to it, not really.
      
But look it the trouble it caused.
Bloody great millstone round this town's neck. Thousands of tourists fascinated
by all that cobblers about pagan gods and intersecting lines of power.

      
If it wasn't for all that old balls, there'd be no New Age
travellers, no hippy refugees running tatty shops, no mid-summer festival and
women dancing around naked, no religious nuts, no UFO-spotters. Glastonbury
Tor, in fact, was a symbol of what was wrong with Britain.

      
Also the National Trust bastards hadn't even given him the contract
for installing the new pathway and steps.