The Chalice (31 page)

      
'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 who 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
…

      
'Major, do you think I could call you back tomorrow evening?'

      
'Look, Mrs Carey ... All
right
, Rosemary ... I'm sorry. Mrs Carey, how can I approach this with you?
There are things you don't know. Parts of the diary we couldn't print for legal
reasons. Elements of George Pixhill's past which have a bearing on what I ...
what I understand is beginning to happen in Glastonbury.'

      
Bloody Pixhill, Juanita thought. I wish I'd never heard of
bloody Pixhill.

      
'All right,' she said. 'I'll come on Friday.'

      
'Thank you,' said Major Shepherd slowly. 'Bless you, Mrs Carey.'
He said it in a peculiar way, as though it was an actual benediction.

      
'A pleasure,' Juanita said, strained. Through the window, she
saw two women walking up the street; one was Dame Wanda Carlisle.

      
'And please,' the Major said, 'please don't let me down. Verity
Endicott can no longer deal with this alone.'

      
She watched the two women pass under the window. Dame Wanda
Carlisle flamboyant in a cape and - talk of the devil - Verity Endicott a pace
behind, like a little chihuahua.
      
Synchronicity.

      
Juanita hated synchronicity. She stood there holding the phone,
pushing back the metal aerial. The button at its tip was missing and she kept pushing
the point into her palm, to experience the reality of pain. More mystery. I
don't
need
any more flaming mystery.

      
'Major, how does Verity Endicott come into this?'

      
She saw a man in a cap and a belted raincoat crossing the road
towards the bookshop.

      
'Goodnight, Mrs Carey.' As though he hadn't heard.

      
'Major Shepherd ...'

      
The man in the raincoat reached the kerb and pulled off his
cap. Coils of thick grey hair tumbled out. It wasn't a man at all.

      
'Oh shit,' Juanita said.

      
Ceridwen.

Don Moulder could never
approach that bottom field now without a feeling of resentment.

      
It was well out of sight of the farmhouse. Bloody perfect, it
was: gently sloping, easy access from the road, magnificent views to the Tor.

      
Ideal for housing. Also, the only field he'd hardly notice if
it had gone. When the snooty beggars at the council had turned the plan down,
Don reckoned this was because Griff Daniel was involved and now he'd lost his
seat the planners were putting the boot in. Seemed like the only way to get the
scheme through now was to get Griff back on the council.

      
Don slowed up, gun pointing downwards now. No lights down
there. Nothing.

      
Crafty devils.

      
Griff Daniel had been round earlier with a roll of posters for
Don to stick on his fences, on telegraph and electric poles, trees. The posters
said: GLASTONBURY FIRST

      
All would be clear very soon, Griff had said.

      
What was in the field was not clear at all. Even though there
was a bit of a moon, so he didn't need his hand-lamp yet.

      
There was something - he could sense that, the way you could
sense whether there was livestock in a meadow in the dark. Although, when Don
put out a hand to the five barred gate, he found the old length of electric
wire still looped around the posts, and they
never
closed gates behind them, didn't hippies. Rustlers he'd ruled out
soon as he figured the noise had to be coming from the bottom field.

      
Sneaky. Well, two could play that ole game.

      
Don undid the wire, gave the gate a prod, moved silently through
and pushed it shut behind him. He crept out into the field, to the edge of
where it sloped down towards the road, laid the unlit lamp at his feet and
hefted his twelve-bore.

      
Stand by.

      
Don stood there a moment in the soggy grass, then he took a
deep breath and stamped down with his right boot on the button of his lamp.

      
'Right then!' he roared. 'What's all this? Who give you per-'

      
His voice cut out like a wireless in a power failure. The
bloody ole lamp hadn't come on. He snatched it up and shook it and still it
didn't light up. He dropped the useless bloody thing in the grass and thought
about firing a shot into the air.

      
Maybe not.

      
He looked up into the sky. A haze of light was wreathed around
the moon and you could make out a bit of nightmist below the Tor.

      
You
testin' me, Lord?

      
It wasn't cold, but it was damp, and Don shivered, wanting to be
in his bed with his old woman. Whoever they were, they'd probably been scared
off. He picked up his lamp, shoved his gun under his arm and turned away, tramping
grumpily back towards the gate.

      
At least, he thought he was going back to the gate. But when
he put out his hand to unloop the wire, he shouted in pain.

      
'Uuurgh!'

      
Bloody hedge. Fistful of damn thorns.

      
Angry with himself now. He must be in a wonky state if he'd
got lost in his own bloody field. He kicked out with his left boot at where he
figured the gate must be and it got snagged in the hedge and he was left
limping about, in a right old mess, trying to drag his foot out and still keep
the boot on.

      
While behind him, in the silence of the bottom field, came the
hollow gasp-and-growl of an old engine starting up.

      
Don Moulder dropped his gun and lamp with the shock of it. He wrenched
his foot out of the hedge, leaving the boot still ensnared there.

      
'All right, come outer there. Show yourselves. I ... I can see
you!'

      
And he could. Under the moon, in front of an old oak tree the
Green beggars had got officially protected so he wasn't allowed to chop it
down.

      
It sat there under the tree: a big, black hippy bus, engine throbbing.

      
'Come on then. I'm a-waitin' for you.'

      
Don standing on one leg, his bootless foot feeling cold. The
Blight was over now all right, it was winter in that field. He could see the
steam from his own breath rising, and he realised he was afeared. Lights were
coming on in front of the bus: feeble, greasy, headlights that didn't light up anything,
not the grass, nor the hedge, nor the gate. The lights hung either side of a radiator
grille that was peeling off like a scab on a child's knee.

      
The bus lurched with a cackle of rusty-sounding gears and he
thought.
Oh Christ, they're gonner run me
over,
crouching and feeling for his twelve bore but finding only the lamp.

      
This time, when he pressed the switch, it lit up at once. He
shone it directly- at the bus and it lit up the grass and the hedge and the old
oak tree he wasn't allowed to chop down.

      
His mind spun. He blinked, lost his balance and fell to his hands.
The bus was still making its rattling cough, but all he could see when, frantically,
he shone his light at it, were the hedge and the oak tree.

      
The noise of the bus cranked up like catarrhal laughter and
filled the night and his head, and all he could see in the lamplight was the
grass and the hedge and the old oak tree he wasn't allowed to chop down.

      
Oh no.
Oh Lord. Oh no.

      
His thumb found the limp's switch. He had to do this.
      
He had to.
Oh Lord, please let…

      
Breath coming raster now, Don snapped off the light. The grass
and the hedge and the oak tree vanished, and there was a moment of calm. Before
the vibration began. The earth shaking under him. An acrid smell beginning to filter
through, diesel and hot rubber.

      
Gears meshed in the air.

      
And there, in the roaring darkness, was the bus right in front
of him, a halo of dirty smoke around it and wisps of grey steam dribbling out
of its loose, grinning radiator and only smog and shadow where its wheels
should have been.

EIGHT

Crone

Ceridwen wasn't her real
name. It was the name of the formidable Celtic Goddess of Rebirth and Transformation
and thus was often brazenly assumed by seers and psychics with professional
ambitions.

      
Her real name was Ruth Dunn and she used to be a nurse.

      
She also claimed to have been a witch since childhood, trained
in 'the robed, Gardnerian tradition'. Now she worked part-time at a New-Age
nursing home on the Pilton Road and had an apartment near the Glastonbury Experience
arcade where she forecast the future by scrying with a mirror and a bowl of
rusty spring water from the Chalice Well.

      
Ceridwen, the Goddess's representative in Glastonbury. Usually
seen on the street dressed in a man's greatcoat or, as tonight, in a district nurse's
gabardine mac, her dense grey hair clamped under a cloth cap.

      
'Thank you,' she said to Juanita. 'Thank you for looking after
her. I've come to take her home.'

      
'Yessss,' Domini breathed. She looked radiant. 'I'm to be
apprenticed to the Inner Circle. A neophyte.'

      
'Wow,' Juanita said.
 
'Somebody open a bottle of champagne.'

      
She was furious. Bloody Ceridwen She'd come back to
Glastonbury after her divorce - after losing custody of the children when her
husband played the witchcraft card in front of a Methodist judge. Raging with
malice and greedily gathering the wretched wives of Avalon to her embittered bosom.