The Chalice (37 page)

      
Powys looked up at the big, fat novel on the top shelf. He'd put
it back on the shelf rather than keep it on a table or locked in a cupboard;
you mustn't respond.

      
'There's an idea I've been tossing around for some time,' Dan
Frayne said. 'Book I thought an old friend of mine should write, though I've
never mentioned it to her. Then I thought she was too close to it, maybe
someone should do it with her. But it would have to be someone of a like mind
because this friend of mine ... Anyway, I'd like to talk to you.'

      
Powys was confused. 'Let me get this right. We are not now
talking about
Mythscapes
, we are
talking about another book entirely.'

      
'We're talking about adapting and expanding the ideas in
Mythscapes
in a way that would make it
rather more publishable.'

      
'I don't like the sound of it.'

      
'Come down and discuss it, huh? We'll meet all expenses.'

      
Had Ben Corby told this bloke Joe Powys was financially
challenged? So broke, in fact, that he would write stuff to order?

      
'Say, this weekend?' Dan Frayne suggested. 'Or... Hey, can you
get a train tonight?'

      
Powys was about to say no way, piss off, when he looked up at
the book again. He thought he saw it move. He had an alarming vision of it
emerging from the shelf, as if someone had slotted a forefinger into the top of
its damaged spine, and hurled it with hurricane force at his head.

      
The voice in his ear said, 'Look, OK, I'll tell you when it clicked.
It was when Ben told me - and he hated telling me, he made me swear not to mention
it to anyone upstairs - it was when he told me about the book.
A Glastonbury Romance
. That was when the
little bell did this ping.'

      
'The little bell?'

      
'The little bell that only pings for publishers. Maybe once or
twice a year.'
      
'That bell, huh?'

      
Powys looked up at the book again. It sat comfortably in its
space, between John Cowper Powys's
Weymouth
Sands
and
Owen Glendower
, neither
of which Powys had read.

      
He got the feeling the book, like Frayne, was waiting for his
answer.

TWELVE

Rescue Remedy

Jim's living room was all
studio now.

      
It had started as a gesture against bloody Pat, who he fervently
hoped would never see it: the sofa pushed back to make space for the easels,
the coffee table acting at first as a rest for the palette, then
becoming
a palette - colours mixed directly
on to the varnish. Bloody Pat would have thrown a fit.

      
Gradually, the painting had crowded the rest of Jim's needs
into corners: the cooker where he made his meals, the table where he ate, the
TV he hardly ever watched, the armchair where he sometimes fell asleep
pondering a composition problem, knowing that as soon as he awoke he could go for
it, everything to hand.

      
Interior walls had been taken out, wherever possible, exposing
the whole of the ground floor, where two pillars of ancient oak helped keep the
ceiling up.

      
At the western end of the room, opposite the dingy little fireplace,
half the wall had been taken out and replaced with glass, almost floor to
ceiling. Most artists were supposed to prefer Northern light; not Jim. He
called it his sunset window, and on good nights it had become a sheet of burning
gold, as in

Bring
me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire.

      
A bad joke now.

      
He'd fired off his pathetic arrows of desire. Shot his buggering
bolt this time and no mistake.

      
Awakening to filthy grey light, he'd closed his eyes again in
weariness, remembering he was supposed to be in the bookshop today. And at once
had seen Juanita's lovely face with its gorgeously expansive smile, the tumble
of heavy hair, the brown arms, those exquisitely exposed shoulders.
      
Who might paint her nude? Degas?
Renoir? Modigliani?

      
Certainly not Battle.

      
No more. Spell broken. Done it himself, like crunching a delicate
glass bauble in his fist. No going back to that shop today. Nor ever. Couldn't
face her again, would never be the same. No laughter. No banter. Surely she'd
realise that.

      
Jim had rolled sluggishly out of bed, peered out at the mist,
couldn't see farther than the buggering ash tree.

      
Thinking, at first, that he would paint. In the very centre of
the studio, the three old-fashioned black, metal easels were set up in a pyramid
formation. His Works in Progress. The glorious dusk. Over the past few weeks,
he'd digested so much dusk he should be able to summon its colours and textures
at any time of day. Even on a lousy, damp morning, the lousiest dampest morning
of his buggering lousy life.

      
But when he'd stood in front of the canvases there'd been a congestion
in his head. It felt soggy, spongy, and he'd found himself wondering, absurdly,
if it had been his hat which had held his creativity together, helped to
contain the glowing dusk, keep it burning in his head. He'd inspected the
paintings on the easels. Skies of clay, fields of carpet and lino. No mystery.
No mystery there at all.

      
They were rubbish. He couldn't paint. What the hell had ever
made him think he could paint?
      
Poor bloody Pat. Right all along, eh?
      
The sense of loss had settled
around Jim like a grey gas. Like the first morning after the unexpected death
of someone loved.

      
Which was one way of putting it. He'd gone back to bed, taking
with him a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

      
Intermittently he'd awoken, feeling cold. Clouds obscuring the
day, whisky obscuring his thoughts. What was left of life with his muse gone
forever? What could even Glastonbury ever mean to him again.

      
Sometimes he'd hear a distant ringing as the rain rolled like
tears down the windows.

'He isn't answering.'

      
'Perhaps he's out painting,' Diane said,
      
'In the rain?'

      
'Well, perhaps he's painting inside then. You know how he
hates to be disturbed while he's painting.'

      
'He shouldn't be painting at all. He knows he always comes in
on a Friday. He ..." Juanita broke off, looked hard at Diane. 'You don't
want to do this, do you? You don't want to go to the police'

      
Confusion was corrugating Diane's forehead. She'd been looking
almost cheerful on her return from Sam Daniel's print-shop. Did Juanita know
about this Glastonbury First meeting? No, Juanita didn't. Well, well. Griff and
Archer obviously weren't letting the grass grow. A coincidence, too, that it
should be held the same time as Woolly's road protest meeting. Or was it? They
ought to keep tabs on this; perhaps she could go to one meeting and Diane to
the other. Assuming they were back from the police station in time.

      
And then Juanita, looking at her watch, had said perhaps they
really ought to be going soon, if only Jim would turn up. Diane hadn't
answered, and that was when Juanita, not wanting to give her any more time to
change her mind, had rung Jim.

      
And now Diane said, 'I've been thinking, Juanita. Perhaps I
should talk to my father first, I can't just, you know, shop him.'

      
'You're shopping Rankin.'

      
'It's the same thing.'

      
'Listen, if you talk to your father, he'll stop you. Somehow
he'll stop you. He'll convince you you didn't see what you know you did see...'

      
Juanita stopped, tried to hold Diane's eyes but Diane turned
away.

      
'You really
did
see
it, didn't you, Diane? You saw Gerry Rankin or his son or both of them kicking
this boy's head. You saw the blood. Come on, I need to hear you say it.'

      
'Yes.' Diane stared hard at the counter. 'Yes, but...'

      
'Oh God, I knew it.'

      
'Why was he found miles away? The Rankins didn't take him to
Stoke St Michael, they took me back to Bowermead. They left Headlice in Don
Moulder's field.'

      
Juanita shrugged. 'So the Pilgrims found him, got scared ...'

      
Scared? Those bastards?

      
'…and…and…listen to me, Diane…and they loaded him into his bus
and somebody drove it off and dumped it in that wood. Then they got the hell
out of Somerset. It makes perfect sense to me. These people will avoid the
police even if they've done nothing wrong.'

      
She had to change the subject then because a couple of customers
came in, elderly teacherish types, the kind who browsed forever.

      
'Actually ...' Lowering her voice. '... I can't help thinking I
may have upset Jim. He was obviously leading up to saying what I didn't want
him to say when Griff Daniel came into the bar and we all ran out into the
street. I didn't see Jim after that.'

      
'He's a nice man,' Diane said.

      
'Yes,' Juanita carelessly dusted the counter. 'And only a few
years older than Harrison Ford.'

      
This morning she'd contemplated what looked like a very sad
and drooping face in the bedroom mirror and hadn't fallen into the usual routine
of giving herself a what- the-hell consolatory grin before turning away.

      
Several of Jim's paintings hung in the flat. One showed a flank
of the Tor below which the sun had set, the afterglow concentrated into a thin,
vibrating red line, like a bright string pulled taut. It was clear that within
a few seconds the line would have gone, and the earth was straining to hold and
feel the moment.

      
Feel the moment. Jim had risen to feel the moment and she'd
been horribly relieved when a force of nature called Griff Daniel had knocked
him down. But that wouldn't have been obvious from her face, would it?

Verity put down her tea
cloth and stepped into the middle of the kitchen, putting her hands together
and closing her eyes as if about to pray. Then, very slowly, she opened them, like
the arms of Tower Bridge.

      
Keeping her wrists joined together and raising her arms,
bringing the cupped hands to face-level.

      
...
like a priest
presenting the chalice for High Mass
, was how Dr Grainger had put it.

      
She opened her eyes and stared into the space between her
hands. The light from the high window unfurled around her like a flag. She felt
like a any Joan of Arc, the quilted body-warmer serving as a breastplate.

      
'Do this every hour,' Dr Grainger had instructed. 'And then
when night falls and the window turns black - and this is the important part -
you continue to do it.'

      
There was another exercise, which had to be done upstairs. It
involved hugging an upright, perhaps the newel post at the top of the stairs,
and at the same time feeling the walls closing around her, feeling the house
hugging
her.

      
She would assiduously practise both these exercises for a week,
as instructed. She would embrace the dark.

      
She remembered the dramatic effects of the communal exercises
led by Dr Grainger at the Assembly Rooms. It was not wrong. She would feel
Colonel Pixhill beside her. And poor Major Shepherd. Abbot Whiting she was less
sure about now, since the Dinner.

      
'That guy has a problem,' Dr Grainger had said when Oliver
Pixhill had gone. 'He has a problem with his father. I don't buy what he was
saying about the darkness in this house being down to the Colonel's essence.
House this old, it shrugs people off. His problem is personal, I doubt it need
concern you.'

      
'Oh, but it must, Dr Grainger. You see, he's a Trustee now. He
has influence. The Old Guard, the people who knew the Colonel, they've all
gone. All gone now. Major Shepherd was the last.'