The Chalice (47 page)

      
'You know I'll help all I can,' Woolly said.

      
'I know. And don't think I'm not grateful, but there's a limit
to how much you
can
help. Or at least
be seen to help. You're a politician now.'

      
'Sheesh, do I look like a politician?'

      
'We have to be seen to be independent.'

      
In the window, a sign Sam had printed said,
COMING SOON - THE
AVALONIAN.
She'd been a little worried about that; suppose people remembered the
old hippy magazine and thought it was going to be the same sort of thing.

      
The phone rang. Diane never answered the phone in case it was
her father. She waited for the answering machine to cut in, Juanita's voice
still on it. There was silence, the caller not sure whether to leave a message.

      
'Er... 'tis Miss Diane I wanted.'

      
'I know that voice,' Woolly said. 'It's…'
      
'Tis Don Moulder here. I, er, I
needer talk to Miss Diane .. 'bout… 'bout them hippies, look. I... right.'

      
The line was cut.

      
'Well, there's a man really at home with the new technology,'
Woolly observed. 'You gonner call him back?'

      
'I might actually go and see him,' Diane said. 'I keep hearing
rumours that he's gone sort of strange.'
      
'That's no rumour, my love'

      
'Apparently he's put up a huge cross on his land. I thought it
might make a piece for
The Avalonian
.
For the dummy. I mean he's not an Alternative person, is he?'

      
'You mean he's like a straight religious maniac. Yeah, I
suppose so. I do admire what you're doing, you know. The way you've thrown
yourself into it. At a time like this.'

      
'It's because it's a time like this,' Diane said.

TWO

Jacket Potatoes

Standing under the swinging
sign of The George and Pilgrims, Joe Powys watched Diane Ffitch walking down
from Carey and Frayne, hands plunged into her coat pockets, a beret plopped on
tangled brown curls, a stiff-backed folder under her arm.

      
She smiled shyly. 'This is awfully good of you. Although, I
mean, it might actually be OK. It might just make the journey.'

      
'Then again, it might fall off.' He went to unlock the Mini.

      
'Well. Yes. I suppose so.'

      
Returning to the inn tonight, Powys had encountered her in the
car park. Sitting in her pink-spotted van with the engine running; it was
making a noise like a small aeroplane.
      
Diane had said,
Does this mean it's sort of broken?

      
It was only a hole in the silencer, but it looked like a very
old exhaust system. Not safe to drive it to Bristol, especially at night.

      
Diane squeezed into the Mini, put her folder behind the seat.
'At least, there's a place at the hospital where you can go and get a cup of
tea or something. While you're waiting.'

      
'Or,' Powys said, 'perhaps I could pop in and see her for a
couple of minutes. Just so I can tell Dan something.'

      
'Oh gosh.' Diane fluttered, embarrassed. 'Bit of a prob, there,
actually. She won't see anyone. Well, you know, except me. She's in quite a bad
way. I mean emotionally, too.'

      
'Yeh, I can imagine' Powys drove up High Street. The
headlights of an oncoming car flash-lit a yellow poster in the window of an
empty shop. It said,
LET'S TAME THE TOR
.

      
'She's feeling a lot of guilt about Jim's death. One way and
another. I mean, she was sort of ... sort of close to him. But I think not as
close as he would've liked, if you see what I mean.'

      
'Oh. Right.'

      
'I mean, no one's saying he ... you know ...'
      
'Killed himself?'

      
'No one's saying that. He just seems to have got rather drunk
and careless. People have been muttering about the Artistic Temperament.
Meaning drink. But he actually wasn't like that. He was terribly balanced,
really. Ever so stoical. Even after a few drinks.'

      
Diane went quiet for a while, a big girl squashed on to a tiny
bucket scat in a car so small that she and Powys were almost touching.

      
'I do find it easy to talk to you,' she said at last. 'So I'm going
to say it. I think ...' She took a deep breath 'I think this was, you know ...
meant.'

      
They were leaving town. Powys saw, in his rear-view mirror, the
sign that said:

GLASTONBURY

Ancient Isle of Avalon

      
He felt a tingle of unreality at the very base of his spine
. This is a town ruled by legend, secretly
governed by numinous rules.

      
Bollocks.

      
He glanced at Diane. She was looking directly at him. He could
see her face very clearly. Its openness seemed to belie everything he'd read
about her in the letter from Juanita Carey to Dan Frayne.

      
Lady Loony. Arnold was sitting placidly on her knee, her arms
around him.

      
Let it go,
said his
Wiser Self.
Don't react. Change the
subject

      
Joe Powys sighed. His Wiser Self had quit years ago, disillusioned.

      
'Meant?' he said. 'How exactly do you mean, "meant"?'

      
Dan Frayne had said, 'I've rung the hospital and she won't
speak to anyone. I've rung this Diane Ffitch, can't get a word of sense. Just
goes on about this fucking Pixhill. Jesus, Joe, all I want is to know what's
going on. Christ, forget the book if you like, go for a winter bloody break at
Harvey-Calder's expense. Just help me.'

      
Powys had driven down a week ago under deep, grey skies, the
famous Tor looking passive, disconnected. As though this crazy plan to have it
fenced off had already diminished it.

      
He'd booked into The George and Pilgrims, into a dark room
with an uncurtained four-poster bed and Gothic windows edged with richly coloured
stained glass. From his window, if he leaned far enough out, he could see the bookshop,
Carey and Frayne.

      
On the first day, Powys had walked Arnold round the streets,
buying flimsy, small imprint books on the Grail, the Goddess, King Arthur and
Joseph of Arimathea.

      
On the second day, he'd led the dog halfway up the Tor and
then carried him to the top, where mist over the levels obscured the views and
a man with a red beard and two pigtails played a tuneless tin whistle into the
wind battering the empty, hollowed-out church tower.

      
On the third day, he'd driven up through a housing estate to
Wearyall Hill, where no signpost marked the path to the Holy Thorn. It proved
to be a wind-thrashed little tree, absolutely alone on the hillside, protected
only by a wire-netting tube. There were views to both the Tor, to the right,
and the Abbey ruins behind the town centre. Of all the places he'd been in
Glastonbury, this was somehow the most moving. He'd wished Fay had been here to
share the moment and then, feeling as lonely and exposed as the Thorn, he had
blinked away tears.

      
On the fourth day, he'd planned to visit the Abbey which was
totally hidden from view until you went under a medieval gatehouse in Magdalene
Street and paid your admission fee. He'd left it until last, maybe worried he'd
be disappointed. This would be an unfortunate reaction to the holyest erthe in
all England.

      
Finally he'd decided to save it, and gone into Carey and Frayne.

      
Waiting until there were no customers. Noting five paperback
copies of
The Old Golden Land
.
Watching Diane working on a laptop behind the counter. And then going over to
request a copy of the little book he'd already read four times.

      
Diane had fumbled under the counter. The seaweed-green volume
of Colonel Pixhill's diaries, as the letters had implied, was not exactly on
display.

      
'I know your face,' Diane looking up to meet his eyes, as if the
exchange of a Pixhill was a secret sign, like a masonic handshake. 'Don't I?'

      
'Shouldn't think so.'

      
But she'd surprised him, diving across the shop for a copy of
The Old Golden Land
. A bit unnerving
because…

      
'Hang on, there's no author picture on the paperback.'

      
'No.' Diane had blushed. 'But there was on the hardback. It
lived in my locker, you see, for an entire term.'

      
It was lunchtime. She'd closed the shop, taken him into a
little room behind, made some tea. Kneeling down with a saucerful for Arnold,
as if a three-legged dog was yet another sign. As he was to learn, Diane Ffitch
was always spotting signs and symbols.

      
It emerged that she'd been packed off at sixteen to this
absolutely frightful
private school near
Oswestry, all outdoor pursuits and lukewarm showers, feeling like a fish out of
water on the cold Welsh Border, so far from the mystery and allure of Avalon,
feeling so utterly
miz
the whole time.
Until Juanita had thoughtfully sent her
The
Old Golden Land.

      
Inspired by the book, she'd found a Bronze Age burial mound on
the edge of the school grounds, seen how it aligned with the village church and
then a hill fort on the horizon ... and realised that the Welsh Border was
actually quite mysterious, not such a ghastly place after all.

      
Powys had told her about Dan Frayne's proposal, Diane never
taking her eyes off him. After a while he'd begun to feel a little
uncomfortable. 'I'm messing up your lunch hour.'

      
'I've not been having one actually. Takes up too much time. I
tend to just sort of nibble things.'

      
Telling him about the magazine she was trying to put together,
determined to have it all organised for when Juanita came out of hospital
because she'd need something to take her mind off everything.

      
Well, Powys said, if there was anything he could do to help
... Thinking that working unobtrusively on a little local magazine would get
him discreetly into the centre of things in Glastonbury, and if there was to be
a book ...

      
He felt her eyes somehow looking into him.

      
'We can use all the help we can get,' she said. 'In Avalon.'

      
The following day, again in her lunch hour, she'd taken him to
see the guy at
SAMPRINT
, who'd struck Powys as being fairly cynical about
The Avalonian
venture but at least had never heard of
The Old Golden Land.
He'd made a big fuss
of Arnold, asked how he'd lost his leg.

      
'A farmer shot him. Accused him of worrying sheep. But it was
a fit-up.'

      
Sam the printer said, 'What did you do?'
      
'His shotgun kind of wound up in the
river,' Powys said. 'It was a family heirloom.'

      
Sam had shrugged approvingly. Then Diane had asked Powys if
he'd interview the new Bishop of Bath and Wells about his attempts to reconcile
Christian and pagan elements. Again, Powys had begun to feel detached from reality.
It was like a half-waking morning dream where you watched yourself being drawn
into unfolding situations, too lazy to pull yourself out.