The Chalice (61 page)

      
'I hope not. Spent the last hour walking. Got a taxi back from
Street. Couldn't settle. That poor woman. Kirsty. I saw her face, you know,
just before they sedated her. Gonner see that face forever, man. Wiped out. How
do you even start to live with that?'

      
Woolly patrolled the square in circles, not looking up. 'So I
left the message for Diane then took off. Walked along Wearyall. One of my places.
Fetched up at the Thorn. Prayed a bit, you know? Prayed to anything that would
listen. Know who I felt like?' He looked at Powys at last.
      
'Judas fucking Iscariot. The chosen
instrument of death. The Thorn ... it felt hostile. Never felt like that
before, man, never. Then I came back and found some upright citizen had decided
to, like, express the feelings of the whole town.'

      
'You told the police about this?'

      
'You kidding? If they'd set light to the damn place I wouldn't
feel I had the right to call the fire brigade. It's over. man. Not gonner walk
away from this one. Don't deserve to.'

      
Woolly kicked away the neck of the broken guitar. Powys bent
and picked it up. The strings were still attached to the bent machine heads.

      
'Who did this?'

      
'Does it matter? Town's crawling with vigilantes now.
Glastonbury First; I thought it'd blow over. Keep quiet, don't make a big deal
out of it, let it bum itself out. Sheesh, everything that happens deals 'em
another ace. Jim Battle. And now—'

      
'You said 'chosen'.'

      
'Huh?'

      
'You said 'chosen instrument of death'. What did you mean?'

      
'Ah, you don't wanner hear this.' Woolly wiped his forehead.
'Seminal book for me.
The Old Golden
Land.
Somebody said you'd changed. Thought it was all balls now. Didn't wanner
have anything to do with leys and location-phenomena.'

      
Powys said nothing.

      
'That being the case, you'll be saying to yourself. What a
shithead - gets pissed, causes a truly horrible fatal accident and the best he
can think of is to blame the paranormal. Get me outer here, you'll be
thinking.'
      
Woolly was close to tears.

      
Powys thought about all the crazy stuff he'd heard tonight. He
thought about Uncle Jack.

      
'Woolly,' he said, 'I think I'm changing back.'

Sam sat for a long time
with his head in his hands.
      
'Take your time,' Juanita said.

      
Although she truly didn't think there was time. Too much happening
too fast. It was like one of those Magic Eye pictures where there was a lot
going on but it all looked like mush until your eye learned how to resolve the
vibrating strands and then, in the centre of it all, was a shatteringly obvious
symbol.

      
A very dark symbol.

      
'We had kind of a row,' Sam said. 'Diane said everything was
real and everything was a part of everything else. Something like that.'

      
This was so close to Juanita's own thoughts that she had to
drink some whisky very quickly, through her straw.

      
Sam had tried to clean himself up. He was wearing an old, torn
army parka, camouflage trousers and walking boots.

      
'Where have you been, Sam?'

      
He sighed. 'Bowermead. Pennard's got a hunt coming off on
Boxing Day. Thought I'd see how I could spoil the fun.'

      
'Rankin catch you?'

      
'No. Didn't see Rankin. I saw ... I saw where hundreds of
beautiful broadleaf trees had been destroyed. The ground all dug up and
flattened. You know how poor old Woolly was saying they could start anywhere,
at any time, clearing wood for the new road?'
      
'This is for real, Sam?'

      
'Swear to God.' His hair was stuck to his forehead where he'd splashed
cold water into his eyes. 'What I figured ... Pennard's worried about hundreds
of protesters descending on his woodland like at Newbury and Batheaston ... so
he's got in first. Destroyed his own trees. Remains of bonfires everywhere, where
they burned the branches.'
      
'The mind boggles,' Juanita said.
Dynamite stuff, certainly. But why would that send Sam off to get crawling drunk?

      
Take it slowly.

      
'Sam, does Diane know about this?'
      
He shook his head.

      
'Did she know you'd gone to Bowermead?'
      
'No. What happened, look, after the
crash the telly were interviewing Archer Ffitch. He's coming out with all this
pious, hypocritical shit, trying to lay it all on Woolly. And then, when the
camera's off, he puts the knife in for Diane with the reporter. How they've
tried to help her but she's a lost cause. Very sick girl, all this. Discreetly
planting the information that Diane's batty and anything she says should be
treated accordingly. Which would include anything printed in
The Avalonian
.'

      
Black lettering on yellow started to roll across Juanita's
brain like one of those advertisements on a belt in the Post Office:
'…OONIAN IS HERE ... THE
AVALOONIAN IS HERE ...THE AVAL…'

      
'I just went insane. I wanted to go off, fuck up the Ffitches
any way I could.'

      
'And now you can,' Juanita said. 'You can blow it to the papers
about all the trees they've destroyed prematurely. Where did you get pissed,
Sam?'

      
'Down the Rifleman's. Four double Scotches and a pint. On an
empty stomach.'

      
'I'm missing something. How did you get from Bowermead to the
Rifleman's Arms?'

      
'Walked. Ran. Ran, mostly. Left the van back on the Pilton
road. Wasn't going back that way. Oh Christ, Juanita, the reason we had the
row, me and Diane, was over what you believed in and what you couldn't handle.'

      
'I'm surprised it took you so long. Working together so closely
and her being of a mystical persuasion, while you…'

      
'Juanita ...' Sam pushed the hair away from his eyes and his
hands stayed clutched to either side of his head. 'So help me, I think I've
seen a ghost.'

'Help yourself, J.M.'
Woolly pushed a bottle of Bell's across the workbench, untied his pathetic
pony-tail. 'You won't mind if I don't.'

      
Powys poured less than half an inch of Scotch into a tumbler.
He wasn't in a drinking mood either.

      
The little room was like the picture you had of the workshop
of the man who made Pinocchio. Curved planes and fancy chisels and lots of
tools you wouldn't know which end to pick them up with. And rich, woody smells.

      
'I'm out of here tomorrow,' Woolly said. 'Best thing. People
don't want to see me around. Even my friends, they'll just be uncomfortable.'

      
'Where'll you go?'

      
'Dunno yet. Here I am one day, an old hippy in the place where
all old hippies would want to come to die. Next day, boom. Outcast.'

      
Woolly lit a roll up, like the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

      
'Sheesh,' he said vacantly.

      
'Look,' Powys said. 'I don't really know this place. I just
came because someone wanted me to write a book about the New Age culture.'

      
'Decline of.' Woolly said. 'It's gonner be all washed up
again. You know the last time this happened? 1539. The dissolution of the
monasteries When the State fitted up the Abbot here. Topped him.'

      
Woolly picked up a wooden guitar bridge with little holes for
the strings to go through and began to sand it down with a small piece of
glass-paper.

      
'I seen it coming a long way off, man. Just never thought it
was gonner happen so fast. I knew there was gonner be a showdown and I knew I'd
be at the centre of it. What I guessed was it'd be the road that brought it all
to a climax. Big protest on the site, us occupying the trees they were gonner bring
down, digging tunnels, forming human chains. Then this business with the Tor
comes up. Need a human chain round that too. I had this feeling that was what I'd
been born for. My destiny. To form human chains around a holy hill.'

      
Powys formed pictures of Woolly as this little Hereward the Wake
figure rallying the New Age troops. Woolly on the TV news. Woolly in Sunday
newspaper profiles.

      
'Stupid,' Woolly said. 'What I'd been born for was to help
kill an innocent child at precisely the right time. Thereby making a key contribution
to the Second Fall of Glastonbury'. Apocalyptic, J.M.'

      
He put down the wooden bridge.

      
Powys said, 'I don't understand.'

      
'OK.' Woolly started rolling the glass-paper between his hands.
'Let's start at the beginning. This is the most important spiritual
power-centre in the country. Maybe in
 
the Western World. This is where they
brought the most powerful mystical artefact the world has ever known, because
it brings together Christianity and the old religions. The Chalice, right.
Let's not call it the Holy Grail, let's just call it the Chalice. Whether it
dispenses wine, water or just pure spirit, it's a symbol of harmony, right?'
      
'I'll go along with that.'

      
'Good. The Tor itself is like an upturned chalice, pouring spiritual
energy into the earth and it flows out in all directions spreading harmony ...
at least, the possibility of harmony. And the strongest of those currents,
cutting straight across Britain ...'

      
'The St Michael Line. It doesn't stand up to too much
scrutiny, Woolly. A lot of those St Michael churches miss the line by a mile.'

      
'Aw, shit, man, I walked that line. From St Michael's Mount to
Bury Abbey. I
know
it exists.' Woolly
touched the little scroll of glass paper to his head. 'In here.'

      
Powys smiled. He had no quarrel with that. Not tonight.

      
'St Michael's the hard-man angel,' Woolly said. 'Defender of the
spirit. Plays it straight. Literally. That line coming down across the
countryside like a big sword. There's also the possibility of another current
weaving in and out of the line. A feminine current this dowser guy found. The
St Mary current. All very harmonious.'

      
'And then' - the thought came out of nowhere - 'somebody puts
a new road through it.'

      
Woolly rose to his feet, picked up the wooden bridge, threw it
into the air and caught it in triumph.

      
'It's about covert secularisation, J.M. The State's always
done it, because government - even the Vatican when they ran things - is anti-spirit.
The State is about, like, rules and money. Spiritual values, they get in the
way. But, shit, there ain't time to go into the politics of all that. You just
got look at the effects of this conflict on the ground - on the landscape.'

      
'When the Normans conquered England,' Powys said, 'and they wanted
to establish a physical power base, they built their castles...'

      
'On ancient sacred burial mounds. You got it, J.M. Course,
when Christianity came they built their churches on mounds and inside stone
circles, too, but that's OK, 'cause it's still spiritual. But the number of
Norman military strongholds built on pagan mounds is staggering. And it goes
on. Where do the Army do their training - bloody Salisbury Plain. So all the
countryside around Stonehenge is churned up by flaming tanks and splattered
with Nissen huts and stuff. Then they ban free festivals at Stonehenge and that
screws it for the genuine pagans and Druids who can't find sanctuary there anymore.'
      
'Leaving Glastonbury Tor.'

      
'Leaving the Tor. Where Archer Ffitch and Griff Daniel and the
G-l crew propose to have 'restricted access'. They strangle the power-centre, pump
the St Michael Line full of diesel fumes, negative emotions, road-rage, fatal
crashes ...'
      
The mention of fatal crashes seemed
to drain the energy out of Woolly, as rapidly as if he'd been shot. He sat
down.

      
'Is this paranoia, J.M.? I can show you the maps, how that
road will be visible, to some extent, from every significant church, every
ancient sacred site from Burrowbridge Mump to Solsbury Hill, where it meets up
with that other evil little bypass. You won't be able to stand on any holy hill
or in any St Michael churchyard without hearing the roar of transcontinental
juggernauts. It's horrifying, like I say, the worst thing to happen to this
town since 1539.'