The Chalice (75 page)

      
Phut
. Gone.

      
Like golden-haired Domini's marriage. Like Jim Battle and his
cottage and his paintings, like Headlice.

      
How swiftly lights were snuffed in this small town. How
quickly they were forgotten. All that energy going bad, No place to raise a
child. And too late now, anyway.

      
She heard laughter behind her. Laughter as light as a ball of
windblown paper.

      
She turned slowly.

      
In the middle of the road stood Ceridwen in darkest robes.

      
Juanita went very still.

      
There was a hazy light around Ceridwen. Her hair, like grey
snakes, sprayed out into this light, which was purple like the spotlit goddess.

      
Well, she'd dreamed of this moment, the big confrontation.

      
But on
her
terms. By
daylight. In Ceridwen's tacky fortune teller's booth. Or Wanda's house, where
there were things to smash, candles to knock over. When she wasn't feeling sick
and feverish and broken and ...

      
Ceridwen laughed.

      
... and disillusioned and decaying, constantly chilled by the
draught of death.

      
She began to pant, looking down at the hands she hadn't been
able to straighten out since they'd gripped the door handle. An old woman's
curling claws —

      
The goddess comes in three aspects,' Ceridwen said, her voice
echoing, as if the whole street, the town, the world was empty, apart from the
two of them. She was looking past Juanita at the Goddess Shop.

      
'Virgin,' she said.

      
Juanita turned in time to see another purple bulb going pop,
putting the smaller goddesses into darkness.

      
Now there was only one bulb remaining. It lit the largest of
Domini's pot goddesses, purpling her pendulous breasts. The obese idol squatted
smugly on her swag of white satin and simpered.

      
While, from the large black hole at the top of her rough-
glazed thighs, a dark fluid was dripping, making viscous rivulets on the white
satin.

      
Juanita backed away. She could almost smell it. She tasted
bile.

      
She looked up at the tower of St John's, but it looked coldly
down, spurning her. And the dark, taunting, menstrual blood of the goddess
soaked into the satin.

      
'Mother,' Ceridwen hissed.

      
As the last bulb went out.
      
Phut.

      
Just like the baby Juanita had had aborted. Secretly. Danny's
baby. Danny becoming terrifyingly un-Danny when he heard. Danny throwing every
book in the shop to the floor. Pushing over the shelf-units, smashing up the window
display and walking out and never returning, never setting foot on the holy
Isle of Avalon again.

      
Juanita turned to face the road and Ceridwen's white, hazy pointing
finger.

      
There was a moment of stillness. A moment of knowing it was
not as it seemed. A smell of fumes, souring the apple-scented woodsmoke from
the chimneys, bad energy forming a grounded cloud.

      
And then, with a sensation of pins and needles in both feet, the
flush began.

      
The big one. The flush of flushes. She felt fire in her limbs,
a fire that dried her blood and her juices. She felt her skin slacken, her
breasts shrivelling into pockets of old leather, her mouth stretching into a
scream which she knew would crack her face into a spiderweb of deep, blackening
fissures.

      
'Hag,' Ceridwen said.

      
Juanita raised her hands like the claws they so much resembled
and rushed out at her, shrieking hatred and despair.

      
But Ceridwen's image went out like another lightbulb and there
was nothing in the middle of the road but Juanita.

      
And the big black bus. Bellowing and farting smoke. With its
radiator hanging off.

      
She felt the buildings tremble and wrapped her arms around her
sagging body. As if that would hold her together.

TWELVE

My Goddess

Sam threw open the
Bowermead gates, ran back and jumped back in the Mini.

      
'Wayne hangs out with Darryl Davey.' he said. 'Of the Provisional
Glastonbury First Brigade. If that yellow-toothed twat…'

      
'Sam, he was lying. He was winding you up. I'm not even going
to mention it to Juanita, the state she's in already. It could, however, be a
police matter. Whatever they did.'

      
'You think the police got a better chance of finding her than
we do?'

      
'They could pull this Davey in.'

      
'I could pull him in. Go round the pubs till I find him.'

      
'And get filled in by his mates.' Powys drove out of the Bowermead
turning towards the lights of Glastonbury.
      
'Time is it?'

      
'Gone ten. What did you get out of Pennard?'

      
'Too much whisky.'

      
'Didn't do you much harm when it came to dealing with Rankin.
If we
both
went round the pubs ...'

      
'I'd rather you went to Meadwell, keep Woolly company. Because
that's where they'll show up. Sooner rather than later.'

      
'You think?'

      
'I know. Sam, who else is in The Cauldron apart from Ceridwen?'

      
'Depends what you mean by 'in''.' Sam had Arnold on his knee,
clutching the dog to his chest. 'A whole lot of women go to the meetings.'

      
'I mean the so-called Inner Circle.'

      
'There's a woman called Jenna thinks she's well in. I dunno.'

      
'You see, we need to find out where the Inner Circle meets.
That's where she'll be. I mean Diane.'
      
'Wanda Carlisle's, surely?'

      
'It's a front. Just like her. Nothing happens there. It's somewhere
else.'

      
'I don't get this, Powys. Surely they're all going up the Tor
with the Bishop for this Solstice dawn crap. They'll be at Wanda's.'

      
'I think you'll find they aren't all going up. Wanda's going
alone with the Bishop. That's a measure of how important they think it is. She's
about as half-arsed as he is. Two lightweights representing the great
traditions of paganism and Christianity- on the most powerful, hallowed site in
Britain. It doesn't make sense. And yet it's got to. It's bloody got to.'

      
Sam said, 'Woolly's coming out with all this stuff about the
biggest blow against spirituality since 1539.I mean, what kind of blow was that
really? The Roman Church was pretty bloody corrupt by the Reformation. The
Popes were just more bent politicians in tall hats. Something had to give.'

      
'It was a blow to Glastonbury. If you try not to get
spirituality confused with organised religion, you find you can keep a better
perspective. What about Archer Ffitch? Where might he be? He got any kind of
apartment in Glastonbury? A girlfriend?'

      
'You're joking. Archer Ffitch ... No, he's got a place in
London. Or maybe he shares somewhere with Oliver Pixhill. But nowhere in
Glastonbury. Anyway, Diane wouldn't be with Archer. Diane's not been having
good feelings about Archer.'

      
Powys glanced sharply at him. 'What's that mean?'

      
'She said - and I was a bit cynical about this at the time -
that she sometimes feels her hate for Archer has a life its own.'

      
'Say that again. Try and remember exactly what she said.'

      
Sam tried. Powys listened, transfixed, gripping the steering
wheel hard, and tried not to crash the car.

      
He drove into Chilkwell Street, indicated left for the town
centre. He needed to talk to Juanita. And he needed a copy of Dion Fortune's
Psychic Self-Defence
. Fast.

      
'I just want Diane,' Sam said. 'That's all. If those scumbags...'

      
Halfway down High Street, Powys braked hard behind a
stationary bus. A big, obviously decrepit black bus, stopped in the middle of
the road.

      
'It's another accident,' Sam said. 'I don't believe this.'

      
Powys pulled out alongside the bus, switched on his headlights.
A woman in a blue coat was lying in the road.

      
He came out of the car so fast he lost his balance - effects of
the whisky, shouldn't even be driving - and pitched over in the road, hitting
his head on the kerb and rolling over, buildings of brick and stone spinning
overhead, lights coming on in windows over upside-down shop signs, pale amber
streetlamps, a church tower with a dusting of weak stars around its crown of stone
thorns.

      
The bus had huge, balding tyres. Bloody thing shouldn't even
be on the road. A few people were gathering. He kept hearing the words 'not
again' again and again and again.

      
He crawled towards the wheels, pulling himself up. Saw a guy
bending over the body. The body wrapped in the blue coat. She said she always
wore something blue. Lucky colour. Nothing would happen to you if you wore
blue.
      
'... can't credit it.' The driver
of the bus, presumably, the guy in an anorak with a Castrol sticker. 'I mean. I
know
this town. I know where Wellhouse
Lane is. But I didn't turn into Wellhouse Lane, did I? I come down here. If I'd
got it right, she wouldn't ... But, like, anyway she just comes leaping out
like ... Christ, I never slammed on like that before, thought I was gonner have
a heart attack.'
      
Powys stumbled to where she lay.
She was very still. The coat had come loose. Her long neck shone light brown
under the headlights, faintly freckled. Her eyes were full open. Big brown
eyes. One arm flung out.

      
The hand ungloved, a livid pink.

      
'Powys.' Nothing moving but her lips 'You're crying.'

Woolly's guts turned over
and he threw up in the sink. He could smell smoke and diesel and burnt rubber.

      
He turned on the taps. Let the water, hot and cold, splatter
down on his face and neck for over a minute, until the old pipes were snorting
and gurgling like a bad case of dysentery.

      
Woolly washed his hands, wiped them on his jeans. That was it.
He went and put on all the lights in the kitchen. Just for a minute. Just to
get rid of the image of Juanita's face in the headlights before he trod the
brakes, screaming out loud, praying to God, forcing his whole being into his feet
and those brakes.

      
A lesson.

      
Never close your eyes at Meadwell.

She sat on the bed in the
lamplight.

      
The lamp in the stone and timber-framed bedroom had a Tiffany
shade almost matching the stained glass in the apex of the Gothic windows. The
bulb in the lamp flickered, perhaps it would go out soon.

      
'I don't like bulbs that do that.' Her arms were by her sides,
held away from her body.

      
'I'll get them to change it,' Powys said.

      
They were in his ancient, mellow, timbered room at The George
and Pilgrims. Juanita wouldn't go home, wouldn't go back to the shop.
It's infected,
she'd kept saying. She'd stood
up shakily in the road. Unhurt.
How can
you be hurt by a phantom bus
? Giggling hysterically. At least the driver was
happy. Powys had handed his car keys to Sam: 'Meadwell, quickly.'

      
Her blue coat lay on the floor by the bed. Arnold had curled
up on it.

      
'I couldn't move.' Her loose sweater had slipped down over one
shoulder. 'I didn't want to move. It was very peaceful in the road. Can't remember
ever feeling as peaceful. I lay and I stared up at that torn radiator grille
and I waited to die.'

      
He sat down next to her on the bed, looked hard into her
dulled eyes. 'How do you feel now?'