'The Avalonian? What is that exactly?'
'God, Diane, you make me feel so old.'
Juanita came to sit in the rocking chair, a glass of white wine in hand, a battered boxfile on her knees.
'The Avalonian is the magazine Danny Frayne and I started in about 1973. I suppose your reading wouldn't have been much beyond Noddy and Big Ears in 1973.'
'I think Thomas the Tank Engine.'
Juanita raised her eyes to the parlour's cracked ceiling. Newly bathed, without make-up, Diane looked all of sixteen. She was perched on a stool, still wearing the faded skirt with the moons on it, washed again and even more faded. She was sipping hot chocolate from a mug, both hands around it.
The shop was closed. The shadows had consumed High Street, Juanita was limp from the reflexologist, Sarah, who had detected from her feet that her diaphragm was tight and her life-force, in general, needed topping up. Juanita wasn't sure her life-force had been replenished, but she did feel more relaxed.
And she had come up with a diverting idea for the Hon. Diane Ffitch. Who couldn't, after all, be a humble shop assistant for the rest of her life, paid a pittance and living out of the shop owner's spare bedroom.
'Oh, this sort of floaty blonde woman came in.'
'Hmmm?' Juanita had opened the boxfile and was rummaging through its contents. 'I should have the very last issue in here.'
'Very self-possessed, but quite batty. Domini something.'
'Oh, right. Dorrell-Adams. She and her husband run that pot shop across the street. Keep mauling each other in the shop window.' Juanita made a face, 'I tend to find that sort of thing quite embarrassing now.'
She scowled at herself. Miserable old hag. That it should come to this. She took out a magazine, A4-size, printed on thick paper browning with age. When she held it up, the paper felt dry and brittle.
The cover, dated August 1976, featured a pen-and ink drawing of a mane haired woman in see through robes and a headdress of bound twigs. Both arms were uplifted, along with her nipples, towards a sunrise behind the Tor. It made Juanita, who'd posed for the drawing, instantly depressed.
In retrospect, the list of contents didn't inspire her much either:
WELLS CATHEDRAL – Its ancient secrets unveiled
CRYSTAL MAGIC – Getting started on a budget
WICCA – Which witch-way is your way?
Diane put her mug on the hearth and looked at the magazine. 'Not a lot's really changed in two decades, has it?'
'You're kidding.' Juanita thought sadly of her own body. Everything now – autumn leaves, secondhand books with loose pages – seemed to make her think sadly of her body. And her lower lip still hurt.
'Consider,' she said. 'There was no animal rights movement. Words like "shamanism" weren't in general usage. And if there were any gay and lesbian pagan groups locally they didn't do a lot of advertising. Not in The Avalonian anyway.'
'Juanita,' Diane said. 'Tell me about The Cauldron.'
'Not gay. Not even mildly happy. Avoid them.' Juanita wiped the air. 'Ceridwen. Awful woman. Oppressive.'
'I talked to her once, must be ten years ago. About Dion Fortune. 'I wanted to know, you see.'
'If you were the reincarnation, having the same initials and everything.' Juanita sighed. 'And what did she tell you?'
'She was very pleasant actually.'
'I bet she was.'
'But she said there were an awful lot of people who'd like to think they were the reincarnation of the most powerful magician of this century. I remember her standard charge was twenty pounds, which I'd saved up from my Saturday wages.'
'You gave the money I paid you to that…?'
'Actually, she gave me ten back. She said 'I wasn't ready.'
'For what?'
'To know one way or the other.'
'Really Diane, you were an awfully naive kid, weren't you?'
Diane said, 'It must have been frightfully exciting in Dion's time. In the twenties, 'I mean. They felt they were on the brink of something miraculous – finding the Holy Grail or something. A bit like you and all your friends in the sixties and seventies. Seems to go in cycles, doesn't it?'
'Diane,' Juanita said heavily. 'I doubt there's ever been a time when some people in Glastonbury didn't think they were on the brink of something miraculous. That's the trick of it.'
'Trick?'
'This town. It plugs itself into your adrenal glands. Over the rainbow stuff.'
'Isn't that good?'
'Not', said Juanita, 'if there's nothing at the end of the rainbow but a crock of shit. Listen. The fact that yon didn't remember The Avalonian is actually quite encouraging. Means that lots of other people won't either. So if it was relaunched… as a different sort of magazine, not just aimed at the New Age community. See what I'm getting at?'
Juanita got up and opened the door to the darkened shop, whose blind not yet down so that they could see the street through the shop window.
'It's not exactly a healthy, rounded community out there.'
A twenty something couple drifted past the shop, hand in hand. Both partners were male, one had dreadlocks, the other wore short hair and a sports jacket.
'Gay pagans?' said Diane.
'Well, they're not locals are they? How many real locals do you see this end of town at night?'
'There's me.'
'I meant ordinary locals. Sorry, but you're not. Not in any respect.'
Juanita closed the door.
'I bet this town's never been as divided as it is now. 'The locals don't want the New Agers, and the New Agers think they're the people who're going to inherit the holyest erthe, and it doesn't matter a damn what the locals think. They've stopped even trying to understand each other.'
'Admittedly, there aren't many locals who wouldn't swap all these little shops for a branch of Marks and Spencer.'
Diane put down her cup to unwrap a peppermint carob bar. She'd drink hot chocolate but eat only carob. Contrary was not the word.
'Let's face it, Diane, they'd swap us for a McDonald's.'
'Not me. I wouldn't. But then, they all think I'm bonkers. It's OK.' She bit into the carob bar. 'One gets used to it.'
Juanita wanted to snatch the carob out of her podgy hand and bang her head on the wall. How dare she get used to it?
'Listen, there has to be a glimmer of light in all this. Think about Woolly. He's an old hippy, but he's local and people trust him enough to put him on the council. That's got to be a small step towards integration.'
'It's probably just an indication'. Diane said morosely, 'of how many people are living in leaky houses built by Griff Daniel.'
'Don't go cynical on me, Diane, it's not your style.'
'I'm sorry. What's your plan?'
Juanita went down on her knees by Diane's wooden stool.
'A revamped Avalonian. A totally Glastonbury paper that contains different viewpoints, input from different sides. Professional. Unbiased.'
Diane shook her head. 'The local people will think it's just another hippy rag and they'll ignore it.'
'Not if it tells them important things they didn't know.'
'Like what?'
'You're the editor,' Juanita said. 'You tell me.'
'Oh.' Diane looked apprehensive. 'I was wondering where all this was leading.'
It was dark by the time Jim wheeled his bike down to the bottom end of High Street, where The George and Pilgrims stood in all its late medieval splendour. To convince himself he wasn't vet a total slave to the booze, he'd pedalled around the town a while, down Benedict Street, round the Northload roundabout, weighing up whether or not he should buy a new hat.
On the one hand, a new hat would remind him distressingly, every time he put it on, of what had happened to the old one. On the other hand, not having a hat reminded him all the time.
The George and Pilgrims looked more like an Oxford college than a boozer. Over the doorway were set the heraldic arms of Edward IV. On the hanging pub sign, a fully armoured knight with a red-cross shield brandished a broadsword while a bunch of standard medieval punters – monks and nuns and a kid – hung around in case he needed anybody to defend. In the top right hand comer of the sign was the ubiquitous Tor.
Jim signalled to St George to keep an eye on his bike and went in, slotting himself into a corner of the bar with a double Chivas Regal and looking around.
He listened to two elderly ladies taking tea at a table in the passage outside: 'Oh, he's quite miraculous, Charlotte. Two weeks ago, I could only bend it this far. Now… see? Isn't that wonderful?'
There was only one other customer in the dark, woody bar. Young chap he thought he recognised, at a particularly shadowed table. On the table were a pint of bitter and a whisky chaser. But before Jim had had more than a couple of sips or Chivas, both glasses were dumped, empty, on the bar.
'Same again,' the young chap told the barman grimly. He had thick black hair and a pair of small, square, gold-rimmed glasses, baggy cord trousers and a practical Guernsey sweater.
Jim recognised him now. 'Tony, isn't it?' Tony something double-barrelled with the pottery a few doors up the street and the gorgeous if rather brittle wife.
'I'm sorry?'
Blinking. Voice a trifle slurred. Oh dear, and not yet seven in the evening. Jim knew this road all too well.
'Jim Battle. Came into your shop when you first opened to enquire whether you were interested in displaying examples of local, er, fine art.'
'Oh yes. Sure. The painter.' Tony peered at him without much interest. 'Another one?'
'Civil of you. Thanks.' Jim drained his glass and Tony jerked a thumb at it, for the barman.
'Married, are you, Jim?'
'Not at the moment.' Jim smiled. Not the most original way to open a conversation in a pub. 'Hope you're not going to tell me what a lucky devil I am, Tony. Not with a wife like yours.'
Dorrell-Adams, that was the name. Holy Thorn Ceramics.
Tony sank a staggering quantity of his new pint, still looking like a man who wasn't used to it.
'Bloody bitch,' he said eventually.
'Oh gosh, Juanita, it's ridiculous. I only did a year. And it's not as if I was any good.'
Diane was pacing the tiny parlour, nervously nibbling another carob bar.
'How are you on layout? Subediting.'
'Hopeless. I was just a slightly mature trainee reporter. Sort of. I know how to write stories. Sort of. I know how not to commit libel. Probably. And that's it.'
'Sounds OK,' Juanita said. 'Sam knows about layouts. Sam Daniel. Griff Daniel's son. Estranged, fortunately. Set himself up as a sort of printer, with an enterprise grant. Desktop stuff, computers. But there's also a local offset plant which could turn the thing out.'
'I remember Sam Daniel. Mostly by reputation. We didn't mix in the same circles. He's in business?'
'In a bolshy sort of way. We discussed The Avalonian about a year ago. I was thinking of doing it all by myself.'
'Why?' Diane sat down, looking flustered.
'Because it seemed like a really nice thing to do, Diane.' Juanita rolled her eyes. 'For the town? OK, it wound up on the back-burner, as these things do. But then you coming back like this, it just seemed…'
Jesus God, don't tell her it was a sign.
'It would be quite a costly venture,' Diane said.
'You mean, have I suddenly got money to throw away? Well, the old bank balance stands at about twelve grand. But I could write to Danny. I bought him out of the shop when he… when he needed to leave. Which put me in the red for quite a while, and fortunately he still feels bad about that. Also, I may approach the Pixhill Trust.'
Diane looked blank. 'Colonel Pixhill?'
'You knew him?'
'I sort of remember him. My father claims he conned my grandmother over the sale of Meadwell after the War. Father was abroad with the Army at the time He was furious. They kept trying to buy Meadwell back, but the Colonel wouldn't play.'
'Poor old Pixhill,' said Juanita. 'They say he lived his last few years on fresh air to keep that place together and then, when he died, his family couldn't even sell it because of the Pixhill Trust, this rickety charity seemingly run by the Colonel's old army pals, most of them miles away.'
Diane said. 'Archer was very friendly with Oliver Pixhill the Colonel's son. Same school. Inseparable for a while.'
'Oliver was apparently seriously pissed off at not being able to flog Meadwell. His inheritance was zilch. But now they say he's a member of the Trust.'
'What's it do, this Trust?'
Juanita perched lightly on the arm of Diane's chair. 'Good works, my child. Worthy things, connected with – and I quote – the Spreading of the Light for the Furtherance of Peace and Harmony in a Troubled World. Does that sound like The Avalonian or doesn't it?'
'They'd give you money?'
'For services rendered. Hang on. Stay right there.'
Juanita went through to the shop and unlocked the cabinet where the antiquarian tomes were kept. She returned with a slim, pocket-sized, softbacked book. It had a rather drab, green, cloth cover.
'I may live to regret this, but you're bound to see it sometime.'
You had to hold the book up to the light to make out the wording, in black, on the cover: GEORGE PIXHILL: THE GLASTONBURY DIARIES
'Take it,' Juanita said. 'Won't take you long to read. Gets seriously depressing towards the end, but you might find you and the old guy have a certain amount, er, in common.'
Meaning an unhealthy obsession with certain aspects of Glastonbury. But at least it would show her where this sort of thing could lead.
Diane held the little book gingerly in both hands, like a child with a first prayer book. 'Why've I never heard of this?'
'Probably because it's only been published a couple of months. And because it's never exactly been advertised. You have to ask for it. Oh, and because this is the only shop that sells it.'
'What?'
Juanita lit a cigarette.
"Bout a year ago, an old buffer called Shepherd – "Major Shepherd, good day to you ma'am" – swans in with this dog-eared manuscript. Wants some advice on publishing it. An absolute innocent. Left the manuscript – the only copy, mind you – left it with me to read. I'm expecting some tedious old war memoirs, Rommel and Me sort of thing.'
Diane put her knees together, her elbows on her knees and her chin between cupped hands. Juanita stiffened, her memory superimposing a plump schoolgirl with spots from too much comfort chocolate: Diane a dozen years ago when Juanita had given her Dion Fortune's The Sea Priestess to read.
Oh God.
'Not Rommel and Me,' Juanita said. 'Although he did serve in the Western Desert with Montgomery.'
Diane nodded eagerly. As if she knew what was coming Jesus, Juanita thought, she'll see it as another of those portents.
'You probably think I'm pitiful,' Tony Dorrell-Adams said, not for the first time tonight.
'Not at all. my boy.' Jim thought it was best to sound fatherly, this was what he seemed to need. 'Women go through phases. Particularly, erm… particularly here, for some reason.'
Actually, he was bloody embarrassed. Chaps flung together in pubs, there were, after all, long established ground rules about what might safely be discussed. Sport, work, the Government. Women as a species. Certainly not – not even after lour Chivas Regals – your, erm, intimate personal problems.
'She's a completely different person,' Tony Dorrell-Adams said miserably. 'We've been here nearly four months. It's getting worse. It's as if… well, as if it isn't me she wants. Not me as an individual. Just the male element. like… like a plug for her socket.'
'Quite,' said Jim gruffly.
'Except she's the one that lights up. Last night…'
Tony's eyes had a deceptive brightness, suggesting a man who hadn't slept in a long time. 'Last night, after dark, she made me do it in… in the window'. I mean the shop window.'
Pause for effect. Jim just nodded. Strewth.
'And I… I nearly couldn't. You know? I mean, it's against the law, isn't it? In public? Not that anybody was about. Least, I don't think so.'
'Oh, you'd have heard.'
'Suppose so. You see, the very reason we came here… I'll tell you, shall I?'
'If you think it'll help.' Jim groaned silently.
'It wasn't all that good between us, you see. I'd had a bit of a thing going with another teacher, to be frank. Nothing important, but it left a gulf, as you can imagine. Well, coming here, that was supposed to be a new beginning. In a place that was, you know, blessed. I thought, if we were working together, in a compatible way, things would straighten themselves out. Especially somewhere like this. Somewhere steeped in magic and earth energy. Somewhere that would feed our hearts. They say, you know, that Glastonbury is actually the heart chakra in the great spiritual body of the world.'
'You came here to put your marriage together?'
Jim shook his head in real sorrow. No wonder they were staring at each other across a gap the width of the Severn Estuary.
'Tony, this is the very last place. Yes, it is uniquely spiritual, but that doesn't make it an easy place to live. Quite the reverse. And as for marriages… same again, is it?'
He handed Tony a tenner and Tony went for more drinks. Jim leaned back, eyes half closed. I'm not like that, am I? I didn't come here expecting anything, surely? I'm just a painter. Came for the mystery.
He was aware of the bar filling up. One or two locals, but mainly incomers – healers and psychics, artists and musicians – the ones who thought it was OK spiritually to drink alcohol. He saw Archer Ffitch come in, moving discreetly through the bar to sit at a table occupied by Griff Daniel.
'Have you seen our new range, Jim?' Tony Dorrell-Adams, distinctly unsteady now, placed another Scotch in front of Jim, spilling some.
'I came to see you, old son," Jim said patiently. 'You remember? I saw all your pottery.' 'She's actually the potter. Domini. Glazes are my thing. And design. On-glaze colours, you know? I thought we were becoming compatible at last. You saw my Arthurian range, didn't you?'
'Oh, yes. Very, er…'
He'd seen the plaques decorated with knights and ladies and heraldry, Morte D'Arthur manuscript stuff; nothing exciting, but that seemed to be Tony. Nothing too exciting.
'Going bloody well. Quite well. People liked it. And the ley-line stuff I did with Woolly Woolaston. Now we're doing this set of six plates on Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph and the boy Jesus on the Isle of Avalon. Joseph collecting the Blood in the Grail. Planting his staff on Wearyall Hill. Damned collectible. Expensive, but it's a limited edition. That's the way ahead, I think. Limited editions.'
'Indeed.' Jim was bored. He saw Archer Ffitch stand up to leave. Archer turned and smiled at someone who'd probably been congratulating him on his candidacy.
'It's this bloody goddess group,' Tony said, 'the bloody Cauldron. That's what changed everything. All female? You know? She goes twice a week now. It's supposed to be a consciousness-raising thing. Discussion and meditation. But who knows what goes on behind closed doors. Do you know?'
Jim shook his head. Never had liked single-sex outfits. Back at the building society he'd resisted all attempts to get him into the Masons, even the buggering Rotary Club.
'And so now she's been poring over pictures of fat, ugly Celtic fertility goddesses and producing these ghastly crude female figurines, sort of Earth-mothers with huge… you know…'
'Boobs?'
Tony glanced furtively around and then whispered it.
'Vaginas.'
He swallowed.
'Who the hell's going to buy those things? I said. Finally, I said it. Tonight. That was all I said – who's going to buy them?'
'Reasonable enough question,' Jim said. Lord, not another range of pot goddesses with giant fannies.
'That's what I thought.' Tony slid close to the wall. 'We have a living to make. I thought it was a reasonable… reasonable question. So I asked it. Who's going to buy them? I said. That was it. All I said.'
Tony lifted the bottom of his Guernsey sweater, pulled it up over his stomach.
'Look at this.'
'Good God, man, what are you doing?' Jim inched away in discomfort. Was this a preliminary to what they called 'male bonding'?
'She…' Tears forming in the poor chap's eyes. Lord, oh Lord.
'Look, steady on, Tony old chap.'
'… She smiled, Jim, and came close… snuggling up, you know? Hands inside the jersey, and then…
'Oh my God.' Jim recoiled.
'Like a puma.'
'Look, hadn't you better have those seen to?'
'Savaged me like a puma,' Tony said, displaying livid scratches, six or eight inches long, still half-bleeding.
He began to cry. 'Came here to find love and harmony. And she savages me. Like a puma.'