Sam tried to gaze casually out or the print-shop window, his chair angled meaningfully away as Charlotte rushed out, slammed into her Golf – blatantly parked on the double-yellows, Daddy being in the same lodge as the chief superintendent – and wafted imperiously off down Magdalene Street.
'Bitch.' He saw two blokes unloading the lights for the Christmas tree in front of the bank. Some bloody Christmas this was going to be.
'What's that, Sam?'
'Didn't say a word, Paul.'
'Oh. Right. Thought you didn't.' Paul, young Mr Tact, went back to his work. He didn't like Charlotte, Sam could tell. He guessed the kid was still a bit scared of high-octane women, not realising they could be just as half-baked under the gloss.
Charlotte, eh? like, what a snotty cow. All the advertising she could have pointed The Avalonian's way… what with working for Stan Pike and Daddy being chairman of the Chamber of Trade and all this crap. She could even have put the arm on Pike to give The Avalonian the all-clear to his mates. 'It is not a hippy rag,' Sam had insisted. 'How many times I got to spell it out? It's a genuine, solid publication.'
'With Diane Ffitch?' Charlotte had replied just now. 'Diane Ffitch? You call being edited by that fruitcake solid?'
'All right, stuff it, then,' Sam had snarled 'We don't need Pike, bloody backstreet used-house dealer.'
Charlotte. Bloody Charlotte, eh? Things had been very much on the blink since he'd made that minor scene at the Glastonbury First gig over the old man and Archer Ffitch. Time to call it a day?
Three years, though. Three years of storms and upsets and sexy making-up sessions. Three years of political arguments and being produced as Charlotte's bit of rough at too many posh parties.
Naturally, she'd backed him all the way in starting up the print-shop, becoming a local businessman, like Daddy, like Stanlow Pike. When Sam became a businessman, Charlotte started circling dates on the calendar for the engagement party. Cracked it at last, brought the anarchist to heel.
Charlotte had got Sam the contract for printing all Pike and Corner's property brochures, which was a major deal.
The major deal… until Juanita Carey had come up with the idea for The Avalonian. Which little Charlotte, of course, didn't like the sound of at all, from the outset.
Sam lit a cigarette.
Another thing about Charlotte was the way she nagged him about his smoking. like he was already her property and she was making sure he came with a full warranty. How could a woman of twenty-six come over so bloody middle-aged? Nil prospect of her moving into the flat without something official, on paper, signed in triplicate. Twice they'd almost wound it up. Trouble was, she looked so seriously edible, waiting for him by the market cross, parked on a double yellow. Could he really stand to see her hanging out for some slimy accountant with a BMW?
Difficult one, that.
He brightened when he saw Diane crossing the road by the Christmas tree. She hadn't been in all morning, and after what Paul had said about her painting the van in the dark he'd kept thinking maybe he should take a walk up to the shop, check her out. Just that he didn't feel he knew her well enough to ask why she was behaving like a fruitcake.
She didn't come in. She didn't even glance at the shop, just walked past, like a bloody zombie, people getting out of her way. Sam watched her cross Magdalene Street and head straight for the Abbey gatehouse. She didn't go in there either, she turned her back on it, fell against the wall like a drunk trying to stay upright.
What the…?
Sam was up and out of the door, not giving himself time to think.
'Diane?'
When he ran across the road, a truck driver braking and blasting his horn, she looked, unseeing, in Sam's direction.
He could see that she was shivering uncontrollably, like a long-term junkie run out of smack. Shit, the girl was ill.
'You all right? Something happened?'
'Oh.' Diane looked up, vaguely. 'Sam.'
'What's wrong?' A few people staring at them now, but not many because this was Glastonbury and there wasn't much they hadn't seen in these streets. 'Only Lady Loony,' he heard one woman with a kid and a shopping bag say knowingly to another and they both laughed and Sam wanted to kick their bloody arses halfway to Benedict Street.
Diane, face slightly blue, was staring vacantly across the road to where the two guys were untangling the Christmas tree lights. Sam took her arm.
'Come on. Come for a hot chocolate, Diane.' Easing her away from the wall. 'Catch your death.'
Darryl Davey came past with a couple of mates, nudging each other and smirking.
'Don't you say a fucking word, sunshine,' Sam snarled.
Darryl narrowed his eyes and gave him the finger.
Tosser.
'You see… and this is strictly off the record…' The Bishop of Bath and Wells lit a thin roll-up. '… some of my predecessors have been frankly embarrassed at having Glastonbury in the diocese.'
The Bishop was a compact man in his early forties. He wore cord trousers and a purple denim shirt, his white clerical band under the button-down collar. Powys wondered if he always rolled his own cigarettes or just wanted to appear cool for the local radical rag.
'Point being, Joe, the Church of England might have owned the Abbey for most of the century, but the ambience remains RC, and I imagine many people still regard us being the landlords as the final insult. Even if we have tidied the place up, stopped it being treated as a convenient stone quarry for local builders.'
'But the Catholics aren't the problem right now, are they?' Powys said. 'You've got what we might call an older denomination to contend with.'
'Pagans.' The bishop laughed. 'Be so much easier if the buggers still wore horns and bones through their noses. But they're quite likely to be academics in suits.' He nodded towards the window. 'Could be a few hanging around the cathedral as we speak.' But he didn't seem to regard this as much of a threat.
They were in Wells, a very small city a short drive from Glastonbury. At a window table in a pub facing the cathedral. The bishop drank Perrier. His name was Liam Kelly; he didn't sound even vaguely Irish.
'But, you see, Joe… are they really pagans? What you have today, as we approach the Millennium, is a great yearning for spirituality. We – the human race – have been everywhere and realised what a terribly small place the earth is, how finite are its resources.'
A micro-cassette machine lay on the table between them, the bishop pulled it a little closer.
'Even been to the moon, and what a dreadful anti-climax that was. So more people are realising there's only one real voyage of discovery left to them, and that is inwards. It's a very promising situation.'
'You think so?'
'You don't?'
The bishop seemed to see Powys for the first time, to wonder who he was. Powys hadn't mentioned his proposed book. Diane had arranged the interview – which, presumably, was why the bishop had agreed to do it; he hadn't been here long enough to risk offending the House of Pennard. How was he to know how things stood between Diane and her immediate family?
Powys said. 'You don't think inner trips can be a little risky for some people?'
'Are we on or off the record?'
'Whatever you like.' Powys stopped the tape.
'Look'; I don't know precisely what kind of magazine this is, ah Joe. But if you can somehow get over the message that I don't regard my visit to Glastonbury next Thursday as any kind of crusade. Or the pagan element as the Enemy. I like to believe that we're all working towards the same goal. If, for instance, some women like to regard the Divinity as having a distinct feminine aspect, how can I legitimately argue against that? The battle for the ordination of women has been fought and won, and it's a victory I applaud.'
Not answering the question. Didn't seem to realise, either, that The Avalonian didn't yet exist and would hardly be on the streets in time to get over any message about Thursday.
'Goddess worshippers,' Powys said. 'You'll be meeting them?'
'On Thursday, as I say. Which is simply the shortest day as far as we're concerned. To them it's Christmas without the Christ – as yet. God, is that the time already? Sorry about this, but I do have to be in Bath for lunch.'
'Oh,' Powys realised. 'The Solstice. Thursday's the Winter Solstice. Won't the pagans be having their… whatever they do?'
The Bishop stood up. 'I don't know what they normally do, but on Thursday, before exchanging opinions about the future of Glastonbury, we shall go together at dawn to St Michael's Chapel, where I shall conduct a small service with carols which followers of the, ah, nature religion will find not incompatible – 'The Holly and the Ivy', this sort of thing.'
'St Michael's Chapel… Look, I'm sorry, I'm not too familiar with the geography, but that's part of the Abbey, is it?'
'No, no.' The Bishop finished his Perrier. 'It's the one on the Tor.'
Powys pocketed his tape machine. 'Let me get this right. You're going to the top of Glastonbury Tor with a bunch of pagans on the Winter Solstice. Doesn't it bother you, if you believe…'
Bishop Kelly laughed and shook his head. 'The Winter Solstice, as I say, is merely the shortest day. 'The 'pagans', if we have to use that term, will be represented by Dame Wanda Carlisle, who I've already met socially and who is, in all other respects, a delightful person. And the Tor is, ah…'
'Just a hill?' Powys couldn't believe this.
'Indeed,' said the Bishop. 'Just a hill.'
'So what are your feelings about this plan to restrict public access?'
The Bishop smiled. 'Good talking to you, Joe. Hope to see you up there.'
Diane went over to sit in her usual red typist's chair. She looked pale as watered milk.
'Go on.' Sam turned on an extra bar of the electric fire and moved to the corner where Paul kept the tea and coffee and Diane's chocolate, everything washed and neatly arranged. 'What did the slimy bastard want?'
'Me for Christmas,' said Diane dolefully. 'At Bowermead. They have a gathering most years, and the awful Boxing Day hunt's been revived, so…'
'Has it now? Well, well. Going, are we?'
'Bowermead? For Christmas? Gosh, no. I might never get out again. They still have sort of dungeons underneath. Anyway, Juanita might be out of hospital by Christmas. She'll need a lot of help.'
'Right,' said Sam. 'Right. Soya cream in your chocolate?'
'Perhaps not. Sam…'
'Good job, we're clean out of soya cream. Sony?'
'Does anything ever, you know, ever happen to you? The way it does to some people. Quite a… a bigger percentage of people than normal, I suppose. In Glastonbury.' Boxing Day hunt, he was thinking. Got to have a go at this one. Especially after that 'MP elect' bollocks. Make Christmas worthwhile, for once. Ring Hughie. Get some of the old crew in from Bristol.
'Sorry, Diane…?' God, but she looked tired. Wanted looking after, this kid.
Diane watched him, unblinking. 'I was saying, did you ever have… did anything ever happen to you that… that you couldn't explain? Like…'
'Oh, there's a whole lot of stuff I can't explain.' Sam dumped two spoonfuls of drinking chocolate into a mug.
'Why folks will cheat and lie for a few quid that isn't gonner make them happy. Why it's always the best people who wind up dead before their time. Why otherwise humane, civilised folks'll go out and make little animals run till they can't run no more and then watch 'em get ripped apart. I don't include your old man in this, mind. I can understand why he does it. It's because he's soulless and pig-thick.'
He pulled a cigarette out of the packet.
'Sorry. Shouldn't talk like that. He is your dad.'
Diane shrugged. She had her hands clasped between her knees. Every few moments her shoulders would shake like she was fighting off flu.
'I know what you're asking,' Sam wanted to put his arms around her. If he could get them all the way round. 'I'm just avoiding the question.'
Not the time to come on with the arms. Probably never would be, after he said what he had to say. Shit. Should have realised he'd have to deal with this at some point. Should've been prepared. Course, if he hadn't grown to like her so much, as a person, it wouldn't have been a problem. In fact he usually got quite a buzz out of laying it on people in this headcase town – the people who'd looked at him, with his tangled, shoulder-length hair and his bit of an earring, and made certain assumptions which were way, way out.
Both of them veggies, too. They agreed totally about animal rights – although Diane was a bit more discreet about it than Sam was; didn't seem to feel quite the same urge to go and beat the living shit out of a huntsman. And, OK, she had this incomprehensible appetite for these totally disgusting carob-covered cereal bars.
Beyond this, it got more difficult.
'Look at me,' Diane shook again. 'I've been like this all morning. Couldn't open the shop.'
'You seen a doctor?'
Diane smiled thinly. 'Not anything a doctor could deal with. I've spent most of the morning sitting in front of the fire trying to deal with it.'
'Archer.'
'Sam, a sort of… blind hatred comes over me.'
'Fair enough.'
'And when it does, things start to happen. Awfully strange things. In the room or wherever I am. Sometimes I can almost see it, see my own rage. I suppose it's always been there. He just touches something in me and sets it off.'
'Seems a perfectly normal reaction to me. We are talking about Archer Ffitch here.'
'When I was a child, I got a sort of perverse comfort from it I would hug it to me. My hatred. Hug it to me like a dog. I think it's… it happened during the Glastonbury First meeting when he unveiled his plans for the Tor. It was as if the Tor knew what he was planning and hated him for it, and all that hatred is coming into me.'
'Ah,' said Sam, wishing he was out of here. 'Right.'
'And that's why the Tor's been coming through to me since I was a baby. The Tor knew what was going to happen as we approached the Millennium. It was all pre-ordained.
Why Violet – Dion Fortune – was chosen to be my spirit guide. Because I have to stop them destroying the Tor.'
'Diane, they don't wanner destroy the Tor, they just wanner restrict…'
'It's the same thing.' Rage dancing in Diane's eyes. 'The Tor, the road scheme. It's all anti-spiritual. You ask Woolly. Woolly was in the shop this morning talking, you know, end-of the world scenario. What happens in Glastonbury affects the spiritual life of the entire nation. This is the cradle.'
'Diane, if Woolly runs out of dope it's an end-of-the-world scenario.' Sam handed her the mug. 'Drink your chocolate'
Dammit, most situations you could work with people for years and they never needed to know where you stood on the big issues, which way you voted, etc.
Sam took a big breath, pulled on a handful of his long hair. Looked at Diane and kept seeing Rufus the fox cub.
'The thing is… I've got a big problem with all this, look. I'm like… coming from a different direction, right? Like, far as I can make out, you believe in just about the whole bit – UFOs, God, ghosts, the Holy Grail.'
'You have a way', Diane lowered her eyes, 'of making it all sound frightfully tawdry.'
'Whereas, I… I'm like… how can I put this… an atheist,' Sam said.
Diane looked up and sought his eyes. This time it was Sam who looked away.
From what seemed a long distance, he heard Diane whispering, 'You don't believe… in anything?'
'I believe in looking after the planet and, you know, each other, and not being cruel to animals. Or even people. Most of them.'
'You don't even believe in the possibility of anything?'
'I believe in cleaning up your own mess. I believe in being kind. But as for… you know…'
Diane said, very faintly, 'The otherworldly.'
'If you like. I think, quite honestly, I think it's all bollocks. The Grail, the Holy bloody Thorn. The Abbey…very pretty, look, but… it's all bollocks.'
In Glastonbury, he thought, you were allowed to be a Christian, a pagan, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim and maybe, at a pinch, a liberal kind of agnostic. Anything, but…
'Where I'm coming from,' Sam said, 'this is a town built on bollocks.'
Big, big patch of quiet.
Then Diane just said, 'Oh.'
And for that moment, and maybe the one after it, Sam Daniel wished he did believe in the resurrection of the body and the forgiveness of sins and the shroud of Turin and the holy virgin of Knock and the men in silver suits, the whole bloody shebang.
Diane was sitting there looking down at her clasped hands. She hadn't touched her chocolate.
It occurred to Sam, for the first time, seeing her half in shadow, eyes downcast, that she was actually kind of beautiful.
Diane stood up. 'I'd better go.'
No. Don't go. I could have second thoughts.
'Yeah,' he said. 'OK, then.'
At the door, he said, 'It's coming along really well, Diane. The Avalonian. If this was for real, I reckon we could have it on the streets before Christmas.'
Diane said very quietly, 'It's all for real. Everything's part of everything else, and it's all for real.'