They' took Sam upstairs. He was certainly pissed. But Juanita suspected there was more to it than that. Some imbalance, something which had toppled him from his comfortably cynical, nonchalant perch.
The sudden perception of a slow-burning desire for Diane?
Devastating, but not enough to do this to him. There was a kind of desperation here.
'Juanita? Is that Juanita?' Sam peered at her, eyes wide and blurred. A tremor went through him. 'I need to be sick.'
Powys showed him the lavatory and shut the door on him.
'I'm quite shocked,' Juanita said. 'I don't think I knew about this. I don't think that even in my wildest…'
'I may be wrong,' Powys said, 'but I don't think Diane knows about it either.'
'Christ,' said Juanita. 'The perfect suitor. A drunken, left-wing anti-bloodsports-campaigner. If only Pennard were here.' She collapsed into the sofa. 'OK, let's call Woolly.
Ask him to keep her there for a while. Some things need to be put into perspective.'
Powys held the phone to her car and called the number.
There was no answer.
Juanita swallowed. Her throat felt very dry. She found herself looking at one of Jim's pictures, was flung brutally back into the moments when she was ringing Jim and ringing and ringing, and he didn't answer, kept on not answering, that was when they went to the cottage.
'Juanita?'
Staring at the picture. Was it going dark? She must have told Karen, the nurse, about that when she was feverish. Karen had said next day, 'That happened to my gran the night before Grandad died.' It used to be well known. The pictures in the room go dark before a death.
'Come on…' Powys on his knees in front of her. 'Calm down, huh? Just tell me where he lives. I'll go and check this out. As soon as we make sure Sam's OK.'
'Powys, you think something's happened to her, don't you?'
'I'm more worried about you. You're not well. You're very pale.'
'I'm OK. Leave Sam to me. You go.'
'I'll leave Arnold. He's a dowser's dog.'
'What on earth does that mean?'
'Pray you never have to find out.' Powys produced his enigmatic earth mystery-guru's smile, but she could tell it was a struggle.
There was the sound of the lavatory flushing.
'And then we need to talk,' he said. 'About what that policeman said. About Jim's cat.'
'Not his cat,' she said hoarsely. 'His hat.'
On his way out, Powys spotted on the table in the downstairs parlour, an ancient copy of The Avalonian. There was a drawing on the front of a woman looking up towards Glastonbury Tor.
He recognised her at once and felt an almost-aching sadness.
Despair made a cold compress on Verity's heart as she switched off the light and padded in her pom-pom slippers to the bed
Dr Grainger had said. Go to bed earlier in the winter, semi-hibernate like the animals. And, if sleep will not come, make use of the peaceful hours to commune with the dark. Listen to the night sounds, the conversing of owls, the creaking and shifting of the house. Listen to the ancient, beating heart of Meadwell.
Verity lay under the sheets with her eyes open, drawn to the windows, two chalky-grey rectangles like paving slabs. Like gravestones in the wall. There were no owls tonight. Occasionally she would hear traffic from the main road, half a mile away, but only the loudest lorries. She wished the road were close enough for headlights to flash on to the glass.
Dr Pel Grainger would wince at such defeatism.
What did Dr Grainger know?
Rolling over on her cold pillow, aware of that painful tug her left hip.
Arthritis.
Although it would be more comfortable that way, she could not lie on her back, remembering how her mother had eventually died in the night and Verity had found her next morning, eyes wide open to the ceiling like a stone effigy upon a tomb.
Verity felt utterly lost. Almost wished that she could See.
Powys said, 'Woolly?'
The little guy dropped his shovel in alarm, spilling fragments and splinters of wood. Under the lamp projecting from the wall, his scalp gleamed through sparse hair. Behind him was a hole where a window had been.
'I'm sorry. We haven't met.' Powys felt foolish. There were shards of broken glass on the cobbles and remains of what might once have been a guitar.
He was getting a bad feeling. If Arnold had been here, Arnold would have growled that particular growl.
'Who are you'' Woolly retrieved the shovel, brandished it like a weapon. Powys swiftly identified himself.
'J.M. Powys.' Woolly smiled the smile of a man for whom everything comes too late. 'Heard you were in town. Tried to find you once. Ask your advice. Sheesh.'
He lowered the shovel. 'Been a bad night, J.M. Bad as they get.'
'We picked up your message for Diane. On the answering machine'
'Where is she?'
'We thought she might be here.'
'We?'
'Juanita Carey and me'
'She's back?' Woolly ran a weary hand through his hair.
'Shit. She picks her nights, don't she? No, Diane's not here.'
'Has she been here?'
'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.'
There was a thump inside Powys's head, as it all landed on him like a big, thick book from a very high shelf.
Sam brought the book up from the shop. 'This the one?'
Juanita nodded. 'Pop it down on the table. You'll have to flip through the pages for me.'
It was one of those Glastonbury-in-old-photos books. Not really Carey and Frayne subject-matter, with its sepia line-ups of long-dead councillors and women in big hats.
'Stop,' Juanita said. 'No, sorry, carry on. Skip this section. Hold it… there.'
Sam swallowed. Juanita extended, with some pain, a discoloured, lumpy forefinger.
Sam looked up from the book.
'Oh, Jesus God,' he said. 'He's younger, but-'
'But that's him?'
Sam nodded. His face looked as blurred and lost and scared and overwhelmed as one of the small boys in knee-length shorts on the very edge of the photograph.
The caption underneath said:
October 1954: Children from St Benedicts C of E Primary School receive their prizes from the vice-chairman of the school governors, Col George Pixhill.