Cal looked away, slightly hot. He tried to sit as if he was relaxed and highly confident, but he felt self-conscious, and couldn’t help glancing over again.
She’d gone. No. Moved. Nearer the door. But she was looking at him. A sharp, intent look, as if she knew him, and there was something about her . . .
And in an instant he recognized her, a shock of fear and vivid joy. She had been in Corbenic. She had carried the golden cup.
He jumped up, making the crockery topple with a clink. People turned, but he was already elbowing his way through the crowded tables.
“Hey! Excuse me!” A large, slightly grim waitress barred his way. “That’ll be one twenty, thank you.”
One twenty! It was extortionate! But he slapped the coins into her palm and she stood back with a sarcastic smile, and he knew she thought he’d been trying to slip off without paying. He wouldn’t care. He had to find the girl.
There were racks of curtains, billowing in the air-conditioning. Gauzy fabrics rippled; he ran down the aisles of them but always the movement seemed to be somewhere else, on the other side. She was there, he knew. Dodging through he came to beds, rows of them, and far down at the end a figure slipped out between them.
“Wait!” he called. Pushing past a salesman he raced after her. Outside, somewhere very close, a clock was chiming, loud, like a church, nine, ten, eleven, and the noise almost seemed to obstruct him, to thicken the air, as he turned sideways to edge past women with loaded bags and a bored man with a stroller. Men’s wear! She wouldn’t be here! But there she was, a slight figure beside a counter of folded pullovers, watching him, her eyes bright. She wore a green dress. The same dress.
Cal cursed. He stood still and told himself he wouldn’t take another step; he’d turn and find the door and get out of the shop into the sunshine. Then he was running. Through lingerie and children’s wear and home furnishings and books she was always ahead, just out of sight. The clock struck, booming through the building. Surely it shouldn’t be that loud! He found stairs and jumped down them, into a dim basement full of shining kitchen appliances.
Abruptly, the chimes stopped. Breathless, he looked around. No one else seemed to be down here. Small echoes shifted.
“It is you, isn’t it?” he said quietly. In the dusty silence his words seemed to hang; he said desperately, “I just want to talk to you! About Corbenic.”
No answer.
He took a step forward. In all the kettles and jugs and teapots; in the stainless steel coffee pots and toasters and mixers and drying racks he saw himself move, swollen and distorted and stretched and tiny. His mouth warped in the convex surfaces. “Please,” he whispered.
She was there. Reflected. He turned quickly, but he couldn’t find her. Only her reflections watched him, her eyes severe in the dimness.
“How could you let us down like that?” Her whisper was intense and fierce, and it startled him.
“What?”
“You lied! To Bron, to yourself. You saw the Grail . . .”
“That cup!”
“Yes. That cup. And the spear. You saw the door open. And you denied all of it!”
Cal stared at her face, twisted in the shiny handle of a kettle. In milk jugs and sugar basins she watched him, seeming young and then old, warping and changing, her hair fair, like his mother’s. “Have you any idea what you’ve done?” her lips breathed, clouding metal.
“No,” he said quietly, turning, moving along the counters. “I haven’t. Tell me.”
She shook her head sadly. “Left us all in our pain. In the Waste Land. Only you can heal us. Come back,” she whispered. “Come home. That’s the quest, Cal.”
Cal banged into a stand of saucepans; they clattered into a rolling, crashing confusion and the girl’s reflection tumbled with them and in the clattering din she looked out at him with twenty covert glances. “Because you did see, didn’t you?”
“That place,” he said urgently. “Was it real? I didn’t just dream it all, did I?”
“You tell me,” she said from over his shoulder. “And do you know the pain he’s in? That we’re all in?”
There were footsteps on the stairs. Cal picked a saucepan up, bewildered. “Back where? It isn’t home. It’s a ruin.”
“It is now.” Close behind him, his arms full of aluminum, he felt her push something in his pocket. “Use the sword,” she whispered. Though her voice was his.
Lights flickered on. A voice said, “Can I help you, sir?”
In the sudden stark light Cal saw the basement was empty. A man in a white shirt and blue tie was standing on the bottom stair looking at him quizzically.
“Oh, no, sorry. Thanks.” He put the pans down quickly. “I just bumped into these,” he said quickly. “It was very dark down here.”
“Yes. Someone seems to have switched the light off.” The man’s voice was oddly acid; now they thought he was a shoplifter, Cal thought bitterly, and that it was saucepans he was after. Saucepans!
The man moved to the cash register. “So you aren’t interested in buying anything?”
“No,” he said firmly, and walked to the stairs.
“Er . . .” The man held out a hand. “Even the CD? I can take care of that here.” His grin was spiteful.
“CD?” Cal was blank.
“In your pocket. Sir.”
Cal felt for it. It stuck out, still warm from her touch. He pulled it out, not even looking at it, but at the sales assistant, his smile rigid and grim, his heart hammering. “Oh yes,” he said tightly. “I’d forgotten about that.”
The assistant took it from him. There were hot smudges from his fingers on the cellophane wrapping; the man saw them and smiled coldly. “Happens all the time,” he said. He ran the bar code over and took out a plastic bag. “Sixteen fifty.”
Cal heard it and managed not to flinch. Elaborately careless, he took out the money and paid it over, only glad he had that much. The man gave him fifty pence change. Silent, Cal turned and stalked up the stairs. He didn’t draw a breath till he was out of the store, and then he marched down the steep street without turning or looking right or left, fury burning in him, and humiliation and dismay. Sixteen fifty! Why couldn’t he just have said he’d made a mistake, laughed it off! They couldn’t have arrested him. That was only when you left the store. Like the time his mother had . . . forgotten about the lager. His ears hot, he stopped and stared sightlessly in a window, taking a deep breath.
The girl had been there. The Grail girl. She must have been.
After a moment he took the plastic bag from his pocket and tipped the CD out, staring at it. It was called Parsifal, and it was all in German. And it looked like opera.
Opera!
Chapter Seven
Perceval goeth toward the Deep Forest, that is full broad and long and evil seeming.
High History of the Holy Grail
“I can give you a lift home if you hang on till about six.” Trevor had put his head around the office door.
Cal looked up from the pink forms. “Oh,” he said. “Thanks.” Then, “What’s the earliest I can finish?”
His uncle smiled wryly. “Five. Just because you’re the boss’s nephew . . .”
“I’ll go then, if you don’t mind. I can walk.”
Trevor shook his head. “Can’t stand the pace, eh? Have you had a good day?”
“Fine.” He didn’t know what else to say. When his uncle had gone and the door was safely shut, he tidied the mass of forms on the desk into neat piles and dropped the calculator into the drawer with a sigh. He’d guessed it might be boring. But this was mind-numbing.
Opposite, Phyllis’s vacant computer station blinked strange images over its screen. Phyllis was his uncle’s PA, but she was well over fifty and as dry as a stick. She didn’t approve of him, he knew. Probably thought he was well-off and spoiled rotten, the boss’s nephew getting a job he wasn’t qualified for and couldn’t do. She certainly wasn’t making things easy.