The children carried on spraying the bus black, didn't even look round. In the near-dark there was something unearthly about them. They were like silent gnomes.
Diane turned back to the older girl. 'Can't you stop them?'
'Why don't you mind your own bleeding business?' Hecate said. 'You nosy fat slag.'
'How dare…?' Diane calmed down, remembered to put on the Somerset. 'That's jolly nice, I must say.'
'Look,' Hecate said. 'Headlice told us to do it, right? Good enough?'
'I don't believe you.'
'I don't give a fart what you believe.' Hecate put her face very close to Diane's. Her teeth were thick and yellow and her breath smelled putrid. 'Now get back on the bus, crawl into a corner and mind your own. Else when they've finished I'm gonna hold you down while they spray your fanny black. That good enough?'
No getting round it; Jim was shaken.
'I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I didn't see her, although…'
Juanita said, 'Jim, is there something wrong with this line?'
Jim coughed, realising he'd been almost whispering down the phone. Whispering. In his own buggering house! And with the lights out, so no one could see him standing by the window.
'Thing is…' He drank some whisky and then put the glass on the windowsill, pushing it behind the curtain as though she could see how full it was. '… it was very nearly dark when the last ones went past, but I'd gone down to the end of the garden by then to get as close as possible to the path.'
Standing behind a sycamore tree with plenty of leaves still on it. Holding his breath as they went past. Hiding in his own buggering garden!
'I mean, they tend to be pretty skeletal, don't they, these travelling types? So unless she's lost a few stone…'
Bloody angry with himself for feeling threatened. But it was the first time in seventeen years of living here that his sacred space had been penetrated so blatantly by so many people. And such bloody purposeful people.
'You could have asked one of them where she was,' Juanita said.
'I suppose I could. But I… it's strange, but I didn't like to speak to them. You know what these characters are normally like, either drugged up to the eyeballs or laughing and swigging cider and what have you, like day trippers.'
'Yes, I know.'
'Not these buggers. Could've been the SAS on night manoeuvres or something. Quite… well, unearthly I suppose. In fact if it hadn't been for the way they were dressed and the glint of the rings in the ears, I'd've… I don't know. They were just so quiet. Not a buggering word between them. And you're looking at – what? – over a hundred of them. Yes. I suppose I could quite easily have missed Diane.'
There was a moment's silence.
'I don't like the sound of this, Jim.'
That's why I called you. Do you think I should phone the police in Street?'
'What, and have the camp raided and Diane herded into a Black Maria? No, let's play it by ear. I'll get the car. Pick you up at the bottom of your track in about ten minutes?'
'Right ho,' Jim said, relieved. 'Just… just be careful. Don't stop for anybody.'
'Jim.'
'Yes?'
'You sound scared.'
'Oh. No, no. Just out of breath.'
Diane stood on the deck of the bus, nervously nibbling another carob bar. It was quiet again now. The strange children had finished spraying the bus and gone. Was it supposed to be a joke? She was ashamed at having let the girl menace her like that.
The air was cooling. She drew her woollen shawl across her lower arms, dragged it tight around her, arms folded in the wool. She sat down in one of the slimy vinyl seats. She'd wait about an hour and then creep quietly away to the van, drive up to Don Moulder's farm and then down Wellhouse Lane into the town.
All the buses and vans were still as wooden huts and drained of their colours. It could have been a scene from centuries ago. The circle of vehicles, which might just as well be carts, looked almost romantically tribal when their squalid aspects were submerged in shadows.
When she'd joined the convoy it was all so noisy and jolly, with a real sense of community. It was a kind of fun paganism more concerned with stone circles and earth forces and ley-lines and spreading good vibes. They were like a travelling circus. And yes, you really could imagine a new spirit of freedom being born and nurtured in an encampment of latterday gypsies dismissed by just about everybody as a bunch of dirty scavengers. There really had been a glimmer of ancient light here.
The smell on the bus was of sweat, grease and oil with an underlying cannabis sweetness. A misty wafer of moon rose in the grimy glass. This was the only ancient light now.
And yet, as the thought passed through her mind, there was another glimmer, some yards away. Diane froze and then, very quietly, stood up and peered through the window into Don Moulder's field.
The Tor, half a mile away, was still visible, the tower entwined in strands of moon-touched cloud. A tall figure was gazing over the fields towards the sacred hill. Gwyn the shaman. He was still here. He must be waiting until they were all in position on the Tor before making his ceremonial entrance.
The shaman was the tribal witch doctor. The man who interceded with the spirits. Bearded Gwyn, with his aloofness and his whispered prophecies, seemed disturbingly like the real thing. It was when Gwyn had joined that the atmosphere had begun to change. The gradual shedding of the happier, noisier, more casual pilgrims, leaving the quieter, more committed ones.
And Diane. And Headlice.
She held her breath, moved back a little from the window. She could see that Gwyn wore… a robe or a long overcoat. His arm, the one nearest to her, was reaching up into the mist, his hand…
His hand was curled around one end of the spectral sickly moon.
Diane gasped. Gwyn stood tall and still, a god with the moon in his hand. Or so it seemed.
Until, with a feeling of deep dread, she became aware that the wan glimmer was from the blade of a real sickle.
Gwyn lowered the blade, in a slow and ceremonial fashion. She watched the curved sliver of light swinging by his side as he strode across the field towards the Tor.
EIGHT
Towers. Everywhere in Glastonbury you were overlooked by towers.
Juanita hurried across High Street. As an established tradesperson, she was permitted a reserved space on the central car park below the fortified Norman tower of St John's.
Like St Michaels on the Tor, over half a mile away, the town's principal church had its own colour chart of moods. In the sunshine of late afternoon, it could be mellow, sometimes almost golden with its four-cornered Gothic crown. But on a dull day it faded to grey and was outshone by the rusty-red tiles on the roofs of the shops and houses packed around it.
And at night it brooded behind its walls and railings. When you looked up, you could no longer make out the four crosses supporting the weather vanes on the highest pinnacles and there was not that sense of the sacred which Glastonbury Abbey always seemed to retain in its ruins, day or night.
There was also a sort of concrete, walled apron where groups of young pilgrims gathered to smoke or chant to bongos and tablas. Which seemed fairly innocent during the day but could be rather menacing after dark
It was also a good place to get yourself mugged, so Juanita very nearly screamed when a shadow moved.
'Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry. Did I scare you?'
'Not at all.' Juanita put a hand to her chest and swallowed. 'Jesus, Verity.'
The little woman wore a quilted body warmer and elflike velvet hat. She carried a shopping bag, even though almost nothing was open.
'Nothing will happen to you here, Juanita. It's a very warm and spiritual spot. And so egalitarian. And the young people know that, and they neither threaten us nor feel threatened.'