'Imagine it bump, bump, bumping down the Tor,' Gwyn said. 'Whiting's head. Bump, bump, bump.'
In time to the measured drumbeat.
Juanita's eyes streamed. This couldn't be happening it couldn't. Not here where she and Danny had lain and shared a joint, drunk cool wine, made love, watched for the good aliens… She felt her stomach heave and began to choke on her own rising vomit. She tried to close her eyes, and she filled her head with prayers to God and all the other stupid gods that lived up here.
'They hung his head on the town gate,' Gwyn said.
'Where should this one hang?'
In the end Juanita had to open her eyes, if only because she knew she couldn't close her ears to the whistle of air against blade.
Jim's mouth was slightly open. She couldn't see his eyes; they'd put his hat back on and tipped it raffishly over his brow.
There was no sound from him, but there was movement, it might have been the candlelight, or it might have been that his cheeks were quivering.
Gwyn, the goat dog-priest, raised his sickle to the slender moon and Juanita saw his long, thin cock begin to rise to the thrill of hacking off the poor man's head.
TWELVE
'The number you have dialled has not been recognised.' said the heartless computer-voice, and Verity cut the line again. Her finger dithered over the buttons on the receiver. It was easy to misdial because not only was her finger shaking but many of the numbers were obscured by blood
She tried again. Telephones quite often malfunctioned in Glastonbury, especially cordless phones and mobiles. Because of the valley formation, according to the engineers. Because of the Shifting of the Veil, according to the mystics.
She'd brewed some camomile tea, sipping it with lips that still felt rigid with shock. There was no comfort tonight in the kitchen, even though it was in the more modem part of the house. No matter how many jolly mugs and copper pans and tomato-red casseroles one placed around the room, the drabness would filter through. Nothing would glint. The electric lights hanging limply between the beams would glow as though on rationed power.
This time, thank God, the telephone rang at the other end. But Major Shepherd's wife was outraged at the disturbance. The Major was unwell; she did not wish him agitated.
'I'm so sorry, Mrs Shepherd, I just didn't know who else to
…?'
'Is it the blasted guttering again. Miss Endicott?' Mrs Shepherd evidently thought Verity was a querulous old ditherer who should have been pensioned off years ago.
'No.' Verity almost sobbed 'It isn't the guttering.'
'Tim!' she heard. 'What are you doing out of bed? Oh, very well, but don't blame me, when you…'
'Verity?' Major Shepherd was wheezing badly. 'Are you all right?'
'No,' Verity said after a pause. 'I really don't think I am.'
Funny how quickly you forgot how it was. The hard-pile office-type carpet. All those white or transparent lampshades, designed for illumination, never for mood, the dominant colour: dark brown; pervasive smelclass="underline" wet leather.
The arrogant, rigid maleness of the place.
As if to emphasise it, her father took her into the gun-room, where she saw the old oak panelled cabinets had been replaced by revolting metal ones, floor to ceiling. It was truly horrible, sort of semi-military.
'Basic security,' he said, noticing her dismay. 'Can't be too careful with guns anymore.'
'You could always just get rid of them, of course,' Diane said. 'Then you wouldn't need security.'
He didn't even bother to react. Gerald Rankin hung around in the doorway, as if she might try to escape. She could still smell his glove over her mouth and nose; the whole house seemed to be impregnated with the oily essence of Rankin's glove and the sense of being closed in.
'Thanks, Rankin,' her father said. 'Good man. Close the door behind you.'
When his farm-manager had gone. Lord Pennard pointed to the worn leather sofa, scuffed as an old wallet. 'Sit down, please, Diane.'
Her legs felt weak, but she stayed stubbornly on her feet, her back to the bay window with its steely, industrial Venetian blinds. She folded her arms beneath the shawl, tightened her mouth.
'As you please. Drink?'
She shook her head minimally. Picked up and brought home, like a little girl again. So who'd informed on her this time? Don Moulder, doubling his three hundred and fifty? Times is hard, my chicken, got to earn your crust where you can, look.
Diane glared at her father, at the marbled coldness of him.
She knew how bitterly angry he must be at the way she had, as he would see it, let him down. But if she didn't go on the offensive, she'd be nowhere. It had taken her many years to learn this.
'Did… did you phone an ambulance?'
Her father raised an eyebrow. 'Did…I?'
Incredulity. He didn't waste words any more than cartridges in his twelve-bore. Rather like a double-barrelled shotgun himself: heavy, steely-grey, polished and greased and functional.
He went across to the dresser, the last remaining piece of old oak in the room. Coming through the house, she'd noticed how many pieces of fine furniture and pictures had gone. He poured himself a small whisky from a decanter. His movements so elegant for a big man. He was perfectly balanced, his stomach still tauntingly flat. He'd always made her feel like some sort of awful throwback: the fat one.
Diane thought of Headlice lying where Rankin and his son, Wayne, had left him, snuffling on his own blood.
'He could be really badly hurt, you know.'
'I'm sorry.' Lord Pennard sipped his whisky. 'Who are we talking about?'
'Damn it, you…'
Calm down!
'His name's Alan. He's actually a sort of human being who hasn't done you any harm.'
The foxes and the pheasants hadn't done him any harm either; unlikely to lose sleep over a hippy.
'Diane, I…' He raised his voice, grey eyes wide and unblinking. 'I rang Patrick to tell him you were safe. He offered to come and collect you. Told him there was no need. Pointed out there was a train tomorrow. Said you'd be on it.'
Frightfully precise. Absolute concrete certainty in every syllable. It should be her cue to run out of the room, hands over her face, mumbling I hate you, I hate you, in a pathetic, drowning voice. She felt familiar small prickly movements in whatever part of the brain was responsible for manufacturing tears. She thought, I can't. I'm nearly twenty-eight years old.
'Look…' Knowing her voice was all over the place. 'Are you going to call an ambulance? Or let me call one?'
He looked at her, his severely handsome face almost sorrowful. He looked her up and down, from the messed-up hair to the fraying shawl to the moon-patterned skirt of washed out blue from the Oxfam shop.
'Yes I know,' she said. 'I know you won't have it done from here. I know that so far there's absolutely nothing to connect you or even Rankin with a… a hippy in a field. But why – please – why can't you let me at least go to a telephone box?'
His face darkened. 'Because…' His body flexed then straightened like a broken twelve bore clacking into place. 'I won't have you wandering around the town like a streetwalker. Because Rankin tells me the injuries were superficial, nothing such an individual wouldn't get in a pub brawl. And because…'
He came close enough to her to smell the Scotch on his breath and see the small veins in his checks like the veins in marble or the palest Roquefort.
'Because, my dear, hippies and gypsies are like dogs. Give one a good kicking and it'll simply limp off into the undergrowth until it's recovered.'
Diane shook her head in disbelief.
'So let's be realistic, shall we?'
He turned away. Never had liked to look at her for long. Something she'd always remembered, the cursory inspection, as if she was livestock off to market. Well, naturally he'd had more time for his son, that was the way of things, that was the system.