'Mobile phone,' Jim said. 'I think you've hit the right nerve.'
'Let's hope so.'
'But you haven't made a friend.'
'Who wants friends like that?'
'Equally,' Jim Battle said, 'who wants an enemy like that?'
It was almost midnight when the Volvo turned into Chilkwell Street.
'I'm sorry.' Diane was wiping her eyes. 'I'm really, really sorry. They're probably right. I mean, you never know it yourself, do you? Nobody thinks they're insane.'
'Shut up,' Juanita said.
Jim Battle sat behind them, hunched inside his muddied overcoat. Juanita thought she should take him home without delay to his cottage and his canvases. Turps and linseed oil acted on Jim like smelling salts. She probably wouldn't see him for several days. He had a lot to paint out of his system.
With Diane, it had been surprisingly easy. Rankin had come off the phone and they'd waited in silence until a familiar plump figure had appeared on the drive. Juanita and Rankin had not looked at each other as Diane had come slowly towards the gate. With the security light and everything, it was rather like one of those Cold War movies, Soviet and Western spies being exchanged at Checkpoint Charlie. And then the recognition and the tears, and a final glance between Juanita and Rankin confirming that none of this had happened.
Juanita thought, The longest night of my entire life and none of it happened.
Diane was saying, 'It's just that – I'm sorry – I've just got to know that Headlice is OK. If we could just perhaps go past the camp…'
She obviously meant the boy they'd had up against the tower, who Jim had sort of rescued.
'Forget it, Diane. They'll all be back by now. I'm not going into that field tonight, not after…'
She heard the breath go into Jim, who'd insisted that even Diane shouldn't be told they'd been on the Tor tonight.
'… I mean, after what happened to this guy, they're probably blaming you. Anyway, if he's been badly hurt, what can you do about it?'
She was in no mood, anyway, to trust Diane's assessment of the situation. This was the Diane who'd told her on the phone yesterday that the bloody- travellers were frightfully nice people, once you not to know them. Jesus.
'We're taking Jim home, OK? Then we're going back to my place.'
Diane said, 'It's just that I'm sort of scared for him, anyway. There was some sort of frightful ritual on the Tor. I mean with hallucinatory drugs and things. I think they were using him in some way to… I don't know. He'd been sick. What I mean is, he was already in a bit of a state before the Rankins attacked him.'
'Shit,' Juanita said.
'Juanita…' Warning rumble from Jim.
'He might look like a hard case,' Diane said, 'with the swastika on his head and everything. But he's really quite, you know, naive and vulnerable.'
The lights of Glastonbury ahead. Also the turning to Wellhouse Lane. And to Don Moulder's bottom field.
'Fuck it,' Juanita said and spun the wheel.
At first she thought she really must be hallucinating when, at the entrance to the bottom field, the Volvo's headlights found Don Moulder himself with a big stick and a heavy-duty hand-lamp.
Moulder was wearing a bulky sheepskin jacket. Pyjamas showed in the gap between the jacket and his Wellingtons.
He was shining the lamp across the field.
Juanita pulled into the side of the lane, just short of the ditch. 'Stay,' she said sternly to Diane.
When she got out, feeling quite unsteady, Moulder had his back to the hedge and his stick clutched under his arm, pointing down.
'Don't you be coming near me, I got a twelve bore.'
'What's it fire, acorns? Calm down, Don, it's Juanita Carey.'
Don Moulder relaxed. 'Don't waste no bloody time, do you, Mrs Carey? Well, I'm telling you now, lady, 'twas their own decision. Can't say's I'm sorry, mind, but a deal was struck and that's that, s'far as I'm concerned. That don't entitle you nor Miss Diane to no money back is all I'm sayin'. They coulder had the full rime. Man of my word, always have been.'
He marched over to the five-bar gate and shone his lamp triumphantly into the bottom field.
'I don't understand,' Juanita said. 'Diane, no!'
Diane had rumbled from the car and pushed past them through the gate.
'What's to understand?' Don Moulder said.
As far as the beam would go, the field was conspicuously empty. No buses, no ambulances, not even debris, just a single white van with pink spots.
Diane stood in front of the van, looking helplessly from side to side.
'They're off my land and good bloody riddance,' Don Moulder said. 'Just like they was never 'ere at all, look. Thought at least I'd 'ave some shit to clean up.'
'Headlice?' Diane cried out. 'It's me. It's Molly.'
Her voice faded into the empty night.
'I don't understand this,' Juanita said. 'Where have they gone?'
'Thin air, Mrs Carey.' Don Moulder cackled. 'Just like one o' them bloody UFOs, look.'
FOURTEEN
Glastonbury Prop. Juanita Carey 14 November
… I had to write about this, Danny, put it all down, tell someone, even though I'm never going to send this one. I can't. Promised Jim. Couldn't even tell Diane what happened on the Tor or even that we were there last night. Although there's a lot she's told me in the house between one a.m. and dawn, most of it stuff I really didn't want to hear. It's seven-thirty a. m I haven't been to bed. You don't even want to imagine what I look like. Diane's taken a cup of chocolate (couldn't supply hot carob) to the spare room, with instructions not to emerge until lunchtime. And…oh, yes, the morning paper just came, Western Daily Press. With, at the bottom of page one, the item of news that explained everything Apparently, the Conservative Party last night chose the man it wants to replace our MP, Sir Laurence Bowkett, who has announced he won't be fighting another General Election due to his advancing arthritis.
The new prospective parliamentary candidate for Mendip South is one Archer Ffitch, son and heir of prominent Glastonbury landowner, the Viscount Pennard.
Get it? There's Archer smarming his way through a selection meeting while his wayward sister is camped on the outskirts of with a bunch of travelling vagrants living off the state and worshipping heathen gods. Well, imagine if the Press gets of this! So Lord P sends Rankin and son off to Don Moulder's field – Moulder having presumably tipped him off
– to remove the troublesome child by night, as discreetly as possible. OK, so one of the vagrants gets beaten up in the process. Big deal. Hardly going to report the assault to the police, are they? And even if they did, it's one of the accepted hazards of the travelling life, getting punched around by local vigilantes, etc.
Of course, I could report it myself, respectable High Street businessperson… 'Well, no, officer, I didn't personally witness the assault on the poor traveller by Lord Pennard's man, but I have it on the very highest authority… The Hon. Diane Ffitch, actually. You know, the one they call Lady Loony.' Added to which, I could hardly reveal how I found out about Diane without telling the whole story. And obviously, after what happened – I may have nightmares about it for years to come – I'm not what you might call terribly well-disposed towards these particular New Age gypsies, anyway.
Keep shtumm, then. Say nothing to nobody. Try and forget it. That's the answer. Always benefit from talking things over with you, Danny. Actually, that's the easiest problem to sort out. The big one is tucked up in the spare bedroom, dreaming of past lives.
When we got in I lit the woodstove. I didn't need one, especially at that time of night, but you can't talk meaningfully in front of an empty grate, and I really wanted to know why. What was the silly little cow DOING with people like that? I'm no wiser. What I got was Diane at her most infuriatingly fey. I heard about dreams and visions and portents (including a vinegar shaker in a fish and chip shop which magically resolved itself into a little Glastonbury Tor).