'Darling,' said Wanda, 'I have absolutely no idea of Dr Grainger's spiritual orientation. But if he can help you to survive in that hellhole, does it really matter? Oh Verity!'
Wanda, who had taken to wearing white, priestess robes about the house suddenly surged towards Verity amid a billow of sleeves.
'I do feel – don't you? – that we are at the beginning of something quite, quite momentous.'
In Wanda's world, it seemed to Verity, nothing which was less than absolutely momentous was worth getting involved in at all. She smiled half-heartedly and gathered her bulky tapestry bag into her arms.
'Eight o'clock, then,' Wanda decreed. 'There's an Inner Circle meeting of The Cauldron downstairs tonight, and I would prefer to leave before they arrive, otherwise I shall just be striding about as usual, longing to know what they're doing down there.'
'It must be frustrating, I know,' Verity said. Ceridwen had insisted that it be at least three years before an initiate was exposed to a high degree of what she called 'live energy'.
'Very well,' she said. 'Eight p.m.'
'Darling, I truly believe it will change your life,' said Wanda.
TWO
'The Avalonian? What is that exactly?'
'God, Diane, you make me feel so old.'
Juanita came to sit in the rocking chair, a glass of white wine in hand, a battered boxfile on her knees.
'The Avalonian is the magazine Danny Frayne and I started in about 1973. I suppose your reading wouldn't have been much beyond Noddy and Big Ears in 1973.'
'I think Thomas the Tank Engine.'
Juanita raised her eyes to the parlour's cracked ceiling. Newly bathed, without make-up, Diane looked all of sixteen. She was perched on a stool, still wearing the faded skirt with the moons on it, washed again and even more faded. She was sipping hot chocolate from a mug, both hands around it.
The shop was closed. The shadows had consumed High Street, Juanita was limp from the reflexologist, Sarah, who had detected from her feet that her diaphragm was tight and her life-force, in general, needed topping up. Juanita wasn't sure her life-force had been replenished, but she did feel more relaxed.
And she had come up with a diverting idea for the Hon. Diane Ffitch. Who couldn't, after all, be a humble shop assistant for the rest of her life, paid a pittance and living out of the shop owner's spare bedroom.
'Oh, this sort of floaty blonde woman came in.'
'Hmmm?' Juanita had opened the boxfile and was rummaging through its contents. 'I should have the very last issue in here.'
'Very self-possessed, but quite batty. Domini something.'
'Oh, right. Dorrell-Adams. She and her husband run that pot shop across the street. Keep mauling each other in the shop window.' Juanita made a face, 'I tend to find that sort of thing quite embarrassing now.'
She scowled at herself. Miserable old hag. That it should come to this. She took out a magazine, A4-size, printed on thick paper browning with age. When she held it up, the paper felt dry and brittle.
The cover, dated August 1976, featured a pen-and ink drawing of a mane haired woman in see through robes and a headdress of bound twigs. Both arms were uplifted, along with her nipples, towards a sunrise behind the Tor. It made Juanita, who'd posed for the drawing, instantly depressed.
In retrospect, the list of contents didn't inspire her much either:
WELLS CATHEDRAL – Its ancient secrets unveiled
CRYSTAL MAGIC – Getting started on a budget
WICCA – Which witch-way is your way?
Diane put her mug on the hearth and looked at the magazine. 'Not a lot's really changed in two decades, has it?'
'You're kidding.' Juanita thought sadly of her own body. Everything now – autumn leaves, secondhand books with loose pages – seemed to make her think sadly of her body. And her lower lip still hurt.
'Consider,' she said. 'There was no animal rights movement. Words like "shamanism" weren't in general usage. And if there were any gay and lesbian pagan groups locally they didn't do a lot of advertising. Not in The Avalonian anyway.'
'Juanita,' Diane said. 'Tell me about The Cauldron.'
'Not gay. Not even mildly happy. Avoid them.' Juanita wiped the air. 'Ceridwen. Awful woman. Oppressive.'
'I talked to her once, must be ten years ago. About Dion Fortune. 'I wanted to know, you see.'
'If you were the reincarnation, having the same initials and everything.' Juanita sighed. 'And what did she tell you?'
'She was very pleasant actually.'
'I bet she was.'
'But she said there were an awful lot of people who'd like to think they were the reincarnation of the most powerful magician of this century. I remember her standard charge was twenty pounds, which I'd saved up from my Saturday wages.'
'You gave the money I paid you to that…?'
'Actually, she gave me ten back. She said 'I wasn't ready.'
'For what?'
'To know one way or the other.'
'Really Diane, you were an awfully naive kid, weren't you?'
Diane said, 'It must have been frightfully exciting in Dion's time. In the twenties, 'I mean. They felt they were on the brink of something miraculous – finding the Holy Grail or something. A bit like you and all your friends in the sixties and seventies. Seems to go in cycles, doesn't it?'
'Diane,' Juanita said heavily. 'I doubt there's ever been a time when some people in Glastonbury didn't think they were on the brink of something miraculous. That's the trick of it.'
'Trick?'
'This town. It plugs itself into your adrenal glands. Over the rainbow stuff.'
'Isn't that good?'
'Not', said Juanita, 'if there's nothing at the end of the rainbow but a crock of shit. Listen. The fact that yon didn't remember The Avalonian is actually quite encouraging. Means that lots of other people won't either. So if it was relaunched… as a different sort of magazine, not just aimed at the New Age community. See what I'm getting at?'
Juanita got up and opened the door to the darkened shop, whose blind not yet down so that they could see the street through the shop window.
'It's not exactly a healthy, rounded community out there.'
A twenty something couple drifted past the shop, hand in hand. Both partners were male, one had dreadlocks, the other wore short hair and a sports jacket.
'Gay pagans?' said Diane.
'Well, they're not locals are they? How many real locals do you see this end of town at night?'
'There's me.'
'I meant ordinary locals. Sorry, but you're not. Not in any respect.'
Juanita closed the door.
'I bet this town's never been as divided as it is now. 'The locals don't want the New Agers, and the New Agers think they're the people who're going to inherit the holyest erthe, and it doesn't matter a damn what the locals think. They've stopped even trying to understand each other.'
'Admittedly, there aren't many locals who wouldn't swap all these little shops for a branch of Marks and Spencer.'
Diane put down her cup to unwrap a peppermint carob bar. She'd drink hot chocolate but eat only carob. Contrary was not the word.
'Let's face it, Diane, they'd swap us for a McDonald's.'
'Not me. I wouldn't. But then, they all think I'm bonkers. It's OK.' She bit into the carob bar. 'One gets used to it.'
Juanita wanted to snatch the carob out of her podgy hand and bang her head on the wall. How dare she get used to it?
'Listen, there has to be a glimmer of light in all this. Think about Woolly. He's an old hippy, but he's local and people trust him enough to put him on the council. That's got to be a small step towards integration.'
'It's probably just an indication'. Diane said morosely, 'of how many people are living in leaky houses built by Griff Daniel.'
'Don't go cynical on me, Diane, it's not your style.'