Verity flinched.
'This,' softly now, 'brings us to the oldest misconception of them all. One so endemic in our society that the modern world seeks to cancel the dark. Throughout history, societies have run towards the light because the light is easy. It makes no demands upon us. See, what you have nowadays, people go for south-facing houses, right? They go for plate-glass walls, French-doors, conservatories – they got to open everything to as much light as they can get. Because light makes no demands.'
Verity felt people around her nodding agreement.
'OK, let's deal with evil. The word "evil" is a terse, blanket condemnation of anything it does not suit us to understand. We know that it is essential for the development of the soul to undergo periods of hardship and so-called negativity. We talk of the soul travelling out of the darkness and into the light. Therefore, the darkness must be "evil". To that I say… bullshit!'
Verity thought of what she'd said to Major Shepherd about the presence of Abbot Whiting exuding evil. Because the lights had gone out? Was that really all it was?
'Let us consider darkness,' said Dr Grainger, 'as a sentient being. As something sensitive and vulnerable. In the States, our cities are so damn bright at night now, you can no longer see the stars. Plus we have high-powered security lamps on our houses, we blast through the night with our headlamps. Instead of melding with the dark, we brutalise it.'
As he said this, he snapped his fingers and the house lights came on for a blazing instant before going out again, and Grainger shouted, 'What do you see? Tell me what you see now. Come on, tell me what you see!'
'Big yellow spots,' a man called out.
'Alarming purple circular things,' described Dame Wanda, 'with a sort of spongy core.'
'OK, OK,' Pel Grainger said. 'You've all seen them before, just you didn't know what you were seeing. Well now, I'm gonna tell you. What happened was we blasted the dark with brutal, artificial light, and what you saw, maybe are still seeing are the bruises. Now, you want me to do that again, you want me to hit the darkness one more time?'
'No way, man.' someone behind Verity said nervously, as if Dr Grainger had threatened to hit a child.
'Any of you? Anybody want the light back? Anybody feel happier with a little illumination around here?'
Silence.
'Good,' said Dr Pel Grainger. 'I congratulate you all. You have reached what I term First stage Tenebral Symbiosis. Now we can begin.
Verity sat with her fingers linked on her knees and felt some trepidation.
When I awoke in my room at the George and Pilgrims, sunlight had turned the stained glass in my window into a nest of gems and I felt at once a different person. It was the first time since before the War that I had slept the night through and awoken after sunrise. Or, if it was not the first time, then it certainly felt like it. This was my rebirth. That morning I walked through the Abbey ruins, at first appalled at what little remained and then overcome with a sudden humility and a desire… to worship.
This was something I had never before experienced; indeed I realised then that I had never really understood the meaning of 'worship'. Before I knew it, I had fallen to my knees, something I had not been able to do since leaving hospital, without the most excruciating pain. This time I felt no pain at all, only a growing sense of wonder. I do not know how long I knelt there in the wet winter grass, gazing up through the noble arch of the Western Doorway, Even today it is still possible, in Glastonbury, to kneel alone and undisturbed in a wide open public place, although I should not care to predict how long this state of affairs will remain before the worshipper is derided or even attacked and robbed. But it seemed to me then, and sometimesstill does, that these serene ruins enclose a level of holiness unexperienced in most of our great surviving cathedrals. And something else: a sadness, which I perceived then as sweet melancholy but now, it pains me to record, seems closer to a bitter despair. But I was full of an extraordinary optimism as, later that morning, I made my way to the Chalice Well, where the Blood Spring flows and the Arimathean was said to have laid down the Grail. There to meet my Teacher and another person: the highly controversial writer and mystic Mr John Cowper Powys.
Mr Powys, it must be said, was not the most popular man in this town at this time, due to the publication before the War of his extremely lengthy novel A Glastonbury Romance.
It is a powerfully volatile tome which had left me with very much mixed feelings. Although its central inspiration is the Holy Grail, the Glastonbury it portrays is far from a sacred haven. Indeed it emerges as a divided community full of 'misfits'. One leading character is an extremely aggressive entrepreneur and there is a young man whose spiritual leanings are challenged by a pretty extreme case of sexual frustration. There is also an unpleasant Welsh pervert of the masochistic type whose peccadilloes are said to have been derived from aspects of Mr Powys's own psychology. And so the thought of an encounter with this depraved and opinionated windbag would normally have completely taken the shine off the day. However…
Diane looked up from Pixhill's diary in alarm. Someone was banging on the shop door.
Don't open the door for anyone, Juanita had warned, cream Range Rover or otherwise. Did she really mean that? Juanita had been a little strange, not only more cynical but seemingly less secure. Rather disturbing; she'd always been such… well, such a lovely free spirit, really.
Diane rose hesitantly. It was true that Glastonbury was not as safe as it used to be. Apparently, there'd been a couple of muggings in the past year, while she was away, and a sexual assault, and as for burglaries…
She opened the door to the shop just a crack. Through the shop window she could see… Oh gosh. A sort of floating thing in white.
'Oh, Diana!' she heard. 'Don't be tedious. I know you're there.'
Oh no. It was that woman, the artist. Domini Something-Thing.
'Come on, do open the door. I need your help.'
Diane, sighing, went through into the darkened shop. Hadn't she told the woman she was busy tonight? Cautiously, she unlocked the door.
'Oh, Diana, really,' Domini said as though they were old friends. 'It's only me.'
She stepped lightly over the threshold. She was wearing a long, white dress, rather flimsy, a dress for a summer night but she didn't seem at all cold. Too animated. There was a gold coloured girdle loosely around her waist, a tore of brass around her neck. She looked… like a goddess.
'It's Diane,' Diane said. 'Not Diana. Look, I'm terribly sorry…'
'Oh,' said Domini. 'You should call yourself Diana, it's more resonant. Diana the huntress.'
'I've never been much of a huntress,' said Diane.
'No. I suppose you haven't.' Domini looked at her with a tilted smile. 'You must be quite strong, though. Hold these, would you?' She reached down behind her to the pavement and came up with a cardboard wine box. 'Be careful, it's rather heavy.'
'Wine?' Diane was bemused, her head still full of the Pixhill diaries.
'Lord, no. Follow me.'
Domini glided diagonally across High Street, paying no heed to a motorcyclist who roared through her path. Behaving as though she was made of air and light and the bike would have passed straight through her.
Diane lumbered behind, clutching the cardboard box to her chest. People had always treated her like a servant. Even servants; her father's staff were always making her fetch mops and garden tools and things.
'Stay precisely there.' Domini had stopped outside her shop. Holy Thorn Ceramics. The window was in darkness.
Domini went into the shop and returned with another cardboard wine box.
Diane stared around, blinking; this was like a silly dream. The buildings, the familiar mixture of old and older, glistened and glittered in a Christmas card sort of way, although the night was far too mild for frost. The street was curiously deserted.