'OK, you can put it down now.' Domini dumped her own box on the flagstones and danced back from it as though it was dirty or radioactive or something. A wobbling clatter of crockery echoed in the silence.
Domini dipped delicately into the box and extracted a white disc, holding it up towards a street light like a conjuror demonstrating to the audience.
It was a plate, gold-rimmed with a stained-glass-style painting in the middle, of a bearded man below a towerless Tor with a barefoot boy.
'That's rather charming.' Diane said.
'Think so, do you?' A white sleeve dropped to the shoulder as Domini's arm came back, and she tossed the plate into the night like a Frisbee.
'My God, what are you…?'
The plate spun in the air for about twenty yards, flashing in the streetlight, before smashing into coloured shards in the road. Domini let out a shrill whoop and shook her golden hair.
'Can you feel it, Diana? Can you feel the vibrations, the energy around us?'
She took out a second plate. The picture in the middle showed a table bearing a golden cup with a shimmering aureole around it. Domini's arm came back again.
'No!' Diane yelled. 'Please…'
Domini lowered her arm and looked at her 'You're right. I'll wait for a car. Or, better still, a heavy lorry.'
'Why are you doing this? Didn't they turn out well or something?'
Domini laughed, a drunk's laugh, but there was no aura of alcohol about her.
'Old stock, Diana. As of tonight. Obsolete. The shop's changing. Holy Thorn Ceramics – that was his idea, too. I know why now, I know the truth about the Thorn. Holy Mother, can't you feel it yet?'
'Yes.' And she could. The night was as sharp as one of the shards of pottery. Everything was hard and clear. There was no wind. The air seemed to fizz.
Domini spread out her arms like a bird feeling the currents. Diane didn't like it. She didn't like the feel of Glastonbury since she'd returned – the unseasonal mildness, summer blight in November, It was as if the weather had been tampered with, the conditions altered for some purpose.
'Look. Don't do this… Domini. You'll regret it tomorrow, I know you will.'
'Tomorrow? Darling, I spit on tomorrow. OK, look, if you don't want me to smash them, help me display them. Will you do that, Diana?'
Domini began to take plates out of the box, like a child unpacking toys. She laid each one face up on the pavement in a line, edging down the hill, dragging the cardboard box behind her.
'Well, what are you waiting for? Take the other box. Come on, Diana.'
'They'll get trodden on.'
'Maybe. But if you don't help me I'll tread on them all now.'
'This is mad.'
'Sanest thing I've ever done. Go on, the bending will do you good. You're too fat. What's the matter with you? Don't you walk anywhere? Don't you ever have sex?'
She's out of control. Oh gosh. Humour her. Then get away.
Diane carefully took a plate out of the box. It showed the bearded man looking up at Christ on the cross.
'Can you believe it?' Domini said. 'I actually painted this shit.'
'I don't understand.'
'Christianity's a brash, male religion which insults women. If we accept, as I assume we all do, that the so-called Holy Grail is simply an unsubtle Christianisation of the Celtic chalice, the sacred cauldron of our ancient wisdom… We do assume that, don't we, Diana?'
'Well…'
'In which case, tell me this.' Domini faced her, hands on hips. 'Where does the Bible mention the Grail? Even the Christian propagandists can't seem to agree whether it was some cup from the mythical Last Supper or whether it was the vessel which caught the blood dripping from the cross.'
'Or both.'
'Or neither. It's a myth. It's smoke. The so-called Grail Quest is a clear cut male-domination trip, an attempt by armed men to steal Woman's cauldron of wisdom and rape her in the process. Just like the raising of the Abbey, with its great phallic towers – no, listen! – by a male-oriented Roman religion on a spot which just happened to be the holy vagina of the supine Goddess.'
'Oh, really!' Diane had heard all this before.
'No, come on, think about this… The Holy Thorn story, OK? Central character: one Joseph of Arimathea, wealthy merchant, international wheeler-dealer.'
'I think it's a rather lovely story, actually,' Diane said staunchly. 'The old tin trader, who brought Jesus to Avalon as a boy, making that last journey back with the holy cup. It's really… resonant. When I'm on Wearyall Hill sometimes I can imagine it all as an island again and old Joseph being helped ashore, a bit unsteady, staggering up the hill with the help of his staff and then, when he can go no further…'
'You really are a big schoolgirl aren't you?' Domini pulled out her cheeks as if she was going to throw up with contempt. 'Isn't it obvious? Sticking his staff into the ground… pulling out his… staff… and he pushes it into a sacred landscape formed into the contours of the body of the Goddess. This man Joseph symbolically fucks the Goddess…'
'No!' Diane was appalled. 'How can you…?'
'And his seed, Diana… his foul seed germinates into a misshapen, stunted tree full of vicious thorns. A tree which flowers in the dead of winter against…'
'Oh now, look…'
'Against all the laws of nature! That's the sick truth behind your pretty little legend. And that's why I could no longer bear to be fronting a business called Holy Thorn Ceramics alongside an idiot who thinks it's all sooooo romantic.'
Domini snatched the plate from Diane's hands, laid it carefully on a flagstone.
'If that's your idea of art you must be stupider than you look.'
Domini jumped on the plate with both feet. A middle-aged man and a woman holding hands, the first sign of normal life since this episode began, crossed the street to avoid them. 'Excuse me…' Diane shouted, but they ignored her and only walked faster.
'Don't be such a wimp.' Domini took two plates and clapped them together in the air like cymbals. Her brittle laughter exploded with the pottery.
FIVE
SWASTIKA CLUE… The evening paper was on the table next to Juanita's wineglass, folded through the headline.
Juanita had drunk three glasses of house white and hardly noticed them go down. Jim was chuntering on about preserving the mystery.
The paper had revealed another mystery. The police were investigating it. Juanita wished to God Tony Dorrell-Adams would drink up and go so she could discuss this development with Jim, decide what they were going to do. But Tony just slumped in his chair; whatever he'd been telling Jim earlier, he wasn't going to talk about it with Juanita around.
'It's like the Holy Grail,' Jim said. 'If somebody dug up an ancient cup under the Chalice Well and it was proved to be the actual Grail the whole thing would be diminished, reduced to another sterile antique in a glass case. There'd be no buggering mystery.'
'Bullshit, sir,' roared a voice from behind. 'The discovery of that Holy Grail would be the best thing as could happen to this town.'
Oh hell. Griff Daniel. Juanita looked up, throwing a defensive arm over the paper. Just what they could do without.
And a reborn Griff Daniel, it seemed. The last time she'd seen him he'd been grim-faced, his grey and white beard bedraggled, his eyes full of sour suspicion. Looking, in fact, exactly like a bent builder who'd lost his seat on the council to a hippy. Now, grinning savagely through a freshly trimmed beard, he'd virtually erupted at their table.
'Now you just imagine. Mr Battle, if we had that bloody Grail banged up in a glass case. No more weirdos with dowsing sticks claimin' they knew where it was buried. No more lunatics having visions of the thing and sayin' they'd been singled out by the Lord. No more bloody speculation. No more room for dreamers and nutcases. Think what that would do for this town.'