The Chalice

'Make it exceedingly bloody boring,' said Jim.

'Ah.' Griff accepted a pint of Guinness from the barman and paid. 'Now that's where we differ, Mr Battle. You look like a regular sort with a decent haircut, but behind it all you're still an immigrant. One o' them.'

'Listen, buster,' Jim said mildly, 'I'll have you know I'm not one of them or one of you either. There are a few buggering individuals left.'

'In this town, Mr Battle, there's only two sides: locals and hippies. Even if some of 'em does wear jackets and tweed hats and is old enough to know better.'

Juanita saw Jim tense at the mention of his hat.

'What gets me, look…' Griff burrowed into his pint and emerged with froth spiked in his beard like cotton buds, '… is they d' think they got somethin' to show us 'bout how to live our lives. By God, I wouldn't live like that if it…'

'They think', Jim said, 'that if they're living here, something will help them to become better people. That it's easier to be a better person here because of a spiritual atmosphere to which you appear to be oblivious.'

'Spiritual!' Griff's tankard connected derisively with a beer-mat. 'Bullshit, mister. You tellin' me we didn't have our abbey and our bit of tourism 'fore they come flooding the town with their cranky fads?'

'That's not what I'm saying at all, and you…'

'And didn't we used to have a proper town centre back then, with real shops sellin' stuff ordinary fold wanted to buy? And wasn't our property prices on a par with Somerton and Castle Carey if not better? And did people laugh at us in them days? No, mister, they did not.'

'What days?' said Jim irritably. 'There's always been an alternative community in Glastonbury. If you go back to the twenties and thirties – Dion Fortune at Chalice Orchard. And then Cowper Powys wrote that enormous novel…'

'Gah,' said Griff. 'Filthy bastard. Bloody ole pervert. Never showed his face here after that come out, 'cordin' to my old dad.' He finished his Guinness with a flourish. 'But I'll tell you what's behind all this, mister. That bloody hill. Brings out the hippies with their weird ceremonies and such. Pull 'em in like a kiddies' playground. Take that thing away and what you got is an ordinary, decent country town with a ruined abbey.'

'But you can't take it away,' Jim said patiently. 'You're stuck with it.'

'No you can't, that's true.' A gleam arrived in Griff's foxy eyes and a little smile crawled out of his beard. 'But you can keep them away. You can make that nasty little hill into as near as dammit a no-go area. If you goes about it right.'

'Got a plan, have we, Mr Daniel?'

'Ah, well. You could say that. You could indeed.' Griff Daniel stood up, looking smugly secretive. 'Glastonbury first, Mr Battle. Glastonbury First!'

'I'm sorry.' Tony Dorrell-Adams rose unsteadily to his feet 'I didn't come here to listen to an argument.' He pushed past Griff towards the door. 'Not what this town should be about.'

'Who the hell's he to know what the bloody town should be about?' Griff dropped into Tony's seat.

'Just a dreamer,' Jim said sadly. 'Just a nutcase.'

'Aye, well,' said Griff, 'I got to say I'd hoped for better from you, Mr Battle. I knows you're a bit of an artist an' that, but… You're very quiet tonight, Mrs Carey.'

'And you', she said, 'are looking unusually buoyant, Mr Daniel.' He'd once made a pass at her when she and Danny had ventured down to the Rifleman's Arms and had a row and Danny had walked out. Griff evidently assuming, prior to getting his face slapped, that ex-hippies had few morals and no taste.

'I'll say this, lady.' Griff wagged a bloated forefinger. 'I'll say this an' no more. There's a change on its way. An' when it comes we're gonner have 'em out. Every phoney healer. Every fortune telling charlatan. Every last dinky cult-follower. Run out of town, with their bloody jazz sticks up their arses. So them that's old enough to know better maybe oughter be thinkin' which side you're really on. 'Cause from now on, my friends, it's gonner be Glastonbury First.'

He beamed at them, smugly.

'It's, erm, joss sticks,' Jim said.

'What?'

'You said "jazz sticks".'

'Gah!' Griff Daniel pushed back his chair and slouched off in search of more malleable company. After a few moments he turned on his heel, raised a hand to the barman and went out.

'Oh my Gods'. It's him. He's coming. Quick! Mustn't let him see us. Where can we go?'

'Into the bookshop.' Diane pulled out her keys, seizing the opportunity to get the crazy woman off the street.

Inside, she steered Domini into the back parlour and flung a log into the stove.

'Energy.' Domini pulled at her hair. 'I had to use the energy. The spore's in the air. Now or never, Diana.'

She'd left a trail of coloured plates perhaps a hundred yards long from The George and Pilgrims to the door of Holy Thorn Ceramics. Except it wasn't Holy Thorn Ceramics any more. Domini had gone into the shop and switched on the lights in the window.

The lights were purple now. They spotlit a crudely repellent squatting earthenware woman with a hole between her legs the size of a chimney pot. Around her lumpen head with its jagged grin was a wreath of brambles.

'No more Holy Thorn!' Domini had screeched. The Goddess lives here now. The Goddess lives!'

'Tea, I think,' Diane said.

'No wine?'

'The last thing you need is wine.'

She'd half expected Domini would suddenly collapse into tears, shattered by the realisation of what she'd done while carried away on this dangerous overflow of energy.

But the golden woman had slipped gracefully into the rocking chair, crossing her legs, the diaphanous white dress gliding back along her thighs.

Diane put the kettle on. 'This is really ever so silly, you know. It's not incompatible at all.'

'That's what I thought at first,' Domini said. 'I became aware of the need for a religion, and this was the only really English one. I mean, all that stuff about Israel – the Holy Land. Well it never seemed very holy to me, all these Jews and Arabs killing each other. This was my holy land. England. I mean, why not?'

She stretched her neck, leaned her golden head into the spindly back of the rocking chair. At least some of the hyper-urgency had gone out of her. She was like a racehorse steaming in the winners' enclosure.

'That hymn, I suppose, turned me on to it, when I was at school. And did those feet in ancient times…? All those lovely lines, the bow of burning gold… Wonderful. Until you get to the last bit.'

'"Till we have built Jerusalem…"'

'Exactly. If you've got a green and pleasant land why deface it with a filthy warren full of Arab muggers? Anyway, our religion's so much older than theirs. They'd heard about this legendary holy island in the West with the power to transform people's lives, a place where you could walk with the spirits, and they wanted a piece of the action. Simple as that.'

A ragged voice came from the street.

'Where are you, you heartless, evil bitch?'

'Ah.' Domini didn't move. 'Tony seems to have found one of his plates.'

There was a ringing silence. Then a long wail of pure, cold anguish from the street. As if the man out there had suddenly taken a knife deep into his stomach.

And then a window shattered.

'Something afoot,' Jim said. 'Something involving Daniel and Archer Ffitch. You hear what he said? Glastonbury First. You see, that's Archer's new slogan. It's all in here…'

He fumbled at the paper. Totally ignoring the swastika story, Juanita noticed.

'Can Archer Ffitch afford to lose that much credibility?' she wondered.

'Don't underrate that man.'

'Which of them do you mean?' Juanita got up. 'Same again?'

'Either. Both. Stay there, sit down, I'll get them. I owe you more than a few drinks.'