No wonder Griff Daniel had looked so happy.
Woolly shook his head in sorrow. 'We had this whole range planned. My knowledge, Tony's artwork. Good team, eh? I work out the concept, he makes 'em, she dumps 'em in the street, he smashes 'em. Gotter be a philosophical message there somewhere.'
'The message', said Juanita, 'is Glastonbury buggers you up.'
'Pixhill,' Woolly said. 'Don't you go quoting Pixhill at me, Juanita. You'll have me all paranoid again.'
'How do you mean?' Juanita asked, but Woolly had spotted Tony.
'What's he done to himself?'
'Cut his hand on a shard of pot. That – what's -his-name, Matthew, the herbalist guy – is sedating him the Natural way and anointing his wound with cowslip syrup or something.'
'This is a real downer,' said Woolly, the only living local councillor to specialise in understatement. A downer. Christ, it showed how basically rickety the whole community-structure was.
If Tony Dorrell-Adams, a steady, middle-class, terribly boring ex-teacher from the Home Counties, could behave like this, what did it say about some of the others?
She wondered where Jim was, turned to look for him.
It was strange: just turning around, just moving made her want to go on moving. There was something… a tingle in the air, an underlying vibration that was horribly exhilarating. The Shockwaves had broken the Blight. People's bodies were flexing as they moved about, the way they might emerging into a bright spring morning.
Something not at all right about this.
A single, undamaged plate with a glowing cup glazed upon it, rolled, as if from nowhere, on end down the pavement and fell flat at Juanita's feet. It seemed awesomely symbolic, like the most innocuous things did when you were on acid.
There was a moment of charged-up silence, the plate wobbling on the flagstones. Juanita had time to think. This is Glastonbury, buggering us up…
… before it all began again.
She heard someone shout, 'Hold him!' as Tony Dorrell-Adams struggled to his feet, scattering the herbalist's bottled preparations and screaming,
'Biiiiiiitch!'
The scream seemed to splatter the white walls above the shops opposite like a gob of spit, and Georgian windows rattled with its agony. The air was alive, fizzing like soda. The streetlamps were flickering, one crackling – as though Tony's scream had hit an electrical current and caused a short circuit or something.
Tony sank to his knees, sobs coming out of him like ghastly, amplified hiccups. 'I want to die… Just want to kill that bitch and die.'
Poor old Tony. One night he's humping his wife in the shop window, like this was Hamburg or Amsterdam, and the next… well, this was how domestic murders happened, one of the classic scenarios; you mock a man's prowess, his skills, it's like trampling his balls.
Juanita's tongue found the swelling on her lower lip, where the pilgrim had punched her and it all muscled in on her, everything that had happened in the past twenty four hours: small events in the great scheme of things – petty violence and humiliation and the unexplained death of a social reject Diane called Headlice.
Diane…
Where the hell was Diane? Who should have been padding around this bizarre streetscape, wide eyed and worried and exuding that doe-like innocence.
'Oh my God…' On a night like this, she'd forgotten about Diane. Snatching out her key, Juanita ran for the door of Carey and Frayne.
'Do it,' Wanda Carlisle urged. 'You won't get another opportunity like this.'
'I can't,' said Verity, 'I really can't.'
'He can help you.'
'It isn't my place to seek help.'
'You really are a martyr.' Wanda swept her black and white chequered cape stiffly across her shoulder. 'And you know what happens to them.'
The hall had nearly emptied Only half the usual lights were on but it seemed to Verity that most people would have been happy to grope their way out in complete darkness. They had discovered an exciting new environment. Within it, they had meditated, they had touched each other's features the way blind people did, reinventing themselves and their partners by discovering what Dr Pel Grainger had identified as their 'shadow selves'. There had been some very effective visualisation exercises and it seemed that everyone's world-view had, for tonight at least, been subtly altered.
Verity had been aware, at one stage, of someone coming in and muttering about some problem on the street, and one person – she thought it was Councillor Woolaston – had left quietly. But the interruption had been soon forgotten as Dr Grainger's audience moved towards First-stage Tenebral Symbiosis.
Now Dr Grainger was sitting on the edge of the platform talking to a couple who'd stayed behind. 'Why, sure,' he was saying nonchalantly. 'just take out the bulbs first then you won't be tempted to rush for the switches.'
'Let's go,' said Verity. Who, precisely because it had all been so seductive, was wishing she hadn't come. Dr Grainger was a very persuasive person, especially in the dark, but there was darkness and darkness, and she couldn't help feeling that Meadwell's dark was not the kind one might 'bond' with.
'Fine,' said Dr Grainger. 'Good luck.' He raised a hand to the departing couple, slipped down from the platform, and then – to Verity's horror – Dame Wanda was upon him. She didn't bother to introduce herself, assuming, as she assumed with everyone, that he would recognise her and be flattered by her attention.
'Dr Grainger, I should like you to meet a friend of mine who is, desperately, desperately in need of your help.'
The man in black smiled patiently.
Verity backed away. 'Oh no, really…'
'Verity, do not dare move.' Wanda turned again to Dr Pel Grainger and said apologetically, 'I am afraid my friend needs saving from herself.'
From where Jim stood, leaning on his bike, the lights of Glastonbury were too bright tonight, harsh with instability.
At the tree-hung entrance to Wellhouse Lane, he paused, feeling cold without his overcoat. Without his hat.
Go on. It'll be all right after the first few hundred yards, there's nothing to be afraid of. They've gone. The travellers have all gone.
Never thought this would happen to him. Never thought he could feel fear in this place of ancient spirit. But there was nothing to be brave for now. Not anymore.
He kept thinking back to yesterday – only yesterday, it seemed like another life, another incarnation – when he was sitting in Juanita's parlour, looking through his Laphroaig (the colour of dusk) at the woman whose skin was like the warmest, softest dusk you could imagine.
There was so much hope then. Well, not really, but you could kid yourself. You could believe in miracles.
And now there was no hope, and he had only himself to blame, doing what he'd always sworn to himself he would never do (stick to the banter, keep it light, never, never let her know for sure).
His hands felt clammy on the rubber of the handlebars. He'd seen what had happened in High Street, briefly assessed the situation – wouldn't have raised an eyebrow- in Bristol – and edged quietly out of the picture. Hated rubberneckers and voyeurs and all this counselling nonsense.
You should never interfere in people's private tragedies.
Private tragedy.
His own had come in the very second that Griff Daniel had burst back into the bar to spread the good news about the man smashing the windows of the hippy shops.
He hadn't meant this to happen. Hadn't come out tonight with the least intention of making a suicide flight.
But something had got to him. Something – whatever had made Griff Daniel so manic – set Jim off.
He'd been watching Juanita's eyes so closely. He knew precisely what he was doing, feeling strangely detached – in reality, probably as unstable as young Tony. And he knew that she knew where it was leading: Jim Battle burning all his boats, with a ninety-nine to one chance of total annihilation.