She raised her heavy eyebrows.
'…Verity Endicott.'
Positioning both of Juanita's hands away from her body, moulded together, palm to palm, like an old-fashioned teacher showing a child how to pray.
'What lovely, slender hands you still have,' she said almost tenderly, and Juanita was suddenly and irrationally scared that her palms might be fused together forever.
'But you're afraid, I think, that beneath the silky, brown skin which, sadly, now caresses only books…'
Juanita saw a splinter of spite in Ceridwen's eyes.
'…are an old woman's curling claws.'
'Let me go.' Juanita felt a coldness under her heart. 'How dare you? How fucking dare you?'
After a long moment, Ceridwen smiled, relaxed and let both Juanita's hands fall away like a discarded pair of silk gloves.
As the two women left, Domini smirking, Juanita felt sick and humiliated. Like Jim Battle after his Execution.
At first, she couldn't feel her hands at all. Self-consciously she rubbed her palms together to restore the circulation, experiencing a moment of relief followed by a palpitating insecurity. And a creeping, bitter shame.
Diane went to shut the shop door.
'No.' Juanita walked out on to the pavement. 'I need some air.'
It was gone midnight. The street was deserted, not even one of those stoned guitar-and-bongo duos under the church wall. The very air felt thin and exhausted, used up by lungs involved in excess panting and screaming and sighing. The town was full of madness tonight.
She walked across the street to the war-memorial, a good twenty feet high and carved like a Celtic cross. Iron railings separated it from St John's churchyard. Juanita leaned against the railings, pulled out her cigarettes.
'We've got problems here,' she said as Diane joined her.
'Look', Diane stared down at her trainers on the first step of the memorial, 'what she said. That was awful. Cruel. But…'
'But true,' Juanita said. 'It wouldn't have been cruel otherwise. I've looked at Verity Endicott more than once and thought, yeah, that'll be me one day. Toddling round the town with my shopping bag when all the shops have closed.'
'That's not what I meant. You're not remotely like Miss Endicott. I hope I look like you when I'm…'
'Forty-something.'
'I wish I looked like you now.'
'Oh, shut up, Diane.' Juanita lit a cigarette. 'Listen, we really have a problem. Nothing to do with that woman.'
'I wish you hadn't offended her.'
'Oh for God's sake… Diane, that boy, Headlice…'
Diane went still.
'He's dead,' Juanita said. 'I'm sorry to tell you like this. It was in tonight's paper. They found his body in an abandoned bus in a wood at Stoke St Michael.'
Diane stared across the street as if it were a distance of several miles.
'He had head injuries,' Juanita said. 'It has to be him because of…you mentioned a swastika.'
'On top of his head.'
'The police are suspicious. You know what that means, don't you?'
Diane put her arms around the stem of the Celtic cross. Her shoulders shook.
'They're appealing to anyone with pertinent information to come forward. Which probably includes anyone who might have seen the boy having his head kicked in by their father's farm manager.'
Diane laid her cheek against the stone.
'Diane?'
'Was it his own bus? That he was found in?'
'It was a black bus.'
Diane nodded.
'I really think you need to go to the police,' Juanita said. 'Tomorrow. I'll come with you.'
'They wouldn't believe me.' Diane's voice was tiny. 'My father would say I'd made it all up. He'd tell them I was unbalanced. Just like he always does.'
'They'd still have to check it out.'
But she was right. Juanita sighed. Lord Pennard and Rankin had had a whole day to make provisions for this incident getting out. They'd have something ready, some watertight story. Especially now the boy was dead. Also, Pennard would undoubtedly have connections at chief constable level and beyond. And with Archer's political career on the line and all it represented in terms of the future wealth and influence of the House of Pennard, there was nothing they wouldn't do.
'Listen, I'll get Jim to look after the shop. While we go to the police station.'
Of course, she'd have to promise Jim first that nothing would come out about the Execution. What a can of worms.
'They'll ask why I didn't report it before,' Diane said. 'Because you didn't know the boy was dead.' She put a hand on Diane's shoulder. 'Come on, Diane Fortune. I'll make us some hot chocolate.'
An amber streetlamp reddened and Juanita looked up warily.
Diane dabbed her eyes with a tissue. 'I was wrong about the Pilgrims. They weren't terribly nice people at all. They made Headlice go into church backwards and they gave him drugs.'
'Quite.' Juanita tried not to think about sickles and animal masks. If only she could tell Diane precisely what the nice pilgrims had done to Jim and her. But a promise, unfortunately, was a promise.
'He had a horrible life,' Diane said. 'He just wanted… something he could believe in.'
'Don't we all.'
As they walked back to the shop, Juanita found herself thinking of Colonel Pixhill and fancied she could feel wings of foreboding overhead, like some shadow hang-glider.
NINE
Yesterday Joe Powys had been to Hereford library and got out everything they had on Uncle Jack Powys. He'd brought back as many books as he'd been allowed to; they were all spread out now on his desk back at the cottage, eight of them.
It was six fifteen a.m. He'd awoken in the dark thinking about it, a little scared. Uncle Jack. Uncle bloody Jack?
Where did this come from? You grow up assuming a certain kinship with one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century, there has to be a reasonable basis for it.
But the more Joe Powys investigated, the more he found that there wasn't.
Last night he'd called up relatives he hadn't spoken to since he was a kid. Joe. Joe Powys. P-O-W… your cousin. That's right, Mary's son…'
Feeling embarrassed as hell now. Arnold the dog sitting by his chair, laughing at him, the way he did, with his orb-like brown eyes.
None of the relatives had heard of any kind of link with John Cowper Powys. None of them remembered it being a family name So he was the only one of them with the surname Powys? What did that say?
'I know what you're thinking, Arnold,' Powys said, 'I suggest you forget it.'
Arnold kind of shrugged, lay down and lowered his head to his paws.
One of the relatives had said. All I remember, Joe, is for a long time we thought you must be Len's boy. Auntie Mary never discussed it.
What his mum used to tell him was that his father had messed around with bad women and they'd got divorced when he was a baby, and Uncle Jack had looked after them until Len came along. Later, Powys had figured that his mother and father had never been married at all, but he didn't push it, never searched out his birth certificate – pretty sure he'd find out he was registered under his mum's maiden name. Not Powys.
She used to talk about Uncle Jack until he was maybe ten. He had memories of books by JCP on the shelves when he was small, but not when he was old enough to read them with any understanding. His mum, in later years, read only magazines, and when he visited her two years before she died even the shelves had gone. Now Len was dead too.
That last time, when he'd asked his mother who was Uncle Jack and she'd looked blank, he'd smiled and not pushed it – what did it matter anyway? True, John Cowper Powys had lived not that far from Wrexham in the last part of his life. True, his mother had been a district nurse who'd moved around Merseyside and North Wales and might well have encountered the old bloke, maybe even nursed him.