Brendan Donovan laughed. 'Do you know what I might do in your place?'
'Resign,' Powys said.
'I might go to Glastonbury and open myself to all the wonderful earth-forces in the hope that my Grail awaited me there.'
'No, you wouldn't.'
'I wouldn't. I'm explaining what I might do if, perish the thought, I were you. Forget it, I probably had Glastonbury on my mind in a negative context, having received this very morning a review copy of a book even more foolish than your own revered opus. By an American, of course, one W. Pelham Grainger, PhD, who wants us all to enrich our lives by bonding with the living darkness. Absolute tosh. He lives near Glastonbury, as it happens. My, my, I must remember to record this coincidence in my Arthur Koestler Appreciation Society Diary.'
Powys shook his head.
'Away with you,' Donovan said. 'Away to your Avalon.'
'Thanks very much,' Powys said. 'I'll expect your bill in the mail.'
'My meter records… let me see… twenty five minutes!'
'Prove it,' Powys said. 'Laboratory conditions.'
TEN
'Bastards.' Woolly threw the Daily Press on to Juanita's counter. 'Bastards, bastards, bastards''
His roughened elbow poked through a hole in his shapeless orange sweater. The rubber band securing his stringy ponytail had snapped. He looked like an ageing Dickensian street urchin. There were tears in his eyes.
'I'm so sorry. Woolly,' Juanita said. 'But it's hardly a surprise, is it?'
She could see in his face that, no, it hadn't been a surprise. But there'd still been that final strand to be snipped before the rope broke and dropped him into the black pit.
She turned the paper around on the counter. The story was front-page lead.
Green Light for M-way The controversial Bath-Taunton expressway is to go ahead – despite furious protests from environmentalists.
The report of the two-month public inquiry, published today, rejects claims that the proposed route would be a 'savage rape of Central Somerset'. But a leading opponent of the plan said last night, 'We'll fight them to the last tree.' The Government claims the road is the only way to end crippling congestion in several small towns and villages, especially during the holiday season. It will also link the county firmly into the trans-European road network, opening up major industrial and commercial possibilities, according to local authority chiefs who have welcomed the decision.
'Got a call from the paper late last night asking for a quote,' Woolly said. 'Too choked to give a reasoned response, just wanted to get it over that we'd be re-forming the action committee, only it come out a bit stronger, like.
'Sheesh.'
Mendip Councillor Edward Woolaston. one of the original protesters, said, No way are they going to get away with this. This is going to be a nationwide issue, even a world issue, and we'll fight them to the last tree.'
Juanita didn't know what to say. The thought of an enormous public protest with the police and armies of security men guarding the site and people getting hurt made her feel faintly sick.
'The thing is, Woolly, it just never works. There've been so many full-scale road protests and it just leaves everyone beaten and bitter. Look at Newbury… Batheaston… Twyford Down… If the Government decides a road's going through, it goes through.'
She stared despondently through the window. All the shards of pottery had disappeared from the gutters, which streamed now with dark rain. Apart from Holy Thorn Ceramics being closed, you'd think nothing exceptional had occurred in High Street. Last night's spark in the air had fizzled out. There was no sign of either Tony or Domini.
'And the thing is. Woolly, if you organise a militant protest to stop the road, all it does is split the community even more because most of the locals think it's a good thing. They don't like the idea of the countryside being ripped up, but if it prevents traffic snarl-ups and children being run over and heavy lorries shaking their foundations… oh hell, you know all this better than I do, a lot of those people voted for you.'
'And won't vote for me again if I'm behind this protest,' said Woolly soberly. 'But I got to go with my conscience. We're fighting for the West Country's right to breathe. We're fighting for green hills, places to walk, places to be. We're fighting to stop them selling Britain for scrap. Sorry. There I go again. Councillor bloody Woolaston. It's all a sham, being a councillor. There is no democracy.'
Juanita pushed the newspaper away. 'So you want me to tell people… what?'
'Tell 'em there's an emergency meeting tonight. Put it round. Seven-thirty. Assembly Rooms. Now they've made a decision they won't hang around. It'll be bulldozers and chainsaw-gangs on every horizon before we know it. Still, you know how you could help.'
'Mmm?'
'Well don't sound so excited, my love.'
'I'm sorry. Lot on my mind.'
The idea of putting Rankin in the frame for murder seemed less straightforward than it had last night. You could never be sure what Diane was going to say, how much of her statement would include what she might consider normal but the police would see as the ravings of a certifiable psychiatric case.
'The Avalonian, I mean,' Woolly was saying. 'You get The Avalonian on the streets, we'd at least have a reliable mouthpiece to counter all the propaganda.'
'I have to tell you, Councillor,' Juanita said severely, 'that The Avalonian isn't going to be anybody's mouthpiece'
'Well, yeah, I accept that, but…'
'But it will be fair and maybe consider certain viewpoints that the regular Press would be a touch queasy about.'
'Fair enough, fair enough. What's your schedule?'
'I don't know. February maybe. Things are moving. As it happens, I've just sent Diane to the print-shop to get acquainted with Sam Daniel. She's a little nervous, having heard that Sam thinks all upper class people should be placed against a wall and shot.'
'He's a good boy, is Sam. You only got to listen to his old man to know that.'
'I thought Griff Daniel hated the ground Sam walks on.'
'Exactly,' said Woolly. 'A good boy.'
In the square entrance hall, he stood on the flagstones, under one of the high, deep-sunk windows either side of the front door, and nodded approval.
'See, Verity, the old Tudor guys built this place, they had it right. They understood the importance of luminary-control. Hence the restrictive fenestration. Everybody says this was down to defence, but that was only part of the calculation.'
Dr Pel Grainger wore a formal black jacket over black jeans and black trainers. In daylight, he looked shorter and rather less imposing. As she supposed he would, given that the night was his chosen environment. Seeing him at the door so early had been quite a shock, rather like seeing an owl perching on one's bird table.
'Verity, you are just so lucky to have this place to yourself.' Dr Grainger smiled, showing small, rather stumpy teeth, their whiteness enhanced by the blackness of his close-mown beard. 'Which is how you got to look at the situation from now on in. Lucky.'
Cornered by Wanda last night, Dr Grainger had expressed – to Verity's dismay – immediate interest in Meadwell. It sounded the kind of place, he said, where just being there could virtually put you into Second-stage Tenebral Symbiosis.
When Verity had tried to explain to Dr Grainger that even in her time here Meadwell had not always been as dark as this, the American had nodded indulgently; he could explain this. Or maybe, he told her, when his therapy programme began to take effect, she wouldn't need to have it explained.
Well, perhaps it would work. Perhaps, after tenebral therapy, there would be more than the usual few precious moments of clarity when she first awoke, before her thoughts began to contract under the pressure of the house.