What? This was bloody quick. Unbelievably quick. Even if Ben Corby had dashed straight into the office with the manuscript as soon as he'd got back, told this bloke Frayne it was wonderful, unmissable, and Frayne had read it immediately, it still didn't figure, this was not how publishers worked.
'Do you ever get up to London?' Dan Frayne asked.
'Hang on…' Powys changed hands, put the phone to his other ear. I don't understand. I mean, you can't have had time to read it, Mr Frayne.'
'Well, that's true,' Dan Frayne said. 'But I've read The Old Golden Land, which I thought was wonderful – at the time. And, uh, Ben Corby told me all about the new book. About the way your attitude had changed.'
'He tell you anything else?'
Dan Frayne laughed, I have to say that when Ben got back he, er, he kind of wanted to talk to somebody. Old Ben was a little bit shaken. Not himself. Amazing.'
Powys looked up at the big, fat novel on the top shelf. He'd put it back on the shelf rather than keep it on a table or locked in a cupboard; you mustn't respond.
'There's an idea I've been tossing around for some time,' Dan Frayne said. 'Book I thought an old friend of mine should write, though I've never mentioned it to her. Then I thought she was too close to it, maybe someone should do it with her. But it would have to be someone of a like mind because this friend of mine… Anyway, I'd like to talk to you.'
Powys was confused. 'Let me get this right. We are not now talking about Mythscapes, we are talking about another book entirely.'
'We're talking about adapting and expanding the ideas in Mythscapes in a way that would make it rather more publishable.'
'I don't like the sound of it.'
'Come down and discuss it, huh? We'll meet all expenses.'
Had Ben Corby told this bloke Joe Powys was financially challenged? So broke, in fact, that he would write stuff to order?
'Say, this weekend?' Dan Frayne suggested. 'Or… Hey, can you get a train tonight?'
Powys was about to say no way, piss off, when he looked up at the book again. He thought he saw it move. He had an alarming vision of it emerging from the shelf, as if someone had slotted a forefinger into the top of its damaged spine, and hurled it with hurricane force at his head.
The voice in his ear said, 'Look, OK, I'll tell you when it clicked. It was when Ben told me – and he hated telling me, he made me swear not to mention it to anyone upstairs – it was when he told me about the book. A Glastonbury Romance. That was when the little bell did this ping.'
'The little bell?'
'The little bell that only pings for publishers. Maybe once or twice a year.'
'That bell, huh?'
Powys looked up at the book again. It sat comfortably in its space, between John Cowper Powys's Weymouth Sands and Owen Glendower, neither of which Powys had read.
He got the feeling the book, like Frayne, was waiting for his answer.
TWELVE
Jim's living room was all studio now.
It had started as a gesture against bloody Pat, who he fervently hoped would never see it: the sofa pushed back to make space for the easels, the coffee table acting at first as a rest for the palette, then becoming a palette – colours mixed directly on to the varnish. Bloody Pat would have thrown a fit.
Gradually, the painting had crowded the rest of Jim's needs into corners: the cooker where he made his meals, the table where he ate, the TV he hardly ever watched, the armchair where he sometimes fell asleep pondering a composition problem, knowing that as soon as he awoke he could go for it, everything to hand.
Interior walls had been taken out, wherever possible, exposing the whole of the ground floor, where two pillars of ancient oak helped keep the ceiling up.
At the western end of the room, opposite the dingy little fireplace, half the wall had been taken out and replaced with glass, almost floor to ceiling. Most artists were supposed to prefer Northern light; not Jim. He called it his sunset window, and on good nights it had become a sheet of burning gold, as in
Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire.
A bad joke now.
He'd fired off his pathetic arrows of desire. Shot his buggering bolt this time and no mistake.
Awakening to filthy grey light, he'd closed his eyes again in weariness, remembering he was supposed to be in the bookshop today. And at once had seen Juanita's lovely face with its gorgeously expansive smile, the tumble of heavy hair, the brown arms, those exquisitely exposed shoulders.
Who might paint her nude? Degas? Renoir? Modigliani?
Certainly not Battle.
No more. Spell broken. Done it himself, like crunching a delicate glass bauble in his fist. No going back to that shop today. Nor ever. Couldn't face her again, would never be the same. No laughter. No banter. Surely she'd realise that.
Jim had rolled sluggishly out of bed, peered out at the mist, couldn't see farther than the buggering ash tree.
Thinking, at first, that he would paint. In the very centre of the studio, the three old-fashioned black, metal easels were set up in a pyramid formation. His Works in Progress. The glorious dusk. Over the past few weeks, he'd digested so much dusk he should be able to summon its colours and textures at any time of day. Even on a lousy, damp morning, the lousiest dampest morning of his buggering lousy life.
But when he'd stood in front of the canvases there'd been a congestion in his head. It felt soggy, spongy, and he'd found himself wondering, absurdly, if it had been his hat which had held his creativity together, helped to contain the glowing dusk, keep it burning in his head. He'd inspected the paintings on the easels. Skies of clay, fields of carpet and lino. No mystery. No mystery there at all.
They were rubbish. He couldn't paint. What the hell had ever made him think he could paint?
Poor bloody Pat. Right all along, eh?
The sense of loss had settled around Jim like a grey gas. Like the first morning after the unexpected death of someone loved.
Which was one way of putting it. He'd gone back to bed, taking with him a bottle of Johnnie Walker.
Intermittently he'd awoken, feeling cold. Clouds obscuring the day, whisky obscuring his thoughts. What was left of life with his muse gone forever? What could even Glastonbury ever mean to him again.
Sometimes he'd hear a distant ringing as the rain rolled like tears down the windows.
'He isn't answering.'
'Perhaps he's out painting,' Diane said,
'In the rain?'
'Well, perhaps he's painting inside then. You know how he hates to be disturbed while he's painting.'
'He shouldn't be painting at all. He knows he always comes in on a Friday. He…" Juanita broke off, looked hard at Diane. 'You don't want to do this, do you? You don't want to go to the police'
Confusion was corrugating Diane's forehead. She'd been looking almost cheerful on her return from Sam Daniel's print-shop. Did Juanita know about this Glastonbury First meeting? No, Juanita didn't. Well, well. Griff and Archer obviously weren't letting the grass grow. A coincidence, too, that it should be held the same time as Woolly's road protest meeting. Or was it? They ought to keep tabs on this; perhaps she could go to one meeting and Diane to the other. Assuming they were back from the police station in time.
And then Juanita, looking at her watch, had said perhaps they really ought to be going soon, if only Jim would turn up. Diane hadn't answered, and that was when Juanita, not wanting to give her any more time to change her mind, had rung Jim.
And now Diane said, 'I've been thinking, Juanita. Perhaps I should talk to my father first, I can't just, you know, shop him.'
'You're shopping Rankin.'
'It's the same thing.'
'Listen, if you talk to your father, he'll stop you. Somehow he'll stop you. He'll convince you you didn't see what you know you did see…'