Dame Wanda. Just what the campaign needed. Ha.
Woolly shrugged 'You tell me. That's what we got to organise. Intelligence. People on the ground who'll report anything suspicious. But this is a preliminary meeting, and there's things we can't very well discuss in a public place, so I suggest we form a Road-rape Action Committee. For which we need an office. Got to get it together under one roof. Somewhere we could have manned round the clock.'
'Staffed?' It was Jenna, the wire-thin Cauldron member, 'Staffed around the clock.'
'Staffed,' said Woolly wearily. Jenna sat down amid a cluster of women in the centre of the room. To her left, Juanita saw the free-floating blonde hair of Domini Dorrell-Adams. To her right the grey coils of Ceridwen.
Ceridwen whispered something lo Jenna, who was back on her feet at once.
'I propose Wanda Carlisle as a kind of president or something, because… because she's a famous person and will attract publicity to the cause.'
And because you can control her, Juanita thought.
'All right,' Woolly said without enthusiasm, doubtless realising he wasn't going to be running the campaign much longer. 'You all wanner take a vote on that one?'
And when the hands rose, Juanita rose too and left. It was all so predictable. Anyway, she wanted to ring Jim again, maybe go up there and drag him out to the pub.
She wasn't prepared to lose a friend.
Funny, all those evenings outside on the hill, the stage all set, the sun primed like the canvas. All those evenings, summer and winter, vest and overcoat. Never realising that on the other side of the dusk was an intensity of energy he'd never dared dream of.
And when he was at last closing in on the mystical vanishing point, when he'd finally found – so to speak – the burial plot of the Grail, it was happening inside his cottage on a grey and sodden evening in no-hope November.
Jim had come through. He lurched from canvas to canvas, pushing the paint before him, as the bronze heat gasped from the fireplace, turning his studio into an alchemist's laboratory, a cave
… a cave within the Tor itself.
He felt like a god. The god of the cave. The old god Gwyn ap Nudd, Celtic lord of the dead, in his chamber at the heart of the Tor.
The thought of the other Gwyn ap Nudd, the pagan goat-priest, no longer made Jim shrivel inside. What the priest had taken from him, he had summoned back. He'd seen it. In the ash tree. It was a sign; he was in control again.
Well into the bottle of Chivas Regal now, he thought about Juanita with her heavy, dark hair, her big Spanish mouth, her breasts, like brown, freckled eggs.
He lunged with his brush and was only half aware of it tearing the canvas. He thought he saw faces in the sunset window, but he didn't care.
He was close to breaking through to the Grail. The ash tree stroked the wall, something hanging from it.
FIFTEEN
The rain was easing as Juanita walked quickly along High Street. She'd made up her mind: she would ring Jim once more and then take a drive up there.
She caught sight of her reflection in the darkened window of the veggie-bar. From a distance of five feet, in an almost sophisticated ensemble, under an umbrella, backlit by the golden streetlamp, she could almost be a refined version of the sylph with the headdress on the front of that long-ago Avalonian.
Maybe she ought to change before going to Jim's.
The door of the former Holy Thorn Ceramics – its sign had gone – opened suddenly, making her heart race, some primitive part of her quite ready to see the goddess standing there in all her dark glory.
But it was only Tony Dorrell-Adams and a suitcase.
'Tony?'
He scowled at first, then saw her, the way she was dressed.
'Oh. Hi, Juanita. You look… normal.'
'Thanks.'
'You know what I mean.' She could almost feel the accumulated sorrow and the bafflement vibrating around him.
'Yes. I do. I'm sorry, Tony, I really am.'
'I bet you are.'
His car was parked by the kerb, an old Cavalier hatchback. He put his suitcase on the wet pavement, released the rear door.
'Look,' Juanita said. 'I'm not part of this, you know.'
'You're a woman. That makes you part of it.'
'Why don't you come over to the shop, have a cup of tea? Talk about it? You can't leave like this. Can't just give up.'
'Watch me,' Tony said. 'I've been given the car. Wasn't that kind? I get custody of the car so I've got the means to remove myself. It would be appreciated if I do this quietly, while everybody, including my wife, is in the protest meeting.'
Tony threw the suitcase into the boot and slammed the door, lamp-lit drops ricocheting into the night like angry sparks.
'This stinks, Tony.'
'Oh, no. This is Glastonbury. It's too holy to stink.'
Tony wiped rain out of his eyes. Probably rain.
'Where will you go?'
'Back to teaching, I expect. I'll find something. Naturally, I'll fight the cow for everything I can get. She wants to keep this place open, she'll have to get some money from her precious Sisters of the fucking Cauldron. Not that anybody's going to want to buy pot goddesses with big… I'm sorry, I'm sorry. OK, maybe you weren't involved. In which case. I'd watch my back if I were you.'
'They can't touch me.'
'No?' He looked her in the eyes, half pitying. 'They can touch anybody, destroy anything. Christ, I used to think we were ultimately inseparable, Domini and me. Meeting of minds, spiritually attuned. Good sex. Bit of a blip, stupid fling that meant nothing, but this was going to be where we got it all together again. That chap who works in your shop…'
'Jim.'
'Jim, yeah. He said last night that this was the last place you should come to repair your marriage. Wise man. There should be barbed wire around this town.'
'Come and have a drink.'
'No. I've got to get out of here.' He wiped his eyes again; it certainly wasn't rain this time. 'I don't claim to understand any of this. I won't be able to explain it to anyone. I wish I could, but I can't.'
'Just hang on a minute, OK? One minute.'
Juanita gave him the umbrella to hold and ran across the road to the bookshop. She was back inside the minute to find Tony standing at the kerb, arms by his side, the umbrella pointing at the pavement. Soaked through and he didn't seem even to have noticed it was raining. She shoved the book into his cold, damp hands.
'What's this?'
'You said you wished you understood. It might help.'
He peered at the book, 'I can't see'
'It's Colonel Pixhill's Diary.'
'Oh. That.' He didn't seem impressed. 'Domini had one, threw it away.'
'People do,' Juanita said. 'Some people do. He can make you feel very depressed. Until something like this happens and then maybe he's the guru you've been searching for. I'm not even supposed to sell it to people unless they specifically ask, so I'm giving it to you. Read it when you get to wherever you're going.'
'Harlow, Essex. Harlow New Town. My parents live there. No legends. No history to speak of. A real sanctuary. Thanks. Thanks for the book.' Tony raised a hand, unsmiling, climbed into his Cavalier and started the engine.
But it was a while before he could pull out into the road, and a while before Juanita could cross it. Because of the sudden traffic.
From a distance, it looked like a motorbike. When she saw what it was, Juanita went weak.
A bus with only one headlight and an engine like a death-rattle. Then a converted ambulance with NATIONAL ELF SERVICE across its windscreen. And then a hump-back delivery van, the kind the Post Office used to have, only with a window punched in the side. And then an old hearse. And more of the same, gasping and limping through the endless rain, a mobile scrapyard.