On her other side, in the dark canal of the aisle, she knew that a shadow-form crouched, could feel it rising with her own bruising fury.
She moved into the aisle. At once, something swirled around her denimed legs. There was a roaring in her head.
The stage seemed miles away, the screen a distant window. 'Archer!' Diane called out in a voice so loud and precise that it scared her.
Silence made a hollow in the hall. Diane felt as if she was standing in mercury.
Oh my God, what am I doing?
Her jaw fell. She felt limp and soaked with sweat.
'I…'
Heads turned. People recognising her at once.
'I…'
No…
She could feel a cool but urgent pressure. A hand on her wrist. Resist, it said. Resist.
'Nanny?'
People began to laugh as Diane turned, stumbled and ran sobbing from the hall.
Juanita called Jim, for the eighth time that day, on the cordless from the upstairs sitting room. Come on, come on, answer the damned phone, you stupid, proud, opinionated old bastard.
The phone still ringing out, she went through into her bedroom, put on the lights, flung herself on the bed, kicked off her shoes. She was still wearing her grey jacket, all dressed up for Woolly's meeting. She started to laugh, halfway to tears.
No answer. He might be in bed. He might be lost in his painting. He might simply be drunk. But with the travellers camped in Wellhouse Lane, there was no way she was going up there to find out.
Juanita lay back, suddenly fatigued, and gazed moodily at the picture on the wall opposite. The table lamps either side of the double bed were perfectly placed to bring out the subtleties of Jim's twilight masterpiece, the tight red thread over the Somerset Levels.
She lay on the bed, half closing her eyes so that there was nothing but that rosy slit and she thought, Sorry Jim. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…
He rumbled himself into his old khaki shirt, covering his bare chest. Stood there feeling very confused. And not too well. His throat was burning. The thick air was full of flitting shadows, so was his head, and it ached dully.
Where had he been?
His palette lay on the edge of the worktable. He saw that all the colours on it were dark. There was a smell of turps, more than a smell; he could taste it; he could taste the buggering turps.
The bottle of white spirit was on the floor at his feet, upright but empty. Jim tell to his knees beside the bottle.
He gagged, wiped the back of a hand across his lips, smelled it. Clutched at his throat. He'd finished the whisky… and drunk the buggering turps. He tried to spit; his throat was too dry. He had a sickening image of his tongue, like a flattened toad on the floor of his mouth. He covered his face with his paint-smeared hands and sank to his knees, sending the empty turps bottle skittering away.
What had he done?
As he tried to pick himself up, long-suppressed images of his old life burst like blisters. In the spouting pus of memories, he saw the wife he'd deserted: bloody Pat, poor bloody Pat, all she wanted was for him to be ordinary, pursue his pension, relegate his art to evening classes, Jim's hobby – how he'd hated that word; nobody in Glastonbury had a paltry hobby; coming to Glastonbury was a buggering quest.
For a Grail.
Jim staggered to his feet, self-disgust and revulsion fluttering frantically in his stomach, as if he'd swallowed a small bird. His insides felt raw, abraded, as if the wings of the bird were tipped with razor blades. He looked round for something to touch, either to prove he wasn't asleep or to wake him up. All he saw were the three metal easels in a Tor shape.
With a feeling of explicit foreboding, Jim advanced on the conical formation, the three canvases, which should be aglow with the holy fire of dusk.
All three were black. He'd painted every square buggering inch black.
Jim began to weep. Went to the fire for warmth, where he found all the logs reduced to black, smouldering husks.
Then where was the light coming from? How could he even see the black paintings? In a last, vague hope that this was all a sour, whisky dream, he stumbled to the sunset window.
And saw… the rearing ash tree, something hanging from a branch… two yellow moons, the source of the bleak light in the room.
He saw – it couldn't be, it just couldn't be – that the yellow moons were the weak and vapid headlights of an old black bus, parked where no bus could possibly park, in his small, square garden, surrounded on four sides by a horn-beam hedge.
Jim cowered, hands over his face. He'd gone mad.
Black. Black, black, black – sound of the rain slapping at the windows. He turned his back on the window, peered in dread through his fingers at a room which was cold and drab and full of failure, reeking of regret.
He began to moan aloud. He'd broken through the darkness expecting images of such intensity that they would fuel his paintings forever, make them burn with Rembrandt's inner light and vibrate with the wild energy swirling in Van Gogh's cypresses. So that Juanita, his beautiful Juanita, would be drawn into the vortex. He'd thought she was already there with him, thought he'd seen her face in the sunset window.
But there was nothing, after all, on the other side of the darkness but a darker darkness, and he'd done something very bad. Killed it. He'd killed a beautiful dusk.
Jim began to scrabble in the hearth, among the ash and cinders and the exhausted, flaking logs grizzling on the stone. Had to get it back. The sacred energy. Had to relight the dusk.
Impulsively, he snatched a handful of greasy paint-rags from the worktable, thrust them into the fireplace. For kindling, he snapped his long brushes, the ones oozing black paint, the black he'd avoided for years, like Monet.
It was the right thing to do. A sacrifice.
He groped for the matches on the mantelpiece, struck in three at once and watched the paint-rags flare and hiss until the broken brushes began to crackle.
Logs. He needed more logs. Apple logs from local orchards which burned sweet and heady. Avalonian sunset.
Behind his eyes he saw his lovely Juanita as she'd been the day he'd first arrived in Glastonbury, his middle-aged life a fresh canvas. He saw her leaning in the doorway of her shop: summer dress, brown arms, those gorgeous, ironic, frankly sensual brown eyes.
Woman of Avalon.
He was warmed. For him, she was always standing in the doorway of her shop.
But the flames were fading; he needed flames to feed her image.
Jim picked up the coffee table he used as a palette, swung it round by the legs and smashed it into one of the supporting pillars. Smashed it again and again into the iron-hard oak until the table was in fragments. Then fed the pieces to the fire, and watched the oil and varnish flash golden.
He pulled out a flaming table-leg, held it aloft like a sconce. He was the god of the Tor again.
Was there time? Oh yes.
Jim felt almost triumphant as he plunged the blazing log into the nearest canvas. No blackness now. He watched Juanita's warm, brown eyes glistening with compassion. She held out her arms and he reached for her.
The cottage began to fill with a red fog. Through it, he saw the generous mouth, darkly sparkling eyes under the tumble of hair.
Until, with a soft smile of regret, she turned away and walked back into her bookshop.
Sorry Jim. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
He watched the shop door slowly close.
SIXTEEN