The Chalice

Waiting until there were no customers. Noting five paperback copies of The Old Golden Land. Watching Diane working on a laptop behind the counter. And then going over to request a copy of the little book he'd already read four times.

Diane had fumbled under the counter. The seaweed-green volume of Colonel Pixhill's diaries, as the letters had implied, was not exactly on display.

'I know your face,' Diane looking up to meet his eyes, as if the exchange of a Pixhill was a secret sign, like a masonic handshake. 'Don't I?'

'Shouldn't think so.'

But she'd surprised him, diving across the shop for a copy of The Old Golden Land. A bit unnerving because…

'Hang on, there's no author picture on the paperback.'

'No.' Diane had blushed. 'But there was on the hardback. It lived in my locker, you see, for an entire term.'

It was lunchtime. She'd closed the shop, taken him into a little room behind, made some tea. Kneeling down with a saucerful for Arnold, as if a three-legged dog was yet another sign. As he was to learn, Diane Ffitch was always spotting signs and symbols.

It emerged that she'd been packed off at sixteen to this absolutely frightful private school near Oswestry, all outdoor pursuits and lukewarm showers, feeling like a fish out of water on the cold Welsh Border, so far from the mystery and allure of Avalon, feeling so utterly miz the whole time. Until Juanita had thoughtfully sent her The Old Golden Land.

Inspired by the book, she'd found a Bronze Age burial mound on the edge of the school grounds, seen how it aligned with the village church and then a hill fort on the horizon… and realised that the Welsh Border was actually quite mysterious, not such a ghastly place after all.

Powys had told her about Dan Frayne's proposal, Diane never taking her eyes off him. After a while he'd begun to feel a little uncomfortable. 'I'm messing up your lunch hour.'

'I've not been having one actually. Takes up too much time. I tend to just sort of nibble things.'

Telling him about the magazine she was trying to put together, determined to have it all organised for when Juanita came out of hospital because she'd need something to take her mind off everything.

Well, Powys said, if there was anything he could do to help

… Thinking that working unobtrusively on a little local magazine would get him discreetly into the centre of things in Glastonbury, and if there was to be a book…

He felt her eyes somehow looking into him.

'We can use all the help we can get,' she said. 'In Avalon.'

The following day, again in her lunch hour, she'd taken him to see the guy at SAMPRINT, who'd struck Powys as being fairly cynical about The Avalonian venture but at least had never heard of The Old Golden Land. He'd made a big fuss of Arnold, asked how he'd lost his leg.

'A farmer shot him. Accused him of worrying sheep. But it was a fit-up.'

Sam the printer said, 'What did you do?'

'His shotgun kind of wound up in the river,' Powys said. 'It was a family heirloom.'

Sam had shrugged approvingly. Then Diane had asked Powys if he'd interview the new Bishop of Bath and Wells about his attempts to reconcile Christian and pagan elements. Again, Powys had begun to feel detached from reality. It was like a half-waking morning dream where you watched yourself being drawn into unfolding situations, too lazy to pull yourself out.

Even after reading the Pixhill diaries.

'All I know is it's itching like hell,' she said.

This nurse was small and bossy but not unsympathetic. She was called Karen.

'That's a good sign. Let's have a look.' She leaned across the bed, the only one in the side-ward. 'Hey, don't back off. It won't hurt.'

'Sorry. Oh, I do need to get out of here.'

'Don't we all? Only some of us have to feed our kids. Just be glad we're not kicking you out before your time. You get the best bits now – relaxing and being looked after and not having to worry. That's the idea, anyway.'

'Sorry. I'm just a natural-born ungrateful bitch.'

The looking-after bit – that was the worst of all. You had to drink from a baby-cup with a spout, sometimes with a nurse holding the cup, although recently she'd learned how to grip it between her wrists, so long as it wasn't hot tea or coffee.

What she hadn't learned was how to turn on taps with her toes, and obviously she couldn't sink her boxing-glove bandages into hot water, so they had to give her a bath – sitting there with her arms in the air having her bits washed. The unutterable degradation of it.

Juanita sighed. 'I thought I'd be out in a week.'

'Well, we didn't order you to develop pneumonia.'

Because of the pneumonia – caused, they said, by shock – they'd had to delay the skin-grafts. You couldn't have a general anaesthetic with lungs seemingly committed to becoming a no-go area for oxygen. They'd pumped her full of antibiotics, but it was two weeks before they could get around to pulling the skin off her thighs and applying it to her hands.

For all that time, she actually hadn't wanted to smoke. Now the need was acute. This morning, she'd got Karen to take her down the corridor and put one in her mouth, unlit.

The fury was building too: But that was irrational, wasn't it?

'There you go.' Karen straightened up. 'Everything's fine. They'll probably take the dressing off again in the morning.'

'Do they have to? Can't I wear a permanent dressing?'

'It's only you who'll notice most of the time.'

'Exactly.'

The sight of the bandage balls at the end of her arms still inflicted horrendous, scorched images of Jim fragmenting in his jagged, molten cage, falling at last into her arms because… because. Oh God, I couldn't turn away from him again.

And then, like a wound slowly turning septic, the other insidious imaginings would begin to manifest.

'You were very lucky,' said Karen, who cleaned her teeth and God help us wiped her bum. 'You want to thank your lucky stars.'

'Sorry. Thanks, lucky stars. Actually, they tell me it was the lucky Afghan. But for the Afghan, my tits would've been jacket potatoes.'

'Don't think about it, all right?'

'Sure,' said Juanita. She looked down at her pure white cotton nightdress and the image of the jacket potatoes brought her to a decision. 'Listen, I need to ask you something.'

Diane asked him, 'Who was John Cowper Powys?'

It had been an easy run to the hospital, along the M5. Powys explored the parking area for a space.

'He was a famous author.'

'I know that. I mean, to you. What relation?'

'Forget it,' Powys said. 'Not your problem.'

'In the diaries,' Diane said, 'there's a bit where Pixhill comes into Glastonbury and meets his teacher, whom he doesn't identify, and John Cowper Powys, who he thinks he isn't going to like much. But he seems to get on with him in the end.'

'I'm glad somebody could.'

'The suggestion is that Colonel Pixhill and Mr Powys were involved in something together. It…' Diane hesitated. 'It's become very important to me to find out what this was.'

He said nothing. He was finding that if you asked Diane direct questions you were apt to scare her off. Better to wait.

'Because, you see, the other person, the teacher, the person Colonel Pixhill doesn't name… I think that was someone close to me. He writes several tunes about visiting his spiritual teacher. Twice he mentions going up Wellhouse Lane. Which was where… where she lived.'

Diane went quiet.

'You think his teacher was a she,' Powys said carefully. 'Why do you think that?'

'Because she's my teacher too,' Diane said, not looking at him. 'That is, she was… my nanny.'

Powys did some quick calculations. They were clearly not edging around the same person.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I thought we might have been talking about a woman who lived in a converted army hut at the foot of the Tor.'