'Woolly! Call the p-'
Then she was choking on a mouthful of thick, leathery fingers and was hauled into the alley, the heels of her trainers bouncing on the cobbles.
In the little square, the tin-hatted bulb hung like a shower-spray over the smashed window and the broken string instruments.
She was absolutely terrified now. It was already a sexual assault, and they knew she'd be able to identify them. This was more than drunken bravado, it was madness. Division, extremism, prejudice… violence.
'Take your dirty, common fingers out of her mouth, Leonard,' Darryl said. 'She's a lady. Deserves better than that.'
She was lowered to the cobbles, her head against the remains of the window.
'And she's gonner get better.' Darryl giggled. Fragments of broken glass fell into Diane's hair. 'And bigger.'
And then, fiddling with the zip of his jeans, Darryl Davey burned their boats.
'What you doin' hidin' in there, Wayne? She can't have you flogged now, boy.'
To her horror, Wayne Rankin emerged from Woolly's doorway and went to stand by Darryl so that she could clearly see his face. He stood like a man in an identification parade, expressionless, a wiry youth with close cut hair like his father's.
Then the heavy man, Leonard, joined them, all three of them blocking the alley.
Wayne smiled slyly, 'All right there. Miss Diane?'
Lanky, shambling Darryl Davey started running his zip noisily up and down.
'If… if you go away now,' Diane said, her voice high and breathless, the taste of Leonard's fingers in her mouth, 'I won't say anything about this.'
There was dead silence. The three men looked at each other and then back at Diane.
'Ho fucking ho,' Darryl Davey said.
TEN
'Go on then!' Mrs Moulder yelled, back from the WI. 'Don't bugger about. Been a sight too many fires hereabouts.'
'You can't be sure,' Don protested feebly. 'Coulder been a glow from a torch, headlamps.'
'Well, seeing where it come from, that's not much better. You should never've let them hippies down there, I told you at the time.'
Halfway through the door, Don turned back. 'Let's call the police, then.'
'Don't be stupid. Farmer for near forty years and scared to go out on his own land. They've all heard about that cross, too. Lizzie Strode said is it true he's holding open-air services now?'
'They can mock! Tis a pit of sin, this place. A pit of sin!'
Don Moulder snatched his lamp from the big hook behind the door and walked into the dark. Protect me, lord, protect thy servant, yea though I walks into the valley of the shadow.
Verity was in a stiff-backed kitchen chair, her back to the Aga, re-reading John Cowper Powys's Maiden Castle.
The novel bad been bought for her many, many years ago by her fiance, Captain Hope, and she'd never been able to open it without picturing him: a strong, stocky man with a faintly practical Errol Flynn air and a wide, white smile which would simply erupt across his face when she opened the door of her mother's house on a Sunday afternoon.
Captain Hope had been ten years older than Verity, who was twenty-five when they became engaged. He liked to call her 'the child bride' although this was more a reference to her stature than her years.
His sudden death from peritonitis, barely a month before the scheduled wedding day, had been followed a week later by her widowed mother's first stroke and then fifteen years of caring for her, increasingly querulous, before her death dispatched Verity, all alone into the world. Two unhappy housekeeping jobs had followed before she and Colonel Pixhill had found each other, recognising the qualities that each required for the quiet, untroubled life that never quite came about.
Colonel Pixhill was not at all like Bernard Hope, being more refined, less vigorous in his manner. But then, when they met, he was so much older. Verity had often wondered what might have developed had she met the Colonel twenty or thirty years earlier. Before the unfortunate Mrs Pixhill.
Before Oliver.
The mere thought of Oliver Pixhill spoiled her concentration and she found herself miserably counting the Christmas cards on the windowsill.
Seventeen. Fewer and fewer every year, as her friends died off and Verity was crossed from the lists of distant great nieces and nephews who presumably thought she must be dead by now but did not think it worth a phone call to find out. She imagined that years after her departure, from the house or from life, whichever came first, there would stall be a handful of' small, cheap cards addressed to Miss V. Endicott, Meadwell, Glastonbury.
There was, quite simply, nobody left now to whom she might turn for help – having this afternoon telephoned the only contact number she now possessed for the Pixhill Trust. She'd at last reached a solicitor called Mr Kellogg and asked him if the Trust could prevent Dr Pelham Grainger from uncovering the Meadwell as, in her view, this would not be complying with the Colonel's wishes.
Mr Kellogg had laughed. Actually laughed.
'Miss Endicott, the Trust is entering a new era. Meadwell is a delightful and historic house and it's been hidden away for too long. While the Chalice Well gets tens of thousands of visitors, ours is ignored.'
'But that's because…'
'We want to see the Colonel take his place among the great pioneers of modern Glastonbury, along with… with all the others. And for Meadwell to become recognised as architecturally on a par with the Tribunal, The George and Pilgrims…'
'But the Colonel quite deliberately- sealed up the well so that nobody…'
'Probably because he was unhappy about spending the money that would have been required to clean and repair it. But times change. Miss Endicott. There are now thousands of tourists with an unassuageable thirst for the Spiritual, and if this man Grainger can help put us on the map…'
Put us on the map!
Was Major Shepherd the last of them to realise that the Colonel's last wish had been for Meadwell to stay, for the forseeable future, entirely off the map?
Any faint hopes that Mrs Rosemary Shepherd, the Major's widow, might have picked up his sword had been dispelled by a telephone call around teatime.
'Miss Endicott, I've been trying to clean out Tim's study, getting rid of all the silly books Pixhill made him read, and I keep falling over this blasted parcel – full of boring papers connected With the Pixhill diaries and addressed to a Mrs Carey. If I've phoned her once I've phoned her a dozen times. Keep getting the same tedious answering machine. Would you have any idea at all what on earth the problem is with this woman?'
Verity had explained that Mrs Carey was in hospital, having been injured in a serious fire.
'Oh. Well, how long's she going to be in hospital? Look, suppose I send this stuff to you, can you pass it on to her?
'Yes, that makes sense. I shall do that.'
Nothing makes sense any more, Verity thought.
Coming into Glastonbury, there were several police diversion signs. One said, AVOID TOWN CENTRE.
'Still got bloody roadworks, I see,' Juanita said. 'I'd ignore it. It's just to avoid congestion in the daytime.'
Seconds later they were stopped by a policeman.
'You're going to ask me if I can read, aren't you?' Powys said.
'I wouldn't insult you, sir I was going to ask you which paper you worked for and then I saw the dog and Mrs Carey. Welcome home, Mrs Carey.'
'I'm sorry?' Juanita looked fogged.
'It's OK, you won't recognise me.' The policeman leaned on the wound-down window. 'I was at the fire.'
'Oh,' Juanita said.
'I'm glad to see you looking so much better. We were a bit worried about you. I put my jacket under your head. Tried to keep you calm until the ambulance got through. You kept saying, "Get the cat.'' I thought, If there's a cat in here he can get himself out.'