'Half-Spanish,' Dan said. 'Well, Mexican, I suppose. Her father was a British doctor working out in middle America after the War, met this Latin beauty and brought her back to Blighty. Result: an English rose with a hint of something more exotic. She was a few years younger than me. I was, as you can imagine, a man-of-the-world figure, with a set of Grateful Dead albums and a regular supply of you-know-what. Golden days, Joe.'
'I was too young.'
'That's what they all say. Thank you, Estelle, that's super. Keep the change. Buy yourself some woolly socks.'
Dan Frayne watched Estelle's bottom all the way to the bar and explained how his lady had had a small legacy from granny, and he'd sold his Triumph Vitesse and they'd run away to the Isle of Avalon where they'd rented a little shop to specialise in secondhand books and underground magazines and privately published hippy stuff about UFOs and ley-lines.
'You think you've arrived in the Elysian Fields. You think you'll be there forever. Then it starts to get to you. It's like a spiritual hothouse. What you think of as your spirit grows like rhubarb in shit. Amazing.'
Dan swallowed some golden beer.
'Suddenly you've got more bloody spirit than you can cope with, and you can't breathe for it. I'm on paradise island with the most beautiful girl in the world, and we… we'd fight. All the time. Over nothing. Over anything. You're pulled to extremes. No half measures. No compromises. Everything's a big issue in Avalon. Everybody you know is a healer and a seeker after wisdom. There are days in August when the air's like incense. I couldn't stand it. To cut a long, long, long story short, I pissed off.'
His mood had changed.
'Broke me up, leaving her, but I wouldn't go back. I didn't trust myself. You know?'
'Because you might have stayed,' Powys said. 'Tried again.'
Dan Frayne nodded rigorously, I'd've stayed, and after a few months it would've been exactly the same. I've never been back. She stayed. She's stubborn. And, all credit to her, the shop's grown and it's a good business now. We've kept in touch. Not so much now. I'm married, three kids, you see the problem.'
Powys glanced at the photograph of the girl in the doorway
Dan said. 'The only way I'd have gone back to Avalon was with the family- as insulation, and how would she have felt then? Don't get me wrong, she wasn't always alone – you know, this and that, over the years.'
Dan began to unpack the brown envelope. It was full of letters, some hand-written, some printed.
'When you look like her, there's no shortage of suitors. But it was clear – you can read this stuff – that she'd built a wall around herself. Maybe that's how you do it. Survive. You know, mentally.'
'And this is the woman you wanted to do the book? The definitive Glastonbury expose.'
Dan Frayne finished his beer.
'I'm worried about her,' he said. I get a feeling, I… nothing like that, I'm about as psychic as a microwave oven. I'm just worried. Maybe a little latent guilt. I'm sorry, this isn't what you expected to hear.'
'You want to commission a book because you're worried about a woman you left in Glastonbury?'
'Urn…' Dan Frayne considered. 'Yeah.' He put his glass down. 'Yeah, I suppose that's the size of it. Amazing.'
FOURTEEN
It was a Gothic-shaped doorway six steps up at the end of an alley framed by High Street shops. Over the door a sign said: ASSEMBLY ROOMS.
The alternative town hall, in fact. On occasion, Juanita could be induced to admit a certain affection for the place.
Diane said, 'I'll let you know what happens, then.' With her usual fashion flair, she was wearing an old and patched red woollen coat over a baggy turquoise sweatshirt and jeans.
'Er… slight misunderstanding.' Juanita smiled innocently. Diane had got away with enough today; because of Jim not showing up they hadn't made it to the police station. 'I kind of thought you might go to the other one. Would you mind?'
'Glastonbury First? But I thought…'
Diane was looking at Juanita's outfit, which comprised a plain charcoal-grey formal jacket with a skirt, a creamy silk top and a pink chiffon scarf'. Not very Assembly Rooms.
'Would that be a terrible imposition, Diane? I thought you might recognise a few of the people I wouldn't.'
Diane looked resigned. 'Do you want me to take notes?'
'I don't think so. Let's not make your Avalonian role too obvious at this stage. Try and blend into the background.'
Some chance of that, Juanita thought, watching Diane drift down the street, as inconspicuous as a pheasant in a chicken run. But at least she wouldn't be in the same meeting as the predatory Ceridwen.
The church type wooden doors of the Assembly Rooms had been thrown back to reveal yellow walls, more steps inside and a stand-up poster reading; RESIST ROAD-RAPE.
Woolly wandered up to stand with Juanita at the entrance to the alleyway, watching the punters going in, shaking his head in disappointment.
'Two real locals, maybe three.'
'And the rest we know,' Juanita said.
It was a shame; Woolly had also tried to give the meeting an element of conventional respectability. He was wearing a suit, had his hair pulled tightly back and bound with a fresh rubber band, looked almost like a regular person.
'That bastard Griff Daniel. You reckon he had advance warning about the road?'
'Well, the word is some posters went out yesterday. But they only went up this morning. Archer?'
'Bastard.' Woolly shook his head.
Still, he couldn't have been exacting a vast crowd. Apart from the easing of traffic congestion and rush-hour hold-ups, most people would be thinking about all the extra jobs the road would bring, how it would open up central Somerset to Euro-money.
Trouble is, the Government's got the bloody moral high ground,' Woolly said. 'Take the juggernauts off the village roads, make the towns safer for the kids, you got the mums and dads on your side before you start. But it's all bullshit – you put this bloody road in and traffic expands to fill it, as traffic invariably does, and the lorries start hitting the village lanes again and kiddies still get mown down, and then you need another new road, and so it goes, until the whole of the West is a sea of metal.'
'That's what I love about you old hippies,' Juanita said. 'You never lose that dewy-eyed optimism.'
'Unless we stop it now.' Woolly pulled Juanita into the shadowy doorway of a picture-framing shop, I got this leaflet through the post the Other day. Offering the support of the eco-guerrillas.'
'God,' said Juanita. 'I'm not sure I like the sound of that.'
'They got a point. Public inquiries and stuff, 'tis no more than a charade. But if contractors find their diggers getting vandalised, the bosses' fancy cars getting scratched…'
'Oh, Woolly, that's not you.'
'Yeah, I know. I hate that stuff. Man of peace. But what d'you do, Juanita?'
'Well, you don't do anything undemocratic. You're a councillor.'
'Sure,' said Woolly. 'But when you get on the council, you find out pretty soon how helpless local authorities are. Thing is, with this bunch in there and no local locals, you're gonner get demands for the extreme option anyway. Not counting the ones who'll recommend curses and laying out the runes and stuff.'
'Ceridwen's there, then,' Juanita said.
Woolly grinned. 'Least you done me proud, Juanita. You look
… sheesh.'
