South.'
In the midst of the applause a lone voice was raised. 'Just a bloody minute!' Five rows in front of Diane, a man had shot to his feet. I object! If you're gonner do your arse-licking in public. Dad, at least get it right.'
Oh gosh, Sam Daniel.
Griff's eyes bulged like a frog's. He strode angrily towards the edge of the platform, as though ready to jump down and attack his son.
Archer arose easily and put a large, firm hand on Griff's' shoulder.
'Thank you, Mr Daniel. And thank you, also, to the gentleman who pointed out that understandable error. I am, of course, not quite MP-elect. The term, at this stage, is Prospective Parliamentary Candidate. Although, perhaps I – who can tell, strange things happen in Glastonbury – perhaps exposure to the atmosphere at the bottom end of High Street has bestowed upon Mr Daniel the gift of prophecy…'
This caused an immediate eruption of mirth. Diane raised her eyes to the plaster mouldings.
Sam Daniel sat down. The young woman next to him looked furious. Diane recognised her at once. Charlotte Lovidge: dark-haired, undeniably chic, a trifle haughty.
Diane saw Sam try to take Charlotte's hand, whereupon she turned pointedly away from him.
They were an item? Gosh. Charlotte, who couldn't be more than twenty-four, worked for Stanlow Pike, possibly training to become a valuer and auctioneer. It seemed an unlikely liaison for Sam. Diane supposed it came down very much to basics: Charlotte was extremely attractive.
Diane huddled into her coat, feeling fat and frumpish, as her brother Archer began to speak.
Against the greystone walls of the Assembly Rooms, they looked a fairly joyless bunch tonight, Juanita thought.
They'd shelved the quest for the Grail for the present. They were here to plan a crusade to protect their holy land from the infidels.
'My information,' Woolly was saying from the makeshift black box stage, 'is that they'll be making a start pretty soon after Christmas.'
There was a rumble from the more committedly Alternative types sitting cross-legged on the carpet below the stage.
'They've learned a few lessons from other road-protests – use the bad-weather months, don't make it easy, don't let the protest turn into a holiday camp with open-air music, stuff like that, don't attract tourists. Anyway, they'll start by clearing woodland. Chainsaw gangs.'
'Savages,' a woman yelled. Road-construction seemed to have taken over from nuclear power as the number one eco-menace.
'Do we know where?' another woman asked. A strong voice, Juanita noted. A voice with a sort of cello effect.
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
