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
There was the sound of a key in the shop door below Juanita's bedroom window.
She called out, 'Come on up, Diane.'
Was the Glastonbury First meeting over already? Maybe it had been a total flop, about four people in the audience.
Sure. And maybe a UFO had come down on Wearyall Hill and Joseph of Arimathea had strolled out with his staff and the teenage Christ in tow.
'Juanita, I'm frightfully sorry.' Diane appeared, puffy-eyed and flustered, in the bedroom doorway. 'I sort of… I couldn't stand to hear any more.'
'That bad, huh?' Juanita sat up and swung her legs from the bed.
'Juanita,' Diane sank down, making the mattress howl. 'You can't imagine just how bad.'
'They couldn't do it.' Juanita walked to the window. High Street looked damp, detached and faintly hostile. 'There's no way they could get that through.'
'They got away with it at Stonehenge when all the hippies and travellers and people went to worship the sun at midsummer and started having festivals and things and causing chaos. They got a special Act of Parliament to make it into a restricted area.'
'Yes, but…'
'And now nobody can get in at all. You have to look at the stones from behind a fence or through binoculars from across the road or something.'
'But the Tor isn't an ancient monument, apart from the tower. I mean, it's an ordinary hill… Well, OK, an extraordinary hill, but you can't fence off a hill.'
'Juanita, they've got it all worked out. It begins with a complete parking ban in Wellhouse Lane. The next step would presumably be some kind of tasteful wire-mesh fence, with metal gates, and no access to anyone after dark.'
'That's impossible. Anyone wants to get in, they'll do it.'
'It worked at Stonehenge. They say it's a completely sterile place now. The great temple of the sun where nobody can go in and watch the sun rise any more or feel the rays on the stone. And now if Archer gets his way, nobody'll be able to see it set, looking out from the top of the Tor to Brent Knoll and Bridgwater Bay. There'd be security patrols at the solstices, they'd have…'
Juanita blinked. 'People supported this in there?'
'They loved it. No more hippies. No more pagan rituals. The farmers were ever so excited. There were all these muddy Mendip growls of approval. 'You're one of us, zurr,' this sort of thing.'
'God,' Juanita said. 'Woolly will blow a fuse. I mean, the Tor would, you know, lose all its magic, all its mysticism, if you had to buy a ticket or something.'
'Oh yes, rather, and Archer was absolutely up-front about this. The undesirables don't come to Glastonbury to see the Abbey ruins or the Tribunal building, they come for the Tor, and if the Tor's no longer accessible, Glastonbury will lose its magnetism and we'll get 'decent' tourists and 'decent' shops and local people will be able to walk the streets without tripping over drug addicts and if they want to go to the Tor they'll be able to go at a 'civilised' time without having to tread in faeces and vomit and, oh Juanita, it's just awful, awful, awful…'
She saw that Diane's eyes were full of tears. Stains all down her cheeks Which didn't seem as plump as they used to. Was she losing weight?
'It's terribly personal for me, you see,' Diane said. 'I've loved the Tor all my life.'
'It won't happen, Diane. There'll be an outcry.'
'There was an outcry over the new road, but that's going to happen. It all depends on who's crying out…'
She stopped, fingers at her mouth. Sitting on the edge of Juanita's bed, she began to sway.
'You OK, Diane?'
