hadn't been here long enough to risk offending the House of Pennard. How was he to know how things stood between Diane and her immediate family?
Powys said. 'You don't think inner trips can be a little risky for some people?'
'Are we on or off the record?'
'Whatever you like.' Powys stopped the tape.
'Look'; I don't know precisely what kind of magazine this is, ah Joe. But if you can somehow get over the message that I don't regard my visit to Glastonbury next Thursday as any kind of crusade. Or the pagan element as the Enemy. I like to believe that we're all working towards the same goal. If, for instance, some women like to regard the Divinity as having a distinct feminine aspect, how can I legitimately argue against that? The battle for the ordination of women has been fought and won, and it's a victory I applaud.'
Not answering the question. Didn't seem to realise, either, that The Avalonian didn't yet exist and would hardly be on the streets in time to get over any message about Thursday.
'Goddess worshippers,' Powys said. 'You'll be meeting them?'
'On Thursday, as I say. Which is simply the shortest day as far as we're concerned. To them it's Christmas without the Christ – as yet. God, is that the time already? Sorry about this, but I do have to be in Bath for lunch.'
'Oh,' Powys realised. 'The Solstice. Thursday's the Winter Solstice. Won't the pagans be having their… whatever they do?'
The Bishop stood up. 'I don't know what they normally do, but on Thursday, before exchanging opinions about the future of Glastonbury, we shall go together at dawn to St Michael's Chapel, where I shall conduct a small service with carols which followers of the, ah, nature religion will find not incompatible – 'The Holly and the Ivy', this sort of thing.'
'St Michael's Chapel… Look, I'm sorry, I'm not too familiar with the geography, but that's part of the Abbey, is it?'
'No, no.' The Bishop finished his Perrier. 'It's the one on the Tor.'
Powys pocketed his tape machine. 'Let me get this right. You're going to the top of Glastonbury Tor with a bunch of pagans on the Winter Solstice. Doesn't it bother you, if you believe…'
Bishop Kelly laughed and shook his head. 'The Winter Solstice, as I say, is merely the shortest day. 'The 'pagans', if we have to use that term, will be represented by Dame Wanda Carlisle, who I've already met socially and who is, in all other respects, a delightful person. And the Tor is, ah…'
'Just a hill?' Powys couldn't believe this.
'Indeed,' said the Bishop. 'Just a hill.'
'So what are your feelings about this plan to restrict public access?'
The Bishop smiled. 'Good talking to you, Joe. Hope to see you up there.'
Diane went over to sit in her usual red typist's chair. She looked pale as watered milk.
'Go on.' Sam turned on an extra bar of the electric fire and moved to the corner where Paul kept the tea and coffee and Diane's chocolate, everything washed and neatly arranged. 'What did the slimy bastard want?'
'Me for Christmas,' said Diane dolefully. 'At Bowermead. They have a gathering most years, and the awful Boxing Day hunt's been revived, so…'
'Has it now? Well, well. Going, are we?'
'Bowermead? For Christmas? Gosh, no. I might never get out again. They still have sort of dungeons underneath. Anyway, Juanita might be out of hospital by Christmas. She'll need a lot of help.'
'Right,' said Sam. 'Right. Soya cream in your chocolate?'
'Perhaps not. Sam…'
'Good job, we're clean out of soya cream. Sony?'
'Does anything ever, you know, ever happen to you? The way it does to some people. Quite a… a bigger percentage of people than normal, I suppose. In Glastonbury.' Boxing Day hunt, he was thinking. Got to have a go at this one. Especially after that 'MP elect' bollocks. Make Christmas worthwhile, for once. Ring Hughie. Get some of the old crew in from Bristol.
'Sorry, Diane…?' God, but she looked tired. Wanted looking after, this kid.
Diane watched him, unblinking. 'I was saying, did you ever have… did anything ever happen to you that… that you couldn't explain? Like…'
'Oh, there's a whole lot of stuff I can't explain.' Sam dumped two spoonfuls of drinking chocolate into a mug.
'Why folks will cheat and lie for a few quid that isn't gonner make them happy. Why it's always the best people who wind up dead before their time. Why otherwise humane, civilised folks'll go out and make little animals run till they can't run no more and then watch 'em get ripped apart. I don't include your old man in this, mind. I can understand why he does it. It's because he's soulless and pig-thick.'
He pulled a cigarette out of the packet.
'Sorry. Shouldn't talk like that. He is your dad.'
Diane shrugged. She had her hands clasped between her knees. Every few moments her shoulders would shake like she was fighting off flu.
'I know what you're asking,' Sam wanted to put his arms around her. If he could get them all the way round. 'I'm just avoiding the question.'
Not the time to come on with the arms. Probably never would be, after he said what he had to say. Shit. Should have realised he'd have to deal with this at some point. Should've been prepared. Course, if he hadn't grown to like her so much, as a person, it wouldn't have been a problem. In fact he usually got quite a buzz out of laying it on people in this headcase town – the people who'd looked at him, with his tangled, shoulder-length hair and his bit of an earring, and made certain assumptions which were way, way out.
Both of them veggies, too. They agreed totally about animal rights – although Diane was a bit more discreet about it than Sam was; didn't seem to feel quite the same urge to go and beat the living shit out of a huntsman. And, OK, she had this incomprehensible appetite for these totally disgusting carob-covered cereal bars.
Beyond this, it got more difficult.
'Look at me,' Diane shook again. 'I've been like this all morning. Couldn't open the shop.'
'You seen a doctor?'
Diane smiled thinly. 'Not anything a doctor could deal with. I've spent most of the morning sitting in front of the fire trying to deal with it.'
'Archer.'
'Sam, a sort of… blind hatred comes over me.'
'Fair enough.'
'And when it does, things start to happen. Awfully strange things. In the room or wherever I am. Sometimes I can almost see it, see my own rage. I suppose it's always been there. He just touches something in me and sets it off.'
'Seems a perfectly normal reaction to me. We are talking about Archer Ffitch here.'
'When I was a child, I got a sort of perverse comfort from it I would hug it to me. My hatred. Hug it to me like a dog. I think it's… it happened during the Glastonbury First meeting when he unveiled his plans for the Tor. It was as if the Tor knew what he was planning and hated him for it, and all that hatred is coming into me.'
'Ah,' said Sam, wishing he was out of here. 'Right.'
'And that's why the Tor's been coming through to me since I was a baby. The Tor knew what was going to happen as we approached the Millennium. It was all pre-ordained.
Why Violet – Dion Fortune – was chosen to be my spirit guide. Because I have to stop them destroying the Tor.'
'Diane, they don't wanner destroy the Tor, they just wanner restrict…'
'It's the same thing.' Rage dancing in Diane's eyes. 'The Tor, the road scheme. It's all anti-spiritual. You ask Woolly. Woolly was in the shop this morning talking, you know, end-of the world scenario. What happens in Glastonbury affects the spiritual life of the entire nation. This is the cradle.'
'Diane, if Woolly runs out of dope it's an end-of-the-world scenario.' Sam handed her the mug. 'Drink your chocolate'
Dammit, most situations you could work with people for years and they never needed to know where you
