All nonsense to Sam. All bollocks. She didn't know whether to pity him or envy him his freedom.
What he thought of her; this mattered more. Sam Daniel thought Diane Ffitch was a loony. It didn't matter that most people had thought this for years, were thinking it now as they watched her trooping up the street like a fat scarecrow. It suddenly mattered awfully that Sam now thought it too. It wounded her. It was terribly unfair.
There was a funny atmosphere in the town again, the shapes of the buildings sharp against a cold, grim sky, everything so vivid, a thunderstorm air of energy-in-waiting.
She wished she could drive away for a while and think, but she hadn't even had the nerve to collect the van from the garage.
And of course that started her thinking about Archer again. That parting shot. He knew about the graffiti on the van. He might even have told them to do it. He was taunting her. Why did he always have to do that?'
She wandered, inevitably, up Wellhouse Lane, past the trees which screened Chalice Orchard, where DF had lived. Probably fooling herself over that as well. What would the legendary high priestess of Isis want with someone like her?
There was an unhealthy engine noise behind her, then an ancient Land-Rover clattered alongside.
'Lookin' for me, Miss Diane?'
Oh gosh. Moulder. Forgotten all about this morning's phone message.
'Hop in, my chicken.'
Another site-meeting, more disillusionment.
Under discussion this afternoon had been a Griff Daniel proposal for a new housing estate out on the Meare road. Green field site. Daniel's plan, an executive housing estate: four bedroom luxury homes two bathrooms (with bidets) and – and this, as far as Woolly was concerned, was the worst of it… double garages. Double bloody garages!
A double garage said this: it said you were expected to have two cars and maybe a third and fourth in the driveway far your teenage kids.
Woolly had tried to explain to his colleagues on the planning sub-committee that the only way to avoid Gridlock Somerset by the year 2020 was to start building homes with single garages or even no bloody garages at all.
And did they listen, his council colleagues?
They looked at him in his red and yellow bobcap and his pink jeans and then they looked at each other and they smiled in that He's from Glastonbury kind of way. Except for Griff Daniel (at the meeting in his capacity as developer), who'd looked at Woolly like he hoped he'd die of something painful in the not too distant future.
Afterwards Woolly had gone to a pub out past Wells for a bite of lunch with Fred Harris, the elderly Wedmore councillor, Fred trying to talk a bit of sense into him. Be pragmatic, Fred said. Your time will come.
Ho ho. His time wouldn't come until they had a New Age party with about a dozen like-minded members (if you could find twelve like-minded New Agers) and a sympathetic central government. Which was about as likely as a Mothership from Alpha Centauri coming down to a civic reception on Glastonbury Tor.
On the way back to the poor, beleaguered Isle of Avalon, he shoved Julian Cope's Autogeddon into the cassette deck. You and me, Jules, you and me. Ah, but nobody took Julian Cope seriously either, possibly on account of him being the only rock star left who dressed like Woolly.
He'd go and see Diane again. Shook him up, that did, bloody Archer Ffitch strolling in just as he was about to lay it on Diane about what the new road would do to the St
Michael line. Coincidence, or what?
'OK,' Karen said. 'No names and you didn't get this from me, all right?'
Juanita nodded. Her mouth felt very dry. She needed to hear this but didn't want to. She composed herself, crossing her hands lightly – with these hands you had to do everything lightly – in her lap in the vinyl bedside armchair.
Karen sat down on the bed. 'Geriatric ward, all right? I'm not saying where. This is what I've been told. That situation, I've been there, I know how easy it is to become impatient when you're on your own at night and half of them are incontinent. A saint would blow, some nights.'
'She isn't', Juanita said, 'a saint.'
'I was just saying that. I just need to know before I go any further that she's not any kind of friend of yours.'
'I mistrust her. I think she's a dangerous megalomaniac, a bad person to be around. OK?'
'All right.' Karen lowered her voice. 'Well, this goes back twenty-odd years. It's small things. Hard to prove. Publicly fitting catheters to old men who don't need them. Putting bedpans just out of reach of the disabled ones and then not cleaning them up and leaving the bedding unchanged for hours. Telling them stuff their relatives have said about them never coming home again and renting out their rooms – when they haven't said anything of the sort Stealing their sweets, taking away pictures of their grandchildren in the night. Telling them that there's, like, no God. That this is where it ends. Except for those who are… condemned to walk the ward. As – you know – as spirits. Take it from me, geriatrics are like little kids. They'll believe what you tell them.'
'Jesus. Those are small things?'
'Came to a head when Dunn left a dead woman on the ward all night, unscreened.'
Karen slid a robe around Juanita's bare shoulders. The warmth helped.
'Go on,' Juanita said.
'She took the Anglepoise lamp from the nurses' table and placed it on the dead woman's bedside table. So that it was lighting up the corpse's face – not a peaceful face, you know? Lit up for them all to see, all these old people, all night.'
'How do you know this?'
'Because a doctor came in unexpectedly, and she was reported.'
'She was sacked after that?'
'And blacklisted. The doctor did a good job, got a few signed statements, although the girls were pretty intimidated. God, I only had to mention the name Ruth Dunn to Jane, who came to us from Oxford… Anyway, Sister Dunn worked in another general hospital… as far as they know. The next they heard of her she was a matron at a public school.'
'Where?'
'Dunno. But some of these fancy schools, they like a sadist, don't they? Just stay well away from that woman, my advice. I better go, Juanita, I'll be getting hauled over the coals.'
'Hang on. Could I talk to this Jane? What about the doctor who reported…'
'I shouldn't have told you her name. Leave her alone, Juanita, Jane's jittery enough at the best of times.'
'What about the doctor?'
Karen rose to her feet, expressionless. 'They say the doctor's died. That's all I know. You take care, Juanita.'
Puttering into Magdalene Street in his old but catalytically converted Renault Six, Woolly spotted the coloured lights of the Christmas tree. He liked coloured lights and he liked Christmas trees.
He wondered what it would be like if you could only see the tree lights instead of headlights. If the only sounds you could hear were, like, carol-singing and stuff, not the rumble of this twenty ton truck coming up behind carrying God-knows-what to God-knows-where. All freight this size should be made to go by rail, was Woolly's view.
Fred Harris, the Wedmore councillor, who was a bit green around the edges, bless him, had patted him on the back as they straggled off Daniel's site. 'Never mind, old son. World'll catch up with you one day, look.' Fred always said that to Woolly.
Be dead by then, Woolly thought, as he drove down to where all the streets converged on the tree. He wondered why his cassette player had suddenly cut out.
'Forget it, my advice' Hughie Painter pulled Sam out the doorway of the Crown Hotel and up into High Street towards the NatWest bank and The George and Pilgrims. 'Jeez, was this your brilliant idea to come here? Can't hear yourself flaming talk.'
The kazoo band was doing a syncopated 'O little Town of Bethlehem', kids singing along, a bunch of young
