attached to the bent machine heads.
'Who did this?'
'Does it matter? Town's crawling with vigilantes now. Glastonbury First; I thought it'd blow over. Keep quiet, don't make a big deal out of it, let it bum itself out. Sheesh, everything that happens deals 'em another ace. Jim Battle. And now-'
'You said 'chosen'.'
'Huh?'
'You said 'chosen instrument of death'. What did you mean?'
'Ah, you don't wanner hear this.' Woolly wiped his forehead. 'Seminal book for me. The Old Golden Land. Somebody said you'd changed. Thought it was all balls now. Didn't wanner have anything to do with leys and location-phenomena.'
Powys said nothing.
'That being the case, you'll be saying to yourself. What a shithead – gets pissed, causes a truly horrible fatal accident and the best he can think of is to blame the paranormal. Get me outer here, you'll be thinking.'
Woolly was close to tears.
Powys thought about all the crazy stuff he'd heard tonight. He thought about Uncle Jack.
'Woolly,' he said, 'I think I'm changing back.'
Sam sat for a long time with his head in his hands.
'Take your time,' Juanita said.
Although she truly didn't think there was time. Too much happening too fast. It was like one of those Magic Eye pictures where there was a lot going on but it all looked like mush until your eye learned how to resolve the vibrating strands and then, in the centre of it all, was a shatteringly obvious symbol.
A very dark symbol.
'We had kind of a row,' Sam said. 'Diane said everything was real and everything was a part of everything else. Something like that.'
This was so close to Juanita's own thoughts that she had to drink some whisky very quickly, through her straw.
Sam had tried to clean himself up. He was wearing an old, torn army parka, camouflage trousers and walking boots.
'Where have you been, Sam?'
He sighed. 'Bowermead. Pennard's got a hunt coming off on Boxing Day. Thought I'd see how I could spoil the fun.'
'Rankin catch you?'
'No. Didn't see Rankin. I saw… I saw where hundreds of beautiful broadleaf trees had been destroyed. The ground all dug up and flattened. You know how poor old Woolly was saying they could start anywhere, at any time, clearing wood for the new road?'
'This is for real, Sam?'
'Swear to God.' His hair was stuck to his forehead where he'd splashed cold water into his eyes. 'What I figured… Pennard's worried about hundreds of protesters descending on his woodland like at Newbury and Batheaston… so he's got in first. Destroyed his own trees. Remains of bonfires everywhere, where they burned the branches.'
'The mind boggles,' Juanita said. Dynamite stuff, certainly. But why would that send Sam off to get crawling drunk?
Take it slowly.
'Sam, does Diane know about this?'
He shook his head.
'Did she know you'd gone to Bowermead?'
'No. What happened, look, after the crash the telly were interviewing Archer Ffitch. He's coming out with all this pious, hypocritical shit, trying to lay it all on Woolly. And then, when the camera's off, he puts the knife in for Diane with the reporter. How they've tried to help her but she's a lost cause. Very sick girl, all this. Discreetly planting the information that Diane's batty and anything she says should be treated accordingly. Which would include anything printed in The Avalonian.'
Black lettering on yellow started to roll across Juanita's brain like one of those advertisements on a belt in the Post Office: '…OONIAN IS HERE… THE AVALOONIAN IS HERE…THE AVAL…'
'I just went insane. I wanted to go off, fuck up the Ffitches any way I could.'
'And now you can,' Juanita said. 'You can blow it to the papers about all the trees they've destroyed prematurely. Where did you get pissed, Sam?'
'Down the Rifleman's. Four double Scotches and a pint. On an empty stomach.'
'I'm missing something. How did you get from Bowermead to the Rifleman's Arms?'
'Walked. Ran. Ran, mostly. Left the van back on the Pilton road. Wasn't going back that way. Oh Christ, Juanita, the reason we had the row, me and Diane, was over what you believed in and what you couldn't handle.'
'I'm surprised it took you so long. Working together so closely and her being of a mystical persuasion, while you…'
'Juanita…' Sam pushed the hair away from his eyes and his hands stayed clutched to either side of his head. 'So help me, I think I've seen a ghost.'
'Help yourself, J.M.' Woolly pushed a bottle of Bell's across the workbench, untied his pathetic pony-tail. 'You won't mind if I don't.'
Powys poured less than half an inch of Scotch into a tumbler. He wasn't in a drinking mood either.
The little room was like the picture you had of the workshop of the man who made Pinocchio. Curved planes and fancy chisels and lots of tools you wouldn't know which end to pick them up with. And rich, woody smells.
'I'm out of here tomorrow,' Woolly said. 'Best thing. People don't want to see me around. Even my friends, they'll just be uncomfortable.'
'Where'll you go?'
'Dunno yet. Here I am one day, an old hippy in the place where all old hippies would want to come to die. Next day, boom. Outcast.'
Woolly lit a roll up, like the Bishop of Bath and Wells.
'Sheesh,' he said vacantly.
'Look,' Powys said. 'I don't really know this place. I just came because someone wanted me to write a book about the New Age culture.'
'Decline of.' Woolly said. 'It's gonner be all washed up again. You know the last time this happened? 1539. The dissolution of the monasteries When the State fitted up the Abbot here. Topped him.'
Woolly picked up a wooden guitar bridge with little holes for the strings to go through and began to sand it down with a small piece of glass-paper.
'I seen it coming a long way off, man. Just never thought it was gonner happen so fast. I knew there was gonner be a showdown and I knew I'd be at the centre of it. What I guessed was it'd be the road that brought it all to a climax. Big protest on the site, us occupying the trees they were gonner bring down, digging tunnels, forming human chains. Then this business with the Tor comes up. Need a human chain round that too. I had this feeling that was what I'd been born for. My destiny. To form human chains around a holy hill.'
Powys formed pictures of Woolly as this little Hereward the Wake figure rallying the New Age troops. Woolly on the TV news. Woolly in Sunday newspaper profiles.
'Stupid,' Woolly said. 'What I'd been born for was to help kill an innocent child at precisely the right time. Thereby making a key contribution to the Second Fall of Glastonbury'. Apocalyptic, J.M.'
He put down the wooden bridge.
Powys said, 'I don't understand.'
'OK.' Woolly started rolling the glass-paper between his hands. 'Let's start at the beginning. This is the most important spiritual power-centre in the country. Maybe in the Western World. This is where they brought the most powerful mystical artefact the world has ever known, because it brings together Christianity and the old religions. The Chalice, right. Let's not call it the Holy Grail, let's just call it the Chalice. Whether it dispenses wine, water or
