The Chalice (78 page)

      
'So what was it?'

      
'Fuck knows. You're the earth-mysteries expert.'
      
'Think about it later,' Woolly
said. 'We got to scare these bastards away before they have the top of that
well off.'
      
By moonlight, they skirted the edge
of the field, keeping to the hedge. They heard the clunk of a pickaxe on
concrete, saw the muffled glow of a lamp on the ground. Sam moved
quietly through the shallow drainage ditch, his shoes and the bottoms of his
jeans soaked through. There was an old stile he vaguely remembered from his
days with the Ramblers' Association. From way back, when there was like a
little pilgrims' way to the Meadwell.
      
Amazingly, he found the stile,
tested it with one foot, it seemed solid enough to stand on, so he stood on it.
He signalled to Woolly. Then, just as the pickaxe struck metal, he bawled out,

      
'Avon and Somerset Police. Don't no bugger move!'

      
And then he was over the stile and going hard for Darryl
Davey, swinging the garden fork like an axe at a tree.

      
Darryl had started to run, and the shaft of the fork caught him
under both knees and he came down on the concrete with a smack. Sam was aware
of the other guy legging it, but that didn't matter because the lamp on the
ground showed him where to put the fork, like hard under Darryl's chin.

      
Woolly was with him now. 'You see who the other fucker was?'

      
'Don't give a shit. This is my man. Darryl, as I recall, it
was in 1972 when you persuaded me to part with my dinner money or face a
difficult nosebleed situation. I got to tell you, you got precisely five
seconds to say what you done with Diane, else it's a prong up each nostril and
then I start beating your lovely big teeth out with the handle, look. And after
that...'

      
Darryl twisted his neck round and a rusting prong nudged his
Adam's apple. He screamed. 'Where's them cops?'

      
'Four,' Sam said. 'Three. Two ...'

      
'I don't fucking know, do I?' Darryl began to cough.

      
Sam raised a foot.

      
'Leave it out,' Woolly said. 'He can't say much with your shoe
on his gob.'
      
'One,' Sam said.

      
'No, listen ... All we done was scare her. Then Ceridwen comes
in and tells us to piss off. I don't know what they done with her after that,
honest to…'

      
'Where was this, Darryl?'

      
'Outside Woolaston's shop. Len and Wayne done his window,
right. I'm following Lady L … Diane.'
      
'Following her, why?'

      
'Cause they told me to.'

      
'Who?'

      
'Like... your old man, yeah?'

      
'Shit,' Sam said in disgust. 'You get your orders from the old
man?'

      
'Sometimes.'

      
Woolly said, 'Who was with you, then?'
      
Darryl went silent.
      
'We missed that, Darryl,' Sam said.
      
'You can kill me,' Darryl Davey
shouted. 'But I ain't sayin' no more.'

      
So they let him go. They let the bastard go.

      
They went back to the house and they put on every light in the
place.

      
It was gone three a.m.

      
'Would you trust Darryl Davey with anything worth knowing?'
Woolly said.

      
'Would you trust my old man?'

      
'Not unless I had no choice,' Woolly said. 'Go on. Go get him,
boy.'

      
'I'm not leaving you here. Woolly. What if the other bugger
comes back?'

      
'Then I'll handle it. Go, Sammy.'

      
'Can't we both go? This well thing, is that really so ... ?'

      
'Yeh. It is. It is, Sammy. Go.'

      
Sam drove away from Meadwell in Joe Powys's Mini. Glad, on one
level, to be leaving Meadwell. Not glad to be leaving Woolly.

      
Premonition?

      
Not that much of a
convert.

FOURTEEN

Pale Lightball

She felt her anger like a
bed of white-hot coals in her plexus. Her eyes, wide open, watched the mist weaving
between the great pillars.

      
Diane watched the tendrils of cold steam interlacing the air
above her, hearing Archer's politician's voice, dark old oak seasoned by his
heritage.

      
All I need to know is,
do you, the people of Glastonbury want it to happen? ... damned hippies and
squatters ... turning this into a jungle...

      
Archer. Who, all through their childhood, had watched her from
a distance. Which was frightfully easy to do at Bowermead. Archer's face, still
as an owl's, amid the branches of a tree as she pushed her doll's pram through
the wood, an enormous pine cone suddenly landing like a grenade on its
blankets. Archer's petulant expression seen from a high chair across the table,
a spoon at his big, meaty lips.

      
Diane bit the bedclothes.

      
Archer's finger at his lips.
Shhhhh
. Almost a man now, very strong as he lifted her out of bed
and carried her in his arms down the stairs, Diane drowsy, half-hypnotised,
aged seven?

      
Down through the grounds, sweet-scented in the summer night,
and Oliver Pixhill waiting in the shrubbery. Almost dawn as they carried her,
half-fascinated, mostly terrified, to the place where the Tor was a huge fairy
castle.
      
Bring
out the lights, Diane ...

      
Diane felt starved and ill. She was drenched in the sort of
spasmodic sweat which keeps congealing on your face, thick and sour as days-old
milk. She was here because she was ill.

      
It was a hospital, wasn't it?

The old man had a big house
now, self-built to a much higher standard than his usual crap, in an acre of
ill-gotten ground set back from decently suburban Leg of Mutton Road. Far
enough off the road to make it what Griff Daniel would call 'exclusive'.

      
But near enough to cause him serious aggro with his nice neighbours
if there should be a high-decibel altercation resulting from the distinguished builder
refusing to admit his prodigal son at half-past three in the morning.
      
Sam started politely. He rang the
bell.
      
There was no response.

      
This time Sam kept his finger on the bell and at the same time
battered his knuckles on the panel below the tasteless slab of bullseye glass.

      
Above the front porch, a bedroom window opened and a security spot
bulb threw a circle of light around Sam.

      
'What the bloody hell you think you're doing?'

      
Sam stood openly in the middle of the circle of light.
      
'Well, I could do a tap-dance, Dad.
Sing a couple of songs of a cabaret for the neighbours. Or you could just let
me in and we'll have a little chat. And, yeah, I do know it's half past three.'

      
'Bugger off,' said Griff Daniel.'

      
'On the other hand, to save a bit of time I could just put that
sundial through your lounge window.'

      
'And set the burglar alarm off, and I could have you banged up
for the night. Now, for the last time... '

      
'I'd like that,' Sam said. 'I could sit in the station down at
Street and keep the night shift entertained with your history, culminating in
your arrangement with Davey, Len Whatsisname and Wayne Rankin. It's cold, Dad,
I'm not gonner piss about...'

      
Three minutes later. Griff let him in. Paisley dressing gown and
a face like a gargoyle with stone fatigue.

      
'You got a bloody nerve, boy.'

      
'Yeah, well, we'll skip over the pleasantries, if you don't
mind.' Sam pushed past him, through the hall and into a split-level lounge with
a floor-to-ceiling rainbow stone fireplace and a cocktail bar with mirrors. He
didn't have time to laugh. 'Things I need to know now, or, by God, I'll put you
under so much shit it'll take more than a JCB...'

      
'You got nothin' on me, boy.' Griff glanced back at stairs.
'No!' Waving a dismissive hand.

      
'Bring her down,' Sam said. 'Let's have a party.' He didn't
want the old man's latest scrubber cluttering the place up, but anything to
cause more disruption ... However, when the woman appeared in the doorway clutching
a white robe to her scrawny throat, she wasn't what he was expecting.

      
It was Jenna. From The Cauldron. Ceridwen's pipe-cleaner.

      
It didn't make sense. What was she doing here with the old man?
Why wasn't she with Ceridwen and the rest of the so-called Inner Circle?

      
And Diane.

      
'Where's Diane?' Sam said weakly. 'That's all I wanner know.'

      
Griff Daniel sneered and dropped into a kingsize easy chair. 'You
stupid little sod. Never did know when you were playin' outer your league.'

      
'And what about you?'
      
'I know my level.'
      
'And her?'

      
Jenna stared at him, her lips like a thin zip.

      
'Why aren't you with Ceridwen?'
      
'She knows her level, too,' Golf
said.
      
'I thought you were a lesbian.' Sam
said. 'I thought that was what the Inner Circle was about.'

      
'The Inner Circle isn't what you think,'' Jenna said. 'And I'm
not in it. And not all feminists are lesbians - that's something he would say.'

      
This was weird. Sam shook his head in non-comprehension. It
was kind of sick.

      
'Don't think this is no more than a loose sexual arrangement,'
Jenna said haughtily. 'He isn't going to be wearing an earring.'

      
'Go away, boy,' Griff Daniel said. 'We don't know nothin'. Somethin'
I've learned these past few weeks. Local politics is my pond, look. Local
politics is knowing which people to help when they d' want you, and when to
keep out of it. Some things, 'tis better to know nothin'.'

      
Sam clenched his fists.
.
     
'Shut the door on your way out,'
Griff said.

      
But when Sam was on his way out he thought of something the
old man
did
know.

Mist, still rising around
the bed like smoke. In a perverse way, Diane found this comforting. It suited
her mood, enclosed her dark thoughts.

      
In the midst of it, she thought for a moment that she could
see a very pale light ball.

      
When she was very young she used to go all trembly and run downstairs,
and Father snorted impatiently and nannies said, Nonsense, child, and felt for
a temperature.

      
Nannies.

      
There was a certain sort of nanny - later known as a governess
- which Father expressly sought out. Nannies one and two, both the same, the sort
which was supposed to have yellowed and faded from the scene along with crinolines
and parasols. The sort which, in the 1960s, still
 
addressed their charges as 'child'. The sort
which, as you grew older, you realised should never be consulted about occurrences
such as lights around the Tor.

      
And then there was the Third Nanny.

      
Her memories of the Third Nanny remained vague and elusive.
She remembered laughter; the Third Nanny was the only one of them that ever
laughed. And one other thing; she would sit on the edge of the bed, but never
left a dent in the mattress when she arose.

      
The pale lightball hovered. Part of her wanted to clutch at it
and part of her wanted to push it away.

      
In the end that was what she did, for lightballs belonged to
childhood, and she was grown up now.