The Chalice

TWELVE

'The number you have dialled has not been recognised.' said the heartless computer-voice, and Verity cut the line again. Her finger dithered over the buttons on the receiver. It was easy to misdial because not only was her finger shaking but many of the numbers were obscured by blood

She tried again. Telephones quite often malfunctioned in Glastonbury, especially cordless phones and mobiles. Because of the valley formation, according to the engineers. Because of the Shifting of the Veil, according to the mystics.

She'd brewed some camomile tea, sipping it with lips that still felt rigid with shock. There was no comfort tonight in the kitchen, even though it was in the more modem part of the house. No matter how many jolly mugs and copper pans and tomato-red casseroles one placed around the room, the drabness would filter through. Nothing would glint. The electric lights hanging limply between the beams would glow as though on rationed power.

This time, thank God, the telephone rang at the other end. But Major Shepherd's wife was outraged at the disturbance. The Major was unwell; she did not wish him agitated.

'I'm so sorry, Mrs Shepherd, I just didn't know who else to

…?'

'Is it the blasted guttering again. Miss Endicott?' Mrs Shepherd evidently thought Verity was a querulous old ditherer who should have been pensioned off years ago.

'No.' Verity almost sobbed 'It isn't the guttering.'

'Tim!' she heard. 'What are you doing out of bed? Oh, very well, but don't blame me, when you…'

'Verity?' Major Shepherd was wheezing badly. 'Are you all right?'

'No,' Verity said after a pause. 'I really don't think I am.'

Funny how quickly you forgot how it was. The hard-pile office-type carpet. All those white or transparent lampshades, designed for illumination, never for mood, the dominant colour: dark brown; pervasive smell: wet leather.

The arrogant, rigid maleness of the place.

As if to emphasise it, her father took her into the gun-room, where she saw the old oak panelled cabinets had been replaced by revolting metal ones, floor to ceiling. It was truly horrible, sort of semi-military.

'Basic security,' he said, noticing her dismay. 'Can't be too careful with guns anymore.'

'You could always just get rid of them, of course,' Diane said. 'Then you wouldn't need security.'

He didn't even bother to react. Gerald Rankin hung around in the doorway, as if she might try to escape. She could still smell his glove over her mouth and nose; the whole house seemed to be impregnated with the oily essence of Rankin's glove and the sense of being closed in.

'Thanks, Rankin,' her father said. 'Good man. Close the door behind you.'

When his farm-manager had gone. Lord Pennard pointed to the worn leather sofa, scuffed as an old wallet. 'Sit down, please, Diane.'

Her legs felt weak, but she stayed stubbornly on her feet, her back to the bay window with its steely, industrial Venetian blinds. She folded her arms beneath the shawl, tightened her mouth.

'As you please. Drink?'

She shook her head minimally. Picked up and brought home, like a little girl again. So who'd informed on her this time? Don Moulder, doubling his three hundred and fifty? Times is hard, my chicken, got to earn your crust where you can, look.

Diane glared at her father, at the marbled coldness of him.

She knew how bitterly angry he must be at the way she had, as he would see it, let him down. But if she didn't go on the offensive, she'd be nowhere. It had taken her many years to learn this.

'Did… did you phone an ambulance?'

Her father raised an eyebrow. 'Did…I?'

Incredulity. He didn't waste words any more than cartridges in his twelve-bore. Rather like a double-barrelled shotgun himself: heavy, steely-grey, polished and greased and functional.

He went across to the dresser, the last remaining piece of old oak in the room. Coming through the house, she'd noticed how many pieces of fine furniture and pictures had gone. He poured himself a small whisky from a decanter. His movements so elegant for a big man. He was perfectly balanced, his stomach still tauntingly flat. He'd always made her feel like some sort of awful throwback: the fat one.

Diane thought of Headlice lying where Rankin and his son, Wayne, had left him, snuffling on his own blood.

'He could be really badly hurt, you know.'

'I'm sorry.' Lord Pennard sipped his whisky. 'Who are we talking about?'

'Damn it, you…'

Calm down!

'His name's Alan. He's actually a sort of human being who hasn't done you any harm.'

The foxes and the pheasants hadn't done him any harm either; unlikely to lose sleep over a hippy.

'Diane, I…' He raised his voice, grey eyes wide and unblinking. 'I rang Patrick to tell him you were safe. He offered to come and collect you. Told him there was no need. Pointed out there was a train tomorrow. Said you'd be on it.'

Frightfully precise. Absolute concrete certainty in every syllable. It should be her cue to run out of the room, hands over her face, mumbling I hate you, I hate you, in a pathetic, drowning voice. She felt familiar small prickly movements in whatever part of the brain was responsible for manufacturing tears. She thought, I can't. I'm nearly twenty-eight years old.

'Look…' Knowing her voice was all over the place. 'Are you going to call an ambulance? Or let me call one?'

He looked at her, his severely handsome face almost sorrowful. He looked her up and down, from the messed-up hair to the fraying shawl to the moon-patterned skirt of washed out blue from the Oxfam shop.

'Yes I know,' she said. 'I know you won't have it done from here. I know that so far there's absolutely nothing to connect you or even Rankin with a… a hippy in a field. But why – please – why can't you let me at least go to a telephone box?'

His face darkened. 'Because…' His body flexed then straightened like a broken twelve bore clacking into place. 'I won't have you wandering around the town like a streetwalker. Because Rankin tells me the injuries were superficial, nothing such an individual wouldn't get in a pub brawl. And because…'

He came close enough to her to smell the Scotch on his breath and see the small veins in his checks like the veins in marble or the palest Roquefort.

'Because, my dear, hippies and gypsies are like dogs. Give one a good kicking and it'll simply limp off into the undergrowth until it's recovered.'

Diane shook her head in disbelief.

'So let's be realistic, shall we?'

He turned away. Never had liked to look at her for long. Something she'd always remembered, the cursory inspection, as if she was livestock off to market. Well, naturally he'd had more time for his son, that was the way of things, that was the system.

'Good.' Making for the door. 'Good…'

Diane was sure he'd been about to say 'Good Man.'

He turned at the door. Lord Reasonable. 'Look, Diane, you've been a damn trial to us all your life, but you're not stupid. No money to speak of, no job. And I should imagine you've seen enough of life with these scavengers, haven't you?'

She gripped the edge of' her shawl. He simply couldn't absorb the idea of people wanting more from life than money and property and power and influence. Especially when, in his case, one of these – money – was less plentiful than it might be.

A corner of his mouth made a brief excursion towards a cheek – the closest he ever came to smiling. He got rid of it quickly, as if it was a nervous twitch.

'Jennifer's prepared your old room. If you want to see me in the morning, I'll be here until eleven. Train you want leaves…'

'I'm not going!' Realising, to her horror, that she'd stamped her foot. 'How can you? My God, it's unbelievable! I'm a grown woman, you send your man to… to kidnap me. And you expect me to meekly get out of town, get out of your hair… it… Where's Archer?'

'This has nothing to do with Archer,' he snapped.

She knew that Rankin or Wayne would be loitering in the passage to make sure she went up the right stairs. She knew the hidden alarms would be activated to make sure she didn't leave in the night. She felt outraged, humiliated, but, as usual, defeated, and said in a despicably small voice, 'You haven't even asked me why I left Patrick.'

Lord Pennard paused, hand on the doorknob. He looked pained.

'Diane, had I wished to know that, I should have asked Patrick. Goodnight to you.'

'You see. Verity, I…' Major Shepherd's voice was swamped in a torrent of coughing from which it seemed he would not recover. Finally, he said, 'This must sound awful, but for some years you have been our little canary.'

Cuddling her cup of camomile tea. Verity recoiled when she saw it was streaked with blood.

'Miners,' the Major said. 'Miners used to take a canary in a cage into the shafts, as a test for poisonous gases. If the canary…'

'I know,' Verity said tightly.

'Of course, I don't mean it quite like that. We knew nothing would happen to you. That little woman, George used to say, is the strongest human being I've ever met. You know what he meant, don't you?'

'He meant I was not sensitive. Not in that way.'

Verity wanted to protest. Just because she did not See, that didn't mean she was without insight or intuition. The Spiritual had become her life. And healing. All those years studying the Bach Flower Remedies. And dispensing them here, in the ancient sanctity of Glastonbury. Even if being here meant living at Meadwell.

'It's always been dark in this house. Major. And it's growing darker. I mean quite literally. I don't know why that is.'

The Major sighed.

'But until tonight, I have never felt the nearness of…'

She could hardly bring herself to utter the word. It was not a Glastonbury word. In the town's mystical circles, people spoke of positives, negatives and mediators, never of…

'… evil. If this was the Abbot, then the Abbot was evil. Is evil. I'm so sorry, Major Shepherd.'

There was a long pause. His wheeze was like the bellows one used to use on a dying fire.

'Verity, listen to me. I know you're on your own. And that no mere wage is recompense. That George warned us to expect problems. As the Millennium approaches. Now listen…'

'If you're going to mention retirement. Major,' Verity said at once, 'I couldn't think of deserting.'

She held on bleakly while Major Shepherd went into another agony of coughing, '… am trying to get you some help. Stronger than me. Younger. If you could just bear… bear to hold on. If you can't, I'll understand.'

'I shall not desert my post,' Verity said, and felt so cold. 'Even though…

Even though the house hated her. It did. It threw darkness at her. It turned everyone against her.

And everything.

She'd heard the creak of the Abbot's chair and dared not move. Everywhere had been utterly, utterly dark. Verity had scrabbled about in the darkness, found her way to the wall where she knew the light switches were, moved her flattened palms from side to side and in circles and still could not find them. The wall had felt as rough and cold as it must have been in the sixteenth century. The electric switches simply were not there.

She'd panicked, naturally, pulling herself up just short of hysteria when her hand alighted on a box of matches, the ones she'd used to light the candle. But when she struck a match it was dead. All of them were. Little sticks which would not light, only snapped.

'This thing,' Major Shepherd said soberly. 'It must remain at Meadwell. Do you know what I'm saying?'

'I think so.' Did she?

When the lights had conic on, slowly and blearily, revealing an empty chair, a sad salmon steak, a scattering of spent matches and all the switches on the walls. Verity had accused herself of being a weak, stupid old woman. She'd cleared the table, placed the Abbot's chair neatly against the wall. In the kitchen, she'd scraped the salmon steak into the wastebin; giving it to the cat, if the cat had still been here, would have seemed disrespectful.

Not that the creature would have deserved it. When Verity had opened the door of the cupboard by the yawning fireplace, to return the candlestick to its place for another year, she'd had a terrible shock. Out had come a whizzing, spinning, slashing Stella, leaving smears of blood over Verity's arms and hands before hurling herself out of the room and streaking out of the house with a violent snap of the kitchen catflap.

The greasy, tobacco-coloured oak pillars supporting the doorway had looked on, like the sour, sardonic, menacing old men who haunted the street corners of her youth.

Putting down the telephone, Verity wept for many minutes, tears mingling with the blood on her bony arms.

Everyone against her. Everything.

A little, old canary, and gases filling the house: who could really say how noxious they were?