The Chalice

ONE

Avalon Out, Says Candidate A bitter attack on the 'New Age subculture' of Glastonbury has been made by the man chosen by South Mendip Tories as their next Parliamentary candidate. The Hon. Archer Ffitch, son of local landowner Viscount Pennard, says the town will become a national joke unless it 'stops encouraging cranks'.

Mr Ffitch won a standing ovation from constituency party members when he told them, 'We must seize the future and stop mooning about our mythical past.' He said the town had become saturated with pseudo mystics, many of whom were blatantly pagan, and had become a Mecca for New Age travellers. As a result, local house prices had dropped and businesses were reluctant to invest in the town. Even the boundary signs identified Glastonbury as The Ancient Isle of Avalon in acknowledgement of 'a probably bogus legend'. Mr Ffitch said, 'If the local authority wants a new slogan, I'll give them one: Glastonbury FIRST, Avalon OUT.' Mr Ffitch's remarks followed his formal acceptance of…

'You bastard,' Jim Battle muttered, as dusk settled like mud around the red roofs.

His first thought was to screw the Evening Post into a ball and ram it into the nearest litter bin. Instead, he folded it into his saddle bag. He would show it to Juanita. If he could face her.

He'd waited until the end of the day before cycling into town, Nothing to do with not wanting to show his face in daylight for fear of people pointing at him: That's him, that's the bloke who was executed last night, ho ho. Where's your hat, Jim?

Nobody would, of course. Nobody knew and nobody would find out. Even the buggering travellers had spirited themselves away. He wouldn't have to face anyone. Except for Juanita and his own hatless head reflected in shop windows.

Perhaps his humiliation on the Tor had been a small payback for his self-indulgence in fleeing the city to reside amid ancient mystery. How bloody Pat would have enjoyed it: the invasion of Jim's little idyll, a barbarian's blade over his throat.

As it turned out, nobody commented even on the premature departure of the travellers. The report of Archer Ffitch's speech had greater implications.

'This is the kind of chap we need,' said Colin Border in the off-licence, pointing to the Post's picture of Archer looking severe but dynamic. 'What I've been saying for years. How can you hope to attract new industry to a town where half the potential workforce appear to be pot-smoking sun worshippers? Fourteen pounds 49p, please, Jim,' wrapping Jim's bottle of Scotch in brown paper.

'Won't be terribly popular down the street, though.' Jim put his money on the counter. 'Lot of New Age types running quite profitable businesses now.'

'What, vegetarian sandwich bars and poky shops specialising in bloody overpriced gimcrack jewellery that's supposed to have healing powers? Give me a Marks and Spencer any day. Not that Archer'll be losing any support in that direction. Most of these halfwits throw away their votes on the Green Party and the rest are bound to be Labour, the odd one or two Lib-Dems. What's he got to lose? Nailing his colours to the mast from the outset. I like that.'

'Hmm,' Jim said. Because of the way he dressed and his disapproval of thieving travellers, people like Colin assumed he must be as reactionary as they were.

'I like this bit, Jim. Listen to this, "Glastonbury enshrines the idea of a strong English and Christian tradition within an established, solidly prosperous country town. It stands for the Old Values. Whereas Avalon, said Mr Ffitch, is a place which exists only in legends and folklore. It has been adopted by those who choose to turn their backs on the real world, to inhabit a drug-sodden cloud-cuckoo land where no one has to work for a living and traditional family values are laughed at.'"

'Yes,' said Jim. 'Quite.' He picked up his bottle and got out of there before he exploded.

Outside, he looked down the street to where the lights of the New Age shops began. He saw a twinkling display of assorted crystals. He saw tarot cards and dreamy relaxation tapes and a lone twilight candle burning in the window of The Wicked Wax Co.

Well, all right, one or two of the windows were rather lurid; some of the owners a little, erm, eccentric. But that candle, for instance, symbolised something important, something close to the essence of it all. Something Archer Ffitch wouldn't understand and many of his supporters wouldn't realise until it was too late.

Jim folded the evening paper, jammed it under his arm and mooched off towards The George and Pilgrims. He needed a couple of drinks.

'You bastard, Ffitch,' he murmured. 'Why must you murder the Mystery?'

The woman with hair the colour of old gold was drifting around the shop with her hands out – palms down, like a priest vaguely searching for children to bless.

'I don't quite know,' she said. 'I don't quite know what I'm looking for.'

Diane thought that went for an awful lot of people in this town.

The woman was frightfully beautiful, in an ethereal sort of way. Must be wonderful to be ethereal. Being slim and elegant would, of course, be a start.

'Juanita would know.' The woman had a long, slender nose; she looked down it at Diane. 'Juanita would know at once.'

'Well, she'll be back in a short while,' Diane said.

Juanita had tramped wearily off to see her reflexologist, leaving Diane in charge of the shop. Just like old times, really. Except that Juanita's weariness used to be feigned and after a glass of wine she'd be fine again, full of ideas and energy. Last night she and Jim had seemed bowed and burdened and today Jim hadn't been round. Juanita had glossed over how they just happened to be walking up Wellhouse Lane when the Range Rover went past. She said that awful split lip had been caused by a flying log chip when she was chopping wood for the stove.

Whatever really happened, Diane thought, it's all my fault.

She gestured hopelessly at the shelves of books; the arrangements had changed a lot since she was last here.

'Perhaps if you gave me an idea.'

The woman whirled on her. She was about thirty, with a lean, peremptory Home Counties accent that didn't go with her appearance at all.

'Celtic manuscripts.'

'What, sort of Book of Kells?'

The woman looked horrified. 'That's Christian, isn't it? No, no, no no, no… what I need, urgently, are the very earliest images I can find of the Goddess. You haven't been here long, have you?'

What a nerve, Diane thought. You live here all your life and someone who moved in maybe six months ago…

'I'm helping out,' she said tightly.

Which goddess? she wanted to ask. A decision seemed to have been taken that all the goddesses, from Artemis to Kali to Isis, should be combined into a single symbol of woman power. For this woman, perhaps, it wasn't so much about spirituality, as a kind of politics. Just like the Pilgrims, really, wherever they were now.

The woman pirouetted again, hands exploring the air, as if she could somehow divine the book she wanted. Her rich golden hair was a tangle of abandoned styles, rippling waves and ringlets. Did she always behave like this, Diane wondered, or was she on something?

As though she'd picked up Diane's thoughts from the ether, the golden woman leaned across the counter and smiled widely. Her eyes were somewhere else.

'I'm the artist,' she declared.

And then stepped back. As though this was some sort of epiphany, a moment of wondrous self-discovery.

'And you are?'

'I'm Diane.'

'Do you acknowledge the Goddess? You should, you know. She can help you.'

With what? With her weight problem? As though spiritual development was just another aspect of health and beauty

'What are you doing tonight?' the woman demanded, homing in on promising raw material. 'Come with me. I'm in Holy Thorn Ceramics across the street. Domini Dorrell- Adams. Come with me and meet the Goddess.'

Gosh, was this an order? The woman leaned sinuously across the counter again. 'I'll call for you, shall I? At seven?'

'Oh, well,' Diane said. 'I've a sort of, you know, commitment tonight.'

'You should make a commitment to the Goddess. The very landscape of Avalon is shaped in her image, did you know that? There's just no place better in the world to learn how to be a woman.'

She drifted to the door. 'Remember The Cauldron,' she sang carelessly, as though she was dropping a pamphlet behind her.

'Right,' Diane whispered, as the door got into the mood and glided shut. She actually did remember The Cauldron. Formed, not long before she'd been dispatched to Yorkshire, by a rather dominant woman calling herself Ceridwen, who used to be a witch and had a Divination Consultancy (fortune-telling booth) somewhere at the rear of the Glastonbury Experience arcade.

Juanita, never the sisterly type, didn't like her at all.

Diane wished Juanita would come back. She felt exposed and nervous when anyone came into the shop, and yet she didn't want to leave it, imagining Gwyn and his sickle among the freaks outside St John's, imagining a cream Range Rover screeching into the High Street kerb, a gloved hand over her face.

She'd slept last night in Juanita's spare bedroom – it had been rather blissy, actually, being in a soft bed again after that sleeping bag in the van. Juanita had said she could stay as long as she liked. Awfully kind, but…

… There were questions to be asked, and pretty urgent ones. Like, what was she going to do, with no money, no job and the kind of family that was probably worse than having no family?

Why had she been called back? What were they trying to tell her, the lights and symbols in the sky, the pungent scent of old Avalon and, most disturbing of all, last night's dark and horrific exhibition in the night sky while the Pilgrims performed what sounded horribly like a Satanic ritual?

Where had the Pilgrims gone? And, most worrying of all, what had happened to Headlice?

She'd half thought of going to the police. Which would immediately implicate Rankin and her father and cause the most awful fuss, possibly for nothing. Hippies and gypsies are like dogs. Give one a good kicking and it'll simply limp off into the undergrowth until it's recovered.

Worse than having no family at all.

Back home. And a stranger – the golden-haired woman had thought she was a stranger. The town seemed different: Juanita's weariness appeared to be general; there was that atmosphere of torpor you found during the Blight, the period towards the end of summer when stagnant heat seemed to stick like toffee to the Somerset Levels. Except this was November and it wasn't heat so much as a lack of cold. No breeze, no vigour. The people she recognised as they walked past the window seemed conspicuously older.

The shop door pinged open then, and Diane looked up in alarm, half' expecting to see Gerry Rankin with a chloroform pad.

'Diane!' the customer yelled. 'Sheesh! Wow! It's true! You are back.'

He was wearing this awful, home-knitted, baggy scarlet sweater that stopped just above his knees – which you could see through the splits in his jeans. His beard was a little more grey, a little more wispy. His hair had all but vanished from the front, making his pony-tail look pretty silly. But his smile was still as wide as his face.

'Oh gosh, Woolly, it's so good…'

'Please…' Woolly drew himself up to his full five-foot-five, assumed a dignified expression. 'Councillor Woolaston, if you don't mind.'

Diane gasped. A hand went to her mouth 'Oh no! Gosh! Really?'

'You didn't hear? Last May, my love. Old Hippy Shakes the Establishment. Electoral Shock Rocks Glastonbury As Longest-Serving Councillor Bites Dust. Pretty wild, huh? I'm on three committees: Planning, Environmental Health and… er, I forget the other, but it's really heavy and influential.'

Diane hugged him. She could quite easily get her arms all the way round, 'I can't believe it!'

'Yeah, well,' said Woolly. 'Neither can Griff Daniel. If one of his lorries is tipping out a load of bricks these days, I stand well clear.'

Diane was thrilled. Over the years, three candidates from the Alternative Sector had stood against their old enemy and been heavily beaten by the local votes. Whoever had thought of putting Woolly up, it had been truly inspired. He might be an old hippy, but he was a local hippy. The natives sometimes despaired of him, but they couldn't help liking him, and they knew he was ever so honest.

'It's just incredible,' said Diane.

'It's not that incredible' Woolly tried to look hurt. 'But yeah, if Griff hadn't had this bit of hassle over jerry-building, over Somerton way. And if it hadn't, like, found its way into the Gazette

… whoops! Aw shit, man, all's fair in love and politics. How long you been back?'

'Since yesterday. Didn't you hear about it?'

'Yeah,' Woolly admitted, with a crooked smile. 'Course I heard about it. Just us politicians got to be a bit guarded. Nothing wrong with the travellers, most of 'em. That your van, with the pink spots? Nice one. Pity they've all gone, mind. I'd like to've seen Archer's face. And your old man.'

'What?' Diane said. Had it got out about her being snatched from the camp?

'Aw, come on. You're saying you really don't know?'

'Don't know what?'

'Sheesh.' Woolly dragged a stool across to the counter. 'What a fucking family. He didn't tell you about Archer being put up as Tory candidate for Mendip South?'

'Oh gosh. I didn't know. Woolly, I really didn't. I didn't know he was even in the running.'

'Clever the way they're timing it,' Woolly said. 'Idea being, presumably, that he stands in for old Bowkett at this dinner and that garden fete and soon he's so well integrated that, come election-time, half the voters'll think he's already the serving MP. Geddit?'

'Ah.' It was all falling into place. This was a crucial time for Archer. Her father would have been picturing the headlines: CANDIDATE'S SISTER IS NEW-AGE- TRAVELLER. A picture of Archer shaking hands with the Prime Minister and another one of Diane in her moon skirt standing in front of a white van with big pink spots. No wonder they'd acted so ruthlessly. No wonder Rankin hadn't cared who got hurt.

It was also no wonder they'd handed her over when Juanita started threatening them with the Press and TV. Handed over! Good God, what sort of hostage had she become?

'I'm not gonner ask what went wrong up in Yorkshire, look,' Woolly said. 'Not any of our business. But I'm glad you're back, Diane, man. Gonner need all the support we can get over this road business, if the public inquiry goes against us.'

'Is that likely?'

'A sham, that inquiry. They won't admit it, but this is the first stage in linking Somerset into the Euro superhighway. Biggest environmental threat in Britain today. Nightmare. Some of the finest countryside in the world sacrificed to the juggernaut. Once they've started, there'll be no end to it. Be nowhere to walk except from your house to your car, and no garden in between.'

Woolly laughed, embarrassed. 'Sorry. When you get on the council you stop talking to people normally, you just make speeches. What you got here?' He started turning over the pages of Shadow of Angels, a glossy, new book about the St Michael Line, mainly pictures, handsome but superficial.

'Hey, I heard this thing was out. Let's see if I'm in the index.'

Woolly was Glastonbury's biggest expert on leys and earth-forces. Which said quite a lot, as there was no town in Britain with more ley-lines or, indeed, ley line experts per square yard.

'Yeah, Woolaston E. T., pages 171-173. Three pages? Sheesh. I shoulda charged this lady. Specially as she's rubbished it, apparently. They dress it up in a lovely jacket with romantic photos and a little bit of text that ends up saying the Line probably don't exist anyway.'

'We followed it,' Diane said. 'The convoy. We went from church to church all the way from the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, stopping at the Avebury circle and all those places and…'

She stopped, suddenly remembering something Headlice had said last night in his manic, mud-splashed, let's-get-out-of-here state.

'Who? The Pilgrims?' Woolly spread his hands. 'Well, that's good, innit? Travelling the Line, near as you can, it helps keep the energy flowing. Here, listen to this… A resident of Glastonbury, Edward "Woolly" Woolaston walks the full length of the line from St Michael's Mount to Bury every five years in what has become a personal ritual. "When I'm too old to walk, I'll find somebody to push me," says Woolaston, who has been studying linear configurations in the West Country landscape for over twenty-five years'

Woolly closed the book and sighed. 'Picture of me, too. She made me wear the woolly hat and the long scarf. The full sixties throw-back bit. I don't mind. I just wish these clever gits would try and understand that while the line might not work out exactly on the map, it does… in here.'

Woolly patted his chest and Diane thought at once of Headlice looking up the Tor from Don Moulder's meadow and announcing, I can feel it… here, punching his chest through his pitifully torn clothing.

And later, minutes before he was attacked in Moulder's field, he'd said. And no more stopping at churches, goin' in backwards…

They'd made a point, on Gwyn's direction, of stopping at every church on the St Michael route as well as many of the old stones and burial mounds. They'd made Headlice go in backwards?

'Hey, don't worry'. Woolly was wearing one of his huge grins, patting her arm. 'We're not gonner let 'em deport you this time. You got Councillor Woolaston behind you now, kid. Not going back with the Pilgrims, are you?'

'I don't even know where they are. It was just a way of… getting here, I suppose.'

Woolly didn't question it. To Woolly, everything in life was about Getting Here. 'So you're OK, then? I mean, in the shop?'

'Oh, yes.' But Diane wasn't too certain. She couldn't help imagining another unsuitable headline: CANDIDATE'S SISTER WORKS IN OCCULT BOOKSHOP; Not quite so detrimental to Archer's prospects. But Archer didn't like anything at all in his way. Not if it could be removed.

'You know, I think I'm gonner buy this book, after all,' Woolly said. 'How much?' He turned the book over. 'Sheesh, that's a bit steep.'

'I'm sure Juanita would want me to knock a pound or so off,' said Diane, but Woolly looked stem.

'Councillor Woolaston never trades on friendship. I'll pay full whack.' Woolly pulled out a pink and blue canvas wallet, searched through it, looked up, did his grin. 'Er… slight cash flow problem. I can give you a tenner, bring the rest tomorrow?'

Diane smiled and put the book in a paper bag for him.

"Tis good to have you back, my love,' said Woolly sincerely.

Verity loved Dame Wanda Carlisle's house. It was everything Meadwell was not – spacious and airy, with sumptuous sofas and deep Georgian windows letting in lots of glorious light.

It was also surprisingly close to the heart of the town, tucked into a discreet mews behind St John's Church, quiet but convenient for attending talks at the town hall and the Assembly Rooms.

'I'm totally convinced this will help you.' Wanda, large and strong and scented, placed a reassuringly regal hand on Verity's wrist. 'My dear, the man is said to be wonderfully charismatic'

Verity raised a hesitant eyebrow. Most of Wanda's pronouncements were couched in similarly extravagant superlatives. All great actresses, Verity supposed, were long conditioned to project, project and project.

'I suppose, all the same, that I shall have to consult Major Shepherd.'

'Nonsense, darling.' Wanda reached for the gin bottle. 'This Major Shepherd, it's all very well for him, he doesn't have to live in the blessed house. So he has no right to pontificate. Now. I'll tell you what we shall do. Dr Grainger is appearing at the Assembly Rooms on… when? Wednesday. Oh… that's tonight!'

'What a coincidence,' Verity observed, covering her wineglass with a hand. 'No more for me, thank you. I shall be quite tiddly.'

'In Avalon…' Wanda mixed herself a large gin and tonic. '… I have found that coincidence does tend to be the norm.' She had come to Glastonbury last spring for my soul's sake. Retaining the Hampstead villa, naturally, because while London might be unbearable it did remind one of the need for the sanctity of Avalon.

Verity raised her eyes to the sculpted ceiling and the cut-glass chandelier which threw hundreds of beautiful light-splinters into the farthest corners. She thought of the soiled bulbs of Meadwell struggling against the shadows and supposed a similar comparison could be made between her and the incandescent Wanda.

'I don't know,' she said. 'I don't know at all.'

She was still flattered that such a distinguished person, well-known from the theatre and the television, should have so much time for her. Although, she suspected Wanda did prefer to be with people who were rather in awe. In the presence of someone manifestly powerful, like Ceridwen, the feted actress tended to wilt into a sort of compliant vagueness.

Verily fingered the glossy pamphlet on the occasional table. The man in the photograph was shaven-headed, bearded and unsmiling. DR PEL GRAINGER: Fear of the Dark – a misconception. An Introduction to Tenebral Therapy.

Dr Grainger was an American author and academic who had recently moved into a barn conversion at Compton Dundon. just a few miles away. Apparently, his argument was that we only fear the dark because we do not fully understand its role, a natural balance of darkness and light being essential for our health, eyesight and spiritual development.

'They say', Wanda confided, 'that he's had all the sources of artificial light removed from his barn. He has no television, writes and reads only by daylight, while the nights are reserved for thinking, meditation, sex and sleep. Sleep of a sublime quality attainable only by those who are truly at peace with the dark.'

Wanda raised a theatrical eyebrow. 'About the quality of the sex one can only speculate'

'It sounds… quite interesting,' said Verity dubiously.

'In Avalon – and this is part of the magic – there is always someone. Whatever your spiritual problem. Always someone near at hand.'

All too near, in Wanda's case. Her house had become the headquarters of The Cauldron, some of whose Outer Circle gatherings had been attended, a trifle timidly, by Verity. The Outer Circle concerned itself mainly with lectures about the role of the Goddess in the modern world.

Actually, Verity was becoming rather sceptical about The Cauldron. She'd first gone along having been told the group was researching the Marian tradition in Glastonbury. While not herself a Catholic, she had felt an urge to understand the power of the faith which had driven Abbot Whiting.

Now, she rather suspected that references to the Goddess Mary were something of a sop. And while respecting pagan viewpoints, Verity had always avoided any practical involvement in that particular belief-system.

'Is Dr Grainger a pagan?' she asked.

She was very much regretting having raised the darkness problem with Wanda. This had been several weeks ago, when the nights were drawing in and she had hoped to be invited to a social evening the actress was hosting, the prime purpose of which was to introduce the recently inducted Bishop of Bath and Wells to leaders of the New Age community. The new bishop was said to be keen to talk, on the basis, apparently, that a pagan spirituality was better than no spirituality at all. Verify thought this was probably a positive move.

'Darling,' said Wanda, 'I have absolutely no idea of Dr Grainger's spiritual orientation. But if he can help you to survive in that hellhole, does it really matter? Oh Verity!'

Wanda, who had taken to wearing white, priestess robes about the house suddenly surged towards Verity amid a billow of sleeves.

'I do feel – don't you? – that we are at the beginning of something quite, quite momentous.'

In Wanda's world, it seemed to Verity, nothing which was less than absolutely momentous was worth getting involved in at all. She smiled half-heartedly and gathered her bulky tapestry bag into her arms.

'Eight o'clock, then,' Wanda decreed. 'There's an Inner Circle meeting of The Cauldron downstairs tonight, and I would prefer to leave before they arrive, otherwise I shall just be striding about as usual, longing to know what they're doing down there.'

'It must be frustrating, I know,' Verity said. Ceridwen had insisted that it be at least three years before an initiate was exposed to a high degree of what she called 'live energy'.

'Very well,' she said. 'Eight p.m.'

'Darling, I truly believe it will change your life,' said Wanda.