The Chalice

FOUR

'Essentially,' Dr Pel Grainger said, 'we are talking readjustment. Reprogramming the organism to self-regulate photo-sensory input. We're talking…'

Dr Grainger moved to the very front of the platform, a portly figure all in black. He breathed in through his nose, abdomen swelling. Then he exhaled languidly and noisily from his mouth, flung his arms wide… and all the lights died at once, as if he'd blown them out.

'Penumbratisation,' he said.

Although it was obviously staged, there was an intake of breath from the audience. Verity jumped in her seat before realising, after a fraught second, that this was not Meadwell, but the Assembly Rooms, the alternative Town Hall, centre for esoteric lectures, meeting place for all who sought, in Glastonbury, a new level of Being. At the Assembly Rooms one expected – even hoped for – the unexpected.

'Marvellous,' said Dame Wanda Carlisle. 'Bravo.' But her voice, normally warm and perfectly pitched, sounded strident and intrusive. Nobody else had spoken.

The now invisible Dr Grainger waited for total silence before continuing.

'If you think that was a shock, my friends, it's nothing compared to the sense of dislocation I guarantee you will feel when we put on the lights again at the end of the session. For those who haven't figured it out yet, penumbratisation means permitting our consciousness to merge with the shadows. It is the preliminary to bonding with the dark. Lesson one: learn to penumbratise.'

So far, Verity had not been terribly impressed with Dr Pel Grainger (the Pel apparently short for Pelham) not least because of his somewhat theatrical appearance. In his long, black jacket, he resembled the magicians she remembered from children's parties before the War. He had a trim, black beard which contrasted so dramatically with his puny, pale face that it must surely be dyed.

With the lights extinguished, however, Dr Grainger was in his clement, his voice as rich as black coffee, the voice of a hypnotist or one of those evangelical American clergymen. It soothed. It was, Verity thought, a rather dangerous voice.

'You may think that you cannot see me. But the Tenebral Law says you can see me clearer than ever now, without the interference of light. Light itself is random, haphazard, volatile. Artificial light is an interference.'

He paused. The little hall was packed, but nobody shuffled or coughed the way they had when the lights were on.

'Only darkness,' intoned the voice of Dr Pel Grainger, 'can connect with our inner being. In tenebral therapy, we learn to locate what I will call the inner dark. The darkness inside ourselves… about which there are a number of ancient misconceptions.'

Verity tensed.

'People say to me, "but darkness… surely we fear the dark because darkness is the oldest metaphor for evil "'

Verity flinched.

'This,' softly now, 'brings us to the oldest misconception of them all. One so endemic in our society that the modern world seeks to cancel the dark. Throughout history, societies have run towards the light because the light is easy. It makes no demands upon us. See, what you have nowadays, people go for south-facing houses, right? They go for plate-glass walls, French-doors, conservatories – they got to open everything to as much light as they can get. Because light makes no demands.'

Verity felt people around her nodding agreement.

'OK, let's deal with evil. The word "evil" is a terse, blanket condemnation of anything it does not suit us to understand. We know that it is essential for the development of the soul to undergo periods of hardship and so-called negativity. We talk of the soul travelling out of the darkness and into the light. Therefore, the darkness must be "evil". To that I say… bullshit!'

Verity thought of what she'd said to Major Shepherd about the presence of Abbot Whiting exuding evil. Because the lights had gone out? Was that really all it was?

'Let us consider darkness,' said Dr Grainger, 'as a sentient being. As something sensitive and vulnerable. In the States, our cities are so damn bright at night now, you can no longer see the stars. Plus we have high-powered security lamps on our houses, we blast through the night with our headlamps. Instead of melding with the dark, we brutalise it.'

As he said this, he snapped his fingers and the house lights came on for a blazing instant before going out again, and Grainger shouted, 'What do you see? Tell me what you see now. Come on, tell me what you see!'

'Big yellow spots,' a man called out.

'Alarming purple circular things,' described Dame Wanda, 'with a sort of spongy core.'

'OK, OK,' Pel Grainger said. 'You've all seen them before, just you didn't know what you were seeing. Well now, I'm gonna tell you. What happened was we blasted the dark with brutal, artificial light, and what you saw, maybe are still seeing are the bruises. Now, you want me to do that again, you want me to hit the darkness one more time?'

'No way, man.' someone behind Verity said nervously, as if Dr Grainger had threatened to hit a child.

'Any of you? Anybody want the light back? Anybody feel happier with a little illumination around here?'

Silence.

'Good,' said Dr Pel Grainger. 'I congratulate you all. You have reached what I term First stage Tenebral Symbiosis. Now we can begin.

Verity sat with her fingers linked on her knees and felt some trepidation.

When I awoke in my room at the George and Pilgrims, sunlight had turned the stained glass in my window into a nest of gems and I felt at once a different person. It was the first time since before the War that I had slept the night through and awoken after sunrise. Or, if it was not the first time, then it certainly felt like it. This was my rebirth. That morning I walked through the Abbey ruins, at first appalled at what little remained and then overcome with a sudden humility and a desire… to worship.

This was something I had never before experienced; indeed I realised then that I had never really understood the meaning of 'worship'. Before I knew it, I had fallen to my knees, something I had not been able to do since leaving hospital, without the most excruciating pain. This time I felt no pain at all, only a growing sense of wonder. I do not know how long I knelt there in the wet winter grass, gazing up through the noble arch of the Western Doorway, Even today it is still possible, in Glastonbury, to kneel alone and undisturbed in a wide open public place, although I should not care to predict how long this state of affairs will remain before the worshipper is derided or even attacked and robbed. But it seemed to me then, and sometimesstill does, that these serene ruins enclose a level of holiness unexperienced in most of our great surviving cathedrals. And something else: a sadness, which I perceived then as sweet melancholy but now, it pains me to record, seems closer to a bitter despair. But I was full of an extraordinary optimism as, later that morning, I made my way to the Chalice Well, where the Blood Spring flows and the Arimathean was said to have laid down the Grail. There to meet my Teacher and another person: the highly controversial writer and mystic Mr John Cowper Powys.

Mr Powys, it must be said, was not the most popular man in this town at this time, due to the publication before the War of his extremely lengthy novel A Glastonbury Romance.

It is a powerfully volatile tome which had left me with very much mixed feelings. Although its central inspiration is the Holy Grail, the Glastonbury it portrays is far from a sacred haven. Indeed it emerges as a divided community full of 'misfits'. One leading character is an extremely aggressive entrepreneur and there is a young man whose spiritual leanings are challenged by a pretty extreme case of sexual frustration. There is also an unpleasant Welsh pervert of the masochistic type whose peccadilloes are said to have been derived from aspects of Mr Powys's own psychology. And so the thought of an encounter with this depraved and opinionated windbag would normally have completely taken the shine off the day. However…

Diane looked up from Pixhill's diary in alarm. Someone was banging on the shop door.

Don't open the door for anyone, Juanita had warned, cream Range Rover or otherwise. Did she really mean that? Juanita had been a little strange, not only more cynical but seemingly less secure. Rather disturbing; she'd always been such… well, such a lovely free spirit, really.

Diane rose hesitantly. It was true that Glastonbury was not as safe as it used to be. Apparently, there'd been a couple of muggings in the past year, while she was away, and a sexual assault, and as for burglaries…

She opened the door to the shop just a crack. Through the shop window she could see… Oh gosh. A sort of floating thing in white.

'Oh, Diana!' she heard. 'Don't be tedious. I know you're there.'

Oh no. It was that woman, the artist. Domini Something-Thing.

'Come on, do open the door. I need your help.'

Diane, sighing, went through into the darkened shop. Hadn't she told the woman she was busy tonight? Cautiously, she unlocked the door.

'Oh, Diana, really,' Domini said as though they were old friends. 'It's only me.'

She stepped lightly over the threshold. She was wearing a long, white dress, rather flimsy, a dress for a summer night but she didn't seem at all cold. Too animated. There was a gold coloured girdle loosely around her waist, a tore of brass around her neck. She looked… like a goddess.

'It's Diane,' Diane said. 'Not Diana. Look, I'm terribly sorry…'

'Oh,' said Domini. 'You should call yourself Diana, it's more resonant. Diana the huntress.'

'I've never been much of a huntress,' said Diane.

'No. I suppose you haven't.' Domini looked at her with a tilted smile. 'You must be quite strong, though. Hold these, would you?' She reached down behind her to the pavement and came up with a cardboard wine box. 'Be careful, it's rather heavy.'

'Wine?' Diane was bemused, her head still full of the Pixhill diaries.

'Lord, no. Follow me.'

Domini glided diagonally across High Street, paying no heed to a motorcyclist who roared through her path. Behaving as though she was made of air and light and the bike would have passed straight through her.

Diane lumbered behind, clutching the cardboard box to her chest. People had always treated her like a servant. Even servants; her father's staff were always making her fetch mops and garden tools and things.

'Stay precisely there.' Domini had stopped outside her shop. Holy Thorn Ceramics. The window was in darkness.

Domini went into the shop and returned with another cardboard wine box.

Diane stared around, blinking; this was like a silly dream. The buildings, the familiar mixture of old and older, glistened and glittered in a Christmas card sort of way, although the night was far too mild for frost. The street was curiously deserted.

'OK, you can put it down now.' Domini dumped her own box on the flagstones and danced back from it as though it was dirty or radioactive or something. A wobbling clatter of crockery echoed in the silence.

Domini dipped delicately into the box and extracted a white disc, holding it up towards a street light like a conjuror demonstrating to the audience.

It was a plate, gold-rimmed with a stained-glass-style painting in the middle, of a bearded man below a towerless Tor with a barefoot boy.

'That's rather charming.' Diane said.

'Think so, do you?' A white sleeve dropped to the shoulder as Domini's arm came back, and she tossed the plate into the night like a Frisbee.

'My God, what are you…?'

The plate spun in the air for about twenty yards, flashing in the streetlight, before smashing into coloured shards in the road. Domini let out a shrill whoop and shook her golden hair.

'Can you feel it, Diana? Can you feel the vibrations, the energy around us?'

She took out a second plate. The picture in the middle showed a table bearing a golden cup with a shimmering aureole around it. Domini's arm came back again.

'No!' Diane yelled. 'Please…'

Domini lowered her arm and looked at her 'You're right. I'll wait for a car. Or, better still, a heavy lorry.'

'Why are you doing this? Didn't they turn out well or something?'

Domini laughed, a drunk's laugh, but there was no aura of alcohol about her.

'Old stock, Diana. As of tonight. Obsolete. The shop's changing. Holy Thorn Ceramics – that was his idea, too. I know why now, I know the truth about the Thorn. Holy Mother, can't you feel it yet?'

'Yes.' And she could. The night was as sharp as one of the shards of pottery. Everything was hard and clear. There was no wind. The air seemed to fizz.

Domini spread out her arms like a bird feeling the currents. Diane didn't like it. She didn't like the feel of Glastonbury since she'd returned – the unseasonal mildness, summer blight in November, It was as if the weather had been tampered with, the conditions altered for some purpose.

'Look. Don't do this… Domini. You'll regret it tomorrow, I know you will.'

'Tomorrow? Darling, I spit on tomorrow. OK, look, if you don't want me to smash them, help me display them. Will you do that, Diana?'

Domini began to take plates out of the box, like a child unpacking toys. She laid each one face up on the pavement in a line, edging down the hill, dragging the cardboard box behind her.

'Well, what are you waiting for? Take the other box. Come on, Diana.'

'They'll get trodden on.'

'Maybe. But if you don't help me I'll tread on them all now.'

'This is mad.'

'Sanest thing I've ever done. Go on, the bending will do you good. You're too fat. What's the matter with you? Don't you walk anywhere? Don't you ever have sex?'

She's out of control. Oh gosh. Humour her. Then get away.

Diane carefully took a plate out of the box. It showed the bearded man looking up at Christ on the cross.

'Can you believe it?' Domini said. 'I actually painted this shit.'

'I don't understand.'

'Christianity's a brash, male religion which insults women. If we accept, as I assume we all do, that the so-called Holy Grail is simply an unsubtle Christianisation of the Celtic chalice, the sacred cauldron of our ancient wisdom… We do assume that, don't we, Diana?'

'Well…'

'In which case, tell me this.' Domini faced her, hands on hips. 'Where does the Bible mention the Grail? Even the Christian propagandists can't seem to agree whether it was some cup from the mythical Last Supper or whether it was the vessel which caught the blood dripping from the cross.'

'Or both.'

'Or neither. It's a myth. It's smoke. The so-called Grail Quest is a clear cut male-domination trip, an attempt by armed men to steal Woman's cauldron of wisdom and rape her in the process. Just like the raising of the Abbey, with its great phallic towers – no, listen! – by a male-oriented Roman religion on a spot which just happened to be the holy vagina of the supine Goddess.'

'Oh, really!' Diane had heard all this before.

'No, come on, think about this… The Holy Thorn story, OK? Central character: one Joseph of Arimathea, wealthy merchant, international wheeler-dealer.'

'I think it's a rather lovely story, actually,' Diane said staunchly. 'The old tin trader, who brought Jesus to Avalon as a boy, making that last journey back with the holy cup. It's really… resonant. When I'm on Wearyall Hill sometimes I can imagine it all as an island again and old Joseph being helped ashore, a bit unsteady, staggering up the hill with the help of his staff and then, when he can go no further…'

'You really are a big schoolgirl aren't you?' Domini pulled out her cheeks as if she was going to throw up with contempt. 'Isn't it obvious? Sticking his staff into the ground… pulling out his… staff… and he pushes it into a sacred landscape formed into the contours of the body of the Goddess. This man Joseph symbolically fucks the Goddess…'

'No!' Diane was appalled. 'How can you…?'

'And his seed, Diana… his foul seed germinates into a misshapen, stunted tree full of vicious thorns. A tree which flowers in the dead of winter against…'

'Oh now, look…'

'Against all the laws of nature! That's the sick truth behind your pretty little legend. And that's why I could no longer bear to be fronting a business called Holy Thorn Ceramics alongside an idiot who thinks it's all sooooo romantic.'

Domini snatched the plate from Diane's hands, laid it carefully on a flagstone.

'If that's your idea of art you must be stupider than you look.'

Domini jumped on the plate with both feet. A middle-aged man and a woman holding hands, the first sign of normal life since this episode began, crossed the street to avoid them. 'Excuse me…' Diane shouted, but they ignored her and only walked faster.

'Don't be such a wimp.' Domini took two plates and clapped them together in the air like cymbals. Her brittle laughter exploded with the pottery.