The Chalice

SEVEN

Increasingly, the dusk obsessed Jim Battle. He supposed it was due to his time of life: slipping away, as everyone must, into the mauve and the sepia.

But still it was endlessly challenging. Midges, for instance. How were you supposed to paint midges? In clouds, perhaps? A thickening of the air? Or just a dry stipple.

'Dry stipple,' Jim said aloud. One of those phrases that sounded like what it meant. There was a word for that; buggered if he could remember what it was.

With a thumb he smudged the sun. In the finished painting, it would be merely a hazy memory, a ghost on the canvas. Same with the Tor; you should be able to feel it in the picture, but not necessarily see it.

Jim stepped away from the canvas. The tangled garden, by now, was all blues and greys and dark browns. As there were no lights on in the cottage, Jim could barely see the canvas. Time to stop. Time to wind up the Great Quest for another day.

Still, for once, time was playing on his side, staying the dead hand of winter, letting him go on painting outdoors into the early evening, using the very last of the light. For this was when things happened. Often, when he looked at the picture next morning, he'd find that the absence of direct light had wrought some marvellous effects, textures he'd never have found if he'd been able to see properly. All a matter of surrendering to the dusk.

And beyond the dusk… lay the Grail.

Of course, everyone came to Avalon in search of the Grail. And it was different for all of them. There was always the possibility of an actual holy relic somewhere. But for most people the Grail was simply the golden core of whatever you dreamed you might achieve. The vanishing point on life's horizon. Glastonbury being one of those spots on the Earth's surface where the phantasmal became almost tangible, where you might actually reach the vanishing point before you, er, vanished.

Jim's personal Grail – the mystical formula which would (he hoped) come to define a Battle painting – was to be round at the very end of dusk, the cusp of the day, the moment between evening and night when the world stopped.

It should happen at dawn too, but it didn't for Jim. He'd walked out in the drizzle and the dew, to wait. In vain. The moment never came, or he could not feel it. Time of life again: at his age perhaps you were just not meant to feel the stopping of the world at dawn.

Not that he greatly wished for youth – only to have come to Avalon as a younger man. Wasn't as if he hadn't known, then, what he wanted to do. Plenty of time for painting, bloody Pat had bleated, when you've got your pension.

God. Why do we listen to them? If he'd left his wife and met Juanita twenty years ago, when she was a very young woman and he didn't seem so much of an older man…

Well, he hadn't. It was enough of a privilege that she was his friend, that he could bathe in her aura. Jim left the canvas wedged into the easel and manhandled the whole painting to the house. He propped it against the open door and turned to accept the night.

The cottage was tiny but satisfyingly isolated, reached by a track too narrow for a car. Ten years ago, although his worldly goods were few, the removal men had been less than euphoric.

But Jim still was, much of the time. Especially when the sun had gone, leaving its ghost to haunt the lush, sloping grass in the foothills of Glastonbury Tor.

Behind the cottage was a wooded hillside which was always immediately activated by the dying sun. He could almost feel it starting to tremble with the stirring and scufflings and rustlings of badgers and rabbits and foxes and owls.

Before him, the dark brown fields rolled away into the tide of mist on the slopes of the Tor and the cottage snuggled into the huge ash tree which overhung it, as if its only protection against the night was to become part of this great organism.

The way that Jim himself wanted to go into the final night. To be absorbed, become part of the greater organism, even if it was only as fertiliser.

He grunted, startled.

Two extra shadows were creeping along the hedgerow.

Headlice saw the little tubby guy in his garden, with his red face and his tweed hat. What a waste, eh? People like that could go and live in nice suburban cul-de-sacs and leave the power places for them that could still feel the electricity.

He dragged Rozzie into the shadow of the hedge. 'Ow!' she screeched. 'Friggin' thorns.'

'Thorns round here are sacred,' Headlice told her. 'That Joseph of whatsit, when he landed and planted his stick, it turned into a thorn tree, right?'

'That's Christian. '

'It's still earth magic' Headlice gazed up towards the Tor, very big now, almost scary in the flatlands. One side of the tower sucking the very last red bit out of the sky, the other side, the one closest to them, sooty-black.

He was glad they'd been sent first, to find their own way through the tangled undergrowth to the Tor. This was how a pilgrimage ought to end. Except he wished it wasn't Rozzie.

A fragile half moon had risen in a thin mist above the holy hill's eastern flank.

'Fuckin' magic, in't it?

'You ain't seen nuffin yet.' Rozzie smiled secretively. 'Stop a minute, willya? I've done me friggin' ankle.'

Headlice gritted his teeth. 'Been better off bringing Molly. Least she knows the country.'

'Yeah,' Rozzie said. 'And you could shag her afterwards right?'

Headlice said nothing.

'What you had in mind, ain't it?' Rozzie said. 'You're a transparent little sod.'

OK, so maybe he did wish it was Mol he was with. Sure; she was fat. Fatish. But she was nice-looking. Open, when Rozzie was closed-up. Despite – and he'd always known this – her not being what she made out. Plus she smelled nice.

When they crossed the lane, only a hedge between them and where the ground started to rise, Headlice wanted to climb over and scramble up, but Rozzie said they'd better find the gate Mort had told them to use. When they reached it they could see a glowing path of concrete: chippings and stuff had been put in, with steps. All the way to the top, it looked like. For the tourists. Sacrilege.

There was a collecting box inviting visitors to contribute towards Tor maintenance. Oh yeah, like patching up the concrete path? Balls to that.

And then there was a National Trust notice board for the thicko tourists. Headlice started to read it anyway, striking a match and holding it close to the print.

Tor is a West Country word of Celtic origin meaning a hill. Glastonbury Tor is a natural formation composed of layers of clay and blue limestone, capped by a mass of hard, erosion-resistant sandstone.

'How do they know that, anyway?' It was almost too dark to make out the print. 'How do they know it's a natural formation?'

'What's it matter?' Rozzie said.

Because it could've been built here, you daft bat. By the ancient shamans. Like the pyramids. According to the lines of force and the position of the heavens.'

The Tor is and has been to many people a place of magic, the focus of legend and superstition. One local story is that there is a hollow space inside; another, perhaps very ancient, that the hill has a secret entrance to the Underworld.

Headlice felt sick to his gut to see it spelled out like this, baby talk, for every ice-lolly sucking day-tripper. He wanted to rip down the board, smash the collecting box, hack up the concrete path. Then the Tor would be a secret place again. A place for pilgrims. He turned away, needing to put this tourist shit behind him.

'Come on.' Pulling at Rozzie.

'Get your mits off. Wanna read this last bit.'

The Tor was the scene of the hanging, drawing and quartering of Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, when Henry VIII dissolved the Abbey in 1539.

'Heavy,' Rozzie said.

'Yeah. Shit.' Headlice dropped the match as it burned down to his fingers. 'I didn't know about that.'

He looked up to where night had fused the hill and the tower into a single dark lump.

'Still.' He walked off along the shining path. 'Maybe the old git had it coming.'

Alone for the first time since she'd joined the convoy, Diane sat in Headlice's bus, a woollen shawl around her shoulders, and unwrapped a peppermint flavoured carob bar.

She was sitting on one of the original vinyl-covered bus seats still bolted to the floor. The bus windows were purpled by a November night as soft and luminous as June.

So this was it. Breathing space over. She was back.

What happens now?

Part of her wanted to take her van and leave quietly. Drive to Juanita's. She'd really missed Juanita, the older sister she'd never had. She really ought to explain. But what on earth could she say? Juanita might run a New Age bookshop, but she could be rather disparaging about people's visions..

I was dreaming every night about the Tor. Vivid colours.

Common homesickness. You'll get over it.

Kept seeing things sort of metamorphose into the Tor. Salt and vinegar shakers in cafes. Plastic bottles of toilet cleaner. And flashing images of it when I closed my eyes.

Hyper-active imagination. Next.

Stopping at traffic lights behind lorries owned by Glastonbury firms. Or houses called Avalon.

Oh, really…

And sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night sensing her near me, in the room.

Oh God, not…

The third Nanny.

You're nuts, Diane.

She began to rock backwards and forwards, holding herself tight in the shawl. Oh God, Oh God, what am I doing here?

Two weeks ago, Patrick had shown her pictures of his family's villa in Chianti country. Wonderful place for a honeymoon. Lovely place, decent man. Oh God.

A shadow passed the window. Then another. She sat very still for a moment. They'd all gone, she'd watched them. Mort and Viper the last to go. She heard a giggle and a hiss.

Kids. There were three or four children in a converted ambulance at the other end of the field, in the care of a sullen teenager called Hecate, a large girl who claimed to be sixteen but was probably younger.

There'd been quite a few babies in the convoy when it first set off, but by the time they reached the beginning of the St Michael Line at Bury St Edmunds, they all seemed to have gone, along with their parents. And the dogs. None of the remaining travellers seemed to have dogs with them. She was sure there'd been a few before, when they were on their way down from Yorkshire.

And musicians. Two guitarists and a flute player. Now there was only Bran, the dour shamanic drummer.

And there used to be lots of ghetto blasters. Endless rock music. Old Rolling Stones albums and Oasis and The Lemonheads. Deep into the night, and the children were used to it and slept through it all.

The hiss came again. Diane got up and went out to the platform. 'What's going on?'

It didn't stop. She stepped off the platform and found herself looking into the shadowed face of the girl called Hecate.

'What's your problem?' Hecate said.

'What are you doing?'

There were four small shadows moving about. Children who were surely old enough to be at school. They were hovering around the bus, making hissing sounds.

'Hey!' Diane realised what was happening. They all had big aerosol sprays. It was almost dark, but she could see that several of the yellow stripes on the bus's bee-panelled panels had already vanished. 'Stop that, you little horrors. Headlice'll go mad!'

The children carried on spraying the bus black, didn't even look round. In the near-dark there was something unearthly about them. They were like silent gnomes.

Diane turned back to the older girl. 'Can't you stop them?'

'Why don't you mind your own bleeding business?' Hecate said. 'You nosy fat slag.'

'How dare…?' Diane calmed down, remembered to put on the Somerset. 'That's jolly nice, I must say.'

'Look,' Hecate said. 'Headlice told us to do it, right? Good enough?'

'I don't believe you.'

'I don't give a fart what you believe.' Hecate put her face very close to Diane's. Her teeth were thick and yellow and her breath smelled putrid. 'Now get back on the bus, crawl into a corner and mind your own. Else when they've finished I'm gonna hold you down while they spray your fanny black. That good enough?'

No getting round it; Jim was shaken.

'I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I didn't see her, although…'

Juanita said, 'Jim, is there something wrong with this line?'

Jim coughed, realising he'd been almost whispering down the phone. Whispering. In his own buggering house! And with the lights out, so no one could see him standing by the window.

'Thing is…' He drank some whisky and then put the glass on the windowsill, pushing it behind the curtain as though she could see how full it was. '… it was very nearly dark when the last ones went past, but I'd gone down to the end of the garden by then to get as close as possible to the path.'

Standing behind a sycamore tree with plenty of leaves still on it. Holding his breath as they went past. Hiding in his own buggering garden!

'I mean, they tend to be pretty skeletal, don't they, these travelling types? So unless she's lost a few stone…'

Bloody angry with himself for feeling threatened. But it was the first time in seventeen years of living here that his sacred space had been penetrated so blatantly by so many people. And such bloody purposeful people.

'You could have asked one of them where she was,' Juanita said.

'I suppose I could. But I… it's strange, but I didn't like to speak to them. You know what these characters are normally like, either drugged up to the eyeballs or laughing and swigging cider and what have you, like day trippers.'

'Yes, I know.'

'Not these buggers. Could've been the SAS on night manoeuvres or something. Quite… well, unearthly I suppose. In fact if it hadn't been for the way they were dressed and the glint of the rings in the ears, I'd've… I don't know. They were just so quiet. Not a buggering word between them. And you're looking at – what? – over a hundred of them. Yes. I suppose I could quite easily have missed Diane.'

There was a moment's silence.

'I don't like the sound of this, Jim.'

That's why I called you. Do you think I should phone the police in Street?'

'What, and have the camp raided and Diane herded into a Black Maria? No, let's play it by ear. I'll get the car. Pick you up at the bottom of your track in about ten minutes?'

'Right ho,' Jim said, relieved. 'Just… just be careful. Don't stop for anybody.'

'Jim.'

'Yes?'

'You sound scared.'

'Oh. No, no. Just out of breath.'

Diane stood on the deck of the bus, nervously nibbling another carob bar. It was quiet again now. The strange children had finished spraying the bus and gone. Was it supposed to be a joke? She was ashamed at having let the girl menace her like that.

The air was cooling. She drew her woollen shawl across her lower arms, dragged it tight around her, arms folded in the wool. She sat down in one of the slimy vinyl seats. She'd wait about an hour and then creep quietly away to the van, drive up to Don Moulder's farm and then down Wellhouse Lane into the town.

All the buses and vans were still as wooden huts and drained of their colours. It could have been a scene from centuries ago. The circle of vehicles, which might just as well be carts, looked almost romantically tribal when their squalid aspects were submerged in shadows.

When she'd joined the convoy it was all so noisy and jolly, with a real sense of community. It was a kind of fun paganism more concerned with stone circles and earth forces and ley-lines and spreading good vibes. They were like a travelling circus. And yes, you really could imagine a new spirit of freedom being born and nurtured in an encampment of latterday gypsies dismissed by just about everybody as a bunch of dirty scavengers. There really had been a glimmer of ancient light here.

The smell on the bus was of sweat, grease and oil with an underlying cannabis sweetness. A misty wafer of moon rose in the grimy glass. This was the only ancient light now.

And yet, as the thought passed through her mind, there was another glimmer, some yards away. Diane froze and then, very quietly, stood up and peered through the window into Don Moulder's field.

The Tor, half a mile away, was still visible, the tower entwined in strands of moon-touched cloud. A tall figure was gazing over the fields towards the sacred hill. Gwyn the shaman. He was still here. He must be waiting until they were all in position on the Tor before making his ceremonial entrance.

The shaman was the tribal witch doctor. The man who interceded with the spirits. Bearded Gwyn, with his aloofness and his whispered prophecies, seemed disturbingly like the real thing. It was when Gwyn had joined that the atmosphere had begun to change. The gradual shedding of the happier, noisier, more casual pilgrims, leaving the quieter, more committed ones.

And Diane. And Headlice.

She held her breath, moved back a little from the window. She could see that Gwyn wore… a robe or a long overcoat. His arm, the one nearest to her, was reaching up into the mist, his hand…

His hand was curled around one end of the spectral sickly moon.

Diane gasped. Gwyn stood tall and still, a god with the moon in his hand. Or so it seemed.

Until, with a feeling of deep dread, she became aware that the wan glimmer was from the blade of a real sickle.

Gwyn lowered the blade, in a slow and ceremonial fashion. She watched the curved sliver of light swinging by his side as he strode across the field towards the Tor.