The Chalice (23 page)

      
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.

TWO

Like a Puma

'
The Avalonian
? What is that exactly?'

      
'God, Diane, you make me feel so old.'

      
Juanita came to sit in the rocking chair, a glass of white wine
in hand, a battered boxfile on her knees.

      
'The Avalonian
is the
magazine Danny Frayne and I started in about 1973. I suppose your reading
wouldn't have been much beyond Noddy and Big Ears in 1973.'

      
'I think Thomas the Tank Engine.'

      
Juanita raised her eyes to the parlour's cracked ceiling.
Newly bathed, without make-up, Diane looked all of sixteen. She was perched on
a stool, still wearing the faded skirt with the moons on it, washed again and
even more faded. She was sipping hot chocolate from a mug, both hands around
it.

      
The shop was closed. The shadows had consumed High Street, Juanita
was limp from the reflexologist, Sarah, who had detected from her feet that her
diaphragm was tight and her life-force, in general, needed topping up. Juanita
wasn't sure her life-force had been replenished, but she did feel more relaxed.

      
And she
had
come up
with a diverting idea for the Hon. Diane Ffitch. Who couldn't, after all, be a
humble shop assistant for the rest of her life, paid a pittance and living out
of the shop owner's spare bedroom.

      
'Oh, this sort of floaty blonde woman came in.'
      
'Hmmm?' Juanita had opened the
boxfile and was rummaging through its contents. 'I should have the very last
issue in here.'

      
'Very self-possessed, but quite batty. Domini something.'

      
'Oh, right. Dorrell-Adams. She and her husband run that pot
shop across the street. Keep mauling each other in the shop window.' Juanita
made a face, 'I tend to find that sort of thing quite embarrassing now.'

      
She scowled at herself. Miserable old hag. That it should come
to this. She took out a magazine, A4-size, printed on thick paper browning with
age. When she held it up, the paper felt dry and brittle.

      
The cover, dated August 1976, featured a pen-and ink drawing
of a mane haired woman in see through robes and a headdress of bound twigs.
Both arms were uplifted, along with her nipples, towards a sunrise behind the
Tor. It made Juanita, who'd posed for the drawing, instantly depressed.
      
In retrospect, the list of contents
didn't inspire her much either:

WELLS CATHEDRAL -
 
Its ancient secrets unveiled
CRYSTAL MAGIC - Getting started on a budget
WICCA - Which witch-way is your way?

      
Diane put her mug on the hearth and looked at the magazine.
'Not a lot's really changed in two decades, has it?'

      
'You're kidding .' Juanita thought sadly of her own body.
Everything now - autumn leaves, secondhand books with loose pages - seemed to
make her think sadly of her body. And her lower lip still hurt.

      
'Consider,' she said. 'There was no animal rights movement.
Words like "shamanism" weren't in general usage. And if there were
any gay and lesbian pagan groups locally they didn't do a lot of advertising.
Not in
The Avalonian
anyway.'

      
'Juanita,' Diane said. 'Tell me about The Cauldron.'

      
'Not gay. Not even mildly happy. Avoid them.' Juanita wiped
the air. 'Ceridwen. Awful woman. Oppressive.'

      
'I talked to her once, must be ten years ago. About Dion Fortune.
'I wanted to know, you see.'

      
'If you were the reincarnation, having the same initials and
everything.' Juanita sighed. 'And what did she tell you?'

      
'She was very pleasant actually.'

      
'I bet she was.'

      
'But she said there were an awful lot of people who'd like to
think they were the reincarnation of the most powerful magician of this
century. I remember her standard charge was twenty pounds, which I'd saved up
from my Saturday wages.'

      
'You gave the money I paid you to that ... ?'

      
'Actually, she gave me ten back. She said 'I wasn't ready.'
      
'For what?'

      
'To know one way or the other.'

      
 
'Really Diane, you were
an awfully naive kid, weren't you?'

      
Diane said, 'It must have been frightfully exciting in Dion's
time. In the twenties, 'I mean. They felt they were on the brink of something
miraculous - finding the Holy Grail or something. A bit like you and all your
friends in the sixties and seventies. Seems to go in cycles, doesn't it?'

      
'Diane,' Juanita said heavily. 'I doubt there's ever been a
time when some people in Glastonbury didn't think they were on the brink of
something miraculous. That's the trick of it.'

      
'Trick?'

      
'This town. It plugs itself into your adrenal glands. Over the
rainbow stuff.'
      
'Isn't that good?'

      
'Not', said Juanita, 'if there's nothing at the end of the rainbow
but a crock of shit. Listen. The fact that yon didn't remember
The Avalonian
is actually quite
encouraging. Means that lots of other people won't either. So if it was relaunched
... as a different sort of magazine, not just aimed at the New Age community. See
what I'm getting at?'

      
Juanita got up and opened the door to the darkened shop, whose
blind not yet down so that they could see the street through the shop window.

      
'It's not exactly a healthy, rounded community out there.'

      
A twenty something couple drifted past the shop, hand in hand.
Both partners were male, one had dreadlocks, the other wore short hair and a
sports jacket.

      
'Gay pagans?' said Diane.

      
'Well, they're not locals are they? How many real locals do
you see this end of town at night?'
      
'There's me.'

      
'I meant ordinary locals. Sorry, but you're not. Not in any
respect.'

      
Juanita closed the door.

      
'I bet this town's never been as divided as it is now. 'The
locals don't want the New Agers, and the New Agers think
they're
the people who're going to inherit the holyest erthe,
and it doesn't matter a damn what the locals think. They've stopped even trying
to understand each other.'

      
'Admittedly, there aren't many locals who wouldn't swap all these
little shops for a branch of Marks and Spencer.'
      
Diane put down her cup to unwrap a
peppermint carob bar. She'd drink hot chocolate but eat only carob. Contrary
was not the word.

      
'Let's face it, Diane, they'd swap us for a McDonald's.'

      
'Not me. I wouldn't. But then, they all think I'm bonkers.
It's OK.' She bit into the carob bar. 'One gets used to it.'

      
Juanita wanted to snatch the carob out of her podgy hand and
bang her head on the wall. How dare she get used to it?

      
'Listen, there has to be a glimmer of light in all this. Think
about Woolly. He's an old hippy, but he's local and people trust him enough to
put him on the council. That's got to be a small step towards integration.'

      
'It's probably just an indication'. Diane said morosely, 'of
how many people are living in leaky houses built by Griff Daniel.'

      
'Don't go cynical on me, Diane, it's not your style.'
      
'I'm sorry. What's your plan?'

      
Juanita went down on her knees by Diane's wooden stool.

      
'A revamped
Avalonian
.
A totally Glastonbury paper that contains different viewpoints, input from
different sides. Professional. Unbiased.'

      
Diane shook her head. 'The local people will think it's just
another hippy rag and they'll ignore it.'

      
'Not if it tells them important things they didn't know.'

      
'Like what?'

      
'You're the editor,' Juanita said. 'You tell me.'