The Chalice (32 page)

      
Now, to Juanita's horror, Diane was presenting Ceridwen with a
cup of tea.

      
'Thank you, my dear.' Ceridwen turned her large face on Juanita.
'You must be glad to have her back.'
      
'Yes,' Juanita said non-committally.
      
'She's grown up.'
      
'Yes. Big girl now, Ruth.'
      
'Ceridwen.'

      
'Oh, sorry.' Juanita smiled.

      
There was a silence. Ceridwen lowered herself into the
armchair, sipped her tea. 'Diane, do you remember coming to see me some years
ago?'

      
'Yes.' Diane glanced apologetically at Juanita
      
'Used to like to call yourself
Diane Fortune, do you remember?'

      
'When she was a little girl,' Juanita said. 'People tend to grow
out of giving themselves silly names.'

      
Ceridwen didn't look at her, only at Diane. 'When she was in
adolescence. When the psychic portals were opening to her.'

      
'When she was having problems at home,' Juanita said. 'When
she was scrabbling for an identity in a family where women don't count for
much, especially if they aren't slim and beautiful.'

      
Ceridwen smiled, still looking at Diane. 'I had heard you were
going through a denial phase. Can't be good for business, Juanita, if you no
longer believe in the books you're selling. Indeed, hard to see ...'

      
She turned to face Juanita at last. Her industrial-strength Alice
band had slipped and thick, grey hair obscured one glittering, ebony eye.

      
'… how can you go on living in Avalon. While contriving to
block it all out.'

      
'Maybe I'm growing old and faded and bitter and cynical.'

      
'You're beautiful, woman.' A sharp rebuke. 'But you lack wisdom.'

      
'Thank you, Ruth.'

      
'And yet', Ceridwen shrugged. 'You may still have ... untapped
potential.'

      
Domini said, 'Ceridwen
could
help you to find it. If you showed some humility.'

      
'Right.' Juanita nodded seriously. 'You mean, I could learn
how to scatter my books down the street and turn over my shop window to a plaster
goddess with big tits and a cunt like a culvert.'

      
Diane gasped. Domini scowled. Ceridwen sipped her tea and
smiled to herself. Go on, Juanita thought.
Turn
me into a hamster.

      
Ceridwen's eyes didn't move. She said, 'That's not what we do any
more.'

      
Something cold and needle thin penetrated Juanita's spine from
within. Ceridwen sat in the stoveside chair like a big Whistler's Mother, face
still and hard and varnished. She began to speak, slowly.

      
'The day will soon come, woman, when the only sanctuary to be
found will be at the bosom of the Goddess. You know that we have to take full
control of the spiritual life and welfare of this community. And soon. As for
you…'

      
Ceridwen appraised Juanita, head to toe, like a fashion-shop
manageress sizing up a customer. Or an undertaker estimating the amount of wood
it would take for the coffin.

      
'... your time is close, woman. You have to come to terms with
it. It'll happen sooner than you dread.'
      
'Are you threatening me''

      
'Oh, Juanita.' Ceridwen laughed. 'I mean the hot flushes. Have
you had the hot flushes yet? There are, as we say, three aspects of the
Goddess. The virgin. The Mother. And...'

      
'Piss off,' said Juanita.

      
'And the crone.' Ceridwen placed her cup and saucer on the arm
of the chair. 'The hag.' She stood up, stately and mature and wise.

      
'The last transition for a woman', she said gently, 'can be a
wonderful and fulfilling time, full of enlightenment. If you are on the Path. A
time of wisdom and reflection. And latent power.'

      
She paused. Her large bosom swelled under the tight gabardine.

      
'But it can also be a time of disillusion and decay, constantly
chilled by the draught of death. It you reject the Goddess inside you.'

      
Juanita found she'd backed into the doorway. The bitch. The
fucking bitch.

      
'That's what they said about HRT,' she said lightly and was
gratified to see Ceridwen's face darken.
      
'Come, Domini,' Ceridwen said.

      
Juanita stayed in the doorway. 'Where are you taking her?
Tony's in the shop.'

      
'Packing, I trust,' said Domini.

      
'We're going to a place of sanctuary,' Ceridwen said. 'Let us
through, please.'
      
'Wanda's house?'

      
Ceridwen didn't reply. The actress's elegant town house had
been virtually taken over by the bloody Cauldron. It had endless bedrooms: they
would put Domini in one, surrounded by candles and ministering angels and the brainwash
would be complete.
      
Bollocks to that.

      
'Why don't you stay here, Domini?' Juanita closed the parlour
door, her back to it, both hands around its handle behind her. 'Take some time,
think about it. You've a lot to lose. Tony's a decent guy.'

      
'I've been trying to tell her ...' Diane said, as Ceridwen came
forward, very much the nursing sister advancing down the ward. Briskly, she
closed in on Juanita, rapidly detaching her hands from the door handle, taking
Juanita's hands in each of hers and bringing them tightly together.

      
Grey coils of hair settled around the broad, coarse face, looking
down on Juanita's. It had all happened very quickly, Juanita flinched,
half-expecting the woman to hit her, but when she spoke it was the voice of
Ruth Dunn again, the firm but kindly nurse.

      
'You silly, silly woman. I think you're really quite unstable.
I think you need counselling.' Ceridwen putting on a show of strength and
sanity for Diane and Domini.

      
She was a much larger woman than Juanita, built for holding
down distressed patients in the night. The grip was stronger than it looked.

      
'Oh, it's understandable,' Ceridwen said, the voice of experience.
'You're frustrated and depressed by your loss of belief. And by Diane's youth,
because yours has gone. You're afraid that, before you know it, another twenty
five years will have passed and you'll look into the glass and your face will
be the face of...'

      
She raised her heavy eyebrows.

      
'…Verity Endicott.'

      
Positioning both of Juanita's hands away from her body,
moulded together, palm to palm, like an old-fashioned teacher showing a child
how to pray.

      
'What lovely, slender hands you still have,' she said almost
tenderly, and Juanita was suddenly and irrationally scared that her palms might
be fused together forever.

      
'But you're afraid, I think, that beneath the silky, brown skin
which, sadly, now caresses only books…'

      
Juanita saw a splinter of spite in Ceridwen's eyes.

      
'…are an old woman's curling claws.'

      
'Let me go.' Juanita felt a coldness under her heart. 'How
dare you? How fucking dare you?'

      
After a long moment, Ceridwen smiled, relaxed and let both
Juanita's hands fall away like a discarded pair of silk gloves.

      
As the two women left, Domini smirking, Juanita felt sick and
humiliated. Like Jim Battle after his Execution.

At first, she couldn't feel
her hands at all. Self-consciously she rubbed her palms together to restore the
circulation, experiencing a moment of relief followed by a palpitating insecurity.
And a creeping, bitter shame.
      
Diane went to shut the shop door.

      
'No.' Juanita walked out on to the pavement. 'I need some
air.'

      
It was gone midnight. The street was deserted, not even one of
those stoned guitar-and-bongo duos under the church wall. The very air felt
thin and exhausted, used up by lungs involved in excess panting and screaming
and sighing. The town was full of madness tonight.

      
She walked across the street to the war-memorial, a good twenty
feet high and carved like a Celtic cross. Iron railings separated it from St
John's churchyard. Juanita leaned against the railings, pulled out her
cigarettes.

      
'We've got problems here,' she said as Diane joined her.
      
'Look', Diane stared down at her
trainers on the first step of the memorial, 'what she said. That was awful.
Cruel. But…'

      
'But true,' Juanita said. 'It wouldn't have been cruel otherwise.
I've looked at Verity Endicott more than once and thought, yeah, that'll be me
one day. Toddling round the town with my shopping bag when all the shops have closed.'

      
'That's not what I meant. You're not remotely like Miss Endicott.
I hope I look like you when I'm ...'
      
'Forty-something.'
      
'I wish I looked like you now.'

      
'Oh, shut up, Diane.' Juanita lit a cigarette. 'Listen, we really
have a problem. Nothing to do with that woman.'
      
'I wish you hadn't offended her.'
      
'Oh for God's sake ... Diane, that
boy, Headlice ...'
      
Diane went still.

      
'He's dead,' Juanita said. 'I'm sorry to tell you like this. It
was in tonight's paper. They found his body in an abandoned bus in a wood at
Stoke St Michael.'

      
Diane stared across the street as if it were a distance of several
miles.

      
'He had head injuries,' Juanita said. 'It has to be him because
of…you mentioned a swastika.'
      
'On top of his head.'

      
'The police are suspicious. You know what that means, don't
you?'

      
Diane put her arms around the stem of the Celtic cross. Her
shoulders shook.

      
'They're appealing to anyone with pertinent information to
come forward. Which probably includes anyone who might have seen the boy having
his head kicked in by their father's farm manager.'

      
Diane laid her cheek against the stone.

      
'Diane?'

      
'Was it his own bus? That he was found in?'
      
'It was a black bus.'
      
Diane nodded.

      
'I really think you need to go to the police,' Juanita said. 'Tomorrow.
I'll come with you.'

      
'They wouldn't believe me.' Diane's voice was tiny. 'My father
would say I'd made it all up. He'd tell them I was unbalanced. Just like he
always does.'

      
'They'd still have to check it out.'

      
But she was right. Juanita sighed. Lord Pennard and Rankin had
had a whole day to make provisions for this incident getting out. They'd have
something ready, some watertight story. Especially now the boy was dead. Also, Pennard
would undoubtedly have connections at chief constable level and beyond. And
with Archer's political career on the line and all it represented in terms of
the future wealth and influence of the House of Pennard, there was nothing they
wouldn't do.

      
'Listen, I'll get Jim to look after the shop. While we go to
the police station.'

      
Of course, she'd have to promise Jim first that nothing would
come out about the Execution. What a can of worms.

      
'They'll ask why I didn't report it before,' Diane said. 'Because
you didn't know the boy was dead.' She put a hand on Diane's shoulder. 'Come
on, Diane Fortune. I'll make us some hot chocolate.'

      
An amber streetlamp reddened and Juanita looked up warily.

      
Diane dabbed her eyes with a tissue. 'I was wrong about the
Pilgrims. They weren't terribly nice people at all. They made Headlice go into
church backwards and they gave him drugs.'

      
'Quite.' Juanita tried not to think about sickles and animal
masks. If only she could tell Diane precisely what the nice pilgrims had done
to Jim and her. But a promise, unfortunately, was a promise.