The Chalice (36 page)

      
He looked astonished. 'Good God, you really think my father
was in a fit mental state to extract a promise from anyone?'

      
'Your father was a great man,' Verity whispered.

      
'My father?' Gently, Oliver took her hands in his. He hesitated.
He took a breath. 'Miss Endicott, my father was a deeply unhappy man with a
paranoid and obsessive nature. Who ruined his own and other people's lives
through ...'

      
'No!' Verity snatched her hands back. That's a ... that's untrue.'

      
Oliver said, with compassion, I do know how you felt about
him, you know.'

      
She stared at him through a blur of angry tears. Saw an unexpected
pain in Oliver's eyes. His father's eyes.

      
'He was my father, and I'm frankly tired of having him venerated.
It's time the truth was acknowledged.'

      
'What can you know of the truth?' Hard to get the words out,
her throat was so tight.

      
'Verity, I've made it my business to find out the truth. You
never wanted to. You loved him too much.'

      
Verity gasped.

      
Oliver held up a placatory hand. 'Oh, not in any physical sense,
I don't suppose. I doubt he was interested in that side of things anymore.'

      
'Stop it.' Verity drew a handkerchief from her sleeve, wiped
her eyes, I don't want to hear any more of this.'

      
Oliver shrugged. 'All I know is, the oppressive darkness I felt
when I entered here was nothing to do with the age of the building. Nothing to
do with the legend of Abbot Whiting. You know that.'

      
Verity rose and backed away from him.

      
'It's him. Miss Endicott. You know that too. You've always known
it. Him and his obsessions. His delusions. His self-importance. His invented
visionary experiences. His crazy, rambling diaries The darkness in here is
him
.'

      
'How can you say these things?' Verity wouldn't look at him.

      
'He destroyed my mother, he neglected his parental responsibilities.
And he's left his stain on this place. Jesus, you can feel him. The
self-inflicted misery of him.'

      
Verity covered her ears, but his voice was low and insistent.

      
'I asked you if you were afraid and you said you were used to
it. Well, of course you are. Part of you wants to feel he's still here. That's
what he left you. His stain.'

      
'No.' Verity began to beat her knuckles on the table. 'No!'

      
Oliver stood up. 'This is the source of your darkness, Dr Grainger.
George Pixhill. Last and most pathetic of a long line of pseudo-mystics who've
thrown away their lives in Glastonbury. You don't need to teach her how to
wallow in it. She's been doing it for half her life.'

      
Verity said quietly, I think you should leave, Oliver.'

      
'I haven't told you why I came'

      
'I do not wish to know.'

      
'I think you do,' Oliver said softly. 'I came to tell you that
Major Shepherd was rushed to hospital late last night.'
      
Verity went very still.

      
'And died early this morning, I'm afraid,' Oliver said, 'I'm
so sorry.'

ELEVEN

The Bell

Mrs Whitney said, it's not
my place to say it, Joe, but you are looking just terrible.'

      
She'd come round from next door with some of her homemade soup,
leek and lentil. She'd done this once or twice a week since he'd been on his
own.

      
'Sorry,' Joe Powys said shakily. 'Didn't get to bed until late.
Bad habit to get into.'

      
He'd fallen asleep in the chair. Sat down to mull over his
conversation with Brendan Donovan and just dropped off. Woken to Arnold whining
softly beneath his chair and…
thud.

      
It
couldn't. Not in broad daylight.

      
'I don't know at all.' Mrs Whitney punched his arm in exasperation.
'Look at the size of them great black circles round your eyes. You look like
one of them pandas. Didn't ought to be all alone out here, with just that dog.
Isn't normal, young chap like you.'

      
She stood in the doorway, rising up in her bobbled slippers,
trying to peer over his shoulder. Perhaps thinking she might be able to spot a
syringe and bag of white powder. Unfair, Joyce was OK; Henry Kettle had thought
so too.

      
'I'm fine,' Powys said. 'Honest to God.'

      
'Ho,' Mrs Whitney said scornfully and bustled past him.
      
She didn't get far. He heard her
gasp.

      
'All it is,' Powys said, 'I was looking for something. A book.
Got carried away, Joyce. You know how it is when you start moving things, you
can't stop.'

      
Well. Yes. On the whole, about as convincing as a mad axeman
in a pool of blood claiming to have had a small mishap clipping his toenails.

      
Mrs Whitney left very quickly, her face as white as the tops
of the hills after this week's short lived snow.

      
It wasn't just the lamp this time. No indeed. Jesus.

      
Inside the house, the phone rang. He let it. It had rung several
times, starting just as he'd opened his eyes to the sight of
A Glastonbury Romance
in the centre of
the hearthrug. He'd picked up the phone and the line had been dead. Not the
dialling tone, not the breathy echo of somebody with the wrong number or making
a hoax call. Just dead: the sound you'd get if you were holding a banana to
your ear.

      
About a minute later it happened again; he'd put it down and
picked it up and there was a perfect, clear dialling tone, and this was when
the whole shelf had collapsed and the books had come out horizontally, not
falling, actually spraying into the room, taking the lamp and the radio with them,
and Powys had thrown himself behind the sofa and screamed at the wall. At least,
he'd intended to scream, but it came out like a whimper, and Arnold flew out
from under the chair and began to snarl.

      
Which was when Mrs Whitney knocked on the front door. Mrs
Whitney and the leek and lentil soup. 'Better come and have this in my kitchen,
Joe. Be warmed up in ten minutes.'

      
Less than five minutes later, he came out, followed by Arnold.
The air was chilly. The mist was a flimsy tent over the forestry, blotting out
the hill farms so that there was just the two cottages, one of them occupied by
a bloke who only had to close his eyes now for something to happen. Maybe when
he went to sleep, some kind of energy escaped from him and ...

      
Oh, come on, you know better than to start theorising. These
things happen. Leave it alone, don't be afraid, don't respond and it'll stop.
Sooner or later it will stop.

      
Next door, Mrs Whitney sat him down by the Rayburn, warmed up
the soup and stood over him while he spooned it up. Arnold lying across his
trainers.

      
'Mr Kettle, now, he had this trouble more than once,' she said
conversationally, I remember when he was dowsing for a new well at the old
Burton place, by Kinsham.'

      
'What trouble exactly?'

      
'Oh, don't you go taking me for a fool, Joe. I lived next door
to Mr Kettle for too many years. Magnet for it, that man.'

      
'So, what do you think I should do?'

      
'Well, it's not
just
the house, is it? Never is just a house, that's what Mr Kettle used to say.
Just that house reacts quicker than most houses, on account of Mr Kettle, if
anything comes in. I don't know where
you
could've picked something up though, Joe; you never goes anywhere much.'

      
'Maybe it was looking for me. God, I said I wouldn't do this
again. If you respond to something, you just encourage it.'

      
'This is deep waters, Joe.' Mrs Whitney put the teapot on the
Rayburn. I don't know what to say. Mr Kettle, now, he knew how to deal with this
sorter business, but you, if you don't mind me saying so, you prob'ly don't.'

      
It could be deeply comforting having a neighbour like Mrs
Whitney who had lived next door to Henry Kettle for many years and accepted
dowsing (and everything it brought with it) as just another aspect of
traditional country life, like blacksmithing and septic tanks.

      
'Get somebody in, you think I should do that?'

      
'Mr Kettle never liked to get nobody in. He was against all
that.
Nothing psychic
, he used to
say,
nothing psychic
.'

      
'Go away, then? Get myself sorted out?'

      
'I don't know what to say,' said Mrs Whitney. 'Your Fay -
she's not coming back, is she?'

      
Through the wall they could hear the phone ringing in Powys's
living room.

      
'Sooner or later you're going to have to answer that,' Mrs
Whitney said.

      
'I think there's a fault on the line. No, I don't think she'll
come back. Fay will probably go through life without anything happening to her
again. If...'

      
He accepted a cup of strong tea.

      
'If she keeps away from you,' Mrs Whitney said. 'That what you
mean?'

      
That probably was what he meant.
      
'That's no life, Joe.'
      
'She'll find somebody.'

      
Mrs Whitney sat down opposite him. 'I meant for you. No life
at all, just you and that dog. Writing your books and walking the hills and
trying to ignore stuff, and your hair going greyer and them circles under your
eyes getting bigger. No life, Joe, that isn't.'

It took him nearly an hour
to put all the books back and assess the damage. For instance, the radio wouldn't
work. It had fallen face-down and now it was dead. Possibly, something had drained
the batteries; this had been known to happen.

      
He stood looking at the shelves, an unstable cliff-face. He put
his hands flat to the books, leaned in. Like you stop an avalanche.

      
The phone wobbled as if it was about to ring, but it didn't.

      
I can't
stand this. But if I leave it'll go with me. At least, if I stay here, there's
Mrs Whitney and the leek and lentil soup.

      
The phone rang.

      
He stared at it. He could see his own fingermarks sweat-printed
on the white plastic. He contemplated picking it up, hurling it at the wall. Wanted
to do some violence back, didn't want it to think he was spooked.

      
When he picked up the phone it wasn't dead any more.

      
'Hello, Joe Powys?'

      
He hadn't got the breath to reply.

      
'I'm sorry, is that J.M. Powys?'

      
No detectable threat here. Nothing untoward. The voice sounded
quite agreeable.
      
'Yes.' He coughed. 'Sorry.'

      
'Joe, my name's Dan Frayne. At Harvey-Calder. I've been
looking at your manuscript.'

      
What? This was bloody quick. Unbelievably quick. Even if Ben
Corby had dashed straight into the office with the manuscript as soon as he'd got
back, told this bloke Frayne it was wonderful, unmissable, and Frayne had read
it immediately, it still didn't figure, this was not how publishers worked.

      
'Do you ever get up to London?' Dan Frayne asked.

      
'Hang on ...' Powys changed hands, put the phone to his other ear.
I don't understand. I mean, you can't have had time to read it, Mr Frayne.'

      
'Well, that's true,' Dan Frayne said. 'But I've read
The Old Golden Land,
which I thought was
wonderful - at the time. And, uh, Ben Corby told me all about the new book. About
the way your attitude had changed.'
      
'He tell you anything else?'

      
Dan Frayne laughed, I have to say that when Ben got back he,
er, he kind of wanted to talk to somebody. Old Ben was a little bit shaken. Not
himself. Amazing.'