The Chalice (38 page)

      
'He can fire you, this Pixhill''

      
'It's not quite as simple as that, if I refuse to leave. Which
I shall, most certainly. But ... Oh, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't
know what I'm
supposed
to do, except stay
here and wait. There's no one to advise me. Poor Major Shepherd.'

      
She'd put a drop of Dr Bach's Rescue Remedy on her tongue, Dr
Grainger nodding approval.

      
'This major, he was the Colonel's right-hand man?'

      
'They served together in the War. Dr Grainger, it's not true
what Oliver said about the Colonel. He was a good, kind man. He wouldn't have
harmed anyone. He loved people. He loved Glastonbury.'

      
'Sure. I'm sure you're right."

      
'I'm probably speaking out of turn, but perhaps Oliver expected
the house to be left to him until the Trust was set up. Oh dear, I don't even
know how or when he became a Trustee. His name was just there'

      
'These trusts, sometimes they like to have a relative. Usually
to see that the wishes of the founder are adhered to.'

      
'He was just a boy,' Verity said. 'What could he know of the
Colonel's wishes?'

      
Dr Grainger had nodded sagely as Verity put the kettle on the
Aga for camomile tea.

      
'You see, only two days ago Major Shepherd said that someone
would help me. He said things were coming to a head, but if I could hold on
...'

      
'That's what he said? If you could hold on, someone would come
along who could help you?'

      
Verity bit her lip. Dr Grainger smiled, brushing a cobweb from
the sleeve of his black jacket. It was the kind of jacket that vicars used to
wear.

      
'Maybe someone did. Verity.'

      
'Did?'

      
'Come along. To help you.'
      
'You mean ... ?'

      
'I told you, I can make it easier for you here. You just have
to trust me."

      
Thinking of Colonel Pixhill and his desire to experience the
Holy Grail, Verity opened her hands, keeping them joined at the wrist.

      
As if to receive a chalice.

THIRTEEN

A Spiritual Hothouse

Harvey-Calder UK had a new
building, near Canary Wharf with its Empire State obelisk. Some London New Age group
claimed this was the crossing point of major metropolitan leys, a significant power
centre. Ben Corby was probably in the process of publishing a book on it.

      
Powys stared at the tower. He'd only seen it in pictures before.

      
He couldn't believe he'd done this.

      
Leaving Arnold with Mrs Whitney, he'd driven into Hereford and
jumped on the Intercity before he could change his mind. He didn't even know if
there was a train, but he walked into the station five minutes before it got in.

      
He was getting this feeling of being on a conveyor belt, everything
going as smoothly as if it was pre-programmed.
      
As if it was fate.

      
He'd thought of ringing Fay at the BBC. In the sure knowledge
that if she had an engagement tonight, she'd cancel it. She would be there.
Whenever. He knew that; he'd be the same. So he didn't call, it wouldn't be
fair. And, if he looked to Fay as bad as he'd looked to Mrs Whitney, she
probably wouldn't let him go back home. Which would help neither of them.

Dan Frayne's office was on
the third floor. It was all open-plan, like the Stock Exchange, computer
terminals everywhere. This maybe told you something you needed to know about
publishing in the nineties.

      
'Joe Powys,' Dan Frayne said. 'Hey. Amazing. Jesus, man, you look
all-in. Heavy journey? Bobby, coffee. Coffee OK for you?'

      
He was probably in his late forties. He had cropped grey hair
and an earring with a small green stone in it. His shapeless clothes emphasised
how thin he was and made Joe Powys, in clean jeans and a new sweater, feel
overdressed.
      
He stared at Powys for a long time
over his glass-topped 'No. You don't look like him. Not at all. Of course, I'm only
going off the pictures.'

      
'Pictures? Oh. Him. Ah well,' Powys said, 'I never claimed to
be related.'

      
Dan Frayne leaned forward, put on a mysterious whisper.
      
'Why, then? Doesn't he like you
cashing in on his name, or what? Why's he doing this to you?'

      
They switched to a nearby wine bar, where everybody seemed to
know Dan Frayne. I'm not trying to impress you,' he said. 'I need this. I need
to be surrounded by dozens of people who know me superficially. Superficially. That's
important.'

      
Joe Powys liked people who were full of nervous energy. They
couldn't hide what was on their minds, came out with it, rarely lied.

      
'I used to have this shop in Glastonbury. Brrr.' Frayne shuddered.
'Bad news, Joe. I mean, for me. Too much closed-in, heavy stuff.' He spread his
arms. I like to be surrounded by lightweights. I am not a heavy person.'

      
Powys looked around. Everybody else in the glass and leather
bar looked, to him, to be pretty intense.

      
'No, no,' said Frayne. 'This is really superficial. Money is
superficial. I love saying that. People think I'm crazy. Like, "Get outa
here, you old hippy, what do you know about the real world?'"
     

      
Powys smiled.

      
'Well, it's true. I'm an old hippy. But - this is the point -
I'd rather be an old hippy among the suits. I'd rather publish straight books
than be down in the basement with Ben Corby, peddling esoterica. Ben, he copes
with it because he's not a hippy and he really does value money and
possessions. This make sense to you?'

      
'Possibly.'

      
'Now you're being cautious. You're like I was when I came out
of Glastonbury.'

      
'You make it sound'. Powys said, 'like coming out of Pentonville.'

      
Dan Frayne became quite sober, I never go back to Glastonbury.
I can't function there. I can't stand to be an old hippy among old hippies. In
Glastonbury you don't know anybody superficially. You know them intensely, deeply,
intimately. You know their star signs and the colour of their auras. Amazing.
They don't have superficial in Glastonbury. They either put their arms around
you and hug you till you squeak or they ignore you. Listen, this book of yours,
I've been reading it. I see Ben's point. I'd've binned it too. Golden Land was
OK, this one I'd've binned.'

      
'Well, thanks,' Powys said.

      
'Except…' Dan held up both hands '... I noticed something. I
noticed that in neither of those books do you ever refer to the celestial city.
Not the merest mention in the index, the only earth-mysteries tomes in the
history of the cosmos that don't go banging on about the legends of Glastonbury.'

      
'No mystery about that. I've just never been.'

      
Dan Frayne pretended to pass out with shock.

      
'Put it this way. If your name was Constable and you were a bit
of a painter, would you buy a bungalow near Flatford Mill?'

      
'Ben Corby would,' said Dan Frayne.

      
'Ben Corby would buy the mill.'

      
'This is true,' Dan said.

      
'But anyway, it'd been done. To death. Everybody discussing earth-mysteries
has to do Glastonbury. I'd got nothing new to contribute.'

      
'When did that ever put a writer off?'
      
'Anyway,' Powys said. 'Now you
know, you can bin the book with a clear conscience.'

      
Gloom descended. You spend a long time isolated in the country,
it's not easy psyching yourself up to come to London with what looks like a
begging bowl.

      
'I'll tell you something,' Dan Frayne said. '
Mythscapes
. I would've dumped the book,
but I still like the idea because it's an antidote to the New Age that isn't
written by either a sceptic or a born-again Christian. It's that bit different.
I just think it would be a better book, a more interesting book, a book with
wider commercial appeal ... if it was also about, uh ...'

      
'Don't say it.' Powys felt a certain big book winging through
the air, over fields and hills, through towns and industrial estates, on the
great ley-line leading to ...

      
'Glastonbury,' Dan said. 'As it really is. Today. The pressures
it imposes on people living in Jerusalem Builded Here. The tensions between the
Christians and the New Age pagans. Reflecting a friction that's been there in Glastonbury
for centuries, millennia…aeons, I don't know.'

      
Silence. Or the nearest you could get to silence in a wine bar
in Wapping.

      
'Well ' Powys stood up. it's been nice meeting you.'

      
'Aw, come on, Powys, siddown. Hear me out, man.'
      
Dan signalled to a waitress dressed
like Powys's idea of a top drawer call-girl. 'Same again, Estelle. The thing is
...'
      
He put his briefcase on the table
between them. 'Can I talk to you? Do you mind? Personal stuff?'

      
"What happened to superficial?'

      
'I just want to tell you why. Explain the background to this.
Hey you look pretty rough, did I tell you that?'

      
'I drop a lot of Valium,' Powys said. 'Go on.'

      
'OK,' Dan said, 'I didn't know much about Glastonbury except
everybody said it was Camelot and Jerusalem rolled into one and you could get
high there without drugs. So twenty-odd years ago I went out West with my lady.
If I'm honest, Glastonbury wasn't the major pull. It was her. Gorgeous is not
the word, but I'm only a publisher, never been good with words.'

      
He took a large, brown envelope from the briefcase, slid out a
photograph and handed it to Powys. It was from the days when coloured photos tended
to come out all blue and mauve. It showed a girl in a long white dress standing
in a shop doorway. Over the door was a sign, hand painted in vaguely
psychedelic Celtic lettering. Carey and Frayne, it said.

      
Powys said. 'What about "lustrous"?' He peered at the
picture again. '"Mesmerising"? "Iridescent"?'

      
'Half-Spanish,' Dan said. 'Well, Mexican, I suppose. Her
father was a British doctor working out in middle America after the War, met
this Latin beauty and brought her back to Blighty. Result: an English rose with
a hint of something more exotic. She was a few years younger than me. I was, as
you can imagine, a man-of-the-world figure, with a set of Grateful Dead albums
and a regular supply of you-know-what. Golden days, Joe.'
      
'I was too young.'

      
'That's what they all say. Thank you, Estelle, that's super. Keep
the change. Buy yourself some woolly socks.'

      
Dan Frayne watched Estelle's bottom all the way to the bar and
explained how his lady had had a small legacy from granny, and he'd sold his
Triumph Vitesse and they'd run away to the Isle of Avalon where they'd rented a
little shop to specialise in secondhand books and underground magazines and
privately published hippy stuff about UFOs and ley-lines.

      
'You think you've arrived in the Elysian Fields. You think
you'll be there forever. Then it starts to get to you. It's like a spiritual
hothouse
.
What you think of as your
spirit grows like rhubarb in shit. Amazing.'

      
Dan swallowed some golden beer.

      
'Suddenly you've got more bloody spirit than you can cope
with, and you can't breathe for it. I'm on paradise island with the most
beautiful girl in the world, and we ... we'd fight. All the time. Over nothing.
Over anything. You're pulled to extremes. No half measures. No compromises. Everything's
a big issue in Avalon. Everybody you know is a healer and a seeker after
wisdom. There are days in August when the air's like incense. I couldn't stand
it. To cut a long, long,
long
story
short, I pissed off.'
      
His mood had changed.