The Chalice (53 page)

      
Mastersab, they called Hughie. Once jailed for three months after
trying to ram a hunting horn down the throat of some pompous bloody Master of
Foxhounds. A hero. A legend in sabbing circles. When you talked to Hughie on the
phone you kept it short and careful.

      
'Half an hour, right? Under the Christmas tree? We'll be,
like, anonymous figures in the crowd.' Sam laughed. 'OK. See you.'

      
About the only thing he could do for Diane was spoil Archer
Ffitch's Boxing Day.

She couldn't bring herself
to go back to the shop. She walked right past. Some people gave her sidelong glances.
      
She knew she probably looked pretty
awful.

      
She'd never felt so isolated. There wasn't anyone she could
trust. How could ... how could anyone live in Glastonbury and not believe in
anything?

      
How could you be, like Sam, a good person who cared about
people and animals and the welfare of the planet, and not believe that it all
existed for some purpose? How could you live in Glastonbury and not feel
closer?

      
Actually, she didn't feel close to anything. She felt used.
The candyfloss sunbeams rolling down the Tor and the ice-cream lights at night
giving way to fragmented images, sharp and threatening as slivers of glass, to
the dark vaporous forms which passed as fast as birds. To the black, portentous
symbols you could only wish you'd never seen.

      
All nonsense to Sam. All
bollocks
.
She didn't know whether to pity him or envy him his freedom.

      
What he thought of her; this mattered more. Sam Daniel thought
Diane Ffitch was a loony. It didn't matter that most people had thought this
for years, were thinking it now as they watched her trooping up the street like
a fat scarecrow. It suddenly mattered awfully that Sam now thought it too. It
wounded her. It was terribly unfair.

      
There was a funny atmosphere in the town again, the shapes of
the buildings sharp against a cold, grim sky, everything so vivid, a
thunderstorm air of energy-in-waiting.
      
She wished she could drive away for
a while and think, but she hadn't even had the nerve to collect the van from
the garage.

      
And of course that started her thinking about Archer again.
That parting shot. He
knew
about the
graffiti on the van. He might even have told them to do it. He was taunting her.
Why did he always have to do that?'

      
She wandered, inevitably, up Wellhouse Lane, past the trees
which screened Chalice Orchard, where DF had lived. Probably fooling herself over
that as well. What would the legendary high priestess of Isis want with someone
like her?

      
There was an unhealthy engine noise behind her, then an
ancient Land-Rover clattered alongside.

      
'Lookin' for me, Miss Diane?'

      
Oh gosh. Moulder. Forgotten all about this morning's phone
message.

      
'Hop in, my chicken.'

Another site-meeting, more
disillusionment.

      
Under discussion this afternoon had been a Griff Daniel proposal
for a new housing estate out on the Meare road. Green field site. Daniel's
plan, an executive housing estate: four bedroom luxury homes two bathrooms
(with bidets) and — and this, as far as Woolly was concerned, was the worst of
it… double garages. Double bloody garages!

      
A double garage said this: it said you were expected to have
two cars and maybe a third and fourth in the driveway far your teenage kids.

      
Woolly had tried to explain to his colleagues on the planning
sub-committee that the only way to avoid Gridlock Somerset by the year 2020 was
to start building homes with single garages or even no bloody garages at all.
      
And did they listen, his council
colleagues?
      
They looked at him in his red and
yellow bobcap and his pink jeans and then they looked at each other and they
smiled in that
He's from Glastonbury
kind of way. Except for Griff Daniel (at the meeting in his capacity as
developer), who'd looked at Woolly like he hoped he'd die of something painful
in the not too distant future.

      
Afterwards Woolly had gone to a pub out past Wells for a bite
of lunch with Fred Harris, the elderly Wedmore councillor, Fred trying to talk
a bit of sense into him. Be pragmatic, Fred said. Your time will come.

      
Ho ho. His time wouldn't come until they had a New Age party
with about a dozen like-minded members (if you could find twelve like-minded
New Agers) and a sympathetic central government. Which was about as likely as a
Mothership from Alpha Centauri coming down to a civic reception on Glastonbury
Tor.

      
On the way back to the poor, beleaguered Isle of Avalon, he
shoved Julian Cope's
Autogeddon
into
the cassette deck.
You and me, Jules, you
and me
. Ah, but nobody took Julian Cope seriously either, possibly on
account of him being the only rock star left who dressed like Woolly.

      
He'd go and see Diane again. Shook him up, that did, bloody Archer
Ffitch strolling in just as he was about to lay it on Diane about what the new
road would do to the St
Michael line. Coincidence, or what?

'OK,' Karen said. 'No names
and you didn't get this from me, all right?'

      
Juanita nodded. Her mouth felt very dry. She needed to hear
this but didn't want to. She composed herself, crossing her hands lightly -
with these hands you had to do everything lightly - in her lap in the vinyl
bedside armchair.

      
Karen sat down on the bed. 'Geriatric ward, all right? I'm not
saying where. This is what I've been told. That situation, I've been there, I
know how easy it is to become impatient when you're on your own at night and
half of them are incontinent. A saint would blow, some nights.'

      
'She isn't', Juanita said, 'a saint.'

      
'I was just saying that. I just need to know before I go any
further that she's not any kind of friend of yours.'

      
'I mistrust her. I think she's a dangerous megalomaniac, a bad
person to be around. OK?'

      
'All right.' Karen lowered her voice. 'Well, this goes back
twenty-odd years. It's small things. Hard to prove. Publicly fitting catheters
to old men who don't need them. Putting bedpans just out of reach of the
disabled ones and then not cleaning them up and leaving the bedding unchanged for
hours. Telling them stuff their relatives have said about them never coming
home again and renting out their rooms - when they haven't said anything of the
sort Stealing their sweets, taking away pictures of their grandchildren in the
night. Telling them that there's, like, no God. That this is where it ends.
Except for those who are ... condemned to walk the ward. As - you know - as
spirits. Take it from me, geriatrics are like little kids. They'll believe what
you tell them.'

      
'Jesus. Those are small things?'

      
'Came to a head when Dunn left a dead woman on the ward all
night, unscreened.'

      
Karen slid a robe around Juanita's bare shoulders. The warmth
helped.

      
'Go on,' Juanita said.

      
'She took the Anglepoise lamp from the nurses' table and placed
it on the dead woman's bedside table. So that it was lighting up the corpse's
face - not a peaceful face, you know? Lit up for them all to see, all these old
people, all night.'

      
'How do you know this?'

      
'Because a doctor came in unexpectedly, and she was reported.'

      
'She was sacked after that?'

      
'And blacklisted. The doctor did a good job, got a few signed
statements, although the girls were pretty intimidated. God, I only had to
mention the name Ruth Dunn to Jane, who came to us from Oxford ... Anyway,
Sister Dunn worked in another general hospital ... as far as they
know. The next they heard of her she was a matron at a public school.'
      
'Where?'

      
'Dunno. But some of these fancy schools, they like a sadist,
don't they? Just stay well away from that woman, my advice. I better go,
Juanita, I'll be getting hauled over the coals.'

      
'Hang on. Could I talk to this Jane? What about the doctor who
reported ...'
      
'I shouldn't have told you her
name. Leave her alone, Juanita, Jane's jittery enough at the best of times.'
      
'What about the doctor?'

      
Karen rose to her feet, expressionless. 'They say the doctor's
died. That's all I know. You take care, Juanita.'

Puttering into Magdalene
Street in his old but catalytically converted Renault Six, Woolly spotted the
coloured lights of the Christmas tree. He liked coloured lights and he liked Christmas
trees.

      
He wondered what it would be like if you could only see the
tree lights instead of headlights. If the only sounds you could hear were,
like, carol-singing and stuff, not the rumble of this twenty ton truck coming
up behind carrying God-knows-what to God-knows-where. All freight this size should
be made to go by rail, was Woolly's view.

      
Fred Harris, the Wedmore councillor, who was a bit green around
the edges, bless him, had patted him on the back as they straggled off Daniel's
site. 'Never mind, old son. World'll catch up with you one day, look.' Fred
always said that to Woolly.

Be dead by then,
Woolly thought, as he
drove down to where all the streets converged on the tree. He wondered why his
cassette player had suddenly cut out.

'Forget it, my advice'
Hughie Painter pulled Sam out the doorway of the Crown Hotel and up into High
Street towards the NatWest bank and The George and Pilgrims. 'Jeez, was this
your brilliant idea to come here? Can't hear yourself flaming talk.'

      
The kazoo band was doing a syncopated 'O little Town of Bethlehem',
kids singing along, a bunch of young drunks dancing in the street

      
'Look, come on.' Sam hadn't been expecting this, not from Mastersab.
'They haven't done that hunt for three years at least, not on Boxing Day. Too
expensive, look, too many people to entertain, too many hunt-followers. But now
Pennard's pushing the boat out again for some reason, and you're saying ...'

      
'I'm saying leave it. We got more important stuff to worry
about.'

      
'No chance, Hughie. I'm gonner ruin that bastard's Christmas.'

      
Hughie pulled him up hard against the ancient walls of The
George and Pilgrims and bawled into his ear, 'And how did you find out about
it, eh, Sammy? Not been widely advertised, am I right?'

      
'Yeh, I know what you're thinking. She let it slip out by
accident, OK?'

      
'Haw! You been set up, boy,' Hughie roared. He was about ten
years older than Sam, grey in his beard. But Sam wasn't about to be humiliated.

      
'Hughie, this is straight up.' Sam was shouting too, now, and
the words were coming very fast. 'She don't even speak to the old man. It's a
dysfunctional family. Leastways, Diane's not functioning in it. I figured, what
if we were to make a bit of a recce, maybe. Then we could have a meeting, draw
up a ground plan, get it dead right, fuck these bastards good.'

      
He spotted his old man swaggering down the street with Quentin
Cotton, both of them wearing big shit eating grins and enamel lapel badges with
that picture of the Tor and a white no-entry sign slashed across it.

      
Sam wanted to leap out at the bastards, start a nice public
barney, but Hughie held him back. 'What's got into you, boy?'

      
'What's got into me? Shit...'

      
'Listen!' Hughie yelled. 'The big issue right now has got to be
the new road, right? The big wildlife issue. It's not just trees and fields,
it's badger sets, the lot. Wholesale devastation. Word is we'll have bulldozers
in by the end of January.'
      
'So?'

      
'So, naturally, we got to have the manpower ready. Like, not
on bail.'

      
'Well, sure, I appreciate that, but this is…'

      
'They could start anytime, Sammy. Could be starting now, for
all I know. Some civil servant, never been west of Basingstoke, gives the word,
out go two damn big, nasty blokes with chainsaws. Private contractors, that's
the way they work it now. Time's money. Evil buggers. Whole armies of security
guards.'