The Chalice (58 page)

      
Diane had recognised him at once. It was Wayne Rankin.
      
Eighteen years old, the farm
manager's son who had kicked Headlice in the face while he lay on the ground.

      
She had crept to the corner of the cobbled alley. Could see them
clearly under a tin shaded exterior bulb. She might be called on to identify
them if they got away before the police came.

      
If Woolly was inside he would surely have telephoned for help
by now. If he wasn't, it was up to her; all the other premises in the little
square were lock up shops and there were no lights in the apartments or
storerooms. No one had come out; either they hadn't heard the breaking glass
and the shouting or they didn't want to get involved.

      
If there'd still been a policeman back in the town centre, she
would have run to him. As it was, she would have to knock on someone's door.

      
The half brick finally ruptured the parchment of the
deep-bodied stannic drum. Wayne Rankin let it fall, drew back his foot and sent
the drum rolling down the cobbles like an empty barrel.

      
'Come on. Woolly!' the heavy man bellowed. 'We wants a private
consultation with our councillor, look.' He gave up trying to find power chords
on the little guitar, swung the instrument round by the neck and shattered it
against the wall.

      
Diane cringed.

      
'That's what we're gonner do to you, Woolaston,' Wayne Rankin
sang. 'You gonner come out, baby-killer?'

      
'We know you're in there' The big man had put on an American
cop voice. He pulled a beer can from his pocket and ripped at the ring-pull.

      
'Woolaston!' Wayne screeched. 'You don't come out, you piece
of hippy shit, we're gonner have your door in.'

      
He began to jump up and down on the soundbox of the guitar.
      
It was too much. Diane's eyes
flooded. They were making as much noise as they could, and where was everybody.

      
She couldn't stand it, turned away and walked blindly back up Benedict
Street, determined to beat furiously on the first door with a light behind it.
      
It was no use pretending everything
would return to shambolic normality because it wouldn't, Colonel Pixhill was right,
there was a growing darkness and an evil in this town which fed on division and
extremism and prejudice. The road scheme, the Glastonbury First which polarised
people and led to tragedy and accusations and a really despicable, meaningless
kind of violence, and …
      
And like a vision of the Grail, it
came to Diane then what she must do. Here in Benedict Street, named after the
little church, which may or may not be the resting place of the bones of St
Benignus the hermit, she saw her direction.

      
She had to write about it. Like Pixhill had, but in a far more
immediate way. She had to find the courage to throw journalistic balance to the
winds and document it all and name names. Tell everyone about Headlice and
Rankin's involvement, about the Glastonbury First movement and how it existed
to split the town in two.

      
The Avalonian.
They
would bring out the first edition for Christmas, late on Christmas Eve when
there'd be no other papers until after the holiday.

      
Even if everyone rejected it and scorned it as Lady Loony's
ravings. Even if Sam refused to get it printed because it wasn't up to his professional
standards. Even if Juanita was frightfully angry and never spoke to her again because
she'd gone down the same sad, dead-end road as Colonel Pixhill.
      
She had no choice.

      
Diane felt, for a moment, quite awesomely calm.

      
And then, in the shadows between streetlamps, she walked into
a pair of open arms. 'Hey, now.' The long arms closed lovingly around her.

      
She thought,
Sam?

      
She smelled beer. The arms manoeuvred her under a streetlamp.

      
'Who we got here then?'

      
The light splattered like egg yolk on a great shambling grin
built around the kind of large, yellow teeth which, according to Sam, looked
appealing on donkeys but rather less so on Darryl Davey.

      
Sam had had a lot to say, over the weeks, about Darryl: thick
as shit but king of the third form on account of being overdeveloped for his
age, like a shark in a goldfish tank.

      
'Lovely Lady Loony,' Darryl Davey said, holding her tightly to
his body.
      
'Please excuse me.'
      
'I don't think so.'

      
She felt his hands through her sweater, clasped between her
shoulder-blades.

      
'You're quite a handful, you are, my lover,' Darryl Davey said.

      
He began to move jerkily down the street, pushing her before
him, his wiry red hair springing as he pressed himself against her.

      
'Stop it. How dare you?' He'd bulldozed her back to Woolly's
alley.

      
'I do what I like, Lady Loony. Go on, struggle. Push them big
titties out.'

      
'Get off me! You
disgusting...'

      
'All right.' Darryl's hands
parted and he stepped back.

      
'Thank you.' Relief streamed through her.

      
Darryl grinned.

      
As arms in a thick check workshirt came around her from
behind. Diane shrieked.

      
Darryl bellowed with laughter. Diane struggled and tried to
turn her head to see the face, although she knew it must be the wide shouldered
man who'd smashed Woolly's guitar.

      
On the edge of her vision she saw Wayne Rankin slip back into
the alley. He wouldn't want her to see him. She couldn't see the face of the
man holding her; whenever she tried to twist away from him, he danced her
around from behind. He was quite a bit shorter than Darryl. He pulled her to
him and she felt something hard press into the base of her spine.

      
Darryl said conversationally, 'They d'say Sammy Daniel's been
shaggin' you.'
      
'Leave me alone!'

      
'Ah, you can do better than him, my lover.'

      
Diane kicked back hard with her trainer. There was a grunt. 'Fuckin'
fat slag.' A hand plunged into her coat and squeezed her left breast hard. She
screamed out.
      
'Woolly! Call the p-'

      
Then she was choking on a mouthful of thick, leathery fingers
and was hauled into the alley, the heels of her trainers bouncing on the
cobbles.
      
In the little square, the
tin-hatted bulb hung like a shower-spray over the smashed window and the broken
string instruments.

      
She was absolutely terrified now. It was already a sexual assault,
and they knew she'd be able to identify them. This was more than drunken
bravado, it was madness.
Division, extremism,
prejudice... violence.

      
'Take your dirty, common fingers out of her mouth, Leonard,' Darryl
said. 'She's a lady. Deserves better than that.'

      
She was lowered to the cobbles, her head against the remains
of the window.

      
'And she's gonner get better.' Darryl giggled. Fragments of
broken glass fell into Diane's hair. 'And bigger.'

      
And then, fiddling with the zip of his jeans, Darryl Davey burned
their boats.

      
'What you doin' hidin' in there, Wayne? She can't have you
flogged now, boy.'

      
To her horror, Wayne Rankin emerged from Woolly's doorway and
went to stand by Darryl so that she could clearly see his face. He stood like a
man in an identification parade, expressionless, a wiry youth with close cut
hair like his father's.

      
Then the heavy man, Leonard, joined them, all three of them
blocking the alley.

      
Wayne smiled slyly, 'All right there. Miss Diane?'
      
Lanky, shambling Darryl Davey
started running his zip noisily up and down.

      
'If ... if you go away now,' Diane said, her voice high and
breathless, the taste of Leonard's fingers in her mouth, 'I won't say anything
about this.'

      
There was dead silence. The three men looked at each other and
then back at Diane.

      
'Ho fucking ho,' Darryl Davey said.

TEN

Black as Sin

'Go on then!' Mrs Moulder
yelled, back from the WI. 'Don't bugger about. Been a sight too many fires hereabouts.'

      
'You can't be sure,' Don protested feebly. 'Coulder been a
glow from a torch, headlamps.'

      
'Well, seeing where it come from, that's not much better. You
should never've let them hippies down there, I told you at the time.'

      
Halfway through the door, Don turned back. 'Let's call the
police, then.'

      
'Don't be stupid. Farmer for near forty years and scared to go
out on his own land. They've all heard about that cross, too. Lizzie Strode
said is it true he's holding open-air services now?'

      
'They can mock! Tis a pit of sin, this place. A pit of sin!'

      
Don Moulder snatched his lamp from the big hook behind the
door and walked into the dark.
Protect
me, lord, protect thy servant, yea though I walks into the valley of the shadow.

Verity was in a
stiff-backed kitchen chair, her back to the Aga, re-reading John Cowper Powys's
Maiden Castle
.

      
The novel bad been bought for her many, many years ago by her
fiancé, Captain Hope, and she'd never been able to open it without picturing
him: a strong, stocky man with a faintly practical Errol Flynn air and a wide,
white smile which would simply erupt across his face when she opened the door
of her mother's house on a Sunday afternoon.

      
Captain Hope had been ten years older than Verity, who was
twenty-five when they became engaged. He liked to call her 'the child bride'
although this was more a reference to her stature than her years.

      
His sudden death from peritonitis, barely a month before the
scheduled wedding day, had been followed a week later by her widowed mother's
first stroke and then fifteen years of caring for her, increasingly querulous,
before her death dispatched Verity, all alone into the world. Two unhappy housekeeping
jobs had followed before she and Colonel Pixhill had found each other,
recognising the qualities that each required for the quiet, untroubled life
that never quite came about.

      
Colonel Pixhill was not at all like Bernard Hope, being more
refined, less vigorous in his manner. But then, when they met, he was so much older.
Verity had often wondered what might have developed had she met the Colonel
twenty or thirty years earlier. Before the unfortunate Mrs Pixhill.

      
Before Oliver.

      
The mere thought of Oliver Pixhill spoiled her concentration
and she found herself miserably counting the Christmas cards on the windowsill.

      
Seventeen. Fewer and fewer every year, as her friends died off
and Verity was crossed from the lists of distant great nieces and nephews who
presumably thought she must be dead by now but did not think it worth a phone call
to find out. She imagined that years after her departure, from the house or
from life, whichever came first, there would stall be a handful of' small,
cheap cards addressed to Miss V. Endicott, Meadwell, Glastonbury.

      
There was, quite simply, nobody left now to whom she might
turn for help - having this afternoon telephoned the only contact number she
now possessed for the Pixhill Trust. She'd at last reached a solicitor called
Mr Kellogg and asked him if the Trust could prevent Dr Pelham Grainger from
uncovering the Meadwell as, in her view, this would not be complying with the
Colonel's wishes.
      
Mr Kellogg had laughed. Actually
laughed.
      
'Miss Endicott, the Trust is
entering a new era. Meadwell is a delightful and historic house and it's been
hidden away for too long. While the Chalice Well gets tens of thousands of
visitors, ours is ignored.'
      
'But that's because ...'