Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'Girlfriend? She's dead too?'

'I didn't know her long enough to put a label on it. We keep the pictures up there to remind us. In case we get blase about certain things.'

Ben put his hands over his face, rubbed his eyes. 'Where's the dog?'

'Under the table, on his rug.'

'Maybe he upset the table, knocked the lamp off.'

'Could be,' said Powys.

'No it fucking couldn't.' Ben found himself breathing hard again, closest he could remember ever being to hysteria. 'And, anyway, why was he howling? He often howl like that?'

'Sometimes.'

'Why d'you say, It's over? Just now, on the stairs.'

He still felt too weak to get up from the sofa.

'Hang on,' Powys said. 'What's Arnold got?' He got down on all fours, scrabbled about under the table, and came up with something.

A book. A big, fat, heavy book.

'Now this is new,' he said (nervously? Was that a quiver of nerves under the voice?).

'This never happened before.'

He looked up and Ben followed his gaze to the very top bookshelf under a big, black beam-end to the left of the fireplace. There was just enough light to show up a gap in the middle of the shelf, the other books apparently stiff and firm to either side.

'It fell off,' Ben said. 'It fell on to the lamp.'

'Yeh, looks like it.' Powys's voice was dry and flaky like the ash in the grate. He held out the book for Ben. It was a real doorstop, about three inches thick, probably over a thousand pages.

Ben couldn't prise his hands from his knees to take it.

But he could see the title, in faded gold down the spine, the author's name across it, the surname in big capitals.

And because he knew Joe had never written anything half that long, he figured this must be John Cowper Powys, novelist, mystic, nutter.

The title, in smaller lettering, confirmed it.

A Glastonbury Romance.

Ben was bewildered, spooked almost out of his head. A book, just one big heavy book, flies off the top shelf, a good nine feet across the fucking room, smashes a lamp. Smashes the only source of light.

'What's it mean?'

'I don't know,' Joe Powys said. He put a hand on the mantelpiece (to stop the hand shaking?).

'But it's all harmless, isn't it?' he said.

As Ben ate his breakfast in Joe's living room, he kept glancing up at the bookshelves, searching out the middle of the top row.

You could read the lettering on the spine easily, at least the part that said

POWYS.

He buttered his toast, edging his chair a few inches to the left.

'Let's talk about John Cowper Powys.'

'Oh,' said Powys. 'Uncle Jack.'

'Uncle Jack? Uncle fucking Jack? You're telling me after all these years that JCP…?'

'Well, I don't know, that's the truth. He had a complicated personal life.'

'You can say that again.'

Ben had lain wide awake and cold for what seemed like hours thinking, on and off, about John Cowper Powys. He'd never actually read A Glastonbury Romance, but he'd read one of the shorter ones (not much credibility for a New Age publisher who'd never read much JCP) and found it actually not that bad for something published half a century ago. Joe being a descendant of the great man was just a possibility they'd hinted at in publicity for Golden Land and never taken that seriously.

'He died in – what – sixty-five?'

'Sixty-three,' Powys said.

'Lived in North Wales, his later years, with this woman who'd been his secretary or something, right? And you were born…?'

'Wrexham. In theory, he could have been my father, but I don't think he was up to it by then. My mother used to talk about an Uncle Jack who was a famous author, but in those days close friends of your parents were always aunties and uncles. And Jack was a common name then.'

'You remember ever seeing the old guy when you were a kid?'

Powys shook his head.

'You never ask about him, when you grew up?'

'Once. Not long before my mother died. I asked her about this Uncle lack, the famous author. I said – because I'd heard of Cowper Powys by then – was he, by any chance, possessed of a middle name beginning with C?'

Ben put down the marmalade. 'And she said?'

'She said, Uncle Jack? What Uncle Jack?'

'Shit. But you could find out.'

'Maybe. Who would it help?'

'Listen.' Ben glanced at the bookshelf, lowered his voice. 'Suppose he wants you to.'

'What?'

'Establish the link.'

'Get lost," said Powys. 'You're leaping to conclusions. A book falls off the shelf…'

'Halfway across the room. And the dog howling.'

'These things happen. Best thing is not to react.'

'Stone me,' Ben hissed at his toast in frustration.

'It was only a book. Nobody got hurt.'

'Not just a book, Powys. Not just a book. OK, what else we got? Glastonbury. When were you last in Glastonbury?'

'Never been.'

Ben put down his knife in astonishment.

'You've never been to Glastonbury? The world centre for earth mysteries? Glastonbury Tor and all the UFOs? Healing rays? The Abbey ruins? The St Michael Line?'

'The St Michael Line's spurious.'

'You've never been to Glastonbury?'

'Well, you know…' Powys stood up and started gathering plates together. He seemed uncomfortable about this, 'I read the Romance the first time when I was quite young. Much of it I didn't understand.'

'Isn't it all about sex?'

'Yeh, it is really. Mysticism and sex, and how they can both screw you up. It didn't make me want to go to Glastonbury, made me want to avoid it. It's a powerful book, though. Tells you a lot about JCP, things you might not want to know if there's a possibility you were related.'

'He had some runny ideas.'

'But where did he get them?' Powys said. 'Did he force his ideas on Glastonbury or did it force them on him?'

'Strange place. But good fun. We sell a lot of books there.'

'As you would.'

'Don't knock it, it's all har…'

Ben stopped himself and looked up at the shelf. Had it moved, just a fraction of a centimetre?

'Keep on saying it,' Powys said. 'Maybe that's best.'

No more than an hour after Ben had gone back to London, the phone rang, and it was Fay.

She'd said she was coming over this weekend, from Hereford. She was supposed to have come last weekend, but the bloke who owned Offa's Dyke Radio had apparently arrived in town and she had to stick around for meetings.

Powys had thought this was an excuse and that there was something else in the air she wasn't telling him about.

Fay said now, 'Joe…'

And when she said Joe, he knew it was going to be heavy. Most of the time she called him Powys; people did, it was a better name than Joe, had more resonance: whisper it and it sounded as if you were calling the cat.

'Joe,' Fay said, 'it's… I've been offered a job.'

At the BBC World Service. London wanted Fay back. There was what they called a six month attachment for a features producer. Six-month attachments at the BBC were hard to come by these days, now it was run like ICI.

She said, what did he think?

He said – what was he supposed to say? – that he thought she ought to take it. He was about to say he was likely to be down in London himself soon, seeing this publisher, and maybe they could…

Or maybe they shouldn't.

Joe Powys was feeling very alone. Fay was the only person who understood. Their relationship had involved a lot of comforting each other, of saying, Listen, you're not out of your mind. And, in the end, the reassurances had themselves served as reminders of how bad it had been and reminders were useful, except for those invoking books thrown from shelves.

Fay said they'd see each other properly, and Arnold and everything, before she went.