Phil Rickman - The Chalice

There was a strange sort of glow in Diane's eyes which Juanita had seen before and found disturbing. Not to say ominous.

'The Cricketer,' Diane said.

'Thought you'd spot that. Bit like your revered nanny, huh? Sits on the edge of the bed with a cool hand on the fevered young brow. Jung would've loved him.'

Diane looked disappointed. 'You're saying this is an archetypal thing. Sort of projected imagination. A child's comfort figure. My ghost, angel, whatever was a good nanny, because all my real nannies were nasty, and Colonel Pixhill's was a cricketer because he was a boy.'

'Something like that. Beats lying awake sucking your thumb, I suppose.'

Diane frowned. 'You've changed. You're ever so cynical now, aren't you?'

'Maybe I've come to my senses. I used to be a mystical snob like the rest, an elitist in a town full of them.'

'What you mean is, you used to be a seeker after some sort of truth,' Diane said primly. 'And now you've stopped searching.'

'If you want to put it like that. All the sects and societies and covens, they all think their particular Path is the True Way and everything else is crap. I've concluded it's safer to start off on the basis that it's all crap.'

'That's just as bigoted, Juanita.'

'Saves a lot of time though, doesn't it?' Juanita pulled her old blue mac from the back of the parlour door. 'Look, I'm off to the pub, see if I can find Jim. You coming?'

'I think I'd rather like to finish reading this.'

'Thought you would. Just remember he died a sad, rather isolated old man, deserted by his wife, stuck in a gloomy farmhouse he couldn't afford to heat and… Oh, remember not to open the door for anyone, cream Range Rover or otherwise.'

'I won't. Juanita…'

'Mmm?'

Diane held up the book, pointed to the tiny writing at the bottom of the spine, where it said Carey and Frayne.

'And yet you published this.'

Juanita shrugged. 'Well… at the Pixhill Trust's expense. A thousand copies, only a few of which have sold since word got round about what was in it. Left to me, there's no way it would have come out looking like that, but the Trust were calling the shots and they wanted dark green, no picture, no blurb, no publicity, no other outlets. It wasn't important if only a few people bought it. It just had to be… available.'

'Did they say why? I mean, he's been dead nearly twenty years.'

'"An obligation'' was all Major Shepherd said. I imagine the Trust thought there ought to be some sort of memorial to Pixhill. Why they sat on the manuscript for so long I've no idea. I only agreed to get it printed because I felt so sorry for old Shepherd, who wasn't in the best of health. Obviously wanted to get the thing off his hands before he passed on.'

Diane held the little green book between her hands and looked thoughtfully at it. Almost as if she was looking into a mirror, Juanita thought. She hoped Diane would continue to find parallels between Pixhill's alleged visionary experiences and her own. And she hoped, as she let herself out of the shop, that by the end of the book the central message would be clear.

Glastonbury buggers you up.

It was a bright night, the crown of St John's tower icy-sharp. On a night like this, this time of year, there ought to be frost. Why wasn't there frost?

All was quiet, save for the clicking of Juanita's heels. Not even the usual semi stoned assembly with guitars and hand-drums around the war-memorial. You could sense tonight the nearness of the Abbey ruins, hidden behind the High Street shops.

But surely, Juanita thought, the whole point of Pixhill's book was that he was saying, don't get taken in by this, don't surrender to the vibes.

He'd come here on the back of a vision. Delirious in his tank on May 27, 1942, he'd imagined himself to be lying out on the sand under that same moon, but when he looked up he saw no battle-smoke – indeed it was awesomely silent.

What he saw was a small bump in the sand, a swelling, something that was buried rising again. There was an eruption – quite silent – and then there it was, huge before him in all its mysterious majesty: a green hill in the desert.

A conical green hill with a church on top.

Next thing, Captain Pixhill awakes on a stretcher and within days is on his way back to England for months of operations on his legs. When he can walk again he's given some sort of admin job at the Ministry and ends the War as a full colonel.

By then, he's discovered Glastonbury, convinced it was the Tor he saw in his Libyan vision after coming so very close to losing his life and his Faith. Convinced this is where his future must lie and inspired to learn that this is where the Holy Grail itself is said to have been brought.

And so, after the War, he comes to Glastonbury, marries a local girl, buys an ugly old house and…

…and what?

As far as Juanita could tell, there was no record of Colonel Thomas George Hendry Pixhill having done anything significant with his life from the moment he arrived to the moment he collapsed with a coronary. He seemed to have moped around the place for thirty years, ingesting the vibes, contemplating the views, tipping his hat politely to every passing female and keeping an occasional diary of, in later years, unremitting pessimism.

For Pixhill, the Holy Grail of his youth had been replaced by the Dark Chalice, presumably a metaphor for an increasingly gloomy world-view. In his last few months he was seeing images of the Dark Chalice everywhere – over the Tor, among the Abbey ruins, above the tower of St John's. Well, he wasn't the only amateur visionary to have gone a bit paranoid towards the end.

'Juanita!' As soon as she entered the pub, Jim was up and beckoning, broad face like an overripe Cox's apple. It was Jim's kind of bar, all wood and stained-glass; he looked like a jolly squire from some eighteenth-century painting.

'Glass of something cold and white, barman, for my friend. Juanita, I was coming to see you. Least, I think I was. Time is it?'

'Time you thought about some black coffee and a sandwich', Juanita said, 'if you're planning to make it home without falling in the ditch.'

He was more than slightly pissed, but at least he was more like the old Battle, and if he waved goodbye to a few more brain cells it would wear away the memory of last night's ordeal all the sooner.

'Had something to tell you, didn't I? The paper. What'd I do with the buggering paper?'

'I think you were sitting on it.' She saw he was not alone. Tony Dorrell-Adams shared his table, looking just as flushed but less convivial.

'Was too. Bit creased, never mind.' Jim retrieved the Evening Post from his chair, placed it on the table, spread it out. 'It's Archer Ffitch. In the paper. Archer's been selected as Tory candidate for Mendip South.'

'I know, Jim. It explains a lot. Hello, Tony.'

Tony nodded, couldn't manage a smile, went back to his beer.

'Yes,' blustered Jim, 'but have you seen what the bastard's saying? Wants this town to be efficient, streamlined, hi-tech, have its own branch of Debenhams, no veggie-bars, no crystals, no mystical bookshops…'

'This is an exaggeration, right, Jim?'

'… no Avalon, no mystery. Wants us, in fact, to be another bland, buggering lay-by on the Euro superhighway.'

'Here, let me read it…'

She saw that people were glancing at him, amused. He was one of those official characters who, like Woolly Woolaston, were allowed, not to say expected, to go over the top. She tried to tug the paper from him.

'Never believe a word I say,' Jim grumbled as the Evening Post tore in two. Juanita collected the segments together and sat down.

'Now, which page?'

'Just look for a picture of a well known smug bastard. Hey, that's another thing. He was in here tonight, was Archer, and guess who he left with… Juanita, are you listening?'