Phil Rickman - The Chalice

The subconscious grows into mid-life crisis. Who is Joe Powys? Even the guy's name isn't real!

The subconscious gets extremely resentful. It reverts to the persona of a disturbed adolescent. It finds a focus for all that resentful energy.

Uncle Jack.

Bloody Uncle Jack.

'Well, it's interesting, Powys,' Brendan Donovan said, it possesses a certain flawed logic. However, I still have a problem with it.'

'Well, of course you do. What I'm doing here is groping for the psychological solution. I haven't said anything about the elements you don't like – power of place, earth-force, the thinness of the veil on the Welsh Border.'

'But it's there by implication, isn't it? Because the house was the home of this water-diviner. Kettle, it is more receptive, its atmosphere remains charged.'

'I didn't say that.'

'And therefore is capable of transforming the frustration of its unhappy occupant into psycho-kinetic energy, yes?'

'Well… could be.'

'Discounting all that, which I am, of course, predisposed to do, out of hand… the problem I have with all this is that the adolescent energy we suspect may cause poltergeist phenomena is essentially a sexual energy. I assume, Powys, you have not begun to find satisfaction in scourging yourself with barbed wire or something.'

'Occasionally I beat myself with Henry's old dowsing rods. Apart from that… Of course, he may have done.'

'Who?'

'John Cowper Powys always liked to think of himself as some kind of sado-masochist.'

'Ah. So you're obsessed with this man,' Donovan said.

'Curiously, I hardly ever thought of him. I'd forgotten that book was even on the shelf. Consciously, I'd forgotten.'

'Which book are we talking about?'

'A Glastonbury Romance. His masterpiece. About twelve hundred pages.'

'Haven't read it. Life's too short for fiction. What's it about?'

'It's basically a West Country soap-opera set in the 1920s. Far as I can remember, it's about people in pursuit of their ideas of the Holy Grail and the tensions between spiritual and commercial demands and people getting their rocks off, spiritually and sexually. I may be wrong, it's a long time since I breezed through it.'

'And this same book every time?' asked Donovan.

'Every time.'

'Too neat,' said Donovan. 'Too neat to be true.'

'Ah. You think I'm lying.'

'Indeed. I'm a scientist. What proof can you show me?'

'I've got a witness.'

'Your publisher. How very convenient.'

'Isn't it?" Powys admitted gloomily.

'Be a marvellous story for your own next publication.'

'No chance.'

'Before I could give a useful opinion, you would have to precipitate this book from its shelf under laboratory conditions. But then you knew that.'

'Brendan, if you bumped into your late granny at the tea machine, you'd make her take out her teeth under laboratory conditions.'

'And in the present circumstances, of course, my findings would have to include the probability of an author in decline attempting to kick-start his flagging career.'

'I knew you'd say that, too.'

'So why did you telephone me?'

'I'm a masochist. Runs in the family.'

Brendan Donovan laughed. 'Do you know what I might do in your place?'

'Resign,' Powys said.

'I might go to Glastonbury and open myself to all the wonderful earth-forces in the hope that my Grail awaited me there.'

'No, you wouldn't.'

'I wouldn't. I'm explaining what I might do if, perish the thought, I were you. Forget it, I probably had Glastonbury on my mind in a negative context, having received this very morning a review copy of a book even more foolish than your own revered opus. By an American, of course, one W. Pelham Grainger, PhD, who wants us all to enrich our lives by bonding with the living darkness. Absolute tosh. He lives near Glastonbury, as it happens. My, my, I must remember to record this coincidence in my Arthur Koestler Appreciation Society Diary.'

Powys shook his head.

'Away with you,' Donovan said. 'Away to your Avalon.'

'Thanks very much,' Powys said. 'I'll expect your bill in the mail.'

'My meter records… let me see… twenty five minutes!'

'Prove it,' Powys said. 'Laboratory conditions.'

'Bastards.' Woolly threw the Daily Press on to Juanita's counter. 'Bastards, bastards, bastards''

His roughened elbow poked through a hole in his shapeless orange sweater. The rubber band securing his stringy ponytail had snapped. He looked like an ageing Dickensian street urchin. There were tears in his eyes.

'I'm so sorry. Woolly,' Juanita said. 'But it's hardly a surprise, is it?'

She could see in his face that, no, it hadn't been a surprise. But there'd still been that final strand to be snipped before the rope broke and dropped him into the black pit.

She turned the paper around on the counter. The story was front-page lead.

Green Light for M-way The controversial Bath-Taunton expressway is to go ahead – despite furious protests from environmentalists.

The report of the two-month public inquiry, published today, rejects claims that the proposed route would be a 'savage rape of Central Somerset'. But a leading opponent of the plan said last night, 'We'll fight them to the last tree.' The Government claims the road is the only way to end crippling congestion in several small towns and villages, especially during the holiday season. It will also link the county firmly into the trans-European road network, opening up major industrial and commercial possibilities, according to local authority chiefs who have welcomed the decision.

'Got a call from the paper late last night asking for a quote,' Woolly said. 'Too choked to give a reasoned response, just wanted to get it over that we'd be re-forming the action committee, only it come out a bit stronger, like.

'Sheesh.'

Mendip Councillor Edward Woolaston. one of the original protesters, said, No way are they going to get away with this. This is going to be a nationwide issue, even a world issue, and we'll fight them to the last tree.'

Juanita didn't know what to say. The thought of an enormous public protest with the police and armies of security men guarding the site and people getting hurt made her feel faintly sick.

'The thing is, Woolly, it just never works. There've been so many full-scale road protests and it just leaves everyone beaten and bitter. Look at Newbury… Batheaston… Twyford Down… If the Government decides a road's going through, it goes through.'

She stared despondently through the window. All the shards of pottery had disappeared from the gutters, which streamed now with dark rain. Apart from Holy Thorn Ceramics being closed, you'd think nothing exceptional had occurred in High Street. Last night's spark in the air had fizzled out. There was no sign of either Tony or Domini.

'And the thing is. Woolly, if you organise a militant protest to stop the road, all it does is split the community even more because most of the locals think it's a good thing. They don't like the idea of the countryside being ripped up, but if it prevents traffic snarl-ups and children being run over and heavy lorries shaking their foundations… oh hell, you know all this better than I do, a lot of those people voted for you.'

'And won't vote for me again if I'm behind this protest,' said Woolly soberly. 'But I got to go with my conscience. We're fighting for the West Country's right to breathe. We're fighting for green hills, places to walk, places to be. We're fighting to stop them selling Britain for scrap. Sorry. There I go again. Councillor bloody Woolaston. It's all a sham, being a councillor. There is no democracy.'

Juanita pushed the newspaper away. 'So you want me to tell people… what?'