Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'Diane, if Woolly runs out of dope it's an end-of-the-world scenario.' Sam handed her the mug. 'Drink your chocolate'

Dammit, most situations you could work with people for years and they never needed to know where you stood on the big issues, which way you voted, etc.

Sam took a big breath, pulled on a handful of his long hair. Looked at Diane and kept seeing Rufus the fox cub.

'The thing is… I've got a big problem with all this, look. I'm like… coming from a different direction, right? Like, far as I can make out, you believe in just about the whole bit – UFOs, God, ghosts, the Holy Grail.'

'You have a way', Diane lowered her eyes, 'of making it all sound frightfully tawdry.'

'Whereas, I… I'm like… how can I put this… an atheist,' Sam said.

Diane looked up and sought his eyes. This time it was Sam who looked away.

From what seemed a long distance, he heard Diane whispering, 'You don't believe… in anything?'

'I believe in looking after the planet and, you know, each other, and not being cruel to animals. Or even people. Most of them.'

'You don't even believe in the possibility of anything?'

'I believe in cleaning up your own mess. I believe in being kind. But as for… you know…'

Diane said, very faintly, 'The otherworldly.'

'If you like. I think, quite honestly, I think it's all bollocks. The Grail, the Holy bloody Thorn. The Abbey…very pretty, look, but… it's all bollocks.'

In Glastonbury, he thought, you were allowed to be a Christian, a pagan, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim and maybe, at a pinch, a liberal kind of agnostic. Anything, but…

'Where I'm coming from,' Sam said, 'this is a town built on bollocks.'

Big, big patch of quiet.

Then Diane just said, 'Oh.'

And for that moment, and maybe the one after it, Sam Daniel wished he did believe in the resurrection of the body and the forgiveness of sins and the shroud of Turin and the holy virgin of Knock and the men in silver suits, the whole bloody shebang.

Diane was sitting there looking down at her clasped hands. She hadn't touched her chocolate.

It occurred to Sam, for the first time, seeing her half in shadow, eyes downcast, that she was actually kind of beautiful.

Diane stood up. 'I'd better go.'

No. Don't go. I could have second thoughts.

'Yeah,' he said. 'OK, then.'

At the door, he said, 'It's coming along really well, Diane. The Avalonian. If this was for real, I reckon we could have it on the streets before Christmas.'

Diane said very quietly, 'It's all for real. Everything's part of everything else, and it's all for real.'

Juanita sat in the bedside chair and stared at her hands until her vision went blurred. 'There,' said Karen, the nurse. 'Isn't medical science wonderful?'

She was too upset to reply. Every time they unwrapped the dressings, the hands seemed to look more alien, the transplants in her palms the revolting pink of an old-fashioned condom. And shockingly clean, devoid of lines.

At first they'd looked like the hands of an excavated corpse which someone had joined to her wrists. Frankenstein hands. Now they were claws. She'd shrieked at the doctor, I can't move them, oh Christ I can't bend the fingers. The doctor said they'd become more flexible. In time. And the pink would fade. In time. As would the pain.

Oh, sure, she knew she was lucky. Knew it could have been so much worse. If she hadn't covered her face, if she hadn't been wearing the Afghan.

And, just for a moment, she'd imagined how it would have been the other way round. If she'd died in flames and Jim had been left with hands which wouldn't hold a paintbrush, wouldn't paint with any delicacy perhaps ever again. Jim gazing into his beloved dusk and watching it recede.

About to cry, Juanita sat up in the chair. Think angry.

What beautiful hands you have, Juanita.

'Take it easy, now,' said Karen. She'd come on duty at four, as usual. Juanita's hands had been unwrapped since ten. She'd got dressed for the occasion, in the off-the-shoulder lemon top which Jim liked so much and a long, Aztec-patterned cotton skirt which lay easy on her flayed thighs.

Juanita looked up into the small face full of professional interest. A couple of times they'd sent a trauma counsellor to see her. At least, she'd claimed to be a trauma counsellor, her questions reflecting a certain concern for Juanita's mental-health. After all, what kind of normal person would hurl herself at the blazing, flaking corpse of even a close friend?

She said to Karen, 'Did you find out anything about Ruth Dunn?'

Karen looked even more anxious, then her face went blank. 'Talk about it later.'

'Come on, Karen, what did you find out?'

'Where's she now, Juanita? This woman.'

'Glastonbury.'

'Not in a hospital?'

'No.'

'Private clinic?'

'Nothing like that.'

'Thank Christ for that.'

'Jesus, Karen…'

'I'll see you later. Sister'll be on my back. We'll have a chat.'

Juanita glowered at the uniformed back. A hospital was like a police state. She thought about discharging herself, walking down to the motorway intersection. Holding up her weird hands to thumb a lift. Frighten the lorry drivers.

Then she sank back into the hard chair and wept.

San paced the office. He had to do something. Couldn't just sit around like a spare prick. Sod it. He snatched up the phone and rang Hughie Painter, Central Somerset's most experienced hunt-saboteur.

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?'