The Chalice Read Online Free PDF Page A

had
already,' Juanita said cautiously. Damn woman knew him rather too well.
           'One. Swear to God. Called at a pub called the Oak Tree or
something. Nerves shot to hell after a run-in with a container lorry from
Bordeaux. One small Bells, I swear it.'
           She looked dubious, puckering her lovely nose. In the
lingering warmth of this year's strange, post-Indian summer, she was wearing a
lemon yellow off the shoulder thing, showing all her freckles. Well, as many of
them as he'd ever seen.
           'Just that you're looking ... not exactly un-flushed, Jim.'
           'Hmmph,' said Jim. He let Juanita sit him down in an armchair,
planting a chunky tumbler in his drinking and painting hand. She had quite a
deep tan from sunning herself reading books on the balcony at the back. While most
women her age were going frantic about melanoma,
Juanita snatched all the sun she could get. Must be the Latin ancestry.
           Watching her uncork the Laphroaig bottle with a rather suggestive thopp, Jim thought, Ten years ... ten
years younger would do it. Ten years, maybe fifteen, and she'd be at least
within reach.
           He coughed, hoping nothing showed. 'Erm ... Happened to cycle
past Don Moulder's bottom field on the way back. Guess bloody what.'
           'New Age travellers?'
           'Nothing gets past you, does it?' Jim held out his glass. 'Arrogant
devils. Bloody- thieving layabouts.'
       'Not quite all of them.'
           As she leaned over to pour his drink, Jim breathed in a
delightful blend of Ambre Solaire and frank feminine sweat, the mixture
sensuously overlaid with the smoky peat musk of the whisky. Aaaaah ...
the dubious pleasure of being sixty-two years old, unattached again, and with
all one's senses functioning, more or less.
           'I'm sorry ...' Shaking himself out of it and feeling the old
jowls wobble. 'What did you just say?'
           'I said at least one of them isn't a thief. Besides, oddballs
have always drifted towards Glastonbury. Look at me. Look at you.'
           'Yes, but, Juanita, the essential difference here is that we saved up our hard-earned pennies until
we could do it in a respectable way.
We didn't just get an old bus from a scrapyard and enough fuel to trundle it
halfway across the country before it breaks down and falls to pieces in some previously
unsullied beauty spot. You see, what gets me is how these characters have the
bare-faced check .. .'
       'Because Diane's with them.'
           '... to call themselves friends of the buggering planet, when
they ... What did you say ... ?' Jim had to steady the Laphroaig with his other
hand.
           Juanita poured herself a glass of probably overpriced white
wine from Lord Pennard's vineyard and lowered herself into a chintzy old
rocking chair by the Victorian fireplace. There was a small woodstove tucked
into the fireplace now, unlit as yet, but with a few autumn logs piled up ready
for the first cold day.
           Jim said, 'I'm sorry, I don't quite understand. You say Diane's
back? Diane s with them ? But I
thought...'
           'We all did Which is ...' Juanita sighed. 'I suppose, why I
got them the field.'
           Jim was bewildered. ' You got them the buggering field?'
           He'd thought she was over all that. Might have been Queen of
the Hippies 1972, but she was fully recovered now, surely to God.
           Juanita said. 'Comes down to the old question: if I don't try
and help her, who else is going to?'
           'But I thought she was working in Yorkshire?' The idea of
Diane training to be a journalist had struck Jim as pretty unlikely at the time, considering the girl's renowned
inability to separate fact from fantasy, 'I thought she was getting married.
Peter somebody.'
           'Patrick. It's off. Abandoned her job, everything,'
       'To become a New Age buggering
traveller?'
       'Not