The Chalice Read Online Free PDF Page B

'Hey, you reckon I was a monk?'
           He felt at the back of his head. Where a monk's tonsure would
be, Headlice had a swastika tattoo, re-exposed because of the affliction which
had led to his extremely severe haircut and his unfortunate nickname.
           Rozzie made a scoffing noise. 'More like one of the friggin'
peasants what carted the stones up the hill.'
           She'd told Diane that the swastika was a relic of Headlice's
days as some sort of a teenage neo-fascist, neo-skinhead. Headlice, however,
pointed out that the original swastika was an ancient pagan solar symbol. Which
was why he'd had one tattooed on the part of him nearest the sun, see?
           He turned away and kicked at the grass. His face had darkened;
he looked as if he'd rather be kicking Rozzie. She was a Londoner; he was from
the North. She was about twenty-six. Although they shared a bus and a bed, she
seemed to despise him awfully.
           'I could've been a
fuckin' monk,' Headlice said petulantly. Despite the democratic, tribal code of
the pilgrims, he was obviously very conscious of his background, which made
Diane feel jolly uncomfortable about hers. She'd been trying to come over sort
of West Country milkmaidish, but she wasn't very good at it, probably just
sounded frightfully patronising .
           'Or a bird,' she said. 'Perhaps you were a little bird nesting
in the tower.' She felt sorry for Headlice.
           'Cute. All I'm sayin' is, I feel ... I can feel it here.' Punching
his chest through the rip in his dirty denim jacket. 'This is not bullshit,
Mol.'
           Diane smiled. On her own first actual visit to the Tor - or it
might have been a dream, she couldn't have been more than about three or four -
there'd been sort of candyfloss sunbeams rolling soft and golden down the steep
slopes, warm on her sandals. She wished she could still hold that soft, undemanding
image for more than a second or two, but she supposed it was only for children.
Too grown-up to feel it now.
           Also she felt too ... well, mature, at twenty-seven, to be
entirely comfortable among the pilgrims although a few were ten or even twenty
years older than she was and showed every line of it. But even the older women
tended to be fey and childlike and stick-thin, even the ones carelessly
suckling babies.
           Stick thin. How wonderful to be stick-thin.
           'What it is ...' Headlice said. 'I feel like I'm home.'
           'What?' Diane looked across to the Tor, with the church tower
without a church on its summit. Oh no.
It's not your home at all, you 're just passing through. I'm the one who's...
           Home? The implications made her feel faint. She wobbled about,
wanting to climb back into the van, submerge like a fat hippo in a swamp.
Several times on the journey, she'd thought very seriously about dropping out
of the convoy, turning the van around and dashing back to Patrick, telling him
it had all been a terrible, terrible mistake.
           And then she'd seen the vinegar shaker on the high chip shop
counter at lunchtime and a spear of light had struck it and turned it into a
glistening Glastonbury Tor. Yes !
she'd almost shrieked. Yes, I'm coming
back!
           With company. There must be over thirty pilgrims here now, in
a collection of vehicles as cheerful as an old fashioned circus. At least it had been cheerful when she'd joined the
convoy on the North Yorkshire moors - that old army truck sprayed purple with
big orange flowers, the former ambulance with an enormous eye painted on each side
panel, shut on one side, wide open on the other. But several of the jollier
vehicles seemed to have dropped out. Broken down, probably. Well, they were all frightfully old. And fairly drab
now, except for Diane's van and Headlice's bee-striped bus.
           Mort's hearse had slunk in next to the bus. There was a mattress
in the back. Mort had offered to demonstrate Love over