The Cold Calling Part 27

'Well, sure, Ersula has strong nerves, but ...'

'However,' Cindy said, 'this doesn't sound like a guardian to me. More of a trace-image. An ancient site usually holds more than one strand of history, see. For instance, in the Dark Ages, we have old shrines taken over by somewhat degenerate Druidic cults, not averse to human sacrifice. This could very well be a flash-image from some sort of blood sacrifice.'

Grayle said, 'You know what really scares me about this country? It's all so close, so near the surface.'

'It's near the surface in many parts of the Earth.' Cindy poured tea. 'It's just that here, so little has altered visually over the centuries that our imaginations do not have to work so hard.'

'My imagination is kind of like an untrained Dobermann. Most of the time you have to forcibly restrain it.'

Cindy smiled. 'Look, lovely, you trusted me, I shall trust you. This particular site is referred to by two names High Knoll and Black Knoll, and they seem to reflect two sides of it.'

'Good and evil?'

'Possibly as simple as that, probably not. The concepts of good and evil seldom apply in this sphere. I was thinking more of male and female. The female side represented by the vision of the Virgin Mary, itself reestablishing a link with the earliest sun-worship at the site. And then we have the male element. Linked, perhaps, to the bloodier aspect.'

'Right.' Grayle accepted a cup of tea and held it on her knees. 'But where is this headed? Are we saying that Ersula who we know was charmed by the idea of the Virgin appearing at this Stone Age site are we saying she inadvertently let herself in for something ... old and bad?'

'This letter was the last you heard? You don't know when she left here?'

'I know that some time after she wrote this, she was wandering around in a kind of dislocated state. She met these people at the Rollright Stones. They're nice. The people, not the stones.'

'No. Those stones have their problems. Why did she go there?'

'I guess she had something on her mind. Maybe she was looking for friends. Someone to confide in. But maybe, if something bad happened to you in connection with prehistoric remains, these people, Matthew and Janny, maybe they're not the kind of people to help you. They're real friendly, obliging, all of that, but a little, uh, enthusiastic. Kind of naive, I guess. Anything bad, they'd tell you you had it wrong.'

'Have you been yet ... to see Mr Falconer?'

'I figured I'd go tomorrow. I wanted to gather as much background as I could before I confronted the guy. He sounds kind of formidable.'

'So I believe.'

'Actually, I was given a videotape of his TV programme which I hoped to view before I went over there, on account I don't even know what he looks like, but this place doesn't appear to be equipped with the necessary hardware.'

'I should quite like to view that, too,' Cindy said thoughtfully. 'I travel around too much to see much television. I wonder if Marcus Bacton has a video machine.'

'Marcus Bacton. Yeah. I need to talk with him too. Maybe I need to spend another day here. Look ... OK ...' Grayle focused on Cindy over the rim of her white teacup. 'You know why I'm here. Why are you here?'

'Ah.' Cindy needed time to think. 'It would take too long. We'll talk tomorrow. After I see Mr Bacton.'

'Oh. OK.' Grayle put her cup on the floor. 'Uh, this ... guardian ... trace-image, whatever. I mean, they can't harm you, these things, can they?'

'Not ... not physically. No. Probably not physically.'

'But they can f.u.c.k up your head?'

'I suppose ... Yes, as you so charmingly put it, I suppose they can f.u.c.k up your head.'

But that's not what really worries you, is it?

Cindy lay in bed again, with the light out. It would be dawn soon. No matter; he didn't need much sleep these days.

The Green Man.

The oldest guardian. Stern defender of the Earth. Just talking it out with Grayle Underhill had made it so much clearer in his mind. He could almost feel the Green Man writhing there.

And Grayle's sister was missing.

Am I quite mad? Cindy wondered before sleep consented to take him. Please G.o.d, let me be mad.

XXV.

This is how it goes, Grayle thought, struggling with the zipper on her jeans. This is how it happens.

Outside the window, morning rinsed the pink stone of the village.

So you do something rash and you wind up in a strange place. You're lonely and anxious and it all seems so futile. This is when you're at your most vulnerable. This is how rich, empty widows wind up backing half-a.s.sed business deals and homeless kids get sucked into fruitcake religious sects.

Somebody is kind to you, is how it starts. Deep into the night, somebody wants to listen.

Just that, by daylight, the whole idea of a cross-dressing actor-ventriloquist who believed he was into a mystical tradition with a direct line to the megalith-builders seemed a whole lot less convincing than it had last night.

Plus, why should Cindy suddenly pick up on her in a bar? What was he doing here anyway and why had he not wanted to tell her last night? If he was looking up his old friend Marcus Bacton, why was he staying at the inn, and why was he alone?

Grayle felt calmer and stronger this morning. She would investigate the University of the Earth. She would do it objectively and efficiently. She would find out what it was that had so seduced Ersula, but she would resist its allure. And Cindy's.

Get wise. Grayle moved down the dark, twisty stairs to chase up a small breakfast before seeking out Cefn-y-bedd. Put some distance.

'What's up with you, Maiden?' Marcus dangerously dug a fork into the toaster to retrieve a fractured slice. 'I mean, what the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is up? You look like you haven't slept.'

'That's because I haven't slept.'

'Oh ... s.h.i.t!' Marcus held the toaster upside down and a million dry crumbs came out on the stone worktop. At the sight of the blackened heap, Maiden erupted into dry coughs and stumbled to his feet to run himself a gla.s.s of water. Marcus brushed the debris to the floor and carried the toast to the table on the end of a fork.

'That's it.' He sat down. 'That is f.u.c.king it. '

Malcolm, the dog, ambled over, checked out the ancient crumbs, sniffed and turned away. Maiden drank the water slowly.

'Had a piece for the magazine yesterday.' Marcus unwrapped a pack of hard, chilled b.u.t.ter. 'Woman in Norfolk claims actual fairies have been performing scenes from A Midsummer-Night's Dream in her b.l.o.o.d.y greenhouse. Been a subscriber since 1962. What do I do with that?'

'Offer her the editorship?'

Marcus stared at him. 'You may be right. I'll bury Mrs Willis today, full honours, be as nice as I can to the relatives, if any turn up. And then-'

'She have any children?'

'Niece in Hay. Another in Allensmore. One of them, I can't remember which, thinks she might make it to the funeral.'

'But if Mrs Willis was Annie Davies ...'

'Then there'll be a few cousins and second cousins in the village. But did they know? And if they did, will they admit it? Old prejudices die hard, places like this. I'll bury her, and then that's it.'

'What is?'

'Get out. p.i.s.s off. Surrender The Phenomenologist to the mad biddies. Put this place on the market. Must be some appeal in a castle, even if the house is disintegrating.'

Maiden filled the kettle, set it down on the stove. 'Maybe Falconer would buy it.'

'Thank you, Maiden. Over my dead, f.u.c.king body. Rather flog it as an outward-bound centre for your ten-year-old car-thieves.'

Marcus was suddenly sunk into profound misery, bloodhound eyes blurring behind his gla.s.ses.

'Went into the b.l.o.o.d.y Healing Room late last night. Core of the house for the past year. All those bottles and jars, with Mrs Willis around, they were full of mystery. Potions and elixirs. All drawing energy from her. Full of a sort of condensed life-force. And at the same time you'd feel this overwhelming peace and calm in there. Now it's just old bottles full of dead and rotting gunge. Have to put them all in bin bags, take them to the tip.'

'I'll do it, if you like.'

Marcus shook his head, splattering b.u.t.ter on a fragment of brittle toast. 'If there's a message in those bottles, Maiden, it's for me. I look at my life ... I mean is that f.u.c.king it? Standing in a desert, surrounded by graves. Celia. Little Sally. Mrs Willis. Possibility of seeing them again's about all there is to look forward to, you get to my age.'

'You're sixty,' Maiden protested.

'Unless, of course, your own version of the Other Side is the truth of it,' Marcus said. 'In which case we're all stuffed, aren't we?'

There was the sound of tyres on the forecourt. Marcus dropped his burnt toast.

Maiden saw someone getting out of a very old but beautifully polished black Morris Minor. 'Woman. Late middle-age, mauvy hair? Tweed skirt, kind of mohair sweater with white woolly lambs on the front. Gold earrings, necklaces, bangles.'

'Sounds h.e.l.lish,' Marcus said. 'If we keep quiet maybe it'll go away.'

'Might be one of Mrs Willis's nieces.'

It certainly wasn't a policeman, so Maiden made for the front door and dragged it open before the woman had time to knock. It was a strange moment. She just stood there looking at him for several seconds. She was as tall as he was. She had the small, glittering eyes of a bird of prey.

'Well,' she said at last. 'You're not Marcus Bacton, are you, lovely?'

A long, flat-topped hill. Like a bed, with a pillow of trees at one end. Grayle headed toward the trees, as directed by Amy Jenkins, the landlady. Remembering what Ersula had written about the curious magic of this place.

She came to a plain farm gate and it was open. Walked through, and suddenly like ... wow there was, below her, this unbelievably beautiful, rambling, mellow stone house spread out like a sleeping lion. The kind of country house they tried to clone in Beverly Hills and failed because the result was just too movie-set perfect. High walls suggested gardens with fishpools and stuff.

Typically because the house was irrelevant to what went on there Ersula had never referred to it, except as 'the center'. It looked more of a home than an educational establishment, which explained why Ersula and the others had had apartments over the stables, and why folks on the courses needed accommodation in the village. Couldn't be more than five or six bedrooms in the house itself.

And just one car parked in front, a rebuilt VW beetle, pink. A squirrel scampered past, otherwise no sign of life.

Clouds were gathering, and it looked like more than a gesture. She should've come in the car, but walking a couple of miles gave you a handle on a place. Fall was setting in, the first dead leaves curling together on the brown gravel as she tried because there were no other options the huge, solid, iron-studded door.

Tugging a bell pull on a black chain, she stepped back in alarm when it responded with this deep, churchy tolling, way back into the house. And Grayle thought, in a kind of terror, Suppose the door opens and it's Ersula. Ersula in a bathrobe, hair mussed and smelling of recent s.e.x?

But there was no Ersula. No answer at all. And no use in ringing again, there was no way anyone in the house would have failed to hear.

Grayle was curious. Emboldened by the likelihood of there being no-one here at all, she wandered around the side of the house to peer over the stone wall. It was too high, around nine feet. But it had a door in it. A smaller replica of the front door, going to a Gothic point. There was a ring handle; she turned it.

Waited, holding her breath. n.o.body came out with a shotgun or two snarling mastiffs on a chain. She pushed her head through the opening. 'Hullo?'

Expecting a stately Elizabethan knot-garden or something of that order, but it was just a gravelled yard with two white Portakabins. This noise coming out of one. A slow, cavernous noise, like a giant flute deep underground.

She stood and listened a while. There was an artificial quality to it. She padded across the yard. The Portakabin windows had Venetian blinds. One was open; you could just about see inside. She saw two tall speakers, computer monitors, a tape deck with a green pilot light. Whole setup looked like a recording studio, maybe for making those ambient, New Age tapes whales talking to one another kind of stuff.

'Yes?' From close behind her.

'OhmyG.o.d. ' Grayle spun.

Found herself facing one of those people you just knew weren't going to be helpful. She was about Grayle's own age, good-looking and so sure of it she could wear an old wax jacket and baggy cords, harness her abundant hair in a rubber band.

'What are you doing here?' Authoritative voice, very English, well bred; kind of voice that spurned Hugh Grant until the last reel.

'I ...'

'No, don't tell me,' the woman said with a flick of a wrist. 'You're a b.l.o.o.d.y journalist, aren't you?'

'Well, uh, as it happens, yeah, but-'

'G.o.d almighty. Don't you people ever get the message? All visits by journalists, interviews, etcetera, etcetera, are absolutely strictly by appointment only. So I suggest you go back to your office and attempt to make one. I mean, would that be so terribly difficult for you?'

'Listen, I don't even know what authority you have to say that.' No way was she going to ident.i.ty herself, pour it all out to some superior being from the planet Arrogant. 'I'd prefer to hear it from Professor Falconer.'

'I speak for him.'

'And you are?'

'Magda. I run this place. Now look, I don't have time for this. We have a course next week, a dozen people, we're mega-busy, so please get back in your car-'

'I never heard of you. I believe my editor spoke to someone called Ersula Underhill.'

Magda blinked. 'That makes no sense. Ersula's ancient history.'

The words pushed a cold skewer into Grayle, who was just imagining Ersula, in a white lab-coat, messing with tapes and stuff and taking no s.h.i.t whatsoever from this woman.

'Anyway,' Magda said, 'Ersula Underhill wasn't authorized to arrange for journalists or anybody else to come here.'

'You say she's gone? Like, where?' Grayle noticed that, in the Portakabin behind her, the giant flute had ceased. She watched Magda's eyes.

'Look.' Magda had her hands aggressively on her hips. 'What is this?'