The Wounded Thorn

by Fay Sampson

  ‘I hope nothing’s happened to her.’

  The chanting from further up the street was growing. It had a hypnotic quality. The lone policeman had been joined by a female colleague. Lamplight showed her high-visibility jacket a lurid yellow. They were conferring together, but seemed uncertain what to do.

  The women were plucking flowers from their hair now, throwing them across the cordon into the damaged street. White blossoms snowed down on the road, where a crueller debris had fallen earlier. Hilary shuddered, remembering. And still the sweetness of the singing went on. Rupert was chanting something in a deeper voice, though Hilary could not hear the words, or if she could, they were in a language she did not understand.

  ‘I think it’s a healing ceremony,’ Veronica whispered. ‘For all those dead or injured. Isn’t that what he talked about? The healing Goddess?’

  ‘That sounds benign. I’d like to think that’s all it is, but it gives me goose pimples.’

  ‘That’s because your brain can’t understand what’s going on. Just take your intellect out of the way and feel it.’

  A brilliant flash lit up the ranks of singers and musicians. Startled faces turned. Rupert Honeydew spun round, his long face caught in a second explosion of light.

  He strode forward, thrusting the startled dancers aside. A long arm shot out and seized the camera from a dark-clad figure which had crept up to the back of the group. Something went sailing across the lamplight to land with a crash in the road.

  A wail rose. A woman’s voice. ‘My camera! You filthy beast!’

  ‘Goodness me! It’s Joan!’ Veronica cried.

  ‘The little idiot. What did she think would happen?’

  The young woman was a dark animal now, down on all fours, scrabbling underneath the police tape to lunge for her shattered camera. She seemed to be shovelling the fragments into a white bag. The police officers came running towards her. She was lifted bodily by the elbows and hustled back towards the tape. Moonlight sparkled in the tears on her cheeks.

  The dancers drew back in silence to let her pass. Rupert Honeydew drew a sign in the air over her head that Hilary feared meant her no good.

  Joan Townsend stumbled towards them, not seeing them, clutching her plastic bag. Veronica stepped out into her path.

  ‘Joan! I’m so sorry. Is it badly damaged?’

  Joan halted and looked up at them, blankly at first.

  ‘Oh. Mrs Taylor, it’s you. Of course it’s damaged! Three hundred pounds, that cost me. I only hope the memory card is all right. It’s just my luck. This was going to be another exclusive. Black Magic in Bomb-hit Town. I’d got a couple of mega shots, but I don’t even know if the card is still usable. How am I going to get more pictures without a camera?’

  ‘Have you got the memory card in that bag? If you have, I’m sure you’ll do brilliantly with what you’ve got. You really think this is black magic, do you? Not some healing ceremony?’

  ‘With those masks?’

  ‘Yes, well, they do look a bit scary in the moonlight, don’t they? But this afternoon you were the first reporter on the spot. You must have got someone to take your story then.’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I was hours ahead of most of the competition. But I haven’t got a big name for a by-line, have I? They’ll just take anything I’ve filed and mix it in with a whole jumble of other stuff. It’ll be a front-page story, all right, but I won’t be the one who gets the credit. Nothing I do is enough.’

  ‘Poor you,’ Veronica soothed.

  Selfish little brat, Hilary thought. Seven people dead. Two children. Baz has probably lost a leg. And then the thought hit her: Baz himself might be the bomber.

  And all you can think of is whether you get your name in the papers.

  She did not say this.

  The singing beyond them seemed to have entered a new phase. The dancers were holding hands in a long chain, beginning to sway to the music as the pipes and drums summoned them. They were revolving now into the side streets, encircling the damaged heart. And still the drums beat out a mournful rhythm and the voices called down a litany of grief.

  The sound faded into the distance.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ Veronica asked Joan. ‘Would you like us to walk you home?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ the girl said dully. ‘I’d better get back and write up what I’ve got. See if I’ve got any salvageable pictures. It’s too late for the morning paper now, anyway. Just my luck.’

  ‘Poor girl,’ Veronica sympathized as Joan trudged away down the street. ‘It must be heartbreaking to be at the centre of things and not be able to make her voice heard.’

  ‘She might start thinking about other people for a change, and not how a thing like this affects her career prospects.’

  ‘Did you see Mel there among the dancers?’ Veronica asked as they turned in at the hotel gate.

  ‘No. But I wasn’t really looking. Why? Does it matter?’

  ‘It was just something you said. After that do at the Chalice Well. You started to question her and you said afterwards that she looked scared.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘At first, while they were piping and dancing, there was something rather enchanting about it. But now, well, I keep remembering those animal masks, and how frightening Rupert Honeydew can be. I’m pretty sure Mel wasn’t there this time. I can’t help wondering why.’

  ‘Amina Haddad. Joan Townsend. And now the girl from the gift shop. You should start a Society for the Protection of Young Females in Glastonbury.’

  ‘I expect it’s just my imagination.’ Veronica laughed uncertainly.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘There’s a memorial service at the parish church this morning. Do you want to go?’

  ‘Need you ask?’

  Veronica looked at her friend with concern. ‘I worry about you. You’re too caught up in this. It’s not entirely reasonable. We don’t know any of the people who died or were injured.’

  ‘I do!’

  Hilary had a sudden vivid memory of using her belt to strap a tourniquet round Baz’s thigh. Trying desperately to keep him conscious. Seeing him stretchered away into an ambulance. Later that afternoon she had taken the laundry bag with her ruined trousers and dumped it in a rubbish bin at the back of the hotel. She had washed away all Baz’s blood – so much blood – in the shower, but she could not erase him from her imagination. She wished she knew what had happened to him.

  The cold was coming back to her. The police were keeping a guard on Baz. Was that because he was a vital witness? Or … She must not let herself think about the alternative.

  ‘Anyway, I rather thought you might like to go. It’s eleven o’clock.’

  ‘I always bring a skirt on these holidays, thinking I might dress up a bit in the evening, but I never do. This time I might actually get to wear it. It seems more respectful for a memorial service than trousers, don’t you think?’

  The skirt in question was a deep green. Hilary did not feel the need to dress in black for mourning. A sober green would suit the occasion well enough. Services like this were expressions of loss, but also of hope in eternal life. She hoped it would comfort her, as well as the families.

  The streets were alive with people again. They clustered thickly in front of the church of St John the Baptist, with its elegantly tall tower.

  ‘I should have known the TV cameras would be out in force. Ghouls.’

  ‘They’re just doing their job. There hasn’t been such a loss of life since the bombings on the Underground. Of course the nation wants to know.’

  They had left the hotel prudently early. They just squeezed into one of the back pews in the north aisle. The church interior was heavy with the scent of white lilies.

  Hilary studied the ranks of mourners in the pews at the front of the church. The first seats would, of course, be relatives of the dead, some of those tragically young. There were rows of uniforms, representing the police, the rescue services. Outside, work
was still going on in the High Street, making the buildings safe. The town was swarming with police officers. Were they still questioning that couple, almost certainly the Marsdens? Or had they been released?

  She looked round for Joan Townsend and did not see her. Hers was probably one of the battery of cameras waiting outside. Then she remembered: Joan’s expensive camera had been shattered when Rupert Honeydew tore it out of her hands last night. Was it insured? Would she have been able to buy another?

  Veronica dug her suddenly in the ribs. ‘I didn’t expect to see him here.’

  Hilary followed the turn of her head. Across the nave, in the opposite aisle and a little behind them, an exceptionally tall man was making his way into one of the last seats. Today he wore a sober brown jacket and grey flannels. It seemed almost impossible to equate him with the figure clad in motley-coloured rags prancing through the moonlit streets at the head of drummers and dancers in animal masks, tossing his padded club in the air. But it was him, without a doubt. Rupert Honeydew, Amina’s Guizer.

  The thought sent Hilary’s eyes darting round the packed church again. There was no sign of Amina in her blue burka. But then, why should there be? The service would no doubt be designed to appeal to a wide range of beliefs, but Amina’s strict Muslim faith was unlikely to find a place in it. This would not form part of her folkloric research.

  It was foolish to feel a prick of anxiety on her behalf. She should leave that sort of thing to Veronica.

  The memory of those small hands busy taking notes at the well came back to her.

  The congregation was rising as the organ music swelled. A small procession was coming up the aisle. The mayor and mayoress of Glastonbury in their gold chains took their seats in one of the front pews. Then came the clergy and choristers of the parish church, followed by the bishop in a purple mitre and cope.

  Anglicanism did this sort of thing rather well, Hilary thought. The grave ceremonial. Young voices rising in the piercing beauty of music from Fauré’s Requiem Mass. The centuries-old beauty of the architecture, which had seen so many mournings and celebrations and outlived them all. She felt for the relatives of the dead she could only see from the back, and hoped they were deriving some comfort from this loveliness, this majesty.

  The words of resurrection uplifted her.

  The Bishop of Bath and Wells gave a short but rather fine address on the transcendence of hope.

  And then it was over. Veronica and Hilary waited patiently for the crush to subside before leaving their short side pew.

  Outside, spring sunshine welcomed them, and the flash of batteries of cameras.

  ‘She isn’t here,’ Veronica said. ‘I thought she would be, even if her camera’s broken.’

  ‘Amina isn’t either, though that’s hardly such a surprise. Who was the third one of your chicks?’

  ‘Mel from the gift shop, if you must know. And no, she isn’t here either. I’m really not being a broody hen, Hilary. Mel’s probably at work, unless they’ve closed the Chalice Well for the occasion.’

  ‘It seems a bit incongruous to think of people coming here for the usual tourist visit to the well, on a day like this.’

  ‘People do such strange things. They’ll come to stare at the place where people died, and then go off and enjoy themselves for the rest of the day.’

  ‘Though come to think of it,’ Hilary mused, ‘the Chalice Well gardens might actually be a good place to find peace.’

  ‘Is that what we’re going to do?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought. Perhaps we should have left by now, as that hotel waiter thought we would have.’

  Veronica had her mobile out. She was frowning as she keyed in the number and held the device to her ear.

  ‘She isn’t answering.’

  ‘Who are you phoning?’

  ‘Joan, poor soul. I wanted to make sure she’s all right.’

  ‘I thought it was Amina you were worried about, after she insisted on chasing Rupert Honeydew’s lot up the Tor.’

  ‘Did I hear someone taking my name in vain? Ladies!’

  Hilary was not a tall woman at the best of times, but she felt intimidatingly dwarfed by the unnatural height of the man who had come up behind her. He did not need the black top hat of his Guizer’s costume to make him toweringly tall. His lean face surveyed them coolly.

  ‘For two strangers to Glastonbury, you seem to turn up at remarkably sensitive times.’

  ‘The Chalice Well was pure coincidence. And yesterday we were in the High Street when the bomb went off. We have an interest in today’s service. I rather hope I may have saved one of the casualties’ life.’

  ‘Quite the heroine, aren’t you?’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant!’ Indignation was growing. ‘I was just trying to point out that we have reason to be here. We’re not just rubber-necking.’

  ‘I certainly thought it was more than that.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  She was rescued by a party of five coming down the churchyard path towards them. With a flash of gladness she recognized Sister Mary Magdalene stepping off on to the grass to by-pass them. Behind her came four of her pupils in purple uniform. They looked sombre. One of them had the traces of tears on her cheeks. Hilary remembered how they too had been caught up in the horror of yesterday’s bombing, how Sister Mary Magdalene had praised the girls’ courage in helping the wounded.

  ‘It was a fine service, wasn’t it?’ the nun said. ‘The bishop always does rise well to the occasion.’

  ‘Establishment flummery!’ Rupert Honeydew almost spat. ‘I could show them where real healing lies. It’s not here, but right up there.’ He gestured to the Tor. ‘Or at the red spring.’

  ‘We all find our own paths to peace.’ Sister Mary Magdalene smiled. ‘May the Lord bless you on yours.’

  She forged on towards the gate, and Hilary was glad to let herself be towed in the wake of the slight figure in her neat grey suit.

  She looked sideways at the schoolgirls accompanying the nun. A twinge of nostalgia overcame her. Forty years. She would not stand in front of a classroom of pupils like that again.

  She was jolted out of memories of the past by the sound of a furious argument on the pavement ahead.

  ‘It’s a disgrace! My home town is attacked by bloody foreigners and I can’t even get into my own parish church to show my respect for the dead.’

  ‘It’s Marsden!’ Hilary exclaimed. ‘The police have let him go.’

  ‘And Joan!’ exclaimed Veronica. ‘She’s got her interview.’

  The stocky journalist was almost overwhelmed by the thickening crowd. Other reporters and photographers were homing in on the scene. Bulbs were flashing.

  Marsden swung round at Hilary’s words. The bulging eyes caught hers. ‘Not like some! They let strangers into the service, but not me.’

  To her dismay, Hilary found the attention of the crowd turning on her. She held up her hands. ‘We just wanted to pray for the bereaved and the injured.’

  ‘Mark my words,’ George Marsden was shouting, ‘it’s what comes of letting Muslims into this country. They should turn them back at the ports and airports, the whole lot of them. Jibber-jabbering in their heathen language, building mosques.’

  Ugly shouts of agreement rose from some of the bystanders.

  ‘I’ve even seen one of their women dressed up in one of those – what do you call ’em? Like a tent.’

  ‘A burka,’ someone shouted out.

  ‘Call it what you like, I’ve seen one of them right here in Glastonbury. And don’t tell me that’s got nothing to do with this bomb. I ask you, what honest woman is going to go around covered up in one of those, so you can’t see what’s underneath. How do we even know it is a woman?’

  The sound of unrest was growing louder. Hilary was beginning to feel alarmed.

  ‘She is. We’ve spoken to her.’ Veronica ventured to raise her voice, but no one listened to her. Microphones were being thrust forward, q
uestions shouted.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Hilary sighed. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing Amina isn’t here this morning.’

  ‘But she will be other mornings, unless she’s packed up and gone.’

  George Marsden was in full flow, but one question stopped him dead.

  ‘Mr Marsden, is it true that you and your wife were held for questioning by the police?’

  ‘That’s an infamous suggestion! We were doing our public duty, helping the police with their enquiries into a dastardly murder. We were key witnesses, Sonia and I. We were right there on the High Street when that bomb went off. Another few yards and it could have killed us.’

  ‘So why did the police detain you? Did it have anything to do with the fact that you were bawling out the owner of a shop very like the one which was bombed?’

  There was a sudden tumult among the barrage of microphones held out towards him. George Marsden seized one of them and clouted the owner over the head.

  ‘George, no!’ his wife’s voice commanded above the shouts of surprise. ‘That’s not the way to deal with these idiots.’

  Today, the small dark-haired woman wore a black dress and jacket, against which a large silver cross glistened. She was almost engulfed by the press pack and the angry crowd of onlookers, but she stood her ground.

  Her husband glared at her. ‘I’ll decide for myself what’s the right way to deal with louts who say I’m not an upright God-fearing Englishman.’

  From the thick of the mêlée a policeman appeared, working his way authoritatively through the struggling ranks of reporters and photographers. He laid a firm hand on George Marsden’s shoulder and fended off the press pack with the other.

  ‘Let’s have a little order here, shall we? Show some respect. There’s a funeral service going on here today.’

  ‘Not a funeral,’ Hilary muttered, ‘a memorial service.’

  But the uniform was having an effect. The misused microphone was restored to its owner. A policewoman had arrived and was shepherding Sonia and George Marsden away. Reporters were eagerly recording the event to camera or scribbling in notebooks. Out of the throng emerged a figure in a sagging brown cardigan.