A Finer End

quiet dignity. Andrew never climbed the Tor without thinking of Richard Whiting’s execution, and he resented bitterly those who would make a theme park of one of Glastonbury’s most sacred spots.
    In this he had his sister Winifred’s support. As an Anglican priest, she found the New Age marketing of Glastonbury as difficult to deal with as he did. Of course, both town and abbey had a long history of embellishment, ending with the scam of all time, the digging up in 1191 of King Arthur’s and Queen Guinevere’s supposed bones from the Abbey churchyard.
    Winnie, always one to see the best in people, insisted that the Abbey monks had acted in good faith, but Andrew was more cynical. After the devastating fire of 1184, the Abbey had been in dire need of funds for rebuilding. The ‘newly’ discovered relics meant pilgrims — and therefore revenue. Human nature had not changed that much in eight hundred years, he thought grimly.
    Realizing it was almost fully dark, Andrew whistled for Phoebe and reclipped her lead as he turned to retrace their path down the hill. Phoebe picked her way through the tussocky grass, and as Andrew followed he considered the lecture he needed to prepare for tomorrow’s sixth-form history class. Sixth-formers were always difficult — full of their own importance as they neared freedom and university — but he had hopes for one girl in particular, a scholar with an interest in archaeology, but then he had been disappointed before. It didn’t pay to invest oneself too deeply in adolescents.
    Winnie teased him about his students, saying he’d been born in the wrong century. According to her, he’d have made a perfect nineteenth-century gentleman archaeologist, surrounded by rapt disciples, but Andrew thought it unlikely that the coterie of scruffy graduate students who usually staffed his digs could be described as ‘rapt’.
    He and his sister had enjoyed an unusual rapport since childhood. Having lost their parents quite young, they’d become particularly close and when, after five years in London, Winnie had been given a parish near Glastonbury, he had felt his life complete. He supposed he’d taken for granted that things would go on as they were indefinitely — in fact, he’d even considered selling his house on Hillhead and moving into the vicarage with Winnie. They had always shared interests, particularly their love of music, and it had been their custom to spend their free time together.
    But all that had changed since Winnie had become involved with Jack Montfort last winter.
    In Winnie’s company, Andrew had been content — with his teaching, his archaeological work, and his activism in the community — but now these once-beloved things seemed pointless.
    The Thorn loomed ahead of him, its twisted silhouette a darker shadow against the dusk, and soon afterwards he reached the stile where the path intersected his street. Winnie loved the house on Hillhead, with its sweeping vista of the Somerset Levels, and she had helped him decorate it in a spare style that enhanced the view. Here they had spent many a winter evening in front of the fire, and in summer had lingered past dusk on the terraced patio.
    As Andrew entered the house, its emptiness seemed to mock him. He hung Phoebe’s lead neatly on the hook beside the door, then scooped her evening portion of food into her bowl. But after a quick perusal of the fridge, he lost any enthusiasm for the preparation of his own meal.
    Instead, he poured himself a solitary glass of red wine and took glass and bottle into the darkened sitting room. Through his uncurtained windows, he could see faint lights twinkling in the plain below, as remote as the stars pricking through the velvet expanse of the southern sky.
    His life seemed as if it were collapsing around him, forming a dark, cold weight in his chest that gnawed at him like a tumour. He’d tried seeking solace elsewhere — a mistaken attempt with consequences so disastrous he strove to put the incident from his mind.
    Never had he dreamed that anything — or anyone — could separate him from his sister, or that he would find her absence so devastating. If ever he had shared Winnie’s faith, this blow would have shattered it — how could any god inflict such loss upon him, after what he had suffered? Nor would any god right it, he thought as he poured another glass of wine. That, he could see clearly now, was entirely up to him.
     
    Fiona Finn Allen had awakened