Crybbe

CHAPTER VIII

Fay walked back to the cottage, for Arnold's sake and to clear her head, although she hadn't drunk all that much wine – not compared to Rachel, anyway. Arnold, however, looked as if he'd been drinking heavily, veering from side to side on his tautened clothes-line. He was hopeless.

Goff had not returned when they arrived back at the Court. She'd left Rachel carrying the triptych into the stable-block where it was to be double-locked into a store-room. Nearly a thousand quid's worth of less-than-fine art. Hereward and Jocasta Newsome would, for once, have good reason to appear appallingly smug.

'Whichever way you look at it, Arnie,' Fay said reflectively, 'our friend Goff is making waves in Crybbe.'

No bad thing, either.

Could she understand the guy's obsession? Well, yes, she could. A man who'd made his first million marketing anarchic punk-rock records in the mid-seventies. Waking up in the nineties to find himself sitting on a heap of money in a wilderness of his own creation. All the cars and yachts and super-toys he'd ever want and nothing to nurture the soul.

Not exactly a quantum leap, was it, from there to the New Age dream?

And, the more she thought about it, the proposed mystical liberation of an obscure Welsh border town from years of economic decay was a story that deserved a bigger audience than it was ever going to reach through Offa's Dyke Radio.

In fact, this could be the moment to approach her old chums at the BBC. How about a forty-five-minute radio documentary chronicling Goff's scheme to turn Crybbe into a New Age Camelot? She could hear a sequence in her head, lots of echoey footsteps and tinkly music, the moaning of men and machinery as massive megaliths were manoeuvred into position. It sounded good.

On the other hand, she had an arrangement with Offa's Dyke, and the little shit Ashpole would want first bite at every snippet that came out of the Goff camp.

… or we'll have to, you know, reconsider things…

Little turd.

And while Radio Four was the interesting option, a chance to prove she could still make national-quality programmes, Offa's Dyke was bread and butter. Of course, if there was a prospect of getting out of Crybbe and back to London or Manchester or Bristol in the foreseeable future, she could make the BBC programme and bollocks to O.D.

She passed the farm entrance and followed Arnold and the road into the wood, where the sudden darkness brought with it a wave of loneliness and resentment towards her dad. Why did the old bugger have to stay out here? All that cobblers about his having to sell the house in Woodstock to pay for Grace's treatment.

Somehow, Dad, Fay thought, all your money's gone down the pan. And tonight, the close of what appeared to have been one of his better days, seemed as good a time as any to make him tell her precisely how it had happened.

A bush moved.

It happened on the edge of her vision, just as she'd passed it, and she thought, it's the wind, then realized there was none.

Arnold growled.

Fay froze. 'Who's that?'

Bloody hell, the phantom flasher of Crybbe. Well, there had to be one. Fay laughed. Nervously.

There was also Black Michael's Hound.

You wouldn't think anything as black as that could glow, would you?

Thank you, Mrs Seagrove.

There was a snigger. An involuntary cry was snatched from Fay, and then he was off. She saw him vanish behind a tree then reappear, moving in a crouch, like a spider, up the field, in the direction of the farm, an unidentifiable shadow. Perhaps it was that man Humble, Goff's minder.

'Have a nice wank, did we?' Fay called after him. But it wasn't funny, and that was why her voice cracked. She was discovering that back alleys in the city, full of chip-wrapping and broken glass, could sometimes be less scary than a placid sylvan lane at sunset.

Because there was the feeling, somehow, that if it did happen here, it would be worse.

Hereward Newsome couldn't wait to get home to tell his wife what he'd learned in the Cock.

Hereward went off to what he described to visitors as 'my local hostelry' perhaps two nights a week and stayed for maybe an hour. He considered a local hostelry was one of those things a man ought to have when he lived in the country, if he was to communicate with the locals on their own level.

'Why bother?' demanded Jocasta, who made a point of never going with him to the Cock. 'Why on earth should I learn about sheep and pigs? Why can't the locals learn about fine art and communicate with us on our level?'

'Because it's their town,' Hereward had reasoned. 'Pigs and sheep have been their way of life for centuries, and now the industry is in crisis and they feel their whole raison d'etre is threatened. We should show them we understand.'

And he did his best. He'd started reading everything he could find in the Guardian about sheep subsidies and the Common Agricultural Policy so he could carry on a respectable discussion with the farmers in the public bar. He'd commiserate with them about the latest EC regulations and they'd say, 'Well, well,' or 'Sure t'be,' in their quiet, contemplative tones and permit him to buy them another couple of pints of Ansell's Bitter.

However, he was always happier if Colonel Croston was in there, or even old Canon Peters. He might not have much in common with either of them, but at least it would be a two-way conversation.

Tonight, however, he'd found common ground… in a big way.

Lights were coming on in the farmhouse as Hereward parked the 2CV neatly at the edge of the slice of rough grass he called 'the paddock'. There was a Volvo Estate in the garage, but he never took that into town unless there were paintings to be shifted.

'It's me, darling.' Hereward hammered on the stable door at the side of the farmhouse. He kept telling her there was no need to lock it; that was the beauty of the countryside. But every other week she'd point out something in the paper about some woman getting raped in her cottage or a bank manager held to ransom in his rural retreat. 'But not in this area, Hereward would say, looking pained.

Even though she'd have recognized his voice, Jocasta opened only the top half of the door so she could see his face and be sure he wasn't accompanied by some thug with a shotgun at his back.

'It is me,' Hereward said patiently, when his wife finally let him in. 'Listen, darling, what did I say about the turning point?'

'Coffee?' Jocasta said. Hereward frowned. When she was solicitous on his return from the pub it usually meant she'd just concluded an absurdly lengthy phone call to her sister in Normandy. Tonight, though, he'd let it pass.

'Sorry,' Jocasta said, plugging in the percolator. 'Turning point? You mean Goff?'

'You remember I told you about that guy Daniel Osborne, the homeopath? Who moved into a cottage in Bridge Street? With his wife, the acupuncturist? Now I learn that next door but one to him – this is quite extraordinary – there's a hypnotherapist who specializes in that… what d'you call it when they try to take people back into previous lives?'

'Regression.' Jocasta turned towards him. He thought she looked awfully alluring when her eyes were shining. He had her full attention.

'The fact is…' Hereward was smiling broadly. 'There're lots of them. And we didn't know it. All kinds of progressive, alternative practitioners and New Age experts. In Crybbe.'

'You're serious?'

'Look, I've just had this from Dan Osborne himself, they can talk about it now. Seems Max Goff's been secretly buying property in town for months and either selling it at a very reasonable price or renting it to, you know, the right people. What we're getting here are the seeds of a truly progressive alternative community. That is, no

… no…'

'Riff-raff,' Jocasta said crisply. 'Hippies.'

'If you must. In fact, it's the sort of set-up that… well

… the Prince of Wales would support.'

'There's got to be a catch,' Jocasta said, ever cautious, 'It seems remarkable that we haven't heard about it before.'

'Darling, everybody's been ultra discreet. I mean, they don't look any different from your ordinary incomers, and there's always been a big population turnover in this area. Look, here's an example. You remember the grey-haired woman, very neat very well-dressed, who was in The Gallery looking at paintings a couple of days ago. Who do you think that was?'

'Shirley MacLaine."

'Jean Wendle," said Hereward.

'Who?'

'The spiritual healer! She used to be a barrister or something and gave it up when she realized she had the gift.'

'Oh.' Jocasta digested this. 'Are you saying Crybbe's going to be known for this sort of thing? With lots of…'

'Tourists! Up-market thinking tourists! The kind that don't even like to be called tourists. It's going to be like Glastonbury here – only better. It'll be… internationally famous.'

'Well,' said Jocasta, 'if what you say is true, it's really quite annoying nobody told us. We might have sold up and moved out, not realizing. And it's still going to take time…'

'Darling,' Hereward said, 'if Goff can pull off something like this under our very noses, the man is a magician.'

The solemnity of the curfew bell lay over the shadowed square by the time Fay and Arnold came back into town, and she found herself counting the clangs, getting louder as they neared the church.

Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine…

There was something faintly eerie about the curfew. Was she imagining it, or did people make a practice of staying off the streets while it was actually being rung, even if they came out afterwards? She stood staring at the steps in front of the clock, willing somebody to walk in or out to prove her wrong.

Nobody did. Nobody was walking on the street. There was no traffic. No children played. No dogs barked. Only the bell and the cawing of crows, like a distorted echo.

Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five…

Every evening the curfew would begin at precisely ten o'clock. You could set your watch by it, and people often did.

How the custom had survived was not entirely inexplicable. There'd been a bequest by one Percy Weale, a local wool-merchant and do-gooder back in the sixteenth century. He'd left land and money to build Crybbe School and also a further twelve acres in trust to the Preece family and their descendants on condition that the curfew bell be rung nightly to safeguard the moral and spiritual welfare' of the townsfolk.

Should the Preece family die off or neglect the task, then the land must be rented out and the money used to pay a bell-ringer. But even in times of plague or war, it was said, the curfew bell had never been silenced.

Because hanging on to those twelve acres would be a matter of pride for the Preeces. Also economics. Fay was learning that farmers in these parts would do almost anything to hold what land they had and would lay in wait for neighbouring death or misfortune to grab more. When a farm was sold, the neighbours swooped like buzzards, snatching up acreage on every side, often leaving a lone farmhouse marooned in the middle, condemned either to dereliction or sumptuous restoration by city folk in search of a rural retreat. The Newsomes lived in one, with a quarter acre of their own surrounded on all sides by other people's property.

Ninety-eight, ninety-nine. One hundred. Although the sun's last lurid light was spread like orange marmalade across the hills, the town centre wore a sombre gown of deep shadows.

Fay noticed Arnold's clothes-line had gone slack.

He was sitting on the cracked cobbles, staring up at the church tower, now overhung with florid cloud. As Fay watched him, his nose went up and, with a mournful intensity, he began to howl.

As the howl rose, pure as the curfew's final peal, with whose dwindling it mingled in the twilit air, Fay was aware of doors opening in the houses between the shops' and the pubs on the little square.

No lights came on. Nobody came out. Arnold howled three times, then sat there, looking confusedly from side to side, as if unsure he'd been responsible for the disturbance.

Fay could feel the stares coming at her from inside the shadowed portals in the square, and the air seemed denser, as if focused hostility were some kind of thickening agent, clotting the atmosphere itself.

She felt she was being pressed backwards into the church wall by a powerful surge of heavy-duty disapproval.

Then someone, a female voice, screeched out, 'You'll get that dog out of yere''

And the doors began quietly to close, one by one, in muted clicks and snaps.

By which time Fay was down on her knees, clutching Arnold to her breast, squeezing his ridiculous ears, warming her bare arms in his fur.

Finding she was trembling.

Jack Preece came out of the church and walked away in the direction of the Cock, without looking at them.