Crybbe

A COMMINATION

or

Denouncing of God's Anger and Judgements against Sinners.

The first page ended on an uncompromising note.

'Cursed are the unmerciful, fornicators and adulterers covetous persons, idolaters, slanderers, drunkards and extortioners.'

'Not many of us left uncursed,' Murray muttered.

The curse of the modern minister's life, in his opinion, was the video-hire shop. Infinitely more alluring to teenagers than the church. And full of lurid epics in which members of the clergy in bloodied cassocks wielded metal crucifixes with which they combat scaly entities from Hell.

One result of this was that a few people seemed to think they should summon the vicar in the same way they'd call in Rentokil to deal with their dampness and their rats.

The telephone bleeped. 'I'll ring you when they're out,' she'd told him. He hadn't replied. At the time, he was considering going to her grandparents and explaining his dilemma. But he'd concluded this would not only be a cop-out, it would be wrong. Because she'd come to him in confidence and she was no longer a minor. She was eighteen and would be leaving school in two or three weeks.

Murray closed The Book of Common Prayer and picked up the phone. 'Vicarage.'

'They're out,' Tessa said.

Barry, the overweight osteopath from upstairs, was between patients, eating a sandwich – herbal pate on whole-wheat.

'I've been taken over by Max Goff,' said Powys, disconsolate.

'Dolmen has, yeah, I read that. He can't do you any harm, though, can he? You're out of print, aren't you?'

'Between impressions,' Powys corrected him. 'Barry, are you really proposing to realign somebody's slipped disc with hands covered in soya margarine?'

'Beats olive oil. And cheaper. Hey, Mandy says she saw you coming out of McDonald's this morning.'

'Couldn't have been me.'

'That's what I thought,' Barry said dubiously.

'Anyway,' Powys said, 'Goff wants to see me. In Crybbe.'

'I thought you were going to say "in the nude" for a minute,' said Barry, wiping his hands on his smock. 'No, from what I hear he's surrounding himself with people sharing his own deep commitment to the New Age movement. If it's this lunch in Crybbe on Friday, several people I know have been invited and nobody's turning him down, because if he likes you, he invites you to join his Crybbe community, which means – listen to this – that you get offered a place to live, on very advantageous terms. And all kinds of fringe benefits.'

'Why aren't you there, then?'

'Bastard's already got an osteopath,' Barry said. 'Gerry Moffat. You believe that? He could have had me, but he went for Moffat. Moffat!'

'Who else?'

'Dan Osborne, the homeopath, he's moved in already, Superior bastard. Paula Stirling. Robin Holland. Oh, and this little French aromatherapist who was in Bromvard, remember her?'

'I can still smell her. Listen, do these people know who Max Goff is?'

'Used to be, Joe. Used to be. This is the new user-friendly ozone-fresh Max Goff. Play your cards right and he'll let you feel his aura.'

'I wouldn't feel his aura with asbestos gloves,' said Powys.

'And he's got some pretty heavy mystical types as well,' said Barry. 'Jean Wendle, the spiritual healer, some guy who's reckoned to be Britain's biggest tarot hotshot and Andy Boulton-Trow. All converging on the New Age Mecca.'

'Andy?' Powys said. 'Andy's involved in this?'

'And there's a single kid,' says Andy, 'moving round the stone, very slowly at first, while all the other kids are sitting in a circle, clapping their hands, doing the chant. And by the time they finish the chant he's back where he started. Got to be a "he", it doesn't work for girls.'

Andy Boulton-Trow, lean and languid, lying back in the grass, spearing a quail's egg from the jar beside him. His voice is deep and lazy, like a stroked cello.

'And then he goes round again… only this time it's just ever-so-slightly faster…'

Johnny goes round the Bottle Stone

… and he goes round TWICE.

'And they keep on repeating it. And it gets faster and faster, building up the momentum, and the kid's got to move faster each time to maintain the pace.'