Crybbe

CHAPTER VI

Henry's place was the end of a Welsh long-house, divided into three cottages. The other two had been knocked into one, and Mrs Gwen Whitney lived there with her husband.

Powys arrived around eight-thirty, driving through deep wells of shadow. Remembering Henry coming out to meet him one evening round about this time, his dog, Alf, dancing up to the car.

That night, twelve years ago, Powys pleading with Henry: 'Come on… it's as much your book as mine. The Old Golden Land by Henry Kettle and Joe Powys.'

'Don't be daft, boy. You writes, I dowses. That's the way of it. Besides, there's all that funny stuff in there – I might not agree with some of that. You know me, nothing psychic. When I stop thinking of this as science… well, I don't know where I'll be.'

And an hour or so later: 'But, Henry, at the very least…'

'And don't you start offering me money! What do I want any more money for, with the wife gone and the daughter doing more than well for herself in Canada? You go ahead, boy. Just don't connect me with any of it, or I'll have to disown you, see.'

Silence now. The late sun turning the cottage windows to tinfoil. No dog leaping out at the car.

Mrs Whitney opened her door as he walked across.

'Mr Powys.' A heavy woman in a big, flowery frock. Smiling that sad, sympathetic smile which came easily to the faces of country women, always on nodding terms with death.

'You remember me?'

'Not changed, have you? Anyway, it's not so long.'

'Twelve years. And I've gone grey.'

'Is it so long? Good gracious. Would you like some tea?'

'Thank you. Not too late, am I?'

'Not for you, Mr Powys. I remember one night, must have been four in the morning when we finally heard your car go from here.'

'Sorry about that. We had a lot to talk about.'

'Oh, he could talk, Mr Kettle could. When he wanted to.' Mrs Whitney led him into her kitchen, 'I think it looks nice grey,' she said.

Later, they stood in Henry's cell-like living-room, insulated by thousands of books, many of them old and probably valuable, although you wouldn't have thought it from the way they were edged into the shelves, some upside down, some back to front. On a small cast-iron mantelshelf, over the Parkray, were a few deformed lumps of wood. Local sculpture, Henry called it. He'd keep them on the mantelpiece until he found more interesting ones in the hedgerows, then he'd use the old ones for the fire.

Mrs Whitney handed Powys a battered old medical bag. 'This was in the car with him. Police brought it back.'

A thought tumbled into Powys's head as he took the bag. 'What about Alf?'

'Oh, old Alf died a couple of years back. He got another dog – Arnold. Funny-looking thing. I says, "You're too old for another dog, Mr Kettle." "Give me a reason to keep on living," he says. Always said he couldn't work without a dog at his side. Arnold, he was in the car with Mr Kettle, too. He wasn't killed. A lady's looking after him in Crybbe. She'll have her hands full. Year or so with Mr Kettle, they forgot they was supposed to be dogs.'

Powys smiled.

'Daft about animals, Mr Kettle was. He's left half his money – I didn't put this in the letter – half his money's going to a dog's shelter over the other side of Hereford. Daughter won't like that.'

'Henry knew what he was doing,' Powys said. 'What's going to happen to the house?'

'She'll sell it. She won't come back, that one. She'll sell it and it'll go to some folks from Off, who'll put a new kitchen in and one of them fancy conservatories. They'll likely stop a couple of years, and then there'll be some more folks from Off. I don't mind them, myself, they never does no harm, in general.'

Powys opened the medical bag. The contents were in compartments, like valuable scientific equipment. Two remodelled wire coat-hangers with rubber grips.

Mrs Whitney said, 'There's a what-d'you-call-it, pendulum thing in a pocket in the lid.'

'I know,' Powys said. 'I remember.'

'Mr Kettle had his old dowsing records in… you know, them office things.'

'Box files.'

'Aye, box files. Must be half a dozen of them. And there's this I found by his bed.'

It was a huge old black-bound business ledger, thick as a Bible. He opened it at random.

… and in the middle meadow I detected the foundations of an old house from about the fifteenth century. I got so engrossed in this I forgot all about finding the well…

He could hear Henry chuckling as he wrote in black ink with his old fountain pen, edge to edge, ignoring the red and black rules and margins.

He turned to the beginning and saw the first entry had been made nearly twenty years earlier. Out of four or five hundred pages, there were barely ten left unfilled. End of an era.

Powys closed the ledger and held it, with reverence, in both hands.

'His journal. I doubt if anybody else has ever seen it.'

'Well, you take it away,' said Mrs Whitney. 'Sometimes I had the feeling some of them things Mr Kettle was doing were – how shall I say? – not quite Christian.'

'Science, Mrs Whitney. He was always very particular about that.'

'Funny sort of science,' Mrs Whitney said. 'There's a letter, too, only gave it to me last week.'

A pale-blue envelope, 'J. M. Powys' handwritten in black ink.

'Oh, he was a nice old chap,' Mrs Whitney said. 'But, with no ill respect for the departed, he'd have been the first to admit as he was more'n a bit cracked.'

For Fay, there would be no secret pleasure any more in editing tape in the office at night, within the circle of Anglepoise light, a soft glow from the Revox level-meters, and all the rest into shadow.

For none of what dwelt beyond the light could now be assumed to be simply shadow. Once these things had started happening to your mind, you couldn't trust anything any more.

That evening, she and the Canon watched television in what used to be Grace's dining-room at the rear of the house and was now their own sitting-room. Two bars of the electric fire were on – never guess it was summer, would you?

Arnold lay next to Alex on Grace's enormous chintzy sofa. The dog did not howl, not once, although Fay saw him stiffen with the distant toll of the curfew. He'd be sleeping upstairs again tonight.

She watched Alex watching TV and sent him mind-messages. We have to talk, Dad. We can't go on here. There's nothing left. There never was anything, you ought to realize that now.

Alex carried on placidly watching some dismal old black and white weepie on Channel Four.

Fay said, at one point, 'Dad?'

'Mmmm?'

Alex kept his eyes on the screen, where Stewart Granger was at a crucial point in his wooing of Jean Simmons.

'Dad, would you…' Fay gave up, 'care for some tea? Or cocoa?'

'Cocoa. Wonderful. You know, at one time, people used to say I had more than a passing resemblance to old Granger.'

'Really?' Fay couldn't see it herself.

'Came in quite useful once or twice.'

'I bet it did.'

Fay got up to make the cocoa, feeling more pale and wan than Jean Simmons looked in black and white. In one day she'd hung up on Guy, betrayed Rachel, demolished relations with Goff before she'd even met him. And caught herself about to give a blow job to a microphone in the privacy of the Crybbe Unattended Studio.

What I need, she thought, is to plug myself into a ley-line, and she smiled to herself – a despairing kind of smile – at the absurdity of it all.

The box files wouldn't all fit in the boot of the Mini. Three had to be wedged on the back seat, with the doctor's bag.

But the ledger, the dowsing journal of Henry Kettle, was on the passenger seat where Powys could see it, Henry's letter on top.

Just past the Kington roundabout he gave in, pulled into the side of the road and, in the thinning light, he opened the letter.

Dear Joe,

I'm doing this now, while I feel the way I do. If it all sorts itself out you'll probably never read this letter. None of it will make much sense to you at first and if it never does make any sense it means my fears will be groundless.

What it comes down to is I've been working out at Crybbe for a chap called Max Goff who's bought Crybbe Court.

The nature of the job is dowsing some old alignments where the stones and such have all gone years ago, and it's been giving me the shivers, quite honestly, that whole place.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing psychic or any of that old rubbish, but it's not right and as far as I can work out it's a long-term kind of thing. I intend to keep an eye on the situation in the weeks and months and, God willing, the years ahead and keep on revising my notes, but I'm not getting any younger and you could go any time at my age and I feel as how I ought to inform somebody. You have had some daft ideas in your time but you're a good boy basically and the only person I can think of who I can trust not to dismiss this out of hand as an old fool's rumblings.

God knows, I'm not infallible and I could be wrong and

I don't even know as yet the nature of what's up in Crybbe, only I get the feeling it's long-term, and I'd like to think there was somebody who could keep an eye on what that Goff's up to.

Now my daughter, we've grown apart, no kidding myself any more. She's out in Canada and she's VERY WELL

OFF. So I've written to my solicitor in Hereford informing him that as well as all the papers my house is to be left to you. Consider it as a token of my confidence.

Yours sincerely,

H. Kettle

(Henry)

'God almighty,' Powys said.

He could see lights coming on in Kington, through the trees on the other side of the road, darkening hills. Somewhere, on the other side of the hills, Crybbe.

Leaving him the house was ridiculous. He'd probably have changed his mind by now, anyway.

But the letter was dated 19 June.

Only two days before Henry's death.

Powys opened the ledger at the last completed page. It also was dated 19 June.

Quite a successful day. Located three more old stones.

One of them would be eleven feet above the ground, which would make it quite rare for the Crybbe area, the nearest one as high as that being down near Crickhowell. I have been over this twice to make sure. It is very peculiar that there should have been so many big stones in such a small area. I tried to date this big one, but all I could come up with was

1593 when it was destroyed. It seemed certain to me that this was done quite deliberately, the whole thing taken out and broken up. This was all quite systematic, like the burning down of monasteries during the Reformation.

What intrigues me is how this Goff could have obtained the information about there having been stones here when even

I had never heard of them. Sometimes I feel quite excited by all this, it is undoubtedly the most remarkable discovery of prehistoric remains in this country for many years, even if the archaeologists will never accept it. At other times, however,

I do get quite a bad feeling that something here is not right, although I cannot put my finger on it. I have always disliked the Tump for some reason. Some places are naturally negative, although perhaps 'natural' is not the word I want. The Welsh border is a very funny place, but I am sure there is a good scientific explanation.

The last entry. Neatly dated and a line drawn under it. Two days later Henry Kettle was lying dead in his car under Crybbe Tump.

It was dark when Powys got back to Hereford. He lugged the box files up the stairs to his little flat above Trackways and left them in the middle of the floor, unopened. It would take months to explore that lot.

Bui he was committed now.

He went down to the shop and put on the lights. From his photograph, Alfred Watkins frowned down on the counter, Powys could see why: Annie had put the box of 'healing' crystals on display.

He wrote out a note and left it wedged under the crystals box.

Dear Annie,

Please hold fort until whenever. I'll call you. Don't light too many joss-sticks.

Feeling a need to explain, he added,

Gone to Crybbe.

P.S. Don't get the wrong idea. It might be old, but it's not golden.

When he put out the lights in the shop, he noticed the answering machine winking red.

A woman's low, resonant voice.

'J. M. Powys, this is Rachel Wade at Crybbe Court. I wanted to remind you about Friday. I'd be grateful if you could call back on Crybbe 689, which is the Cock Hotel or 563, our new office at Crybbe Court. Leave a message if I'm not around. Things are a little chaotic at present, but we'd very much like to hear from you. If you can't make it on Friday, we could arrange another day. Just please call me.'

'I'll be there,' Powys said to the machine. 'OK?'

He went upstairs to bed and couldn't sleep. He'd seen Henry barely half a dozen times in the past ten years. If the old guy really had left him his house to underline his feelings about Crybbe then they had to be more than passing fears.

'What have you dumped on me, Henry?" he kept asking the ceiling. And when he fell asleep he dreamt about the Bottle Stone.