Crybbe

CHAPTER VII

The following day was overcast, the sky straining with rain that never seemed to fall. After breakfast, Jimmy Preece, gnarled old Mayor of Crybbe, went to see his son.

He found Jack tinkering with the tractor in the farmyard, his eldest grandson, Jonathon, looking on, shaking his head.

'Always the same,' Jack grunted. 'Just when you need it. Mornin', Father.'

'I been telling him,' Jonathon said. 'Get a new one. False economy. This thing gets us through haymaking, I'll be very surprised indeed.'

Jimmy Preece shook his head, then he nodded, so that neither of them would be sure which one he was agreeing with.

'Got to take an overview,' said Jonathon, this year's chairman of the Crybbe and District Young Farmers' Club. 'Goin' from day to day don't work any more.'

'Break off a minute, will you?' Jimmy said. 'Come in the 'ouse. I want a bit of advice.'

He knew that'd get them. Jack straightened up, tossed his spanner into the metal toolbox and walked off without a word across the farmyard to the back door. 'Warren!' he roared. 'Put that bloody guitar down and make some tea.'

In the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, Warren whipped the letter out of his back pocket and read it through again. He'd thought at first it might have been Peter, the drummer pulling his pisser again. But where would Peter have got hold of Epidemic headed notepaper?

Dear Mr Preece,

Thank you for sending us the cassette of FATAL

ACCIDENT, which I return.

Max Goff has listened with interest to your songs and believes then could be considerable potential here…

It was signed by this Rachel Wade, the snooty tart Warren had seen driving Max Goff around. It had to be genuine.

Well, fuck, what had he got to be surprised about? Max Goff hadn't got where he was today without he could spot a good band when he heard one.

Have to get working, then. Have to get a few more numbers together. Get on the phone to the boys, soon as the old man and bloody Jonathon were out the way.

Warren took their tea. They were sprawled around the big living-room, grandad getting his knackered old pipe out. Looked like the start of a long session, and the phone was in the same room. Warren was nearly grinding his teeth in frustration.

Stuff this, he'd walk into town and use the phone box by the post office. He left the tray of mugs on a stool and cleared out quick, before the old man could come up with some filthy old job for him.

Out in the hallway, though, he stopped, having second thoughts. Warren liked to know about things. He tramped loudly to the main door, kicked it shut, then crept quietly back and stood by the living-room door, listening.

And soon he was bloody glad he had.

Fay had decided that what she must do, for a start, was get her dad out of the town for a few hours so she could talk to him. Really talk.

It seemed ridiculous that she couldn't do this in the house but that was how it was. Often, in Crybbe, you simply couldn't seem to approach things directly. There were whole periods when everything you tried to do or say was somehow deflected.

In the same way, she felt the place smothered your natural curiosity, made the urge to find out – the act of wanting to know – seem just too much trouble.

It wasn't that the air was in any way soporific, she thought unlocking the Fiesta. Not like the famous country air was supposed to be, or the dreamy blue ozone at the seaside that sent you drifting off at night on waves of healthy contentment.

Here, it was as if the atmosphere itself was feeding off you, quietly extracting your vital juices, sapping your mental energy, so that you crawled into bed and lay there like a dried out husk.

Had the air done this to the people? Or had the people done it to the air?

Or was it just her, living with an old man whose mind was seizing up.

Fay gave him a blast on the horn. Come on. Dad, you're not changing your mind now.

In the local paper she'd found a story about people in a village fifteen miles away receiving some kind of conservation award for adopting their local railway station, planting flowers on the embankments, that kind of thing. Ashpole had agreed it would probably make a nice little soft package. End of the programme stuff, keep it down to four minutes max.

From the back seat, Arnold barked. It was a gruff, throaty bark, and his jaws clamped down on it as soon as it was out. It was the first one Fay had ever heard him produce. He must be settling in. She leaned over and ruffled his big ears, pleased.

Alex emerged by the front door at last. It had been far from easy persuading him to come with her, even though he did seem much better today, more aware.

He sat with his hands on his lap as she drove them out of town, on the Welsh side. 'Hope you know a decent pub over there, my child.'

'We'll find one.'

The sky was brightening as she drove into the hills, the border roads unravelling through featureless forestry, then open fields with sheep, a few cows, sparse sprinklings of cottages, farm buildings and bungalows.

The little railway station was on the single-track Heart of Wales line, which went on to Shrewsbury. It wasn't much more than a halt, with a wooden bench and a waiting room the size of a bus-shelter.

Fay had arranged to meet the Secretary of this enthusiastic committee which existed to defend the unprofitable line against what seemed to be a constant threat of imminent closure by British Rail. He turned out to be a genial guy and a good talker, and he'd brought along a couple of villagers who spent their weekends sprucing up the station surrounds, cutting back verges, planting bulbs. They were friendly and self-deprecating.

In Crybbe it would have to have been the newcomers who took the job on. But Crybbe didn't have a station, anyway. Only B-roads.

Interviews done, she stood for a moment at the edge of the line, looking out towards the hills and thinking what a quiet, serene place this actually was. Untampered with. All the old patterns still apparent.

A buzzard glided overhead, then banked off like a World War II fighter, flashing the white blotches under its wings.

She thought, it's me. All this is wonderful. It isn't mean and tight and stifling at all. I'm just a sour bitch who thinks she's had a raw deal, and I'm blaming the poor bloody border country.

Alex was in the car, white beard brushing his Guardian as he read, still managing without glasses at pushing ninety. He was wearing a baggy cardigan over his Kate Bush T-shirt. Fay thought suddenly, I wish I knew him better.

… and Mrs Wozencraft's cottage – old Jessie Wozencraft – that's his as well, he's bought that.'

'Good luck to him,' Jonathon said. 'Old place is near enough falling down.'

'That's not the point, Jonathon,' said Jack Preece. 'Point your grandad's makin' is…'

'Oh, I know what he's sayin' – and he's dead right. What bloody use is an acupuncturist in Crybbe?'

'What do they do, anyway?'

'They sticks needles in you, to cure things.'

'Wouldn't stick any in me, boy, I hates them injections.'

'It don't matter what they does!' Warren heard his grandad say, thumping the chair-arm. It's the principle. Retired folk I don't mind so much, give 'em a bit of bird watchin' and a library book and they don't bother nobody, and they always dies after a few years anyway. What I object to is these clever-arsed fellers as wants to change things to what they thinks they should be, if you know what I'm sayin'. Everything pretty-pretty and no huntin' the little furry animals. And no jobs either, 'cause factories spoils the view.'

'Market forces, Grandad. You can't do nothin' about market forces.'

'Nine properties, 'e's had so far, I counted. Nine! Everything for sale within a mile of town, he's bought it.'

'Many as that, eh?'

Warren didn't like the way this conversation was going. He fingered the crisp Epidemic notepaper in his pocket.

Jonathon said, 'Well, nobody else'd've bought 'em, would they? Not with interest rates the way they are. All right, it's speculation

…'

'It's not just speculation, Jonathon. There's a purpose to it, and it's not right. You heard that woman on the wireless. New Age and psychic powers. I don't know nothin' about any of it and I don't want to, and I don't want him doin' it yere.'

'Woken a lot of people up to it, that bit on the radio,' Jack said. 'Everybody talkin' about it in the Cock last night, the post office this morning. Lot of people's worried it's going to bring the hippies in.'

'What are any of 'em but hippies? Quack healers, fortunetellers…'

'Who is she, Father? Somebody said it was that girl who lives with 'er dad, the old feller with the beard.'

'Fay Morrison,' Grandad said. 'Nice enough girl. Comes to council meetings.'

'Tidy piece,' Jonathon said.

Warren knew who they meant. Seen her the other night, coming back from the Court with that dog. Followed her behind the hedge. Spying, most likely, she was, nosy cow.

'I admit I never wanted 'em to put that radio studio in,' his grandad said. 'But if it 'adn't been for this girl nobody'd've believed it. They years it on the wireless, it brings it 'ome to 'em, isn't it?' Warren heard the old feller sucking on his pipe. 'Ah, but he's a crafty bugger, that Goff. Comes to my door tryin' to get round me, all the things he's goin' to do for the town. Get the Mayor on his side, first – tactics, see.'

'Well, we can't stop him. Can't block market forces, Grandad.'

'We can stop him takin' our town off us to serve his whims!'

'And how're we supposed to do that?'

'He wants a public meeting, we'll give him one.'

'What are you savin' here. Father? Give him a rough time? Let him know he isn't wanted?'

Behind the door, Warren began to seethe. This was fucking typical. Here was Max Goff, biggest bloody independent record producer in the country, on the verge of signing Fatal Accident to Epidemic. And these stick-in-the-mud bastards were scheming to get rid of him.

Jonathon was saying, 'See them stones he had delivered? Bloody great stones, dozens of 'en.'

'Building stone?'

'No, just great big stones. Huge buggers. Like Stonehenge, that kind.'

Things went quiet, then Warren heard his grandad say, 'He's oversteppin' the mark. He's got to be stopped.'

Warren wanted to strangle the old git. He wanted to strangle all three of them. Also that fucking radio woman who'd let it all out and stirred things up. The one who shouted after him through the hedge that night, called him a wanker.

Every pub they'd tried had stopped serving lunch at two o'clock – so much for all-day opening – and so they'd wound up at this Little Chef, which didn't please him. 'Bloody cooking by numbers. Two onion rings, thirty-seven chips. All this and alcohol-free lager too. And these bloody girls invariably saying, "Was it all right for you?" as if they're just putting their knickers back on.'

'At least they're there when you want them,' Fay said. getting back on the A49. 'Would you like to see Ludlow?'

'Like to go home, actually.'

'God almighty! What is it about that place?'

'Left my pills there.'

'I know you did. But luckily, I brought them. What's your next excuse?'

Alex growled. 'Wish I'd had a son.'

'Instead of me, huh?'

'Sons don't try to manage you.'

'Dad, I want to talk to you.'

'Oh God.'

'Was that the first time Guy rang, the other night?'

'Hard to say, my dear. Once I put the phone down I tend to forget all about him. He may have rung earlier. Does it really matter?'

'I don't mean just that night. Has he rung any other time when I've been out?'

'Can't remember. Suppose he could have done. I didn't think you cared.'

'I don't. It's just Guy's coming down to make a documentary about Max Goff, and I was wondering how he found out there was something interesting going on. I know you tend to absorb local gossip like a sponge and then somebody squeezes you a bit and it all comes out, and then you forget it was ever there.'

'You think I told him?'

'Did you?'

'Did I? God knows. Say anything to get rid of him. Does it matter?'

Fay glanced in her wing mirror then trod on the brakes and pulled in violently to the side of the road. 'Of course it bloody matters!'

'I think you're overwrought, my child. You're young. You need a bit of excitement. Bit of stimulation. Country life doesn't suit you.'

'Crybbe doesn't suit me.'

'So why not simply…?'

She said carefully, 'Dad. You may be right. There may be nothing at all wrong with Crybbe. But, yes, I think it's time I left. And I think it's time you left. You've no reason to stay, you've no roots there, no real friends there.'

He said sadly, 'Oh, I have.'

He wasn't looking at her. He was looking straight out at the A49, lorries chugging past.

'Who? Murray Beech? He'll be off, first chance of a bigger parish. He's got nothing to thank Crybbe for – his fiancee didn't hang around, did she?'

'No,' Alex said. 'Not Murray.'

'Who then?'

He didn't reply.

Fay fiddled with the keys in the ignition. Alex talked to everybody, old vicars never changed. A friend to everyone, essence of the job. But how many did he really know?

'What are you saying, Dad?'

'Grace,' he whispered, and Fay saw the beginning of tears in his old blue eyes.

She put a hand on his arm. 'Dad?'

'Don't ask me about this. Fay,' Alex said. 'Please. Just take me home.'