Crybbe

CHAPTER II

Guy dropped by.

She opened the back door, thinking it was the milkman come for his money, as was usual on a Saturday.

'Fay. Hi.'

'Oh, my God.'

She wouldn't have chosen to say that, but Guy seemed pleased at the reaction. Perhaps he saw it as an urgent suppression of instinctive desire.

'Thought I'd drop by, as I had some time on my hands.' Incandescent smile. 'Spending the weekend here, getting acclimatized.'

New crowns, Fay spotted. Good ones, of course.

'Crew's gone back, but I've been invited to open some shitty art exhibition tomorrow night. Must be a bit short on celebrities in these parts if they want me.' Guy laughed.

Still a master of double-edged false modesty, Fay thought, wishing she'd changed, combed her hair, applied some rudimentary make-up.

And then despising herself utterly for wishing all that.

'Come in, Guy. Dad's gone for a walk; he'll be devastated to have missed you.'

'How is he?' Guy stepped into the hall and looked closely at everything, simulating enormous interest in the chipped cream paintwork, the wallpaper with its faded autumn leaves, the nylon carpet beneath his hand-stitched, buffed, brown shoes.

He wore a short, olive, leather jacket, soft as a very expensive wallet.

'We used to have some fascinating chats, your father and I, when I was in Religious Programmes.'

'I expect he learned quite a lot,' Fay said, going through to the kitchen.

'That was how I swung the Crybbe thing, you know. It cut plenty of ice with Max Goff, me being an ex-religious-affairs producer. Indicated a certain sensitivity of touch and an essentially serious outlook. Nothing crude, no juvenile piss-taking.'

'Tea or coffee?' Fay said. 'Why did you leave Religious Programmes, anyway? Seemed like a good, safe earner to me. Just about the only situation where you can work in television and still get to heaven.'

'Well, you know, Fay, there came a time when it was clear that Guy Morrison had said all he needed to say about religion. Is it ground coffee or instant?'

'Would I offer you instant coffee, Guy?'

'I don't like to make presumptions about people's financial positions,' Guy said sensitively.

'We're fine.'

'I did tell you, didn't I, that I'd probably have brought you in as researcher, except for this J.M. Powys problem?'

'Thanks, but I doubt I'd've had time, anyway. Pretty busy, really.' The handle came off the cup she was holding – that'd teach her to lie twice.

'He was foisted on me, Fay. Nothing I could do.'

'I met him last night. Seemed a nice bloke.'

Just before lunch, J. M. Powys had phoned to ask how Arnold was. Comfortable, Fay had said, having been on the phone to the vet as early as was reasonable. Stable. As well as can be expected.

Guy crinkled his mouth. 'One-book wonder, J. M. Powys. A spent force.'

Must be a nice bloke if Guy despises him, Fay thought. She began to filter the coffee in silence.

Eventually, Guy, sitting at the kitchen table, said, 'Long time since we met face to face, Fay. Three years? Four?'

'At least.' Physically, he'd hardly changed at all. Perhaps the odd characterful crease, like the superb-quality leather of his jacket. Pretty soon, she thought in dismay, he'll be looking too comparatively young ever to have been married to me.

Guy said, 'You're looking… er, good. Fay.'

What a bastard. She made a point of net replying in kind.

Guy said, 'Quite often, you know – increasingly, in fact – I find myself wondering why we ever split up.'

'Didn't it have something to do with you screwing your production assistant?'

Guy dismissed it. 'Trivial, trivial stuff. I was young, she threw herself at me. You know that. I'm essentially a pretty faithful sort of person. No, what we had…' He pushed Grace's G-plan dining chair away from the table and leaned back, throwing his left ankle over his right knee and catching it deftly with his right hand. He obviously couldn't quite remember what they'd had.

'I often wish we'd had children, Fay.'

Oh hell.

Guy's intermittent live-in girlfriend had apparently proved to be barren. Fay remembered him moaning about this to her one night on the phone. She remembered thinking at the time that infertility was a very useful attribute for an intermittent live-in girlfriend to have. But Guy was at the age when he wanted there to be little Morrisons.

'I'm at the Cock.'

'What?'

'The Cock Hotel,' Guy said, it's an appalling place.'

'Dreadful,' Fay said, pouring his coffee,

'I think I'm going to have to make other arrangements when we start shooting in earnest.'

'I should.'

'Can you think of anywhere?'

'Hasn't Goff offered you accommodation?'

'Nothing suitable, apparently. He says. Though we do have special requirements – meals at all hours.'

Sore point, obviously.

'Still,' Fay said cheerfully. 'I've heard he's going to buy the Cock, turn it into a New Age Holiday Inn or something.'

She brought her coffee and sat down opposite him. If anything, he was even more handsome these days. It had once been terribly flattering to be courted by Guy Morrison. And unexpectedly painless to become divorced from him.

'I've changed, you know, Fay.'

'Hardly at all, I'd've said.'

'Oh, looks… that's not what it's all about. Never was, was it?'

Of course not, she thought. However, in your case, what else is there to get excited about?

'And you're obviously just as arrogant,' she said brightly.

'Confidence, Fay,' he said patiently. 'Not arrogance. If you don't continually display confidence in this business, people think you're…'

'A "spent force". Like J. M. Powys?'

'Something like that. I should have held on to you,' he said softly, a frond of blond hair falling appealingly to an eyebrow. 'You kept me balanced. I was terribly insecure, you know, that's why…'

'Oh, for God's sake, Guy, you were never insecure in your life. This is me you're giving all this bullshit to. Let's drop this subject, shall we?'

He looked hurt. But not very hurt.

'How did you get on yesterday?' Fay asked him, to change direction. 'They never managed to pull the wall down, did they?'

'Don't ask,' Guy said, meaning 'ask'.

'All went wrong, then?' This was probably the reason Guy was here. He was in urgent need of consolation.

'I've just been looking at the rushes.'

'What, you've been back to Cardiff?'

'No, no, I sent Larry to a video shop in Leominster last night to transfer the stuff to VHS so I could whizz through it at the Cock. When he came back, he said, "You're not going to like this," and cleared off quick. I've just found out why. Good grief. Fay, talk about a wasted exercise. First, there's bloody Goff – plans a stunt like that and doesn't tell me until it's too late to hire a second crew and then…'

'But it didn't happen, anyway. The wall's still there.'

'I know, but I had what ought to have been terrific footage of Goff going apeshit on top of the Tump, when the sound system packed in and the bulldozer chap said he couldn't do it. But the light must've been worse than I thought or Larry hadn't done a white-balance or something – he denies that, of course, but he would, wouldn't he?'

'What, it didn't come out?' Fay, who'd never worked in television, knew next to nothing about the technicalities of it. 'I thought this Betacam stuff didn't need much light.'

'Probably something wrong with the camera, Larry claims. First this big black thing shoots across the frame, and then all the colour's haywire. By God, if there's any human error to blame in Cardiff, somebody's job could be on the line over this.'

'But not yours, of course' said Fay. 'Hold on a minute, Guy.' She was listening to a vague scraping noise, it's Dad. He can't get his key in the door.'

Fay dashed into the hall, closing the kitchen door behind her and opening the front door. The Canon almost fell over the threshold, poking his key at her eye.

'Thank God.' Fay caught his arm, whispered in his ear, 'Come and rescue me, Dad. Guy's here, and he's in a very maudlin mood.'

'Who?' He was out of breath.

'Guy, you remember Guy. We used to be married once. I've got this awful feeling he's working up to asking me to have his baby.'

A blurred film had set across the Canon's eyes. He shook his head, stood still a moment, breathing hard, then straightened up. 'Yes,' he said. 'Fay. Something you need to know.'

'Take your time.'

'Tape recorder. Get your tape recorder.' His eyes cleared, focused. 'There's been an accident. A death. Everybody's talking about it. I'll tell you where to go.'

'There'll be no delay,' the dodman said. 'We start tonight.'

'Don't you need planning permission?' Powys asked.

The dodman only smiled.

As expected, he'd turned out to be Andy Boulton-Trow with a mobile phone and a map in a transparent plastic folder.

'There are six we can put n immediately. Either on Max's land around the Court or on bits of ground he's been able to buy. Not a bad start. You're getting one, did you know that?'

'Thanks a bunch.'

'The top of your little acre, where it meets the road. See?' Andy held out his plastic-covered photocopy of Henry's map. 'Right there.'

It was a large-scale OS blow-up. The former location of each stone was marked by a dot inside a circle and the pencilled initials,