Crybbe

CHAPTER IX

He remembered… TWELVE… spiralling down out of the sky, seeing the stone thickening and quivering and throbbing, the haze around it like a dense, toxic cloud. At which point Memory went into negative, the fields turned purple, the river black. Everything went black.

He didn't remember the scramble of feet, all four of them rushing the new author, J.M. Powys, picking him up, carrying him to the so-called fairy mound and dumping him face-down on its grassy funk with shrieks of laughter.

He was only able to construct this scene from what Ben Corby had told him years later.

From Ben's story, he'd tried to form an image of Rose, but he couldn't be sure whether she was laughing too or whether she'd stopped short, her face clouding, feeling premonition like a small tap on the shoulder from a cold, stiff hand.

Every time he pushed himself into replaying the scene in his head, he forced Rose to be laughing when they dumped him on the mound. He always put the laugh on freeze frame and then pulled the plug. So that he could climb out of it without breaking down.

Powys stood in the neutrality of a sunless summer evening and put both hands on the Bottle Stone – at its shoulders, when it began to taper into the neck – and pushed hard.

It was solid. A proper job, as Henry Kettle would have said. Probably several feet of the thing underground, the earth compressed around it, a few rocks in there maybe. Tufts of long grass embedded at the base. It might have been here for four thousand years. You could dig for three hours and it would still be erect.

It needed a JCB to get it out.

But first he had to force himself to touch it, to walk around it (only not widdershins, never widdershins). The stone, a cunningly hewn replica of something which had speared his dreams for twelve years.

He also reserves the right, Rachel had said, to install standing stones or other ritual artefacts on your lawn.

All down to Andy Boulton-Trow. He could imagine Andy's unholy delight at finding, among Goff's collection of newly quarried megaliths, one roughly (not roughly, exactly) the size and shape of the Bottle Stone.

Or maybe, knowing that Powys was coming to Crybbe, he'd actually had one cut to shape and then planted it in a spot that would emphasize the correlation of the stone and the river, recreating the fateful scene of twelve years ago.

Rough therapy? Or another of Andy's little experiments.

Fifty yards away, the brown river churned like a turbulence of worms towards the bridge.

The Canon was angry.

'And you didn't tell me. You didn't even tell me.'

They'd taken one of the big cushions from the sofa in what was now their living-room, at the rear of the house, and put it on the rug in front of the fire, and then put the three-legged dog on the cushion.

Arnold didn't object to this at all, but something in Alex had clearly snapped.

'It's got to stop, Fay. It isn't helping. In fact, it's making things a good deal worse.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't want to get you all worked up.'

'Well I am worked up. Even though it was young Preece and he's dead. Divine retribution, if you ask me.'

'That's not a very Christian thing to say, Dad.'

'Listen, my child.' Alex, kneeling on the rug, waved a menacing forefinger. 'Don't you ever presume to tell me what's Christian.'

He went down on his hands, face to face with Arnold. 'Poor little perisher. Shouldn't be allowed out with you, Fay, the way you get up people's noses.'

'Oh, I get up people's noses, do I?'

'If you got up noses for a living, you couldn't do a better job. Coming here with your superior Radio Four attitude – "Oh dear, have to work for the little local radio station, never mind, at least there's no need to take it seriously…" '

'Now just a minute, Dad…'

' "… Oh, God, how am I expected to do any decent interviews with people who're too thick to string three coherent sentences together?" '

The Canon clambered awkwardly to his feet and then dumped himself into an armchair he'd battered into shape over several months. He swung round, as if the chair was a gun-turret, training on her a hard, blue glare. A once-familiar glare under which she used to crumble.

'You,' he said, 'were never going to adapt to their way of life, because it was the wrong way to do things, because they keep their heads down and don't parade in front of the council offices with placards if they don't get their bins emptied.'

'Dad, I'm supposed to be a reporter…'

'And when this fat fellow – what's his name?… Goff – when this meddling lunatic arrives with his monumentally crazy scheme to turn the place on its head… Well, guess who can't get along with him either. Why, it's Miss Sophisticated Fay Peters, late of Radio Four! And she won't get back to London where she belongs…'

'Dad, you know bloody well…'

'… because she has this astonishing notion that her dilapidated old dad won't be able to manage without her! Jesus Christ!'

Alex slumped into silence.

Fay couldn't speak either. If this was Jean Wendle's doing, it was remarkable. Lucid, cogent, powerful, clear-eyed. He might have been ten years younger and in total control of himself.

She was shaken. He was right, of course, even if there was a lot he didn't know.

Or maybe there were things he did know.

When she did finally manage to utter something, it wasn't what she'd had it in mind to come out with at all.

'Dad,' she heard this pathetic little-girl voice saying, close to tears. 'Dad, why is Grace haunting us?'

Warren never even saw his grandad until the old bugger was upon him.

He was out by the Tump, thinking how much bigger it looked now from the side where the wall had been ripped out. Old thing could breathe now.

Big, fat mound. Like a giant tit.

Gomer'd carted his bulldozer away, moaning it'd cost over two thousand quid to repair it; Warren thought that was a load of old crap, Gomer trying it on. Who gave a shit, anyway? Standing here, Warren felt again the raw, wild power he'd first experienced the night he buried the old box. He would've been in town, up the alley, shagging the arse off Tessa, except she'd wanted to go to this poncy art exhibition, could you believe that?

He'd left the old man at home, drinking. Never used to drink at home. Gone to pieces since Jonathon drowned, the elder son, the heir.

Warren was the heir now. They'd have to give the bloody old farm to him. You had to laugh, sometimes.

Jonathon was being planted on Wednesday. An inquest could be opened tomorrow. Warren had wanted to go along with the old man, who had to give evidence that the stiff really was Jonathon Preece. But they said after he'd done that, it'd be adjourned for a few weeks, so they'd have a long wait before they heard all the interesting stuff from the pathologist who'd cut Jonathon up on the slab.

After the inquest had been opened, the body'd be released for burial, but the old man said they wouldn't be having it back at the house. Another disappointment for Warren, who'd planned to come down in the night and look under the shroud at all the stitches where the pathologist had put Jonathon's guts back.

From behind, the hand came down on Warren's shoulder like a bird's claw.

'What you doin' yere, boy?'

Warren would've turned round and nutted him, if he hadn't recognized the voice.

'Ow're you, Grandad?'

'I said, what you doin' yere?'

'I come for a walk, like. Free country, innit?'

'Come with me, boy, I want a word with you.'

'Sorry, Grandad, got no time, see. Got to meet somebody down the town.'

The old git looked real weird tonight. Skeletal. Skin hanging loose over his bones. Powerful grip he had, though, and he used it now- on Warren's arm, above the elbow, digging into the muscle.

'Ow! Bloody gedoff, you old… Where we goin'?'

Jimmy Preece pulled him all the way to the edge of the field, well away from the Tump and the hole where the wall had been – pointing at this gap now, saying in a hard, rough voice,

'You know anythin' about that, boy?'

'What you on about?'

'You know what I'm on about.' The old bugger's eyes were twin glow-worms, burrowed deep in his frazzled face, 'the feller as nicked Gomer's bulldozer and rammed it through the wall. You know him, boy?'

'I never… I swear to God!'

Next thing Warren knew, he was on his back in the grass half-stunned. The old git'd knocked him clean off his feet with one massive swipe across the face.

'Never use the name of God in sight of that thing again, you understand me, boy?'

Warren lay there, felt like his face was afire and his brains were loose. 'You mad ole… you got no right…'

His grandad put out a hand and helped him to his feet.

'Sorry, boy. Nerves is all shot, see, what with Jonathon and now this.'

Warren backed off. Stood with a hand over his blazing cheek.

'Warren, you and me got to talk.'

'That's what you calls it, is it?'

His grandad look his cap off, scratched his head, replaced the cap.

'Jonathon dyin', see, that changes things. With Jonathon around, didn't matter if you went through your life without knowin' nothin'. Your dad, 'e's the first Preece 'ad less than three children. Weren't 'is fault your mam left 'im, but that's besides the point. I only 'ad two sisters, but if anythin'd 'appened to me, they'd have done it, no arguments.'

'What you on about?'

'The bell, Warren.'

'Oh, that ole thing. Stuff that.'

'You what, boy?'

'Stuff it. I done some thinkin' about that. You can all get bloody stuffed, you think I'm ever gonna take over that bell from Dad. Jonathon might've been mug enough, but I couldn't give a fucking shit, you wanna know the truth, Grandad. My future's not round yere, see. I'm a musician.'

'Music?' The old feller spat hard, once. Gobbed right there on the grass. 'Music? Pah!'

Warren backed off, fell his face contorting. His finger was out and pointing at the old bastard's sucked-in face.

'You know nothin',' Warren snarled. 'You wanner know about my music, you ask Max Goff. 'E's gonner sign me, see. 'E's gonner sign the band. So you can do what you like. You can fuckin' disinherit me. .. you can keep your run-down farm. And you can take your bell and you can shove it, grandad. I couldn't care less.'

His grandad went quiet, standing there, face as grey as the stone.

'I shouldn't worry,' Warren sneered. 'One o' them newcomers'll take it on. That Colonel Croston, 'e's keen on bells.'

'No! The Preeces done it through plague and droughts and wartime when ringing bells was an offence. But we done it, boy, 'cause it's got to be done, see. Got to be.'

The old feller near desperation. Touch of the pleading there now. Stuff him.

'I don't wanner talk to you no more. Grandad. You're not all bloody there, you ask me.'

'Warren, there's things…'

'Oh yeah, there's things I don't know! Always, ever since I was so 'igh, people been tellin' me there's things I don't know, maybe I don't wanner know, maybe… What's up with you now?'

His grandad was looking past him at something that caused his mouth to open a crack, bit of dribble out the side, false teeth jiggling about. Disgusting.

He turned and began to walk back towards the road, towards the town. Warren slinking half a dozen paces behind. When the gap between them was wide enough, Warren turned and saw what looked like the sunset reflected in one of the top windows of the old house, just below the roof-line.

Except there wasn't any sun, so it couldn't be a sunset.

Warren shrugged.