Crybbe

1974.

Before reorganisation, the rural district authority had been based here. But 'progress' had removed the seat of power to a new headquarters in a town thirty miles away. Now there was only Crybbe town council, a cursory nod to local democracy, with ten members and no staff apart from its part-time clerk, Mrs Byford, who dealt with the correspondence and took down the minutes of its brief and largely inconsequential meetings.

The council chamber itself had even been considered too big for the old RDC, and meetings of the town council were self-conscious affairs, with eleven people hunched in a corner of the room trying to be inconspicuous. Although their meetings were public, few townsfolk were ever moved to attend.

Tonight, however, it seemed likely the chamber would actually be too small for the numbers in attendance, and the chairman would be occupying, for the first time in nearly twenty years, the official chairman's chair.

The chairman tonight would be Col Croston.

Mrs Byford, the clerk, had telephoned him at home to pass on the Mayor's apologies and request that he steer the public meeting.

'Why, surely,' Col said briskly. 'Can hardly expect old Jim to be there after what's happened.'

'Oh, he'll be there, Colonel,' Mrs Byford said, 'but he'll have to leave soon after nine-thirty to see to the bell, isn't it.'

'Shouldn't have to mess about with that either at his age. All he's got to do is say the word and I'll organize a bunch of chaps and we'll have that curfew handled on a rota system, makes a lot of sense, Mrs Byford.'

The clerk's tone cooled at once. 'That bell is a Preece function, Colonel.'

Oh dear, foot in it again, never mind. 'All got to rally round at a time like this, Mrs Byford. Besides, it could be the first step to getting a proper team of bell-ringers on the job. Crying shame, the way those bells are neglected.'

'It's a Preece function,' Mrs Byford said from somewhere well within the Arctic Circle. 'The meeting starts at eight o'clock.'

Minefield of ancient protocol, this town. Col Croston often thought Goose Green had been somewhat safer.

Col was deputy mayor this year. Long army career (never mentioned the SAS but everybody seemed to know). Recommended for a VC after the Falklands (respectfully suggested it be redirected). But still regarded becoming deputy mayor of Crybbe as his most significant single coup, on the grounds of being the only incomer to serve on the town council long enough to achieve the honour – which virtually guaranteed that next year he'd become the first outsider to wear the chain of office.

His wife considered he was out of his mind snuggling deep into this hotbed of small-minded prejudice and bigotry. But Col thought he was more than halfway to being accepted. And when he made mayor he was going to effect a few tiny but democratically meaningful changes to the wav the little council operated – as well as altering the rather furtive atmosphere with which it conducted its affairs.

He often felt that, although it gave a half-hearted welcome to new industry, anything providing local jobs, this council appeared to consider its foremost role was to protect the town against happiness.

Indeed, until being asked to chair it, he'd been rather worried about how tonight's meeting would be handled. He been finding out as much as he could about Max Goff's plans and had to say that the New Age people he'd met so far hadn't invariably been the sort of head-in-the-clouds wallies one had feared. If it pulled in a few tourists at last, it could be a real economic shot in the arm for this town.

So Col Croston was delighted to be directing operations.

With a mischievous little smile he lifted the gavel and gave it a smart double rap.

'Silence! Silence at the back there!'

Whereupon, to his horror, Mrs Byford materialised in doorway with a face like a starched pinny.

'I hope, Colonel, that you're banging that thing on the blotter and not on the table.'

'Oh, yes, of course, Mrs Byford. See…' He gave it another rap, this time on the blotter. It sounded about half as loud. 'Yes.. . ha. Well, ah… your morning for the correspondence, is it?

Mrs Byford stalked pointedly to the corner table used for town council meetings and placed upon it the official town council attache case.

'Glad you came in, actually,' Col Croston said, 'I think we ought to send an official letter of condolence to the relatives I that poor girl who had the accident at the Court.'

'I see no necessity for that.' Mrs Byford began to unpack her case.

'There's no necessity, Mrs B. Just think it'd be a sympathetic thing to do, don't you?'

'Not my place to give an opinion, Colonel. I should think twice, though, if I were you, about making unauthorised use of council notepaper.'

Col Croston, who'd once made a disastrous attempt to form a Crybbe cricket club, estimated that if he bowled the gavel at the back of Mrs Byford's head, there'd be a fair chance of laying the old boot out.

Just a thought.

It was Bill Davies, the butcher, who rang Jimmy Preece to complain about the picture. 'I'm sorry to 'ave to bother you at time like this, Jim, but I think you should go and see it for yourself. I know you know more about these things than any of us, but I don't like the look of it. Several customers mentioned it, see. How is Jack now?'

'Jack's not good,' Jimmy Preece said, and put the phone down.

He could see trouble coming, been seeing it all the morning, in the calm of the fields and the weight of the clouds.

In the cold, gleeful eyes of his surviving grandson.

Ten minutes after talking to Bill Davies, the Mayor was walking across the square towards The Gallery, traders and passers-by nodding to him sorrowfully. Nobody said, 'Ow're you'. They all knew where he was going.

Even in today's profoundly pessimistic mood, he was not prepared for the picture in the window of The Gallery. He had to turn away and get some control of himself.

Then, face like parchment, he pushed through the pine-panelled door with its panes of bull's-eye glass.

The woman with too much make-up and a too-tight blouse opened her red lips at him. 'Oh. Mr Preece, isn't it? I'm so terribly, terribly…'

'Madam!' Mr Preece, his heart wrapped in ice, had seen in the gloating eyes of the yellow-haloed man in the picture that the accident to Jack and the drowning of Jonathon were only the start of it. This was what they'd done with their meddling and their New Age rubbish.

'That picture in the window. Where'd 'e come from?'

'My husband brought it back from Devon. Why, is there…?'

'Did 'e,' Mr Preece said heavily. 'Brought it back from Devon, is it?'

Couldn't stop himself.

'Devon…? Devon…?'

Saw the woman's lips make a colossal great 'O' as he raised a hand and brought it down with an almighty bang on the thick smoked-glass counter.

The cremation was at twelve, and Powys was late. He felt bad about this because there was barely a dozen people there. He spotted Henry's neighbour, Mrs Whitney. He noted the slight unassuming figure of another distinguished elder statesman of dowsing. And there was his old mate Ben Corby, now publishing director of Dolmen, newly acquired by Max Goff.

'Bloody minister never even mentioned dowsing,' Ben said.

It had been a swift, efficient service. No sermon. Nothing too religious, nothing psychic.

Powys said, 'I don't think Henry would have wanted to be wheeled in under an arch of hazel twigs, do you?'

'Too modest, Joe. All the bloody same, these dowsers. Look at old Bill over there – he wouldn't do me a book either.'

Powys smiled. 'Henry left me his papers.'

'In that case, you can do the book. The Strange Life of Henry Kettle, an official biography by his literary executor. How's that? Come and have a drink, my train back to Paddington's at ten past two.'

Ben Corby. Plump and balding Yorkshireman, the original New Age hustler. They went to a pub called the Restoration and sat at a window-table overlooking a traffic island with old stone cross on it.

'Golden Land Two,' said Ben. 'How long? A year?'

Not the time, Powys thought, to tell him there wasn't going to be a book.

'Seen Andy lately?' he asked.

'Great guy, Max,' Ben said. 'Best thing that could've happened to Dolmen. Been burdened for years with the wispy beard brigade, wimps who reckon you can't be enlightened and make money. Give me the white suit and the chequebook any day. The New Age movement's got to seize the world by the balls.'

'Andy,' Powys said patiently. 'You seen him recently?'

'Andy? Pain in the arse. He wouldn't write me a book either. He's always been an Elitist twat. Hates the New Age movement, thinks earth mysteries are not for the masses… but, there you go, he knows his stuff; I gather he's giving Max good advice.'

'Maybe he's just using Max.'

'Everybody uses everybody, Joe. It's a holistic society.'

'How did Andy get involved?'

Ben shrugged. I know he was teaching art at one of the local secondary schools. Had a house in the area for years, apparently.'

That made sense. Had he really thought Andy was living in a run-down woodland cottage with no sanitation?

But why teaching? Teaching what?

'Andy's hardly short of cash.'

'Maybe he hit on hard times,' said Ben. 'Maybe he felt he had a duty to nurture young minds.'

Young minds. Powys thought of the girl at the stone. And then a man leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder.

'Excuse me, Mr Powys, could I have a word? Peter Jarman, Mr Kettle's solicitor.'

Peter Jarman looked about twenty-five; without his glasses he'd have looked about seventeen. He steered Powys into a corner. 'Uncle Henry,' he said. 'We all called him Uncle Henry. My grandfather was his solicitor for about half a century. Did you get my letter?'

Powys shook his head. 'I've been away.'

'No problem. I can expand on it a little now. Uncle Henry's daughter, as you may have noticed, hasn't come back from Canada for his funeral. He didn't really expect her to, which, I suspect, is why he's left his house to you.'

'Bloody hell. He really did that?'

'Seems she's done quite well for herself, the daughter, over in Canada. And communicated all too rarely with Uncle Henry. He seems to have thought you might value the house more than she would. This is all rather informal, but there are formalities, so if you could make an appointment to come to the office.'

'Yes,' Powys said faintly. 'Sure.'

'In the meantime,' said young Mr Jarman, 'if you want to get into the cottage at any time, Mrs Whitney next door is authorised to let you in. Uncle Henry was very specific that you should have access to any of his books or papers at any time.'

'You told me,' Jocasta Newsome said, suppressing her emotions, but not very well, 'that you hadn't managed to buy much in the West Country, and you proceeded to prove it with that mediocre miniature by Dufort.'

Hereward nervously fingered his beard. Now that it was almost entirely grey, he'd been considering shaving the thing off. As a statement, it was no longer sufficiently emphatic.

The black beard of the dark-eyed figure in the picture seemed to mock him.

'Where did it come from, Hereward?'

'All right,' he snapped, 'it wasn't from the West. A local artist sold it to me.'

Jocasta planted her hands on her hips. 'Girl?'

'Well… young woman.'

'Get rid of it,' Jocasta said, not a request, not a suggestion.

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'Take it back. Now.'

'What the hell's the matter with you? It's a bloody good painting! Worth eight or nine hundred of anybody's money and that's what Max Goff's going to pay!'

'So if Goff's going to pay the money, what's it doing in our window upsetting everybody?'

'One man!' He couldn't believe this.

'The Mayor of this town, Hereward. Who was so distressed he nearly cracked my counter.'

'But.. Hereward clutched his head, 'he's the Mayor! Not a bloody cultural arbiter! Not some official civic censor! He's just a tin-pot, small-town… I mean, how dare the old fuck come in here, complaining about a picture which isn't even… an erotic nude or

… or something. What's his problem?'

'He calmed down after slapping the counter,' Jocasta admitted. 'He apologized. He then appealed to me very sincerely – for the future well-being of the town, he said – not to flaunt a picture which appeared to be heralding the return of someone called Black Michael, who was apparently the man who built Crybbe Court and was very unpopular in his day.'

'He actually said that? In the year nineteen hundred and ninety-three, the first citizen of this town – the most senior elected member of the town council – seriously said that?'

'Words to that effect. And I agreed. I told him it would be removed immediately from the window and off these premises by tonight. I apologised and told him my husband obviously didn't realise when he purchased it – 'in the West Country' – that it might cause offence.'

For a moment, Hereward was speechless. When his voice returned, it was hoarse with outraged incredulity.

'How dare you? How bloody dare you? Black bloody Michael? What is this… bilge? I tell you, if this gallery is to have any artistic integrity…'

'Hereward, it's going,' Jocasta said, bored with him. 'I don't like that girl, she's a troublemaker. I don't like her weird paintings, and I want this one out.'

'Well, I can't help you there,' Hereward said flatly. 'I promised it would stay in the window until tomorrow.'

Jocasta regarded him as she would something she'd scraped from her shoe. It occurred to him seriously, for the first time, that perhaps he was something she'd like to scrape from her shoe. In which case, the issue of his failed trip to the West, his attempt to recover ground by buying this painting on the artist's eccentric terms, all this would be used to humiliate him again and again.

She turned her back on him and as she stalked away, Hereward saw her hook the tip of one shoe behind the leg of the wooden easel on which sat the big, dark picture.

He tried to save it. As he lunged towards the toppling easel, Jocasta half-turned and, seeing his hands clawing out, must have thought they were clawing at her. So she struck first. Hereward felt the nails pierce his cheek, just under his right eye.

It was instinctive. His left hand came back and he hit her so hard with his open palm that she was thrown off her feet and into a corner of the window, where she lay with her nose bleeding, snorting blood splashes on to her cream silk blouse.

There was silence.

A bunch of teenage boys just off the school bus, home early after end-of-term exams, gathered outside the window and grinned in at Jocasta.

The picture of the unsmiling man with the yellow halo in the doorway of Crybbe Court had fallen neatly and squarely in the centre of the floor and was undamaged. Its darkness flooded the gallery and Hereward Newsome knew his marriage and his plans for a successful and fashionable outlet in Crybbe were both as good as over.

Assessing his emotions, much later, he would decide he'd been not so much sad as angry and bitter at the way a seedy little town could turn a civilized man into a savage.

Jocasta didn't get up. She took a tissue from a pocket in the front of her summery skirt and dabbed carefully at her nose.

Hereward knew there was blood also on his torn cheek. He didn't touch it.

Outside, the school kids began to drift away. Jocasta had her back against the window, unaware of them.

Still she made no attempt to get up, only said calmly, voice nasally blocked, as if she had a cold, ' I accepted some drawings from that girl a few days ago. Sale or return. Do you remember them?'

'I didn't make the connection,' Hereward said quietly.

'They were drawings of an old man.'

'I didn't see them.'

'He was cutting his own throat.'

'Yes,' Hereward said dully. '… What?'

'The reason I don't want this painting here is that the other night, while you were away, the figure, the likeness of this old man, the old man in the drawings, was seen in our bathroom.'

Hereward said nothing.

'Not by me, of course,' his wife assured him. 'But the man I was sleeping with swears it was there.'

Everything was completely still in The Gallery. Hereward Newsome stunned, aware of a droplet of blood about to fall from his chin. Jocasta Newsome lying quietly in the window, red splashes like rose petals on her cream silk blouse.