Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (16 page)

   
Not exactly a quantum leap, was
it, from there to the New Age dream?

   
And, the more she thought about
it, the proposed mystical liberation of an obscure Welsh border town from years
of economic decay was a story that deserved a bigger audience than it was ever
going to reach through Offa's Dyke Radio.

   
In fact, this could be the moment
to approach her old chums at the BBC. How about a forty-five-minute radio documentary
chronicling Goff's scheme to turn Crybbe into a New Age Camelot? She could hear
a sequence in her head, lots of echoey footsteps and tinkly music, the moaning
of men and machinery as massive megaliths were manoeuvred into position. It
sounded good.

   
On the other hand, she had an
arrangement with Offa's Dyke, and the little shit Ashpole would want first bite
at every snippet that came out of the Goff camp.

   
... or we'll have to, you know, reconsider things . . .

   
Little turd.

   
And while Radio Four was the
interesting option, a chance to prove she could still make national-quality
programmes, Offa's Dyke was bread and butter. Of course, if there was a
prospect of getting out of Crybbe and back to London or Manchester or Bristol
in the foreseeable future, she could make the BBC programme and bollocks to
O.D.

   
She passed the farm entrance
and followed Arnold and the road into the wood, where the sudden darkness
brought with it a wave of loneliness and resentment towards her dad. Why did
the old bugger have to stay out here? All that cobblers about his having to
sell the house in Woodstock to pay for Grace's treatment.

   
Somehow, Dad, Fay thought, all
your money's gone down the pan. And tonight, the close of what appeared to have
been one of his better days, seemed as good a time as any to make him tell her
precisely how it had happened.

   
A bush moved.

   
It happened on the edge of her
vision, just as she'd passed it, and she thought, it's the wind, then realized
there was none.
   
Arnold growled.
   
Fay froze. 'Who's that?'

   
Bloody hell, the phantom flasher
of Crybbe. Well, there had to be one. Fay laughed. Nervously.

   
There was also Black Michael's
Hound.

   
You wouldn't think anything as black as that could glow, would you?

   
Thank you, Mrs Seagrove.

   
There was a snigger. An involuntary
cry was snatched from Fay, and then he was off. She saw him vanish behind a
tree then reappear, moving in a crouch, like a spider, up the field, in the
direction of the farm, an unidentifiable shadow. Perhaps it was that man
Humble, Goff's minder.

   
'Have a nice wank, did we?' Fay
called after him. But it wasn't funny, and that was why her voice cracked. She
was discovering that back alleys in the city, full of chip-wrapping and broken
glass, could sometimes be less scary than a placid sylvan lane at sunset.

   
Because there was the feeling,
somehow, that if it
did
happen here,
it would be worse.

Hereward Newsome couldn't wait to get home to tell his wife what he'd
learned in the Cock.

   
Hereward went off to what he
described to visitors as 'my local hostelry' perhaps two nights a week and
stayed for maybe an hour. He considered a local hostelry was one of those
things a man ought to have when he lived in the country, if he was to
communicate with the locals on their own level.

   
'Why bother?' demanded Jocasta,
who made a point of never going with him to the Cock. 'Why on earth should I
learn about sheep and pigs? Why can't the locals learn about fine art and communicate
with us on
our
level?'

   
'Because it's their town,'
Hereward had reasoned. 'Pigs and sheep have been their way of life for
centuries, and now the industry is in crisis and they feel their whole
raison d'etre
is threatened. We should
show them we understand.'

   
And he did his best. He'd
started reading everything he could find in the
Guardian
about sheep subsidies and the Common Agricultural Policy
so he could carry on a respectable discussion with the farmers in the public
bar. He'd commiserate with them about the latest EC regulations and they'd say,
'Well, well,' or 'Sure t'be,' in their quiet, contemplative tones and permit
him to buy them another couple of pints of Ansell's Bitter.

   
However, he was always happier
if Colonel Croston was in there, or even old Canon Peters. He might not have
much in common with either of them, but at least it would be a two-way
conversation.

   
Tonight, however, he'd found
common ground ... in a big way.

   
Lights were coming on in the
farmhouse as Hereward parked the 2CV neatly at the edge of the slice of rough
grass he called 'the paddock'. There was a Volvo Estate in the garage, but he
never took that into town unless there were paintings to be shifted.

   
'It's me, darling.' Hereward
hammered on the stable door at the side of the farmhouse. He kept telling her
there was no need to lock it; that was the beauty of the countryside. But every
other week she'd point out something in the paper about some woman getting
raped in her cottage or a bank manager held to ransom in his rural retreat.
'But not in
this
area, Hereward would
say, looking pained.

   
Even though she'd have recognized
his voice, Jocasta opened only the top half of the door so she could see his
face and be sure he wasn't accompanied by some thug with a shotgun at his back.

   
'It
is
me,' Hereward said patiently, when his wife finally let him in. 'Listen,
darling, what did I say about the turning point?'

   
'Coffee?' Jocasta said. Hereward
frowned. When she was solicitous on his return from the pub it usually meant
she'd just concluded an absurdly lengthy phone call to her sister in Normandy.
Tonight, though, he'd let it pass.

   
'Sorry,' Jocasta said, plugging
in the percolator. 'Turning point? You mean Goff?'

   
'You remember I told you about
that guy Daniel Osborne, the homeopath? Who moved into a cottage in Bridge
Street? With his wife, the acupuncturist? Now I learn that next door but one to
him - this is quite extraordinary - there's a hypnotherapist who specializes in
that. . . what d'you call it when they try to take people back into previous
lives?'

   
'Regression.' Jocasta turned
towards him. He thought she looked awfully alluring when her eyes were shining.
He had her full attention.

   
'The fact is . . .' Hereward
was smiling broadly. 'There're lots of them. And we didn't know it. All kinds
of progressive, alternative practitioners and New Age experts. In Crybbe.'

   
'You're serious?'

   
'Look, I've just had this from
Dan Osborne himself, they can talk about it now. Seems Max Goff's been secretly
buying property in town for months and either selling it at a very reasonable
price or renting it to, you know, the
right
people. What we're getting here are the seeds of a truly progressive alternative
community. That is, no ... no . . .'
   
'Riff-raff,' Jocasta said crisply.
'Hippies.'
   
'If you must. In fact, it's the sort
of set-up that . . .well . . .the Prince of Wales would support.'

   
'There's got to be a catch,'
Jocasta said, ever cautious, 'It seems remarkable that we haven't heard about
it before.'

   
'Darling, everybody's been ultra
discreet. I mean, they don't look any different from your ordinary incomers,
and there's always been a big population turnover in this area. Look, here's an
example. You remember the grey-haired woman, very neat very well-dressed, who
was in The Gallery looking at paintings a couple of days ago. Who do you think
that was?'
   
'Shirley MacLaine."
   
'Jean Wendle," said Hereward.
   
'Who?'

   
'The spiritual healer! She used
to be a barrister or something and gave it up when she realized she had the
gift.'

   
'Oh.' Jocasta digested this.
'Are you saying Crybbe's going to be known for this sort of thing? With lots of
. . .'

   
'Tourists! Up-market
thinking
tourists! The kind that don't even
like to be called tourists. It's going to be like Glastonbury here - only
better. It'll be . . .
internationally
famous
.'

   
'Well,' said Jocasta, 'if what
you say is true, it's really quite annoying nobody told us. We might have sold
up and moved out, not realizing. And it's still going to take time . . .'

   
'Darling,' Hereward said, 'if
Goff can pull off something like this under our very noses, the man is a magician.'

The solemnity of the curfew bell lay over the shadowed square by the
time Fay and Arnold came back into town, and she found herself counting the
clangs, getting louder as they neared the church.

   
Fifty-seven, fifty-eight,
fifty-nine . . .

   
There was something faintly
eerie about the curfew. Was she imagining it, or did people make a practice of
staying off the streets while it was actually being rung, even if they came out
afterwards? She stood staring at the steps in front of the clock, willing
somebody to walk in or out to prove her wrong.

   
Nobody did. Nobody was walking
on the street. There was no traffic. No children played. No dogs barked. Only
the bell and the cawing of crows, like a distorted echo.

   
Seventy-three, seventy-four,
seventy-five . . .

   
Every evening the curfew would
begin at precisely ten o'clock. You could set your watch by it, and people
often did.

   
How the custom had survived was
not entirely inexplicable. There'd been a bequest by one Percy Weale, a local
wool-merchant and do-gooder back in the sixteenth century. He'd left land and
money to build Crybbe School and also a further twelve acres in trust to the Preece
family and their descendants on condition that the curfew bell be rung nightly
to safeguard the moral and spiritual welfare' of the townsfolk.

   
Should the Preece family die
off or neglect the task, then the land must be rented out and the money used to
pay a bell-ringer. But even in times of plague or war, it was said, the curfew
bell had never been silenced.

   
Because hanging on to those twelve
acres would be a matter of pride for the Preeces. Also economics. Fay was
learning that farmers in these parts would do almost anything to hold what land
they had and would lay in wait for neighbouring death or misfortune to grab more.
When a farm was sold, the neighbours swooped like buzzards, snatching up
acreage on every side, often leaving a lone farmhouse marooned in the middle,
condemned either to dereliction or sumptuous restoration by city folk in search
of a rural retreat. The Newsomes lived in one, with a quarter acre of their own
surrounded on all sides by other people's property.

   
Ninety-eight, ninety-nine. One
hundred. Although the sun's last lurid light was spread like orange marmalade
across the hills, the town centre wore a sombre gown of deep shadows.
   
Fay noticed Arnold's clothes-line had
gone slack.
   
He was sitting on the cracked cobbles,
staring up at the church tower, now overhung with florid cloud. As Fay watched him,
his nose went up and, with a mournful intensity, he began to howl.

   
As the howl rose, pure as the curfew's
final peal, with whose dwindling it mingled in the twilit air, Fay was aware of
doors opening in the houses between the shops' and the pubs on the little
square.

   
No lights came on. Nobody came
out. Arnold howled three times, then sat there, looking confusedly from side to
side, as if unsure he'd been responsible for the disturbance.

   
Fay could feel the stares
coming at her from inside the shadowed portals in the square, and the air
seemed denser, as if focused hostility were some kind of thickening agent,
clotting the atmosphere itself.

   
She felt she was being pressed
backwards into the church wall by a powerful surge of heavy-duty disapproval.

   
Then someone, a female voice,
screeched out,
'You'll get that dog out
of yere''