Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (25 page)

   
Bui he was committed now.

   
He went down to the shop and
put on the lights. From his photograph, Alfred Watkins frowned down on the
counter, Powys could see why: Annie had put the box of 'healing' crystals on
display.

   
He wrote out a note and left it
wedged under the crystals box.

   
Dear Annie,

         
Please hold fort until whenever. I'll call you. Don't light
   
too many joss-sticks.

   
Feeling a need to explain, he
added,

   
     
Gone
to Crybbe.

         
P.S. Don't get the wrong idea. It might be old, but it's
   
not golden.

   
When he put out the lights in
the shop, he noticed the answering machine winking red.
   
A woman's low, resonant voice.

   
'J. M. Powys, this is Rachel Wade
at Crybbe Court. I wanted to remind you about Friday. I'd be grateful if you
could call back on Crybbe 689, which is the Cock Hotel or 563, our new office
at Crybbe Court. Leave a message if I'm not around. Things are a little chaotic
at present, but we'd very much like to hear from you. If you can't make it on
Friday, we could arrange another day. Just please call me.'

   
'I'll be there,' Powys said to
the machine. 'OK?'

   
He went upstairs to bed and couldn't
sleep. He'd seen Henry barely half a dozen times in the past ten years. If the
old guy really had left him his house to underline his feelings about Crybbe
then they had to be more than passing fears.

   
'What have you dumped on me,
Henry?" he kept asking the ceiling. And when he fell asleep he dreamt
about the Bottle Stone.

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, fortune- tellers . . .'

   
'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.'