Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (33 page)

   
But last winter had been a mild
winter. Bugger-all snow anywhere. And only Gomer saw the heroic side of the
other things he did.

   
A few months ago he'd done this
broadcast about the perils of digging drainage ditches and such. Explaining it
to that little girl from the local radio. How, for him, it was like a military
exercise - although not modern military; more like in these epic films where
the knight gets into his armour, which is so heavy he has to be winched on to
his horse. It was in these terms that Gomer Parry spoke on the radio of his
life at the controls of the JCB.

   
Probably gave the listeners a
good laugh. Certainly didn't bring him any more work. He couldn't remember a
worse year, the local farmers - his regular clients - tighter than ever.
Constipated buggers sitting there waiting for a laxative from Brussels. Farmers
wouldn't fart these days unless they got an EC grant for it.

   
So Gomer Parry, feeling the
pinch, had been very near excited when he had a phone call from Edgar Humble.

   
He'd played darts with Edgar
Humble in the public bar at the Lamb in Crybbe. Edgar didn't say much, which
was unusual for a Londoner; he just kept beating you at darts. But Gomer knew
who employed him, and that was why he was very near excited when he got the
call, because from what he'd heard here was a bloke who was going to need
plenty plant hire.

   
'Knock walls down, can you?'
Edgar Humble asked.

   
'What kind of walls?'

   
'Stone wall. Victorian, I'd
say. Thick, solid. Five, six feet high. Couple of feet thick in places. Too
much for yer?'

   
Gomer had almost laughed down
the phone. 'Put it this way,' he said, if I'd been in business round Jericho
way, all those years ago, they wouldn't have needed no bloody trumpets.'

'Max,' Rachel said, 'this is J. M. Powys.'

   
Max Goff put on his Panama hat.
Bizarre, Powys thought. Eccentric. But not crazy. Those are not crazy eyes.

   
Goff looked at Powys for a good
while. He had a beard like red Velcro. 'How long you been here?'

   
'Since last night,' Powys said
steadily. 'I stayed at the Cock.'

   
'Yeah? Shit hole, huh? I hope
you put it on my tab.' Goff grinned at last and stuck out a stubby hand. 'Hi,
J. M. Welcome to Crybbe. Welcome to the Old Golden Land.'

   
Powys took the hand. Goff's
grip was flaccid. Powys said, 'You think this is the Old Golden Land?'

   
The countryside was colourless.
Mist was still draped around the Court like grimy lace curtains.

   
'Not yet,' Goff said. 'But it
will be. Listen, if I'd known you were here I'd've driven back last night.'

   
'That's OK. Ms Wade was looking
after me.'

   
Rachel was standing behind Goff
in the courtyard. Powys deliberately didn't look at her. Neither, he noticed,
did her boss, the man who overpaid her for little extras.

   
Goff jerked his Velcro chin at
the two men at his side. 'This is Edgar Humble, my head of security.'

   
'Mr Humble,' Powys said
tightly.

   
'And Andy Boulton-Trow, who of
course you know, yeah?'

   
Andy wore a white shirt and
black jeans. Close up, he looked even thinner than he'd been twelve years ago.
You could see the bones flexing in his face as he smiled. It was a quick, wide
smile.

   
It made Powys feel cold.
   
'Joe.'

   
'Andy,' he said quietly.

   
'Long time, my friend.' Andy's
hair, once shoulder-length, was shaven right to the skull, and he was growing a
beard. It would be black.

   
They hadn't met since Rose's
funeral.

   
Goff said, 'Now Henry Kettle's
gone, Andy's my chief adviser in the Crybbe project. Andy knows stones.'

   
Chief adviser. Jesus.

   
There was a big difference
between Andy Boulton-Trow and Henry Kettle. What it came down to was: Henry
would have said, don't mess with electricity until you know what you're doing.
Andy would say, sure, just hold these two wires and then bring them together
when I give you the nod, OK?

   
'So you lost Henry,' Powys
said.

   
Andy dropped the smile.

   
'Tragic,' Goff said. 'There's
gonna be a Henry Kettle memorial.'

   
A memorial. Well, that was all
right, then. That made up for everything.

   
'We haven't decided yet where
it's gonna go.'
   
'But somewhere prominent,' Andy said.
   
Powys didn't say a thing.

   
'J.M.,' Goff said, 'we need to
talk, you and I. At length. I have a proposition. Hell, we all know each other,
I'll spell out the basics. I want you to write me a sequel to
Golden Land
for Dolmen. I want it to be
the Crybbe story. The - hey, what about this? - The
New
Golden Land.'

   
Goff beamed and looked round,
Powys thought, for applause.

   
'What I'm talking here, J. M.,
is a substantial advance and the quality republication in under a year's time
of the original
Golden Land
, to pave
the way. Revise it if you like. New pictures. In colour. Whatever.'

   
Sure. Scrap Rose's pictures,
Powys thought dully. Get better ones.

   
'And there's a place for you
here.'
   
'A place?'

   
'A place to live. A beautiful
house with a view of the river. Part of the deal. Rachel will take you there
after we eat.'

   
'Mr Goff . . .' He wondered why
people kept giving him houses.

   
'Max.'

   
'I have a place already. I run
a little shop in Hereford called Trackways, which . . .'
   
'I know,' said Goff.

   
'. . . which is more than a
shop. Which is a kind of museum to Alfred Watkins as well, the only one of its
kind in Hereford, which . . .

   
'But it doesn't
need
to be in Hereford,' Goff said. 'And
it doesn't have to be a little shop. Come over here.'

   
He led Powys to a corner of the
courtyard and pointed across the field behind the stables, about a hundred
yards from the Tump, where the trees began to thicken into the wood.

   
'As befits the stature of the
man, the Watkins Centre needs to be a major development in, let's say, an
eighteenth-century barn.'

   
On the edge of the wood was a
massive, tumbledown barn complex, beams and spars poking out of it like
components of a badly assembled dinosaur skeleton.

   
'Place needs to be big enough
to house a huge collection of Watkins's photographs and ley-maps, and scores of
original paintings of ancient sites. And it needs to be here. In Crybbe.'

   
Powys felt like a cartoon
character who'd been flattened by a steam-roller and become a one-dimensional
mat.

   
Lowering his voice, Goff said,
'I know your situation, J.M. I know you put all the money from
Golden Land
into Trackways, and I know
how difficult it must be keeping Trackways afloat."

   
He clapped Powys on the back.
'Think about it, yeah?'

   
Goff strolled back to the
silent group of three standing next to the Ferrari. 'Rach, there's been a
slight change of plan. We have lunch at two, we spend the afternoon in
discussion groups then we assemble, early evening, at the Tump.'

   
Powys saw part of a cobweb from
the attic floating free from a padded shoulder of Rachel's blue business suit.

   
'The Tump?'

   
'A ceremony,' Goff said. 'To
launch the project. We're gonna knock down the wall around the Tump. Maybe
that's where Mr Kettle's memorial should be. We're gonna finish what he began.
We're gonna liberate the Tump.'

   
Andy Boulton-Trow nodded.

   
Goff grinned massively. 'It's
the beginning,' he said. 'Come on, let's get back to the Cock, see who shows
up.'

From the top of the farmyard there was a fine view of the river and the
Welsh hills behind. But Jimmy Preece and his son Jack were looking, for once,
the other way, up towards the Court. This was a view Jack had been conditioned,
over the years, to avoid - as if, when he emerged from the farmyard gates, he
was to wear an imaginary patch over his right eye.

   
This afternoon a great black
cloud hung over the Tump.

   
Below it, the bulldozer was
bright yellow.

   
'Gomer Parry's,' Jack said.

   
'Sure t'be," Jimmy said.
'And only one reason 'e's down there.'

   
'So what you gonner do,
Father?'

   
'No choice, Jack. I shall 'ave
to 'ave a word with 'im when 'e gets back.'

   
The two men stood in silence
for over a minute.

   
Then Jack mumbled, almost to
himself. 'Sometimes . . . sometimes I wonders, well, so what? What if 'e
do
come down, that ole wall? An' the ole
bell . . . what if 'e
don't
get rung
some nights?'

   
Jimmy Preece was too certain of
his son even to reply. Jack was like him. Jonathon was like Jack. And Warren -
well, Warren was only a second son, so it didn't matter, anyway, about Warren.

   
The Mayor was about to walk
away, back into town, when he heard Jack saying, '. . . And the ole box. If the
ole box is gone, do it matter?'

   
Jimmy Preece stopped and turned
and walked back very slowly to where Jack stood, a bigger man than Jimmy,
habitually in dark-green overalls.

   
'The ole box?'

   
'I don't know, Father, 'e's
gone. Maybe. Might've gone. Hard to say, isn't it, without pulling the whole
wall out?'

   
Jimmy Preece said, 'Can't 'ave
gone, Jack. Sometimes them ole bricks subside. I told you, anyway, leave 'im
alone, that old box. Keep 'im walled up. Tell Jonathon when 'e's thirty and
married. Never tell Warren.'

   
'Found some bits of plaster and
stuff in the fireplace,' Jack said. 'Poked about a bit and the bricks fell out
the cavity.'

   
'Put 'em back, block 'em up.'

   
'That's what I was doin'. Cavity,
though, see, cavity was empty, Father.'

   
'That case, you got a job to
do, Jack. You get in there and find where the box's fallen to, then you put 'im
back on the ledge and you seals the bugger up proper. And another thing, Jack,
you get that dog seen to. Last night . . .'

   
'I know. Yeard 'im from the
belfry even. I phoned 'er up. I give 'er till weekend.'

   
'This is the weekend,' said
Jimmy Preece. 'Get Jonathon to do it.'

   
Jack Preece looked down at his
boots. 'Gets to me sometimes, Father, that's all. Why us?'

   
He walked off without saying
goodbye, because none of the Preeces ever said goodbye to each other; only
'Ow're you' on Christmas morning.

CHAPTER IV

The one time Rachel had seen Guy Morrison, at a preliminary meeting with
Max in London, he'd been wearing a lightweight suit with sun-glasses in the
breast pocket and carrying a briefcase and a mobile phone.

   
Today, Guy was in director
mode. He wore denims and a leather pouch, like a holster, on his belt. He had
blond hair and craggy features. A TV man from central casting, Rachel thought.
At his shoulder stood a dumpy, stern-faced girl with straight black hair and a
waterproof clipboard.

   
Hustling J.M. off to the Cock,
Goff had told Rachel over his shoulder, 'Morrison wants to do a few exterior
shots of the Court with nobody about. Stick around till he shows, Rach, keep an
eye on him.'