Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (40 page)

   
Unlikely. He hoped. Well, it
was a question of image: the farmer who let a townie in a suit pinch his gun
and toss it in the river. They'd love that in the saloon bar of the Cock, it would
go down in the folk history of the town.

   
Rachel was spending the morning
at the Court, organizing workmen putting finishing touches to the stable-block.
He thought of going to see Mrs Seagrove.

   
He carried his suitcases into
the cottage. It was a good cottage, a better home than his flat. It had wonderful
views over the river - slopping and frothing feverishly, after hours of heavy
rain.

   
He couldn't stay here for long
though. Not on false pretences. There was no way he was going to write the New
Age Gospel According to Goff.

   
And the sequence by the river
last night kept replaying itself. The feeling of the warm gun, the knowledge
that he was not only capable of killing but
wanted
to kill. The bar of shadow across the grass and the river, all the way from the
Tump, where Henry Kettle died.

   
And Arnold, Henry Kettle's dog.
A dowser's dog, Henry used to say, isn't like other dogs.

   
It wasn't raining any more. Through
the large window in the living-room, he saw the clouds had shifted like
furniture pushed to the corners of the room, leaving a square of light. Fifty
yards away, the river, denied its conquest of the meadow, slurped sulkily at
its banks. On the other side of the river, in the semi-distant field - probably
Goff's land - Powys saw two tiny figures, one holding a couple of tall poles.

   
He thought, the dodmen. Alfred
Watkins's term for the prehistoric surveyors who had planned out the leys,
erecting standing stones and earthworks at strategic points. The surveyors
would, Watkins imagined, have held up poles to find out where tall stones would
be visible as waymarkers. Now modern dodmen were at work, recreating
prehistoric Crybbe in precisely the way it was presumed to have been done four thousand
or so years ago.

   
From here, Powys couldn't even
make out whether they were dodmen or dodwomen. But he was prepared to bet one of
them would be Andy Boulton-Trow.

   
Calm, laid-back, omniscient old
Andy.

   
I think Joe ought to present himself to the Earth Spirit in the time
honoured fashion. . .

   
. . . the very least you can do, mate . . .

   
. . . think of it as a kind of appeasement.

   
Now Andy was personally supervising
the operation to open up the town of Crybbe to the Earth Spirit.

   
On past experience of this irresponsible
bastard, did that sound like good news?

'I think,' Hereward Newsome said, almost shaking with triumph, 'that
I've cracked it.'
   
'You saw him?'

   
'He's gone back to London. I
saw Rachel Wade. She said go ahead.'

   
Hereward took off his jacket,
hung it over the back of the antique-pine rocking-chair by the Aga, sat down
and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves. 'But we need to move fast.'

   
'Why?' If Jocasta wasn't as ecstatic
as she might have been this was because Hereward's news had eclipsed her own
small coup.

   
'I mean a buying trip. To the
West Country, I'd suggest and pronto. There's Ernest Wilding at Street,
Devereux in Penzance, Sally Gold in Totnes, Melanie Dufort in . . . where is it
now, some place near Frome? All specializing in megalith paintings - or they
were. And there have to be more. What happened to the Ruralists? Where's Inshaw
these days?"

   
'Not far from here, I heard.'

   
"Oh.' He stood up.
'Anyway, I'm going to make some calls now. Strike while Goff's hot. If we go
down there this weekend fetch a few back to put in front of him on Tuesday when
he comes back.'

   
Hereward paced the kitchen. Any
second now, Jocasta thought, he'll start rubbing his hands. Still, it
was
good news.

   
'You ought to see his proposed
exhibition hall. Rachel showed me this huge barn he's going to rebuild. It'll
be a sort of interpretive centre for prehistoric Crybbe and the whole earth mysteries
thing. He's looking for maybe seventy paintings. Seventy! Darling, if we can
provide
half
of those we're talking .
. . let's be vulgar, if we can get the kind of stuff he wants, we're talking
megabucks.'

   
'Why can't we go
next
weekend?"

   
'Look ... so we close the gallery
for a day. What have we got to lose, with Goff out of town? And the way things
have been, can we afford to delay?'

   
'Hereward!' God, he was so
irritating. 'What about Emmanuel Walters?'

   
'Oh.' Hereward sat down. 'It's
Sunday, isn't it?'

   
'Ye-es,' Jocasta said, exasperated,
'it is. And it's a bloody good job one of us is efficient.' Adding
nonchalantly, 'I've even arranged a celebrity to open the exhibition.'
   
'Oh yes?'

   
Jocasta's lips cemented into a
hard line. Even if it was a member of the Royal Family it wouldn't impress
Hereward at the moment, still on his Max Goff high.
   
'It's Guy Morrison.'

   
'Oh. Er, super. Didn't he used
to be . . . ?'
   
'He's producing and presenting the
documentary the BBC are doing on Max Goff and Crybbe. He seems very pleasant, he
agreed at once. I think he's at rather a loose end. He's spending the weekend
here, getting to know the town. Getting to know the people who count.'

   
'Not much use coming to The
Gallery, then.' Hereward guffawed insensitively.

   
Jocasta scowled. That was
it
. 'I know,' she said, 'why don't you
go to the West Country on your own? I'll stay behind and handle the private
view.'

   
'Yes, I suppose it makes sense.'

   
Jocasta knew it made no sense
at all. Good old Hereward, always anxious to be accepted by artists as a
friend, someone who understood the creative process, would spend hundreds of pounds
more than she would. But at least she'd get rid of him for a couple of days.
Increasingly, Jocasta had been thinking back with nostalgia to the days when
they'd had separate jobs and only met for a couple of hours in the evening . .
.'

   
Hereward said - a formality,
she thought - Will you be all right on your own?'

   
Just for a minute she thought
about last right and those drawings and the sticky feeling on her hands which
had proved, when the lights came on, to be no more than perspiration.

   
'I shall be fine,' she said.

Mrs Seagrove brought him tea in one of her best china cups - as
distinct, she pointed out, from the mugs she took out to the lorry drivers in
the layby.

   
'I thought I'd seen the last of
you, Joe. How's the doggie.
   
'We think he's going to be OK.'

   
'That's good.' She was wearing
today a plaid skirt of different tartan. I'm not Scottish,' she said. 'Frank
and I used to go up there every autumn, and we'd visit these woollen mills.'

   
There was a picture of Frank on
the sideboard. He was beaming and holding up a fish which might have been a
trout.

   
'He was thrilled when we got
this place, so near the river. He joined the angling club. It was a shame.
Turned out to be not a very good river for fishing. And the problem was, Joe, Frank
could see the river, but I could only see
that
.'

   
She sat with her back to the
big, horizontal window with its panoramic view across the river to the woods
and, of course the Tump.

   
'About that . . .' Powys said.

   
'I thought you'd come about
that.' Mrs Seagrove held the teacup on her kilted knees, flat and steady as a
good coffee table. 'Well, I'm glad somebody's interested. Mrs Morrison is always
too busy. Unless I want to talk about it on the radio she says. Well, I said,
would you make a spectacle of yourself on the wireless?'

   
'Last night, you said something
was coming at us. From the Tump?'

   
'People are fascinated by these
things. I'm not. Are you, Joe?'

   
'Well, I used to be. Still am,
in a way, but they worry me now.'

   
'Quite right. I'm not
interested, I've never been interested.
   
'It nearly always happens to people
who are not interested,' said Powys.

   
'I think I know when it comes
now, what time, so I draw the curtains and turn the telly up, but some nights I
just have to go and look, just to get it out of the way. I'm scared to death,
Joe, but I look, just to get it out of the way.'
   
'And what time is it?'

   
'Usually after nine o'clock and
before they ring that bell in the church. Not always. It's early sometimes,
almost full daylight - although it goes dark all of a sudden, kind of thing,
like it's as if it's bringing its own darkness, do you know what I mean? And
just once - it was that night the poor man crashed his car - just once, it was later,
about half-tennish. Just that once.'

   
Powys said, 'It's a dog, isn't
it? A big, black dog.'

   
'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Seagrove
very' quietly. 'Yes, it is.'

   
'How often have you . . . ?'

   
'Seven or eight times, I've
seen it. It always goes the same way. Coming from the . . . the mound thing.'

   
'Down from the mound, or out of
the mound?'

   
'I couldn't honestly say, dear.
One second it's not there, the next it is, kind of thing. I'm psychic, I
suppose. I never wanted to be psychic, not like this.'

   
'Is it - I'm sorry to ask all
these questions - but is it obviously a dog? It couldn't be anything else?'

   
'You ask as many questions as
you like, dear. I've been finding out about you, I rang a friend of mine at the
library in Dudley. No, that's an interesting point you make there - is it really
a dog? Well, I like dogs. I wouldn't be frightened of a dog, would I? Even a
ghost dog. Naturally, it'd be a shock, the first time you saw it, kind of thing,
but no, I don't think I'd be frightened. Oh dear, I wish you
hadn't
asked me that now, it's disturbed
me, that has, Joe.'

   
'I'm sorry.'

   
'I don't want to stay here. I'd
be off tomorrow, but how much would I get for this, even if I managed to sell
it?'

   
if you really wanted to go
quickly,' Powys said, 'I think I could find you a buyer. You'd get a good
price, too.'

   
'Not you?'

   
'Good God, no, not me. I couldn't
afford it, even if. . . Look, leave it with me for a day or two.'

   
'I don't know what to say, dear.'
Mrs Seagrove's eyes were shining, in a way, I'd feel bad about somebody having
this place. But they might not be psychic, mightn't they?'

   
'Or they might be quite
interested.'

   
'Oh no,' she said. 'Nobody's
interested in evil, are they?'

CHAPTER II

Guy dropped by.
   
She opened the back door, thinking it
was the milkman come for his money, as was usual on a Saturday.
   
'Fay. Hi.'
   
'Oh, my God.'

   
She wouldn't have chosen to say
that, but Guy seemed pleased at the reaction. Perhaps he saw it as an urgent
suppression of instinctive desire.

   
'Thought I'd drop by, as I had
some time on my hands.' Incandescent smile. 'Spending the weekend here, getting
acclimatized.'

   
New crowns, Fay spotted. Good
ones, of course.

   
'Crew's gone back, but I've been
invited to open some shitty art exhibition tomorrow night. Must be a bit short
on celebrities in these parts if they want
me.
'
Guy laughed.

   
Still a master of double-edged
false modesty, Fay thought, wishing she'd changed, combed her hair, applied
some rudimentary make-up.