Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (45 page)

   
'That's
curious
.
That
is
curious
.'

   
'That's it. Hang on a minute,
Joe, I'll find the start. OK, here we go . . .'

   
' . . . keep you a minute. Fay, just something I need to look at.
Bear with me.'

   
'That's OK, Mr Kettle. Can I call you Henry during the interview? Makes
it more informal.'

   
'You please yourself, girl. Call me a daft old bugger if you like.

   
Powys felt almost tearful.
Every time someone like Henry died, the world faded a shade further into
neutral.

   
'Well, bugger - don't mind me, Fay, talking to myself. That's curious.
That
is
curious. If I didn't know
better, I'd almost be inclined to think it wasn't an
old
stone at all. Funny old business . . . Just
when you think you've come across everything you find something that don't. . .
quite . . . add up. Come on then Fay, let's do your bit of radio, only we'll go
somewhere else if you don't mind . . .'

   
Powys said, 'Can you just play
that bit again.'
   
'
. . . almost be inclined to think it wasn't an old stone at all . . .'

   
That's the bit.' There was a
parallel here, something from Henry's journal. 'Fay, where was this, can you
show me? Have you time before church?'

   
'We'll have to be a bit quick,
Joe,' Fay said, rewinding.

Murray Beech watched his sermon rolling out of the printer with barely
an hour to go before the service. Normally he worked at least three weeks in
advance, storing the sermons on computer disk. This one had been completed only
last night, at great personal risk - Murray had twice lost entire scripts due
to power cuts.

   
But the electricity rarely
failed in the morning, and the printer whizzed it out without interruption.

   
Certain claims have already been made for the effects of this
so-called New Awakening . . .

   
Why am I doing this? he asked
himself.

   
Because it's what they want to
hear, he answered shamefully. Never imagined it would come to this. What harm
were they causing, these innocent cranks with their ley-lines and their healing
rays?

   
Ironically, Murray had come to
Crybbe aware of the need for tolerance with country folk, their local customs,
their herbal remedies. But it had proved to be a myth. Country people,
real
country people weren't like this,
not in Crybbe anyway, where he'd never been offered a herbal remedy or even a
pot of home-made jam. And where the only custom was the curfew, an unsmiling
ritual, performed without comment.

   
On a metal bookshelf sat the
three-volume set of Kilvert's Diary given to him by Kirsty when he told her he
was leaving Brighton to become a vicar in the border country.

   
'Just like Kilvert!' She'd been
thrilled. He'd never heard of Kilvert, so she'd bought him the collected
diaries, the record (expressively written,
 
if you liked that sort of thing) of a young Victorian clergyman's life,
mainly in the village of Gyro, about twenty miles from Crybbe. Kilvert had
found rich colours in nature and in the people around him. He'd also found
warmth and friends, even if he did have a rather disturbing predilection for
young girls.

   
Murray's stomach tightened; he
was thinking of dark-eyed Tessa, a sweat dab over her lips.
   
Loneliness.

   
Loneliness had brought him to
this.
   
I've no friends here.

   
Kirsty had spent a week in
Crybbe, long enough to convince her this was not the border country beloved of
Francis Kilvert.

   
'You once said you'd follow me anywhere my calling took me.
Africa
. . . South America . . .'

   
'But not Crybbe, Murray. I'd die. I'd wither.'

   
She'd given him Kilvert's diary
for his birthday two years ago.

   
Exactly two years ago. Today
was his birthday.

   
'Is there no chance of your
finding a living down here, Murray?' his mother had asked this morning, on the
phone.

   
They'd been proud, of course,
as he had, when he'd been given Crybbe - such a large parish, such a young man.
   
 
Nobody else wanted it.

   
No home-made jam. No Women's
Institute. No welcome at the primary school. No harvest-supper. No
bell-ringers. No friends. No wife.

   
He could, of course, have
betrayed the inert, moribund villagers by siding openly with the New Age
community, who at least sought some kind of spirituality, albeit misguided. He
could, perhaps, have made friends, of a sort, amongst them.

   
But he knew his role as priest
was to support his parishioners, even if they did not support him, apart from token
mute appearance at his services. Even if they did not deserve him.

   
Murray was disgusted with
himself for thinking that.
   
Loneliness. Loneliness had brought him
to this.

The only way either of them knew into the wood was through the Court
grounds. When they arrived there in Fay's Fiesta, Rachel was outside the
stables with one of the interior designers, a small, completely bald man she
introduced as Simon.

   
'What this place is about,'
Simon was saying, 'is drama. Drama and spectacle.'

   
Powys didn't even have to go
inside to see what he meant. The original stable doors had been replaced with
huge portals of plate-glass, through which you could look down into a kind of
theatre, the kitchen and dining-room walled off from a single cavernous room,
the length of the building, ending in a wide wooden desk, its back to the huge
picture-window.

   
And the Tump.

   
When Max was sitting at his
desk, he would be directly under the mound. From the top of the room it would
look as if the great tumulus with its wavy trees was growing out of his head.

   
Especially now that . . .
   
'What happened to the wall?'

   
Rachel grimaced. 'Person or
persons unknown came in the night to do Max a big favour, using Gomer Parry's
bulldozer. I'm sure Humble knows who it was, he tends to be out there in the
small hours, killing things. But Humble isn't saying.'

   
The attack on the wall, the
opening up of the stable-block, with glass at either end ... the formation of a
conduit between the Tump and Crybbe.

   
Powys looked at it through
Goff's eyes: a stream of healing energy - deep blue - surging through the
stables, through the Court itself, through the wood to the church and then into
the town.

   
Equally, though, you could see
the Tump as a huge malignant tumour, assisted at last to spread its black cells
and bring secondary cancers to Crybbe, a town already old and mouldering.

   
'Natural drama,' Simon, the
designer, said. 'Great.'

In the centre of the wood was a huge hole, newly dug, around five feet
deep.

   
'Must be destined for a big
one,' Powys said. 'And they're making sure it's going to be visible.'

   
Fay looked around in horror.
'There was a bit of a clearing when I was here with Henry, but nothing . . .
nothing like this.'

   
The immediate area was strewn
with chainsaw carnage, stumps of slaughtered trees, heaps of wet ash where
branches had been burned.

   
Looking back the way they'd
come, Powys could see the roof of the Court. 'I reckon most of this wood's
going to disappear. They want to open up the view from the prospect chamber,
reconnect the town with the Court - and the Tump.'

   
'But you can't just chop down a
whole wood!' Fay glared at Rachel, who backed off, holding up both hands.

   
'Listen, I know nothing about
this. This is Boulton-Trow's province.'

   
'Aren't trees like this
protected?'

   
'I should imagine so,' said
Rachel. 'But it's hardly an imprisonable offence. You can take out injunctions
to prevent people chopping down individual trees, but once they're gone,
they're gone, and if you do it quietly, well . . .'

   
'Like starting from the middle
and working outwards,' Powys said. 'I don't know how old this wood is, but the
indication from the prospect chamber is that at the end of the sixteenth
century it wasn't here at all. I reckon it was planted not to give the Court
more privacy but so the townsfolk couldn't see the Court. So they could pretend
it wasn't there. Just as the stable-block was put in to block the Court off
from the Tump. They were scared of something.'

   
He was balancing on the edge of
the hole, looking down. So, Fay, this is where Henry discovered there'd been a
stone.'

   
'I think so. Must be.'

   
'And yet he had the feeling the
stone that stood here wasn't an
old
stone.'

   
'That's what he seemed to be
saying.' Fay was more concerned about the wholesale destruction of the wood.
'And they are supposed to be bloody
New
Age
people!' She peered through what remained of the trees. 'Can I get to
the church this way?'

   
'Sure,' Rachel said. 'Five
minutes' walk. There's a footpath newly widened. Goes past a redbrick heap
called Keeper Cottage, which is where Boulton-Trow's living.'

   
'He lives here?' Powys said,
surprised. 'In the wood?'

   
'Yes, and rather him than me.
Go past it, anyway. Fay, and you're in the churchyard in no time.'

   
'Thanks.' Fay pulled a bunch of
keys from her bag. 'Do me a favour, Joe, I've got to catch Murray's blasted
sermon. Could you bring my car round to the church when you've finished here.
It's got the Uher in the back. I'll need to interview him afterwards.'

   
She vanished into the bushes.
Like an elf, he thought.
   
'I came to a decision this morning,'
Rachel said.
   
She sat down on a tree stump. 'I'm
going to quit.'
   
'Good. I mean, that's terrific. You're
wasted on that fat plonker.'

   
'I'm becoming peripheral
anyway. Max doesn't listen to me
any more
. He's getting so fanatical I don't think there's anything you or I can
do to stop him. Also, he's entering one of his DC phases. He's besotted with
Boulton-Trow."

   
'Andy? Is it reciprocated?'

   
'You know the guy better than
me. J.M.'

   
'He's an opportunist.'

   
'There you are, then.'

   
He watched her, pale and
graceful in this arboreal charnel house. She brushed a stray hair out of one
eye.
   
He said, 'When will you tell him?'
   
'Probably after his public meeting on
Tuesday.'

   
'That's marvellous, Rachel. You
won't regret it. Coming to church?'

   
Rachel stood up. 'Oh gosh, far
too busy. Least I can do is make sure his stable-block's ready for him.
Besides, I'm not a churchy person. I'm one of those who thinks it's a waste of
a Sunday - what do you call that, an atheist or an agnostic?'

   
He put an arm around her waist.
'You call it a smug bitch.'

   
He grinned, happy for her.

CHAPTER V

And let's pray now,' Murray Beech said, head bowed, 'for the soul of our
brother Jonathon Preece . . .'
   
Kneeling in a back pew, Fay tensed.

   
'. . . taken so suddenly from
the heart of the agricultural community he served so energetically. Those of us
who knew Jonathon - and can there be any here who did not? - will always
remember his tireless commitment to the Young Farmers' movement and, through
this, to the revival of an industry in which his family has laboured for over
four hundred years.'