Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (51 page)

   
'And you didn't tell me. You
didn't even
tell
me.'

   
They'd taken one of the big
cushions from the sofa in what was now their living-room, at the rear of the
house, and put it on the rug in front of the fire, and then put the
three-legged dog on the cushion.

   
Arnold didn't object to this at
all, but something in Alex had clearly snapped.

   
'It's got to stop, Fay. It
isn't helping. In fact, it's making things a good deal worse.'

   
'I'm sorry. I didn't want to
get you all worked up.'

   
'Well I
am
worked up. Even though it was young Preece and he's dead. Divine
retribution, if you ask me.'

   
'That's not a very Christian
thing to say, Dad.'

   
'Listen, my child.' Alex,
kneeling on the rug, waved a menacing forefinger. 'Don't you ever presume to
tell
me
what's Christian.'

   
He went down on his hands, face
to face with Arnold. 'Poor little perisher. Shouldn't be allowed out with you,
Fay, the way you get up people's noses.'

   
'Oh, I get up people's noses,
do I?'

   
'If you got up noses for a living,
you couldn't do a better job. Coming here with your superior Radio Four
attitude - "Oh dear, have to work for the little local radio station,
never mind, at least there's no need to take it seriously . . ." '

   
'Now just a minute, Dad . . .'

   
' " . . . Oh, God, how am
I expected to do any decent interviews with people who're too thick to string
three coherent sentences together?" '

   
The Canon clambered awkwardly
to his feet and then dumped himself into an armchair he'd battered into shape
over several months. He swung round, as if the chair was a gun-turret, training
on her a hard, blue glare. A once-familiar glare under which she used to
crumble.

   
'You,' he said, 'were never
going to adapt to their way of life, because it was the
wrong
way to do things, because they keep their heads down and
don't parade in front of the council offices with placards if they don't get
their bins emptied.'

   
'Dad, I'm supposed to be a
reporter . . .'

   
'And when this fat fellow -
what's his name? . . . Goff - when this meddling lunatic arrives with his monumentally
crazy scheme to turn the place on its head . . . Well, guess who can't get
along with him
either.
Why, it's Miss
Sophisticated Fay Peters, late of Radio Four! And she won't get back to London where
she belongs . . .'

   
'Dad, you know bloody well . .
.'

   
'. . . because she has this
astonishing notion that her dilapidated old dad won't be able to manage without
her!
Jesus Christ!'

   
Alex slumped into silence.

   
Fay couldn't speak either. If
this was Jean Wendle's doing, it was remarkable. Lucid, cogent, powerful,
clear-eyed. He might have been ten years younger and in total control of himself.

   
She was shaken. He was right,
of course, even if there was a lot he didn't know.

   
Or maybe there were things he
did know.

   
When she did finally manage to
utter something, it wasn't what she'd had it in mind to come out with at all.

   
'Dad,' she heard this pathetic little-girl
voice saying, close to tears. 'Dad, why is Grace haunting us?'

Warren never even saw his grandad until the old bugger was upon him.

   
He was out by the Tump,
thinking how much bigger it looked now from the side where the wall had been
ripped out. Old thing could breathe now.

   
Big, fat mound. Like a giant tit.

   
Gomer'd carted his bulldozer
away, moaning it'd cost over two thousand quid to repair it; Warren thought
that was a load of old crap, Gomer trying it on. Who gave a shit, anyway? Standing
here, Warren felt again the raw, wild power he'd first experienced the night he
buried the old box. He would've been in town, up the alley, shagging the arse
off Tessa, except she'd wanted to go to this poncy art exhibition, could you
believe that?

   
He'd left the old man at home,
drinking. Never used to drink at home. Gone to pieces since Jonathon drowned,
the elder son, the heir.

   
Warren was the heir now. They'd
have to give the bloody old farm to him. You had to laugh, sometimes.

   
Jonathon was being planted on
Wednesday. An inquest could be opened tomorrow. Warren had wanted to go along with
the old man, who had to give evidence that the stiff really was Jonathon
Preece. But they said after he'd done that, it'd be adjourned for a few weeks,
so they'd have a long wait before they heard all the interesting stuff from the
pathologist who'd cut Jonathon up on the slab.

   
After the inquest had been opened,
the body'd be released for burial, but the old man said they wouldn't be having
it back at the house. Another disappointment for Warren, who'd planned to come
down in the night and look under the shroud at all the stitches where the pathologist
had put Jonathon's guts back.

   
From behind, the hand came down
on Warren's shoulder like a bird's claw.
   
'What you doin' yere, boy?'

   
Warren would've turned round
and nutted him, if he hadn't recognized the voice.

   
'Ow're you, Grandad?'

   
'I said, what you doin' yere?'

   
'I come for a walk, like. Free
country, innit?'

   
'Come with me, boy, I want a
word with you.'

   
'Sorry, Grandad, got no time,
see. Got to meet somebody down the town.'

   
The old git looked real weird tonight.
Skeletal. Skin hanging loose over his bones. Powerful grip he had, though, and
he used it now- on Warren's arm, above the elbow, digging into the muscle.

   
'Ow! Bloody gedoff, you old . .
. Where we goin'?'
   
Jimmy Preece pulled him all the way to
the edge of the field, well away from the Tump and the hole where the wall had
been - pointing at this gap now, saying in a hard, rough voice,

   
'You know anythin' about that,
boy?'

   
'What you on about?'

   
'You know what I'm on about.'
The old bugger's eyes were twin glow-worms, burrowed deep in his frazzled face,
'the feller as nicked Gomer's bulldozer and rammed it through the wall. You
know him, boy?'

   
'I never ... I swear to God!'

   
Next thing Warren knew, he was
on his back in the grass half-stunned. The old git'd knocked him clean off his
feet with one massive swipe across the face.

   
'Never use the name of God in
sight of that thing again, you understand me, boy?'

   
Warren lay there, felt like his
face was afire and his brains were loose. 'You mad ole . . . you got no right .
. .'

   
His grandad put out a hand and
helped him to his feet.

   
'Sorry, boy. Nerves is all
shot, see, what with Jonathon and now this.'

   
Warren backed off. Stood with a
hand over his blazing cheek.

   
'Warren, you and me got to
talk.'
   
'That's what you calls it, is it?'

   
His grandad look his cap off,
scratched his head, replaced the cap.

   
'Jonathon dyin', see, that
changes things. With Jonathon around, didn't matter if you went through your
life without knowin' nothin'. Your dad, 'e's the first Preece 'ad less than three
children. Weren't 'is fault your mam left 'im, but that's besides the point. I only
'ad two sisters, but if anythin'd 'appened to me, they'd have done it, no
arguments.'

   
'What you on about?'

   
'The bell, Warren.'

   
'Oh, that ole thing. Stuff
that.'

   
'You what, boy?'

   
'Stuff it. I done some thinkin'
about that. You can all get bloody stuffed, you think I'm ever gonna take over
that bell from Dad. Jonathon might've been mug enough, but I couldn't give a
fucking shit, you wanna know the truth, Grandad. My future's not round yere,
see. I'm a musician.'

   
'Music?' The old feller spat hard,
once. Gobbed right there on the grass. 'Music? Pah!'

   
Warren backed off, fell his face
contorting. His finger was out and pointing at the old bastard's sucked-in
face.

   
'You know
nothin'
,' Warren snarled. 'You wanner know about my music, you ask
Max Goff. 'E's gonner sign me, see. 'E's gonner sign the band. So you can do
what you like. You can fuckin' disinherit me . . . you can keep your run-down
farm. And you can take your bell and you can shove it, grandad. I couldn't care
less.'
   
His grandad went quiet, standing
there, face as grey as the stone.

   
'I shouldn't worry,' Warren
sneered. 'One o' them newcomers'll take it on. That Colonel Croston, 'e's keen
on bells.'

   
'No! The Preeces done it
through plague and droughts and wartime when ringing bells was an offence. But
we done it, boy, 'cause it's got to be done, see. Got to be.'

   
The old feller near
desperation. Touch of the pleading there now. Stuff him.

   
'I don't wanner talk to you no
more. Grandad. You're not all bloody there, you ask me.'
   
'Warren, there's things . . .'

   
'Oh yeah, there's things I
don't know! Always, ever since I was so 'igh, people been tellin' me there's
things I don't know, maybe I don't wanner know, maybe . . . What's up with you
now?'

   
His grandad was looking past
him at something that caused his mouth to open a crack, bit of dribble out the
side, false teeth jiggling about. Disgusting.

   
He turned and began to walk
back towards the road, towards the town. Warren slinking half a dozen paces
behind. When the gap between them was wide enough, Warren turned and saw what
looked like the sunset reflected in one of the top windows of the old house,
just below the roof-line.

   
Except there wasn't any sun, so
it couldn't be a sunset.
   
Warren shrugged.

CHAPTER X

The smell happened first.

   
It happened quite suddenly, as
if in the cracking of a rotten egg. The smell and with it the light. Elements of
the same change.

   
The smell was filthy. Sulphur,
and something cess-pit putrid.

   
The light came in oily yellows,
the yellow of candles made of animal fat and the yellow of pus from a wound
gone bad. The light came from no particular direction but glistened on the
stone walls like lard.

   
Rachel shrank from the walls,
but she couldn't get away from the stairs. Where she crouched, it was no longer
dry and dusty but wet, warm and slick, like phlegm. She touched a stone step
just once, and something unpleasant came off on her fingers. She tried to wipe
them on the oak door, but that also was coated with a thick, cheesy grease,
gritty here and there with what felt like fly corpses.

   
Rachel pulled the hand away in
disgust, wiped it on her Barbour, knowing she could no longer bring herself to
beat on this door. Her fists were sore and peeling, anyway, and if there was
anyone out there they weren't going to help her. Perhaps they were waiting for
the cool, superior, professional woman to break down, to shriek and sob and plead.

   
'I can't stand this,' she said
aloud. 'I shall be sick.'

   
Which couldn't make the
atmosphere any more foetid.

   
But if I was a woman with any
imagination, she thought, I would be very, very frightened.

   
For the Court, always so drab
and dusty and derelict - gloomy, but no more menacing than an empty warehouse -
had swollen into a basic sort of life.