Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (69 page)

   
'Who don't want anything to do
with farming, as you well know, Mr Goff.'
   
'Huh?'

   
"E's gonner be a star,
isn't that right?'
   
'I don't . . .'

   
'Pop guitarist, isn't it?
You're gonner make the boy a millionaire. Sign 'im up, turn 'im into a big star
so he 'e can get his lazy arse out of Crybbe and don't need to 'ave nothing to
do with us ever again . . . You ask me if there's anything you can do, Mr Goff,
I reckon you done enough.'

For the first time, Murray Beech had locked the church for the night.
He'd waited until the curfew was over and then walked over with the keys,
surprised to find Jimmy Preece and not his son emerging from the belfry.

   
In an arid voice, from which
all emotion had been drained, Jimmy Preece had explained why he was here,
leaving Murray horrified. He'd remembered hearing the ambulance, wondering who
it was for. How could lightning strike twice, so cruelly, at a single family?
How could any kind of God . . . ?

   
Murray often wondered just how
many of his colleagues in the church seriously believed any more in a Fount of
Heavenly Wisdom. Perhaps there should be a confidential survey, some sort of
secret ballot within the Organization. No one could fault the basic Christian ethic
but Murray couldn't help wondering if it wasn't in the best interests of
sustaining a credible, relevant, functioning clergy to have this anachronism
known as God quietly phased out. God was a millstone. Three times as many people
would seek clerical help with their personal problems if they didn't have to
cope with God.

   
And without God the question of
sacrilege would not arise, and nobody, he thought now, standing by the altar
rail, would have to cope with . . .
this
.

   
The church door had not been
forced last night. A window had simply been smashed in the vestry.

   
This morning Jonathon Preece
lay apparently undisturbed, a silent sentinel, still, presumably - and Murray
was not inclined to check - in his coffin, still safely supported on its bier,
a slim metal trolley, only slightly more ornate than those used in hospitals.
The coffin was still pointing at the altar with its white and gold cloth.

   
Neither the coffin nor the bier
had been disturbed. Only the altar itself. In the centre of the cloth, a silver
dish had been heaped high with something brown and pungent.

   
Murray approached with trepidation
and distaste to find the substance in the dish was not what he'd feared.

   
Next to the dish was the tin
from which the brown gunge had been scraped.

   
It was dog food.

   
Murray was almost relieved.

   
And so puzzled by this that he
failed to carry out a more detailed inspection of the church and therefore did
not find out what else had been done.

Goff raised a faint smile and both hands. 'Im starting to understand, Mr
Preece. I see where you're coming from. The boy sent me a tape, right?'

   
'You tell me, sir, you tell
me.'

   
'Sure I'll tell you. This kid .
. .'

   
'Warren.'

   
'Warren, yeah. Mr Mayor, you
know how many tapes we get sent to us? Jeez, I don't even know myself - a
thousand, two thousand a year. How many we do anything with? In a good year -
two. Young . . .'

   
'Warren.'

   
'Sure. Well, the reason he got
further than ninety-nine point nine per cent of the others was he sent it to
the Cock and I listened to it myself. The normal thing is I pay guys to pay other
guys to listen to the tapes on the slushpile, saves me a lotta grief, right?
But I didn't wanna appear snobbish, big London record chief sneering at local hopefuls.
So I listened to the tape and I had a letter sent back, and what it said was,
this stuff isn't basically up to it, but we aren't closing the door. When you
feel you've improved, try us again, we're always prepared to listen. You know
what that means? You'd like me to give you a frank and honest translation, Mr
Mayor?'

   
Jimmy Preece swallowed. 'Yes,'
he said. 'I'd like you to be quite frank.'

   
'I'm always frank, Mr Mayor,
'cept when it's gonna destroy somebody, like in the case of this tape. You ever
hear your grandson's band, Mr Preece?'

   
'Used to practise in the barn,
till Jack turned 'em out. Hens wouldn't lay.'

   
'Yeah, that sounds like them,'
said Goff, smiling now. 'Crude, lyrically moronic and musically inept. They
might improve, but I wouldn't take any bets. My advice, don't let the kid give
up sheep-shearing classes.'

   
It went quiet in the living-room
at Court Farm. In the whole house.

   
'Thank you,' Jimmy Preece said
dully.
   
'No worries, Mr Preece. Believe me.
The boy'll make a farmer yet.'

Behind the door, at the foot of the stairs, Warren Preece straightened
up.

   
His face entirely without
expression.

CHAPTER II

Jean's narrow town house had three floors and five bedrooms, only three
of them with beds. In one, Alex awoke.
   
To his amazement he knew at once
exactly who he was, where he was and how he came to be there.
   
Separating his thoughts had once been
like untangling single strands of spaghetti from a bolognese.

   
Could Jean Wendle be right?
Could it be that his periods of absent-mindedness, of the mental mush - of
wondering what day it was, even what time of his life it was - were the results
not so much of a physical condition but of a reaction, to his surroundings?
Through living in a house disturbed by unearthly energy. A house on a ley-line.

   
No ley-lines passed through
this
house. Something Jean said she'd
been very careful to establish before accepting the tenancy.

   
Why not try an experiment, Jean
had suggested. Why not spend a night here? An invitation he'd entirely misunderstood
at first. Wondering whether, in spite of all his talk, he'd be quite up to it.

   
Jean had left a message on
Fay's answering machine to say Alex wouldn't be coming home tonight.

   
She'd shown him to this very
pleasant room with a large but indisputedly single bed and said good night. He
might notice, she said, a difference in the morning.

   
And, by God, she was right.

   
The sun shone through a small
square window over the bed and Alex lay there relishing his freedom.
   
For that was what it was.

   
And all thanks to Jean Wendle.
How could he ever make it up to her?

   
Well, he knew how he'd
like
to make it up to her . . . Yes, this
morning he certainly felt up to it.

   
Alex pushed back the bedclothes
and swung his feet on to a floor which fell satisfyingly firm under his bare
feet. He flexed his toes, stood, walked quite steadily to the door. Clad only
in the Bermuda shorts he'd worn as underpants since the days when they used to
give ladies a laugh, thus putting them at their ease. Under the clerical costume,
a pair of orange Bermuda shorts. 'I shall have them in purple, when I'm a
bishop.' Half the battle, Alex had found, over the years, was giving ladies a laugh.

   
There was the sound of a radio
from downstairs.

   
'. . . local news at nine o'clock from Offa's Dyke Radio, the
Voice of the Marches. Here's Tim Benfield.

   
'Good morning. A farmer is critically ill in hospital after his
tractor overturned on a hillside at Crybbe. The accident happened only days
after the tragic drowning of his son in the river nearby. James Barlow has the
details. . .'

   
Barlow? Should have been Fay,
Alex thought. Why wasn't it Fay?

   
Alex found a robe hanging
behind the door and put it on. Bit tight, but at least it wasn't frilly. In the
bathroom, he splashed invigorating cold water on his face, walked briskly down
the stairs, smoothing down his hair and his beard.

   
He found her in the kitchen, a
sunny, high-ceilinged room with a refectory table and a kettle burbling on the
Rayburn.

   
'Good morning, Alex.' Standing
by the window with a slim cigar in her fingers, fresh and athletic-looking in a
light-green tracksuit.

   
'You know,' Alex said, 'I
really think it bloody well is a good morning. All thanks to you, Jean.'

   
Jean. It struck him that he'd
persisted in calling her Wendy simply because it was something like her surname
which he could never remember.

   
He went to the window, which
had a limited view into a side-street off the square. He saw a milkman. A
postman. A grocer hopefully pulling out his sunblind.

   
Normality.

   
Harmless normality.

   
He thought about Grace. Perhaps
if he left the house then what remained of Grace would fade away. Fay had been
right; there was no reason to stay here. Everything was clear from here, a
different house, not two hundred yards away - but not on a spirit path.

   
Spirit paths. New Age nonsense.

   
But he couldn't remember the
last time he'd felt so happy.

Hereward Newsome was seriously impressed by the painting's tonal
responses, the way the diffused light was handled - shades of Rembrandt.

   
'How long have you been
painting?'

   
'I've always painted,' she
said.

   
'Just that I haven't seen any
of your work around.'

   
'You will,' she said.

   
He wanted to say, Did you
really do this yourself? But that might sound insulting, might screw up the
deal. And this painting was now very important, after the less than satisfactory
buying trip to the West Country. An item to unveil to Goff with pride.

   
Hereward had returned the previous
afternoon, terrified of facing Jocasta, with two hotel bills, a substantial
drinks tab and a mere three paintings, including a study of Silbury Hill which was
little more than a miniature and had cost him in excess of twelve hundred
pounds.

   
To his surprise, his wife had
appeared almost touchingly pleased to have him home.

   
She'd looked tired, there were
brown crescents under her eyes and her skin seemed coarser. She'd told him of
the terrible incident at the Court in which Rachel Wade had died. Hereward, who
didn't think Jocasta had known Rachel Wade all that well, had been more concerned
at the effect on his wife, who looked . . . well, she looked her age. For the
first time in years, Hereward felt protective towards Jocasta, and, in an odd way,
stimulated.

   
He'd shown her his miserable
collection of earth-mystery paintings.

   
'Never mind,' she'd said,
astonishingly.
   
He'd trimmed his beard and made a
tentative advance, but Jocasta felt there was a migraine hovering.

   
This morning they'd awoken
early because of the strength of the light - the first truly sunny morning in a
week. Jocasta had gone off before half past eight to open The Gallery, and Hereward
had stayed at home to chop logs. On a day like this, it was good to be a
countryman.

   
Then the young woman had
telephoned about the painting and insisted on bringing it to the house, saying
she didn't want to carry it through town.

   
He thought he'd seen her before,
but not in Crybbe, surely. Dark hair, dark-eyed. Darkly glamorous and confident
in an offhand way. Arrived in a blue Land Rover.

   
She wore a lot of make-up. Black
lipstick. But she couldn't be older than early-twenties, which made her mature
talent quite frightening.

   
If indeed she'd done this herself;
he didn't dare challenge her.

   
It was a large canvas - five feet
by four. When he leaned it against the dresser it took over the room
immediately. What it did was to draw the room into the scene, reducing the
kitchen furniture to shadows, even in the brightness of this cheerfully sunny
morning.