Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (82 page)

   
'Sure,' Fay said, more calmly
than she felt.

   
'We need to try and break up
that meeting well before ten. Because if they all start pouring out of the town
hall and there's something . . . I don't know, something in the square, I don't
know what might happen. We're going to have to break it up, set off the fire
alarm or something.'

   
'I doubt if they've got one,
but I'll think of something.'

   
'I didn't necessarily mean
you.'

   
'I'm the best person to do it.
I've got nothing to lose. I have no credibility left. What you need to do -
because you know all the fancy terminology - is go and see Jean, see if she's
got any ideas. And make sure Dad lies low. Can you take Arnold?'

   
'Sure.'

   
He looked down at her. He
couldn't see her very well. She looked like an elf, if paler than the
archetype. A plaster elf that fell off the production line at the painting stage,
so all the colours had run into one corner of its face.

   
He put his arms around her and
lightly kissed her lips. The lips were very dry, but they yielded. He felt her
fear and hugged her.

   
Fay smiled up at him, or tried
to. 'Watch it, Joe,' she said. 'Remember where you are.'

CHAPTER V

Have you ever performed an
exorcism?

   
Sitting in the near-dark in
Grace's parlour. Sitting awkwardly, with his elbows on the table where Fay used
to keep her editing machine until . . . until somebody broke it.

   
And the only voices he could
hear were Jean's and Murray's alternately repeating the same strange question.
   
Exorcism.
   
Well, have I?

   
Canon Alex Peters remembered
the sunny afternoon when Murray was here - only about a week ago - the very
last sunny afternoon he could remember.

   
Remembered exploring his memory
with all the expectation of a truffle-hunter in Milton Keynes . . . finally
dredging up the Suffolk business.
'Wasn't
the full bell, book and candle routine . . . more of a quickie,
bless-this-house operation.
   
'Actually I think I made it up as I
went along.'
   
Grace's chair waited in front of
Grace's fireplace. The brass balls twisted in the see-through base of Grace's
clock, catching the last of the light, pulsing with the final death-throes of
the day.

   
And now, when you really need
the full bell, book and candle routine, you haven't got the right book and the
only bell in town is the bloody curfew which we don't talk about.

   
Candles, though. Oh yes, plenty
of bloody candles. Everybody in power-starved Crybbe has a houseful of bloody
candles.

   
Alex dipped his head into his
hands and moaned.

   
What are you doing to me,
Wendy? I can't handle this, you know I can't.

   
He looked at the clock. He
could see the twisting balls but not the time. But it must be getting on for
nine.

   
Nine o'clock and Alex sitting
waiting for his dead wife, and frightened.

   
Oh yes. Coming closer to the
end didn't take away the fear.

   
'Dear Lord,' said Alex
hopelessly. 'Take unto Thee Thy servant, Grace. Make her welcome in Thine Heavenly
Kingdom, that she should no longer dwell in the half-light of limbo. Let her
not remain in this place of suffering but ascend for ever into Thy holy light.'

   
Alex paused and looked across
at the mantelpiece as though it were an altar.

   
'Amen,' he said, and lowered
his chin to his chest.
   
He had no holy water, no vestments, no
Bible, no prayer book.

   
An old man in faded Kate Bush
T-shirt, tracksuit trousers and an ancient, peeling pair of gymshoes, standing,
head bowed in the centre of the room, making it up as he went along.

   
What else could he do?

   
Certainly not this strident
stuff about commanding unquiet spirits to begone. Not to Grace, a prim little
lady who never even went to the newsagent's without a hat and gloves.

   
'Forgive me, Grace,' Alex said.

   
He sat down in the fireside
chair, which had been hers, on those special occasions when the sitting-room
was in use.
   
'Forgive me,' he said.
   
And fell asleep.

Fay slipped into the hall unprepared for the density of the crowd.

   
How could so many be so silent?

   
Every seat was taken and there
were even more people standing, lining every spare foot of wall, two or three
deep in some places.

   
Wynford Wiley, guardian of the
main portal, turned his sweating cheese of a head as she came in, rasping at
her. 'Not got that tape recorder, 'ave you?'

   
Fay held up both hands to show
she hadn't, and Wynford still looked suspicious, as if he thought she might be
wired up, with a hidden microphone in her hair. For Christ's sake, what did it
matter?

   
She stood just inside the doors
and saw the impossibility of her task. There must be over three hundred people
in here. Joe Powys hadn't been entirely serious, but he'd been right: the best
thing they could have done was pile into the car and make a dash for
civilization. And she'd been so glib:
I'll
think of something.

   
Fay looked among the multitude,
at individual faces, each one set as firm as a cardboard mask. Except in the
New Age ghetto, towards the front of the hall, to her left, where there was a
variety of expressions. A permanent half-smile on the nodding features of a
smart man in a safari suit. A woman with an explosion of white hair wearing a
beatific expression, face upturned to the great god Goff.

   
Max was being politely
cross-examined on behalf of the townsfolk by the chairman, craggy Colonel
Croston, who Fay knew from council meetings - the only councillor who'd ever
spoken to her before the meetings.

   
'I think one thing that many
people would like me to ask you, Mr Goff, is about the stones. Why is it
necessary to erect what I suppose many people would regard as crude symbols of
pagan worship?'

   
Goff seemed entirely at ease
with the question.

   
'Well, you know . . .' Leaning
back confidently in his chair 'I think all that pagan stuff is a concept which
would raise many an eyebrow in most parts of Wales, where nearly every year a
new stone circle is erected as part of the national eisteddfod. I realize the
eisteddfodic tradition is not so strong here on the border any more - if it
ever was - but if you were to place these stones in the ground in Aberystwyth,
or Caernarfon, or Fishguard, I doubt anyone would even notice. The point is, Mr
Chairman . . . all this is largely symbolic. It symbolises a realisation that
this town was once important enough to be a place of pilgrimage - like Lourdes,
perhaps. And that
it can be again.'

   
Spontaneous sycophantic
applause burst from the New Age quarter.

   
Is he blatantly lying, Fay
wondered. Or does he seriously believe this bullshit?

   
Or are we, Joe Powys and I,
grossly, insultingly, libelously wrong about everything?

   
But almost as soon as she
thought this, she began to feel very strongly that they were not wrong.

   
It was ten minutes past nine,
the chamber lit by wrought-iron electric chandeliers, and she just
knew
there was going to be a power cut
within the next half hour.

'Come in, Joe,' Jean Wendle said. 'I fear we shall be losing our
electricity supply before too long.'
   
How do you know that?'

   
Carrying Arnold, he followed
her down the hall and into her living-room, where a pleasant Victorian lamp
with a pale-blue shade burned expensive aromatic oil.

   
'There's a sequence,' Jean
said, perching birdlike on a chair-arm. Tea?'

   
 
'No time, thanks. What's the sequence?'
   
'Well, temperature fluctuation, to
begin with. Either a drop or a raising of the temperature. Coupled with a kind
of tightening of the air pressure that you come to recognize. Y'see, these new
trip mechanisms or whatever they use do seem to be rather more vulnerable to it
than the old system. Or so it seems to me.'

   
Jean crossed her legs neatly.
She was wearing purple velour trousers and white moccasins. 'No time, eh? My.'

   
He put Arnold down. 'When you
say "it" . . . ?'

   
'It? Oh, we could be talking
about anything, from the geological formation - did you know there's a fault
line running through mid Wales and right along the border here, there've been
several minor but significant earthquakes in recent years, there's the geology,
to start with . . .'

   
'Jean,' Powys said, 'we're in a
lot of trouble.'

   
'Aye,' Jean Wendle said, 'I
know.'

   
'So let's not talk about
temperature fluctuations or rock strata, let's talk about Michael Wort.'
   
'What about him?'

   
Powys sat down, gathered his
thoughts and then spent three minutes telling her, in as flat and factual a way
as he could manage, his and Fay's conclusions. Ending with the shadow of Black
Michael falling over Crybbe, whatever remained of his earthly power centres
fused with the town's, the exchange of dark energy.

   
He felt Arnold pushing against
his legs in the way he'd done last night in Bell Street, before leading him to
the blood and the semi-conscious Fay. Powys reached down a hand and patted him,
and Arnold began to pant. He's aware of the urgency, too, Powys thought. But
then, he's a dowser's dog.

   
'It'll try and take the church
tonight,' he said. 'And then . . . God knows . . .'

   
Jean sat and listened. When he
finished she was silent for over a minute. Powys looked at his watch and then
bit on a knuckle.

   
'That's very interesting,' Jean
said. 'You may be right.'

   
Arnold whined.

   
'Shush.' Powys laid a hand on
the dog's side. Arnold breathing rapidly.

   
'We haven't any time to waste,
Jean. I think . . . it seems to me I need to get over to the church and ensure
that . . . well, that old Preece makes it to the belfry. I can't think what
else I can do that's halfway meaningful, can you?'

   
Jean thought for a moment and
then shook her head.

   
'What I think is ... in fact I
know . . . that you ought to go for the source.'

   
Her eyes were very calm and
sure.
   
Powys said, 'I don't know what you
mean.'
   
'The source, Joe. Where it begins.'
   
He thought of the great dark mound
with its swaying trees and the blood of Henry Kettle on its flank.
   
'That's right,' Jean said. 'The Tump.'
   
'I . . .' It was forbidding enough by
daylight.
   
'Don't think you can handle that?'

   
'I don't see the point, I'm not
a magician. I'm not a shaman - I'm just a bloody writer. Not even that any
more.'

   
No, he might just as well have
said. I don't think I
can
handle it.
This was Jean Wendle he was talking to. Jean Wendle, the psychic. Also Jean
Wendle the barrister. The human lie detector.

   
'Oh, Joe, Joe . . . You're like
Alex. You won't face up to the way it is. To what has to be done. You lost the
wee girl Rose, you lost Rachel Wade.'

   
'No.' He shook his head. He
didn't understand. He hadn't understood when it happened - either time - and he
didn't understand now.

   
What am I
missing
? Suddenly he was in a mental frenzy Why did she have to say
that? Why did she have to slap him across the face with the incomprehensible
horror of Rose and Rachel? And was he missing something?