Crybbe (AKA Curfew) Read online

  'Precisely. And what happened? They lost touch with it.'

  'Lost touch with what?'

  'With the life force, Mr. Kettle! Listen, give me your opinion on this. Whaddaya think would happen if. . . ?'

  Max Goff walked right up to Mr. Kettle in the ill-lit square and looked down at him, lowering his voice as if he were about to offer him a tip for the stock market. Mr. Kettle felt most uneasy. He was getting the dead-sheep smell.

  'Whadda you think would happen,' Goff whispered, 'if we were to put the stones back?'

  Well, Mr. Kettle thought, that depends. Depends on the true nature of leys, about which we know nothing, only speculate endlessly. Depends whether they're forgotten arteries of what you New Age fellers like to call the Life Force. Or whether they're something else, like paths of the dead.

  But all he said was, 'I don't know, Mr. Goff. I wouldn't like to say.'

  CHAPTER IV

  How old was the box, then?

  Warren Preece reckoned it was at least as old as the panelling in the farmhouse hall, which was estimated to be just about the oldest part of the house. So that made it sixteenth century or so.

  He was into something here all right. And the great thing, the really fucking great thing about this was that no other bastard knew about it. Lived in this house all his life, but he'd never had cause to poke about in the chimney before - well, you wouldn't, would you? - until that morning, when his old man had shouted, 'Put that bloody guitar down, Warren, and get off your arse and hold this torch, boy!'

  Piss off, Warren had spat under his breath, but he'd done it, knowing what a bastard the old man could be when a job wasn't going right.

  Then, standing in the fireplace, shining the torch up the chimney - the old man on a step-ladder struggling to pull the crumbling brick out - a bloody great lump of old cement had fallen away and broken up and some of the dust had gone in Warren's eye.

  'You clumsy bastard. Dad!' Warren fell back, dropping the torch, ramming a knuckle into his weeping eye, hearing masonry crumbling where he'd staggered and kicked out. If he made it to college without being registered disabled through living in this broken-down pile of historic crap, it'd be a real achievement.

  'Come on. Warren, don't mess about! I need that light.'

  'I'm f . . . Hang on, Dad, I can't flaming see.' Hunched in the fireplace, scraping at his gritty, watery eye.

  And it was then, while picking up the torch - flashing it on and off to make sure the bulb hadn't broken when he'd dropped it - that Warren found this little tunnel.

  It was no more than a deepish recess in the side wall of the fireplace, about eighteen inches off the ground. Which would have put it on a level with the top of the dog grate, when they'd had one. Must have been where he'd kicked back with his heel, hacking off a cob of sixteenth-century gunge.

  Warren shone the light into the recess and saw what looked like carving. Put a hand inside, felt about.

  Hey, this was . . .

  'Warren! What you bloody doing down there, boy?'

  Quickly he shoved bits of brick into the opening, ramming them tight with the heel of his trainer. Then shone the torch back up the chimney for the old man pretty damn fast.

  In fact, for the rest of the day he'd been a very willing labourer - 'You stay there, Dad, I'll get it.' 'Want me to mix the cement down here and pass it up, Dad?' 'Cuppa tea, Dad?' Anything so the old man'd get the job done and bugger off out of the way.

  The old man had been surprised and pleased, grinning through a faceful of soot, patting Warren on the shoulder. 'We done a good job there, boy. He won't set on fire again, that ole chimney. Fancy a pint?'

  He'd never said that before. Well, not to Warren. Most nights, sometimes with Jonathon, he just went off to the Cock without a word.

  So Warren, too, was surprised and almost pleased. But wasn't going for no pint with the old man tonight. No way.

  'Told Tessa I'd be round, Dad. Sorry.'

  The old man looked quite relieved. Warren had watched him tramping off up the track, eager to wash the dust out of his throat. So eager he hadn't bothered to clean up the mess in the hearth and so hadn't noticed anything he shouldn't.

  Stupid git.

  Warren got himself a can of Black Label from the fridge and went back to the fireplace to pull out them old bricks.

  He'd got the box out, was squatting on the hearth, dusting off, when he heard Jonathon's car. He'd tucked the box under his arm - bloody heavy, it was, too - and got it out through the back door and round the back of the barn, where he'd hidden it in the bottom of an old water-butt.

  And gone up to his room and waited for Jonathon to piss off.

  The way he saw it, you didn't seal up an oak box like this and stash it away in a secret compartment in the chimney unless there was something pretty damn valuable inside. And, as he'd discovered, just about anything a bit old was valuable these days.

  Warren had a mate, a guy who got rid of stuff, no questions asked. He could be looking at big money here on the box alone, it was in good nick, this box, sealed up warm and dry for centuries. Warren looked at the box and saw- a new amplifier for the band. He looked harder and saw this second-hand Stratocaster guitar. Felt the Strat hanging low round his hip, its neck slippy with sweat.

  The curfew bell was tolling in the distance. His dad had sunk a swift pint and plodded off up the tower to do his night duty, silly old bugger.

  Why do you keep on doing that. Dad? Don't pay, do it? And no bugger takes any notice 'part from setting their watches.'

  'Tradition, boy. Your grandad did it for over thirty year. And when I gets too rheumaticky to climb them steps Jonathon'll do it, right, son?'

  Jonathon nodding. He was always 'son', whereas Warren was 'the boy'. Said something, that did.

  What it said was that Jonathon, the eldest son, was going to get the farm. Well, OK, if Jonathon wanted to wallow in shit, shag sheep all his life, well, fair enough.

  Warren didn't give a toss about going to college in Hereford either, except that was where the other guys in the band lived.

  But Crybbe - he could hardly believe this - was where Max Goff was going to be.

  Max Goff, of Epidemic Records.

  He'd seen him. Been watching him for days. Somehow Max Goff had to hear the band. Because this band was real good - he could feel it. This band fucking cooked.

  The box was in one of the sheds on the old workbench now. He'd rigged up an old lambing light to work by, realizing this was going to be a delicate operation. Didn't want to damage the box, see, because it could be worth a couple of hundred on its own.

  Now. He had a few tools set out on the bench: hammer, screwdriver, chisel, Stanley knife. Precision stuff, this.

  Warren grinned.

  OK, if it came to it, he would have to damage it, because he hadn't got all bloody night. But better to go in from underneath than cut the lid, which had a bit of a carving on it nothing fancy, like, nothing clever, just some rough symbols. Looked like they'd been done with a Stanley knife. A sixteenth century Stanley knife. Warren had to laugh.

  Round about then, Crybbe had another power cut, although Warren Preece, working in the shed with a lambing light, wasn't affected at all.

  But Fay Morrison was furious.

  She'd always preferred to do her editing at night, especially in the days when she was producing complete programmes, there'd just be her and the tape-machine under a desk-lamp, and then, when the tape was cut together, she would switch off the lamp and sit back, perhaps with a coffee, and play it through in the cosy darkness. Only a red pilot-light and the soft green glow of the level-meters, the gentle swish of the leader tape gliding past the heads.

  Magic.

  This was what made radio so much more satisfying than television. The intimacy of moments like this. And the fact that you could do all the creative work on your own, only going into studio for the final mix.

  Fay really missed all that. Hadn't imagined she'd miss it so much.
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  Tonight, she'd waited until her father had wandered off to the pub for his nightly whisky and his bar-supper. And then she'd gone into her office, which used to be Grace Legge's sitting-room.

  And still was, really, in the daytime. But at night you could switch off the G-plan furnishing and the fifties fireplace, and the front room of Number 8, Bell Street, Crybbe, became more tolerable, with only a second-hand Revox visible in the circle light from the Anglepoise.

  Fay had a package to edit for Offa's Dyke Radio. Only a six-minute piece to be slotted into somebody else's afternoon chat-and-disc show on what was arguably the worst local shoe-string station in the country.

  But it was still radio, wasn't it? After a fashion.

  And this morning, doing her contribution for a series on - yawn, yawn - 'people with unusual hobbies', Fay had actually got interested in something. For a start, he was ever such a nice old chap - most of the people around here, far from being quaint rural characters, were about as appealing as dried parsnip.

  And he'd actually been happy to talk to her, which was a first. Until, she'd come here. Fay had encountered very few people who didn't want to be on the radio: no cameras, no lights, and no need to change your shirt or have your hair done. But in this area, people would make excuses - 'Oh, I'm too busy, call again sometime.' Or simply refuse - 'I don't want be on the wireless' - as if, by collecting their voices on tape you were going to take their souls away.

  Yes, it was that primitive sometimes.

  Or so she felt.

  But the water-diviner, or dowser, had been different and Fay had been fascinated to learn how it was done. Nothing apparently, to do with the hazel twig, as such. Simply a faculty you developed through practice, nothing as airy-fairy as 'intuition'.

  And it definitely was not psychic.

  He kept emphasizing that, scrutinizing her a bit warily as she stood there, in her T-shirt and jeans, wishing she'd brought a sweater and a wind-muff for the microphone. It had been bit breezy in that field, even if tomorrow was Midsummer Day.

  'Do you think I could do it, Henry?' she'd asked, on tape. You always asked this question, sounding as if it had just occurred to you. There would then follow an amusing couple of minutes of your attempting to do whatever it was and, of course, failing dismally.

  'You could have a try,' he'd said, playing along. And she'd taken the forked twig in both hands. 'Hold it quite firmly so it doesn't slip, but don't grip it too hard. And, above all,

  relax . . .'

  'OK,' she'd heard herself say through the speaker. And that was when the power went off.

  'Bloody hell!' Fay stormed to the window to see if the other houses in the street were off. Which they were.

  It was the fourth power cut in a month.

  'I don't believe it!'

  OK, you could imagine that on some distant rock in the Hebrides, even today, there would be quite a few times when the power got waylaid on its way from the mainland.

  But this was close to the epicentre of Britain. There were high mountains. And they were not in the middle of an electric storm.

  She couldn't remember if it was South Wales Electricity or Midlands Electricity. But neither could be up to much if they were unable to maintain supplies to a whole town - OK, a very small town - for longer than a fortnight without a break.

  Hereward Newsome, who ran the art gallery in town, had complained to his MP and tried to get up a petition about it, but he'd given that up in disgust after collecting precisely fifteen signatures, all from newcomers, including Fay and her dad.

  Of course, the Newsomes' problem did appear to be somewhat more serious. Not only were they having to suffer the power cuts but they were affected by other surges in supply, which, Hereward swore, were almost doubling their electricity bills. He was getting into a terrible state about it.

  Actually, Fay was a bit dubious about the huge bills being caused by a fault in the system. She grinned into the darkness, it was probably Jocasta's vibrator, on overdrive.

  There was a bump and the sound of two empty spools clattering to the floor.

  'Pushkin, is that you?'

  Grace's cats got everywhere.

  Fay decided she didn't like this room very much in the absolute dark.

  She felt along the wall for the tape-recorder plug, removed it and went to bed.

  Living in Crybbe would drive anybody to a vibrator.

  Warren should have known.

  Sixteenth-century lock. Not as if it was Chubb's finest, was it? Stanley knife into the groove, sliding it around a bit, that's all it took. Then the screwdriver pushed into the gap. Hit just once with the palm of his hand.

  It didn't exactly fly open, the box. Well, it wouldn't, would it?

  Being as how it had turned out to be lead-lined.

  Fucking lead! No wonder it was so heavy. Good job he didn't tried to cut into it through the bottom.

  'Course that lead lining was a bit of a disappointment. Warren had been hoping the box weighed so much because was full of gold coins or something of that order. Lead, even antique lead, was worth bugger all, he was pretty sure of that.

  Funny smell.

  Well, not that funny. Old, it smelled old and musty. He moved the lambing light closer, poked a finger in.

  Cloth, it was. Some sort of old fabric, greyish. Better be a bit careful here, bloody old thing might disintegrate.

  On the other hand, he couldn't afford to waste any time. His old man - who wasn't much of a drinker - might even be on his way back from the church. He might, of course, have called back round the pub for one with Jonathon and his mates. (If Warren was in the pub with his mates and the old man came in, he'd turn his stool round, pretend he hadn't seen him, but Jonathon would call him over, buy him a pint; that was the kind of smarmy git Jonathon was.) But most likely he'd come home, getting a few early nights in before haymaking time and dipping and all that rural shit.

  And as he came up the track he'd see the light in the shed.

  Warren pulled the lamp down, away from the shed window. He couldn't see much through the glass, with its thick covering of cobwebs full of dust and dead insects, except that it was very nearly dark and there was a mist.

  He was feeling cold now, wanting to get it over with and go back to the house. It was going to be no big deal, anyway. Old papers probably. Some long-dead bugger's last will and testament.

  He prodded the cloth stuff with the end of the Stanley knife and then dug the blade in a bit and used the knife to pull the fabric out of the box in one lump.

  What was underneath the cloth was whiteish and yellowish like brittle old paper or parchment crumpled up.

  He gave it a prod.

  And the Stanley knife dropped out of Warren's fingers - fingers that had gone suddenly numb.

  'Aaaa . . .'

  Warren caught his breath, voice gone into a choke.

  The knife fell into the box and made this horrible little chinking noise.

  CHAPTER V

  Mr. Kettle raised a hand to Goff as he drove away. He was thinking, well, somebody had to buy the place. Better this rich, flash bugger - surely - than a family man with a cosy wife and perhaps a daughter or two, with horses for the stables and things to lose. Good things. Peace of mind. Balance of mind.

  He left the town on the Ludlow road which would take him past the Court. It wouldn't be Goff's only home. Well, he'd move in and stride around for a while, barking orders to battalions of workmen, changing this and restoring that in the hope it would give the house some personality, a bit of atmosphere. And then he'd get tired of the struggle and go back to London, and the Court would become a weekend home, then an every-other-weekend home, then a holiday home, then just an investment.

  Then he'd sell it.

  And the process would begin all over again.

  Dead ahead of him at this point, the Court crouched like an animal behind the Tump. The Tump was a mound which at some stage may or may not have had a castle on top. Trees sprouted from
it now and brambles choked the slopes. The Tump was a field away from the road, about two hundred yards, and there was a wall around it.

  Arnold whined once and crept into the back seat where he lay down.

  Behind the wall, the Tump loomed black against the dull, smoky dregs of the dusk. All the more visible because there were no lights anywhere. Nothing. Had there been a power cut?

  It had always been obvious to Mr. Kettle that whether or not the Tump had once had a castle on it, before that - long, long before that - it had been a burial place of some importance. He'd been up there but found no sign of it having been excavated. Which was not that unusual; mounds like this were ten a penny in the Marches.

  The business of the stones. That was unusual.

  What would happen if he put them back, the same stones where you could find them, substitutes where they'd vanished entirely? Well, probably nothing. Nothing would happen. That was what Mr. Kettle told himself as he drove in the direction of the Tump along a road which vaguely followed the ley he'd marked on the Ordnance Survey map as 'line B'. The mound, of course, was on the line.

  He was relieved when the road swung away from the ley and the shadow of the Tump moved over from the windscreen to the side window. Now, why was that? Why was he relieved?

  He slowed for the final bend before the town sign and glanced in the mirror, seeing in the dimness the dog's intelligent eyes, wide, bright and anxious.

  'He don't know really what he's takin' on, Arn,' Mr. Kettle said, his voice softening as it always did when he and the dog were alone.

  He put out his left hand to switch on the headlights. Towns ended very abruptly in these parts. Full street lighting and then, in the blink of an eye, you were into the countryside, where different rules applied. But tonight there were no lights; it was all one.

  People said sometimes that the Court must be haunted, whatever that meant. Atmospherics, usually. The couple of times he'd been in there it had been cold and gloomy and had this miserable, uncared for kind of feeling. In Mr. Kettle's experience, so-called haunted houses were not normally like that - they could be quite bright and cheerful in the daytime, except for those cold bits. There were always cold bits.