Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (24 page)

   
'Not for you, Mr Powys. I
remember one night, must have been four in the morning when we finally heard
your car go from here.'

   
'Sorry about that. We had a lot
to talk about.'

   
'Oh, he could talk, Mr Kettle
could. When he wanted to.' Mrs Whitney led him into her kitchen, 'I think it
looks nice grey,' she said.

   
Later, they stood in Henry's cell-like
living-room, insulated by thousands of books, many of them old and probably
valuable, although you wouldn't have thought it from the way they were edged
into the shelves, some upside down, some back to front. On a small cast-iron
mantelshelf, over the Parkray, were a few deformed lumps of wood. Local
sculpture, Henry called it. He'd keep them on the mantelpiece until he found
more interesting ones in the hedgerows, then he'd use the old ones for the
fire.

   
Mrs Whitney handed Powys a
battered old medical bag. 'This was in the car with him. Police brought it
back.'

   
A thought tumbled into Powys's
head as he took the bag. 'What about Alf?'

   
'Oh, old Alf died a couple of
years back. He got another dog - Arnold. Funny-looking thing. I says,
"You're too old for another dog, Mr Kettle." "Give me a reason
to keep on living," he says. Always said he couldn't work without a dog at
his side. Arnold, he was in the car with Mr Kettle, too. He wasn't killed. A
lady's looking after him in Crybbe. She'll have her hands full. Year or so with
Mr Kettle, they forgot they was supposed to be dogs.'

   
Powys smiled.

   
'Daft about animals, Mr Kettle
was. He's left half his money - I didn't put this in the letter - half his
money's going to a dog's shelter over the other side of Hereford. Daughter
won't like that.'

   
'Henry knew what he was doing,'
Powys said. 'What's going to happen to the house?'

   
'She'll sell it. She won't come
back, that one. She'll sell it and it'll go to some folks from Off, who'll put
a new kitchen in and one of them fancy conservatories. They'll likely stop a couple
of years, and then there'll be some more folks from Off. I don't mind them, myself,
they never does no harm, in general.'

   
Powys opened the medical bag.
The contents were in compartments, like valuable scientific equipment. Two
remodelled wire coat-hangers with rubber grips.

   
Mrs Whitney said, 'There's a
what-d'you-call-it, pendulum thing in a pocket in the lid.'

   
'I know,' Powys said. 'I
remember.'

   
'Mr Kettle had his old dowsing
records in . . . you know, them office things.'
   
'Box files.'

   
'Aye, box files. Must be half a
dozen of them. And there's this I found by his bed.'

   
It was a huge old black-bound
business ledger, thick as a Bible. He opened it at random.

                  
. . . and in the middle meadow I detected
the foundations

                  
of an old house from about the fifteenth
century. I got so
                  
engrossed in this I
forgot all about finding the well. . .

   
He could hear Henry chuckling
as he wrote in black ink with his old fountain pen, edge to edge, ignoring the
red and black rules and margins.

   
He turned to the beginning and
saw the first entry had been made nearly twenty years earlier. Out of four or
five hundred pages, there were barely ten left unfilled. End of an era.

   
Powys closed the ledger and held
it, with reverence, in both hands.

   
'His journal. I doubt if
anybody else has ever seen it.'

   
'Well, you take it away,' said
Mrs Whitney. 'Sometimes I had the feeling some of them things Mr Kettle was
doing were - how shall I say? - not quite Christian.'

   
'Science, Mrs Whitney. He was
always very particular about that.'

   
'Funny sort of science,' Mrs Whitney
said. 'There's a letter, too, only gave it to me last week.'

   
A pale-blue envelope, 'J. M.
Powys' handwritten in black ink.

   
'Oh, he was a nice old chap,'
Mrs Whitney said. 'But, with no ill respect for the departed, he'd have been
the first to admit as he was more'n a bit cracked.'

For Fay, there would be no secret pleasure any more in editing tape in
the office at night, within the circle of Anglepoise light, a soft glow from
the Revox level-meters, and all the rest into shadow.

   
For none of what dwelt beyond
the light could now be assumed to be simply shadow. Once these things had
started happening to your mind, you couldn't trust anything any more.

   
That evening, she and the Canon
watched television in what used to be Grace's dining-room at the rear of the
house and was now their own sitting-room. Two bars of the electric fire were on
- never guess it was summer, would you?

   
Arnold lay next to Alex on
Grace's enormous chintzy sofa. The dog did not howl, not once, although Fay saw
him stiffen with the distant toll of the curfew. He'd be sleeping upstairs again
tonight.

   
She watched Alex watching TV
and sent him mind-messages. We have to talk, Dad. We can't go on here. There's nothing
left. There never was anything, you ought to realize that now.

   
Alex carried on placidly
watching some dismal old black and white weepie on Channel Four.
   
Fay said, at one point, 'Dad?'
   
'Mmmm?'

   
Alex kept his eyes on the screen,
where Stewart Granger was at a crucial point in his wooing of Jean Simmons.

   
'Dad, would you . . .' Fay gave
up, 'care for some tea? Or cocoa?'

   
'Cocoa. Wonderful. You know, at
one time, people used to say I had more than a passing resemblance to old
Granger.'
   
'Really?' Fay couldn't see it herself.
   
'Came in quite useful once or twice.'
   
'I bet it did.'

   
Fay got up to make the cocoa,
feeling more pale and wan than Jean Simmons looked in black and white. In one
day she'd hung up on Guy, betrayed Rachel, demolished relations with Goff
before she'd even met him. And caught herself about to give a blow job to a
microphone in the privacy of the Crybbe Unattended Studio.

   
What I need, she thought, is to
plug myself into a ley-line, and she smiled to herself - a despairing kind of
smile - at the absurdity of it all.

The box files wouldn't all fit in the boot of the Mini. Three had to be
wedged on the back seat, with the doctor's bag.

   
But the ledger, the dowsing
journal of Henry Kettle, was on the passenger seat where Powys could see it,
Henry's letter on top.

   
Just past the Kington
roundabout he gave in, pulled into the side of the road and, in the thinning
light, he opened the letter.

   
Dear Joe,

         
I'm doing this now, while I feel the way I do. If it all
   
sorts itself out you'll probably never
read this letter. None of
   
it will make much sense to you at
first and if it never does
   
make any sense it means my fears will
be groundless.

         
What it comes down to is I've been working out at Crybbe
   
for a chap called Max Goff who's
bought Crybbe Court.

         
The nature of the job is dowsing some old alignments
   
where the stones and such have all
gone years ago, and it's
   
been giving me the shivers, quite
honestly, that whole place.
   
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing
psychic or any of that
   
old rubbish, but it's not right and as
far as I can work out
   
it's a long-term kind of thing. I
intend to keep an eye on the
   
situation in the weeks and months and,
God willing, the years
   
ahead and keep on revising my notes,
but I'm not getting any
   
younger and you could go any time at
my age and I feel as
   
how I ought to inform somebody. You
have had some daft
   
ideas in your time but you're a good
boy basically and the
   
only person I can think of who I can
trust not to dismiss this
   
out of hand as an old fool's
rumblings.

         
God knows, I'm not infallible and I could be wrong and
   
I don't even know as yet the nature of
what's up in Crybbe,
   
only I get the feeling it's long-term,
and I'd like to think there
   
was somebody who could keep an eye on
what that Goff's
   
up to.

         
Now my daughter, we've grown apart, no kidding myself
   
any more. She's out in Canada and
she's VERY WELL
   
OFF. So I've written to my solicitor
in Hereford informing
   
him that as well as all the papers my
house is to be left to
   
you. Consider it as a token of my
confidence.

                  
Yours sincerely,

                  
H. Kettle
                  
(Henry)

   
'God almighty,' Powys said.

   
He could see lights coming on
in Kington, through the trees on the other side of the road, darkening hills.
Somewhere, on the other side of the hills, Crybbe.

   
Leaving him the house was
ridiculous. He'd probably have changed his mind by now, anyway.

   
But the letter was dated 19
June.

   
Only two days before Henry's
death.

   
Powys opened the ledger at the
last completed page. It also was dated 19 June.

         
Quite a successful day. Located three more old stones.
   
One of them would be eleven feet above
the ground, which
   
would make it quite rare for the
Crybbe area, the nearest one
   
as high as that being down near Crickhowell.
I have been
   
over this twice to make sure. It is
very peculiar that there
   
should have been so many big stones in
such a small area. I
   
tried to date this big one, but all I
could come up with was
   
1593 when it was destroyed. It seemed
certain to me that this
   
was done quite deliberately, the whole
thing taken out and
   
broken up. This was all quite
systematic, like the burning
   
down of monasteries during the
Reformation.

         
What intrigues me is how this Goff could have obtained
   
the information about there having
been stones here when even
   
I had never heard of them. Sometimes I
feel quite excited by
   
all this, it is undoubtedly the most
remarkable discovery of
   
prehistoric remains in this country
for many years, even if the
   
archaeologists will never accept it.
At other times, however,
   
I do get quite a bad feeling that
something here is not right,
   
although I cannot put my finger on it.
I have always disliked
   
the Tump for some reason. Some places
are naturally negative,
   
although perhaps 'natural' is not the
word I want. The Welsh
   
border is a very funny place, but I am
sure there is a good
   
scientific explanation.

   
The last entry. Neatly dated
and a line drawn under it. Two days later Henry Kettle was lying dead in his
car under Crybbe Tump.

   
It was dark when Powys got back
to Hereford. He lugged the box files up the stairs to his little flat above
Trackways and left them in the middle of the floor, unopened. It would take months
to explore that lot.