Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (3 page)

Ten minutes later Goff was back, puffing, the flush in his cheeks making
his close-mown beard seem even redder. Excitement coming off him like steam.

   
'Mr. Kettle, let me get this
right. According to your calculations, this is line B, right?'

   
'That's correct.'

   
'And by following this line, as
you dowsed it, we suddenly come across what could be the only remaining stone
in the alignment. Is it exactly where you figured it'd be?'

   
'Well . . . Mr. Kettle got to his
feet and picked up his bag. Max Goff eyed it.

   
'Got the rods in there? Can we
dowse the line some more, maybe find another stone?'

   
No, we bloody can't, Mr. Kettle
thought. You might as well ask, how about if we grabs hold of this electric
cable to see if he's live?

   
He saw, to his dismay, that Goff
was looking at him in some kind of awe; he'd found a new guru. It was not a
role Mr. Kettle fancied. 'Getting late,' he said. 'I ought to be away. Don't
like driving in the dark these days.'

   
'When can you come again?'

   
'Look,' Mr. Kettle said. 'I'm an
old man. I likes my fireside and my books. And besides, you got it all now. You
know where they all are. Or used to be.'

   
This Goff was a man whose
success in business had convinced him that if you knew a source, knowledge and
experience could be bought like . . . what would this feller buy?. . .
cocaine? Mr. Kettle, who still read two newspapers every day, knew a bit about
Max Goff and the kind of world he came from.

   
'Maybe your role in this is only
just beginning,' Goff said. 'How about I send a car for you next time?'

   
Money was no object for this
bugger. Made his first million by the time he was twenty-seven, Mr. Kettle had
read, by starting his own record company. Epidemic, it was called. And it had
spread like one. Now it was international magazines and book publishing.

   
'Well,' Mr. Kettle said. 'Isn't
much more as I can tell you, anyway. You've got the maps. Nothing more to be
found, even if you excavates, I reckon.'

   
'Hmmm.' Goff was making a show
of being unconvinced, as they followed what Mr. Kettle now thought of, wrote of
in his journal - but never spoke of - as the Dark Road, the Thoroughfare of the
Dead. Returning at dusk, back into Crybbe, a town which had loitered since the
Middle Ages, and probably before, in the area where England hardened into Wales.

   
On the very border.

CHAPTER III

It was the seventh bell they always rang, for the curfew. Almost rang
itself these days. Seventeen years Jack had been doing it. Didn't need to think
much about it any more. Went regular as his own heartbeat.
   
The bell clanged above him.
   
Jack let the rope slide back through
his hands.

   
Seventy-three.

   
His hands closed again around
the rope.
   
Seventy-four.

   
He hadn't been counting. At any
point during the ringing Jack could tell you what number he was on. His arms
knew. His stomach knew.

   
One hundred times every night.
Starting at ten o'clock. Newcomers to the town, they'd asked him, 'Don't you find
it spooky, going up there, through that graveyard, up all those narrow stone
steps, with the church all dark, and the bell-ropes just hanging there?'

   
'Don't think about it,' Jack
would say. And it was true; he didn't.

   
There were eight bells in the
tower, and that was reckoned to be a good peal for this part of the country.

   
For weddings, sometimes in the
old days, they'd all be going. Even fairly recently - though not any more - it
had been known for some snooty bride from Off to bring in a handful of bell-ringers
from her own parish for the big day. This had only been permitted for weddings,
sometimes. On Sundays, never. And not Christmas. Not even Easter.

   
And also, every few years some
bearded clown in a sports jacket would pass through. And then the church or the
town council would gel a letter from the secretary of some group of nutters
that travelled the country ringing other people's bells.

   
The town council would say no.

   
Occasionally - this was the
worst problem - there'd be somebody like Colonel Croston who'd moved in from
Hereford, where he was reckoned to have been in the SAS. He liked to keep fit.
Jogged around the place.

   
And rang bells, as a hobby.

   
He'd been a pain in the neck at
first, had Colonel Croston. 'No bell-ringers apart from you, Jack? That's
appalling. Look, you leave this one to me.'

   
Jack Preece remembered the
Colonel putting up posters inviting all able-bodied folk to come to the church
one Friday night and learn the ropes. 'Give me six months. Guarantee I'll knock
them into shape.'

   
Jack had gone along himself
because he didn't like the thought of youngsters running up and down the stone
steps and swinging on his ropes.

   
When the two of them had been
waiting around for nearly an hour he let the despondent Colonel take him for a
drink.
   
'Doesn't deserve these bells, Jack,
this town.'

   
'Aye, aye,' Jack had said non-committally,
and had permitted Colonel Croston to buy him a large brandy.

   
He hadn't bothered to tell the
Colonel that even he only knew how to ring the curfew using the seventh bell.
Well, no point in buggering with the others, see, was there? No point in making
a show. They could have pulled the other bells down and flogged them off for
scrap, far as Jack Preece was concerned.

   
Anyhow, what they'd done now,
to save a lot of bother and pestering was to take down all the ropes. Except,
of course the one that rang the seventh bell.

   
Some nights, Jack would be real
knackered after a day's dipping, or shearing, or lambing. He'd stagger up them
steps, hurting all over his body, dying for a pint and aching for his bed. Some
nights he'd grab hold of that rope just to stop himself falling over.

   
Still the hundred would be
done. And done on time.

   
And it was on nights like this
that Jack felt sometimes he was helped. Felt the belfry was kind of aglow, and
other hands were pulling on the rope beside his own.

   
Spooky?

   
Well, he didn't think about it.
Where was the point in that?

They walked slowly into the town over a river bridge with old brick
walls which badly needed pointing, the river flat and sullen below. Past a pub,
the Cock, with flaky paintwork and walls that had once been whitewashed but now
looked grey and unwashed.

   
A dark, smoky, secretive little
town. There was still an afterglow on the fields, but the town was already
embracing the night.

   
Mr. Kettle had never been to
Paris or New York. But if, tonight, he was to be flown into either of them, he
suspected he wouldn't feel any more of a stranger than he did entering Crybbe -
a town he'd lived within twenty miles of all his life.

   
This town, it wasn't remote exactly,
not difficult to reach, yet it was isolated. Outsiders never had reason to pass
through it on the way to anywhere. Because, no matter where you wanted to
reach, there was always a better way to get there than via Crybbe. Three roads intersected
here, but they were B roads, two starting in Wales - one leading eventually to Hereford,
the other to Ludlow - and the other . . . well, buggered if he knew where that
one went.

   
Max Goff, almost glowing in his
white suit, was striding into the dimness of the town, like Dr Livingstone or
somebody, with a pocketful of beads for the natives.

   
They'd take the beads, the
people here. They wouldn't thank him, but they'd take the beads.

   
Henry Kettle didn't claim to
understand the people of Crybbe. They weren't hostile and they weren't
friendly. They kept their heads down, that was all you could say about them.
A local historian had once told him this was how towns and villages on the
border always used to be. If there was any cross-border conflict between the
English and the Welsh they never took sides openly until it was clear which was
going to win. Also, towns of no importance were less likely to be attacked and
burned.

   
So keeping their heads down had
got to be a way of life.

   
Tourists must turn up sometimes.
By accident, probably. Mr. Kettle reckoned most of them wouldn't even bother to
park. Sure the buildings were ancient enough, but they weren't painted and
polished up like the timber-frame villages on the Hereford black-and-white
trail. Nothing here that said 'visit me' with any enthusiasm, because there was
no sense of pride.

   
From the church tower, above the
cobbled square, a lone bell was clanging dolefully into the musty dusk. It was
the only sound there was.

   
'What's that?' Goff demanded.

   
'Only the curfew.'

   
Goff stopped on the cobbles,
his smile a great gash. 'Hey really . . . ? This is a real curfew, like in the
old days?'

   
'No,' Mr. Kettle said. 'Not really.
That's to say, people are no longer required to be off the streets by
nightfall. Just tradition nowadays. The Preece family, it is, performs the
duty. One of 'em goes up the belfry, God knows how many steps every night,
summer and winter; nine-thirty, or is it ten?'

   
He looked up at the church
clock but it was too dark to make out where its hands were pointing. He was
sure there used to be a light on that clock. 'Hundred times it rings, anyway.'

   
'Might only be a tradition, but
there's still nobody on the streets,' Max Goff observed. 'Is there?'

   
'That's 'cause they're all in the
pubs,' said Mr. Kettle. 'No, what it is, there's some old trust fund arranges
for the bell to be rung. The Preeces get grazing rights on a few acres of land in
return for keeping up the custom. Passed down, father to son, for four
hundred-odd years. Being farmers, they always has plenty sons.'

   
They stood in the square until
the ringing stopped.

   
'Crazy,' Goff said, shaking his
big head in delight. 'Cray-zee. This is the first night I've spent here,
y'know?'I've always stayed in Hereford. It's magic, Mr. Kettle. Hey, we still
on the line?'

   
'I suppose we must be. Aye, see
the little marker by there?'

   
A stone no more than a foot
high, not much more than a bump in the cobbles. Goff squatted next to it and
held his palms over it, as though he expected it to be hot or to light up or
something. The dog, Arnold, watched, his head on one side as if puzzled by a
human being who went down on all fours to sniff the places where dogs had
pissed.

   
Two middle-aged women walked
across the square talking in low voices. They stopped talking as they walked
past Goff, but didn't look at him, nor Mr. Kettle, nor each other.

   
Then they went rigid, because
suddenly Arnold's head was back and he was howling.

   
'Jeez!' Goff sprang up. The two
women turned, and Mr. Kettle felt he was getting a very dark, warning look, the
women's faces shadowed almost to black.

   
'Arnold!' With some difficulty
- beginning to think he must have a bad spring under his own house, the way his
rheumatism had been playing up lately - Mr. Kettle got down on his knees and
pulled the dog to him. 'Sorry, ladies.'

   
The women didn't speak, stood
there a moment then turned and walked away quickly as the howling subsided,
because Mr. Kettle had a hand clamped around Arnold's jaws. 'Daft bugger, Arnold.'

   
'Why'd it do that?' Goff asked,
without much interest.
   
'I wish I knew, Mr. Goff.'

   
Mr. Kettle wanted some time to
think about this. Because for a long time he'd thought it was just a drab
little town, full of uninspired, interbred old families and misfits from Off.
And now, he thought, it's more than that. More than inbreeding and apathy.