Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (4 page)

   
He unclamped the dog's jaws,
and Arnold gave him a reproachful glance and then shook his head.

   
There were lights in some town
houses now. They lit the rooms behind the curtains but not the square, not even
a little, folk in this town had never thrown their light around.

   
'OK?' Goff said, feet planted
firmly on the cobbles, legs splayed, quite relaxed. Wasn't getting it, was he?
Wasn't feeling the resistance? Didn't realize he was among the descendants of
the people who'd pulled up the stones.

   
Mr. Kettle was getting to his
feet, one hand against the wall, like his old bones, the brick seemed infirm.
The people here, they cared nothing for their heritage.

   
And their ancestors had torn up
the stones.

   
Goff was just a big white blob
in the dim square. Mr. Kettle walked to where their cars were parked in a
little bay behind the church overhung with yew trees. His own car was a dusty VW
Estate. Goff had a Ferrari.

   
'Come to dinner, OK?' Goff
said. 'When I've moved into the Court.'

   
'You're going through with it,
then?'
   
'Try and stop me.'

   
'Can I say something?' Henry
Kettle had been thinking about this for the past fifteen minutes or so. He
didn't much like Goff, but he was a kindly old chap, who wanted at least to put
out a steadying hand.
   
'Of course.'

   
Mr. Kettle stood uneasily in
the semi-dark. 'These places . . .' he began, and sucked in his lips, trying to
concentrate. Trying to get it right.

   
'I suppose what I'm trying to
say is places like this, they - how can I put it? - they invites a kind of
obsession
.' He fell silent, watching the
buildings in the square hunching together as the night took over.

   
A harsh laugh came out of Goff.
'Is that it?' he asked rudely.

   
Mr. Kettle unlocked his car
door and opened it for Arnold 'Yes,' he said, half-surprised because he'd thought
he was going to say more. 'Yes, I suppose that is it.'

   
He couldn't see the dog anywhere.
'Arnie!' he called out sharply. He'd had this problem before, the dog slinking
silent away, clearly not at ease, whimpering sometimes.

   
He hadn't gone far this time,
though. Mr. Kettle found him pressed into the churchyard wall, ears down flat,
panting with anxiety. 'All right, Arn, we're leaving now,' Mr. Kettle said patting
him - his coat felt lank and plastered down, as if he was the first dog ever to
sweat. This was it with a dowser's dog - he'd pick up on the things his master
was after and, being a dog and closer to these matters anyway, his response
would be stronger.

   
Slipping his hand under Arnold's
collar, Mr. Kettle led him back to the car and saw Goff standing there quite still
in his white suit and his Panama hat, like an out-of-season snowman.

   
'Mr. Kettle,' Goff took a steep
breath. 'Perhaps I ought, explain. This place ... I mean, look around . . .
it's remote, half-forgotten, run-down. For centuries its people lived from the
land, right? But now agriculture's in decline, it doesn't provide extra jobs
any more, and there's nothing here to replace it. This town's in deep shit, Mr.
Kettle.'

   
Mr. Kettle couldn't argue with
that; he didn't say anything. Watched Max Goff spread his hands, Messiah-style.

   
'And yet, in prehistory, this
was obviously a sacred place,' Goff said. 'We have this network of megalithic
sites - a dozen or so standing stones, suggestions of a circle or a henge. And the
Tump, of course. Strong indications that this was a major focus of the Earth Force.
A centre of terrestrial energy, yeah? Do you see any signs of that energy now?'

   
'People pulled the stones out,'
Mr. Kettle said.

   
'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.