Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (65 page)

   
It took him a long time.

   
And if Andy had come back,
caught him at it?

   
So what? The bastard had more
explaining to do than he did.

   
He was scared, though. You
couldn't not be, in this environment. Not if you were inclined to believe it
worked.

   
As he wrote, he started to
understand. Not all of it, but enough. Enough to convince him that the original
source of some of these notes was probably Dr John Dee, astrologer to Elizabeth
I. That Dee, who lived along the valley, who was not psychic but studied people
who were, had been the recipient of the visit from the man who came "at
nyte in hys spyryte'.

   
And that the visitor was
Michael Wort. High Sheriff of Radnorshire.

   
And you can prove that?

   
Of course not. What does that
matter?
I
believe it.
   
But you're not rational, Powys. You're
a certifiable crank.
   
He'd put the Filofax back into the bread-oven,
wishing there was somewhere to wash his hands, and climbed out through the
window again, walking away into the dusk, the wood gloomy, treacherous place now,
spiked with fallen branches bramble tentacles.

   
The night coming on, and he
didn't feel so certain of ability to deal with this, this . . .

         
diabolical sorcerie.

   
This phrase appeared several
times in the text.

   
Standing, now, by the stone,
feeling the tension like an impending thunderstorm, only denser. And the
feeling that when the storm broke and the rain crashed down, the rain would be
black and afterwards the earth would not be cleansed and purified but in some
way poisoned.

   
Acid rain of the soul.

   
He moved a few feet away from
the stone, stood behind a thick old oak tree bound with vines and creepers. The
logic of the Old Golden Land told him that right next to the stone was not the
place to be when the storm broke.

   
It also told him that the ringing
of the curfew every night was some kind of climax and if he wanted to get a feel
of what was going on, he ought to stay near that stone for. . . what?

   
He stretched his arm towards
the sky to see his watch.

   
For less than half an hour.

   
He was frightened, though, and
really wanted to creep back through the wood to the nearest lights.

So he thought about Henry Kettle and he thought about Rachel. And found
himself thinking about Fay too.

She sped through the shadowed streets, Arnold on the passenger seat.

   
Not the other son - what was
his name? . . . Warren - not him, surely.

   
She could hear her own
voice-piece.
The accident came only a
week after Warren's brother, Jonathan, was tragically drowned in the swollen
river near his home . . .

   
The usual reporter's moral
conflict taking place in her head. Better for the Preece family if it was
someone else. Better for the media if it was another Preece - Double Disaster
for Tragic Farm Family.

   
Better for her, in truth, if
she was away from Offa's Dyke Radio, which was clearly in the process of
ditching her anyway. And away from Crybbe also, which went without saying.

   
Headlights on, she dropped into
the lane beside the church. Nothing like other people's troubles to take your
mind off your own.

   
Other, brighter headlights met
hers just before the turning to Court Farm, and she swung into the verge as the
ambulance rocketed out and its siren warbled into life.

   
Still alive, anyway. But that
could mean anything.

   
Fay drove into the track. She'd
never been to Court Farm before.

   
Firemen were standing around
the yard, and there was a policeman, one of Wynford's three constables. Fay
ignored him; she'd always found it easier to get information out of firemen.

   
'Didn't take you long,' one said,
teeth flashing in the dusk. 'You wanner interview me' Which way's the camera?'

   
'No need to comb your hair,'
Fay said. 'It's radio.'

   
'Oh, in that case you better
talk to the chief officer. Ron!'

   
Firemen were always affable after
it was over. 'Bugger of a job getting to him,' Ron said. 'Right up the top,
this bloody field, and the ground was all churned up after all this rain.
Still, we done it. Bloody mess, though. Knackered old thing it was, that
tractor. Thirty-odd years old.'

   
'It just turned over?'

   
'Ah, it's not all that
uncommon,' said Ron. 'I reckon we gets called to at least two tractor accidents
every year. Usually young lads, not calculated the gradients. Never have
imagined it happening to Jack Preece, though.'

   
'
Jack
Preece?'

   
'Hey, now, listen, don't go putting
that out till the police confirms the name, will you? No, see, I can't figure
how it could've happened, Jack muster been over there coupla thousand times.
Just shows, dunnit. Dangerous job, farming.'

   
'How is he? Off the record.'

   
'He'll live,' Ron said, changing
his boots. 'Gets everywhere this bloody mud. His left leg's badly smashed. I
don't know . . . Still, they can work miracles these days, so I'm told.'

   
Fay got him to say some of it
again, on tape. It was 9.40, nearly dark, because of all the cloud, as she
pulled out of the farmyard.

   
She was halfway down the track
when a figure appeared in the headlights urgently waving both arms, semaphoring
her to stop.

   
Arnold sat up on the seat and
growled.
   
Fay wound her window down.
   
'Give me a lift into town, will you?'

   
It was too dark to see his face
under the cap, but she recognized his voice at once from meetings of the town
council and the occasional 'Ow're you' in the street.

   
'Mr Preece!'

   
Oh, Christ.

   
'Get in the back, Arnold,' Fay
hissed. As she pushed the dog into the back seat, something shocking wrenched
at her mind, but she hadn't time to develop the thought before the passenger
door was pulled open and the Mayor collapsed into the seat next to her,
gasping.

   
'In a hurry. Hell of a hurry.'

   
The old man breathing heavily
and apparently painfully as they crunched down the track. As she turned into
the lane, Mr Preece said, 'Oh. It's you.' Most unhappy about this, she could tell,
'I didn't know it was you.'

   
'I'm terribly sorry,' Fay said,
'about Jack. It must be . . .'

   
'Aye . . .' Mr Preece broke off,
turned his head, recoiled. 'Mighter known! You got that . . . damn
thing
in yere!'

   
'The dog?'

   
The shocking thought of a couple
of minutes ago completed itself with an ugly click. As she was pushing Arnold
into the back seat she'd felt the stump of his rear, left leg and heard Ron,
the leading fireman, in her head, saying,
left
leg's badly smashed.

   
'Mr Preece,' Fay said carefully,
'I'd like to come and see you. I know it's a bad time - a terrible time - but I
have to know what all this is about.'

   
He said nothing.
   
Fay said, 'I have to know - not for
the radio, for myself - why nobody keeps a dog in Crybbe.'
   
The Mayor just breathed his painful
soggy breaths, never looked behind him at what crouched in the back seat, said
not a word until they moved up alongside the churchyard and entered the square.
   
'I'll get out yere.'
   
'Mr Preece . . .'

   
The old man scrambled out.
Started to walk stiffly away. Then turned and tried to shout, voice cracking up
like old brown parchment.

   
'You leave it alone, see . . .'
He started to cough. 'Leave it
alone
,
you . . .'

   
Mr Preece hawked and spat into
the gutter.

   
'. . . stupid bitch,' he said roughly,
biting off the words as if he was trying to choke back more phlegm and a
different emotion. And then, leaving the passenger door for her to close, he
was off across the cobbles, limping and stumbling towards the church.

   
He's going to ring the curfew.
Fay thought suddenly.

   
His son's just been mangled
within an inch of his life in a terrible accident and all he can think about is
ringing the curfew.

Jonathon had been saying for months - years even - that it was time they
got rid of that old tractor.

   
Probably this wasn't what he'd
had in mind, Warren thought, standing in Top Meadow, alone with the wreckage of
the thing that had crippled his Old Man, all the coppers and the firemen gone
now.

   
The Old Man had been working on
that tractor all day, giving himself something to concentrate on, take his mind
off Jonathon and his problem of having nobody to hand over the farm to when he
was too old and clapped out. Then he'd mumbled something about testing the
bugger and lumbered off in it, up the top field, silly old bastard.

   
Testing it. Bloody tested it
all right.

   
Warren had to laugh.

   
With the last of the light, he
could more or less see what had happened, the tractor climbing towards the
highest point and not making it, sliding back in the mud, out of control and
tipping over, the Old Man going down with it, disappearing underneath as the
bloody old antique came apart.

   
But Warren still couldn't
figure how he'd let it happen, all the times he'd been up here on that bloody
old tractor. At least, he couldn't see
rationally
,
like, how it had happened.

   
It was the
un
rational answer, the weird option, glittering in his head like
cold stars, that wouldn't let him go home.

   
He followed the big tracks
through the mud by the field gate, up the pitch to the point where the tractor
had started rolling back prior to keeling over. He followed the tracks to the
very top of the rise, to where the tractor had been headed, glancing behind him
and seeing the trees moving on top of the old Tump half a mile away.

   
By the time he was on top of
the pitch, he was near burning up with excitement. It hadn't seemed like the
right part of the field at all, but that was because he'd come in by a
different, gate, looking at it from a different angle.

   
Warren hesitated a moment and
then dashed back down to the tractor. Somebody had left behind a shovel they'd
been using to shift the mud so the firemen could get their cutting gear to the
Old Man. He snatched up the shovel, carried it back up the pitch, prised away
the top sod - knowing instinctively
exactly
where to dig - threw off a few shovelfuls of earth, and there it was, the old
box.

   
The jagged thrill that went
through him was like white-hot electric wire. 'Oh, fuck, oh fuck.' Blinded by
his power. 'I done it. Me.'

   
His fingers were rigid with
excitement as he opened the box, just to make sure, and he almost cried out
with the euphoria of the moment.

   
He couldn't see proper, but it
was like the hand of bones, the Hand of Glory in the box had bent over and
become a fist.

   
It was curled around the
Stanley knife, gripping it, and the blade was out.

   
Warren shivered violently in
horror and pleasure - the combination making him feel so alive it was like he
was a knife himself, sharp and savage, steely and invulnerable.

   
The only indestructible Preece.

CHAPTER XI

At first, the figure was dressed in dark clothes so that when it
filtered through the twilit trees only the soft footsteps and the rustlings
told Powys anyone was coming.
   
He moved behind his oak tree, sure it
was going to be Andy. Holding himself still, packing away the anger and the
grief - an unstable mixture - because, for once, he intended to have the
advantage.