Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (2 page)

   
Fay took a deep breath. This
was not like her at all.

   
On the table in front of her
lay a small, flat, square box containing fifteen minutes' worth of tape she'd
recorded that morning. On the box was written in pencil:

Henry Kettle, dowser.

   
Later, Fay would create from
the tape about six minutes of radio. To do this she would draw the curtains,
switch on the Anglepoise lamp and the Revox editing machine and forget she was
in Crybbe.

   
It was what kept her sane.

   
She wondered what kind of reaction
she'd get if she told it like it was to the perusers of the property columns.
   
Fay picked up the pencil and wrote on
the pad:

FOR SALE

Faded terraced house in godforsaken backwater,

somewhere in damp no man's land long disowned

by both Wales and England.

Fully modernized - in 1960.

Depressingly close to bunch of run-down shops,

selling nothing in particular.

Backing on to infertile hill country, full of dour farming

types and pompous retired bank managers from Luton.

No serious offer ignored.

   
In fact,
she added,
we'd tear your bloody hand off. . .

Chapter II

Close up, she was like a dark, crooked finger pushing out of the earth,
beckoning him into the brambles.

   
When he looked back from the
entrance to the field, she'd shrivelled into something more sinister: a bent
and twisted old woman. A crippled crone.

   
Or maybe just the broken stump
of a fence post. Maybe only that.

   
She hadn't been visible from here
at all until, earlier that day, Mr. Kettle had put on his thick gloves and
pulled away the brambles, then pruned the hedge around her so that she stood naked,
not even a covering of moss.

   
Now he'd brought Goff to see
his discovery, and he should have felt a bit proud, but he didn't. All the time
he'd been cutting away the undergrowth something had been pulling at him,
saying.
Leave it be, Henry, you're doing
no good here.

   
But this was his job, and this
stone was what showed he'd earned his money. It made a nonsense of the whole
business if he didn't reveal the only real evidence that proved the line was there,
falling sure as a shadow across the field, dead straight, between two youngish
oak trees and . . .

   
'See that gate?'

   
'The metal gate?'

   
'Aye, but he's likely replaced
generations of wooden ones, Mr. Kettle said, his voice rolling easy now, like
the hills around them. Even without the final proof he'd have been confident of
this one. Wonderful feeling it was, when you looked up and everything in the landscape
- every hill and every tree, every hedge, every gateway - suddenly smiled at
you and nodded and said you were right, you done it again, boy.

   
Like shaking hands with God.

   
Happening again, so suddenly
like this, everything dovetailing, it had taken his mind off the doubts, and
he'd been asking himself: how can there be anything wrong, when it all falls together
so neatly.

   
He indicated the gate again.
'Prob'ly the cattle chose the spot, you following me?'

   
'Because they'd always go out
that way! Out of the field, right?'

   
'You're learning.' Though it
was still warmish, Mr. Kettle wore a heavy tweed suit. He carried what once had
been a medical bag of scuffed black leather, softened with age. The tools of
the trade in there, the forked twigs and the wire rods and the pendulums. But
the tools weren't important; they just made the clients feel better about
paying good money to a walking old wives' tale like him.

   
Max Goff had a white suit, a
Panama hat and the remains of an Aussie accent. For a long time Mr. Kettle had
found it hard to take him seriously, all the daft stuff he came out with about
wells of sacred power and arteries of healing energy and such.

   
The New Age - he kept on about
that. Mr. Kettle had heard it all before. Twenty years ago they were knocking
on his door in their Indian kaftans and head-bands, following him out to stone
circles, like Mitchell's Fold up in Shropshire, where they'd sit smoking long, bendy
cigarettes and having visions, in between pawing each other. Now it was a man
in a white suit with a big, powerful motor car, but it was the same old thing.

   
Many, many times he'd explained
to people that what he did was basically about
science
. Wonderful, yes - even after all these years the thrill was
there all right. But it was a natural
 
thing.
Nothing psychic about dowsing.

   
What sun there'd been had all
but gone now, leaving a
 
mournful old sky
with clouds like a battle-flag torn into muddy, blood-stiffened strips. It hadn't
been a good spring and it
 
wouldn't be a
good summer.

   
'Now look
up
from the gate,' said Mr. Kettle.

   
'Yeah, that . . . church
steeple, you mean?'

   
'No, no, before that. Side of
that bit of a hedge.'

   
'Oh . . . that thing.'

   
The old girl was about a
hundred yards down the field, separated from the hedge now, blackened against
the light, no more than three feet tall. But she was there, that was the point.
In the right place.

   
'Yes,' Mr. Kettle said. '
That
thing.'

   
It was no good, he didn't like
her. Even if she'd proved him right he didn't like the feeling coming off her,
the smell that you could smell from a good distance, although not really.

   
'Is it a tree stump?' And then,
'Hey, you're kidding, it can't be!' The little eyes suddenly sparking. He'd be
ruthless and probably devious in his business, this feller, but he had this enthusiastic
innocence about him that you couldn't altogether dislike.

   
'Jeez,' Goff said. 'I thought
they'd all gone!'
   
'Why don't you go over and have a look
at 'er?' Mr. Kettle put down his bag and sat on it under the hedge and patted
the grass so that Arnold, his dog, would sit down, too. And they both sat and
watched this bulky, bearded bloke making his ungainly way across the tufted
meadow. Impatient, stumbling, because he'd thought they'd all gone, the old
stones of Crybbe. . .

Mr. Kettle, too, had believed they'd all gone, until this morning when
they'd finally let him into the field for the first time and he'd located the
line and walked slowly along it, letting it talk to him, a low murmur.

   
And then the tone had altered,
strengthened, calling out to him, the way they did. 'I'm here, Henry, the only
standing stone left standing within a mile of Crybbe.'

   
Or vibrations to that effect.
As megaliths went, she wasn't impressive, but she hadn't lost her voice. Not a
voice he liked, though; he felt it was high and keening and travelled on a
thin, dry wind.

   
But it proved he hadn't lost
his capacity to receive. The
faculty
.

   
'Still there, then, Arnold. Every
time I goes out I reckon it isn't bound to work
any more
,' He scratched the dog's
head. 'But it's still there, boy.'

   
The only conclusion Mr. Kettle
could reach about why this stone had survived was that there must've been a
wood here and the thing had been buried in brambles. And if they'd noticed her
at all, they, like Goff, might have thought it was just an old tree stump.

   
He could see the figure in the
white suit bending over the stone and then walking all around, contemplating
the thing from different angles, as if hoping she'd speak to him. Which, of course,
she wouldn't because if Goff had possessed the
faculty
there'd have been no reason to send for Henry Kettle.

   
An odd customer, this Goff, and
no mistake. Most of the people who consulted dowsers - that is, actually paid
them - had good practical reasons. Usually farmers looking for a water supply
for their stock. Or occasionally people who'd lost something. And now and then
those afflicted by rheumatics, or worse, because they'd got a bad spring under
the house.

   
'Why am I still thinking he's
trouble then, Arnie?'

   
The dog considered the
question, looked serious.

   
Well, hell, he didn't
want
to think that. Not at all, became
this Goff was the first person who'd ever paid him to go ley-hunting.

   
'Mr. Kettle,' he'd said, coming
straight to the point, which Mr. Kettle liked, 'I've been advised that this
used to be quite a centre for prehistoric remains, and I wanna know, basically,
what happened to them. Can you find out where they used to be? The old stones?
The burial mounds? And I'm told you can kind of detect ley-lines, too, yeah?'

   
'Well,' Mr. Kettle had said
carefully, 'I know what you mean. It do sometimes seem they fall into straight
lines, the old monuments.'

   
'No need to be coy with me, Mr.
Kettle. I'm not afraid to call a ley-line a ley-line.'

   
Now this had, at first, been a
joy, taking the old chap back nigh on seventy years. He remembered - a memory
like a faded sepia photo - being on a hazy hilltop with his father and other members
of the Straight Track Club. Mr. Watkins pointing out the little bump on the horizon
and showing how the line progressed to it from mound, to stone, to steeple. The
others nodding, impressed. The picture frozen there: Mr. Watkins, arm
outstretched, bit of a smile under his stiff beard.

   
Now, remarkably - and loathe as
Mr. Kettle had been, at first, to admit it - this Goff had stumbled on
something Mr. Watkins would, no question, have given his right arm to know about.

   
So it had proved unexpectedly
exciting, this survey, this ley-hunt. Bit of an eye-opener. To say the least.
   
Until . . .

   
One morning, knowing there had
to have been a stone in a particular place in Big Meadow and then digging about
and finding part of it buried nearby, Mr. Kettle had got a feeling that
something about this was not regular. In most areas, old stones were lost gradually,
over centuries, plucked out at random, when exasperation at the damage done to
a plough or a harrow had finally overcome the farmer's inbred superstition.

   
But at Crybbe, he was sure, it
had been systematic.

   
Like a purge.

   
Mr. Kettle's excitement was
dampened then by a bad feeling that just wouldn't go away. When he dug up the
stone he thought he could smell it - something faintly putrid, as if he'd
unearthed a dead sheep.

   
And, as a man who lived by his
feelings, he wondered if he ought to say something. About the purge on the
stones. About the history of the Court - John Dee, Black Michael and the hangings.
And about the legends, which travelled parallel to history and sometimes, if
you could decode them, told you far more about what had really happened than
the fusty old documents in the county archives.

   
Mr. Kettle, who kept his own
records, was getting more and more interested in Crybbe - wishing, though, that
he didn't have to be. Wishing he could ignore it. Detecting a problem here, a
serious long-term problem, and wishing he could turn his back on it.

   
But, as the problem was likely
to remain long after he'd gone, he'd taken steps to pass on his fears. With a
feller like this Max Goff blundering about the place, there should always be
somebody who knew about these things - somebody trustworthy - to keep an eye
open.

   
He supposed he ought to warn
Goff, but the thought of 'something sinister' would probably only make the
place more appealing.

   
'And, anyway, you can't tell
these New Age types anything, can you, Arnold?' Mr. Kettle was scratching the
dog's head again. 'No, you can't, boy.'