Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (28 page)

   
'What you sayin' 'ere, then?
Somebody wants to stop you broadcastin'? That it?'

   
'It's possible. Isn't it?

   
'And is it gonner stop you
broadcastin'?'

   
'Well, no, as it happens. I .
.
  
I've got a portable tape recorder I
do all my interviews on, and I can edit down at the studio in town, there's a
machine there. But would they know that?'

   
'Listen.' Wynford was row
wearing an expression which might have been intended to convey kindness. Fay
shuddered. 'He - they - just came in and smashed up the most expensive thing
they could find. Then, could be as 'e was disturbed - or,
thought
'e was gonna be disturbed, maybe 'e yers somebody walkin'
past . . .'

   
'Maybe he wasn't disturbed at
all,' Fay said. 'Maybe he just left because he'd achieved what he set out to
do.
   
'I think you're watchin' too much
telly.'

   
'Can't very well watch too much
TV in Crybbe. The power's never on for longer than three hours at a stretch.'

   
Wynford turned his back on her,
opened the office door. Arnold walked in, saw Wynford and growled.

   
'See you've still got that dog
Didn't leave 'im in the 'ouse, then, when you went out?'

   
'What? Oh. No, he came with
us,' Fay said. 'What happened with the RSPCA, by the way? Does anybody want to
claim him?'

   
'No. I reckon 'e's yours now.
If 'e stays.'
   
'How do you mean?'
   
'Well. If 'e don't take off, like.'
   
He was wearing such a weird smile that
Fay pursued him to the front door, 'I don't understand.'

   
Wynford shrugged awkwardly.
'Well, you might wake up one day, see, and . . .'e'll be. . . well, 'e won't be
around any more.'

   
Fay felt menaced. 'Meaning
what? Come on . . . what are you saying?'

   
Wynford's face went blank.
'I'll go and talk to some neighbours,' he said, and he went.

   
'Dad,' Fay said, 'I've said
this before, but there's something very wrong with that guy.'

   
"Sorry, my dear?' Alex
looked up. His eyes were like floss.
   
'Sit down. Dad, you've had a shock.'
   
'I'm fine,' Alex said. 'Fine. If
there's nothing I can do here, I'll probably have an early night.'

   
Fay watched the policeman walk
past the window, imagined him peering through it with his face squashed against
the glass, like a robber in a stocking mask.

   
She recoiled, stared at the
gutted hulk of the Revox, a bizarre idea growing in her head like a strange
hybrid plant.

   
She turned to Arnold, who was
standing placidly in the doorway gazing up, for some reason, at Alex, his tail
well down.

   
'Christ,' Fay said.

   
Something had occurred to her
that was so shatteringly preposterous that . . .
   
'Dad, I have to go out.'
   
'OK,' Alex said.

   
. . . if she didn't satisfy
herself that it was completely crazy, she wasn't going to get any sleep
tonight.

   
'You go and walk off your
anger,' Alex said. 'You'll feel better.'

   
'Something . . .' Fay looked
around for Arnold's plastic clothes-line. 'Dad, I've just got to check this
out. I mean, it's so . . .' Fay shook her head helplessly. 'I'll be back, OK?'

She took J. M. Powys to her room at the Cock. The big room on the first
floor that she shared with Max. But Max was in London.

   
The licensee, Denzil, watched
them go up. ]. M. Powys looked, to say the least, dishevelled, but Denzil made
no comment. Rachel suspected that if she organized an orgy for thirty participants,
Denzil would have no complaints as long as they all bought drinks in the bar to
take up with them.

   
Rachel closed the bedroom door.
The room was laden with dark beams and evening shadows. She switched a light
on.

   
So this was J. M. Powys. Not
what she'd imagined, not at all.

   
'Don't take this wrong, but I
thought you'd be older.'
   
'I think I am
older.
' He tried to smile; it came out lop-sided. There was drying
blood around his mouth. His curly hair was entirely grey.

   
'Er, is there a bathroom?'

   
'Across the passage,' Rachel
said. 'The en-suite revolution hasn't happened in Crybbe yet. Possibly next
century. Here, let me look . . . Take your jacket off.'

   
It was certainly an old jacket.
The once-white T-shirt underneath it was stiff with mud and blood.

   
Gently, Rachel prised the
T-shirt out of his jeans. The colours of his stomach were like a sky with a
storm coming on. 'Nasty. That man is a liability.'

   
'I've never . . .' Powys winced,
'been beaten up by a New Age thug before. It doesn't feel a lot different,
actually.'

   
Rachel said, 'Humble has his
uses in London and New York, but . . . Just move over to the light, would you .
. . really don't like the way he's going native, I caught him laying snares the
other day. Look, Mr Powys, I don't know what I can do for bruising, apart from
apologize profusely and buy you dinner. Not that you'll thank me for that,
unless you're into cholesterol in the basket.'

   
'I don't mind that. I had a Big
Mac the other day.'

   
He sounded almost proud.
Perhaps J. M. Powys was as loony as his book, after all.

Addressing the fireplace, Alex said, 'Why? You've always been so
houseproud. Why do this?'

   
He mustn't touch anything.
Fingerprints. Couldn't even tidy the place up a bit until they'd looked for
fingerprints. Waste of time, all that. They wouldn't have Grace on their files.

   
Alex started to cry.

   
'Why can't you two get on
together?'

   
A tangled ball of black, unspooled
tape rustled as he caught it with his shoe. Like the tape, the thoughts in his
head were in hopeless, flimsy coils and, like the tape, could never be rewound.

All the way up the High Street, Fay kept her eyes on the gutter. She saw
half a dozen cigarette-ends. A crumpled crisp packet and a sweet-wrapper. Two
ring-pulls from beer cans. And a bus ticket issued by Marches Motors, the only
firm which ran through Crybbe - twice a week, if you were lucky.

   
But neither in the gutter nor
up against the walls did she find what she was looking for.

   
When Arnold stopped to cock his
leg up against a lamppost, Fay stopped, too, and examined the bottom of the
post for old splash-marks.

   
There were none that she could
see, and Arnold didn't hang around. He was off in a hurry, straining on the
clothes-line as he always did on the street. She'd have to get him a lead tomorrow.

   
Now
there
was a point. Fay steered Arnold past Middle Marches Crafts
and the worn sign of the Crybbe Pottery, which her dad said was about to close
down. There was a hardware shop round the corner.

   
Hereward Newsome was emerging
from The Gallery. 'Oh, hi, Fay. Out on a story?' .
   
'You're working late.'

   
'We're rearranging the main
gallery. Making more picture space. Time to expand, I think, now the town's
taking off.'
   
'Is it?'

   
'God, yes, you must have noticed
that. Lots of new faces about. Whatever you think of Max Goff, he's going to
put this place on the map at last. I've been talking to the marketing director
of the Marches Development Board - they're terribly excited. I should have a
word with him sometime, they're very keen to talk about it.'

   
'I will. Thanks. Hereward,
look, you haven't got a dog, have you?'

   
'Mmm? No. Jocasta had it in
mind to buy a Rottweiler once - she gets a little nervous at night. Be good
deal more nervous with a Rottweiler around, I said. Hah. Managed to talk her
out of that one, thank God.'

   
'Do you know anybody who has
got one?'

   
'A Rottweiler?'

   
'No, any sort of dog.'

   
'Er . . . God, is that the
time? No, it's not something I tend to notice, who has what kind of dog. Look,
pop in sometime; there's a chap - artist - called Emmanuel Walters. Going to be
very fashionable. You might like to do an interview with him about the
exhibition we're planning. Couple of days before we open, would that be
possible? Give you a ring, OK?'

   
She nodded and smiled wanly,
and Hereward Newsome walked rapidly away along the shadowed street, long
strides, shoulders back, confident.

   
Fay dragged Arnold round the
corner to the hardware shop. Like all the other shops in Crybbe, there was
never a light left on at night, but at least it had two big windows - through which,
in turn, she peered, looking for one of those circular stands you always saw in
shops like this, a carousel of dog leads, chains and collars.

   
There wasn't one.

   
No, of course there wasn't.
Wouldn't be, would there? Nor would there be cans of dog food or bags of
Bonios.

   
The streets were empty and
silent. As they would be, coming up to curfew time, everybody paying
lip-service to a tradition which had been meaningless for centuries. She was starting
to work it out, why there was this artificial kind of tension in the air:
nobody came out of anywhere for about three minutes either side of the curfew.

   
Except for the newcomers.

   
'Fay. Excuse me.'

   
Like Murray Beech.

   
Walking across the road from
the church, one hand raised, collar gleaming in the dusk.
   
'Could I have a word?'

   
When he reached her, she was
quite shocked at how gaunt he appeared. The normally neatly chiselled face
looked suddenly jagged, the eyes seemed to glare. Maybe it was the light.

   
Fay reined Arnold in. There was
a sense of unreality, of her and the dog and the vicar in a glass case in the
town centre, public exhibits. And all the curtains parting behind the darkened
windows.

   
Sod this.
Sod it!

   
'Murray,' she said quite loudly,
very deliberately, 'just answer me one question.'

   
He looked apprehensive. (In
Crybbe, every question was a threat.)

   
Fay said, 'Do you know anybody
with a dog?' The words resounded around the square.

   
The vicar stared at her and his
head jerked back, as if she'd got him penned up in a corner with her microphone
at his throat.

   
'Anybody,' Fay persisted. 'Any
kind of dog. Anybody in Crybbe?'

   
'Look, it was about that I . .
.'

   
'Because I've been scouring the
gutters for dog turds and I can't find any.'

   
'You . . .'

   
'Not one. Not a single bloody
dog turd. Surprise you that, does it? No dog turds in the streets of Crybbe?'

   
Fay became aware that she was
coiling and uncoiling the clothes-line around her fingers, entwining them until
the plastic flex bit into the skin. She must look as mad as Murray did. She felt
her face was aflame and her hair standing on end. She felt she was burning up
in the centre of Crybbe, spontaneous emotional combustion in the tense minutes
before the curfew's clang.

   
'No dog turds, Murray. No dog
leads in the shops. No . . .' The sensation of going publicly insane brought
tears to her eyes. 'No rubber bones . . .'

   
Murray pulled himself together.
Or perhaps, Fay thought, in comparison with me it just looks as though he's
together.

   
'Go home. Fay,' he said.

   
'Yes,' Fay said, 'I will.'