Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (63 page)

   
But Jonathon had been right.
False economy. Especially if it failed him in the middle of the haymaking and
he had to get one from Gomer to finish off.

   
Jonathon had been right, and
he'd tell him so tonight. Least he could do.

   
Jack hadn't been in yet to see
his son's coffin; couldn't face it. Couldn't face people seeing him walking
into the church, the bloody vicar there, with his bank-manager face and his phoney
words of comfort. The bloody vicar who didn't know the score, couldn't know the
way things were, couldn't be any help whatever.

   
But that was how vicars had to
be in this town, Father said. Don't want no holy-roller types in Crybbe. Just
go through the motions, do the baptisms and the burials, keep their noses out and
don't change nothing . . . don't break
the routine.

   
And Jack wouldn't break his routine.
He'd go into the church as usual tonight to ring the old bell, and he'd go just
a bit earlier - but not so much earlier as anybody'd notice - so he could spend
five minutes alone in there, in the near-dark, with his dead son.

   
Jack urged the tractor up the
long pitch, and the engine farted and spluttered like an old drunk. If it
couldn't handle the pitch on its own any more then it was going to be bugger- all
use pulling a trailer for the haymaking and he'd be going to Gomer for help -
at a price.

   
He'd be going to Warren too,
for help with the haymaking this time, and the price there was a good deal
heavier. All these years, watching Warren growing up and growing away, watching
him slinking away from the farm like a fox. Jack thinking it didn't matter so
much, only one son could inherit - only enough income from this farm to support
one - and if the other one moved away, found something else, well, that could
only help the situation. But now Jack needed Warren and Warren knew that, and
that was bad because there was a streak of something in Warren that Jack didn't
like, always been there but never so clear as it was now.

   
'Come on, then.' Jack talking
to the tractor like she was an old horse. Be better off with an old horse, when
you thought about it.

   
'Come on!'

   
Could be tricky if she stalled
near the top of the pitch and rolled back. Jack was ready for this happening,
always a cautious man, never had a tractor turn over on him yet, nor even close
to it.

   
'
Go on
.'

   
Bad times for the Preeces.

   
Not that there'd ever been good
times, but you didn't expect that. You held on; if you could hold on, you were
all right. Farming wasn't about good times.

   
He'd be fifty-five next birthday,
of an age to start taking it a bit easy. No chance of that now.

   
He saw himself going into the church
to ring the bell in less than two hours time, and Jonathon lying there in his
box. What could he say?

   
You was right, son, was all
he'd mumble. You was right about the ole tractor.

   
When what he really wanted to
say - to scream - was,
You stupid bugger,
boy . . . all you had to do was shoot the bloody dog and you winds up . . .
bloody drowned!

   
Father always said, You gotter
keep a 'old on your feelin's, Jack, that's the main thing. You let your
feelin's go, you're out of control, see, and it's not for a Preece to lose
control, we aren't privileged to lose control.

   
Bugger you, Father! Is that all
there is? Is that all there'll ever be? We stands there in our fields of rock
and clay, in the endless drizzle with our caps pulled down so we don't see to the
horizon, so we don't look at the ole Tump, so we never asks,
why us
?

   
Tears exploded into Jack's eyes
just as he neared the top of the pitch and through the blur he saw a great big
shadow, size of a man, rising up sheer in front of him. He didn't think; he trod
hard on the brake, the engine stalled and then he was staring into the peeling grey-green
paint on the radiator as the tractor's nose was jerked up hard like the head of
a ringed bull.

   
The old thing, the tractor,
gave a helpless, heart-tearing moan, like a stricken old woman in a geriatric
ward, and the great wheels locked and Jack was thrown into the air.

   
He heard a faraway
earth-shaking bump, like a blast at a quarry miles away, and he figured this
must be him landing somewhere. Not long after that, he heard a grinding and a rending
of metal and when he looked down he couldn't see his legs, and when he looked up
he could only see the big black shadow.

   
It was very much like a
hand
, this shadow, a big clawing black
hand coming out of the field, out of the stiff, ripe grass, on a curling wrist
of smoke.

   
As he stared at it, not wanting
to believe in it, it began to fade away at the edges, just like everything
else.

CHAPTER IX

Although her eyes were fully open, she wasn't looking at anything in the
room, not even at the microphone suspended six inches above her lips. There was
a sheen on her face, which might have been caused by the heat from the single
TV light. The only other light in the draped and velvety room was a very dinky,
Tiffany-shaded table-lamp in the corner behind Guy Morrison and the camera
crew.

         
GRAHAM JARRETT: 'Can you
describe your surroundings?

         
         
Can you tell me where you are?'

         
CATRIN JONES: 'I am in my
bedchamber. In my bed.'

   
They understood she was called
Jane. She only giggled when they asked for her second name. But strangely,
after a few minutes, Guy Morrison had no difficulty in believing in her. She
spoke, of course, with Catrin's voice, although the accent had softened as if a
different accent was trying to impose itself, and the inflection was altered.
This was not Catrin, not any Catrin he knew.

         
JARRETT: 'Is it night?'
         
CATRIN: 'It is dark.'

         
JARRETT: 'So why aren't
you asleep?'
         
CATRIN: 'I ache so much.'
         
JARRRETT: 'Are you not well?'
         
CATRIN: 'I'm aching inside.'

         
JARRETT: 'You mean you're
unhappy about something?'

         
CATRIN (
sounding distressed
): 'I'm aching inside
. . .
inside
.
         
         
(Long pause and a mixture of wriggles,
half-smiles and
         
         
soft
moans
.) 'My sheriff's been to take his pleasure.'

   
Strewth. This really was not
shrill, plump, chapel-raised Catrin, from Bangor.

   
Also, Guy realized, watching Catrin
licking her lips suggestively, it was suddenly not useable footage.

         
CATRIN: 'He watches me.
Sometimes he comes in the
         
         
night
and I can see him and he watches me. I awake.
         
         
The
room . . . so cold . . .He is here . . . uurgh . . .
         
         
he's
.
  
.His eyes. His eyes in the darkness.
Only
         
         
his
. . . eyes . . .aglow.'

   
Catrin was rolling from side to
side, breathing in snorts. The tartan rug slipped from her legs. She dragged
her skirt up to her waist and spread her legs.

         
CATRIN (
screaming):
'Is that what you've come to
see?'

'Wonderful,' Alex murmured, 'I think this is the only thing I live for
these days.'
   
The cool hands.

   
'You,' Jean Wendle said, 'are
an old humbug.'

   
'That's Dr Chi's diagnosis, is
it?'

   
'Shush.'

   
'Hmmph.'

   
After the treatment. Jean made
coffee but refused to let Alex have any whisky in his. 'Time you took yourself
in hand,' she said.

   
'No chance of
you
taking me in hand, I suppose?'

   
Jean smiled.

   
This dementia of yours,' she
said, sitting next to him on the sofa. 'When I said the other night that you
should relax and observe yourself, I think I was teaching my grandmother to suck
eggs. I think you almost constantly observe yourself. I think you have a level
of self-knowledge far beyond most of the so-called mystics in this town.'

   
'Oh, I'm just a bumbling old
cleric,' Alex said modestly.

   
'This . . . condition. Unlike, say,
Alzheimer's, it's far from a constant condition. Sometimes the blood flow to
the brain is close to normal, is that right? I mean, like now, at this
particular moment, there is no apparent problem.'

   
'I don't know about that,"
Alex said. 'Some people would say consulting someone who communes with a
long-dead Chinese quack is a sure sign of advancing senility. Oh hell …
I'm sorry, Wendy, I've sheltered so long behind not taking anything seriously.'

   
'It's Jean.'

   
'Yes, of course. I ... I want
to say you've made a profound difference to me. I haven't felt so well in a
long time. I feel I'm . . . part of things again. That make sense?'

   
'When precisely did you first
suspect there was something wrong with your general health?'

   
'Oh ... I suppose it would be
not long after poor old Grace died. Feeling a bit sorry for myself. I'd had a
spot of angina, nothing life-threatening, as they say, but my morale . . .'

   
'Because Grace had died?'

   
Alex sat back, said, 'You scare
me, Wendy. Bit too perceptive for comfort. Yes, I was low because of the guilt
I was feeling at being initially really rather relieved that she'd popped
off.'

   
He paused for a reaction but
didn't get one.

   
Jean stood up, went away and
returned, looking resigned, with a bottle of Bell's whisky. 'Perhaps you can
start taking yourself in hand tomorrow.'

   
'God bless you, my dear.' Alex
diluted his coffee with a good half-inch of Scotch.

   
A silence. Alex thought he could
hear a distant siren sound, like a police car or an ambulance.

   
'I gather you've been talking
to my daughter.'

   
Jean rested a hand lightly on
his thigh. 'I don't think she knows quite what to make of you.'

   
Alex looked at Jean's hand, not
daring to hope. 'And what about you, Wendy? Do you . . . ?'

   
The siren grew louder. Jean
stood up and went across to the deep Georgian window.

   
She looked back at him over a
shoulder, her little bum tight in pale-blue satin trousers. Coquettish? Dare he
describe that look as
coquettish?

   
'Oh, I think I can make
something of you,' Jean said.

'Fire Service.'

   
'Hello, it's Fay Morrison from,
er . . . from Offa's Dyke Radio. Can you tell me what's happening in Crybbe?
Where's the fire?'

   
'You've been very quick, my
girl. I don't think they've even got there yet. It isn't a fire. It's a tractor
accident. Tractor turned over, one person trapped. The location is Top Meadow, Court
Farm. One machine. No more details yet I'm afraid.'

   
'Court Farm? Bloody hell!' Fay
reached for the Uher. 'Thanks a lot.' She put the phone down. 'What do you want
to do, Arnie? You coming, or are you going to wait here for Dad?'

   
Thinking, what if he's here on
his own when the curfew starts? Who's going to keep him quiet?

   
Arnold was lying under what
used to be an editing table before somebody smashed the Revox. He was obviously
finding it easier to be down than sit. He wagged his tail.