Crybbe aka Curfew

Murray often wondered just how many of his colleagues in the church seriously believed any more in a Fount of Heavenly Wisdom. Perhaps there should be a confidential survey, some sort of secret ballot within the Organization. No one could fault the basic Christian ethic but Murray couldn't help wondering if it wasn't in the best interests of sustaining a credible, relevant, functioning clergy to have this anachronism known as God quietly phased out. God was a millstone. Three times as many people would seek clerical help with their personal problems if they didn't have to cope with God.

And without God the question of sacrilege would not arise, and nobody, he thought now, standing by the altar rail, would have to cope with… this.

The church door had not been forced last night. A window had simply been smashed in the vestry.

This morning Jonathon Preece lay apparently undisturbed, a silent sentinel, still, presumably – and Murray was not inclined to check – in his coffin, still safely supported on its bier, a slim metal trolley, only slightly more ornate than those used in hospitals. The coffin was still pointing at the altar with its white and gold cloth.

Neither the coffin nor the bier had been disturbed. Only the altar itself. In the centre of the cloth, a silver dish had been heaped high with something brown and pungent.

Murray approached with trepidation and distaste to find the substance in the dish was not what he'd feared.

Next to the dish was the tin from which the brown gunge had been scraped.

It was dog food.

Murray was almost relieved.

And so puzzled by this that he failed to carry out a more detailed inspection of the church and therefore did not find out what else had been done.

Goff raised a faint smile and both hands. 'Im starting to understand, Mr Preece. I see where you're coming from. The boy sent me a tape, right?'

'You tell me, sir, you tell me.'

'Sure I'll tell you. This kid…'

'Warren.'

'Warren, yeah. Mr Mayor, you know how many tapes we get sent to us? Jeez, I don't even know myself – a thousand, two thousand a year. How many we do anything with? In a good year – two. Young…'

'Warren.'

'Sure. Well, the reason he got further than ninety-nine point nine per cent of the others was he sent it to the Cock and I listened to it myself. The normal thing is I pay guys to pay other guys to listen to the tapes on the slushpile, saves me a lotta grief, right? But I didn't wanna appear snobbish, big London record chief sneering at local hopefuls. So I listened to the tape and I had a letter sent back, and what it said was, this stuff isn't basically up to it, but we aren't closing the door. When you feel you've improved, try us again, we're always prepared to listen. You know what that means? You'd like me to give you a frank and honest translation, Mr Mayor?'

Jimmy Preece swallowed. 'Yes,' he said. 'I'd like you to be quite frank.'

'I'm always frank, Mr Mayor, 'cept when it's gonna destroy somebody, like in the case of this tape. You ever hear your grandson's band, Mr Preece?'

'Used to practise in the barn, till Jack turned 'em out. Hens wouldn't lay.'

'Yeah, that sounds like them,' said Goff, smiling now. 'Crude, lyrically moronic and musically inept. They might improve, but I wouldn't take any bets. My advice, don't let the kid give up sheep-shearing classes.'

It went quiet in the living-room at Court Farm. In the whole house.

'Thank you,' Jimmy Preece said dully.

'No worries, Mr Preece. Believe me. The boy'll make a farmer yet.'

Behind the door, at the foot of the stairs, Warren Preece straightened up.

His face entirely without expression.

CHAPTER II

Jean's narrow town house had three floors and five bedrooms, only three of them with beds. In one, Alex awoke.

To his amazement he knew at once exactly who he was, where he was and how he came to be there.

Separating his thoughts had once been like untangling single strands of spaghetti from a bolognese.

Could Jean Wendle be right? Could it be that his periods of absent-mindedness, of the mental mush – of wondering what day it was, even what time of his life it was – were the results not so much of a physical condition but of a reaction, to his surroundings? Through living in a house disturbed by unearthly energy. A house on a ley- line.

No ley-lines passed through this house. Something Jean said she'd been very careful to establish before accepting the tenancy.

Why not try an experiment, Jean had suggested. Why not spend a night here? An invitation he'd entirely misunderstood at first. Wondering whether, in spite of all his talk, he'd be quite up to it.

Jean had left a message on Fay's answering machine to say Alex wouldn't be coming home tonight.

She'd shown him to this very pleasant room with a large but indisputedly single bed and said good night. He might notice, she said, a difference in the morning.

And, by God, she was right.

The sun shone through a small square window over the bed and Alex lay there relishing his freedom.

For that was what it was.

And all thanks to Jean Wendle. How could he ever make it up to her?

Well, he knew how he'd like to make it up to her… Yes, this morning he certainly felt up to it.

Alex pushed back the bedclothes and swung his feet on to a floor which fell satisfyingly firm under his bare feet. He flexed his toes, stood, walked quite steadily to the door. Clad only in the Bermuda shorts he'd worn as underpants since the days when they used to give ladies a laugh, thus putting them at their ease. Under the clerical costume, a pair of orange Bermuda shorts. 'I shall have them in purple, when I'm a bishop.' Half the battle, Alex had found, over the years, was giving ladies a laugh.

There was the sound of a radio from downstairs.

'… local news at nine o'clock from Offa's Dyke Radio, the Voice of the Marches. Here's Tim Benfield.

'Good morning. A farmer is critically ill in hospital after his tractor overturned on a hillside at Crybbe. The accident happened only days after the tragic drowning of his son in the river nearby. James Barlow has the details…'

Barlow? Should have been Fay, Alex thought. Why wasn't it Fay?

Alex found a robe hanging behind the door and put it on. Bit tight, but at least it wasn't frilly. In the bathroom, he splashed invigorating cold water on his face, walked briskly down the stairs, smoothing down his hair and his beard.

He found her in the kitchen, a sunny, high-ceilinged room with a refectory table and a kettle burbling on the Rayburn.

'Good morning, Alex.' Standing by the window with a slim cigar in her fingers, fresh and athletic-looking in a light-green tracksuit.

'You know,' Alex said, 'I really think it bloody well is a good morning. All thanks to you, Jean.'

Jean. It struck him that he'd persisted in calling her Wendy simply because it was something like her surname which he could never remember.

He went to the window, which had a limited view into a side-street off the square. He saw a milkman. A postman. A grocer hopefully pulling out his sunblind.

Normality.