Crybbe aka Curfew

'Well, we can't stop him. Can't block market forces, Grandad.'

'We can stop him takin' our town off us to serve his whims!'

'And how're we supposed to do that?'

'He wants a public meeting, we'll give him one.'

'What are you savin' here. Father? Give him a rough time? Let him know he isn't wanted?'

Behind the door, Warren began to seethe. This was fucking typical. Here was Max Goff, biggest bloody independent record producer in the country, on the verge of signing Fatal Accident to Epidemic. And these stick-in- the-mud bastards were scheming to get rid of him.

Jonathon was saying, 'See them stones he had delivered? Bloody great stones, dozens of 'en.'

'Building stone?'

'No, just great big stones. Huge buggers. Like Stonehenge, that kind.'

Things went quiet, then Warren heard his grandad say, 'He's oversteppin' the mark. He's got to be stopped.'

Warren wanted to strangle the old git. He wanted to strangle all three of them. Also that fucking radio woman who'd let it all out and stirred things up. The one who shouted after him through the hedge that night, called him a wanker.

Every pub they'd tried had stopped serving lunch at two o'clock – so much for all-day opening – and so they'd wound up at this Little Chef, which didn't please him. 'Bloody cooking by numbers. Two onion rings, thirty-seven chips. All this and alcohol-free lager too. And these bloody girls invariably saying, 'Was it all right for you?' as if they're just putting their knickers back on.'

'At least they're there when you want them,' Fay said. getting back on the A49. 'Would you like to see Ludlow?'

'Like to go home, actually.'

'God almighty! What is it about that place?'

'Left my pills there.'

'I know you did. But luckily, I brought them. What's your next excuse?'

Alex growled. 'Wish I'd had a son.'

'Instead of me, huh?'

'Sons don't try to manage you.'

'Dad, I want to talk to you.'

'Oh God.'

'Was that the first time Guy rang, the other night?'

'Hard to say, my dear. Once I put the phone down I tend to forget all about him. He may have rung earlier. Does it really matter?'

'I don't mean just that night. Has he rung any other time when I've been out?'

'Can't remember. Suppose he could have done. I didn't think you cared.'

'I don't. It's just Guy's coming down to make a documentary about Max Goff, and I was wondering how he found out there was something interesting going on. I know you tend to absorb local gossip like a sponge and then somebody squeezes you a bit and it all comes out, and then you forget it was ever there.'

'You think I told him?'

'Did you?'

'Did I? God knows. Say anything to get rid of him. Does it matter?'

Fay glanced in her wing mirror then trod on the brakes and pulled in violently to the side of the road. 'Of course it bloody matters!'

'I think you're overwrought, my child. You're young. You need a bit of excitement. Bit of stimulation. Country life doesn't suit you.'

'Crybbe doesn't suit me.'

'So why not simply…?'

She said carefully, 'Dad. You may be right. There may be nothing at all wrong with Crybbe. But, yes, I think it's time I left. And I think it's time you left. You've no reason to stay, you've no roots there, no real friends there.'

He said sadly, 'Oh, I have.'

He wasn't looking at her. He was looking straight out at the A49, lorries chugging past.

'Who? Murray Beech? He'll be off, first chance of a bigger parish. He's got nothing to thank Crybbe for – his fiancee didn't hang around, did she?'

'No,' Alex said. 'Not Murray.'

'Who then?'

He didn't reply.

Fay fiddled with the keys in the ignition. Alex talked to everybody, old vicars never changed. A friend to everyone, essence of the job. But how many did he really know?

'What are you saying, Dad?'

'Grace,' he whispered, and Fay saw the beginning of tears in his old blue eyes.

She put a hand on his arm. 'Dad?'

'Don't ask me about this. Fay,' Alex said. 'Please. Just take me home.'

CHAPTER VIII

On top of the Tump it all came clear.

You could see over the roofs of the stables and Crybbe Court itself, which was sunk into a shallow dip. And there, only just showing above the trees, was the church tower. But then the trees hadn't always been so high – or even here at all.

The church was at the high point of the town, the main street sloping down to the river. From here you couldn't see the street or the river – but you could see the fields on the opposite bank, rising into hills thickened now with forestry. And, at one time, before the introduction of the voracious Sitka Spruce from Alaska, that might have been bare hillside, and there would have been other markers to pick up the line.

Joe Powys looked all around him and saw how clearly the Tump had been positioned to dominate the town, even the church, and draw in the landscape like the corners of a handkerchief.

That old feeling again, of being inside an ancient mechanism. At the centre of the wheel.

Identifying the line took an act of imagination because there were no markers any more. But Henry Kettle had discovered where upright stones had once been aligned to guide the eye from the Tump to the distant horizons.

But there was something about it that Henry Kettle didn't like.

Powys moved away from the highest point and stood next to a twisted hawthorn tree. The sky was a tense, luminous grey, swollen like a great water-filled balloon, and he felt that if it came down low enough to be pricked by the tree's topmost thorns, he'd be drowned.

It was his own fault. Places like this could ensnare your mind, and your thoughts became tangled up with the most primitive instincts, old fears lying hidden in the undergrowth like trailing brambles.

As quickly as he could, but still very carefully, Powys came down from the Tump, climbed over the wall and didn't look back until he was well into the field, heading towards the road, where he'd left the Mini. Halfway across the field, there was a bumpy rise, and it was here that he found the hub-cap.

He sat on a hummock with the disc on his knee. It was muddy and badly rusted, but he could still make out the symbol in the centre – two letters: VW.

'Still the same car. then, Henry. How old is it now? Twenty-two, twenty-three?'

Holding Henry's hub-cap, Powys looked back at the Tump.

I have always disliked the Tump for some reason. Some places are naturally negative.