Crybbe aka Curfew

This was the only time that other people recognised the truly heroic nature of his job. They'd pour out of their homes, dozens of them, as he busted through the last snowdrift to liberate some remote hamlet that'd been cut off for a fortnight. Big cheers. Mug of tea. Glass of Scotch. Good old Gomer.

But last winter had been a mild winter. Bugger-all snow anywhere. And only Gomer saw the heroic side of the other things he did.

A few months ago he'd done this broadcast about the perils of digging drainage ditches and such. Explaining it to that little girl from the local radio. How, for him, it was like a military exercise – although not modern military; more like in these epic films where the knight gets into his armour, which is so heavy he has to be winched on to his horse. It was in these terms that Gomer Parry spoke on the radio of his life at the controls of the JCB.

Probably gave the listeners a good laugh. Certainly didn't bring him any more work. He couldn't remember a worse year, the local farmers – his regular clients – tighter than ever. Constipated buggers sitting there waiting for a laxative from Brussels. Farmers wouldn't fart these days unless they got an EC grant for it.

So Gomer Parry, feeling the pinch, had been very near excited when he had a phone call from Edgar Humble.

He'd played darts with Edgar Humble in the public bar at the Lamb in Crybbe. Edgar didn't say much, which was unusual for a Londoner; he just kept beating you at darts. But Gomer knew who employed him, and that was why he was very near excited when he got the call, because from what he'd heard here was a bloke who was going to need plenty plant hire.

'Knock walls down, can you?' Edgar Humble asked.

'What kind of walls?'

'Stone wall. Victorian, I'd say. Thick, solid. Five, six feet high. Couple of feet thick in places. Too much for yer?'

Gomer had almost laughed down the phone. 'Put it this way,' he said, if I'd been in business round Jericho way, all those years ago, they wouldn't have needed no bloody trumpets.'

'Max,' Rachel said, 'this is J. M. Powys.'

Max Goff put on his Panama hat. Bizarre, Powys thought. Eccentric. But not crazy. Those are not crazy eyes.

Goff looked at Powys for a good while. He had a beard like red Velcro. 'How long you been here?'

'Since last night,' Powys said steadily. 'I stayed at the Cock.'

'Yeah? Shit hole, huh? I hope you put it on my tab.' Goff grinned at last and stuck out a stubby hand. 'Hi, J. M. Welcome to Crybbe. Welcome to the Old Golden Land.'

Powys took the hand. Goff's grip was flaccid. Powys said, 'You think this is the Old Golden Land?'

The countryside was colourless. Mist was still draped around the Court like grimy lace curtains.

'Not yet,' Goff said. 'But it will be. Listen, if I'd known you were here I'd've driven back last night.'

'That's OK. Ms Wade was looking after me.'

Rachel was standing behind Goff in the courtyard. Powys deliberately didn't look at her. Neither, he noticed, did her boss, the man who overpaid her for little extras.

Goff jerked his Velcro chin at the two men at his side. 'This is Edgar Humble, my head of security.'

'Mr Humble,' Powys said tightly.

'And Andy Boulton-Trow, who of course you know, yeah?'

Andy wore a white shirt and black jeans. Close up, he looked even thinner than he'd been twelve years ago. You could see the bones flexing in his face as he smiled. It was a quick, wide smile.

It made Powys feel cold.

'Joe.'

'Andy,' he said quietly.

'Long time, my friend.' Andy's hair, once shoulder-length, was shaven right to the skull, and he was growing a beard. It would be black.

They hadn't met since Rose's funeral.

Goff said, 'Now Henry Kettle's gone, Andy's my chief adviser in the Crybbe project. Andy knows stones.'

Chief adviser. Jesus.

There was a big difference between Andy Boulton-Trow and Henry Kettle. What it came down to was: Henry would have said, don't mess with electricity until you know what you're doing. Andy would say, sure, just hold these two wires and then bring them together when I give you the nod, OK?

'So you lost Henry,' Powys said.

Andy dropped the smile.

'Tragic,' Goff said. 'There's gonna be a Henry Kettle memorial.'

A memorial. Well, that was all right, then. That made up for everything.

'We haven't decided yet where it's gonna go.'

'But somewhere prominent,' Andy said.

Powys didn't say a thing.

'J.M.,' Goff said, 'we need to talk, you and I. At length. I have a proposition. Hell, we all know each other, I'll spell out the basics. I want you to write me a sequel to Golden Land for Dolmen. I want it to be the Crybbe story. The – hey, what about this? – The New Golden Land.'

Goff beamed and looked round, Powys thought, for applause.

'What I'm talking here, J. M., is a substantial advance and the quality republication in under a year's time of the original Golden Land, to pave the way. Revise it if you like. New pictures. In colour. Whatever.'

Sure. Scrap Rose's pictures, Powys thought dully. Get better ones.

'And there's a place for you here.'

'A place?'

'A place to live. A beautiful house with a view of the river. Part of the deal. Rachel will take you there after we eat.'

'Mr Goff…' He wondered why people kept giving him houses.

'Max.'

'I have a place already. I run a little shop in Hereford called Trackways, which…'

'I know,' said Goff.

'… which is more than a shop. Which is a kind of museum to Alfred Watkins as well, the only one of its kind in Hereford, which…

'But it doesn't need to be in Hereford,' Goff said. 'And it doesn't have to be a little shop. Come over here.'

He led Powys to a corner of the courtyard and pointed across the field behind the stables, about a hundred yards from the Tump, where the trees began to thicken into the wood.

'As befits the stature of the man, the Watkins Centre needs to be a major development in, let's say, an eighteenth-century barn.'

On the edge of the wood was a massive, tumbledown barn complex, beams and spars poking out of it like components of a badly assembled dinosaur skeleton.

'Place needs to be big enough to house a huge collection of Watkins's photographs and ley-maps, and scores of original paintings of ancient sites. And it needs to be here. In Crybbe.'

Powys felt like a cartoon character who'd been flattened by a steam-roller and become a one-dimensional mat.

Lowering his voice, Goff said, 'I know your situation, J.M. I know you put all the money from Golden Land into Trackways, and I know how difficult it must be keeping Trackways afloat.'

He clapped Powys on the back. 'Think about it, yeah?'

Goff strolled back to the silent group of three standing next to the Ferrari. 'Rach, there's been a slight change of plan. We have lunch at two, we spend the afternoon in discussion groups then we assemble, early evening, at the Tump.'

Powys saw part of a cobweb from the attic floating free from a padded shoulder of Rachel's blue business