Crybbe aka Curfew

'It won't take a minute.' She was very composed this morning, probably embarrassed as hell about last night's tearful sequence. He opened the folder in a deliberately cursory fashion. What the hell was all this about? Was he expected to buy something?

The drawing was pen-and-ink. The face was inspecting itself in a mirror. Every wrinkle on the face – and there were many – was deeply etched. The eyes were sunken, the cheeks hollow, the nose bulbous.

Guy inhaled sharply. He looked up at Jocasta in her Japanese dressing-gown, could tell she was working hard to hide her feelings, holding a mask over her anticipation. Anticipation and something else. Something altogether less healthy.

He looked down at the drawing again. He felt a deep suspicion and a growing alarm.

'Is this some son of joke?'

'Is it him?' Jocasta asked.

'I don't know what you mean. Who did these?'

'Is it him?'

Of course it was him. It was either him or Guy was going mad. His deep suspicion was suddenly drenched in cold confusion and a bitter, acrid dread.

'Look at the next one.'

All the sensation had left his fingers. He watched them, as if they were someone else's fingers, lifting the first drawing, laying it to one side, face-down on the table.

He didn't understand.

A moment earlier, he saw, the old man had slashed his throat. The open razor had fallen from one spasmed hand – it was drawn in mid-air, floating a fraction of an inch below a finger and thumb – while the fingers of the other hand we pushing into the opened throat itself, as if trying to hold the slit tubes together, to block the tunnels of blood.

The blood was black ink, blotch upon blotch, spread joyously, as if the pen nib was a substitute for the cut throat razor.

Guy thrust the drawing aside, came raggedly to his feet. He stumbled to the sink and threw up what seemed like half a gallon of sour coffee.

It was not the drawing, he thought as he retched. It was the knowledge of what, if he'd stayed a moment longer in the bathroom last night, he would have seen.

He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand, saw Jocasta watching him in distaste, knew exactly what she was thinking: that perhaps all men were as pathetic as her husband.

'I'm sorry,' Guy said. He washed his hands and his face, snatched a handful of kitchen towel to wipe them. No, dammit, he wasn't sorry at all.

'I think you owe me an explanation,' he said coldly.

Murray Beech leaned out of his pulpit, hands gripping its edges, as if he were sitting up in the bath.

'And what,' he demanded, 'is this so-called New Age? Can there be any true meaning in a concept quite so vague?'

He paused.

'The New Age,' he said heavily.

He glared out into the church – late-medieval and not much altered. 'Some of you may remember a popular song, 'This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius'.'

'He's going to knock it, then,' Powys whispered to Fay.

'Well, of course he's going to knock it,' Fay said, out of the side of her mouth. 'That's why I'm here.'

The Uher sat on the pew at her side, its spools turning, the microphone wedged between two prayer books on the ledge, she was recording the sermon for her own reference. She wouldn't get anything of broadcast quality at this range and she hadn't got permission anyway. She'd talk to him on tape afterwards, throw his own words back at him and see how he reacted.

''Harmony and Understanding',' Murray quoted. 'Sympathy and Trust Abounding'.'

Alien concepts in Crybbe, Fay thought cynically. The vicar's words must be settling on this comatose congregation with all the weight of ash-flakes from a distant bonfire.

Caught in white light from a small Gothic window set high in the nave, Murray Beech – light-brown hair slicked flat, metallic features firmly set – was looking about fifteen years older than his age. A man with problems.

Fay's dad shuffled and coughed. He didn't know she was there.

Who was this woman, then? Slim and small-boned, she wore a wide-brimmed brown felt hat which concealed her hair and neck.

The Vicar announced there would be a public meeting in Crybbe on Tuesday night, when the members of this congregation would be asked to consider the merits of the New Age movement and decide to what extent they would allow it to infiltrate their lives.

Now, he had no wish to condemn the obviously sincere people who offered what appeared to be rather scenic shortcuts to their own idea of heaven. Indeed, it might be argued that any kind of spirituality was better than none at all.

The Canon coughed again; the woman next to him was very still. Almost… almost too still.

'We have a choice,' said Murray. 'We can pray for the strength and the will to confront the reality of a world defiled by starvation, injustice and inequality – a world crying out for basic Christian charity.

'Or,' he said, with the smallest twist of his lips, 'we can sidestep reality and amuse ourselves in what we might call the Cosmic Fairground.'

Everyone alive moved a little, Fay thought, watching the woman. Even sleeping people moved.

No. Not here. You can't follow him here. Not into church.

Murray hauled himself further up in his pulpit, raised his voice.

'How appealing! How appealing it must seem to live in a little world where, if we're sick, we can pass off the health services and the medical advances of the past hundred years as irrelevant and call instead upon the power of… healing crystals.'

Powys smiled.

But Fay had stiffened, feeling the tiny hairs rising on her bare arms. Her father's face was turned towards the pulpit. He had never glanced at the woman by his side. Fay thought, I can see her, but can he?

'… a little world, where, if we feel we are suffering a certain starvation of the soul, we need not give up our Sunday mornings to come to church. Because all we need to do is to go for a stroll along the nearest ley line and expose ourselves to these famous cosmic rays.'

Fay heard him as if from afar. She was looking at her father. And at the woman. Neat, small- boned, wide-brimmed hat concealing her hair and neck. And unnaturally still.

The church was darkening around Fay. The muted colours had drained out of the congregation. Everything was black and white and grey Nobody moved. Murray Beech, flickering like an ancient movie, black and white in his surplice, was gesturing in the pulpit, but she couldn't hear him any more.

She stared hard, projecting her fear and – surprised at its strength – her uncontrollable resentment. Until she felt herself lifting from the pew, aware of a sudden concern in the eyes of Joe Powys, his hand reaching out for her from a long, long way away, but not touching. Fay rising on a malign wave while, at the same time, very slowly, the woman sitting next to her father began, for the first time, to move.

Began, very slowly, to turn her head.

And Fay was suddenly up on her feet in the silent church, shrieking aloud. 'How dare you? Get out! How dare you come in here!'

Gripping the prayer-book shelf so hard that it creaked.

'Why?' Fay screamed. 'Why can't you just get on with your death and leave him alone?'

Then everybody was turning round, but Fay was out of the church door, and running.