Crybbe aka Curfew

CHAPTER VII

'But…'

Well, she couldn't say she hadn't been warned.

The vet, an elderly, stooping man in a cardigan, said there'd been quite a concentration of shotgun pellets in the dog's rear end.

'Fairly close range, you see. Must have been. If he'd moved a bit faster, the shot would have missed him altogether. I got some of them out, and some will work to the surface in time. But he'll always-be carrying a few around. Like an old soldier.'

Arnold was lying on a folded blanket, his huge ears fully extended. His tail bobbed when Fay and Joe appeared. His left haunch had been shaved to the base of the tail. The skin was vivid pink, the stitching bright blue.

'But he's only got three legs,' Fay said.

'I did try to save it, Mrs Morrison, but so much bone was smashed it would have been enormously complicated and left him in a lot of pain, probably for life. It's quite unusual for the damage to be so concentrated. But then, dogs that are shot are usually killed.'

'He's a survivor,' Fay said.

Arnold was not feeling sorry for himself, this was clear. He thumped his tail against his folded brown blanket and tried to get up. Fell down again, but he tried. Fay rushed to pat him to stop him trying again.

'Never discourage him from standing up,' the vet said. 'He'll be walking soon, after a fashion. Managed a few steps m the garden this morning. Falls over a lot, but he gets up again. He's young enough to handle it with aplomb, I think. Be cocking his stump against lampposts in no time. Need a lot of attention and careful supervision when he's outside, for a while. But he'll be fine. Some people can't cope with it, you know. They have the dog put down. It's kinder, they say. Kinder to them, they mean.'

With a stab of shame. Fay found herself thinking then about her father.

'And there's one thing,' the vet said. 'He won't be considered much of a danger to sheep now. I can't see this particular farmer coming after him again.'

'Most unlikely,' Powys agreed.

There must have been twenty or thirty people around the Court this afternoon, pulling things down, turning out buildings like drawers. And this was a Sunday; every one of them, no doubt, on double-time. Money- no object.

The Crybbe project seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Everything was happening unbelievably quickly, three or four months' work done inside a week. As if Max knew he had to seize the place, stage a coup before bureaucracy could be cranked into action against him.

And it was happening all around Rachel, as if she wasn't there. Had Max ordered her to stay behind here just to make this point?

Max's own energy seemed to be pumped entirely into his project, as if he didn't have an empire to run. Even from London, directing people and money to Crybbe.

Because, unknown to its hundreds of employees, this was now the spiritual centre of the Epidemic Group. Crybbe. The Court.

The Tump.

She'd caught sight of a specimen of his proposed new logo: a big green mound with trees on it. In Max's vision, all the power of Epidemic – the recording companies, the publishing houses, the high-street shops – would emanate from the Tump.

On a wall in the stable there was a map of the town with every building marked. The ones owned by Epidemic and now inhabited – or soon to be – by alternative people had been shaded red. She'd counted them; there were thirty-five properties, far more than Max was publicly admitting. Far more than even she had known about.

She tried to imagine the town as the alternative capital of Britain, with thousands of people flooding in to take part in seminars, follow the ley-lines with picnic lunches, consult mystics and healers. People in search of a spiritual recharge or a miracle cure.

A kind of New Age Lourdes.

Crybbe?

Rachel shook her head and wandered across the courtyard, head down, hands deep in the pockets of her Barbour. Couldn't wait to get rid of this greasy bloody Barbour for good.

She arrived at the burgeoning rubbish pile, which would soon consist of the entire non-Tudor contents of the Court. Leftovers from four centuries. Reminders of the times when the Court's other incarnations had been a private school (failed), a hotel (failed), even a billet, she'd been told, for American servicemen during World War II.

It was a shame; a lot of the stuff they were throwing out would be quite useful to some people and some of it valuable. A darkwood table, scratched but serviceable. A wardrobe which was probably Victorian and would sell, cleaned up, for several hundred quid in any antique shop. Peanuts to Max.

Money to burn. Hardly New Age What happened to recycling?

The pile was over twelve feet high. Filthy carpets which, unrolled, would probably turn out to be Indian. A rocking-chair. A couple of chests, one thick with varnish, the other newer, bound with green-painted metal strips, black lettering across its lid; you couldn't make out what it said.

Rachel looked hard at the second chest. Where had she seen it before?

Good Lord! She ran to the chest and pulled up its lid. They couldn't do this…

But they had.

Exposed to full daylight, Tiddles, the mummified cat, looked forlorn, a wisp of a thing, his eye-sockets full of dust, one of his sabre-teeth broken, probably in transit to the heap.

Tiddles, the guardian. Evicted.

She looked up at the Court, its lower windows mainly boarded up, the upper ones too small to give any indication of what was going on inside.

One thing she knew. Tiddles might not be Tudor – seventeenth century, somebody had suggested – but he was part of that place. He would have to go back.

Goes round FOUR times.

The earth force (assume it exists) rising up through the soles of your feet, a kind of liquid light. Up into your legs and then, into the body itself, the solar plexus, the first major energy centre. Feel it forming into a pulsing ball of warm, white light, while the chant goes on, the rhythmic clapping…

And he goes round FIVE times.

'Powys. I need to tell you…'

'Sorry?'

'Are you OK, Powys?'

'Yes, sorry, I was…'

Powys driving Fay's Fiesta through a delirium of damp trees, their foliage burgeoning over the road. Fay sitting in the passenger seat with Arnold on the blanket on her knee, fondling the dog's disproportionately large ears.

'Powys, I need to tell you why I went berserk in church.'

He said nothing. She seemed a good deal more relaxed now; something had obviously resolved itself.

'Have you ever seen a ghost?'

He shook his head. 'Terrible admission, isn't it? My belief in ghosts is founded entirely on hearsay.'

'Who exactly is Jean Wendle?'

'She's a spiritual healer. One of the more convincing ones. Nice woman. Used to be a lawyer. Barrister. Or an advocate, as they say in Scotland. Very high-octane. Then she found she could heal people, so she gave up the law to devote her life to it. They were about to make her a judge at the time. It caused… uproar in legal circles.'

'Oh!'