Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (70 page)

   
The painting, Hereward thought,
stole the sunlight away.

   
He identified the front entrance
of Crybbe Court, the building looking as romantically decrepit as it had last
week when he'd strolled over there out of curiosity, to see how things were progressing.
Broken cobbles in the yard. Weeds. A dull grey sky falling towards evening.

   
The main door was open, and a
tall, black-bearded man, half-shadowed, stood inside. Behind the figure and
around his head was a strange nimbus, a halo of yellowish, powdery vapour. The
man had a still and beckoning air about him. Hereward was reminded in a curious
way, of Holman Hunt's
The Light of the
World,
except there was no light about this figure, only a sort of glowing
darkness.

   
'It's very interesting,'
Hereward said. 'How much?'
   
'Three hundred pounds.'

   
Hereward was pleased. It was,
in its way, a major work, lustrous like a large icon. This girl was a
significant discovery. He wanted to snatch his wallet out before she could
change her mind, but caution prevailed. He kept his face impassive.
   
'Where do you work?'
   
'Here. In Crybbe.'

   
'You're ... a full-time,
professional painter?'

   
'I am now,' she said. 'Would
you like to see the preliminary sketches?'

   
'Very much,' Hereward said.

   
She fetched the portfolio from
the Land Rover. The sketches were in Indian ink and smudged charcoal - studies
of the bearded face - and some colour-mix experiments in acrylic on paper.

   
He wondered who the model was,
didn't like to ask; this artist had a formidable air. Watched him, unsmiling.
   
And she was so
young
.
   
'Does it have a title?'
   
'It speaks for itself.'

   
'I see,' Hereward said. He
didn't. 'Look,' he said. 'I'll take a chance. I'll buy it.'

   
She'd watched him the whole
time, studying his reaction. She hadn't looked once at the painting. Most
unusual for an artist; normally they couldn't keep their eyes off their own work.

   
'Could I buy the sketches,
too?'

   
'You can have them,' she said.
'Keep them in your attic or somewhere.'

   
'I certainly won't! I shall
have them on my walls.'
   
The girl smiled.

   
'One thing.' She had a trace of
accent. Not local, 'I might be doing more. Even if it's sold, I'd like the
painting in the window of your gallery for a couple of days. No card, no identification,
just the picture.'

   
'Well . . . certainly. Of course.
But you really don't want your name on a card under the picture?'

   
Shook her head. 'You don't know
my name, anyway.'

   
'Aren't you going to tell me?'

   
She left.

   
It was not yet ten o'clock.

The Mayor of Crybbe was seeing his youngest grandson for the first time
as a man.
   
An unpleasant man.

   
He'd patrolled the farm, checking
everything was all right, collected a few eggs. Then noticed that something,
apart from the tractor, was missing from the vehicle shed.

   
When he got back to the house,
he saw Warren landing hard on the settee, like he'd been doing something else,
heard his grandad and flung himself down in a hurry.

   
'Where's the Land Rover,
Warren?'

   
'Lent it to a friend.'

   
'You . . .
what
?' Mr Preece took off his cap and began to squeeze it.

   
'Don't get excited, Grandad.
She'll bring it back.'
   
'
She
?'

   
'My friend,' said Warren, not
looking at him. He hadn't even shaved yet.

   
When Mr Preece looked at
Warren, he saw just how alone he was now.

   
'Come on. Warren, we got things
to do. Jonathon's funeral tomorrow and your dad in hospital. Your gran rung
yet?'
   
'Dunno. Has she?'

   
'She was gonner phone the
hospital, see what kind of night Jack 'ad, see when we can visit 'im.'
   
'I hate hospitals,' said Warren.
   
'You're not gonner go?'

   
"Can't see me goin' today,'
said Warren, like they were talking about a football match. 'I'll be busy.'

   
Jimmy Preece began to shake.
Sprawled across the settee was a hard, thin man with a head shaved close until
you got right to the top when it came out like a stiff shaving brush. A sneering
man with an ear-ring which had a little metal skull hanging from it. A man with
flat, lizard's eyes.

   
Before, it had been an irritation,
the way Warren was, but it didn't matter much. You looked the other way and you
saw Jonathon, you saw the chairman of the Young Farmers' Club. You saw Jimmy
Preece fifty years ago.

   
Now this ... his only surviving
grandson.

   
He tried. 'Warren, we never
talked much . . . before.'

   
Warren's laughter was like spit.
'Wasn't no reason to talk was there? Not when there was Dad, and there was good
old reliable old Jonathon.'

   
'Don't you talk like that about
. . .'

   
'And now you wanner talk, is it?
What a fuckin' surprise this is. Fair knocks me over with the shock, that
does.'

   
Jimmy Preece squeezed his cap
so tightly he felt the fabric start to rip.

   
This . . .
this
was the only surviving Preece, apart from himself, with two
good legs to climb the stairs to the belfry.

   
'Now you listen to me, boy,'
Jimmy said. 'There's things you don't know about . . .'

   
'Correction, Grandad.' Warren
uncoiled from the couch, stood up. 'There's things I don't
care
about. Big difference there, see.'

   
Jimmy Preece wanted to hit him
again. But this time, Warren would be ready for it, he could tell by the way he
was standing, legs apart, hands dangling loose by his sides. Wouldn't worry him
one bit, beating an old man.

   
Jimmy Preece saw the future.

   
He saw himself prising Mrs
Preece out of her retirement cottage, dragging her back to this old place. He
saw himself running the farm again, such as it was these days, and ringing the
old bell every night until Jack was out of hospital, and then Mrs Preece caring
for her crippled son, and what meagre profits they made going on hired help as
he, Jimmy Preece, got older and feebler.

   
He knew, from last night's
ordeal, how hard it was going to get, ringing that bell. Jack must've sensed
it, but he hadn't said a word. That was Jack, though, keep on, grit your teeth,
do your duty. You don't have to like it but you got to do it.

   
Going to be hard. Going to be a
trial.

   
While this. . . this
thing
slinks around the place grinning and
sneering.

   
Going to be no fall-back. A
feeble old man, and no fall-back.

   
'Why don't you just let it go,
Grandad,' Warren said, with a shocking hint of glee. 'What's it worth? Think
about the winter, them cold nights when you're all stiff and the old steps is wet
and slippery. Could do yourself a mischief, isn't it.'

   
Jimmy Preece seeing his youngest
grandson for the first time as a man.

   
A bad man.

   
He wanted to take what Goff had
told him this morning and hurl it in Warren's thin, snidey face.

   
Instead, he turned his back on
his sole remaining grandson and walked out of the house, across the yard.

   
Warren went back into the fireplace
and lifted out the old box.

   
He set the box on the hearth
and opened the lid.

   
The hand of bones looked to be
lying palm up this morning, the Stanley knife across it, the fingers no longer
closed around the knife.

   
Like the hand was offering the
Stanley knife to Warren.
   
So Warren took it.

CHAPTER III

         
         
. . . an did bnnge out
hys bodie and shewde hym to the
         
crowde with the rope about hys
necke . . .

Joe Powys lay on the floor still wearing last night's sweatshirt,
flecked with mud and stuff from the woods and some blood from later. He was
alone; she'd slipped quietly away a few minutes ago.

   
The hanged man was obviously
the High Sheriff, Sir Michael Wort, displayed by his frightened servants to the
angry townsfolk to prove that he really was dead. So if they'd seen his body,
how did the legend arise that Wort had perhaps escaped down some secret tunnel?

   
Only one possible answer to
that.

   
It had been in his head almost
as soon as he woke, half-remembering copying out the material and half-thinking,
it was part of some long, tortured dream. But
The Ley-Hunter's Diary
I993
was there, in his jacket on the floor by his pillow, and it was still throwing
out answers. Not very credible answers.

   
The door was prodded open and
Arnold peered round. Powys beckoned him, plunged his hands into the black and white
fur. It felt warm and real. Not much else felt real.

   
Arnold licked his hand.

   
Powys looked around the room,
at the dark-stained dressing-table, the wardrobe like an upturned coffin, the
milk-chocolate wallpaper. Not the least depressing room he'd ever slept in.

   
'Don't blame me for the decor.'

   
She stood in the doorway.

   
She was in a red towelling
bathrobe, arms by her sides, hands invisible because the sleeves were too long.
   
'It's certainly very Crybbe,' he said.

   
Fay nodded. 'And I'm never going
to sleep here again, that's for sure.'

He'd awoken several times during the night on his makeshift bed of sofa
cushions laid end to end.

   
Once it was Arnold licking his
forehead. And once with an agonizing image arising in his mind: an exquisitely
defined, twilit image of Rachel's broken body, both eyes wide open in a head
that lolled off-centre, the perfect, pale, Pre-Raphaelite corpse, Ophelia, 'The
Lady of Shalott' . . .

   
Lady cast out upon a Rubbish
Heap.

   
He'd stood up, hearing Fay
moaning in the bed. 'Oh God.' Twisting her head on the pillow, 'it hurts. It
really hurts. It was just numb for a while, now it really hurts.'

   
'Let me take you to a
hospital.'

   
'I'm not leaving this room.'

'And I thought Arnold looked a mess,' she said. 'What's the time?
There's only one reliable clock in this house and I couldn't bear to look at
it.'

   
Powys consulted their two
watches on the bedside cupboard. 'Half nine. Ten. Mine's probably right, yours
is cracked. So it's ten.'

   
'Even my watch has a cracked
face.' Fay smiled feebly. 'I was lying there, thinking, you know, it can't be
as bad as it feels, it really can't. Then I staggered to the bathroom mirror. .
. And it was. It really bloody was.'

   
The cut ran from just below the
hairline to the top of the left cheek. The left eye was black, blue, orange and
half-closed.

   
'The bitch has scarred me for
life.'

   
He remembered all the blood on
the linoleum and thought she actually looked a good deal better than the
quaking thing he'd found curled up on the kitchen floor, incapable, for a long
time, of coherent speech.