Crybbe aka Curfew

by Phil Rickman

  An odd customer, this Goff, and no mistake. Most of the people who consulted dowsers – that is, actually paid them – had good practical reasons. Usually farmers looking for a water supply for their stock. Or occasionally people who'd lost something. And now and then those afflicted by rheumatics, or worse, because they'd got a bad spring under the house.

  'Why am I still thinking he's trouble then, Arnie?'

  The dog considered the question, looked serious.

  Well, hell, he didn't want to think that. Not at all, became this Goff was the first person who'd ever paid him to go ley-hunting.

  'Mr. Kettle,' he'd said, coming straight to the point, which Mr. Kettle liked, 'I've been advised that this used to be quite a centre for prehistoric remains, and I wanna know, basically, what happened to them. Can you find out where they used to be? The old stones? The burial mounds? And I'm told you can kind of detect ley-lines, too, yeah?'

  'Well,' Mr. Kettle had said carefully, 'I know what you mean. It do sometimes seem they fall into straight lines, the old monuments.'

  'No need to be coy with me, Mr. Kettle. I'm not afraid to call a ley-line a ley-line.'

  Now this had, at first, been a joy, taking the old chap back nigh on seventy years. He remembered – a memory like a faded sepia photo – being on a hazy hilltop with his father and other members of the Straight Track Club. Mr. Watkins pointing out the little bump on the horizon and showing how the line progressed to it from mound, to stone, to steeple. The others nodding, impressed. The picture frozen there: Mr. Watkins, arm outstretched, bit of a smile under his stiff beard.

  Now, remarkably – and loathe as Mr. Kettle had been, at first, to admit it – this Goff had stumbled on something Mr. Watkins would, no question, have given his right arm to know about.

  So it had proved unexpectedly exciting, this survey, this ley-hunt. Bit of an eye-opener. To say the least.

  Until…

  One morning, knowing there had to have been a stone in a particular place in Big Meadow and then digging about and finding part of it buried nearby, Mr. Kettle had got a feeling that something about this was not regular. In most areas, old stones were lost gradually, over centuries, plucked out at random, when exasperation at the damage done to a plough or a harrow had finally overcome the farmer's inbred superstition.

  But at Crybbe, he was sure, it had been systematic.

  Like a purge.

  Mr. Kettle's excitement was dampened then by a bad feeling that just wouldn't go away. When he dug up the stone he thought he could smell it – something faintly putrid, as if he'd

  unearthed a dead sheep.

  And, as a man who lived by his feelings, he wondered if he ought to say something. About the purge on the stones. About the history of the Court – John Dee, Black Michael and the hangings. And about the legends, which travelled parallel to history and sometimes, if you could decode them, told you far more about what had really happened than the fusty old documents in the county archives.

  Mr. Kettle, who kept his own records, was getting more and more interested in Crybbe – wishing, though, that he didn't have to be. Wishing he could ignore it. Detecting a problem here, a serious long-term problem, and wishing he could turn his back on it.

  But, as the problem was likely to remain long after he'd gone, he'd taken steps to pass on his fears. With a feller like this Max Goff blundering about the place, there should always be somebody who knew about these things – somebody trustworthy – to keep an eye open.

  He supposed he ought to warn Goff, but the thought of 'something sinister' would probably only make the place more appealing.

  'And, anyway, you can't tell these New Age types anything, can you, Arnold?' Mr. Kettle was scratching the dog's head again. 'No, you can't, boy.'

  Ten minutes later Goff was back, puffing, the flush in his cheeks making his close-mown beard seem even redder. Excitement coming off him like steam.

  'Mr. Kettle, let me get this right. According to your calculations, this is line B, right?'

  'That's correct.'

  'And by following this line, as you dowsed it, we suddenly come across what could be the only remaining stone in the alignment. Is it exactly where you figured it'd be?'

  'Well… Mr. Kettle got to his feet and picked up his bag. Max Goff eyed it.

  'Got the rods in there? Can we dowse the line some more, maybe find another stone?'

  No, we bloody can't, Mr. Kettle thought. You might as well ask, how about if we grabs hold of this electric cable to see if he's live?

  He saw, to his dismay, that Goff was looking at him in some kind of awe; he'd found a new guru. It was not a role Mr. Kettle fancied. 'Getting late,' he said. 'I ought to be away. Don't like driving in the dark these days.'

  'When can you come again?'

  'Look,' Mr. Kettle said. 'I'm an old man. I likes my fireside and my books. And besides, you got it all now. You know where they all are. Or used to be.'

  This Goff was a man whose success in business had convinced him that if you knew a source, knowledge and experience could be bought like… what would this feller buy?…

  cocaine? Mr. Kettle, who still read two newspapers every day, knew a bit about Max Goff and the kind of world he came from.

  'Maybe your role in this is only just beginning,' Goff said. 'How about I send a car for you next time?'

  Money was no object for this bugger. Made his first million by the time he was twenty-seven, Mr. Kettle had read, by starting his own record company. Epidemic, it was called. And it had spread like one. Now it was international magazines and book publishing.

  'Well,' Mr. Kettle said. 'Isn't much more as I can tell you, anyway. You've got the maps. Nothing more to be found, even if you excavates, I reckon.'

  'Hmmm.' Goff was making a show of being unconvinced, as they followed what Mr. Kettle now thought of, wrote of in his journal – but never spoke of – as the Dark Road, the Thoroughfare of the Dead. Returning at dusk, back into Crybbe, a town which had loitered since the Middle Ages, and probably before, in the area where England hardened into Wales.

  On the very border.

  CHAPTER III

  It was the seventh bell they always rang, for the curfew. Almost rang itself these days. Seventeen years Jack had been doing it. Didn't need to think much about it any more. Went regular as his own heartbeat.

  The bell clanged above him.

  Jack let the rope slide back through his hands.

  Seventy-three.

  His hands closed again around the rope.

  Seventy-four.

  He hadn't been counting. At any point during the ringing Jack could tell you what number he was on. His arms knew. His stomach knew.

  One hundred times every night. Starting at ten o'clock. Newcomers to the town, they'd asked him, 'Don't you find it spooky, going up there, through that graveyard, up all those narrow stone steps, with the church all dark, and the bell-ropes just hanging there?'

  'Don't think about it,' Jack would say. And it was true; he didn't.

  There were eight bells in the tower, and that was reckoned to be a good peal for this part of the country.

  For weddings, sometimes in the old days, they'd all be going. Even fairly recently – though not any more – it had been known for some snooty bride from Off to bring in a handful of bell-ringers from her own parish for the big day. This had only been permitted for weddings, sometimes. On Sundays, never. And not Christmas. Not even Easter.

  And also, every few years some bearded clown in a sports jacket would pass through. And then the church or the town council would gel a letter from the secretary of some group of nutters that travelled the country ringing other people's bells.

  The town council would say no.

  Occasionally – this was the worst problem – there'd be somebody like Colonel Croston who'd moved in from Hereford, where he was reckoned to have been in the SAS. He liked to keep fit. Jogged around the place.

  And rang bells, as a hobby.

  H
e'd been a pain in the neck at first, had Colonel Croston. 'No bell-ringers apart from you, Jack? That's appalling. Look, you leave this one to me.'

  Jack Preece remembered the Colonel putting up posters inviting all able-bodied folk to come to the church one Friday night and learn the ropes. 'Give me six months. Guarantee I'll knock them into shape.'

  Jack had gone along himself because he didn't like the thought of youngsters running up and down the stone steps and swinging on his ropes.

  When the two of them had been waiting around for nearly an hour he let the despondent Colonel take him for a drink.

  'Doesn't deserve these bells, Jack, this town.'

  'Aye, aye,' Jack had said non-committally, and had permitted Colonel Croston to buy him a large brandy.

  He hadn't bothered to tell the Colonel that even he only knew how to ring the curfew using the seventh bell. Well, no point in buggering with the others, see, was there? No point in making a show. They could have pulled the other bells down and flogged them off for scrap, far as Jack Preece was concerned.

  Anyhow, what they'd done now, to save a lot of bother and pestering was to take down all the ropes. Except, of course the one that rang the seventh bell.

  Some nights, Jack would be real knackered after a day's dipping, or shearing, or lambing. He'd stagger up them steps, hurting all over his body, dying for a pint and aching for his bed. Some nights he'd grab hold of that rope just to stop himself falling over.

  Still the hundred would be done. And done on time.

  And it was on nights like this that Jack felt sometimes he was helped. Felt the belfry was kind of aglow, and other hands were pulling on the rope beside his own.

  Spooky?

  Well, he didn't think about it. Where was the point in that?

  They walked slowly into the town over a river bridge with old brick walls which badly needed pointing, the river flat and sullen below. Past a pub, the Cock, with flaky paintwork and walls that had once been whitewashed but now looked grey and unwashed.

  A dark, smoky, secretive little town. There was still an afterglow on the fields, but the town was already embracing the night.

  Mr. Kettle had never been to Paris or New York. But if, tonight, he was to be flown into either of them, he suspected he wouldn't feel any more of a stranger than he did entering Crybbe – a town he'd lived within twenty miles of all his life.

  This town, it wasn't remote exactly, not difficult to reach, yet it was isolated. Outsiders never had reason to pass through it on the way to anywhere. Because, no matter where you wanted to reach, there was always a better way to get there than via Crybbe. Three roads intersected here, but they were B roads, two starting in Wales – one leading eventually to Hereford, the other to Ludlow – and the other… well, buggered if he knew where that one went.

  Max Goff, almost glowing in his white suit, was striding into the dimness of the town, like Dr Livingstone or somebody, with a pocketful of beads for the natives.

  They'd take the beads, the people here. They wouldn't thank him, but they'd take the beads.

  Henry Kettle didn't claim to understand the people of Crybbe. They weren't hostile and they weren't friendly. They kept their heads down, that was all you could say about them.

  A local historian had once told him this was how towns and villages on the border always used to be. If there was any cross-border conflict between the English and the Welsh they never took sides openly until it was clear which was going to win. Also, towns of no importance were less likely to be attacked and burned.

  So keeping their heads down had got to be a way of life.

  Tourists must turn up sometimes. By accident, probably. Mr. Kettle reckoned most of them wouldn't even bother to park. Sure the buildings were ancient enough, but they weren't painted and polished up like the timber-frame villages on the Hereford black-and-white trail. Nothing here that said 'visit me' with any enthusiasm, because there was no sense of pride.

  From the church tower, above the cobbled square, a lone bell was clanging dolefully into the musty dusk. It was the only sound there was.

  'What's that?' Goff demanded.

  'Only the curfew.'

  Goff stopped on the cobbles, his smile a great gash. 'Hey really…? This is a real curfew, like in the old days?'

  'No,' Mr. Kettle said. 'Not really. That's to say, people are no longer required to be off the streets by nightfall. Just tradition nowadays. The Preece family, it is, performs the duty. One of 'em goes up the belfry, God knows how many steps every night, summer and winter; nine-thirty, or is it ten?'

  He looked up at the church clock but it was too dark to make out where its hands were pointing. He was sure there used to be a light on that clock. 'Hundred times it rings, anyway.'

  'Might only be a tradition, but there's still nobody on the streets,' Max Goff observed. 'Is there?'

  'That's 'cause they're all in the pubs,' said Mr. Kettle. 'No, what it is, there's some old trust fund arranges for the bell to be rung. The Preeces get grazing rights on a few acres of land in return for keeping up the custom. Passed down, father to son, for four hundred-odd years. Being farmers, they always has plenty sons.'

  They stood in the square until the ringing stopped.

  'Crazy,' Goff said, shaking his big head in delight. 'Cray-zee. This is the first night I've spent here, y'know?'I've always stayed in Hereford. It's magic, Mr. Kettle. Hey, we still on the line?'

  'I suppose we must be. Aye, see the little marker by there?'

  A stone no more than a foot high, not much more than a bump in the cobbles. Goff squatted next to it and held his palms over it, as though he expected it to be hot or to light up or something. The dog, Arnold, watched, his head on one side as if puzzled by a human being who went down on all fours to sniff the places where dogs had pissed.

  Two middle-aged women walked across the square talking in low voices. They stopped talking as they walked past Goff, but didn't look at him, nor Mr. Kettle, nor each other.

  Then they went rigid, because suddenly Arnold's head was back and he was howling.

  'Jeez!' Goff sprang up. The two women turned, and Mr. Kettle felt he was getting a very dark, warning look, the women's faces shadowed almost to black.

  'Arnold!' With some difficulty – beginning to think he must have a bad spring under his own house, the way his rheumatism had been playing up lately – Mr. Kettle got down on his knees and pulled the dog to him. 'Sorry, ladies.'

  The women didn't speak, stood there a moment then turned and walked away quickly as the howling subsided, because Mr. Kettle had a hand clamped around Arnold's jaws. 'Daft bugger, Arnold.'

  'Why'd it do that?' Goff asked, without much interest.

  'I wish I knew, Mr. Goff.'

  Mr. Kettle wanted some time to think about this. Because for a long time he'd thought it was just a drab little town, full of uninspired, interbred old families and misfits from Off. And now, he thought, it's more than that. More than inbreeding and apathy.

  He unclamped the dog's jaws, and Arnold gave him a reproachful glance and then shook his head.

  There were lights in some town houses now. They lit the rooms behind the curtains but not the square, not even a little, folk in this town had never thrown their light around.

  'OK?' Goff said, feet planted firmly on the cobbles, legs splayed, quite relaxed. Wasn't getting it, was he? Wasn't feeling the resistance? Didn't realize he was among the descendants of the people who'd pulled up the stones.

  Mr. Kettle was getting to his feet, one hand against the wall, like his old bones, the brick seemed infirm. The people here, they cared nothing for their heritage.

  And their ancestors had torn up the stones.

  Goff was just a big white blob in the dim square. Mr. Kettle walked to where their cars were parked in a little bay behind the church overhung with yew trees. His own car was a dusty VW Estate. Goff had a Ferrari.

  'Come to dinner, OK?' Goff said. 'When I've moved into the Court.'

  'You
're going through with it, then?'

  'Try and stop me.'

  'Can I say something?' Henry Kettle had been thinking about this for the past fifteen minutes or so. He didn't much like Goff, but he was a kindly old chap, who wanted at least to put out a steadying hand.

  'Of course.'

  Mr. Kettle stood uneasily in the semi-dark. 'These places…' he began, and sucked in his lips, trying to concentrate. Trying to get it right.

  'I suppose what I'm trying to say is places like this, they – how can I put it? – they invites a kind of obsession.' He fell silent, watching the buildings in the square hunching together as the night took over.

  A harsh laugh came out of Goff. 'Is that it?' he asked rudely.

  Mr. Kettle unlocked his car door and opened it for Arnold 'Yes,' he said, half-surprised because he'd thought he was going to say more. 'Yes, I suppose that is it.'

  He couldn't see the dog anywhere. 'Arnie!' he called out sharply. He'd had this problem before, the dog slinking silent away, clearly not at ease, whimpering sometimes.

  He hadn't gone far this time, though. Mr. Kettle found him pressed into the churchyard wall, ears down flat, panting with anxiety. 'All right, Arn, we're leaving now,' Mr. Kettle said patting him – his coat felt lank and plastered down, as if he was the first dog ever to sweat. This was it with a dowser's dog – he'd pick up on the things his master was after and, being a dog and closer to these matters anyway, his response would be stronger.

  Slipping his hand under Arnold's collar, Mr. Kettle led him back to the car and saw Goff standing there quite still in his white suit and his Panama hat, like an out-of-season snowman.

  'Mr. Kettle,' Goff took a steep breath. 'Perhaps I ought, explain. This place… I mean, look around… it's remote, half-forgotten, run-down. For centuries its people lived from the land, right? But now agriculture's in decline, it doesn't provide extra jobs any more, and there's nothing here to replace it. This town's in deep shit, Mr. Kettle.'

  Mr. Kettle couldn't argue with that; he didn't say anything. Watched Max Goff spread his hands, Messiah-style.