by Phil Rickman
Following the river. Fay walked Arnold down the field, towards the bridge, close to where she and Rachel had gone with the bottle of wine on a sunny afternoon that seemed like weeks and weeks ago.
It was one of Fay's 'thinking' walks. She wanted, as someone once said, to be alone.
Before leaving, she'd pored over some of the books in her small 'local' collection – Howse's History of Radnorshire, Ella Mary Leather's The Folklore of Herefordshire, Jacqueline Simpson's The Folklore of the Welsh Border. Not quite sure what she was looking for.
Anything to do with dogs, really. Dogs and bells.
There'd been separate entries on both. Two books referred to the Crybbe curfew, one of only a handful still sounded in British towns – purely tradition – with two of them along the Welsh border. There was all the usual stuff about the bequest of Percy Weale, wealthy sixteenth-century wool merchant, to safeguard the moral welfare of the town. One book briefly mentioned the Preece family as custodian of the tradition.
Fay untied Arnold's clothes-line. He snuffled around on the riverbank, going quite close to the water but never getting his paws wet. Interested in something. Perhaps there were otters. The river looked fat, well-fed by rain.
Not raining now, but it probably would before nightfall, the clouds moving in together like a street gang, heavy with menace.
It was only since coming to Crybbe that Fay had begun to regard intangibles like the sky, the atmosphere, climatic changes as… what? Manifestations of the earth's mood?
Or something more personal. Like when a mist seemed to cling to you, throwing out nebulous tentacles, as if you and it… as if it knew you.
And the atmosphere hereabouts – threatening or blandly indifferent – was not an expression of the earth's mood so much as… She stopped and stared across the darkening river at the huddle of Crybbe.
Not the earth's mood, but… the town's mood.
This thought came at the same moment as the shot.
Fay whirled.
The riverside field was empty, the clouds united overhead, thick and solid as a gravestone. There were no more shots and no echo, as if the atmosphere had absorbed the shock, like a cushion.
Everything still, the field unruffled, except for a patch of black and white – and now red – that pulsed and throbbed maybe twenty yards from Fay.
'Arnold?' she said faintly. 'Arnold?'
CHAPTER VI
From where Rachel was standing. Max Goff, arms folded, resembled an enormous white mushroom on the Tump.
In tones which, roughed by the speakers, didn't sound as reverent as they were perhaps intended to, Goff paid a brief tribute to Henry Kettle, said to be among the three finest dowsers in the country, killed when his car crashed into the obscene Victorian wall built around this very mound.
'No way we can know what went through Mr Kettle's head in those final moments. But I guess there was a kind of tragic poetry to his death.'
Rachel closed her eyes in anguish.
'And his death… began a minor but significant preliminary task which I intend to complete today.'
Max paused, looked down at his feet, looked up again. The cameraman could be seen zooming in tight on his face.
'The Victorians had scant respect for their heritage. They regarded our most ancient burial mounds as unsightly heaps which could be plundered at will in search of treasure. And to emphasize what they believed to be their dominance over the landscape and over history itself, they liked to build walls around things. Maybe they had a sense of the awesome terrestrial energy accumulating here. Maybe they felt threatened. Maybe they wanted to contain it.'
Or maybe they didn't fool themselves it even existed, Rachel thought cynically.
'But whatever their intention.' Goff began to raise his voice. 'This wall remains a denial. A denial of the Earth Spirit.'
He lifted an arm, fist clenched.
'And this wall has to come down as a first symbolic act in the regeneration of Crybbe.'
People clapped. That is, Rachel noticed, members of the New Age community clapped, raggedly.
'Only it won't be coming down today,' Humble said.
Rachel's eyes snapped open.
'We got a problem, Rachel. This is Mr Parry. The bulldozer man.'
A little man in wire-rimmed glasses stuck out a speckled brown hand. 'Gomer Parry' Plant Hire.'
'How do you do,' said Rachel suspiciously. 'Shouldn't you be down there with your machine?'
'Ah, well. Bit of a miscalculation, see,' said Gomer Parry. 'What it needs is a bigger bulldozer. See, even if I hits him high as I can reach, that wall, he'll crash back on me, sure to. Dangerous, see.'
'Dangerous,' Rachel repeated, unbelieving.
'Oh hell, aye.'
'OK. So if it needs a bigger bulldozer,' Rachel said carefully, 'then get a bigger bulldozer.'
'That,' said Gomer Parry, 'is, I'm afraid, the biggest one I got. Other thing is I got no insurance to cover all these people watchin'.'
Rachel said, very slowly, 'Oh…, shit.'
'Well, nobody said it was goin' to be a bloody circus,' said Gomer Parry.
Goff stood there, on the top of the Tump, still and white; monarch of the Old Golden Land.
He was waiting.
He came across the field in loose, easy strides, the twelve- bore under his arm, barrel pointing down. He wore a brown waterproof jacket and green Wellingtons.
It was darker now. Still a while from sundown, but the sun hadn't figured much around here in a long time.
'Sorry, miss.' Cursory as a traffic warden who'd just handed you a ticket. 'Shouldn't 'ave let 'im chase sheep, should you?'
'What?'
It was only afterwards she realized what he'd said. Fay, on her knees, blood on her jeans, from Arnold.
The dog lay in the grass, bleeding. He whined and twitched and throbbed.
'Move back, miss. Please.'
And she did. Thinking it had all been a horrible mistake and he was going to help her.
But when she shuffled back in the grass, almost overbalancing, he strolled across and stood over the dog, casually levelling his gun at the pulsating heap.
Fay gasped and threw herself forward, on top of Arnold, feeling herself trembling violently, like in a fever, and the dog hot, wet and sticky under her breasts.
'Now don't be silly, miss. 'E's done for, see. Move away, let me finish 'im off.'
'Go away!' Fay screamed. 'Fuck off!' Eyes squeezed closed, lying over Arnold. The dog gave a little cry and a wheeze, like a balloon going down.
'Oh no,' Fay sobbed. 'No, please…'
Lying across the dog, face in the grass, blind anger – hatred – rising.
They both saw the dog fall, not far from the river, a blur of blood. The woman running, collapsing to her knees. Then the man wandering casually across the field.
'The bastard. Who is he?'
'Jonathon Preece,' Mrs Seagrove said, white-faced, clinging to her gate. 'From Court Farm.'
'What the hell's he think he's doing?'
'I wish I could run,' Mrs Seagrove said, her voice quaking with rage and shock. 'I'd have that gun off him. Look…'
She clutched his arm. 'What's he doing now, Joe? He's going to shoot her, he's going to shoot the girl as well!'
Incredibly, it did look like it. She'd thrown herself over the dog. The man was standing over them, the gun pointing downwards.
'Do you know her?'
'Too far away to tell, Joe.' Mrs Seagrove began to wring her hands. 'Oh, I hate them. I hate them. They're primitive. They're a law unto themselves.'
'Right.' Powys was moving towards the field. Common land, he was thinking, common land.
'Shall I call the police?'
"Only if I don't come back,' Powys said, shocked at how this sounded. For real. Jesus.
He slipped and scrambled to his feet with yellow mud on his grey suit. 'Shit.' Called back, 'What did you say his name was?'
'For God's sake, be careful. Preec
e, Jonathon Preece.'
'Right. You stay there, Mrs Seagrove. Get ready to phone.' Jesus, he thought, realizing he was trembling, what kind of place is this?
Guy Morrison was about to tear his hair. This was a two-camera job and he only had one. How was he supposed to shoot Goff and the destruction of the wall with one camera?
What this needed was a shot of the bulldozer crashing through, with a shower of stone, and a cut-back to Goff's triumphant face as he savoured the moment from his eyrie on the Tump. It would be a meaningful sequence, close to the top of the first programme, maybe even under the titles.
But now was ne supposed to get that with one crew? If he'd known about this beforehand, he'd have hired a local news cameraman as back-up – Griggs, for instance. But he didn't know about it in advance because this arrogant, fat bastard was playing his cards too close to his chest.
At least the delay was a breathing space.
'Which you want to go for, then?' the cameraman, Larry Ember, asked him, pulling his tripod out of the mud close to the summit of the mound.
Guy pushed angry, stiffened fingers through his blond hair. 'Whichever we go for, it'll be wrong,' he said uncharacteristically. 'Look, if we set up next to Goff, how much of the bulldozer stuff do you reckon you can shoot from here?'
'Useless,' Larry Ember said. 'You're shooting a wall collapsing, you got to be under the thing, like it's tumbling towards you. Even then, with one camera, you're not going to get much.'
'Maybe we can fake it afterwards. Get the chap to knock down another section of wall round the back or something. We've got no choice, I need to get his reactions.'
'Could always ask him to fake it afterwards.'
'Perhaps not,' said Guy.
'Fucking cold up here,' Larry said. 'What kind of summer is this?'
A swirling breeze – well, more than a breeze – had set the trees rattling around them.
'Going to rain, too, in a minute.' Larry Ember looked up at a sky like the inside of a rotten potato. 'We should have had lights up here. I told you we needed a sparks, as well. You can't cut costs on a job like this.'
'I didn't know it was going to happen,' Guy hissed. 'Did I? I thought it was going to be a couple of talking heads and a few GVs'
Goff lurched over, white jacket flapping in the wind. 'Some flaming cock-up here. Switch that damn thing off for now, Guy, will you?'
'You the producer, or is he?' the cameraman wondered provocatively.
'Go along with him. For now.' Guy had gone red. His dumpy, serious-faced assistant, Catrin Jones, squeezed his arm encouragingly. Guy knew she'd been in love with him for some time.
Below them, the speakers on the van began to crackle. Goff's voice came out fractured. '… et… chel Wade…up here. Get Rach… ade… up here NOW.'
Catrin zipped up her fleecy body-warmer, 'It's a funny thing…'
'Nothing,' snapped Guy, 'about this is funny.'
'No, I mean it's so cold and windy up here and down there… nothing.' She waved a hand towards the crowd below – some people drifting away now. 'No wind at all, nobody's hair is blowing or anything.'
'OK.' Guy prodded Larry Ember's left shoulder, bellowed down his ear. 'Executive decision. Let's get down there. Take a chance, shoot it from below.'
"… ucking sticks gonna blow over.' Larry clutched his camera as the wind buffeted the tripod. The wind seemed to be coming from underneath. Catrin's clipboard was suddenly snatched from her hands and wafted upwards with a wild scattering of white paper, like a bird disturbed.
She squealed. 'Oh no!' Clawing frantically at the air.
'Leave it!' Guy said.
'It's the shot-list!'
'Just let it go!'
Five yards away, Goff was shrieking into the microphone, to no effect. The sound had gone completely.
'… king weird, this set-up.' Larry's words snatched into the swirling wind.
'One more shot!' Guy screaming down the cameraman's car again. 'Get Goff. Get him now!'
Goff's arms were flailing, the wide lapels of his white jacket whipped across his chin, the trees roaring around him, the sky black. He was out of control.
Guy wanted this.
Powys edged round the field, concealed – he hoped – by gorse-bushes and broom, then crossed it diagonally, approaching the man, Jonathon Preece, from behind, as quietly as he could. Feeling himself quivering: outrage and apprehension. He could see the woman lying not quite flat, spread across the dog, looking up now at Preece.
Heard her harsh whisper. '… done, you bastard?'
'I'm allowed,' Preece said with, Powys thought, surprising belligerence, the shotgun under his arm, barrel unbroken, if a dog's threatening sheep…'
'There are no bloody sheep!'
'There is in that next field,' he insisted. 'Up there, 'e was. I seen 'im before. We 'ad four lambs killed up there t'other week.'
'You're lying! This dog wasn't even here last week.'
'If a farmer got reason to think…' Waving his arms for emphasis, the gun moving about under one.
'You going to shoot me now?'
Jonathon Preece looked down at the gun under his arm and stepped back a pace or two. Powys froze, only three or four yards behind him now. Preece bent down, watching the woman all the time, and laid the shotgun on the grass to one side,.
'See. I put 'im down now, the ole gun. You go 'ome. Nothing you can do.' A bit defensive now. 'I'm within my legal rights, you ask Wynford Wiley. Can't be 'elped. No place for dogs, sheep country.'
The woman didn't move. Powys saw a tumble of tawny hair over a blue nylon cagoule.
A curious thing happened then. Although it was way past 9 p.m. and the sky was deep grey – no trace of sunlight for hours – a shadow fell across the field like an iron bar.
And down it, like a gust of breath through a blowpipe, came a harsh wind.
'What's he doing? What is he doing?'
Rachel couldn't believe it. Max was lumping up and down on the summit of the mound, his white jacket swirling around him, his white trousers flapping, as if he was trying to keep his balance, struggling to stay on his feet.
'Looks like 'e's been caught in a hurricane,' Gomer Parry observed.
But there was no wind. The trees behind Goff on the Tump appeared quite motionless, while Goff himself was dancing like a marionette with a hyperactive child wielding the strings.
He's just angry, Rachel thought. Out of his mind with rage because the wall isn't collapsing and the PA system's broken down. Teach him to hire local firms for a job like this.
She was aware, on the edge of her vision, of Andy Boulton-Trow in his white shirt and his tight, black jeans looking up at the dancing bear on the mound. Andy's beard-shadowed face was solemn and watchful, then it split into a grin and he started shaking his head.
He saw Jonathon Preece look up in sudden alarm as the shaft of wind made a channel of black water across the river, from bank to bank.
There was a strangled yelp from the woman or the dog or both, but he couldn't hear either of them clearly because of the wind.
It came like a hard gasp of breath.
Bad breath.
The wind smelled foul. And as Powys, choking, reeled away from it, his senses rebelled and the whole scene seemed to go into negative for a moment, so that the sky was white and the grass was red and the river gleamed a nauseous yellow.
He stumbled, eyes streaming, a roaring in his ears.
And when the noise faded and the halitosis wind died and his vision began to clear, Joe Powys found he was holding the twelve-bore shotgun.
It was heavier than he expected, and he stumbled, almost dropping it. He gripped it firmly in both hands, straightened up.
Jonathon Preece roared, 'Who the 'ell…?' Powys saw his face for the first time – raw pink checks. Age maybe twenty-two or three.
'Steady, pal.'
'You give me that gun, Mister!'
'Advise me, Jonathon.' Powys pointed the shotgun in the general
direction of Jonathon Preece's groin. 'I've never used one of these before. Do I have to pull the two triggers to blow both your balls off, or is one enough?'
He was gratified to see fear flit, fast as an insect, across Jonathon Preece's eyes, 'I don't know who you are, mister, but this is none of your business.'
Powys felt himself grinning. In his right hand, the barrel of the twelve-bore was comfortably warm, like radiator pipes. The stock fitted into his armpit, firm as a crutch.
'You watch it. Mister. Ole thing'll go off.'
'Yes,' Powys said.
He raised the barrel, so that it was pointing into Jonathan's chest.
'You put 'im down. Be sensible!'
His finger under the trigger-guard, so firm. He thought, this man deserves what's coming to him. This man needs to die. He felt a hard thud of certainty in his chest. An acute satisfaction, the flexing of an unknown muscle.
He drank in the dusk like rough ale, closed his eyes and squeezed.
"Nnnn… oooo.'
Saw, in slow-motion, the chest of Jonathon Preece exploding, the air bright with blood, a butcher's shop cascade.
A tiny, feeble noise. He turned. The woman in the blue cagoule was up on her knees now, breathing hard. The tiny, feeble noise came out of the lump of sodden fur exposed on the grass.
'Arnie!' She looked up at Powys; he saw tear-stained, blood-blotched cheeks, clear green eyes and a lot of mud. 'Oh God, he's hanging on. Can you help me?'
Powys's mouth was so dry he couldn't speak.
Jonathon Preece screamed. 'You got no bloody sense? Gimme that gun!'
'I…'
'Please,' the woman begged.
'Gimme it!' The farmer took a step forward.
From out of the town's serrated silhouette came the first sonorous stroke of the curfew.
Powys looked down in horror at the gun. It felt suddenly very cold in his hands.
'Gimme…'
'Get it yourself,' Powys said, backing away, far enough away for Jonathon Preece, in this light, to remain unsure of what was happening until he heard the splash.
When the gun hit the water, Powys saw Mrs Seagrove hurrying down the bank towards them and then he saw Jonathon Preece's purpling face and became aware, for the first time, as the farmer advanced on him with bunched fists, that Jonathon Preece was bigger than he was. As well as being younger and fitter and, at this point, far angrier.