by Unknown
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.
'You fuckin' done it now, Mister. Antique, that gun is. Three generations of my family 'ad that gun.'
Powys shrugged, palms up, backing off. He felt loose, very tired suddenly. 'Yeah, well ... not too deep just there . . . Jonathon. Be OK. When it dries out.'
Preece's head swivelled - Mrs Seagrove coming quickly towards them, red-faced, out of breath - and he stopped, uncertain.
Mrs Seagrove stood there in her twinset and her plaid skirt, breathing hard, eventually managing to gasp, 'Did you see it? Did you?'
Powys looked at her, then at Jonathon Preece who'd turned to the river, was glaring out. The river looked stagnant. Preece hesitated, stared savagely into the drab water, started to say something and then didn't.
'Please,' the woman said from the grass.
It began to rain, big drops you could see individually against the hard sky.
Powys pulled off his jacket and knelt down. The dog's eyes were wide open, flanks pulsating. Powys didn't know what to do.
The dog squirmed, blood oozed.
Powys laid the jacket down. 'Put him on this.' He slid both hands beneath the dog. 'Gently. We'll get him to a vet. You . . . you never know your luck.'
In the river now, almost up to the tops of his Wellingtons, Jonathon Preece bellowed, 'I know your face, Mister. I'll 'ave you!'
'Oh, piss off,' Powys said, weary of him. He heard Mrs Seagrove wailing, 'You must've seen it. It was coming right at you. It went through you.'
CHAPTER VII
Jean Wendle was living in a narrow town house on the square. Inside, it was already quite dark. She put on a reading lamp. Its parchment shade made the room mellow.
Gold lettering on the book spines, the warm brass of a coal-scuttle in the hearth. It reminded Alex of his first curate's house in Oxfordshire, before he'd been promoted into an endless series of vast, unbeatable vicarages and rectories. She'd certainly brought the warmth of her personality into the place.
Jean Wendle made him sit in a smoker's bow chair, his back to the fireplace, with its Chinese screen, facing a plain, whitewashed wall.
'Some days,' Alex said, 'it seems fine. I mean there might be nothing wrong. Or perhaps that, in itself, is an illusion. Perhaps I think I'm all right and everybody else sees me as stark, staring . . .'
'Shush.' Touch of Scottish in her voice, he liked that. 'Don't tell me. Don't tell me anything about it. Let me find out for myself.'
Yes, he really rather fancied her. Sixtyish. Short, grey hair. Still quite a neat little body - pliable, no visible stiffening. Sort of retired gym-mistress look about her. And nice mobile lips.
Cool fingers on his forehead. Moving from side to side, finding the right spot. Then quite still.
Quite sexy. Would he have let himself in for this if he hadn't fancied her a bit?
Not a chance.
'Don't talk,' she said.
'I wasn't talking.'
'Well, don't think so loudly. Not for a moment or two. Just relax.'
Taken him a few days to arrive into the cool hands of Jean Wendle. Well, a few nights - tentative approaches in the pub. Not a word to Fay. Definitely not a word to Grace.
And why shouldn't he? What was there to lose? The GP in Crybbe was a miserable beggar - hadn't been much to poor old Grace, had he? Drugs. Always drugs. Drugs that made you sleepy, drugs that made you sick. And at the end of the day . . .
Gradually, he and reality would go their separate ways. Rather appealing in one sense - what did reality have to commend it these days? But not exactly a picnic for anyone looking after him. Alex knew what happened to people who lost their minds. It sometimes seemed that half his parishioners had been geriatrics. They remembered having a wash this morning, when it was really days ago. They peed in the wardrobe by mistake.
Fay, now - that child was suffering a severe case of misplaced loyalty. If he couldn't get rid of her, it was his solid intention to pop himself off while he could still count on getting the procedure right. She'd thank him for it one day. Better all round, though, if he could make it look like an accident. Fall off the bridge or something.
Would have been a pity though, with all these alternative healing characters swanning around, not to give it a try first. What was there to lose?
The first chap he'd been to, Osborne, had not been all that encouraging. Almost as depressing as the doc. Alex got the feeling old age was not what the New Age was about.
And all this 'like cures like' stuff. A drop of this, a drop of that. Little phials of colourless liquid, touch of the medieval apothecary.
'How long before it starts to work?'
'You mustn't expect dramatic results, Alex,' Osborne told him. 'You see, holistic medicine, by definition, is about improving the health of the whole person. Everything is interconnected. Obviously, the older one is, the more set in its ways the body is, therefore the longer . . .' He must have seen the expression in Alex's eyes. 'Look, my wife's an acupuncturist, perhaps that might be more what you . . .'
'All those bloody needles. No thanks.'
'It isn't painful, Alex."
'Pain? I don't mind pain!'
Just the image of himself lying there, an overstuffed pincushion.
This kind of healing was a good deal more dignified, if you concentrated on those cool hands and didn't think too hard about what was supposedly going on in the spirit world.
He'd grilled her, naturally.
'Dr Chi? Dr bloody Chi? You don't look like a nutter, Wendy. How can you seriously believe you're working under the supervision of some long-dead Chinky quack?'
'My name's Jean,' she'd corrected him softly.
'Dr Chi!' Alex draining his Scotch. 'God save us.'
'Do you really want to know about this, Alex, or are you just going to be superior, narrow-minded, chauvinistic and insulting?'
'Was I? Hmmph. Sorry. Old age. Senile dementia.'
'Are you really old enough to be senile, Alex? What are you, seventy?'
'I'm certainly way past flattery, Wendy. Way past eighty, too. Go on, tell me about this Peking pox-doctor from the Ming dynasty.'
He'd forced himself to listen patiently while she told him about Dr Chi, who, she said, she'd once actually seen - as a white, glowing, egg-shaped thing.
'The name is significant. Dr Chi. Chi is the oriental life force. Perhaps that's the name I've subconsciously given him. I don't know if I'm dealing with a doctor from the Ming dynasty, the T'ang dynasty or whenever. He doesn't speak to me all sing-song, like a waiter serving chicken chow mein. All I know is there's a healing force and I call him Dr Chi. Perhaps he never was a human doctor at all or perhaps he's something that last worked through a Chinese physician. I'm not clever enough to understand these things. I'm content to be a channel. Good gracious, don't you believe in miracles, Alex? Isn't that the orthodox Anglican way any more?'
Regarding the Anglican Church, he wasn't entirely sure what he believed any more.
Powys found the page, ran his finger down the column headed Veterinary Surgeons. 'OK, D. L. Harris. Crybb
e three-nine-four.'
Mrs Seagrove dialled the number and handed him the phone.
The woman in the bloodstained blue cagoule sat in the hall. The dog lay on Powys's jacket on the woman's knee, panting.
'Have a cup of tea while you're waiting,' Mrs Seagrove said.
She shook her head. 'No. Thank you..We may have to take him somewhere.'
The number rang for nearly half a minute before a woman answered.
'Yes.'
'Mr Harris there, please?'
'What's it about?' Local accent.
'We've got a very badly injured dog. Could you tell me where to bring it?'
A silence.
'Dog, you say?' Shrill. As if he'd said giraffe or something.
'He's been shot.'
'I'm sorry,' the woman said flat-voiced. "But Mr Harris is out.'
'Will he be long? Is there another vet?'
'Sorry.' Cool, terse. 'We can't help you.'
A crackle, the line broke.
'I don't believe it,' Powys said. 'She said the vet was out, I asked when he'd be back or was there anyone else, and she said she couldn't help me. Can you believe that? This was a vet's, for God's sake.'
'Wrong,' Fay Morrison said bitterly. 'This was a Crybbe vet's,'
'What the fuck was happening up there?' Max Goff lay on his bed in his room at the Cock.
'You tell me,' said Andy Boulton-Trow.
'I never felt so high. Like, at first I was really angry, really furious at the inefficiency. Why weren't they bringing the flaming wall down, why was nothing happening, why was the sound failing?'
'And then?'
'Then I felt the power. The energy. I never felt anything so heavy before. It took off the top of my skull. That ever happen to you?'
'Once or twice,' Andy said.
'Come to London with me,' Goff said. 'Stay at my place.
'I have things to do here.'
'Then I'll stay here. We'll stay in this room. You got things to teach me, I realize this now. We'll stay here. I'll get rid of Ms Wade. I'll send her back to London.'
Andy placed a hand on Max's knee.
'You go back to London, Max. There's such a thing as too much too soon. You'll get there. You'll make it.'
Andy didn't move his hand. Max shivered.
'Took off the top of my skull. And then the curfew started.'
'Yes,' Andy said. 'The curfew.'
'I don't think I like that curfew,' Jean Wendle said, pouring Earl Grey, after the treatment. 'I don't know whether it's the bell or what it represents. I don't like restrictions.'
'Oh, quite,' Alex said. 'Couldn't stand it if it was a real curfew. But as a bit of picturesque traditional nonsense, it's all right, isn't it?'
'I think it is a real curfew, in some way,' Jean said, 'I don't know why I think that. Well, yes, I do - people do stay off the streets while it's being rung, have you noticed that? But I think there's something else. A hundred times a night is an awfully big tradition.'
'I suppose so.'
Alex would give her the benefit of the doubt on anything tonight. He didn't remember when he'd last felt so relaxed, so much at peace. And him a priest. Best not to go into the implications of all this.
'It's a very odd little town,' Jean said. She drew gold-dusted velvet curtains over a deep Georgian window.
'Aren't they all.'
'No, they aren't. This is. There are - how can I put it? - pockets of strange energy in this town. All over the place. People see things, too, although few will ever admit it.'
'See things?' Alex was wary.
'Manifestations. Light effects. Ghosts.'
'Hmm,' said Alex. 'Good cup of tea.'
'Being on the border is a lot to do with it. When we make a frontier . . . when we split something physically asunder in the landscape, especially when we build something like Offa's Dyke to emphasize it, we create an area of psychic disturbance that doesn't go away.'
Alex stirred his tea, wishing she'd talk about something else.
Jean said, 'Do you think they've taken on more than they can handle? Max Goff and the New Age people?'
'I thought you were one of them.'
'I like to keep a certain distance,' Jean said, 'I like to watch. Can they control it, I wonder? Or is it too volatile for them?'
'Oh, we can't control anything,' Alex said. 'That's something everybody learns sooner or later. Least of all control ourselves.'
It was well after midnight by the time they came out of the vet's.
Without Arnold.
'I couldn't stand the way he was looking at me,' Fay said, it's not been his week, has it? He's in a car crash, sees his master die. Saved from the clutches of the Crybbe constabulary, finds he's become a kind of pariah in the town. Then he gets shot.'
The Mini had been parked for over two hours on a double yellow line outside the vet's surgery in Leominster, fifteen miles from Crybbe. The nearest one from which they'd managed to get a response. The vet handling night-calls had been understanding but had made no comments either way about the wisdom of farmers shooting dogs alleged to be worrying sheep.
The vet had said Arnold would probably live. 'Just don't expect him to be as good as new with all that lead inside him.'
One of the back legs had taken most of it. Bones had been broken. The vet had seemed a bit despondent about that leg. Fay had spent half an hour holding Arnold at different angles while the vet examined what he could, removing shotgun pellets. He might have to operate, he said, and got Fay to sign a paper relating to responsibility if Arnold died under anaesthetic.
Now Fay and Powys were standing on the pavement, unwinding. It was very quiet in Leominster, the other side of midnight. No menace here. Fay thought.
J. M. Powys was shaking out his jacket. It was scarcely identifiable as a jacket any more. It looked as if someone had faced a firing squad in it.
'Oh God,' Fay said. 'I'm so sorry.'
J. M. Powys dangled the jacket from an index finger and looked quite amused. J. M. Powys. Bloody hell. 'It's hard to believe you're J. M. Powys. I thought you'd be . . .'
'Dead.'
'Well, not quite.'
'That lady, Mrs Seagrove. She called you Mrs Morrison. You're not Guy's wife, are you?'
'No,' Fay said. 'Not any more.'
She explained, leaning on an elderly Mini in a quiet street in Leominster, lights going out around them. Explained quite a few things. Talking too much, the way you did when you'd been through something traumatic. Only realizing she was shooting her mouth off, when she heard herself saying, 'I've got to get out of that place, or I'm going to implode. Or maybe I'll just kill somebody.'
She pulled both palms down her cheeks. Shook her hair, like a dog. 'What am I going on about? Not your problem. Thanks for everything you've done. I shall buy you a new jacket.'
'I don't want a new jacket.' Powys opened the car door. 'I like them full of patches and sewn-up bits.'
He drove carefully out of the town, dipping the headlights politely when they met another vehicle. They didn't meet many. The lights sometimes flashed briefly into the eyes of rabbits sitting in the hedgerows. Once, J. M. Powys had to brake for a badger scampering - that was really the word, she'd have expected badgers to lumber - across the road and into a wood.
Fay realized she hadn't phoned her dad. He'd be worried. Or he wouldn't, depending on his state of mind tonight. Too late now.
'Arnold!' Powys said suddenly, breaking five minutes of slightly sleepy silence.
'What?'
'Arnold. Not Henry Kettle's dog? You aren't the person who's looking after Henry's dog?'
'And not making an awfully good job of it, so far.'
'Stone me,' said Powys. 'Sometimes coincidence just seems to crowd you into corners.'
'Especially in Crybbe,' Fay said. She wished she was travelling through the night to somewhere else. Virtually anywhere else, actually.
The bones were very white in the torchlight. There were also some par
chment-coloured bits, skin or sinew, gristle.
'Ah,' Tessa said, less than awed, 'I know what that is.'
Warren was miffed. How the fuck could she know anything about it?
'Yeah,' Warren said. 'It's a hand.'
'It's a Hand of Glory."
'What you on about?'
'A dead man's hand.'
'Well, that's bloody obvious, isn't it?'
A hanged man's hand,' Tessa said.
Warren squatted down next to her. The spade lay on the grass, next to a neat pile of earth and the square of turf, set carefully to one side so it could be replaced.
'Which means it's got magic powers,' Tessa said. Where'd you find it?'
'Around.'
'All right, don't tell me! What's that Stanley knife doing in there?'
'Well, I . . .' Buggered if he was going to tell her he'd been scared to put his hand in and take the knife out. 'I'm seeing what effect it 'as on it. You know, like you puts an old razorblade under a cardboard pyramid and it comes out sharp again. New Age, that.' Warren cackled. 'I'm learnin' all about this New Age, now, see. 'Ow'd you know that?'
'Know what?'
' 'Bout it being a hanged man's hand.'
'I think I'd like to draw it,' Tessa said. 'Maybe I'll come up here again.'
'No.' It was his hand. 'Keep diggin' it up, the ground'll get messed up and somebody else might find it.'
'They won't. Do you know why you brought it here, Warren?'
'Good a place as any.'
Tessa smiled.
'What you done with then other drawings, the old feller?'
'Got fed up with him,' Tessa said. 'Passed him on.'
'Who to?'
'Dunno where he might end up,' Tessa said mysteriously. 'Part of the fun.' She smiled and fitted a forefinger down the front of Warren's jeans and drew him towards her, across the old box.
'Let's do it here ... do it ... by the box. Leave it open, see what happens.'
'Prob'ly come crawlin' out an' pinch your bum,' Warren said slyly. 'Anyway, it's too late now, for that.'