Crybbe aka Curfew

'Twelve years. And I've gone grey.'

'Is it so long? Good gracious. Would you like some tea?'

'Thank you. Not too late, am I?'

'Not for you, Mr Powys. I remember one night, must have been four in the morning when we finally heard your car go from here.'

'Sorry about that. We had a lot to talk about.'

'Oh, he could talk, Mr Kettle could. When he wanted to.' Mrs Whitney led him into her kitchen, 'I think it looks nice grey,' she said.

Later, they stood in Henry's cell-like living-room, insulated by thousands of books, many of them old and probably valuable, although you wouldn't have thought it from the way they were edged into the shelves, some upside down, some back to front. On a small cast-iron mantelshelf, over the Parkray, were a few deformed lumps of wood. Local sculpture, Henry called it. He'd keep them on the mantelpiece until he found more interesting ones in the hedgerows, then he'd use the old ones for the fire.

Mrs Whitney handed Powys a battered old medical bag. 'This was in the car with him. Police brought it back.'

A thought tumbled into Powys's head as he took the bag. 'What about Alf?'

'Oh, old Alf died a couple of years back. He got another dog – Arnold. Funny-looking thing. I says, "You're too old for another dog, Mr Kettle." "Give me a reason to keep on living," he says. Always said he couldn't work without a dog at his side. Arnold, he was in the car with Mr Kettle, too. He wasn't killed. A lady's looking after him in Crybbe. She'll have her hands full. Year or so with Mr Kettle, they forgot they was supposed to be dogs.'

Powys smiled.

'Daft about animals, Mr Kettle was. He's left half his money – I didn't put this in the letter – half his money's going to a dog's shelter over the other side of Hereford. Daughter won't like that.'

'Henry knew what he was doing,' Powys said. 'What's going to happen to the house?'

'She'll sell it. She won't come back, that one. She'll sell it and it'll go to some folks from Off, who'll put a new kitchen in and one of them fancy conservatories. They'll likely stop a couple of years, and then there'll be some more folks from Off. I don't mind them, myself, they never does no harm, in general.'

Powys opened the medical bag. The contents were in compartments, like valuable scientific equipment. Two remodelled wire coat-hangers with rubber grips.

Mrs Whitney said, 'There's a what-d'you-call-it, pendulum thing in a pocket in the lid.'

'I know,' Powys said. 'I remember.'

'Mr Kettle had his old dowsing records in… you know, them office things.'

'Box files.'

'Aye, box files. Must be half a dozen of them. And there's this I found by his bed.'

It was a huge old black-bound business ledger, thick as a Bible. He opened it at random.

… and in the middle meadow I detected the foundations

of an old house from about the fifteenth century. I got so

engrossed in this I forgot all about finding the well…

He could hear Henry chuckling as he wrote in black ink with his old fountain pen, edge to edge, ignoring the red and black rules and margins.

He turned to the beginning and saw the first entry had been made nearly twenty years earlier. Out of four or five hundred pages, there were barely ten left unfilled. End of an era.

Powys closed the ledger and held it, with reverence, in both hands.

'His journal. I doubt if anybody else has ever seen it.'

'Well, you take it away,' said Mrs Whitney. 'Sometimes I had the feeling some of them things Mr Kettle was doing were – how shall I say? – not quite Christian.'

'Science, Mrs Whitney. He was always very particular about that.'

'Funny sort of science,' Mrs Whitney said. 'There's a letter, too, only gave it to me last week.'

A pale-blue envelope, 'J. M. Powys' handwritten in black ink.

'Oh, he was a nice old chap,' Mrs Whitney said. 'But, with no ill respect for the departed, he'd have been the first to admit as he was more'n a bit cracked.'

For Fay, there would be no secret pleasure any more in editing tape in the office at night, within the circle of Anglepoise light, a soft glow from the Revox level-meters, and all the rest into shadow.

For none of what dwelt beyond the light could now be assumed to be simply shadow. Once these things had started happening to your mind, you couldn't trust anything any more.

That evening, she and the Canon watched television in what used to be Grace's dining-room at the rear of the house and was now their own sitting-room. Two bars of the electric fire were on – never guess it was summer, would you?

Arnold lay next to Alex on Grace's enormous chintzy sofa. The dog did not howl, not once, although Fay saw him stiffen with the distant toll of the curfew. He'd be sleeping upstairs again tonight.

She watched Alex watching TV and sent him mind-messages. We have to talk, Dad. We can't go on here. There's nothing left. There never was anything, you ought to realize that now.

Alex carried on placidly watching some dismal old black and white weepie on Channel Four.

Fay said, at one point, 'Dad?'

'Mmmm?'

Alex kept his eyes on the screen, where Stewart Granger was at a crucial point in his wooing of Jean Simmons.

'Dad, would you…' Fay gave up, 'care for some tea? Or cocoa?'

'Cocoa. Wonderful. You know, at one time, people used to say I had more than a passing resemblance to old Granger.'

'Really?' Fay couldn't see it herself.

'Came in quite useful once or twice.'

'I bet it did.'

Fay got up to make the cocoa, feeling more pale and wan than Jean Simmons looked in black and white. In one day she'd hung up on Guy, betrayed Rachel, demolished relations with Goff before she'd even met him. And caught herself about to give a blow job to a microphone in the privacy of the Crybbe Unattended Studio.

What I need, she thought, is to plug myself into a ley-line, and she smiled to herself – a despairing kind of smile – at the absurdity of it all.

The box files wouldn't all fit in the boot of the Mini. Three had to be wedged on the back seat, with the doctor's bag.

But the ledger, the dowsing journal of Henry Kettle, was on the passenger seat where Powys could see it, Henry's letter on top.

Just past the Kington roundabout he gave in, pulled into the side of the road and, in the thinning light, he opened the letter.

Dear Joe,

I'm doing this now, while I feel the way I do. If it all

sorts itself out you'll probably never read this letter. None of

it will make much sense to you at first and if it never does

make any sense it means my fears will be groundless.

What it comes down to is I've been working out at Crybbe

for a chap called Max Goff who's bought Crybbe Court.

The nature of the job is dowsing some old alignments

where the stones and such have all gone years ago, and it's

been giving me the shivers, quite honestly, that whole place.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing psychic or any of that

old rubbish, but it's not right and as far as I can work out

it's a long-term kind of thing. I intend to keep an eye on the

situation in the weeks and months and, God willing, the years

ahead and keep on revising my notes, but I'm not getting any

younger and you could go any time at my age and I feel as

how I ought to inform somebody. You have had some daft

ideas in your time but you're a good boy basically and the

only person I can think of who I can trust not to dismiss this