Crybbe Court?
No, not the Court itself, the stable-block – now seriously renovated, he saw. There was an enormous oblong of glass set in the wall – a huge picture-window, facing the Tump.
Behind the building he could see the corner of a forecourt, where two men stood in the rain looking down on four long, grey, jagged stones.
Powys stiffened.
One of the men was dark and thin and was talking to the other man in a voice which, had he been able to hear it, would probably have reminded him of a stroked cello.
'Least you can do, mate,' Andy tells you. 'Look at all the money the book's going to make. Think of it as a kind of appeasement of the Earth Spirit.'
Fiona claps her hands. 'Oh, go on, Joe. We'll all sit here and chant and clap.'
'Bastards.' You look at Rose, who smiles sympathetically. Reluctantly you stand up, and everybody cheers.
Well, everybody except Henry. 'Don't wanna play about with these old things.' Quaint old Herefordshire countryman.
Andy leaning on an elbow. I thought you weren't superstitious, Henry. Ancient science and all that. Nothing psychic.
'Aye, well, electricity's science too, but you wouldn't wanna go sticking your fingers up a plug socket.'
Thankful for his advice, you make as if to sit down.
'Not got the bottle for it, Joe?'
Ben starts clapping very slowly, and the others – except Henry – pick up the rhythm. 'Joey goes round the Bottle Stone, the Bottle Stone, the Bottle Stone…'
Crybbe was forty-five minutes away. Minor roads all the once they'd left the A49. Neither of them spoke; Fay thinking; hard, bringing something into focus. Something utterly repellent that she hadn't, up to now, allowed herself to contemplate for longer than a few seconds.
A woman in a cold miasma, frigid, rigid, utterly still. Not breathing. Past breathing… long past.
She looked in the driving mirror, and there was Arnold, the dog, sitting upright on the back seat; their eyes met in the mirror.
You saw her, Arnold. You saw something. But did I?
Did I see the ghost of Grace Legge?
Ghost. Spirit of the dead. And yet that image, the Grace thing, surely was without spirit. Static. Frozen. And the white eyes and that horrible smile with those little, thin fish-teeth.
That was her. Her teeth. Tiny little teeth, and lots of them, discoloured, brittle. The memory you always carried away, of Grace's fixed smile, with all those little teeth.
She'd been nothing to Fay, just Dad's Other Woman. No, not exactly nothing. Twenty years ago, she'd been something on the negative side of nothing. Somebody Fay had blamed – to herself, for she'd never spoken of it, not to anyone – for her mother's death. And she'd blamed her father, too. Perhaps this was why, even now, she could not quite love him – terrible admission.
She had, naturally, tried hard for both of them when she came down for the wedding. Water under the bridge. An old man's fumbling attempts to make amends and a very sick woman who deserved what bit of happiness remained for her.
Perhaps her dad thought he'd killed them both. Both his wives.
Compassion rising, Fay glanced sideways at Alex, sitting there with his old green cardigan unbuttoned and ATE USH in fading lettering across his chest.
What this was about – had to be – was that he, too, had seen something in the night.
And what must that be like for an old man who could no longer trust his own mind or even his memories? If she wasn't sure what she'd seen – or even if she'd seen anything – what must it be like for him?
Fay clinched the steering wheel lightly, and goose pimples rippled up both arms.
That's why you can't leave, Dad. You've seen something that none of your clerical experience could ever prepare you for. You're afraid that somehow she's still there, in the house you shared.
And you're not going to walk out on her again.
Henry Kettle had written.
It is very peculiar that there should have been so many big stones in such a small area.
Long after Andy and the other man had walked away Powys still stood silently under the dripping trees, staring in fascination at the recumbent stones in the corner of the courtyard.
Megaliths.
And Andy Boulton-Trow, whom Powys hadn't seen for twelve years. Designer of the cover of The Old Golden Land. Painter of stones, sculptor of stones, collector of stone-lore.
The stones lay there, gleaming with fresh rain. Old stones,' or new stones? Did it matter; one stone was as old as another.
Stones didn't speak to him the way they spoke to Henry Kettle, but he was getting the idea. Max Goff, presumably, intended to place new stones in the spots identified by Henry.
And the obvious man to select and shape the stones – an act of love – was Andy Boulton-Trow, who knew more about the nature of megaliths than anyone in Europe. Powys had met Andy at art college, to which Andy had come after university to learn about painting and sculpture… with specific regard to stone.
From beyond the courtyard, he heard an engine start, a vehicle moving away.
Then all was quiet, even the rain had ceased.
Powys slid from the trees and made his way around the side of the stone stable-building to the comer of the courtyard where the stones lay.
Fay drove into Crybbe from the Ludlow road. The windscreen wipers squeaked as the rain eased off.
She thought. We're never going to be able to talk about this, are we, Dad? Not for as long as you live.
She stopped in front of the house to let him out. 'Thank you,' he said, not looking at her, it's been… a pleasant day, hasn't it?'
'I'll put the car away. You stay here, Arnold.'
She backed the car into the entry, a little tunnel affair in the terrace, parking too close to the wall; there was only just room to squeeze out. 'Come on, Arnold.'
Alex was waiting for them at the back door. His face was grave but his blue eyes were flecked – as they often were now – with a flickering confusion.
'Got the tea on. Dad?'
'Fay.. '. I..
He turned and walked into the kitchen. The kettle was not even plugged in.
'Fay…'
'Dad?'
He walked through the kitchen, into the hall, Fay following, Arnold trolling behind. At the door of the office, Grace's sitting-room, he stood to one side to let her pass.
'I'm so sorry,' he said.
At first she couldn't see what he meant. The clock was still clicking away on the mantelpiece, the fireside chair still piled high with box files.
'The back door was open,' Alex said. 'Forced.'
She saw.
They must have used a sledgehammer or a heavy axe because it was a tough machine, with a metal top.
'Why?' Fay felt ravaged. Cold and hollow and hurting like a rape victim. 'For God's sake, why?'
Her beloved Revox – night-time comfort with its swishing spools and soft-glowing level-meters – had been smashed to pieces, disembowelled.
A few hundred yards of tape had been unspooled and mixed up with the innards, and the detritus was splattered over the floor like a mound of spaghetti.
CHAPTER IX
The women who had, in recent years, been powerfully attracted to Joe Powys had tended to wear long, hand-dyed skirts and shapeless woollies. Sometimes they had frizzy hair and sometimes long, tangled hair. Sometimes they were big-breasted earth-mother types and sometimes small-boned and delicate like Arthur Rackham fairies.
Sometimes, when Powys fantasized – which was worryingly rarely, these days – he imagined having, as he put it to himself, a bit of smooth. Someone scented. Someone who shaved her armpits. Someone who would actually refuse to trek across three miles of moorland to find some tiny, ruined stone circle you practically had to dig out of the heather. Someone you could never imagine standing in the middle of this half-submerged circle and breathing, 'Oh, I mean, gosh, can't you feel it…can't you feel that primal force?'