Crybbe aka Curfew

She took J. M. Powys to her room at the Cock. The big room on the first floor that she shared with Max. But Max was in London.

The licensee, Denzil, watched them go up.]. M. Powys looked, to say the least, dishevelled, but Denzil made no comment. Rachel suspected that if she organized an orgy for thirty participants, Denzil would have no complaints as long as they all bought drinks in the bar to take up with them.

Rachel closed the bedroom door. The room was laden with dark beams and evening shadows. She switched a light on.

So this was J. M. Powys. Not what she'd imagined, not at all.

'Don't take this wrong, but I thought you'd be older.'

'I think I am older.' He tried to smile; it came out lop-sided. There was drying blood around his mouth. His curly hair was entirely grey.

'Er, is there a bathroom?'

'Across the passage,' Rachel said. 'The en-suite revolution hasn't happened in Crybbe yet. Possibly next century. Here, let me look… Take your jacket off.'

It was certainly an old jacket. The once-white T-shirt underneath it was stiff with mud and blood.

Gently, Rachel prised the T-shirt out of his jeans. The colours of his stomach were like a sky with a storm coming on. 'Nasty. That man is a liability.'

'I've never…' Powys winced, 'been beaten up by a New Age thug before. It doesn't feel a lot different, actually.'

Rachel said, 'Humble has his uses in London and New York, but… Just move over to the light, would you… really don't like the way he's going native, I caught him laying snares the other day. Look, Mr Powys, I don't know what I can do for bruising, apart from apologize profusely and buy you dinner. Not that you'll thank me for that, unless you're into cholesterol in the basket.'

'I don't mind that. I had a Big Mac the other day.'

He sounded almost proud. Perhaps J. M. Powys was as loony as his book, after all.

Addressing the fireplace, Alex said, 'Why? You've always been so houseproud. Why do this?'

He mustn't touch anything. Fingerprints. Couldn't even tidy the place up a bit until they'd looked for fingerprints. Waste of time, all that. They wouldn't have Grace on their files.

Alex started to cry.

'Why can't you two get on together?'

A tangled ball of black, unspooled tape rustled as he caught it with his shoe. Like the tape, the thoughts in his head were in hopeless, flimsy coils and, like the tape, could never be rewound.

All the way up the High Street, Fay kept her eyes on the gutter. She saw half a dozen cigarette-ends. A crumpled crisp packet and a sweet-wrapper. Two ring-pulls from beer cans. And a bus ticket issued by Marches Motors, the only firm which ran through Crybbe – twice a week, if you were lucky.

But neither in the gutter nor up against the walls did she find what she was looking for.

When Arnold stopped to cock his leg up against a lamppost, Fay stopped, too, and examined the bottom of the post for old splash-marks.

There were none that she could see, and Arnold didn't hang around. He was off in a hurry, straining on the clothes-line as he always did on the street. She'd have to get him a lead tomorrow.

Now there was a point. Fay steered Arnold past Middle Marches Crafts and the worn sign of the Crybbe Pottery, which her dad said was about to close down. There was a hardware shop round the corner.

Hereward Newsome was emerging from The Gallery. 'Oh, hi, Fay. Out on a story?'.

'You're working late.'

'We're rearranging the main gallery. Making more picture space. Time to expand, I think, now the town's taking off.'

'Is it?'

'God, yes, you must have noticed that. Lots of new faces about. Whatever you think of Max Goff, he's going to put this place on the map at last. I've been talking to the marketing director of the Marches Development Board – they're terribly excited. I should have a word with him sometime, they're very keen to talk about it.'

'I will. Thanks. Hereward, look, you haven't got a dog, have you?'

'Mmm? No. Jocasta had it in mind to buy a Rottweiler once – she gets a little nervous at night. Be good deal more nervous with a Rottweiler around, I said. Hah. Managed to talk her out of that one, thank God.'

'Do you know anybody who has got one?'

'A Rottweiler?'

'No, any sort of dog.'

'Er… God, is that the time? No, it's not something I tend to notice, who has what kind of dog. Look, pop in sometime; there's a chap – artist – called Emmanuel Walters. Going to be very fashionable. You might like to do an interview with him about the exhibition we're planning. Couple of days before we open, would that be possible? Give you a ring, OK?'

She nodded and smiled wanly, and Hereward Newsome walked rapidly away along the shadowed street, long strides, shoulders back, confident.

Fay dragged Arnold round the corner to the hardware shop. Like all the other shops in Crybbe, there was never a light left on at night, but at least it had two big windows – through which, in turn, she peered, looking for one of those circular stands you always saw in shops like this, a carousel of dog leads, chains and collars.

There wasn't one.

No, of course there wasn't. Wouldn't be, would there? Nor would there be cans of dog food or bags of Bonios.

The streets were empty and silent. As they would be, coming up to curfew time, everybody paying lip-service to a tradition which had been meaningless for centuries. She was starting to work it out, why there was this artificial kind of tension in the air: nobody came out of anywhere for about three minutes either side of the curfew.

Except for the newcomers.

'Fay. Excuse me.'

Like Murray Beech.

Walking across the road from the church, one hand raised, collar gleaming in the dusk.

'Could I have a word?'

When he reached her, she was quite shocked at how gaunt he appeared. The normally neatly chiselled face looked suddenly jagged, the eyes seemed to glare. Maybe it was the light.

Fay reined Arnold in. There was a sense of unreality, of her and the dog and the vicar in a glass case in the town centre, public exhibits. And all the curtains parting behind the darkened windows.

Sod this. Sod it!

'Murray,' she said quite loudly, very deliberately, 'just answer me one question.'

He looked apprehensive. (In Crybbe, every question was a threat.)

Fay said, 'Do you know anybody with a dog?' The words resounded around the square.

The vicar stared at her and his head jerked back, as if she'd got him penned up in a corner with her microphone at his throat.

'Anybody,' Fay persisted. 'Any kind of dog. Anybody in Crybbe?'

'Look, it was about that I…'

'Because I've been scouring the gutters for dog turds and I can't find any.'

'You…'

'Not one. Not a single bloody dog turd. Surprise you that, does it? No dog turds in the streets of Crybbe?'

Fay became aware that she was coiling and uncoiling the clothes-line around her fingers, entwining them until the plastic flex bit into the skin. She must look as mad as Murray did. She felt her face was aflame and her hair standing on end. She felt she was burning up in the centre of Crybbe, spontaneous emotional combustion in the tense minutes before the curfew's clang.

'No dog turds, Murray. No dog leads in the shops. No…' The sensation of going publicly insane brought tears to her eyes. 'No rubber bones…'

Murray pulled himself together. Or perhaps, Fay thought, in comparison with me it just looks as though he's together.

'Go home. Fay,' he said.

'Yes,' Fay said, 'I will.'

With Arnold tight to her legs, she turned away and began to walk back in the direction she'd come along the silent street. It was nearly dark now, but there were no lights in any of the houses.

Because people would be watching at the windows. The woman, the vicar and the dog. A tableau. A little public drama.