Crybbe aka Curfew

And he goes round… ONCE.

When Guy came to the door, Fay simply pretended there was nobody in, knowing it had to be her ex-husband calling in on the way to his lunch date with Max Goff and his cohorts.

Knowing, also, that if Guy was in the mood he was arrogant enough to have lined her up as today's emergency standby leg-over. Fay, hi! (Long time, no bonk!)

Behind the bathroom door she clenched her fists.

There was a second ring.

Fay sat on the lavatory with the lid down. The lid was still topped by one of Grace's dinky little light-green candlewick loo-mats.

Grace. Her dad thought that Grace Legge, dead, had smashed the Revox. Somehow. It was insane. And there was no way they could talk about it.

There was no third ring.

Arnold sat at Fay's feet and wagged his tail. He never reacted to the doorbell.

Only the curfew bell.

'Arnold,' Fay said, 'do you want to talk about this?' Arnold looked at her with sorrowful eyes. Even when his tail was wagging his eyes were sorrowful.

She held his muzzle between her hands. She couldn't remember ever feeling so confused, so helpless. So completely wiped out.

The phone rang in the office. Fay drifted down to answer it, not in any hurry. She wished she'd put on the answering machine, but the thing had been disabled so many times by power cuts that she'd almost abandoned it.

'Hello.'

There was a hollow silence at the other end.

'Mrs Morrison?' A local accent. Male.

'Yes. Who's that?'

'Mrs Morrison, you been told.'

'Have I? Told what?'

'So this is your last warning, Mrs Morrison. You 'ave till weekend.'

'To do what?'

But, of course, she knew.

'And what if I don't?' Fay said grimly. 'What if I say I have no intention of even considering getting rid of the dog? Especially as nobody seems prepared to explain what the hell this is all about?'

'You been told,' the voice said. 'And that's it.'

Chapter III

Gomer Parry did plant hire.

He operated from an old wartime aircraft hangar up the valley, outside the village where he lived. In this hangar he had two lorries, the heaviest tractor in the county, a big JCB, a small JCB and these two bulldozers.

You didn't hire the equipment; what you hired was Gomer Parry, a tough little bloke with mad, grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses.

Been a farmer for nearly twenty years before the magic of plant hire had changed his life. sold most of his land to buy the old hangar and the machinery. Gomer Parry: sixty-four now, and he never looked back.

Gomer could knock buildings down and make new roads through the forestry. He could dig you a new septic tank and a soakaway that soaked away even in Radnorshire clay. And during bad winters the highways authority always hired him as a snow-plough.

This was the only time that other people recognised the truly heroic nature of his job. They'd pour out of their homes, dozens of them, as he busted through the last snowdrift to liberate some remote hamlet that'd been cut off for a fortnight. Big cheers. Mug of tea. Glass of Scotch. Good old Gomer.

But last winter had been a mild winter. Bugger-all snow anywhere. And only Gomer saw the heroic side of the other things he did.

A few months ago he'd done this broadcast about the perils of digging drainage ditches and such. Explaining it to that little girl from the local radio. How, for him, it was like a military exercise – although not modern military; more like in these epic films where the knight gets into his armour, which is so heavy he has to be winched on to his horse. It was in these terms that Gomer Parry spoke on the radio of his life at the controls of the JCB.

Probably gave the listeners a good laugh. Certainly didn't bring him any more work. He couldn't remember a worse year, the local farmers – his regular clients – tighter than ever. Constipated buggers sitting there waiting for a laxative from Brussels. Farmers wouldn't fart these days unless they got an EC grant for it.

So Gomer Parry, feeling the pinch, had been very near excited when he had a phone call from Edgar Humble.

He'd played darts with Edgar Humble in the public bar at the Lamb in Crybbe. Edgar didn't say much, which was unusual for a Londoner; he just kept beating you at darts. But Gomer knew who employed him, and that was why he was very near excited when he got the call, because from what he'd heard here was a bloke who was going to need plenty plant hire.

'Knock walls down, can you?' Edgar Humble asked.

'What kind of walls?'

'Stone wall. Victorian, I'd say. Thick, solid. Five, six feet high. Couple of feet thick in places. Too much for yer?'

Gomer had almost laughed down the phone. 'Put it this way,' he said, if I'd been in business round Jericho way, all those years ago, they wouldn't have needed no bloody trumpets.'

'Max,' Rachel said, 'this is J. M. Powys.'

Max Goff put on his Panama hat. Bizarre, Powys thought. Eccentric. But not crazy. Those are not crazy eyes.

Goff looked at Powys for a good while. He had a beard like red Velcro. 'How long you been here?'

'Since last night,' Powys said steadily. 'I stayed at the Cock.'

'Yeah? Shit hole, huh? I hope you put it on my tab.' Goff grinned at last and stuck out a stubby hand. 'Hi, J. M. Welcome to Crybbe. Welcome to the Old Golden Land.'

Powys took the hand. Goff's grip was flaccid. Powys said, 'You think this is the Old Golden Land?'

The countryside was colourless. Mist was still draped around the Court like grimy lace curtains.

'Not yet,' Goff said. 'But it will be. Listen, if I'd known you were here I'd've driven back last night.'

'That's OK. Ms Wade was looking after me.'

Rachel was standing behind Goff in the courtyard. Powys deliberately didn't look at her. Neither, he noticed, did her boss, the man who overpaid her for little extras.

Goff jerked his Velcro chin at the two men at his side. 'This is Edgar Humble, my head of security.'

'Mr Humble,' Powys said tightly.

'And Andy Boulton-Trow, who of course you know, yeah?'

Andy wore a white shirt and black jeans. Close up, he looked even thinner than he'd been twelve years ago. You could see the bones flexing in his face as he smiled. It was a quick, wide smile.

It made Powys feel cold.

'Joe.'

'Andy,' he said quietly.

'Long time, my friend.' Andy's hair, once shoulder-length, was shaven right to the skull, and he was growing a beard. It would be black.

They hadn't met since Rose's funeral.

Goff said, 'Now Henry Kettle's gone, Andy's my chief adviser in the Crybbe project. Andy knows stones.'

Chief adviser. Jesus.

There was a big difference between Andy Boulton-Trow and Henry Kettle. What it came down to was: Henry would have said, don't mess with electricity until you know what you're doing. Andy would say, sure, just hold these two wires and then bring them together when I give you the nod, OK?

'So you lost Henry,' Powys said.

Andy dropped the smile.

'Tragic,' Goff said. 'There's gonna be a Henry Kettle memorial.'

A memorial. Well, that was all right, then. That made up for everything.

'We haven't decided yet where it's gonna go.'

'But somewhere prominent,' Andy said.

Powys didn't say a thing.

'J.M.,' Goff said, 'we need to talk, you and I. At length. I have a proposition. Hell, we all know each other, I'll spell out the basics. I want you to write me a sequel to Golden Land for Dolmen. I want it to be the Crybbe story. The – hey, what about this? – The New Golden Land.'

Goff beamed and looked round, Powys thought, for applause.

'What I'm talking here, J. M., is a substantial advance and the quality republication in under a year's time of the original Golden Land, to pave the way. Revise it if you like. New pictures. In colour. Whatever.'