Crybbe aka Curfew

… the very least you can do, mate…

… think of it as a kind of appeasement.

Now Andy was personally supervising the operation to open up the town of Crybbe to the Earth Spirit.

On past experience of this irresponsible bastard, did that sound like good news?

'I think,' Hereward Newsome said, almost shaking with triumph, 'that I've cracked it.'

'You saw him?'

'He's gone back to London. I saw Rachel Wade. She said go ahead.'

Hereward took off his jacket, hung it over the back of the antique-pine rocking-chair by the Aga, sat down and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves. 'But we need to move fast.'

'Why?' If Jocasta wasn't as ecstatic as she might have been this was because Hereward's news had eclipsed her own small coup.

'I mean a buying trip. To the West Country, I'd suggest and pronto. There's Ernest Wilding at Street, Devereux in Penzance, Sally Gold in Totnes, Melanie Dufort in… where is it now, some place near Frome? All specializing in megalith paintings – or they were. And there have to be more. What happened to the Ruralists? Where's Inshaw these days?"

'Not far from here, I heard.'

"Oh.' He stood up. 'Anyway, I'm going to make some calls now. Strike while Goff's hot. If we go down there this weekend fetch a few back to put in front of him on Tuesday when he comes back.'

Hereward paced the kitchen. Any second now, Jocasta thought, he'll start rubbing his hands. Still, it was good news.

'You ought to see his proposed exhibition hall. Rachel showed me this huge barn he's going to rebuild. It'll be a sort of interpretive centre for prehistoric Crybbe and the whole earth mysteries thing. He's looking for maybe seventy paintings. Seventy! Darling, if we can provide half of those we're talking… let's be vulgar, if we can get the kind of stuff he wants, we're talking megabucks.'

'Why can't we go next weekend?"

'Look… so we close the gallery for a day. What have we got to lose, with Goff out of town? And the way things have been, can we afford to delay?'

'Hereward!' God, he was so irritating. 'What about Emmanuel Walters?'

'Oh.' Hereward sat down. 'It's Sunday, isn't it?'

'Ye-es,' Jocasta said, exasperated, 'it is. And it's a bloody good job one of us is efficient.' Adding nonchalantly, 'I've even arranged a celebrity to open the exhibition.'

'Oh yes?'

Jocasta's lips cemented into a hard line. Even if it was a member of the Royal Family it wouldn't impress Hereward at the moment, still on his Max Goff high.

'It's Guy Morrison.'

'Oh. Er, super. Didn't he used to be…?'

'He's producing and presenting the documentary the BBC are doing on Max Goff and Crybbe. He seems very pleasant, he agreed at once. I think he's at rather a loose end. He's spending the weekend here, getting to know the town. Getting to know the people who count.'

'Not much use coming to The Gallery, then.' Hereward guffawed insensitively.

Jocasta scowled. That was it. 'I know,' she said, 'why don't you go to the West Country on your own? I'll stay behind and handle the private view.'

'Yes, I suppose it makes sense.'

Jocasta knew it made no sense at all. Good old Hereward, always anxious to be accepted by artists as a friend, someone who understood the creative process, would spend hundreds of pounds more than she would. But at least she'd get rid of him for a couple of days. Increasingly, Jocasta had been thinking back with nostalgia to the days when they'd had separate jobs and only met for a couple of hours in the evening…'

Hereward said – a formality, she thought – Will you be all right on your own?'

Just for a minute she thought about last right and those drawings and the sticky feeling on her hands which had proved, when the lights came on, to be no more than perspiration.

'I shall be fine,' she said.

Mrs Seagrove brought him tea in one of her best china cups – as distinct, she pointed out, from the mugs she took out to the lorry drivers in the layby.

'I thought I'd seen the last of you, Joe. How's the doggie.

'We think he's going to be OK.'

'That's good.' She was wearing today a plaid skirt of different tartan. I'm not Scottish,' she said. 'Frank and I used to go up there every autumn, and we'd visit these woollen mills.'

There was a picture of Frank on the sideboard. He was beaming and holding up a fish which might have been a trout.

'He was thrilled when we got this place, so near the river. He joined the angling club. It was a shame. Turned out to be not a very good river for fishing. And the problem was, Joe, Frank could see the river, but I could only see that.'

She sat with her back to the big, horizontal window with its panoramic view across the river to the woods and, of course the Tump.

'About that…' Powys said.

'I thought you'd come about that.' Mrs Seagrove held the teacup on her kilted knees, flat and steady as a good coffee table. 'Well, I'm glad somebody's interested. Mrs Morrison is always too busy. Unless I want to talk about it on the radio she says. Well, I said, would you make a spectacle of yourself on the wireless?'

'Last night, you said something was coming at us. From the Tump?'

'People are fascinated by these things. I'm not. Are you, Joe?'

'Well, I used to be. Still am, in a way, but they worry me now.'

'Quite right. I'm not interested, I've never been interested.

'It nearly always happens to people who are not interested,' said Powys.

'I think I know when it comes now, what time, so I draw the curtains and turn the telly up, but some nights I just have to go and look, just to get it out of the way. I'm scared to death, Joe, but I look, just to get it out of the way.'

'And what time is it?'

'Usually after nine o'clock and before they ring that bell in the church. Not always. It's early sometimes, almost full daylight – although it goes dark all of a sudden, kind of thing, like it's as if it's bringing its own darkness, do you know what I mean? And just once – it was that night the poor man crashed his car – just once, it was later, about half-tennish. Just that once.'

Powys said, 'It's a dog, isn't it? A big, black dog.'

'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Seagrove very' quietly. 'Yes, it is.'

'How often have you…?'

'Seven or eight times, I've seen it. It always goes the same way. Coming from the… the mound thing.'

'Down from the mound, or out of the mound?'

'I couldn't honestly say, dear. One second it's not there, the next it is, kind of thing. I'm psychic, I suppose. I never wanted to be psychic, not like this.'

'Is it – I'm sorry to ask all these questions – but is it obviously a dog? It couldn't be anything else?'

'You ask as many questions as you like, dear. I've been finding out about you, I rang a friend of mine at the library in Dudley. No, that's an interesting point you make there – is it really a dog? Well, I like dogs. I wouldn't be frightened of a dog, would I? Even a ghost dog. Naturally, it'd be a shock, the first time you saw it, kind of thing, but no, I don't think I'd be frightened. Oh dear, I wish you hadn't asked me that now, it's disturbed me, that has, Joe.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I don't want to stay here. I'd be off tomorrow, but how much would I get for this, even if I managed to sell it?'

if you really wanted to go quickly,' Powys said, 'I think I could find you a buyer. You'd get a good price, too.'

'Not you?'

'Good God, no, not me. I couldn't afford it, even if… Look, leave it with me for a day or two.'

'I don't know what to say, dear.' Mrs Seagrove's eyes were shining, in a way, I'd feel bad about somebody having this place. But they might not be psychic, mightn't they?'

'Or they might be quite interested.'

'Oh no,' she said. 'Nobody's interested in evil, are they?'