Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (9 page)

   
'OK, that's fine, Fay . . . I'm
rolling. Go in five.'
   
She wound back, set the tape running
and took the cans off her ears, leaving them around her neck so she'd hear the
engineer call out if he ran into problems.

   
Leaning back in the metal-framed
typist's chair, she thought, God, I've been shunted into some seedy sidings in
my time, but this . . .

   
. . . was the Crybbe Unattended
Studio.
   
Ten feet long and six feet wide. Walls
that closed in on you like the sides of a packing case. A tape-machine on a
metal stand. A square mahogany table with a microphone next to a small console
with buttons that lit up. And the chair. And no windows, just a central light
and two little red lights - one above the door outside to warn people to keep
away in case whoever was inside happened to be broadcasting live to the scattered
homesteads of the Welsh Marches.

   
This studio used to be the gents'
lavatories at the back of the Cock, before they'd built new ones inside the
main building. Then some planning wizard at Offa's Dyke Radio had presumably
stuck a plastic marker into the map and said without great enthusiasm: Crybbe -
well, yeah, OK, not much of a place, but it's almost exactly halfway up the
border and within couple miles of the Dyke itself . . . about as central as we
can get.'

   
Then they'd have contacted the
Marches Development Board, who'd have told them: No problem, we can offer you a
purpose-built broadcasting centre on our new Kington Road Industrial Estate at
an annual rent of only . . .

   
At which point the planning
wizard would have panicked and assured them that all that was required was a
little room to accommodate reporters and interviewees (one at a time) and for
sending tape down a land-line to Offa's Dyke main studios.
   
All self-operated. No staff, no
technicians. Very discreet: You walk in, you switch on, and a sound-engineer
records your every word from fifty miles away.

   
Which was how they'd ended up
with the former gents' at the Cock. A tired, brick building with a worn slate
roof, at the end of a narrow passageway past the dustbins.

   
The original white tiles with
worrying brown stains had gone now. Or at least were hidden behind the black
acoustic screening which formed a little soundproof module inside the building.

   
But sometimes, especially early
in the morning, Fay would swear she could smell . . .

   
'That's lovely, Fay, thanks very
much.'
   
Thanks, Barry,' Fay told the microphone
on the desk. All engineers were called Barry.

   
'It's Elton, actually,' he
said. 'Hang on, Gavin's here, he'd like a word.'

   
Elton. Jesus, nobody in this
country who was called Elton could possibly be over twenty-one. Even the damned
engineer at Offa's Dyke were fresh out of engineering school.

   
Gavin Ashpole came on the line,
the station's news editor, an undeveloped rasp, unsure of whether it was
supposed to sound thrusting or laid-back. He wanted to know if Fay was any
closer to an interview with Max Goff about his plans for Crybbe Court. Or at
least some sort of statement. 'I mean, is it going to be a recording studio, or
what? We going to have enormous rock stars helicoptering in? We need to know,
and we need to know
before
we read
about it in the bloody papers.'

   
'No, listen, I told you, his PA
insists he doesn't want any publicity yet, but . . .'

   
Calm down, woman, don't rise to
it.

   
'But when he's got things together,'
Fay finished lamely, he says they'll tell me first.

I . . . I've no reason to think she's bullshitting.'

   
'Why can't you doorstep him?
Just turn up. Put the fucker on the spot.'

   
'Look, isn't it better to try
and stay on the right side of the guy? There could be a lot of mileage in this
one for us, in . . . in the future.' Hesitating because 'in the future' she
wasn't going to be here, was she?

   
Absolutely no way she could
tell him about the late Henry Kettle being hired by Goff to do some dowsing
around the Court. Partly because she hadn't been able to persuade Mr. Kettle to
tell her what he was supposed to be looking for. And partly because loony Gavin
Ashpole would start wondering how he could implicate the famous Goff in Henry's
death.

   
I don't know, Fay.' Ashpole
switching to the Experienced News Editor's pensive drawl. 'I'm not into all
this pussyfooting about. We're gonna lose out, here. Listen, try him again,
yeah? If you don't get anywhere, we'll have to, you know, reconsider things.'

   
He meant if she didn't get him
an interview soon they'd send in some flash kid from the newsroom to show her
how it was done. Nasty little sod, Gavin Ashpole. All of twenty-four. Career to
carve.

   
You've got to stop this, Fay warned
herself, as the line went dead. You're becoming seriously obsessed with age.
Good God, woman, you're not
old.

   
Just older than almost
everybody else connected with Offa's Dyke Radio. Which, OK, was not exactly
old
old, but. . .

   
What it is, she thought, your
whole life's been out of synch, that's the problem. Goes back to having a
father who was already into his fifties when you were conceived. Discovering your
dad is slightly older than most other kids' granddads.

   
And yet, when you are not yet
in your teens, it emerges that your mother is threatening to divorce your aged father
because of
his
infidelity.

   
Fay shook her head, playing
with the buttons on the studio tape-machine. He'd given up the other woman,
narrowly escaping public disgrace. Eight years later he was a widower.

   
Fast forward over that. Too
painful.

   
Whizz on through another
never-mind-how-many years and there you are, recovering from your own misguided
marriage to a grade-A dickhead, pursuing your first serious career - as a radio
producer, in London - and, yes, almost starting to enjoy yourself. . . when,
out of the blue, your old father rings to invite you to his wedding in . . .

   
'
Sorry, where did you say . . . ?'

   
'C-R-Y-B-B-E.'

   
'Where the hell is that. Dad? Also,
more to the point, who the hell is Grace?'

   
And then - bloody hell! -
before he can reply, you remember.

   
'Oh my God, Grace was the woman
who'd have been cited in Mum's petition! Grace Legge. She must be . . .'

   
'Sixty-two. And not terribly
well, I'm afraid, Fay. Moneywise, too, she's not in such a healthy position. So
I'm doing the decent thing. Twenty years too late, you might say . . .'

   
'I might not say anything
coherent for ages, Dad. I'm bloody speechless.'

   
'Anyway, I've sort of moved in
with her. This little terraced cottage she's got in Crybbe, which is where she
was born. You go to Hereford and then you sort of turn right and just, er, jus carry
on, as it were.'

   
'And what about your own house?
Who's taking care of that ?
   
'Woodstock? Oh, I, er, I had to sell
it. Didn't get a lot actually, the way the market is, but . . .'

   
'Just a minute, Dad. Am I
really hearing this? You sold that bloody wonderful house? Are you going
senile?'

   
Not an enormously tactful
question, with hindsight.

   
'No option, my dear. Had to
have the readies for . . . for private treatment for Grace and, er, things.
Which goes - now, you don't have to tell me - goes against everything I've always
stood for, so don't spread it around. But she's really not awfully well, and I
feel sort of . . .'

   
'Sort of guilty as hell.'

   
'Yes, I suppose. Sort of. Fay,
would you object awfully to drifting out here and giving me away, as it were?
Very quiet, of course. Very discreet. No dog-collars.'

   
This is - when? - eleven months
ago?

   
The wedding is not an entirely
convivial occasion. At the time, Grace Legge, getting married in a wheelchair,
has approximately four months to live, and she knows it.

   
When you return to a damp and
leafless late-autumnal Crybbe for the funeral, you notice the changes in your
dad. Changes which a brain-scan will reveal to be the onset of a form of
dementia caused by hardening of the arteries. Sometimes insufficient blood is
getting to his brain. The bottom line is that it's going to get worse.

   
The dementia is still intermittent,
but he can hardly be left on his own. He won't come to London - 'Grace's cats
and things, I promised.' And he won't have a housekeeper - 'Never had to pay a
woman for washing my socks and I don't plan to start now. Wash my own.'

   
Fay sighed deeply. Cut to Controller's
office, Christmas Eve. 'Fay, it's not rational. Why don't you take a week off
and think about it? I know if it was my father he'd have to sell up and rent
himself a flat in town if he was expecting me to keep an eye on him.'

   
'This is just it, he
doesn't
expect me to. He's an
independent old sod.'

   
'All right. Let's say you do go
to this place. How are you supposed to make a living?'

   
'Well, I've done a bit of scouting
around. This new outfit, Offa's Dyke Radio . . .'

   
'Local radio?
Independent
local radio? Here today and
. . . Oh, Fay, come on, don't do this to yourself.'

   
I thought maybe I could
freelance for them on a bread-and-butter basis. They've got an unattended
studio actually in Crybbe, which is a stroke of luck. And the local guy they had,
he's moved on, and so they're on the look-out for a new contributor. I've had a
chat with the editor there and he sounded quite enthusiastic'

   
'I bet he did.'

   
'And maybe I could do the odd
programme for you, if freelancing for a local independent as well doesn't break
some ancient BBC law.'

   
'I'm sure that's not an
insurmountable problem, but . . .'
   
'I know, I know. I'm far too young to
be retiring to the country.'

   
'And far too good, actually.'

   
'You've never said before.'

   
'You might have asked for more
money.'

   
Typical bloody BBC.

   
Fay spun back the Henry Kettle
tape - why couldn't you rewind your life like that? - and let herself out,
throwing the studio into darkness with the master switch by the door. But the
spools were still spinning in her head.

She locked up and set off with a forced briskness up the alley, an
ancient passageway, smoked brick walls with a skeleton of years-blackened
beams. Sometimes cobwebs hung down and got in your hair. She wasn't overfond of
this alley. There were always used condoms underfoot; sometimes the concrete
flags were slippery with them. In winter they were frozen, like milk ice-pops.

   
She emerged into the centre of
Crybbe as the clock in the church tower was chiming eleven. Getting to eleven
sounded like a big effort for the mechanism; you could hear the
strain.

   
There were lots of deep
shadows, even though the sun was high, because the crooked brick and timbered
building, slouched together, like down-and-outs sharing a cigarette. Picturesque
and moody in the evening, sometimes. In the daytime, run-down, shabby.

   
People were shopping in the
square, mainly for essentials, the shops in Crybbe specialized in the items
families ran out in between weekly trips to the supermarkets in Hereford or Leominster.
In Crybbe, prices were high and stocks low. These were long-established shops,
run by local people: the grocer, the chemist, the hardware and farming
suppliers.

   
Other long-established businesses
had, like Henry Kettle, gone to the wall. And been replaced by a new type of
store.

   
Like The Gallery, run by
Hereward and Jocasta Newsome, from Surrey, specializing in the works of border
landscape artists. In the window, Fay saw three linked watercolours of the Tump
at different times of day, the ancient mound appearing to hover in the dawn
mist, then solid in the sunlight and then dark and black against an orange sky.
A buff card underneath lid, in careful copperplate