Phil Rickman - Crybbe

Rachel said, 'That's really sick. Max.' But Goff was looking up at the mound with a new pride, not listening.

'I bet if we mark out those tyre-tracks across that field we'll find they correspond exactly to line B.'

'Line B?'

'The fucking ley-line, Rachel.'

'Max, that's…'

Goff looked hard at Rachel. She shut up.

Jesus, she thought.

Whoomp.

'Bit for level, Fay.'

'OK, here we go…'

Mr. Kettle said, '… All right then, we know there's got to be water yereabouts…'

'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.'