Phil Rickman - Crybbe

'Arnie!' She looked up at Powys; he saw tear-stained, blood-blotched cheeks, clear green eyes and a lot of mud. 'Oh God, he's hanging on. Can you help me?'

Powys's mouth was so dry he couldn't speak.

Jonathon Preece screamed. 'You got no bloody sense? Gimme that gun!'

'I…'

'Please,' the woman begged.

'Gimme it!' The farmer took a step forward.

From out of the town's serrated silhouette came the first sonorous stroke of the curfew.

Powys looked down in horror at the gun. It felt suddenly very cold in his hands.

'Gimme…'

'Get it yourself,' Powys said, backing away, far enough away for Jonathon Preece, in this light, to remain unsure of what was happening until he heard the splash.

When the gun hit the water, Powys saw Mrs Seagrove hurrying down the bank towards them and then he saw Jonathon Preece's purpling face and became aware, for the first time, as the farmer advanced on him with bunched fists, that Jonathon Preece was bigger than he was. As well as being younger and fitter and, at this point, far angrier.

'You fuckin' done it now, Mister. Antique, that gun is. Three generations of my family 'ad that gun.'

Powys shrugged, palms up, backing off. He felt loose, very tired suddenly. 'Yeah, well… not too deep just there… Jonathon. Be OK. When it dries out.'

Preece's head swivelled – Mrs Seagrove coming quickly towards them, red-faced, out of breath – and he stopped, uncertain.

Mrs Seagrove stood there in her twinset and her plaid skirt, breathing hard, eventually managing to gasp, 'Did you see it? Did you?'

Powys looked at her, then at Jonathon Preece who'd turned to the river, was glaring out. The river looked stagnant. Preece hesitated, stared savagely into the drab water, started to say something and then didn't.

'Please,' the woman said from the grass.

It began to rain, big drops you could see individually against the hard sky.

Powys pulled off his jacket and knelt down. The dog's eyes were wide open, flanks pulsating. Powys didn't know what to do.

The dog squirmed, blood oozed.

Powys laid the jacket down. 'Put him on this.' He slid both hands beneath the dog. 'Gently. We'll get him to a vet. You… you never know your luck.'

In the river now, almost up to the tops of his Wellingtons, Jonathon Preece bellowed, 'I know your face, Mister. I'll 'ave you!'

'Oh, piss off,' Powys said, weary of him. He heard Mrs Seagrove wailing, 'You must've seen it. It was coming right at you. It went through you.'

Jean Wendle was living in a narrow town house on the square. Inside, it was already quite dark. She put on a reading lamp. Its parchment shade made the room mellow.

Gold lettering on the book spines, the warm brass of a coal-scuttle in the hearth. It reminded Alex of his first curate's house in Oxfordshire, before he'd been promoted into an endless series of vast, unbeatable vicarages and rectories. She'd certainly brought the warmth of her personality into the place.

Jean Wendle made him sit in a smoker's bow chair, his back to the fireplace, with its Chinese screen, facing a plain, whitewashed wall.

'Some days,' Alex said, 'it seems fine. I mean there might be nothing wrong. Or perhaps that, in itself, is an illusion. Perhaps I think I'm all right and everybody else sees me as stark, staring.. .'

'Shush.' Touch of Scottish in her voice, he liked that. 'Don't tell me. Don't tell me anything about it. Let me find out for myself.'

Yes, he really rather fancied her. Sixtyish. Short, grey hair. Still quite a neat little body – pliable, no visible stiffening. Sort of retired gym-mistress look about her. And nice mobile lips.

Cool fingers on his forehead. Moving from side to side, finding the right spot. Then quite still.

Quite sexy. Would he have let himself in for this if he hadn't fancied her a bit?

Not a chance.

'Don't talk,' she said.

'I wasn't talking.'

'Well, don't think so loudly. Not for a moment or two. Just relax.'

Taken him a few days to arrive into the cool hands of Jean Wendle. Well, a few nights – tentative approaches in the pub. Not a word to Fay. Definitely not a word to Grace.

And why shouldn't he? What was there to lose? The GP in Crybbe was a miserable beggar – hadn't been much to poor old Grace, had he? Drugs. Always drugs. Drugs that made you sleepy, drugs that made you sick. And at the end of the day…

Gradually, he and reality would go their separate ways. Rather appealing in one sense – what did reality have to commend it these days? But not exactly a picnic for anyone looking after him. Alex knew what happened to people who lost their minds. It sometimes seemed that half his parishioners had been geriatrics. They remembered having a wash this morning, when it was really days ago. They peed in the wardrobe by mistake.

Fay, now – that child was suffering a severe case of misplaced loyalty. If he couldn't get rid of her, it was his solid intention to pop himself off while he could still count on getting the procedure right. She'd thank him for it one day. Better all round, though, if he could make it look like an accident. Fall off the bridge or something.

Would have been a pity though, with all these alternative healing characters swanning around, not to give it a try first. What was there to lose?

The first chap he'd been to, Osborne, had not been all that encouraging. Almost as depressing as the doc. Alex got the feeling old age was not what the New Age was about.

And all this 'like cures like' stuff. A drop of this, a drop of that. Little phials of colourless liquid, touch of the medieval apothecary.

'How long before it starts to work?'

'You mustn't expect dramatic results, Alex,' Osborne told him. 'You see, holistic medicine, by definition, is about improving the health of the whole person. Everything is interconnected. Obviously, the older one is, the more set in its ways the body is, therefore the longer…' He must have seen the expression in Alex's eyes. 'Look, my wife's an acupuncturist, perhaps that might be more what you…'

'All those bloody needles. No thanks.'

'It isn't painful, Alex."

'Pain? I don't mind pain!'

Just the image of himself lying there, an overstuffed pincushion.

This kind of healing was a good deal more dignified, if you concentrated on those cool hands and didn't think too hard about what was supposedly going on in the spirit world.

He'd grilled her, naturally.

'Dr Chi? Dr bloody Chi? You don't look like a nutter, Wendy. How can you seriously believe you're working under the supervision of some long-dead Chinky quack?'

'My name's Jean,' she'd corrected him softly.

'Dr Chi!' Alex draining his Scotch. 'God save us.'

'Do you really want to know about this, Alex, or are you just going to be superior, narrow-minded, chauvinistic and insulting?'

'Was I? Hmmph. Sorry. Old age. Senile dementia.'

'Are you really old enough to be senile, Alex? What are you, seventy?'

'I'm certainly way past flattery, Wendy. Way past eighty, too. Go on, tell me about this Peking pox-doctor from the Ming dynasty.'

He'd forced himself to listen patiently while she told him about Dr Chi, who, she said, she'd once actually seen – as a white, glowing, egg-shaped thing.

'The name is significant. Dr Chi. Chi is the oriental life force. Perhaps that's the name I've subconsciously given him. I don't know if I'm dealing with a doctor from the Ming dynasty, the T'ang dynasty or whenever. He doesn't speak to me all sing-song, like a waiter serving chicken chow mein. All I know is there's a healing force and I call him Dr Chi. Perhaps he never was a human doctor at all or perhaps he's something that last worked through a Chinese physician. I'm not clever enough to understand these things. I'm content to be a channel. Good gracious, don't you believe in miracles, Alex? Isn't that the orthodox Anglican way any more?'