But before she could unleash this ample bundle of ecclesiastical charm on the punters, there was just one minor difficulty to overcome.
The Canon didn't appear to want to leave Crybbe. Ever.
This was the central problem in Fay's life. This was what kept her awake at night.
Christ, how could he? He didn't tramp the hills, wasn't much interested in peregrine falcons or otters or bog-orchids. How, for God's sake, could he bear to go on living in this no-hope town now that the woman who'd brought him here had been dead for nearly a year?
Other recent settlers kept saying what a little haven it was. Convincing themselves. A handful of retired people – most of them rather younger than the Canon – drifted into the town every year. The kind who told themselves they needed to be closer to nature. But nature, for them, amounted to a nice view. They came here not to die, but to fade out. To sit amid soft greenery until they grew frail and lighter than air and the wind blew them away like dandelion seeds.
What happened in reality was that an ambulance eventually took them off, rattling along the narrow lanes to Hereford General, twenty-five miles away. Taking too long to get there because all the roads were B roads, clogged with tractors and trailer-loads of sheep, whose milky eyes showed that they had no illusions at all about fading into a green heaven.
'Don't do it, Dad,' Fay said, just to create a new sound – three minutes' walk from the so-called town centre and all you could hear was the clock on the mantelpiece and the wheezing of the fridge. 'Don't leave your mind in bloody Crybbe.'
The Canon seemed, perversely, to revel in the misery of the town, to relish the shifty, suspicious stares he encountered in the post office and all the drinks the locals didn't buy him in the pub.
His mind was congealing, like a fried egg on a cold morning. The specialists had confirmed it, and at first Fay had refused to believe them. Although once you knew, the signs were pretty obvious.
Decay was infectious. It spread like yellow fungus in a tree stump. Fay realized she herself had somehow passed that age when you could no longer fool yourself that you were looking younger than you felt.
Especially here. The city – well, that was like part of your make-up, it hid all the signs. Whereas the country spelled it out for you. Every year it withered. Only the country came up green again, and you didn't.
Fay took a deep breath. This was not like her at all.
On the table in front of her lay a small, flat, square box containing fifteen minutes' worth of tape she'd recorded that morning. On the box was written in penciclass="underline"
Henry Kettle, dowser.
Later, Fay would create from the tape about six minutes of radio. To do this she would draw the curtains, switch on the Anglepoise lamp and the Revox editing machine and forget she was in Crybbe.
It was what kept her sane.
She wondered what kind of reaction she'd get if she told it like it was to the perusers of the property columns.
Fay picked up the pencil and wrote on the pad:
FOR SALE
Faded terraced house in godforsaken backwater, somewhere in damp no man's land long disowned by both Wales and England.
Fully modernized – in 1960.
Depressingly close to bunch of run-down shops, selling nothing in particular.
Backing on to infertile hill country, full of dour farming types and pompous retired bank managers from Luton.
No serious offer ignored.
In fact, she added, we'd tear your bloody hand off…
Chapter II
Close up, she was like a dark, crooked finger pushing out of the earth, beckoning him into the brambles.
When he looked back from the entrance to the field, she'd shrivelled into something more sinister: a bent and twisted old woman. A crippled crone.
Or maybe just the broken stump of a fence post. Maybe only that.
She hadn't been visible from here at all until, earlier that day, Mr. Kettle had put on his thick gloves and pulled away the brambles, then pruned the hedge around her so that she stood naked, not even a covering of moss.
Now he'd brought Goff to see his discovery, and he should have felt a bit proud, but he didn't. All the time he'd been cutting away the undergrowth something had been pulling at him, saying. Leave it be, Henry, you're doing no good here.
But this was his job, and this stone was what showed he'd earned his money. It made a nonsense of the whole business if he didn't reveal the only real evidence that proved the line was there, falling sure as a shadow across the field, dead straight, between two youngish oak trees and…
'See that gate?'
'The metal gate?'
'Aye, but he's likely replaced generations of wooden ones, Mr. Kettle said, his voice rolling easy now, like the hills around them. Even without the final proof he'd have been confident of this one. Wonderful feeling it was, when you looked up and everything in the landscape – every hill and every tree, every hedge, every gateway – suddenly smiled at you and nodded and said you were right, you done it again, boy.
Like shaking hands with God.
Happening again, so suddenly like this, everything dovetailing, it had taken his mind off the doubts, and he'd been asking himself: how can there be anything wrong, when it all falls together so neatly.
He indicated the gate again. 'Prob'ly the cattle chose the spot, you following me?'
'Because they'd always go out that way! Out of the field, right?'
'You're learning.' Though it was still warmish, Mr. Kettle wore a heavy tweed suit. He carried what once had been a medical bag of scuffed black leather, softened with age. The tools of the trade in there, the forked twigs and the wire rods and the pendulums. But the tools weren't important; they just made the clients feel better about paying good money to a walking old wives' tale like him.
Max Goff had a white suit, a Panama hat and the remains of an Aussie accent. For a long time Mr. Kettle had found it hard to take him seriously, all the daft stuff he came out with about wells of sacred power and arteries of healing energy and such.
The New Age – he kept on about that. Mr. Kettle had heard it all before. Twenty years ago they were knocking on his door in their Indian kaftans and head-bands, following him out to stone circles, like Mitchell's Fold up in Shropshire, where they'd sit smoking long, bendy cigarettes and having visions, in between pawing each other. Now it was a man in a white suit with a big, powerful motor car, but it was the same old thing.
Many, many times he'd explained to people that what he did was basically about science. Wonderful, yes – even after all these years the thrill was there all right. But it was a natural thing. Nothing psychic about dowsing.
What sun there'd been had all but gone now, leaving a mournful old sky with clouds like a battle-flag torn into muddy, blood-stiffened strips. It hadn't been a good spring and it wouldn't be a good summer.
'Now look up from the gate,' said Mr. Kettle.
'Yeah, that… church steeple, you mean?'
'No, no, before that. Side of that bit of a hedge.'
'Oh… that thing.'
The old girl was about a hundred yards down the field, separated from the hedge now, blackened against the light, no more than three feet tall. But she was there, that was the point. In the right place.
'Yes,' Mr. Kettle said. 'That thing.'
It was no good, he didn't like her. Even if she'd proved him right he didn't like the feeling coming off her, the smell that you could smell from a good distance, although not really.
'Is it a tree stump?' And then, 'Hey, you're kidding, it can't be!' The little eyes suddenly sparking. He'd be ruthless and probably devious in his business, this feller, but he had this enthusiastic innocence about him that you couldn't altogether dislike.