The Buried Circle

by Jenni Mills

  ‘This about YouTube by any chance?’

  ‘You know? Surprise stops the emotional leakage.

  ‘It’s been there a fortnight. Or, rather, it was. The Air Accident people managed to have it taken off earlier this week. I had about eight emails, sending me the link, from so-called friends.’

  ‘And you didn’t bother to tell me?’

  ‘It would have upset you. Don’t give me that look–it’s on your face that it upsets you. Only a matter of time before someone had it removed, if not the AAIB, then the family–though I bloody well hope they never heard about it. It was the last couple of minutes, mostly the crash itself, not what led up to it.’

  ‘You saw it?’

  Ed looks uncomfortable.

  ‘You did, didn’t you?’

  He sighs. ‘Yes, I watched it. Once, if that makes it any better.’ He picks up a tea-towel from the floor, wipes the mugs and drops a teabag into each, his back to me. ‘Shouldn’t ask this, but…’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ I say. ‘You want to know what I’m going to say at the inquest, don’t you? What I told the police?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Well, yes. It would be helpful.’ He swings round to face me. ‘More to the point…Any chance you could get me a copy of the rest of the video?’

  No way. I feel sick at the thought of it.

  ‘Jesus, Ed, even if I could…What the hell would you do with it?’

  His fingers are worrying at a piece of loose skin by his thumbnail, reminding me of Martin on the first day of filming. ‘I thought I explained the shit I’m in. No money, no lawyer. If I lose my licence, I’m bankrupt for sure. Do you remember the exact conversation immediately before that last run across the crop circle? I sure as hell don’t, not word for word, but if it’s on the tape, the Air Accident Investigators will know precisely what Steve and I said to each other. I have to know what they know: it’s the only way I can plan my defence.’

  ‘You said OK. I remember that, I think–you said OK, like it was…a challenge.’

  ‘Is that all? Didn’t I say–that’s not a good idea? It’s dangerous? Nothing like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. You might have done. I don’t remember. But the conversation wouldn’t be on the tape anyway. We were planning to dub music and commentary over the pictures so we didn’t bother to take a feed from the headsets.’

  Ed closes his eyes in relief. ‘I thought…There were screams on the YouTube piece.’

  ‘But muffled, right? The camera’s inbuilt microphone might’ve picked up the odd sound at high volume, but any normal chat would have been drowned on the recording by wind and engine noise.’

  The kettle starts to whistle. Ed crouches to open the tiny fridge for milk. He says something I can’t hear.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said, would you be prepared to back me up at the inquest if I told the coroner I warned Steve about the danger but he insisted? I know it’s a lot to ask…’

  My heart stutters. ‘I can’t do that. I told you, I don’t remember who said what.’

  ‘It wouldn’t exonerate me but it might make a difference.’

  ‘You’re asking me to lie for you.’

  ‘It’s not a lie. It’s what I’m sure happened.’

  The kettle’s still shrieking. I reach over and turn off the gas. ‘Don’t bother with tea on my account,’ I say. ‘I have to go. You’re right. It is a lot to ask. Too much.’

  He stands up and, for a second, I think he’ll block my way, but instead he flattens himself against the kitchenette so we don’t have to touch. There’s sadness in his eyes, but they crinkle up with his usual lop-sided smile. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Friends, Indy?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  As I walk down the road towards the car, the Smiths blast out again from the caravan, singing about being human and needing to be loved.

  CHAPTER 20

  1938

  I was so upset that I couldn’t summon enthusiasm for church that Sunday. Hard to kneel in front of God, remembering the thoughts in my mind when Mr Keiller tried to wrestle my handbag from me. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw his handsome face leaning over me, felt his hand slide across my bosom, accidental like.

  Mam and I usually went to St James’s, where the serpent writhed round the old font and the saint trod on its wicked head. Dad never went; said he’d seen all he wanted of God in the trenches. Nor did Mr Keiller. Sometimes, like this week, we were too busy with guests expecting roast Sunday luncheon. Then I’d go to evensong instead, on my own if Mam was too tired. Sunday supper was always serve-yourself, a cold collation, sandwiches made from the left-over roast, and salad and cheese and pickles, and once we’d laid it out Dad looked after everything while I went to church and Mam put her feet up.

  ‘I’ll be glad when we’ve done with the guesthouse,’ she’d taken to saying. ‘It’s a chore and no mistake, these days.’

  Tonight the evening was too lovely to sit in the dark nave of St James’s, I told myself, knowing it was only an excuse to have an hour to myself, thinking about Mr Keiller and imagining his fingers doing much more than brush accidental against my chest. So I went walking, the laburnum flowers in yellow drifts and the air smelling of fresh-mown grass. Over the footbridge, the Winterbourne shrunken to a reedy trickle, the ground was already pegged out at Trusloe for the foundations of the new houses. Lawrence of Arabia’s brother had put up some of the money. Strange to think these empty fields would one day hold a village.

  I’d reached the far side of Longstones field–two big old sarsens down there, facing each other like wary boxers–when I heard bells floating across the air. Not St James’s: these were from the next village on, Yatesbury. My conscience tugged me. It was a fair step, but a pretty church. I’d be too late for the start of the service but I could slip into a pew at the back.

  It was further than I’d thought. As I walked up the path between the yews, limping a little on blistered feet, the sun was dipping below the treetops. The wooden door was ajar, and I could hear the deep voice of the vicar intoning the words of the Collect: Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.

  Leaning on a box tomb with his back to me, Mr Cromley was smoking a cigarette; I knew him by the slope of his shoulders in the dark green Morven blazer. I hesitated, but he must have heard my step on the gravel. To my dismay, he turned, dropping the glowing cigarette end onto the ground.

  ‘Miss Robinson! Beautiful evening.’ He had a winning smile, and I reminded myself it wasn’t his fault, what had happened at the picnic.

  ‘Didn’t have you down as a churchgoer, Mr Cromley.’

  ‘I don’t go into the service. I prefer to shrive my soul out here in the churchyard.’

  ‘You have a soul, then?’

  ‘You’re very cruel all of a sudden. And you’ve been avoiding me, Heartbreaker. You’ve missed most of the service, so come and sit down on–’ he looked at the slab between us ‘–William Cullis and his fine family and watch the sun go down with me. We can discuss the state of our souls.’

  It was the first time he had called me Heartbreaker. The organist was hammering away at the closing hymn, ‘And Now the Wants Are Told’. I felt a snake twist in my belly, and I held his gaze, without saying anything, though the sun was against me and I couldn’t make out the expression in his eyes. I remembered the feel of his hands on my shoulders, pulling me down onto the grass while Mr Keiller knelt over me.

  ‘I have to be back before long,’ I said. But all the same I sat next to him on the flat surface of the box tomb. Birds sang all around, threatening and warning each other: don’t let me catch you at that, don’t let me catch you at that.

  Between us and the sun was a row of white headstones.

  ‘You know who they are, don’t you?’ said Mr Cromley. ‘I come here to pay my respects, because who else will, apart from their families?’ He pointed at a stone carved with a pai
r of wings in a laurel wreath. ‘Per ardua ad astra. The hard way to the stars.’

  ‘Royal Air Force?’ I asked.

  ‘Royal Flying Corps, when they joined up. These are men–boys, probably–who were learning to fly here in the Great War. Died before they made it to the front line. Some might’ve come down in that field beyond the fence.’

  I jumped down to look. He was right, boys, most of them: you could see from the dates. Some headstones carried a message from their mams and dads. A pressure came in my chest, and my eyes prickled. ‘They never got to fight?’ I asked, climbing back onto the box tomb next to him.

  He nodded. ‘I can see them, can’t you, carrying their kitbags into the barracks, with such hopes of glory? Maybe they’d weighed up their chances in a dogfight against a German ace. But a mistake on a training circuit? Nobody imagines he’ll go that way.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor sods. I find it inexpressibly sad.’

  O wondrous peace, sang the congregation in the church, in thought to dwell on excellence divine; to know that nought in man can tell how fair Thy beauties shine.

  ‘Will there be another war?’ I asked him.

  He blew air down his nose like an impatient horse. ‘Of course there’ll be another war. The Jewish financiers who run this country will see to that, whatever the old appeaser Chamberlain hopes. And another row of headstones. Another bad joke on the part of God. More brave souls, who hoped for glory and never touched it.’

  ‘You have souls on the brain,’ I told him.

  He glared at me. ‘Maybe because it could be my soul hovering over a chunk of white marble. Everything will change, you know.’ Then he sighed. ‘I forget you’re so young, Heartbreaker. How fair thy beauties shine. Smoke?’

  I shook my head. He selected a cigarette from a silver case and slipped it between his lips; he’d given up that silly pipe. There was the creak of the church door behind us, footsteps in the porch. The service had ended. As Mr Cromley took out matches and lit up, we could hear the congregation crunching down the gravel path, chattering away to each other. Goodness knows what they thought of us, silhouetted against the sinking sun like a courting couple.

  ‘I blame the Communists,’ I said, hoping to prove I knew something about politics. I’d heard Dad say that to Mam, listening to the news on the wireless.

  Mr Cromley laughed. ‘There you go again, Heartbreaker. No, Mr Hitler’s the villain, and will have to be stopped somehow, or we’ll all be speaking German in ten years’ time.’ He took a pull on his cigarette, then blew a perfect smoke ring into the still air. ‘I don’t like dancing to the tune of our Semitic brethren, but that’s a far lesser evil than a mad housepainter in charge.’

  A robin fluttered from a chestnut tree and perched on one of the white headstones. Mr Cromley twisted round to watch the last of the congregation pass through the lich-gate.

  ‘I hate it,’ he said. ‘All this pious bleating, hoping to save their souls. It achieves nothing. My father was a churchgoer, but it didn’t stop him being blown to bits the week the armistice was signed.’

  ‘How old were you?’ I asked.

  ‘Six.’ He sounded cold and dismissive, like I’d asked a stupid question. ‘War’s the great leveller, Heartbreaker. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. D’you know, where I’m lodging in Trusloe Cottages, farm labourers can’t afford the rents of the houses the council built for them? Things have to change, and perhaps war’s the only way to do it.’

  I didn’t know what to say. Times was hard for a lot of families on the land, I knew that. But they always had been. How was a war going to sort that out? But Mr Cromley was looking at me intense, like. ‘Haven’t seen you since the picnic,’ he said. ‘Alec is right, she is a first-class bitch.’

  ‘He’s going to marry her, isn’t he?’ I said.

  ‘Fraid so.’ He tapped me lightly on the chin. ‘Thing is, Heartbreaker, you’re younger and prettier, but her father’s a major-general. Your father keeps a guesthouse, and soon he won’t have even that questionable status. I hear he’ll be a tobacconist.’ Mr Cromley said it like you’d say ‘toilet attendant’.

  Tears pricked behind my eyes. Dad, in his cheap off-the-peg suit, Mam ironing the hand-stitched table mats. All they’d worked for, the guesthouse with its clean sheets and towels changed every day, meant nothing. Clean sheets could never take me where I wanted to be. I swung my legs up onto the tomb, and wrapped my arms round my knees, looking away towards the dipping sun at the end of the graveyard, willing the tears back where they came from. The row of white headstones confronted me like a row of sinister, even teeth.

  ‘You really have fallen for him, haven’t you?’ Mr Cromley sounded amazed. ‘You poor little thing.’

  Best not to say anything. I wasn’t so green I didn’t see Mr Cromley as a dangerous fellow to confide in.

  ‘How old are you, Heartbreaker?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ I lied.

  ‘A mature woman in the Neolithic. You’d probably have at least a couple of babies by now. In fact, you could be considered middle-aged, given that life expectancy wasn’t much over thirty.’ He threw away his cigarette. ‘Are you still a virgin at sweet sixteen?’

  I went hot. ‘No gentleman would ask that.’

  He reached out a hand and lifted my skirt back from my knee. I went completely still. The evening breeze played over the bare skin above my stocking top.

  ‘Do you know how I made Alec’s acquaintance, Miss Robinson?’ Every time he repeated my name it was like an incantation. ‘We were both members of–how shall I put it? A small group of gentlemen with certain interests in common. My uncle recommended me. We would meet for drinks at someone’s club, then repair to a flat in South London where a young woman would assist us in our experiments in ritual. And I’m not talking about what goes on in there…’ He nodded towards the church. ‘Religion’s a crutch. I’m talking about a tool. There are ways of harnessing the cosmos to help someone determined. What you will shall be.’ His finger began stroking my thigh, circling above the top of my stocking. ‘We’d take turns, Miss Robinson. One after another with the same woman. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘Enough to know I don’t want to hear it.’ But my breathing gave me away. I was remembering what had happened at the picnic, Mr Cromley holding my arms, Mr Keiller towering over me…The two of them becoming confused in my mind, changing places, turning in mazy circles like Mr Cromley’s insistent finger.

  ‘Alec is a highly sexualized man. He’s curious, likes to try different experiences. Sometimes our experiments would be about withholding.’ The finger abruptly stops stroking. ‘Withholding can create very powerful magic. And sometimes–’ the finger lightly brushes my skin again, this time on the inner thigh ‘–sometimes it would be about giving.’

  Our breath hung in the air between us, his finger a light pressure on my leg. My skin ached. I wanted that finger to move again, but it didn’t.

  ‘Are you a giving person, Miss Robinson?’

  ‘I don’t think you should be talking like this.’

  ‘I could make a gift of you to Alec. Or vice versa.’

  I lifted his hand off my thigh, swung my legs off the tomb and jumped to the ground, dusting fragments of stone off the back of my skirt. ‘I’m not a parcel, Mr Cromley.’

  I didn’t turn round as I stalked away into the glimmering evening, but I knew he was watching me all the way down the yew-shaded path.

  CHAPTER 21

  ‘Not Druids,’ says Martin, as we approach the Red Lion. ‘Please tell me there won’t be Druids.’

  A lively wind shoos the clouds across the night sky. Wiccans celebrate rituals according to the moon, and tonight is the first full moon after the vernal equinox–which also makes it Easter on Friday. The campsite behind the car park has already sprouted a few tents: pagans of various persuasions who’ve started their bank-holiday break early.

  ‘Of course there will be Druids. Also witches, goddess worshippers and–’

  �
��Enough. My father will be rotating in consecrated ground. I told you he was a vicar, didn’t I? Broad-minded, ecumenical, but nevertheless drew the line at sacrificing goats.’

  What is this masculine obsession with goats? ‘There will be no goats,’ I say firmly. ‘Not so much as a gerbil.’

  But Martin is clambering onto an archaeological hobby-horse. ‘The point is there never were Druids at Avebury. Druids came several thousand years later, and hung around sacred groves, not stone circles. And, frankly, what we know of Druids today is all nineteenth-century construct–started by a load of rich, middle-aged Victorian men with nothing better to do than dress up in white sheets and silly hats and hold secret rituals.’

  ‘Don’t let our Druids hear you talking like that. They take it very seriously’

  ‘Is your chum the shaman going to be there?’

  ‘Not tonight. He’s taken a party of men to camp in the Savernake Forest on a discover-your-inner-wild-man weekend.’

  ‘Wish I’d known. Sounds right up my street.’

  The cottages look cosy, glowing curtains drawn against the night, chimneys emitting thin streams of smoke that the wind tosses into the ragged clouds. Sensible villagers, warm villagers, unbothered by the full moon, hunkered around their fires watching the Ten o’clock News and the late film. On the corner of the main road, the pub is a blaze of light. The pagans generally gather at the tables outside, but we’re early.

  ‘Inside for a drink to warm us up?’ suggests Martin, as we cross the road. ‘Or, put it another way, I am not freezing my bollocks off on a bench waiting for Druids. I’ve more time for Wiccans, mind. Another completely made-up faith, invented mid-twentieth century, but there’s something about a Wiccan that appeals to my lapsed Anglicanism. Did you know there are actually Christian Wiccans too?’

  He gives me a naughty sideways grin as we go inside.

  Martin’s all right, really. Now I know him better, I can’t imagine why I fancied him, except that something can happen between the filmer and the filmed. They spend so long staring into each other’s eyes through either end of a camera.