The Buried Circle

by Jenni Mills

  Pete’s drawing back his leg for another kick, aiming higher up the thigh.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Can’t you stop him, Karl?’

  ‘Eh?’ Karl releases my arm in surprise. ‘Pete, she knows our names’.

  Pete stares, foot drawn back for the next kick and something dangerous in his piggy eyes. I’ve probably made the situation a million times worse.

  There’s a flurry of movement, a shout, and suddenly it’s Pete on the ground, clutching his shoulder and grunting through clenched teeth. ‘You tosser, you’ve dislocated my fuckin’–’

  Ed’s getting to his feet, using the metal detector he’s pulled out of Pete’s hands as a kind of crutch. ‘Crikey’, he says, making the word grate. ‘My heart bleeds. You, you bastard, were about to kick me in the balls–what d’you think I’m going to do, lie back and wait for you to get on with it? Indy, get in the Land Rover. No, driver’s side.’

  Karl backs away towards the Transit, hands in the air. Ed waves the metal detector threateningly at him. I climb into the Land Rover.

  ‘Key in the ignition,’ says Ed. ‘Turn it. Headlights on.’ The engine throbs and the scene springs to dramatic life, Karl flattening himself against the Transit doors, terrified, the other man still on the ground, trying to push himself one-handed onto his knees. ‘Now put her in reverse. Let the clutch out–no, not yet, wait till I say go, then straight backwards, if you please.’

  In the wing mirror, I watch him walk round the back, carrying the metal detector. He emerges on the other side, his hands empty.

  ‘OK, Indy.’ He grins at me through the windscreen. ‘Your turn. Go.’

  I grasp the gear stick, hesitate, then shove it back into neutral, turning off the engine. I don’t want to be the one to do this.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I…can’t.’ I hand him the keys through the open window. Impossible to explain my reluctance, and the sudden queasiness that has swept over me.

  Ed gives me a puzzled stare, lets me climb out, then gets into the driver’s seat. Karl shrinks away as I approach the white van, eyes like a spooked horse’s. He really isn’t very bright, I realize–possibly even has learning difficulties.

  ‘Is that your metal detector?’ I ask him. ‘Not his?’

  Karl nods nervously. ‘Pete’s is still in the van.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I call to Ed. ‘Don’t…’

  But he doesn’t hear me because the engine catches. The Land Rover moves backwards, and the back wheels crunch on something solid. Then the vehicle comes forward again, with another sick-making splintering crunch. Ed turns off the engine, climbs down, and walks to the back to look. ‘Don’t think the Man In Black will be detecting much Bronze Age treasure with that.’

  ‘What the flick you on about?’ says Pete, clambering awkwardly to his feet, still clutching his damaged shoulder. ‘That’s criminal fticking damage. Could sue you. We got rights.’

  ‘Not to dig up ancient monuments.’

  ‘Ancient monuments?’ says Karl, next to me.

  Ed pulls a phone out of his pocket–the phone that has no charge. ‘And don’t pretend this is innocent because I took a photo when you stopped at Yatesbury. Any more aggro and it’s going straight to English Heritage and the landowner, van numberplate, the lot.’

  ‘We didn’ touch a thing at Yatesbury,’ says Pete. He limps towards the passenger door of the Transit, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Never even had the detectors out. ‘Sides, what were you doin’ at Yatesbury if you aren’t after same as us?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have found much there.’ My legs are trembling. ‘It’s an airfield. The ground’s full of old metal so you’d never’ve been able to pinpoint antiquities.’ I touch Karl’s arm and whisper, ‘Sorry.’

  In the headlights, Pete gives me a withering glare.

  ‘Who said anything about antiquities? Course it’s a fucking airfield, you daft cow, that’s what we were fucking there for. We’re into aviation archaeology’

  ‘You’re shivering,’ says Ed, as the white Transit turns awkwardly and bumps down the track, taking Pete and Karl back to Bristol, probably via the nearest A and E. ‘Jump in the Land Rover, and start the heater. It’s the one thing that does work efficiently in this vehicle.’

  I haul myself into the driver’s seat and turn on the engine. Hot air blasts out of the vents. ‘I wish we hadn’t done that. They were harmless.’

  ‘Harmless? He hit me with a metal detector, for God’s sake. They deserved it.’

  ‘Karl didn’t. He was just some poor slow-witted kid, and it was his metal detector you crushed. It didn’t belong to the bloke who hit you.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Ed turns and gazes at the retreating taillights. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that. Though if everything was so sweet and innocent, why are they doing it in the dark?’ He leans in and rubs my thigh absent-mindedly. ‘And the Man In Black was remarkably easily pacified, wasn’t he? Shouted a bit, but pissed off exceeding quick. Threw everything in the back of the Transit and fled. They were twitchy at Yatesbury too.’

  ‘You think they’re the ones responsible for Frannie’s lights on Windmill Hill, after all?’

  ‘No, no. The aviation-archaeology line had the ring of truth. Only…no airfield up here on Easton Down that I’ve ever heard of. And I know all the Wiltshire airfields. Even the ones that closed down years ago. So what were they looking for?’ He pokes me in the ribs. ‘If you’ve warmed up a bit, you going to move out of that seat and let me drive?’

  ‘We’d be far safer with me driving.’

  ‘Bollocks. Get out.’

  Obediently, I step down to walk round the bonnet, where insects dance in the headlight beams.

  Ed stands in my way. ‘I’ve had a better thought.’ His fingers wander down the side of my face, across my lips, under my chin, hook themselves into the V-neck of my T-shirt and tug gently. ‘How about rough sex in the open air?’

  Funny, the same thought was going through my mind.

  CHAPTER 39

  1941–2

  Although, as the airman at the dinner predicted, Donald Cromley had been posted back to his squadron in early November, all that autumn and winter I couldn’t rid myself of the notion he was following me. I knew the squadron was still in Kent, because Davey was with them now, his letters frequent as ever, full of his hopes for the eventual move to Colerne, which kept being postponed. But sometimes when I walked on the Ridgeway, I’d be sure I’d heard another step. I’d whip round to see the track empty behind me, a long white tongue licking the darkening Downs. The beech leaves reddened, crisped, fell, and turned to a brown sludge. Frost hardened the ruts. The journey home to Avebury each night seemed longer and longer. This year, if there was an air-raid warning and I missed the bus, or if I was fire-watching, there was no Davey along the road at Wroughton to run me home in his steel-roofed Baby Austin. More than once, I made a nest of blankets borrowed from the nurses and slept on the floor at the hospital.

  If Mr Cromley hadn’t forced me out of Avebury, that winter would. January ‘42 was a black, icy month. So was the beginning of February. One of the nurses was getting married, and giving up her room in Swindon Old Town to go and live with her fianc’s parents. I had a couple of hours to spare between the end of work and the start of my fire watch, and I agreed to meet Nell when her shift finished, to walk back to her lodgings and be introduced to the landlady. I was still reluctant to move into town, but I knew it was the sensible thing to do.

  Everyone else in the almoner’s office had left for the evening. I’d already put on my coat and turned out the light when I realized I’d forgotten to deliver some discharge papers to the sister on Orthopaedics. It was bright enough by the moonlight pouring through the sash windows to see them on the desk; I picked them up with a little shiver, thinking I’d been lucky so far on fire watch but that tonight was what they used to call a bomber’s moon. Bombers were flying all weathers by then, no reason to think they’d be more likely tonight than any other, but that moon filled me
with superstitious dread.

  My shoes squeaked on the polished lino as I walked down the empty corridor. The hospital was never asleep, but some nights, like tonight, it seemed to be holding its breath. Swindon, with its railway yards and the Vickers aircraft works at South Marston, was bound to get it bad eventual, and maybe this would be the time. Not long ago there’d been a raid on Kembrey Street, where the Plessey factory was, only Jerry had missed that and blown a row of houses to bits instead.

  Ahead of me, the thump of double doors announced I wasn’t the only person left in the building. A telephone rang unanswered in an office somewhere; on a side corridor a door opened, and a burst of laughter escaped, cut off a moment later as it closed again. Footsteps receded in the other direction, and I glanced down the passage to see if it was anyone I knew, catching only a glimpse of a flapping white coat. When my eyes returned to the corridor ahead, a blue uniform was approaching from the direction of Orthopaedics.

  He was more surprised than I, but recovered himself quickly.

  ‘Visiting the sick, Heartbreaker?’

  I’d have liked to pretend, but I was carrying a folder full of bumph. ‘I work here,’ I said curtly. ‘Hadn’t you figured that out?’

  Mr Cromley’s eyes slid to the buff folder, and my varnished nails digging into its flank. ‘Not a nurse, then,’ he said slowly. ‘But hospital clerk seems a bit tame for you. Had you down for a factory girl, stuffing high explosive into bomb casings and sending them on their way to Mr Hitler with your very best wishes.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I transferred the folder to the other arm, eyeing my escape route through the doors leading to the ward at the end of the corridor.

  ‘Hasn’t your boyfriend told you? Half the squadron transferred to Colerne last weekend. The rest will be following shortly, including Davey’

  Davey’s letter must have been delayed, or he hadn’t got round to writing yet, though I doubted that. Worried me more that he’d been boasting to Mr Cromley I was his girl.

  ‘I meant, what are you doing in the hospital?’

  ‘Dispensing cheer. One of our Polish pilots broke his leg making his escape through a window after a visit to the WAAF quarters at Wroughton. He doesn’t speak much English, so I drove over to bring him cigarettes and condolences in case he was lonely.’ Mr Cromley smiled, his old charming self, like Hallowe’en night had never happened. ‘Entirely unnecessary, it turned out. He seems to have made friends with all the nurses. So I felt a bit of a spare part. Can I buy you a drink? The Goddard Arms is comfortable. I can give you a lift home after.’

  ‘I’m on fire watch tonight,’ I said. Did he still carry that little dagger of his? And I’m meeting a friend first.’

  ‘Bring her along,’ he said. ‘Two’s company, three’s even more fun–’

  The double doors banged again, and Nell came through them, hauling her cape over her shoulders.

  ‘We’ve other plans.’ I caught Nell by the arm. ‘Have to deliver these,’ I said to her, brandishing the folder. ‘I know the boys are waiting for us, but I promised Sister…’

  Nell’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. She allowed herself to be wheeled round and marched back through the double doors.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I called over my shoulder to Mr Cromley. ‘I should get your skates on back to Colerne, if I were you. Likely be a raid tonight.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re playing at,’ said Nell. ‘Boys, my foot. But if I wasn’t a respectable engaged woman, I’d gladly take him off your hands. He’s a bobby dazzler.’

  ‘Don’t be dazzled,’ I said. ‘He’s a sorcerer.’

  By the time we came back through the double doors Mr Cromley had gone. We left the hospital, making for Drove Road through the blacked-out Old Town. The moonlight silvered the metal hoops of the unlit lampposts; there was hardly anyone about.

  ‘We’ve time for a quick one at the Victoria,’ said Nell. More our sort of pub than the ivy-clad Goddard Arms.

  ‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be late for fire watch. Mervyn’s on.’ He was one of the older ARP wardens, a retired porter with a pitted nose like the burr on an oak tree, and a stickler about timekeeping–though also such a gent he usually tried to persuade me to kip down for the duration. He thought fire watch was no place for a woman, but was always glad, he said, when it was my turn because he reckoned I brought good luck: never a raid when you’m on duty, he used to say.

  ‘You’ll stop and have something to eat, though?’ asked Nell. ‘Probably bloody Woolton pie again, but better than dripping toast in the hospital’

  ‘I like dripping toast.’

  ‘Reminds me of engine oil.’

  We grumbled amiably about food all the way up Cricklade Street. I was bringing a half-dozen eggs from my Avebury landlady for hers, each one wrapped careful in tissue paper and nested in the shoulder bag that was meant to hold my gas mask–which I’d stopped bothering to haul around with me months ago. The ARP wardens would have fined me if they’d caught me without it, but the carry-case came in useful for all manner of cargo.

  On the right, the dark pinnacle of Christchurch spire pierced the silver sky: the Old Lady on the Hill, the locals call it. Behind the churchyard lay the overgrown gardens of the Lawn, a crumbling mansion house where the Goddard family used to live. It had been empty for years, though there was a rumour it was to be requisitioned to billet troops. I turned round and checked behind us. A couple of soldier boys were disappearing round the corner a long way off, but no one else was around as we took the fork that was Drove Road.

  Nell’s lodgings were about halfway up. Her landlady made a fuss of me, wanted to know all about my family. Devizes, eh: full of soldiers now, was it? Was my young man one of them?

  Every time someone asked me if I had a young man, I felt a sense of dread. It was as if denying Davey would be condemning him to death. And here he was, arriving in Wiltshire any day now, and no doubt planning to drive over to see me, soon as he could find petrol for his car. How was I going to explain to him that the night after the Starfish had been a mistake and could never be repeated?

  No, I said. He’s not a soldier, he’s in the RAE A navigator.

  Though she’s got a pilot officer after her too, said Nell, with a wink.

  The landlady’s husband came in from his shift, tired, not saying much. He worked on the railways, and went to get washed while the landlady and Nell took me upstairs to show me the room. The landlady was especial proud of the alarm clock, Canadian made, same as they’d issued to all the railwaymen: you’d have it, she said, he sleeps so light, these days, neither him nor me needs it. The room was comfortable, spacious, with a double wardrobe and a bay window, but I knew immediately I wouldn’t take it.

  They asked me to stop for supper, and I looked at my watch and said, no, I’d better be going, old Mervyn was a Tartar for punctuality.

  On the way back down Drove Road I was cursing myself for all kinds of fool, because it had been a good room, better than my little attic in Avebury. I could still take it. I hadn’t told them I wouldn’t. But after bumping into Mr Cromley earlier I’d been sure, against all sense, if I’d pulled back the blackout material on that window, instead of their vegetable patch and an Anderson shelter at the end of the garden there’d be a row of tombstones. I couldn’t shake the sickening memory of the bay-windowed house with the cemetery behind, and a voice that said, Spit. Lick my finger.

  I was nearly at the end of the road when the siren started up. Could’ve gone back to Nell’s landlady’s house easy, and asked to crowd with them into their damp little shelter. They’d be expecting me to dash back, Nell’s hospitable landlady hovering uneasily at the kitchen door while her husband urged her to hurry up, the bombers weren’t going to wait for them to stroll at their leisure to the bottom of the garden.

  But if I went back I’d be late for fire watch.

  Mervyn wouldn’t mind. He’d have worried, but he’d be happy on his own. He’d enjoy pressing o
ne of the medical students into service.

  I hesitated, almost turned. But, no, it’d be letting him down. It wasn’t that far. If I ran, I’d be at the hospital in a jiff.

  I started to leg it down the road, hoping I wouldn’t see the shape of a Heinkel or a Junkers crossing the silvery sky towards the spire of Christchurch. The carry-case for my gas mask was banging against my hip, and I realized I’d forgotten to give Nell’s landlady the eggs in it. Probably scrambled by now. I wasn’t scared. I knew I could make it back easy. The street was familiar, and empty: there was only me, and the banshee wail of the siren, no thunder yet of engines in the sky, no oil-saturated wood shavings ready to burst into flames, like that mad night at the Starfish. If I met an ARP warden, he’d only tell me to get a wiggle on back to the hospital.

  The slope was gentle but I was flagging as I came up to the low wall that bounded the churchyard, its iron railings spared from being melted down for Spitfires. A breeze rattled the leafless branches of the pollarded trees edging the path to the porch. A shadow came at me from the gateway, a hand caught the cloth of my coat, and fingers dug cruelly into my arm, jerking me almost off my feet.

  It was all slow and dim, like I was watching myself then, the shadow tugging me through the gate, its other arm snaking round my neck, a knee in the small of my back forcing me up the steps and onto the churchyard path. He said something, but I couldn’t make it out, because the voice was distorted, and I’d caught enough of a glimpse to know why. It was like looking into the empty stare of a black skull instead of a face. He was wearing a gas mask. For a moment, stupid, I thought it was the ARP warden. He’d tell me there was a gas attack tonight, to put on my own mask, and then he’d have to fine me because he’d discover that I had a mess of raw egg in my carry-case instead.