The Buried Circle

by Jenni Mills

  ‘I’m sorry…’ I tried to say, but then my brain started working again. The ARP warden wouldn’t have his arm round my throat, nor stink so powerful of beer.

  I heard the sound of the bombers then, coming from the south like fat blowflies homing in on raw meat. He half pushed, half dragged me up the path, and now I reckoned I understood what he’d been saying, because when I struggled the arm tightened across my windpipe, cutting off my air. Time stopped and started, came and went. Between the trunks of the trees I glimpsed Victorian gravestones, an angel leaning at a drunken angle on a pedestal. The night was swirling with lights, searchlight beams, sparks behind my eyes, the white moon, the thunder of the raid starting, streams of tracer and the pulsing glow of incendiaries as he hauled me round the side of the church and leaned against the wall, panting, his arm still crooked tight on my throat. The Old Lady on the Hill spread before us a grandstand view of hell, where a bomb must’ve landed on the railway yards. Behind us the old tangled shrubberies of the Lawn were black and empty. No one courting there tonight. No one to hear me, if his arm slackened and freed my throat enough to scream.

  Then suddenly he swings me round so our positions are reversed, and it’s me against the wall, the weight of him pushing my face against the rough stone, and his unmistakable intention pressed into the small of my back like a horrible parody of the night with Davey, watching the procession in the Manor garden.

  ‘Fucking in a boneyard,’ he whispers. ‘You owe me, Heartbreaker.’ His nail rakes across the side of my face and he tears out my earring: he’s opened a vein, because I feel the slow drip of blood trickling down my neck. Then I realize it in’t his nail, it’s the ragged point of his old bronze dagger; I can see it out of the corner of my eye. More magic, then, the dirty sort that’s only about power.

  He releases my throat but his hand’s like a claw on my shoulder. This time I hear him loud and clear. ‘You can turn round,’ he says. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  I told myself I wouldn’t be afraid anyway. I’d decide how I’d be, not let him decide for me. I turned round.

  Eyes like a fly. The Insect King.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he repeats. ‘It’s only a mask. And you know about masks, don’t you, Heartbreaker?’

  PART SIX

  The Sun Stands Still

  Without a doubt Solstice–from the Latin solstitium, the sun at a standstill–would have been an important occasion for our ancestors who gathered at Avebury. Unlike at Stonehenge, where the midsummer sun rises over the Heel Stone, there seems to be no obvious solar alignment; but for all agricultural societies, it is a critical point in the year. On 21 June, the sun rises at its most north-easterly degree. Morning after morning, as the days have lengthened, its point of appearance has crept in an arc around the world, only to pause before changing course and completely reversing its motion.

  Dr Martin Ekwall,

  A Turning Circle: The Ritual Year at Avebury,

  Hackpen Press

  CHAPTER 40

  1942

  ‘I’ve found a nice room in Swindon, Mam,’ I said, ‘and you’ve no need to worry because there hasn’t been a raid for more than a couple of months.’ I was holding her hand; she was too exhausted even to sit up in bed. There were only a couple of other patients in the side ward in the cottage hospital at Marlborough. Mr Keiller had fixed it, bless him; he seemed to know all the right strings to pull.

  I hadn’t had to offend Nell’s landlady by turning down the room with the bay window because Nell was still living there. Her fianc was missing in action, so the wedding and her plans to move in with his parents had been postponed. Her landlady recommended me to a woman further along the road, and now I was in lodgings hardly bigger than a boxroom. It had a narrow single bed, a chest of drawers, and instead of a wardrobe, a hook on the back of the door. Her husband worked at the railway yards too, and she had a job at the Plessey factory at the far end of Drove Road; it wasn’t so much the money she wanted but the extra ration book in the house. I rarely saw them, except at mealtimes, and spent all the time I could at the hospital. There was more than enough work to keep me busy.

  My mother blinked slowly, and sighed. After a while I realized she was trying to raise her head from the pillow.

  ‘I got eyes in my head, Frances,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t think you can fool me, like you can your father.’ She paused for an effortful breath. ‘I won’t tell him, though. It would kill him. I know I can trust you to do the right thing.’ Her fingers tightened on mine.

  * * *

  There wasn’t a soul I could have told what had happened that night. When Mr Cromley buttoned up his air-force-blue trousers and left me in the churchyard, he knew he was safe. War hero: DSO, DFC. Reckon I wasn’t the only girl in the blackout who knew she wouldn’t be believed if she cried rape.

  God knows how Mam could tell I’d fallen pregnant, and she was the only one, because I was still thin as a stick. She thought the baby was Davey’s, and she wanted me to shame him into marrying me. But he wasn’t some country simpleton who couldn’t add up. Even if he had been, wouldn’t have been fair on him.

  He trundled over in the Baby Austin from the base whenever he could, which was mercifully not often. Colerne was a long way from Swindon, almost to Bath, and flying night-fighters could be cruel tiring, so he was busy nights while I worked days. Easy to fob him off, too, with the excuse that visiting Mam took up all my spare moments. I’d managed to avoid being alone with him much by insisting he brought a pal along so poor unhappy Nell could come out with us, to cheer her up. Davey was so good-hearted he didn’t mind, or if he did, he didn’t show it, so long as I allowed him a kiss at the end of the evening. Nell gave me some odd glances when I fended off her attempts to give us time on our own, but I told her afterwards Davey was always pressing me to go too far. The strange thing was, he wasn’t. Something had changed in him, and sometimes I had the feeling it was him keeping me at arm’s length, rather than the other way round.

  I walked out of the hospital doors and onto the sunny forecourt. The Baby Austin was waiting, Davey in the back seat, head back with his forage cap pulled down over his eyes. He woke as soon as I rattled the door handle. ‘You’re tired out,’ I said, opening the passenger door. ‘They must be keeping you busy. Tell you what, drive me straight home and you go back to base for some proper shuteye.’

  Davey climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Don’t fuss. I’m fine.’ He yawned as he fired the engine. ‘Well, all right. I wouldn’t mind grabbing an hour or two before we take off tonight. But let’s stop on the way back, shall we? The afternoon’s too beautiful to waste.’

  We drove up to the common overlooking the town, and Davey reversed the car a little way up a track. We sat in silence, looking down across the roofs of Marlborough.

  So here it was, then, the moment I’d been dreading. Any minute now he’d lean across and start to kiss me. Then, unless I stopped him, a hand would sneak between the buttons of my dress. What was I to do? How could I explain? And what if I did tell him it was over between us, and tonight was the night he never came back from patrol over the dark Channel coast?

  Davey didn’t move. He was staring out of the windscreen, his eyes ringed with fatigue.

  ‘You’re done in,’ I said. ‘Start the car, take us back after all.’

  ‘No,’ he said, still not making a move. ‘I don’t want to go back yet.’

  There was something in his voice. ‘You hate it, don’t you?’ I said. ‘You should’ve stayed an erk after all.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, that’s not it. I’d rather be doing this.’ He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  ‘There’s a but missed off the end of that sentence.’

  ‘It’s…hard sometimes, that’s all’ He was twisting his cap between his hands.

  ‘Hard?’

  ‘Hard to explain. Just…you have to push yourself.’

  His face was all screwed up with tension and he couldn’t meet my ey
es.

  ‘Is it frightening, going out at night?’ I asked.

  He started to shake his head, then nodded instead. ‘But not like I thought. I’m never afraid when we take off. It’s coming back.’ He tried for a laugh. ‘Nobody really talks about it, except they call it the Twitch. Some have it more obvious than others. Some never seem to have it at all. But if you do, you keep it to yourself He couldn’t look me in the eye, afraid I was going to condemn him. ‘Same as…I used to care when we shot a bomber down. Used to watch out to see if they’d managed to bale out, used to hope the poor buggers had. And then I stopped caring. Same time I started thinking about whether or not I’d be coming back.’

  So that was it, the reason he’d been awkward with me.

  ‘You’re burned out,’ I said. ‘They were on at you to take an easier posting. You shouldn’t have joined that squadron. Tell them, Davey. You can’t go on this way’

  He ignored me because he’d unstoppered himself, and it all had to come pouring out now. ‘Something keeps you going for the first hour or so after takeoff. Looking for trade, we say, waiting for the controller to give you a vector to steer onto on a bomber’s tail. And when you do make contact, you’re too busy staying alive, too busy reading off the AI screen, looking at them blips, working out is he above you or below you, how far before your pilot can shoot the bastard out of the sky, will the gunner at the back of the bomber wake up and see us first. But afterwards…I think, dear God, how did we make it? Why did You pick us to come home, and not those poor sods in the flamer we shot down?’ He stared down between his knees, and began picking at a loose thread in the fabric of his cap. ‘Ought to feel glad on the way home, but I never do. Keep looking over my shoulder or listening to the note of the engine and thinking, any minute, God’ll change His mind, and we’re going to fall out of the sky. And you know what’s the worst? Nights there’s no contact, when we fly all over the sky searching for the buggers and they never show up. When the order comes to head for home, I think, that’s torn it. Soon as our backs are turned, there’ll be a Messerschmitt sneaking out from the dark side of the moon and sitting on our tail’

  He twisted in his seat to face me, with a rueful grin on his face. ‘You know what I do then? I start saying what I call the Navigator’s Prayer. The Lord is my shepherd, he leadeth me up the Bristol Channel, above safe waters. Over Bridgwater Bay, he hideth me in clouds, to turn east at Avonmouth. Yea, though we fly through the valley of the shadow of death, if we follow the rivers, watch for the moon on the water, we’ll come home at last. I think about you, coming home to you, and I keep repeating to myself, watch for the moon shining on water. Helps push down the panic, when we’re leaking fuel and the pilot’s depending on me to find the quickest way back to base. And when we see the Kennet and Avon, I know we’re nearly there. Only a few miles, and I’ll be flying near above where you are. I tell the pilot to sit above the canal and it’s a straight road. I never feel safe till then. Same on the nights we cut across country from the south, I still look for the canal to know I’m coming home.’

  ‘Davey…’ I said.

  He shook his head quickly. ‘Don’t say anything, Fran. Don’t say a word.’ He jabbed the starter with a trembling finger, and the car rolled down the bumpy track towards the main road.

  Right now, with Mam so ill, I couldn’t afford to be sick, so I told myself there was plenty of time to make up my mind what to do. Working in a hospital, I knew there were ways to solve my problem–risky ways. We’d had enough girls in with blood down their legs, trying to persuade the doctor it was nothing but a heavy period.

  Lucky I wasn’t the other kind of sick, like some women are in the early months. There was only one thing did it to me and that was the smell of wine. Found that out one morning in church, at communion. The vicar wiped the chalice, I tottered unsteady to my feet, ran up the aisle and out the door. I made it into the fresh air just in time, and lost my breakfast over some old worthy’s tombstone. This wasn’t Christchurch, of course. The devil had settled in that churchyard. Like he’d settled in me.

  But wine was easy avoided: there weren’t much about in the war. Only trouble was, tonic wine was popular with the young doctors. God knows where they got hold of it. Cabbage was the worst of them; the nurses said he held parties in his room, tonic wine and pure ethanol in the punch.

  Must’ve been the day after one of his famous parties I came across him on one of the wards. He looked terrible, even by junior-doctor standards: curly hair rumpled, purple bags under his eyes, and the eyeballs all veined a watery red.

  The sister on Men’s Surgical was a terror. Didn’t matter you weren’t one of her nurses, she’d still dragoon you into doing her bidding.

  ‘Miss Robinson!’ she said. ‘Dr Prentice being somewhat the worse for wear this morning, perhaps you’d make him a cup of tea. Otherwise we shall never get these dressings done.’ The nurse with her rolled her eyes. I’d only come in to drop off the cigarette rations.

  While I was in the sluice waiting for the tea to brew–the nurses always made it from the hot-water cylinder there–Cabbage came in. Hadn’t realized his name was Dr Prentice; to us, he was only ever Cabbage, with his stocky frame and fleshy, flattened nose.

  ‘I gorra terrible head,’ he said. He leaned over the sink, arms slightly bent. ‘No, won’t come up, more’s the pity’ He belched. ‘Beg pardon. That’s better.’ In his Scouse voice, the word became berra.

  The smell was coming off him in waves, cheap sickly red wine, like it had drifted up from the communion cup. He was blocking my way to the door. I tried to hold it back, but the belch was what did it. I elbowed him out of the way and threw up in the sink.

  When I came up for air, he was leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed.

  ‘Know how you feel,’ he said. ‘But not for the same reason, maybe.’ He opened one eye and winked. ‘Earned my best marks on Obs and Gynae. You need birra medical advice, you let me know.’ Written across his hangover pallor was kindness, and genuine concern.

  I wiped my mouth on my hankie and muttered something about the Spam fritters in the canteen. Then I stumbled out, leaving him to pour his own tea. In the corridor, the thought of Cabbage’s meaty little hands poking me about almost brought the sickness on again. But at least I knew now who to ask for help.

  CHAPTER 41

  Solstice

  The sky starts to lighten at about three in the morning. I lie there for nearly an hour, watching the curtains turn paler and paler, lying first on one side, then the other in the hope of fooling my body back into sleep. Eventually, when the bedside clock shows four, I unwrap the tangled sheets from my legs, get up and stare out of the window. Nothing moving on the street apart from next door’s cat, dark coat glistening in the drizzle. In the distance, the breeze occasionally blows the sound of drumming towards Trusloe. Solstice: the pagans are welcoming sunrise–not that there’s any sun to see through the low cloud–in the stone circle. Bryn will be there.

  I pull on my jeans, quickly, not wanting to give myself a chance to change my mind.

  There are two police cars at the junction where the Trusloe lane meets the main road, making sure no pagans park where they shouldn’t. I walk down the road towards Avebury, but cut off across the field opposite the public car park. Two more patrol cars at the entrance, and the barrier’s closed, a man leaning out of the window of a people-carrier, shouting at the coppers who won’t let him in. A short queue of cars waits hopefully behind. Nobody, apart from residents, is allowed to stop anywhere near the village this morning. There are cones across every lay-by and farm gateway, the narrow country lanes patrolled by more police vehicles. If the idea was to keep people out of Avebury, it hasn’t worked. Several woebegone pilgrims are behind me on the main road, in walking boots and cagoules beaded with rain, hiking from cars parked miles away, too late for sunrise. As I clamber over the stile onto the field path, a flaming paper lantern rises high into the sky above the circle.

 
The water ripples quietly over the long weeds on the streambed. I was afraid there might be people here. But no one is at the spring except the Goddess, with her winking mosaic skin of broken mirror tiles and china. She averts her eyes, staring into the brown water, while I tie the offering to the branch above her head.

  This time I came prepared. A scrap of an old blue cotton shirt–one of Frannie’s dusting rags. Blue’s your colour…I’ve stapled an envelope to it: BRYN, in bold letters. It took three attempts to settle on words that might finish the matter, with reasonable grace:

  Thank you for a lovely moment. The Goddess smiled on us, once and once only. Goodbye.

  There didn’t seem much point in signing it, since we’ve never exchanged names. All the same, I scrawled India at the bottom, out of habit.

  When I came here before, in May, this place seemed beautiful, magic. Now it makes me want to cringe. The rags hanging from the tree seem tawdry and pathetic. The Goddess–only a bald shop dummy, after all–is spattered with mud, and her plastic foot cracked. The note I’m leaving seems embarrassingly twee…

  Something–bird or rat–stirs in the hedge. Spooked, I lose my balance, fumble the knot and tear the staple from the material. The note drifts down like a dead leaf into the mud at the Goddess’s feet. A twig cracks behind me as I’m bending to pick it up.

  ‘Hello.’ Soft northern voice that’s almost a whisper.

  I hadn’t heard him coming. The note’s in my hand, the envelope smeared with mud. Straightening up, my eyes meet Bryn’s wild blue ones. If he says, ‘I knew you’d be here,’ I’ll scream.

  ‘Thought you’d be at the stone circle,’ I say. His eyes are bloodshot and scratchy-looking, the lids red and puffy.