The Buried Circle

by Jenni Mills

  ‘Nah.’ He glances round like priest-in-residence of the grove. ‘Spent the night in a vigil at Adam’s Grave, lookin’ out over Alton Barnes. Walked back to make my offerings here.’

  ‘That’s miles!

  ‘Doesn’t worry me.’ He seems exalted from lack of sleep. ‘A crop circle appeared in the East Field, overnight. Flashing lights. Whole landscape lit up.’

  ‘Sheet lightning?’

  ‘Nah. Pulses of energy. That’s what makes the crop circle. Not everyone can see it. There were some guys watching with night-vision scopes along the ridge, said they never saw a thing till the sky started to brighten, and there was the circle, out of nowhere.’ His lips part in the small, superior smile of one the gods favour. ‘The military were there already, before dawn. Great black helicopter hovering over the field. And men in black combats in an unmarked van. I went down, and there was grey dust around the circle. Guy with the night-vision scope came with me, said it was radioactive because his Geiger counter was kicking off. The men in combats told us to keep away. See, that’s what happens, the pulses of energy register on secret detectors, and the military send a team out to investigate. They don’t tell us what’s going on because it would scare people too much.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, with my own thoughts about men in unmarked vans. ‘Probably wise to keep away.’

  ‘Didn’t get close, but it gave me a headache and my legs are aching. They say all that kind of stuff–nausea, cramps–can hit you if the circle’s on a leyline, and the flow of energy’s been reversed.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘You come to make an offerin’ too?’

  He’ll have seen me, through the trees. But did he see the note fluttering to the ground?

  I could hand it to him to read now. Or–I could come back later.

  With the other hand, the one not holding the note, I point into the tree. ‘That’s mine, the blue one.’

  ‘Your colour.’ He smiles at me, and a poisonous little voice in my head tells me I’ll never wear blue again. ‘I’ll hang mine on the tree, then we–’

  ‘I should be getting back. Have to be at work.’ I glance down at my watch, which isn’t there because I forgot to put it on. ‘Busy week.’

  Bryn gives me the unconvinced look of one who doesn’t understand the concept of ‘at work’ or why anyone should be ‘busy’. He steps under the tree, fumbling in his pocket, then reaches up to hang a red fabric dog collar on a branch that bends over the water. A fleeting gleam of sun makes shadows of the leaves fall across his tanned face: he’s frowning with concentration and breathing heavily through his mouth, like a child, as he fastens the clasp.

  ‘Where’s Cynon?’ I hadn’t noticed until now that the dog wasn’t with us.

  ‘Back at the Long Barrow.’

  For a moment I’d been worried something had happened to the animal. ‘You camping there again? Anyway, I should go. Sorry. I’ll leave you to it.’

  Coward, whispers my conscience.

  ‘We can walk back together,’ says Bryn. ‘I’m near finished here.’ He faces the Goddess, his face reflected over and over in the broken mirror tiles. His lips move, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. I edge backwards towards the conifers. Before I can make my escape, he’s turning to me again, his eyes alight with something I can’t, and don’t want, to read. All through the wood I can feel his eyes boring into my back, making my legs clumsy and awkward on the slippery path.

  ‘Right,’ I say, as we arrive at the track leading to the Long Barrow. ‘Er–see you around.’

  ‘Mebbe not for a bit,’ he says, and sneezes. ‘Sorry, hayfever. Leavin’ tomorrow, I think. Decided I’m goin’ back for Fergus.’

  Relief washes over me. ‘Great. I mean, well, goodbye, then.’

  ‘I’ll be back.’ His eyes lock with mine. ‘It’s still early…’ He gestures vaguely in the direction of the Long Barrow.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, with an enormous effort not to let my eyes slide guiltily away. ‘Have to make breakfast for my gran.’ The most I’ve told Bryn about myself, and already I wish I hadn’t let it slip. I don’t want to let him into any part of my life. He’s nodding as if he understands.

  ‘Goddess go with you.’ His hand touches mine, and he leans forward but before he can kiss me I’ve stepped back. His eyes flinch, like a lost child who expects nothing better from life than disappointment. He gives me a tight little smile and starts up the hillside track towards the sleeping dragon on the skyline. I’m half expecting to see Cynon race out of the barrow to greet him, but there’s no sign of him.

  I plod down the hill, turning my head every so often to check. The minute he’s disappeared between the stones guarding the barrow, I cut back into the wood again to the spring.

  Without the staple to fasten it, I have to untie the blue cloth, and wrap it round the envelope. He’s bound to come back before he leaves tomorrow…The faded red dog collar trembles as I pull down the branch. Something doesn’t feel right about it. I re-knot my blue rag, making sure the name on the envelope shows, glancing uneasily over my shoulder, imagination setting eyes into the trees.

  No one there. But when I glance towards the water, the eyes of the shop-dummy Goddess are fixed on my treacherous face.

  CHAPTER 42

  1942

  So there was no way to tell Davey I couldn’t be his girl. He still didn’t touch me, apart from a chaste kiss at the end of our evenings. I pretended there was fervour in the way I kissed him back, though it was a relief he didn’t seem to want anything more. I wondered if he was afraid of failing and appearing less than a man. But I’d come to dread hearing the unmistakable misfire of the Baby Austin as it turned the corner into Drove Road–he somehow kept that car alive, but it wasn’t a well machine. I couldn’t bear the hope in his eyes when he climbed out of it and waved to me.

  You made your own bed, Frances Robinson, now you get down and lie on it. That’s what Mam would have said, though now she was too tired even for talking. When I visited, she lay watching me with dark eyes that were wells of pain. The doctors–and Dad–talked breezily in front of her of an operation, when she’d found her strength again, but anyone could see that would never happen.

  Davey turned up at Drove Road one Saturday morning in June. I was more than four months gone, now, still skinny, with a funny little turn on me, like a peapod that hasn’t yet filled out proper. I’d my set of excuses–hospital food, all stodge, can’t keep the weight off–but I never had to use them. People were too polite or too blind to ask. No forgetting, though: the babba was going to be a kicker, already beginning to flutter its tiny heels against my belly wall five or six times a day. It felt like butterfly wings beating inside me.

  ‘Too lovely to stay in,’ Davey said. ‘Brought us a picnic. Swapped some cigs for a tin of ham.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, hating myself for killing that hope. ‘You know I see Mam Saturday afternoons.’

  His face was near exploding with eagerness. ‘I know. I’ll drive you again. We’ll stop on the way’

  So this time we wound up sitting on one of the barrows on Windmill Hill, eating ham sandwiches made with no butter. The wind was rustling the grasses, fat seeds bending their nodding heads. There were flowers all over, blue scabious, pink-veined orchids like stretched skin, trefoils the colour of spilt egg yolk, the edges tinged red. High clouds raced each other across a blue sky.

  I reached for another ham sandwich. Lord, I was hungry these days. Davey yawned.

  ‘Keeping you up again, am I?’ I asked.

  ‘Have a heart, Fran,’ he said. ‘Night op. Saw sunrise over the Mendips as we came back up the Bristol Channel. Thank God.’

  ‘You not applied for a transfer yet?’ I said. ‘Davey, I told you, you can’t go on…’

  He turned on me with a flash of anger in his eyes. First time he’d ever been so sharp with me. ‘Forget what I told you. You can’t understand.’

  ‘I understand burned out,’ I said. ‘Don’t think you’re the only one. I se
e it all the time with they lads on the ward, pushing themselves to go back to operations and crying at night when they think no one hears. It’s no disgrace, Davey.’

  He wouldn’t meet my eyes again, and started ripping up roots of grass, one by one, and I knew what it was. He was looking away towards the stone circle and the Manor at Avebury, hidden in the trees. Poor old Davey. Always trying to live up to something, or someone.

  ‘Last week we lost two crews,’ he said. ‘One came too close behind the bomber they were stalking, and when it blew up, they blew up too. The other crew caught it coming home over Weston-super-Mare. Still dark, moon set, and the bloody ack-ack mistook them for a German fighter. No bale-outs, no survivors.’ He looked down at the blood streaking his fingers where the blades of grass had cut him. There were tears in his eyes.

  They was brave boys, the ones like Davey The ones with imagination and brains, who could work out the odds, and picture the end, and still they made themselves climb into those fragile wooden planes night after night. Poor sod. I remembered the sunny day four years ago when I sat up here with my sketchbook, seeing him carefree and driving the motorbike with Mr Keiller on the back, bouncing over the hilltop, before I’d known about Mam being ill, before…

  Davey put his hand on my leg.

  Time twisted round on itself. Couldn’t help it, I flinched.

  Everything pulled itself out then, into a long moment. Heartbreaker…The wind picked at the seed heads and the hem of my dress. Davey was frozen, his hand an inch away from my knee.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s…Mam, you know…’

  But he heard the lie in the pause. ‘You met someone.’

  ‘No. Yes–’ Too late again, I tried to grasp the excuse.

  ‘I’ve been stupid,’ he said. He put his chin on his hand and looked away, trying to hide the wetness in his eyes. ‘I’ve always been stupid about you, Fran. I let myself think you’d come round, eventual, I only had to be patient. And I was, wasn’t I? I thought you had come round, that night at the Starfish–and these last months, I’ve fooled myself into believing the only problem was with me, and one day if I was patient we’d be over that too. But it’s like that sodding car, innit? I coax the bugger into starting, but she in’t ever going to run sweet, is she?’

  ‘No,’ I said. It was a relief to tell the truth, though I could hear the tearing grief in his voice. ‘There in’t–what there needs to be. I do love you, you’re my friend, but I can’t love you the way you want me to.’

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘There in’t anyone.’ Then, bugger it, I was crying. Couldn’t stop myself. Was in that place where you cry so hard feels like the earth under you ought to be washed away. Face down on the barrow, grasses prickling my arms and chest, cheeks scalding. There was a moment I felt Davey touch my back, very light, but I tensed and he drew his hand away.

  Don’t know how long I cried. Sun went on beating down on us, a plane droning in the distance, one of the training craft at Yatesbury, probably. Imagined Mr Cromley in it, flying circuits, looking down like a god and laughing his socks off. But he wasn’t at Yatesbury now. Davey saw him every day at Colerne, bless him, and Davey didn’t know.

  After a while I realized Davey was talking, his voice low, like an embarrassed man mumbling prayers, the wind whipping the words out of his mouth and scattering them.

  ‘…Look for the moon shining on water…Kennet and Avon running east-west, a straight road home and lock onto the signal…’

  ‘Davey.’ My voice was all claggy with tears, but it still worked.

  I heard the rustle of grasses. I rolled over, and there he was, good couple of yards off, sitting at the edge of the barrow’s pudding top, back to me but his head turned to look over his shoulder. ‘You all right, Fran?’

  ‘What in buggeration you on about?’

  He shuffled his body round to face me, his hands still wrapped tight about his knees. ‘Navigator’s Prayer. Reminding myself we always do come home in the end. Dun’t matter who he is, I want you to be happy. Best friends, eh? We still best friends?’ Then he saw my face. ‘Dun’t he make you happy? What’s wrong, Fran?’

  I was a godforsaken fool. Could have told him then, everything, every blessed detail. But I was afraid of the strength of what he felt for me. If he’d known about the baby that was on the way, he’d have made me see it through and keep it. He’d have married me, like Mam wanted; it wouldn’t have been love, or not the kind I was after, but it would have been family. And I nearly did tell him about the baby. But I knew that baby was a curse; it was Mr Cromley’s bastard, and I’d be getting rid of it. And we were on Windmill Hill, where I’d lain in the grass daydreaming about Mr Keiller. I wasn’t yet the age where you see more than one shade of green.

  I told him everything else, though. What happened in the churchyard. What Mr Cromley made me do. All the way back to the sick little ritual, the two of them, spilling my blood and taking my virginity in the house by the cemetery because I’d begged them to do it.

  CHAPTER 43

  1942

  After I’d told him about Mr Cromley and the house backing onto the cemetery, Davey said nothing. The wind shivered the flowers and the long grasses on top of the barrow; a skylark was singing somewhere overhead.

  ‘So now you know,’ I said, to break the silence.

  ‘You should’ve told me before.’ He was tearing up grasses by their roots again. ‘I’d’ve–’

  ‘Lost your job, if you’d done anything. Or lost me mine.’ I put a hand on his arm. ‘Leave them grasses alone. They done you no harm.’

  He shook my hand off. His face was knotted and bright red.

  ‘You do believe me?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘I went with him willing, the first time, but you do understand why?’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t know if I understand anything ‘bout you any more, Fran.’ There was defeat in his voice. He wouldn’t look at me. I’d been too truthful.

  ‘Dear Christ, I’d do anything for it not to have happened. I wish a bloody bomb had landed on us. If I’d been stronger, I’d have fought him off and killed him with my bare hands. Why don’t he fall out of the sky, when so many good lads are never coming back?’ The baby gave two feeble kicks, like it was knocking shyly to come out. A lark was twittering high above. Davey slowly tortured a grass head. ‘You think I asked for it, don’t you?’

  ‘You should’ve stayed at Nell’s.’

  ‘The air raid didn’t start till after I’d left.’ I was angry with him now, too, for blaming me. ‘I wasn’t looking for a poke, Davey I was trying to get back to the hospital for fire watch.’

  ‘Poke’s a vulgar word.’

  ‘Well, what word’m I supposed to use, then?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Time I took you to see your mam. Visiting hours’ll be over if we don’t get a move on.’

  And that was that. We walked in silence across the hillside back to the top of the track where we’d left the Baby Austin, me thinking maybe I had asked for it, maybe it was all my fault. Then I’d think, no, it wasn’t, and who was Davey to judge? I could’ve wished him in a place where he’d understand how powerless a woman is when a man wants his way. But that kind of thinking in’t no good. You only get it back yourself, threefold, like they say.

  Outside the cottage hospital, I’d climbed out of the Austin and was almost at the entrance when I heard behind me the squeak of the car window being wound down.

  ‘Fran?’

  I stopped and looked back. Yards of forecourt between us, as well as the concealed peapod of my belly.

  ‘Give me time, OK?’ he said. ‘It’s…not easy to understand, you know?’ There were tears in his eyes. ‘Feels like you’ve taken everything away. There never was any hope for me, was there? That night we were together wun’t no more than pity, was it?’

  ‘Gratitude,’ I said. ‘You saved my life.’ Then wished it unsaid: it made what we
’d done sound like a ten-bob note pushed into a beggar’s hand.

  His jaw tightened. ‘I’d still do anything for you, Fran. But I can’t think about what you did without getting angry.’

  ‘Be angry with him,’ I said. ‘Not me.’ I turned my back and pushed through the double doors.

  Mam was frailer than ever, more yellow, skin like old newspaper with dark bruises along the veins of her arm.

  ‘What they doing to you, Mam?’ I asked, trying to keep the cheerfulness from leaking out of my voice.

  ‘Always sticking needles in me,’ she said. ‘I tell ‘em, it won’t do no good.’ How defeated she sounded.

  ‘Davey’s outside,’ I said, and felt a wrench as relief lit up her face. ‘He’ll…do the right thing.’ Didn’t know what I meant by that, but it was a lie to comfort myself as much as her.

  ‘Good girl,’ she said. ‘I can go easy now.’

  ‘Don’t talk about going anywhere,’ I said. But she was drifting to sleep already, poor tired thing. I sat by her, stroking her hand, seeing a smile ease the corners of her mouth when I did so, but she didn’t open her eyes. After a while her breathing deepened and I knew she was no longer aware of me. I stood up, wondering how long I should stay. I went to the window to wave to Davey, to tell him I was ready to leave, but the Baby Austin was gone.

  Mam died less than a week later. The telephone call came while I was on fire watch. Dad didn’t have a phone at the shop; he was calling from his neighbour’s. I could hear the clink of cups in the background, the meaningless chatter that begins when someone dies and never stops for weeks and weeks. I thought I made out someone saying, ‘A blessed release.’ Dad could hardly speak: his voice was raspy with unshed tears. ‘Harold,’ called another voice halfway through. ‘Your tea’s getting cold.’ Dad, lost without Mam to give him the cue how to behave, said ‘I’d better go,’ and hung up.

  I went up to the hospital roof again and sat waiting. A bomb would have been a relief. But the bombers had missed us: the glow to the west showed it was Bristol’s turn again.