The Buried Circle

by Jenni Mills

  Then there was so much to sort out because Dad wasn’t capable of sorting anything. The hospital gave me time off and I went to Devizes, sleeping for the first time in the boxroom that smelt of cigars. I tried to persuade Dad to open the shop, but he couldn’t function. If anyone came in he stared, unable to work out what they were there for.

  The funeral was held in Avebury at St James’s, the church packed, sandwiches and beer after at the Red Lion. I’d hoped Mr Keiller would come, but Mrs Sorel-Taylour said he was away, in London. Perhaps he was patching things up with Mrs Keiller again. I’d wanted to ask if there was any chance of a cottage for Dad because it seemed to me my poor lost father would never manage the shop without Mam. Mrs Sorel-Taylour shook her head.

  ‘I very much doubt there’s anywhere suitable,’ she said. ‘The new houses at Trusloe, if there’d been time to build them, one of those would have been ideal.’

  ‘I thought maybe the cottage in Manor Drive?’

  ‘Mr Keiller has other plans for that.’ The twist of her mouth suggested she disapproved of those plans, whatever they might be. ‘Can’t he manage for the time being where he is?’

  ‘Avebury was his home,’ I said. ‘And now Mam’s here, he should be too.’

  ‘Well, there’s a war on. People have to make do.’ Her face softened. ‘I’m sorry, Frances.’

  Afterwards Dad and I went back to the flat over the shop. He’d been drinking whisky in the pub; it had befuddled him. I put the kettle on for tea. When I carried the cups through into the sitting room, he was staring into space, his face drained of all hope.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I said. ‘What’ll you do when I go?’

  ‘Go?’ He turned bewildered eyes on me. ‘What do you mean? Aren’t you staying?’

  ‘I have to get back to the hospital.’

  ‘But she’s dead.’

  I didn’t understand for a moment, then realized he was away with the fairies again. ‘Not that hospital, Dad. I work at another hospital. War work. They need me there.’

  ‘I need you.’ His eyes pleaded. ‘Thought you’d stay. Not sure I can cope on my own.’

  ‘I’ll stay another week,’ I said.

  I stayed for three. I wrote to some cousins, who lived in Yorkshire; they hadn’t come to the funeral, because it was unpatriotic to travel, but they’d sent a letter of condolence. I asked if Dad could stay with them–’He needs a holiday,’ I wrote untruthfully. He needed more than a holiday, he needed a home, but I hoped they’d offer without me having to beg. They replied that he’d be welcome. ‘Stay as long as he likes.’ Probably had weeks rather than months in mind, but I told myself getting him there was half the battle. Part of me didn’t want him to go, but I knew it was for the best, especially now my skirts were so tight that elastic in the waistbands didn’t help, and I had to let panels of material into the side seams.

  I saw him off at Swindon station. My legs ached as I waited on the platform for the packed train to leave, my shoes pinching. The baby drummed its heels on my belly wall, savage blows now instead of polite taps. Dad stood in the corridor with his little suitcase at his feet, waving at me through the window as the carriage pulled away. He looked so lost I hoped a soldier with a seat would take pity on him. Then I took my throbbing feet straight to the hospital.

  I found Cabbage smoking with one of the nurses in the sluice.

  ‘Can I have a word?’ I asked him. ‘Private, like.’

  The nurse gave me a hoity-toity look but stubbed out her cigarette in the sink and left.

  ‘How many weeks?’ he asked. I counted back and told him. He seemed astonished. ‘You sure? You don’t look that far gone.’

  ‘It was the beginning of February,’ I said. ‘I can be certain.’

  ‘Some women hardly show the first time,’ he mused. ‘There was a girl when I was doing my training, hadn’t a clue, thought it was bellyache. Had the junior doctor in Casualty fooled: he was looking for appendicitis until the nurse pointed out she could see the baby’s head crowning. Patient tried to claim it was a virgin birth, but that’s bog Irish for you.’ The casual contempt in his voice made me wince. I’d thought of him as kind, but perhaps I was no more to him than that Irish girl–another chance to show off his cleverness. ‘So, what do you want me to do? I can get you into a place I know in Liverpool, a midwife runs it, very discreet, she’ll find a home for the baby afterwards…’

  ‘I want rid of it,’ I said. ‘You know what I mean. You can do it, can’t you? I can’t go on with this.’

  ‘Can’t be done,’ he said. ‘You’re too late, sweetheart. Too risky now–we could kill you as well as the baby. Should’ve come to me a month or more ago, if that’s what you were after.’

  I closed the door of the little room in the house on Drove Road, kicked off my spiteful shoes and hung my coat on the hook, on top of the hanger with my best polka-dot dress. I’d not be going dancing for a while. I wondered what people did, faced with this. I’d been so sure Cabbage, or someone like him, would help. There was the place in Liverpool, and no doubt somewhere like it closer. But what was I to tell people? They’d guess, wouldn’t they? And how soon would it be obvious if I didn’t vanish? Despair near sank me. Outside, everyday life on Drove Road continued, men bicycling home from work at the railway yards, women walking back from the aircraft factory. The early August heat was killing. The scent of gravy made with browning stole through the house as my landlady prepared another meatless supper. Grief for Mam, pushed so deep down, swelled up and burst like a great bubble in my chest. I lay face down on the bed, the scratchy cotton prickling my hot face, clawing at handfuls of the material to keep the tears inside, and the baby too, wishing these things could be swallowed back into the body and never let out to shame me.

  A knock at the door. ‘Frances? You in there? Tea’s nearly done.’ I wiped my eyes on the maroon bedspread. ‘Having a lie-down.’ ‘Thought I heard you come in. Did you see the letter on the hall table?’

  ‘Be down in a jiff after I’ve had a wash.’

  Maybe the letter was from Davey. There’d been nothing since the picnic at Windmill Hill. I’d tried ringing the base after Mam died, but the phone was answered by a man who told me Davey’s squadron were ‘operational’: he’d leave a message. He’d sounded drunk, slurring his words, but maybe that was because he was posh. Colerne wasn’t that far and even if Davey couldn’t wangle a pass surely he could’ve sent a note. I felt angry with him. He’d took it hard, I knew, but he’d come through, wouldn’t he? Like you had to?

  Didn’t understand how thin Davey’d been stretched already.

  I stood up, my legs tingling when my feet hit the floor. My feet were puffy; now my shoes wouldn’t go back on. I forced on slippers and padded downstairs.

  It wasn’t from Davey. The address on the envelope was typed, on a machine I’d used often enough to recognize its crooked Rs and squashed-up ds. I ripped it open eagerly.

  My dearest Heartbreaker,

  Damnably late to be saying this, but I have been away in London and Sorel-Taylour has only just informed me of your sad bereavement. It is thirty-five years since the death of my own mother (and nearly forty-five since my father died) but I feel her loss as keenly today as I ever did. I am sorry to hear of your mother’s death; though I did not know her well, she must have been a fine woman to instil in her daughter the truth and talent and feeling that is yours.

  I regret I cannot help with the matter of a home for your father. The cottage in Manor Drive is promised to a friend. But please do call in at the Manor when you are next passing by. I am hoping to resume my entertainments for airmen, and you would be a welcome adornment to our tea parties.

  Sincerely,

  A.K.

  PS: Talking of the Brylcreem Brigade, I hear

  I turned the page with disappointment, glad he’d taken the trouble, but wishing there’d been more. The rest of the postscript overleaf almost stopped my heart:

  our Brushwood Boy and Cromley are
partnered! Donald’s navigator apparently broke his leg falling off his bicycle after revels in the NAAPI, but young Davey stepped into the breach. Cromley’s lucky to have such a steady chap flying with him. You should have married the Boy, Heartbreaker–I never understood why the pair of you didn’t tie the knot long ago.

  For once, the kicker in my belly remained still. It must have understood the shapeless fear in my heart.

  CHAPTER 44

  The drizzle has hardly let up, but nearly four hours after Solstice sunrise Avebury’s still clogged with footsore pilgrims. Despite gritty eyes and a mouth like the bottom of a birdcage, I’m too wired to sleep after the visit to the spring. I woke a surprised Frannie for breakfast at six thirty, then set out an hour later for the stone circle. Drumming pulses from the campsite; I half expect to see John, but there’s no sign of him.

  A black 4×4 lurches off the main road with squealing tyres and pulls up at the top of the high street, dance music blasting combatively, going head to head with the pagan bongos. The window on the driver’s side glides down and Ibby pokes her head out. ‘India! You might have told us.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘That there wouldn’t be anywhere to park. Got up at the crack and drove here from Bristol to film sunrise–bastard police wouldn’t let us stop. We’ve been cruising the lanes for hours–missed the whole bloody thing apart from a couple of wobbly shots out of the car window, and footage of crusties’ vans parked on the Ridgeway’

  ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘How could we know? You’re supposed to be the sodding researcher.’

  Not worth the row to say that since I’ve not so far been paid I don’t see why I should nanny the film crew through every minute of their day.

  ‘I told Martin.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t pass it on. Probably has his head up his arse again about that married man he pines for in Bath.’

  ‘What married man?’ And how come Ibby knows about this and I don’t?

  She ignores the question. ‘And if you read your callsheet, you’d remember he isn’t joining us until early afternoon, for filming at the Long Barrow. Don’t forget you said you’d help cart the equipment up there when you finished at the caf. We haven’t a soundman today, so I can’t manage without you. Two o’clock. Don’t be late.’

  Harry, in the passenger seat, mouths, ‘PMT,’ careful not to let Ibby see him.

  She slams the vehicle into gear again. ‘We’re off to breakfast in Marlborough.’

  The window slides back up with a clunk, the 4 × 4 executes a neat turn and squeals away.

  There’s still an hour before my shift starts at the caf–in the kitchen, for a change, so I can leave in time to help the film crew this afternoon. Corey hasn’t yet arrived, and I don’t have a key, so I wander over to the Trust offices in the hope of finding one. Ed’s beaten me to it. His jacket and boots are in the lobby.

  He wanders into the kitchenette, looking rumpled, as I’m filling the kettle.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask. ‘I thought Graham was covering the overnight Solstice watch.’ It comes out sharper than I intended, perhaps because my encounter with Bryn at the spring is making me feel guilty, as if I betrayed Ed in some way.

  He doesn’t seem to notice, but yawns dramatically, playing for sympathy. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘What kept you awake?’

  ‘Oh, this and that.’ He hoists himself onto the countertop a couple of feet away, long legs kicking the cupboard door. ‘If you’re making a cuppa, I’ll have one. Want to come out with me to pick up litter round the Long Barrow this morning? I have strictest instructions it has to be pristine for your film crew.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m sandwich-making in the caf as soon as Corey opens up.’

  ‘I’ll manage.’ His eyes follow me as I open the cupboard looking for coffee and sugar. ‘Knowing Graham, he’ll probably turn up to help, in spite of being up all night chasing pagans off the verges. Sad bastard can’t seem to keep away from this place.’ He jumps down, puts his hands on my shoulders and bends his mouth to my ear. ‘Neither can I. Do you think there’s time for a quick snog before Michael arrives?’

  The drizzle stops and the day brightens, so on my mid-morning break I make myself a sandwich and take it to eat at one of the tables under the trees by the museum, like a tourist, waving smugly at Corey when she comes out to clear crockery. It’s been an easy morning in the caf so far. Solstice celebrations put off the more staid National Trust members, and the pagans favour bring-your-own-tofu-burger barbecues on the campsite.

  ‘Keeping you busy enough?’ I ask.

  She makes a face. ‘Why does it knacker you more when it’s quiet? We’ve more than enough sandwiches, I reckon, so you can piss off early if you want.’

  The Trust’s Land Rover drives into the staff car park, the back loaded with black plastic bin bags full of rubbish. Ed and Graham climb out: Graham must have turned up, as predicted, after a short kip. They begin to unload them into the skips.

  ‘That Ed’s stronger than he looks,’ said Corey, with a sly glance. ‘Want a bet he’ll be over this way for a free cup of coffee when he’s done?’

  ‘He’ll be lucky’

  Ed reaches for the last black bag; Graham lays a hand on his arm and stops him. A conversation starts, too low to hear.

  ‘Anyway, better crack on,’ says Corey. ‘You finished with that plate?’

  Graham climbs into the driver’s seat and slams the door. The engine coughs, and the Land Rover heads off up the drive, the single black bin-bag jolting sluggishly in the open back.

  As Corey threads her way through the tables with the loaded tray, Ed comes out of the car park heading for the caf, changing direction when he catches sight of me. He sits down heavily at my table. ‘Hi.’

  ‘You look like you’ve had a good morning,’ I say. The circles under his eyes are, if anything, darker.

  ‘Marvellous,’ he says. ‘Utterly marvellous. Litter all over the place. Hundreds of bloody tea-lights in the Long Barrow. Soot marks on the stone, which Graham and I had to scrub off. And, to cap it all, a dead dog.’

  John has been washing T-shirts when I reach his cottage, hanging them on the line in the front garden.

  ‘You idiot,’ he says, when we’re nursing mugs of Brummie-strength tea in the living room. ‘You know what the Long Barrow is, Indy? It’s an entrance to the Lower World. The place I start when I’m making the Journey. Why the hell didn’t you tell me that’s where you went that night?’

  There is absolutely no way I believe John goes anywhere beyond this room when he does his shamanic thing, the drums and the trance and all that, but all the same it gives me a chill to think of him sitting here bare-chested, chanting, picturing himself slipping between the big stones flanking the Long Barrow’s doorway and passing through its dark chambers into an alternative reality.

  ‘You ought to have more respect,’ he continues, ‘or at least understand that what you do there can have…repercussions. Sex is one of the most powerful elements of some magics. Under a waning moon, too. Not good Wyrd.’

  I shiver, deciding I’d prefer not to know why a waning moon is bad, exactly, and wishing the fire were lit. The brick hearth holds a basket of pine cones around a dried-flower arrangement donated by one of his lovely ladies.

  ‘Why’s he killed his dog?’

  John shakes his head. ‘You’re jumping to conclusions. Maybe it was hit by a car. Your…friend could have left it at the barrow as a burial. Or maybe it wasn’t his dog, someone else dumped it. He’s probably harmless, but from all you’ve said…’ He looks dubiously into the hearth, stretches forward to lift a pine cone out of the fire basket, and tosses it from one hand to the other. ‘I sometimes think the pagan movement is an alternative Care in the Community. And if I were you, I’d retrieve that note from the Swallowhead springs.’

  Outside the window, grey cloud has muffled the sun again. John’s newly laundered T-shirts flap in the wind that
has risen. One is black, fluttering next to a pair of dark, faded combat trousers.

  ‘What were you up to last night? Were you and your friends out near Alton Barnes, by any chance? Wearing black combats?’

  ‘All sorts of ways to celebrate Solstice,’ he says, standing up to light the candle on the mantelpiece, to ward off the gloom. ‘But let’s concentrate on the problem in hand.’ He stares into the cold fireplace. ‘You are such a pillock, know that? Why do you keep behaving like this? It’s like you have no respect for yourself.’

  ‘I–’ I can’t come up with an answer that sounds credible even to myself.

  ‘I’d like nothing better than to see you in a relationship. But you don’t do relationships. You do dysfunctional shags. Usually associated with an excessive consumption of alcohol, far as I can make out.’

  ‘Not this time.’

  Tramadol, for God’s sake. Were you born yesterday? Thought I’d brought you up with a healthy respect for drugs.’

  ‘You’re not my father, John.’

  He winces. ‘No. Maybe I should have behaved more like one.’ He starts tossing the pine cone again. It’s starting to remind me of a live grenade. ‘But my own dear dad wasn’t the finest role model. I’ve always tried to look out for you, though, haven’t I?’

  ‘Sorry.’ I take a sip of tea. It tastes awful, because I keep thinking of poor old Cynon, head crushed, according to Ed, and…

  Get in the van, Indy

  ‘John,’ I say.

  He puts the pine cone carefully down on the arm of the chair.

  ‘I think I need to talk about what happened to Mick Feather.’

  CHAPTER 45

  ‘Once saw a film,’ John says, bringing two more mugs of tea from the kitchen, ‘in which someone had their memory wiped by a sinister corporation, and they keep getting inexplicable flashbacks and go round trying to get their memory back. Made me laugh like a drain.’ He sits down again next to me on the sofa and puts a fatherly arm round my shoulders, squeezing tight. ‘You don’t need a sinister corporation. People wipe their own memories clean, happens every day. You think I really remember what happened when I shot that Argie? It’s like in another life, someone else’s…’