The Buried Circle

by Jenni Mills

  I race up the high street, dashing across the junction without a glance in either direction, breath rasping in my throat and a pain in my chest.

  ‘Get to the hospital fast as you can, Indy,’ John’s message said. ‘The bleeding started up again and they’re taking her into theatre tonight, after all.’ I tried calling back, but he must have driven to the hospital already, phone turned off as soon as he went inside. I keep thinking of her eyes, scared and pleading. I don’t want to go to hospital. People die in hospital.

  The car is parked in the lane on the verge, but my car keys are inside the cottage. The lamplight through the curtains gives the place a homey glow. The key skids on the lock’s faceplate; somehow my shaking hands manage to push it into the keyhole and turn it, shoving open the door. Yellow lamplight washes out onto the path–

  I turned the lamps off. I remember switching off all the lights before I left the cottage.

  ‘Ed?’

  Can’t be Ed. He’d have no way of getting in because I have the door key, the only door key as far as I know…

  ‘Martin?’ He must have a spare.

  Hovering uncertainly in the porch, peering over the threshold. No one in the sitting room. The Keiller biography lies open where I left it on the table, my rain jacket hung on the post at the foot of the stairs, my spare cardigan on the back of the sofa. Across the room, on top of the chest, my car keys glint under the lamp, next to my abandoned coffee mug. The fireguard is no longer in place, and flames lick the sides of a fresh log on the fire. A fat white candle is alight on a saucer, on the tiled corner of the hearth. Another candle burns on the window ledge, its flame swaying in the draught from the open door.

  It is Martin, isn’t it? What’s he doing here? Is he upstairs? He’s supposed to be staying with his friend in Bath.

  The log shifts on the fire as a lump of coal collapses, and my heart jumps, but the house is otherwise silent. This feels wrong. But all I need are the car keys, and I can be out of here, have to be out of here, whether or not Martin’s back, because there’s no time to mess around–time’s leaking away at the hospital in Swindon. There’s no one in the room. Go for it.

  I’m halfway to the chair when there’s a blur of movement in the corner of my eye. He comes barrelling out of the kitchen and has an arm crooked round my throat before I’ve had a chance to turn more than my head. My handbag falls off my shoulder, while his other hand closes on the muscle at the top of my arm, forcing a squeak out of me, and the door key drops out of my fingers onto the carpet. Somehow he gets a knee into the small of my back, arching my body and pressing me against the back of the sofa so the air is forced out of my lungs. We must look, absurdly, like some sort of pornographic temple carving.

  Then his voice sighs in my ear, ‘Indy,’ and I understand exactly who this is.

  You stupid, stupid girl.

  I can’t believe I’ve been so blind. I can feel tears pricking, panic clawing at my lungs making it even harder to breathe than it already is. He has complete control, sliding me down to the floor, my T-shirt rolling up and my exposed abdomen pressed against the rough hessian carpet, the mobile phone in my pocket digging into my hip, his knee pinning me down while his arm is yanking up my chin, making my neck and shoulder muscles scream.

  On thy belly thou shalt go

  ‘Indy…’

  I let myself go as limp as I can.

  ‘That’s better. Don’t fight me.’ The pressure on my throat eases fractionally.

  ‘I’m…not…’ He’s allowing me only enough airway to force out a whisper.

  ‘No point strugglin’.’ The arm eases off a fraction more. ‘See? I can feel your veins easing. When you strain against me, it’s like ropes of lights under your skin, your blood fizzing and sending off sparks.’

  Shit. What’s he taken? Mushrooms?

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  I can guess: I opened the window in the kitchen to let out the steam while I was washing up, must’ve forgotten to close it. He’ll have climbed in over the sink.

  And why? Well, everything goes back to that summer in Tolemac, doesn’t it?

  He strokes my hair. ‘Sssh. No hurry. Your friend isn’t comin’ back for a while, is he?’

  ‘It was you who broke in at Frannie’s, wasn’t it? How did you come to hurt her, though? Did you knock her down accidentally?’ I don’t want to believe it could have been anything else. The grip on my throat has eased fractionally. But even if I managed to scream, the nearest neighbour is elderly and takes her hearing aid out when she goes to bed. The loudest pagans drum with impunity behind her cottage.

  ‘She opened the door to me.’ There’s a high note of surprise in his voice, which suggests it’s all unravelling so fast he’s amazing himself now. ‘The Hag!

  He doesn’t mean it the way ordinary people would. He means the Goddess.

  ‘She opened the door and said: India’s at work. And I was thinkin’, Right, yes, I knew that, I suppose, and then she’d closed the door on me again. Realized she didn’t like me. Put up with me, when she used to see me, only because of Meg.’ The back of my hair lifts with the vibration of him shaking his head–that wonderment again. ‘See, it all happens on both planes, doesn’t it? The real, and the extra-real? The Goddess wears three faces: Maiden, Mother, Crone. If you hold the Crone tight, she shifts shape, releases the Maiden again. I went round the back and broke in. She didn’t scream: she called me Donald. I told her, my name’s not Donald, it’s…’

  This is possibly the longest speech Bryn has ever come out with, in my hearing.

  Except it isn’t Bryn, is it?

  ‘What the hell happened to you, Keir?’ I ask.

  CHAPTER 56

  29 August 1942

  Mr Keiller was in the sitting room, wearing his police uniform, standing with his back to the empty fireplace, the light from the lamps striking a marmalade sheen on his thinning, oiled brown hair, and his inspector’s peaked hat laid careful on a side table like he was expecting to have to pick it up again to go out. First time it struck me how much older than me he was: older than Mam, God rest her, near as old as Dad. Tonight all those years were scratched into the skin of his face, his jowls saggy with a kind of defeat, his tense mouth reluctant to let out the words repeating what they’d told him when the call came through about the plane that had crashed on Easton Down that afternoon. Crater. Explosion. Instant. No hope.

  ‘You know, Heartbreaker, I’m sick to death of this bloody war,’ he said. ‘For two pins I’d…’ He shook his head. His oiled hair gleamed in the lamplight. ‘Why is it the best ones who go, I ask you? Why is it the ones with the brains and the balls? Donald…’ His voice cracked up. ‘Poor old Donald. Such a silly bloody thing to happen.’

  Not even the glory of being shot out of the sky by the enemy. And what about Mr Keiller’s Brushwood Boy? Was any of that shininess in the corners of his eyes for Davey?

  ‘Did you go to…where it happened?’ I asked him. ‘Were they…?’

  He shook his head. ‘Would have been an irony, wouldn’t it? No, a couple of constables from Devizes did the necessary. I’ll go up first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’ Knew immediate he was going to say no.

  ‘I don’t think that would be advisable, do you, Mrs S-T? Frances looks like she needs helping to bed, and a good long lie-in tomorrow.’

  Maybe I did look bad, hunched like an old woman next to a glowing two-bar electric fire Mr Young had brought from upstairs. I was wrapped in a blanket, hugging a hot-water bottle, one of Mrs S-T’s dresses hanging off my shoulders because my clothes had been soaked through, my teeth still chattering.

  Mr Keiller picked up his brandy glass, swirled it, stared into it like it could tell him the future. Must’ve seen rain-drenched grass, mud, sheep, gurt grey stones leaning every which way like crooked teeth. ‘It’s all over, isn’t it?’ he said, more to himself than to us. ‘Someone else’ll have to finish
here now. I haven’t the heart.’

  I didn’t need him to describe what happened. Soon as I heard, I knew how it would have been.

  They’d been called to scramble that morning. Their squadron flew night-fighters, fragile black-painted wooden Mosquitos that took two men to crew them, pilot and navigator. Donald, and Davey crammed in behind his shoulder, watching the flickering screen of the AI to guide them onto the tail of their target.

  ‘Tired,’ said Mr Keiller. ‘Poor devils, they’d been out half the night, and the squadron was under strength. Abortive sortie over Weston-super-Mare, chasing a report of some Junkers 88s, coming in to do Bristol some damage. Missed ‘em completely. Called back home, landed, as another set of bombers started slinking up from the south–broad daylight by now, mind, but Jerry could count on the weather giving cover that afternoon. Every other airfield within reach had their hands full with the raid on Bristol and, with the forecast so bad, inevitable Donald’s squadron of night-fighters would be scrambled again. Donald needn’t have gone, but he insisted.’

  The little black wooden planes flying down the belly of Britain, out over the Channel towards Normandy, sunlight pinning them against blue sky at first, like night-flying moths caught in daylight. Not long before they were flying into weather, invisible among the massing black clouds. Davey in the navigator’s seat, tired, scared. Donald Cromley piloting, cocky, believing he could get away with anything, determined to bag a kill. Relying on the AI, the Airborne Interceptor, what they called radar later on, that Davey had trained on special. Looking for them Nazi bastards, finding bugger all, missed ‘em again. They Germans was already blowing holes in Drove Road, aiming for the Plessey factory, but instead hitting houses where little girls had been playing hopscotch on the pavement. Donald insists they keep going, looking for trade as he puts it. Pushing it as usual, flying that bit further than he should have. Out over the Channel, the boys had a skirmish with a couple of Messerschmitts–at least they think they’re Messerschmitts, hard to tell in the murk until you’re up close. Donald looses off a few rounds, some other bugger fires back, could have been one of them or one of us. Holes in the fuselage, doesn’t feel like there’s too much damage but all the same it’s given them a scare and they’ve lost the target anyway in the murk. There’s a lot of dense cloud around and it’s easy playing hide and seek. Weather too bad now, anyway, where Davey and Donald was, and fuel too low to do much more than turn round and set a course for home and hope to God they made it back.

  Never afraid when we take off. It’s coming back

  Poor Davey. Should’ve stayed an erk.

  And you know what’s the worst? When there’s no contact, and we fly all over the sky looking for the buggers and they never show up. When the order comes over the radio to head for home, I think, That’s torn it

  Afraid, always, of the luck running out just when they thought they were safe. He sat in the car on Marlborough Common that day, telling me how scared he was of not coming back. Heart pounding, every time they flew, like it must have coming back from France that afternoon. 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

  ‘They were nearly home,’ said Mr Keiller. ‘Nearly bloody made it. Sorry about the language, ladies. Bit upset.’

  Davey reciting the Navigator’s Prayer. When we see the Kennet and Avon canal, I know we’re nearly home…If they could see the canal. They’re flying through a terrible thunderstorm. Sky black as night.

  Rain coming down in sheets. And Donald Cromley, watching his instruments as they fly towards the darkened escarpment of the Marlborough Downs, notices there’s something amiss.

  ‘Port engine gave up the ghost, damaged in the skirmish with the German fighters. Colerne says they managed to radio in before the radio packed up too. They were going to try to bring her in at either Alton Barnes or Yatesbury.’ Mr Keiller’s eyes fixed on the corner of the room, like he can’t bear to look at any of us. ‘Donald would have favoured Yatesbury, of course, knew it like the back of his hand.’

  Thought he did, anyway, cocky bastard. But this is a day like no day he’s ever flown before, a day that’s not so much like flying through a night as like flying under water. Does that matter? Of course not. Behind him he’s got Davey, good old Davey; Davey’s an ace navigator, knows his way around Wiltshire, from the air and on the ground. Knows all the roads, all the airfields, knows every fold and wrinkle of the hills. Give us a fix, Davey. Really? Well, you’re the numbers wizard. Donald, too tired to argue, believes him.

  On the ground it’s pitchy black too. The airfields will have to turn on their lights for the boys coming home. Alton Barnes is dark: it’s a training base, no novices out flying today. Davey and Cromley are past and gone before the message reaches Alton Barnes to light up the runway.

  ‘Not more than a couple of miles short of Yatesbury field. Simple mistake. Poor bastards weary unto death, flying practically blind, radio not responding, catch a glimpse of what they assume are runway lights.’

  Easton Down. Not so fancy as the Starfish at Barbury, but one of the Q-sites Davey’s chum helped to build. A fake airfield. Don’t tell me Davey forgot it was there. He knew where it was all right.

  Easton Down wasn’t one of the sophisticated Q-sites. Weren’t no Hares and Rabbits, the lighting rigs that made it look like planes were taking off or landing, running across the empty farmland. For Donald Cromley, that was the pity of it, because if he’d seen what looked like a plane taking off he’d have known at once it couldn’t have been Yatesbury, like Alton Barnes a training airfield, so nobody except him and Davey likely to be flying in or out of it that terrible afternoon. Instead Easton Down had gooseneck flares, laid out like runway lights across the bumpy ground. They’d been lit most of the afternoon, since the crew in the pillbox had been alerted there were German bombers in the air, and nobody’d given them the stand-down yet.

  There she is, says Davey.

  You sure? says Donald, bit of doubt in his voice. Wasn’t expecting to be at Yatesbury yet, hasn’t seen any of the familiar markers he used flying in and out when he was piloting those trainee wireless operators round the field. But it’s a bugger of a day, Satan’s own picnic out there; maybe, thinks Donald, he’s missed the landmarks in the rain and the gloom.

  That’s her, for definite. Davey knows exactly where he is, doesn’t he? Best sense of direction in the squadron, which is why Donald was so glad to have him volunteer as his navigator when George broke his leg.

  And Davey does know exactly where he is.

  ‘Meant to be a fail-safe system,’ says Mr Keiller. His eyes are wet, I’d swear, in the lamplight. ‘Coded signals, so RAF crews don’t mistake them for the real thing. Red light on a pole, flashing the letter K in Morse, supposed to indicate they should back off, it’s a dummy field. Poor devils. Such a stupid bloody mistake, but they were tired. I assume Davey must have interpreted it as “carry on”. It’s happened before.’

  No, Davey knows exactly where he is. He’s been planning this for weeks, waiting for the right opportunity. What you will shall be.

  Wish I could’ve killed him, I said to Davey, the day of the picnic on Windmill Hill, when I told him what Mr Cromley had done. Shook Davey’s world. Can’t think about what you did, Fran, without getting angry.

  Get angry with him, I said. When it came down to it, Davey would do anything for me. Would’ve married me, if he’d known I was going to have a baby, even though it was Donald Cromley’s bastard. But he didn’t know. Should’ve told him.

  Donald fingers the old bronze dagger he stows in the pocket of his flying jacket, every mission, his compact with the forces of nature. He swings her round, begins the approach. Does he feel the slightest bit uneasy? Does he see, for a second, the contempt in his uncle’s eyes through the leather mask, that afternoon in the house in Swindon when cocky young Donald couldn’t get it in, and panicked, and disgraced the rite? Does he hear Mr Keiller’s
bellow, the night he stole Charlie’s skull? Does he hear through his earphones, Davey shouting in triumph, as the fragile wooden Mosquito comes in and bellies, not on a concrete runway but on uneven farmland, the plane slewing and bucking as Donald wrenches the controls to steer away from a stand of trees that shouldn’t be in the middle of an airfield? He still thinks he’s going to make it, of course, until a wheel hits a sarsen jutting out of the ground and breaks off, the nose tilts, the plane cartwheels and finally ploughs into the side of a Bronze Age barrow.

  For a moment, there they are, the fuselage smashing around them like black matchsticks, two young men locked together like driver and pillion passenger on a motorbike bouncing over the hillside. The fuel tank ignites, a slash of orange fire tears apart the unnatural dusk, and thunder rolls across the hills.

  CHAPTER 57

  ‘Missed you, Indy,’ Keir says, after a bit.

  He always could best me at wrestling, even though he was smaller than me when we were kids. And his den, his stupid den on the Downs that he wouldn’t show me that summer–that would have been the Long Barrow, wouldn’t it?

  ‘You didn’t know I was India?’ This suddenly seems important. ‘Not when I jumped your fire in Tolemac. You’d have said.’

  I’ve been stupid, yes, not realizing Bryn was the boy I played with as a child, but why should we recognize each other? It’s seventeen years since we last met: two lifetimes, for eight-year-olds. But I don’t want that night in the Long Barrow to have been…knowing. Because, looking back, I can understand why it felt so wrong and awful at the time.

  ‘My skin knew,’ he says. ‘My head didn’t. I understood when I read your note. Why didn’t you tell me your name before? We’d’ve been together sooner.’

  Didn’t tell you my name because my skin recognized something: how weird you’ve become. Another long silence has fallen, giving me time to turn over the full, ridiculous awfulness of it. If only I had told him my name, by his campfire on May Eve…Well, I thought I was protecting myself.