Living in the Past

by Jane Lovering

  ‘Is he with the police?’

  I nodded. I was, although I wouldn’t admit it, straining my ears for the sound of conversation, that would hopefully give me some clue as to what was going on, but couldn’t hear anything other than a general muted muttering.

  ‘Did they send that dick-faced cockwomble, Sunley?’ He spoke with so much venom that I was taken aback for a moment.

  ‘What? Oh, yes, Marcus Sunley. The inspector.’

  Richard was quiet for a moment. ‘They’ve got history,’ he said at last, quietly.

  ‘Criminal, personal or romantic?’

  Richard gave me an old-fashioned look sideways. ‘He’s a good lad, Duncan.’ He was still talking quietly. ‘We’ve worked together a fair bit, over the years, so I know he … none of this is his fault, you know.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t immediately assuming that because the police want to talk to him he must have done something, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘When he was younger something happened up here. He’s never told me what exactly, just that it was something to do with a disappearing girl and it’s made him very aware of the police, and vice versa. He’s got a bit of a complex about it, I reckon.’

  I thought of Duncan’s expression when the police arrived. He’d had something of the same look I often got at school when I reprimanded one of my Year Elevens, a lad who was often in trouble. It was a ‘screwed shut’ kind of look, a look that expected nothing less and knew that there was no point in hoping for more from life. A hopeless acceptance of things.

  ‘I think he’s complex all round,’ I said.

  There was a commotion at the doorway to the food store and Duncan and the inspector appeared. Duncan looked even paler and his hair was standing on end as though he’d been pushing his hands through it. His eyes were shadowed, hooded by his brows, which he’d pulled down into a squinty frown.

  ‘Let’s get on site,’ he said to Richard, under cover of a flurry of students and diggers converging, presumably for lunch now that the police had moved out of the way.

  ‘See you again soon, Professor McDonald,’ the inspector said over his shoulder, tailing his men as they all began to troop back up to the access road in a professionally underbooted sort of way, through the mud. It sounded like a sort of threat.

  ‘No. You won’t,’ Duncan replied, but quietly, past a jaw so clenched that it didn’t move as he spoke. I could almost hear his teeth creaking under the strain.

  ‘Didn’t go well, then?’ Richard and Duncan headed back down towards the edge of the dig site and, in a spirit of sympathy, I went with them. Okay, I hardly knew the man, but there was a tiny tickle of curiosity prickling at the back of my head as to why, when he obviously wasn’t locked up for any terrible offences, and Richard was so sure he was innocent, he had this awful attitude to the police. I was rationalising it as professional interest. A few students who’d been under my charge one way or another had found themselves on the wrong side of the law, and there was nearly always a reason. Some perceived injury or unfairness, some social injustice, that made them take, it had to be said, the path of least resistance. The easy way out, burglary or bottling, joyriding – all things that had reasons, motivations – even if that was just to impress some girl. Whatever Duncan had or hadn’t done, there would be reasons, and I found I wanted to hear them.

  The two men were more surefooted on the slope than I was and by the time I got to them they were poised on the edge of the hole again. No students inside it this time, just a trench about three feet deep and ten feet long, layers of earth lining the sides like a wafer biscuit, all different colours even to my untrained eye. At the bottom, in half an inch of water, lay some black stringy fibres, which looked as if they led back into the trench.

  Duncan was crouched down, knees in the mud, but he wasn’t looking into the hole. Richard was wandering up and down the length of the edge, but neither were speaking.

  ‘Definitely goes right the way back. Open it up further?’ Richard said at last.

  Duncan levered himself to his feet. ‘Look.’ Then he stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Should I …?’ I waved a hand at the top of the hill.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine, Grace. I’ve no idea why I … I mean, it’s not a secret, it’s just that … oh, shit. I don’t know. I feel guilty, that’s what it is, even though I’ve no need.’

  Now Duncan looked directly at me, a level expression that held truth in it and I became fairly certain that all this was nothing to do with joyriding or stealing sweets from a pic ’n’ mix display.

  ‘My family own a house, just up over the top of that hill, behind the barrow. My mum is from the area, the place has been in her family for generations, so we used to come here on holidays every summer growing up – me, Mum and Dad, my brothers …’ A deep breath. ‘When I was twenty, my girlfriend and I came on our own. On holiday from university. I was checking the area out, knew I wanted to dig here one day, walking on the moors, hanging out … We’d been good, me and her. Talked about getting a place together when we left uni, maybe getting married one day, all that. And then – she disappeared.’

  ‘While you were here?’ I stared around at the hills, at the hunched shoulder of barrow on the skyline.

  ‘Yeah, that summer. She’d been unsettled all holiday, very quiet, withdrawn. We’d argued a bit. You know. Like when a relationship is on the way out?’

  I didn’t know. My relationship had ended in held hands over a hospital bed, in tears and ‘I love you’s’ until the end.

  Duncan cleared his throat as though he realised. ‘And then …’ He made a spread hands gesture. ‘Gone. Not a trace.’

  Richard had his eyes closed. Thinking, maybe. ‘And the police investigated?’

  ‘Aye. Bearing in mind that she’d gone with just her handbag, they reckoned I did away with her. Argued with her, put her in a shallow grave somewhere.’ Duncan swallowed; I saw his throat move as though he was trying to swallow back the words. ‘I didn’t. I swear, on the lives of anyone I can think of right now. She walked out, one afternoon when I was in York looking at maps in the archives, and I never saw her again.’

  A digger came past, nodded at us, and we all stood quietly until he’d gone out of hearing range, as though by agreement.

  ‘And that’s why you hate the police so much?’ It was fairly self-evident, but I was used to having to make things absolutely clear.

  Duncan gave me a sideways look and a nod that looked rueful. ‘They tried, oh, believe me, they tried to pin it on me. But, no evidence, of course, so … every time anyone is reported missing, or wanders off, anything within a hundred miles of me … back they come. They’re determined, I’ll give them that.’

  ‘I suppose they’re paid to be,’ I said, feeling a bit inadequate. This scruffy and slightly mud-stained man in the torn wax coat was confessing to being a suspected murderer and, whilst teacher training had been quite specific on a number of subjects, it had clearly left this one off the syllabus. ‘And you never heard from her again?’

  ‘If I had the police would, believe me, be the first to know.’ A small smile. ‘Like I said, we’d been arguing, so I thought she’d just walked out on me at the time. Later … And thank you for not running away.’

  ‘Bloody hell, man! Running away would be—’

  ‘Par for the course.’ Duncan turned the smile on Richard. ‘It’s what I’ve come to expect. I told you because you deserved a reason for my … ah, somewhat flakey attitude to Lord Snidey Whiplash and his friends. I don’t generally spread it about that I am perpetually suspected of rape and murder. Those I do tell don’t tend to hang around for long afterwards.’ He rubbed at his face. ‘Mud, as I am in a prime position to know, sticks, and metaphorical mud doesn’t wash off.’

  Richard and I looked
at one another in a kind of blank faced ‘I don’t know what to say’ way.

  ‘So.’ Duncan straightened his spine. ‘We need to take this trench back further, you know. See how far this wood goes.’

  ‘We’re definitely saying “wood” then, are we?’ Richard switched subjects with ease. I wanted to stand there and say ‘but … but …’ to find out what had happened that afternoon when the vanishing girlfriend went, whether the police had ever stopped looking. What had made her walk out on Duncan? But the subject was dealt with. Done, for now, clearly, with both Duncan and Richard trying to outdo one another in the ‘talking very quickly about the current situation to prevent any hint of the past conversation breaking through’ way.

  ‘Still waiting for Millie to turn up and give us a definite, but yeah, we’re treating it as a possibility.’

  I left them to it and went back to manning the wet sieves.

  Chapter Nine

  2000 BC

  Hen tended the fire to keep it in and then went to her doorstep to sit and watch the last rays of the sun vanish behind the sleeping place, bathing the ancestors in their last glow as they went. From here she could see Drustan being helped to limp back up from the river by his mother, Airwen, leaning on her arm and chattering, voice still high with youth, although she knew it would soon start dipping under words with the weight of the manhood that awaited him.

  Her heart twisted in her chest and she wound her hands tight into her skirts, pulling against the rough fabric to distract herself from the emotions. She watched Airwen, solidly built as a lasting reminder of her privileged, higher-status childhood, help the boy into their family home, where Tor would be sitting now, by the fire, gutting fish, helping to sew deerskin into clothing, heating water with the boiling stones … She shook her head. Stopped all thoughts of Tor. Looked instead at the other two huts, one occupied by Tor’s sister, the other by his niece; both of them left to bring up their children alone. Caerlynn, after the death of her man at the hands of another and young Vast, abandoned to the care of her uncle. Tor worked hard to make sure they were all fed and safe, Hen knew. He worried about the responsibility, talked among the wider family at every Midsummer and Midwinter gathering to try to find men suitable for these women under his care, but that was not the way for Hen, she never could, never came close to meeting anyone she could feel for as she felt for Tor.

  Night was coming in fast now. Bats flew around her head, picking insects out of the air as they were drawn to the light of her fire, but apart from those sounds, and the muted voices from the homes along the path, all was quiet. Even the river, the path to the land of the ancestors, was whispering tonight, perhaps in sympathy with her feelings.

  Why? Why do I torture myself like this? Why do I stay? Hen shook her head to drive the thoughts out again. She well knew why she stayed. Why she lived in Tor’s shadow.

  Love. She had come down from the hills to settle here because of her love for Tor, but their emotions had been no match for those who dealt with these things, and the first Midwinter festival had seen him matched with Airwen, a girl from the far side of the dale. Airwen, raised on plentiful food to be fertile and healthy, a girl whose family were known, whose prospects for motherhood were thought to be safe and true. They couldn’t trust a girl who may have come from anywhere, couldn’t allow the match when Hen may have been cast out by her own family group for her inability to breed or had a blood-tie member who was touched by the ancestors. So she’d been allowed to stay under Tor’s protection, but not as his mate, and he had partnered with Airwen, as the ancestors, apparently, dictated. Had grown to love her, Hen knew.

  Hen turned away and ducked back under the hide curtain. Inside her hut it was smoky and smelled of the meat she was drying over the fire and she busied herself turning the strips of cow meat so they didn’t singe. Driving all thoughts of Tor from her head with the knowledge that their lives here were fragile and depended on supplies for the winter, on weather and the health of their animals. Knowing that those elders had been right, that an incomer who could bring sickness that could kill them all was no suitable match for one of them.

  And all the time feeling that dragging pain in her heart for the things she’d hoped for, dreamed of, that would never be.

  Chapter Ten

  That evening things were a bit more relaxed. As though the visit from the police had defused some tension.

  ‘Still no sign of Tessa?’ I took a plate of stew from Tabs.

  ‘Nope. But good news on Mills, she’s hoping to be here tomorrow.’

  A spoonful of something that looked like swede, only runnier was dolloped on my plate to keep the stew company.

  ‘Oh that’s … but she’ll want to share with you, won’t she? I can’t stay in the tent with the pair of you all loved up, I’ll just feel …’ Sad. Oh I knew the world carried on falling in love, just because I’d lost Jamie didn’t mean everyone else should be single for life, but I still wasn’t in a state where the sight of other people’s coupledom didn’t hurt.

  ‘Oh. Oh yeah, suppose.’ Tabitha stirred her spoon around the yellow mush, setting off a smell indicative of digestive distress. ‘I’m sure there’s another tent around somewhere you can bunk up in.’

  ‘Bunk up in?’ I’d have hissed like a villain, if the words had been hissable, but instead I did a sort of evil whisper. ‘Tabs, you got me here to keep you company, not end up in some kind of real life remake of a porn film! I am not sharing a tent with just anybody! They could be … well … anybody!’

  ‘I’ll ask around, okay?’

  There was a general air of stampede brewing in the queue; it had been a hard afternoon, especially when the clouds had broken and fallen from the sky in chunks of water so large that they had edges. Everyone was wet, dirty and hungry, and my holding up the food queue was not being appreciated, so I moved on, balancing my largely liquid dinner on my plate with difficulty.

  Duncan and Richard were sitting together in one corner, a pink-haired girl on one side and Katrin’s boyfriend Kyle on the other, so I sat alone at a table and felt my seat start sinking slowly into the grass as I forked up lumps. Wet sieving had somewhat prejudiced me against liquid, and once I’d eaten the firmer and more identifiable bits of my meal, my appetite retreated and left me sitting in front of a plate of stuff, with nowhere else to really go.

  ‘Hey, Grace.’ The Scottish voice at my shoulder told me who it was and I turned gratefully away from my plate.

  ‘Hello, Duncan.’

  Nothing else was forthcoming and we just looked at one another for a bit. He’d cast off the waxed coat, and was wearing a huge knitted jumper that looked as though it should have been twinned with those hairy socks. His hair was slicked down with the rain and was dripping occasionally.

  ‘I … err … d’you fancy a drink?’ He dried his forehead on a matted sleeve.

  ‘Would this be a drink in a pub where there is a fire and a proper roof? Because, if so, count me in as I’d really like to sit down somewhere dry for a change. My bum is beginning to clench in anticipation every time I bend my knees.’

  ‘Okay, verging on the “too much information” there, but I think we can find somewhere where the furniture isn’t actually floating.’ His tone was light. ‘The weather isn’t always this bad, y’know. Sometimes we go back with sunburn.’

  ‘Whereas this time you’re going back with rust?’ I turned back to my plate and poked half-heartedly at a potato. At least, I thought it was a potato, it might have been a lump of lard.

  ‘Oh, come on now, let’s not leave dysentery out, and all the fun that entails.’ Duncan was still standing there. Watching me watch my potato.

  ‘And you were the one for the “too much information”.’ I gave my food a final poke and stood up. ‘Okay. That drink. Now, I think, is a good time.’

  ‘Well, I was going to change, but your pers
istence is strangely enticing. Come on. Are you all right with going in my car?’

  I stopped and he walked into me. I got a sudden impression of a body that works hard, sinew and muscle, before he cannoned off and hit one of the posts holding the canteen up, but I was already processing far more than the feeling of him pressed into my back. He thought I might be worried travelling alone in a car with him? And then I had a horrible flash of knowing what it must be like to always be suspected of the murder of a woman. How Duncan must always be second-guessing himself, always having to explain, be transparent, always beyond reproach, just in case.

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘Well, okay then.’ He passed by me, squeezing between the tables. ‘This way.’ And, performing a mock bow, he ushered me out under the tent flap.

  Does she understand? Does she ‘get it’? Duncan drove the Land Rover along the moorland road, dodging in and out of the sheep that saw the warm tarmac as the ovine alternative to a week in Marbella and were stretched out along its surface chewing the cud and basking. Does she have any idea what a deal this is for me, to have a woman with me unaccompanied? Does she even guess how much I’m hoping that she won’t choose tonight to walk out onto the moors alone, and vanish?

  ‘That’s our house, over there.’ He pointed with an elbow as he coaxed the Defender as nimbly as it could manage between two resting ewes. ‘Down the track to your right.’ He could hardly bring himself to look at it now; despite the sturdy, cottagey face it presented to the world it would always represent confusion and loss to him.

  ‘It looks nice.’ Grace peered out past him to the low-gabled front that lay at the end of the track. ‘It’s so close to the dig. Why didn’t you stay there, instead of camping out with us mud-grubbers?’

  He kept his eyes on the road. Those sheep were treacherous buggers and could move surprisingly quickly, especially given that their hobbies seemed to include ‘crashing into things’ and ‘getting run over’.