Living in the Past

by Jane Lovering

  ‘I’m sorry. I … are you all right?’ And his eyes were softer, the moon-dawn combination lending him glamour, shading his cheekbones above the stubble, giving his body a new grace and sureness as he moved in across that cold gap to grab me round the shoulders. ‘You looked as though you were going to fall down for a second there.’

  I felt every inch of his arm around me. Every individual muscle, almost as though I could see it through his sweater like one of those skinned man charts they had on the walls in the Biology lab; given enough of a push I could probably have named them all. ‘I think I might have a little bit of a hangover,’ I said, my voice a bit faint.

  ‘From one double gin and tonic? You should have told me you were such a cheap date.’ Now the envy was gone from his voice, he was back to the bantering tone. ‘I could have taken advantage of that.’

  ‘I think any evening that ends with a person being arrested is about as exciting as I can stand,’ I said, and then felt bad because his eyes closed for a second and his mouth turned down at the edges. ‘Sorry, Duncan.’

  ‘Aye, well. I’ve sort of got used to it now, like an occupational hazard, you know? Suppose I should start building arrest time into every date, just to simplify things.’

  I turned towards him, his coat following my movement like a well-trained collie. ‘Oh, so it was a date, was it? I thought you just wanted to watch my chip-throwing action.’

  He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and seemed to be trying to form words, from the way his lips were rippling. ‘Ah,’ he eventually managed. ‘Might have been hoping you wouldn’t spot that.’

  ‘I don’t think you can or should date someone without their knowledge.’ I tried to sound stern but his embarrassed and slightly sheepish expression was making me grin. ‘That’s what we, in the big world outside, call stalking.’

  The moon finally gave up and slid off between two hills, leaving dawn to slouch up over the opposite moor like a teenager off to a job interview. The ground around us was lightening into day, losing that mixed wash grey tone and picking up shading as it went, as if it were a film gradually moving from black and white to colour.

  ‘Would you mind?’ Duncan asked at last. His voice was very quiet, very serious. ‘If I did call it a date?’

  He’d left his arm around me, but was standing very very still as though not to draw attention to it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s been … I mean, I know I have to move on from Jamie, I can’t do a Queen Victoria and I don’t want to, and you’re … well, I like you, but it’s been nearly ten years since I dated anybody and I don’t know what the rules are any more, and I still talk to Jamie so I don’t know if I’m really over him properly and Tabitha says he would have liked you …’ I trailed off. Duncan had raised his eyebrows.

  ‘So, while you were saying all those words, I was hearing “but let’s take it slowly”. Yes?’ The arm gave my shoulders a little shake. ‘I mean, if I’m wrong, I’m sorry. But I like you, Grace. And not just because of what you might have seen either, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘That would be an oddly specific reason to date someone, yes.’

  ‘And you know I’m not … I mean, I have this whole “police” thing going on, and there’s only you and Richard that know the whys and wherefores of that, so I know you know it’s nothing personal.’

  I moved a little closer to him, until our bodies sort of bumped gently. ‘I know it’s hard for you. And I wish there was something I could do.’

  In that weird, liminal state, pinned halfway between night and day, all this felt almost unreal. There was a fuzzy quality to the light that made me half wonder if I was dreaming, but there was absolutely no doubt at all about the heat in Duncan’s fingers as he gently cupped my chin and then, with his gaze scanning the whole of my face, he moved in and kissed me. Just one, soft touch of the lips, odd after all this time since my last kiss, almost as though he was stealing my breath.

  ‘Just don’t disappear,’ he said, moving back just a whisper. ‘At least, not without a forwarding address.’

  And then, still keeping his arm around me, he guided us back to the path that led to the campsite.

  I was just closing the sieves down for the evening, which consisted of turning off the water pump and making sure any generously proportioned lumps had been rubbed through, when Tabitha appeared. ‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘You look like Swamp Thing. Or like you’ve spent the day up to your elbows in a sump. Whatever that is.’

  ‘How can you compare me to something when you don’t even know what you’re comparing me to?’ I scraped mud off my hands by wiping them down my legs. It had been a fruitless day’s sieving and my back hurt. ‘You might inadvertently flatter me, and nobody wants that.’

  ‘Sump. Sump. It doesn’t sound good though, does it? You definitely look like something sumpy. To be honest, I thought you’d have argued more about the Swamp Thing.’

  ‘Knowing your love for old horror movies, I’m just glad I didn’t get Bride of Frankenstein. I think love might have turned your brains to mush, Tabs’.’ I shut down the water tap from the header tank and wandered over to where she stood, carefully on the far side of the muddy runoff.

  ‘Yeah. Okay. I’ve come to invite you to ours for a bottle of wine and a chat.’

  I looked at her dubiously. ‘You aren’t inviting me just so I can ring your parents and break the news about the wedding, are you?’ My look wrinkled down into sternness. ‘Because that is your business, Tabs. Just because I’m a teacher who has occasionally been forced into PHSE lessons, it does not fit me for explaining to your slightly sheltered parents that you are marrying your girlfriend. Show them a couple of episodes of Queer as Folk and take them some chocolates, they’ll be fine.’

  Tabitha screwed up her nose. ‘You’re no fun.’

  ‘Define “fun”. Because I’d rather be de-fleaing my mum’s cat. And that involves more protective clothing than a shift at a dodgy nuclear power plant, so guess how much I enjoy it.’ But I followed her anyway, down the hill to the tent village. Millie was sitting outside their tent with a bottle of wine in one hand and a small white tile with a black dot on that she was scrutinising with a hand lens in the other.

  She put both down when she saw us approaching, although after a momentary pause she picked the wine back up again. ‘Hey.’

  Tabitha produced some plastic wine glasses and the wine was broached. Fairly unceremoniously too, but it had been a long day, Duncan was trying to make use of all the daylight possible to get the site surveyed.

  ‘So.’ Tabitha regarded me through screwed up eyes. She might have been being thoughtful, or it could have been the wine, which was acidic and body temperature from sitting in a tent all day under the sun. ‘You and Duncan, eh.’

  ‘There isn’t a me and Duncan. Duncan and I. He’s just, well, we’re just friends. Yes. We’re friends.’

  Tab raised her eyebrows, but that still might have been the wine. ‘No. You and I are friends. You and Mills are friends. You don’t look at us like you want us to take you somewhere and bang you relentlessly all night. Which, I have to say, makes us feel bloody well insulted, but there you go. So. I repeat, you and Duncan. And I am not making my voice into a question there, Gray, it’s a fact, even if you can’t see it.’

  ‘I do not look at anyone like that!’ I nearly choked on my wine and blood tore through my cheeks, making my face heat up like sunburn. ‘Let alone Duncan.’

  Millie and Tabitha exchanged a look. ‘It’s only a matter of time before you do though,’ Tabitha said, reasonably. ‘I’m just cutting down the waiting.’

  Millie poured me another plastic glass of wine. I wasn’t entirely convinced that the wine wasn’t artificial too. It bit like an annoyed terrier. ‘We’re very pleased, Grace, honestly. Very happy to see you coming out of your shell. Ok
ay, the Prof isn’t who I’d have chosen, but …’ A tender hand laid on Tabs’ knee. ‘… that’s probably obvious. And he’s a decent guy, when you look under all the hair and the mud. In fact, given a vigorous towelling, he’s not bad looking either. So, yeah, you could do worse.’

  ‘It’s not a bit …’ I trailed off, uncertain what I really wanted to finish. ‘Tacky?’ I finally settled on.

  ‘Tacky would be dating that nineteen-year-old muscle-bound guy with the pickaxe,’ Tabs said. ‘Seriously, he’s not doing himself any favours, getting his shirt off all the time. With all those tattoos it’s like watching stop-frame animation digging a hole. Going out with Duncan is practically classy, in fact. He’s a PhD, he’s written masses of papers and … stuff.’

  ‘We’re talking about Grace dating him, sweetie, not hiring him for a research project.’ Millie patted her gently.

  I had a sudden image of Duncan’s face, the excitement and anticipation as he’d shown me the site and told me that my vision had been spot on. ‘Actually …’ I began, but Tabs, as usual, talked over me.

  ‘And Mills and I think he’s really good for you. Since you’ve been here you’ve got more …’ She made up and down movements with both hands.

  ‘Like a bouncy castle?’ I guessed. ‘Er … ill-fitting bra? Fat?’

  ‘Help me out here, Mills, she’s being bloody daft again.’

  ‘Ebullient,’ Millie supplied. ‘You’ve got a bit of your sparkle back.’

  Tabitha raised both hands in triumph. ‘Yes! So our Scottish superstud might not be laying you down for his country, but whatever he is doing, it’s working.’

  I sipped at the wine again. ‘You don’t think it’s too soon? After Jamie, I mean?’

  Tabs sighed impatiently. ‘Gray, you can get over Ebola in two years. Honestly, nobody thinks you loved Jamie any less just cos you want to get it on with a grubby Scots guy in a soggy jumper. They might wonder about your sense of taste, but they won’t think that.’

  ‘He’s not that bad.’ Millie topped up our glasses. ‘If I was straight I’d probably fancy him. Half the diggers do, after all. But he doesn’t go for it. He could but he doesn’t, and that tells you what kind of man he is.’

  ‘Undersexed,’ Tabs said, confidently.

  ‘Not from what I’ve heard.’ Millie snorted. ‘Friend of a friend stuff, but, yeah. Anyway. He’s decent, keeps his hands off the youngsters even when they practically issue an open invitation, all that.’

  I hid my face behind the wine, thinking, yes, but that’s not decency, that’s fear. And feeling, once more, a twinge of sympathy for Duncan. Grubby Scots guy that he was.

  Chapter Twenty

  Duncan barely saw Grace for the next few days. It was perfectly understandable, he told himself; she was busy up at the wet sieves, he was busy overseeing the new dig site. It was just that … He sat in the sun that had deigned to make an appearance today, with a pack of sandwiches in his hand, leaned back against the slope and looked down on the industrious site below him. Not like the anthill that such things were always compared to, more like a bunch of hens scratching in the dirt, lots of squawking and rushing interspersed with a lot of dust and solitary, stationary activity.

  Just what? What had he expected? He let his gaze travel up and along the opposite slope, to where the sieves were only visible as the top of the mechanism that rocked the soil, and part of the water tank. What did I expect? We agreed it was a date, that’s all. One date and I’ve hardly seen her since, so, what? What would I have thought if she’d come creeping through into my part of the tent late at night? Well, I’d have been grateful, obviously, it’s been a long time, but I KNOW she’s not about that. And since the weather’s improved we’ve been so full-on with the excavation, it’s not like we could take a day off to go skipping through the heather either. So. Things have gone on exactly as they did before.

  He bit into a sandwich of unspecified provenance that turned out to be cheese and pickle, and the bland flat feel of the cheddar combined with the sweet bite of the pickle just reminded him of his life even more. Okay. I may be more involved with Grace than I think, if even a sandwich makes me think of her. And, why not? She’s lovely, she doesn’t seem to mind my habit of getting arrested every five minutes, the whole ‘seeing back through time’ is just a red herring. Pretty sure I’d have fancied her anyway. He chewed, feeling the sun warm his back. He’d neglected the coat in favour of a T-shirt with the Rolling Stones on, hoped Grace would see the sartorial gag but hadn’t had a chance to lay eyes on her today.

  Someone shouted from the causeway site, where teams were carefully picking back layers of soil, uncovering age-old river mud until they got to a part where tatters of wood, pickled by the acidic conditions, formed a mass that could, just possibly, have been a platform jutting into a wide, shallow river. Duncan could see the outburst of activity, Richard dancing from digger to digger in his attempt to get everything absolutely recorded. Ranging poles sprang up, sketching and photography and GPS was all going on like mad, someone must have found something significant. He swallowed his last crust and wondered what it was. And whether Grace would have an insight.

  ‘Prof?’ It was Millie. He had a lot of time for the PhD dendro-specialist. She irritated the hell out of him when she did the ‘flighty’ thing, and her girlfriend could be a royal pain in the arse with her thinly veiled remarks about him and Grace, but Millie knew her stuff. ‘You done with lunch? Only Kyle just found something off the causeway, wondered if you wanted to come and take a look?’

  Duncan stood up. ‘Yeah, okay, I’ll come down.’ He brushed sand and peat off his jeans. ‘Oh, and Millie? Meant to ask you, is Grace okay? I’ve not had a chance to talk to her and I wondered …’

  He’d never noticed how direct Millie’s eyes were. How she could look at you as if she was boring a hole through your good intentions and down to the base layer. ‘You wondered if she was avoiding you. Well, Prof, I have to say that, despite your very best attempts at wooing, Grace actually seems to quite like you.’

  Under the Rolling Stones, Duncan’s stomach did a little uplift of pride and hope. ‘Oh. Does she?’ He tried to sound nonchalant and ‘well, it’s fine if she doesn’t, barely know the woman, just asking’, but was aware that he failed by quite a margin.

  ‘Yeah.’ They began walking, picking their way over ankle high bushes that jutted from the hillside like benign tripwires. ‘She came over to the tent the other night, we all pretended it was for a bottle of wine but really?’ She gave him a shrewd look. ‘We had to go through all the “is it too soon after Jamie, does he pick women up often on sites, is he genuine”, kinda crap. We told her your intentions were honourable, if that makes you feel better.’ A sideways look. ‘They had better be honourable, because if they’re not I’m gonna come after you with a scalpel and an auger, get me?’

  ‘Oh yes, I get you loud and clear.’ Duncan winced. ‘I like Grace. I know she still … that Jamie still features in her life and that’s fine. It’s good, in fact. I like the idea that she hasn’t just forgotten someone who meant so much to her. I only want her to …’ He shrugged. ‘I just want her to like me. Crabbit old bugger that I am.’

  ‘I’ve done my best.’ Millie stopped him with a hand on his arm. ‘It’s up to you now.’

  He felt his face stretch into a smile. ‘Yeah, thanks.’ But he couldn’t stop his brain from coming up with images, and the imaginings that had plagued him increasingly since he’d met Grace. If we ever … if there’s ever a situation that needs me there … like, I don’t know, just thinking it and way way ahead of myself here but … say we had kids. And she needed me there, but I’d been lifted and locked up pending another alibi. What kind of a life is that? ‘I’m just not sure I’m very good at the interpersonals, to be honest.’

  Those astute eyes looked into his again for a moment, and then she swiped an impatien
t hand at her hair, almost like a distraction. ‘Trust me here, being a gay woman is just as much about letting someone in to a life that might not all be sunshine and roses as any other. We don’t have some kind of monopoly on easy dating and cosy relationships. Life is …’ A hand waved to indicate the site. ‘Shit heaps and deep holes. You just have to take the gold brooches when you uncover them.’

  The site was largely deserted; everyone had flocked to the causeway and were clustered around Kyle, who was stooping over something, brushing mud carefully from it as it lay in the side of a carefully stratified trench, deep within the river mud deposits. Ritual offering? Duncan felt his heart speed up.

  ‘Rich? What have we got? Good work, Kyle.’ He bent and slapped the digger on the back.

  To his surprise, Richard called everyone off site for a lunch break. ‘I’ll get the Prof to have a quick look, you all get some lunch. It’s going to be a long day, so make sure you all get plenty.’

  Slowly and, to him, a little reluctantly, the digging students filtered off up to the catering tent, leaving the site mostly empty, apart from one or two volunteers who were drawing sections through trenches up at the house sites. When he was sure they’d all gone, Richard jumped down into Kyle’s trench.

  ‘We’ve got one or two good finds, looks like an example of ritual deposits, off this side of the causeway.’ He pointed, his arm scanning a line that ran about five or six metres. ‘What we’re looking at would have been deep water, maybe a pool, standing around ten metres off the causeway, so deposits thrown in purposefully, rather than dropped.’

  ‘So far, so normal, if exciting.’ Duncan watched from the side of the trench. Richard motioned at him to join him.

  ‘And then, we find this. Absolutely in situ, locked in the same strata as the other finds, no sign of disturbance.’ And Richard bent down and pointed.