‘So, it looks as though you’ve decided to make a recovery,’ Taid said, switching on the library’s gas fireplace. He poured two cups of sweet Earl Grey tea and settled next to her on the Chesterfield. ‘You had us worried for a while there.’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘So Grandmère said,’ she croaked.
‘It sounds as though your throat is still quite sore.’
Elizabeth shook her head.
‘Well, that’s good. Drink your tea while it’s hot, it’ll help. We haven’t talked properly for almost two weeks. How are you feeling, in general?’
‘All right, although I might be over soup soon.’
‘Ahh. It would be best if you can push through and keep eating it, actually.’
Elizabeth was puzzled. ‘For my throat?’
‘No, for Matty.’
Elizabeth frowned.
‘He’s been so very quiet and withdrawn,’ Taid explained. ‘The only thing he will do is cook with Madeleine, and he seems particularly dedicated to making soup for you.’
‘I’ll keep eating it, then, of course. Anything he makes for me.’
‘Good. I meant how are you feeling in your life outside the house, though. Before you became ill, how were things at work? With Luke? Volunteering at uni?’
Elizabeth steeled herself against the memory of her last interaction with Carl.
‘I called the uni when you were sick,’ Taid said, ‘to let Carl know you wouldn’t be in last Saturday. I wasn’t sure what the arrangement was between you.’
Elizabeth closed her eyes against Taid’s next words.
‘He seemed surprised that I called. Even though he said that was fine, I got the impression he wasn’t expecting to see you. Did something happen?’
Elizabeth’s face must have displayed her fury.
‘I thought as much,’ Taid said. ‘Well?’
Bitterness filled Elizabeth’s mouth. ‘He fired me.’
‘Cariad, are you sure? You thought he had last time, but he got over it.’
‘Yes,’ Elizabeth croaked, ‘I’m sure. He banned me from working on the remains, ordered me to give all my data to Alice, and took back my lab keys.’ She looked Taid in the eye. ‘He meant it this time.’
‘I’m sorry. I know how much it meant to you.’
‘Yes.’ What else could she say?
‘May I ask what happened?’
‘He made up stupid things to put in the first paper about the site. I wanted to wait for evidence. He got really angry. I tried to placate him, but it didn’t work, so I gave up.’ Elizabeth’s voice faded to a hoarse whisper. ‘I told him it was wrong, and he fired me. End of story.’
‘Ah, my poor little existential donkey,’ Taid said.
Elizabeth smiled wanly.
‘I suppose this means you’ll go back to reading about archaeology in your spare time? You’ll need to be up to date with the latest developments when you win one of those tutoring jobs.’
‘I doubt I’ll get a tutoring position now. Carl will stop it.’
‘I can’t see how. Is he a lecturer in the department?’
Elizabeth shook her head.
‘Then I can’t see why he would be part of the selection process,’ Taid reasoned. ‘You didn’t put him down as one of your referees?’
‘No. He’d already behaved unpredictably once by then, so I wasn’t sure what he’d say about me.’
‘Good. Then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. So, until you win one of the tutoring positions…’
‘If I win one of the tutoring positions…’
‘All right, Miss Cautious. Regardless of whether you win one of the tutoring roles or not, I think you should keep working on archaeology on Saturdays. It made you so happy. The question is, what topic should you concentrate on?’
Elizabeth sighed. Losing her place on the Juluwik team and forgoing access to the Olmec remains might be the price she had to pay for defending good scientific practice, but it was steep.
‘I’m not sure. All I want is to keep working on the Olmec remains, and get to the point of publishing my own analysis as primary author, but I can’t. I can help one of the grad students with her work, though.’
‘Is there any reason you can’t finish the analyses you started, as well as helping the grad? Did you collect all the data you need?’
‘I have everything I need for at least one analysis. Only Carl told me he’d sue if I did anything with it.’
‘Well then, you can’t publish it…but he can’t stop you from finishing your analysis for yourself, can he?’
‘No. I guess not.’
‘Then I think you’ve found your Saturday project.’
‘Yes.’ Elizabeth’s enthusiasm precipitated another coughing fit.
Taid patted her gently on the back. As she sipped her tea, trying to lubricate her throat, he sat back, spread his arms and smiled.
‘Let the analysis begin!’
Elizabeth’s grin answered his. They hadn’t done this in so long.
‘Ffwrdd a ni!’ Let’s go!
Taid chuckled. He loved it when Elizabeth spoke Welsh.
‘First, what are your questions?’ he asked. ‘Quickly, don’t think about it!’
‘Who were the people in the cemetery? Why do they seem to be so closely related? Were they all buried at the same time? How could Juan misinterpret the remains so badly? What is Carl up to…He can’t seriously believe the unfounded ideas he’s coming up with.’
‘See? Plenty to fill up your Saturdays. Now, you seem to have two sets of questions. One: who were the people and what happened to them? Two: why does Carl seem determined to misinterpret the data?’
‘That’s it.’
‘So, my little donkey, let’s open your shaving kit and apply it to the second question first.’
Elizabeth had created the moniker ‘existential donkey with a philosophical shaving kit’ during her difficult second year at university. Miserable in her yearning for Luke, she had thrown herself into philosophy in a search for inner peace. Taid already referred to her as an existentially challenged, angst-ridden donkey, after her childhood obsession with Eeyore. Once she read of Occam’s Razor, Hitchens’ Razor and Hanlon’s Razor, however, she added the idea of her donkey carrying a philosophical shaving kit.
‘First, Hanlon’s Razor,’ said Taid, ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. We have to ask, are Juan and Carl’s mistakes due to incompetence, or intent?’
‘Well, even though he’s intelligent, Juan was lazy during our undergrad degrees. I don’t think there was any malice in the mistakes he made with the skeletons, I think he just didn’t care enough to do a proper job.’
‘All right. And Carl?’
‘I honestly don’t know. He has to be smart in order to be the leader of so many excavations, right?’
‘Ambitious, at the very least.’
‘And he keeps going on about how many people’s careers he can influence. Is that an indicator of malice?’
‘Motivation, possibly. We can come back to him. As for answering your first question, who these people were and how they wound up in the cemetery, what information do you have?’
‘My observations of the skeletons, all my metric and non-metric data, and…’ Elizabeth tapped her temple, ‘…everything in the site files, as well as the Mesoamerican datasets of dental non-metrics I found in the literature.’
‘Excellent.’ Taid poked her kneecap. ‘Smart little donkey.’
‘So, what should I do next?’ Elizabeth knew what his answer would be, but she liked hearing him say it.
‘Approach it like any other research question, of course. Define your questions, your methodology for answering them, develop your models, run your analyses, examine your results and…voila.’
‘It’s a plan. I can work on this at night after work.’
‘All right, but don’t overdo it, cariad.’
‘I won’t, I promise.’
Making her way back to her bedroom, Elizabeth wondered if identifying the women and children would help her figure out what Carl was up to. And maybe, if she could work out why Carl was deliberately misinterpreting their remains, she could do something about it.
— —
Over the course of the following week, after work and between cat naps, Elizabeth worked out her approach to her ‘Saturday Project’.
One of her grandmothers delivered a bowl of soup each night for dinner. The previous evening Nainai had brought her ginger and chicken soup, a perennial household favourite in the cold and flu season. Tonight, over an enormous serving of French country chicken noodle soup prepared by Matty, Elizabeth defined her questions. Exactly what did the skeletal remains represent? How closely were the individuals related, both genetically and in time? Where did they sit in the wider population? And…
Her head was still too fuzzy to work properly. She stopped for a break to look around her bedroom. She loved the design: white built-in bookshelves lined the wall opposite the door, surrounding a pressed tin fireplace. The mirror above the fireplace reflected an enormous chandelier that hovered over her white wrought-iron four-poster bed. A matching white writer’s desk displayed her computer and an antique pith helmet gifted from Taid. Beside the desk, a deep-red chaise longue sat in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors that led to her balcony…
Oh dear. If she was contemplating colour schemes, she was too tired to concentrate. Time for bed.
— —
The next night Elizabeth sat at her desk nutting out her methodology. She had everything she needed to complete a dental non-metric analysis, which would allow her to see how closely related the Juluwik people were to other groups from Mesoamerica. But what could she do to work out the relationships between her skeletons? There were the DNA analyses that Alice was running, of course, but the results might not be available for months.
What about the timing of the burials? Something had seemed strange about that when she first looked through the site records. She would review the records again in her phrenic library, paying close attention to the stratigraphy.
How about the writing? Carl was hanging a lot of his claims on that. She would contact Henry again, as soon as the first publication was out, and ask him to explain what each of the glyphs meant. That way she could check Juan’s translation of ‘royal’ and ‘male’.
Nainai pushed open her bedroom door with one foot. Elizabeth rose from her chair. ‘Let me help you.’
‘No, Yīlìshābái, please stay there. If you could clear a space on the end of your desk?’
Nainai put down a tray containing a bowl of fragrant slow fire winter melon soup and a beautifully written letter.
Elizabeth read out the characters. ‘Fēng xiàng zhuàn biànshí, you rén zhú qiáng, you rén zào fēngchē.’
She paused. ‘Sorry Nainai, give me a moment. I know what the characters mean: wind, building, walls, people, but I can’t put it together.’
‘I don’t think I taught you this one,’ Nainai said. ‘Literally, it means, “When the wind of change blows, some people build walls, while others build windmills.” ’
Nainai’s look suggested she was solving all of Elizabeth’s problems, but Elizabeth couldn’t see how. ‘Ah. I see.’
‘I think the English equivalent is, “When one door closes, another opens.” Perhaps the path you chose for yourself is no longer available, but you are still you. You can find another way to express yourself.’
This was exactly what Taid kept telling her. Elizabeth suspected grandparental collusion. ‘Yes, I see. Thank you.’
— —
By Friday morning Elizabeth was looking forward to sleeping in over the weekend. She was also eager for her afternoon coffee with Nathan. Lynton, her other friend from Maps, joined them this time.
‘Thank you so much for the card and fruit,’ she said to both of them.
‘It was Nathan’s idea, actually,’ Lynton said, waving happily in his direction.
‘Well, it’s what my mum likes,’ Nathan said. ‘So! It’s weeks since we caught up. Are you better now?’
‘Mostly. Just very tired.’
‘Work was okay this week?’
‘Yep, and Judy was nice. She looked after the service desk so I could work sitting down in the back.’
‘That’s good,’ Lynton said. ‘It can take ages to get over being sick. And how’s everything going with that gorgeous boyfriend of yours?’
‘Well…okay, I guess.’
‘Something wrong?’
‘No, everything’s fine. I’m missing him, that’s all. It’s so hard, being separated most of the year.’
‘I can imagine. I couldn’t bear to be apart from my hubby for even a week!’
‘I’ve been curious about something,’ Nathan said to Elizabeth, ‘but it might be a sore point.’
Was he going to ask how she and Luke maintained a long-distance relationship? That would be too personal to talk about.
‘How’s everything with your volunteering job? If you’ve been sick, you haven’t been able to do it, I suppose.’
That was almost more awkward than talking about her relationship with Luke. ‘Well, things aren’t great. I was fired.’ Saying it quickly hurt less.
‘I’m sorry,’ Nathan and Lynton replied together.
‘It’s okay. I stood up for what was right, and as my grandparents say, sometimes there’s a price. I’m still working on the data I collected, though, just for myself. I want to find out what happened at the site. I can’t stop wondering about the stories of the women and children buried there.’
‘Good for you, don’t let anyone stop you,’ Lynton said.
‘Did you talk to Henry Evans about the site again?’ Nathan asked.
‘Not yet, but I will. There are a few things I want to ask him. I’ll email him tonight and ask if he’s free to talk over the weekend.’
— —
By dinner time the following evening Elizabeth had pieced together a full framework for her literature review, methodology and models. She explained her progress to Taid over a bowl of French onion soup. They both made noises of appreciation as they ate and talked. Grandmère was an expert at choosing just the right onions, the exact brandy and a perfect sprig of thyme to produce a divine onion soup.
That night, excitement prevented Elizabeth from falling asleep straight away. Despite still feeling disappointed at losing her place on the Olmec team, there was a deep satisfaction in continuing her investigation at home. And she would talk to Luke tomorrow. She couldn’t wait!
She finally fell asleep, her cartouche curled in the palm of her hand. She dreamt that the ballplayer was talking to her, but she couldn’t make out the words.
— —
Elizabeth stayed in her room most of Sunday. The Skype bell didn’t sound. She managed to distract herself by watching DVDs of Black Books and Doctor Who. As soon as each episode ended, though, she was aware of the sound of her own pulse in her ears. It was six weeks since she and Luke last spoke…wasn’t he as anxious to talk to her as she was to him?
In the end, she had to give up and prepare for bed. She hadn’t heard back from Henry, either, she realised. Then, a bell, just as she crawled beneath the covers. Elizabeth flew to her computer desk and flicked the mouse – Luke! She was so relieved to see his handsome face.
‘Hi, Lizzie-bear. Long time no see!’
‘Is everything okay? Are you all right? Why didn’t you call me earlier? Weren’t you worried about me? Have you heard about your job applications?’
Luke smiled. ‘Lizzie, slow down. I have plenty of time now, let’s catch up.’
‘So, have you heard anything about your applications?’ she repeated more calmly.
‘No, it’s far too early for that.’ Luke paused. ‘I don’t want you to get your hopes up too much, Lizzie. It’s possible that I won’t get a position, you know.’
‘Of course you will. You�
�d be perfect for either the lecturer or tutor roles.’
‘We have to be realistic,’ Luke smiled disarmingly again. ‘It’s likely that one of the other applicants has a lot more experience than me. Don’t worry. If it’s meant to be, it will be. So, how’s your work on the Juluwik site going?’
They talked for more than an hour, covering everything to do with Carl’s deceit, the Olmec remains, her illness, her job application, Luke’s work at his Mayan excavation and his plans to come home for a long break after Christmas. Luke was suitably outraged by Carl’s behaviour, and Elizabeth felt her annoyance with Luke’s extended silence fade as they chatted.
Drifting off to sleep, Elizabeth felt more herself than she had in weeks.
— —
When she logged on to her computer on Monday night, Elizabeth found the first email in her inbox was from Henry.
Elizabeth
The paper has come out. I’ve pasted the link below. It’s almost as if you and I spoke about a different site.
Henry
What was Henry on about? Oh well, didn’t matter. This was it! The moment she had been waiting for. Finally, her name – Dr Elizabeth Pimms – on a real academic paper in a real academic journal.
Elizabeth clicked through to the link.
It was an online journal Elizabeth hadn’t heard of before.
She scanned the page.
Her name wasn’t on the paper.
Anywhere.
— —
Elizabeth let the shock of this latest disappointment wash over her during dinner. Although she was outraged, given Carl’s behaviour up until now she probably should have seen this coming.
Climbing the stairs to her bedroom after dessert, Elizabeth decided to look through the paper more carefully. It wasn’t what she expected at all. There was no overarching description of the site, no photos…in fact, nothing concrete. The paper was just more of Carl’s wild speculation, which explained Henry’s comment.
Elizabeth leant back in her chair to work out her next steps. She needed to let Henry know she wasn’t responsible for Carl’s paper, and that she was working on Juluwik in her own time. Perhaps she should Skype him on the weekend.
There was something else: Alice’s name wasn’t on the paper either. Just how many people had Carl duped?
Olmec Obituary Page 14