“I promise I’ll pay you back as soon as I … come back again. Here. In a day or two. Only I haven’t got any cash with me and nothing in my bank.”
“Whoa.” He held up his hands. “First off, I’d be happy to lend you the money, but it won’t do you any good.”
“Why not?”
“Because today is Sunday. Shops’ll be closed.”
“Sunday? Shit!”
“Should I be worried you don’t know what day it is?”
“Bristol!” she nearly shouted. “There’s a big shopping center there that’s bound to be open on a Sunday.”
“Lucky for us that won’t be necessary. As it happens, I know a man who has just what you’re looking for.”
“You do? That’s great. Will he let us borrow it? Can you phone him and ask? Where do we have to go?” She paced up and down even as Liam pressed a mug of tea into her hand, impatience beginning to get the better of her.
Liam sipped his hot drink and then said, “You can ask him yourself. And we only have to go there.” He pointed out of the window at the back of the kitchen toward the building behind. Toward the pub.
“Harley?” she asked. “Harley has a metal detector?”
“Used to be quite the enthusiast. Are you going to sit down or what?”
Xanthe forced herself to perch on one of the kitchen chairs and did her best to gulp the scalding tea. “Sorry to do this to you,” she said. “Again.”
“What are friends for? Just to be clear, your mum still thinks you’re in Milton Keynes, right?”
Xanthe nodded. “Have you seen her lately?”
“Spotted her buying chutney at a stall in the Saturday market yesterday.”
“How did she seem?”
“I could hear her haggling, trying to beat down the price of the pickle.”
Xanthe smiled, relieved. “That sounds like Mum.” She drank her tea, avoiding Liam’s gaze, hoping to avoid difficult questions. He clearly picked up on her restlessness and eagerness to get on with what she had to do, as he got up and pulled a leather jacket on over his T-shirt before pushing his feet into sneakers.
“Come on,” he said, picking up his car keys. “We’ll go and wake up Harley, you can use your very best smile on him, and I promise we’ll have you up at the manor house before sensible people are out of their beds.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen clock that plainly said the time was a quarter to six.
They decided there was more likelihood of getting Harley to hear them if they tried the rear of the pub. Liam helped her climb over the locked wooden gate that led into the small yard where barrels of beer were delivered. They walked around a store shed and on to the kitchen entrance, where they both set about knocking and calling. After what felt like an interminable wait there came sounds of heavy footsteps and muttered Scottish curses. Locks were turned, bolts pulled back, and the door finally hauled open.
Harley appeared, a shirtless vision, his upper body a wealth of tattoos mapping his youth, his beer-grown belly just a little too much for his jeans to contain, his bare feet strangely vulnerable. He opened his mouth, no doubt to let loose a stream of bad language to vent his fury at having been dragged out of bed at such a painful time on a Sunday morning. When he saw them standing there the surprise of it took the wind from his sails. He looked from Liam to Xanthe and back again and then gave a low growl.
“This had better be good,” he said.
It took a maddening ten minutes to make him understand what they wanted, and to convince him they were not planning some manner of robbery. He clearly hated not being given all the facts, his natural curiosity as an amateur historian demanding answers. At last he saw that Liam could not give him any, and that Xanthe would not. Reluctantly, he led them up to the attic, where they dug through endless boxes, piles of books, a large vinyl record collection, and several leather biker jackets before Harley spotted what was wanted.
“There she is, the little beauty!” he cried, removing the long-stemmed gadget from its dusty box. The thing resembled nothing so much as a bagless vacuum cleaner. He flicked a few switches. “Haven’t had her out in years. Aye, but we had some hunts, out in the misty mornings, looking for coins and so forth. Annie wasn’t so keen on me wandering off looking for treasure when we’d a pub to run, though. I kind of got out of the way of it, you know. Now, has the old girl got any charge left in her?”
They waited while he twiddled knobs. Small lights came on. He waved the machine over a nearby random bicycle wheel. It made no sound, not a single beep. Xanthe began to feel desperate. They were wasting valuable minutes, if the thing wasn’t going to work they would have to drive miles to find another one. Just then there was a jittering bleep and then an earsplitting screech from the machine. Liam and Xanthe flinched, throwing their hands over their ears, but Harley laughed, delighted.
“There she blows! Will you look at that. Years of ignoring the poor wee thing and she’s still ready for action. Here.” He handed the detector to Liam, no doubt thinking a mechanic would know how to use it. “Take good care of her, laddie. I might just find time to start using her again, now that you’ve stirred the idea of hunting treasure in me.”
They thanked him, made all sorts of promises regarding both the metal detector and future explanations, and left as quickly as they could. Back at his workshop, Liam took Xanthe into the main bay of the garage.
“Time to give my latest project a run out,” he said. “I’ve been doing some fine tuning. Was looking for a moment to put her to the test.” With a flourish, he pulled back a dust sheet to reveal a gleaming red, soft-top classic sports car. She vaguely recognized it as the one Liam had been driving when he pinched her parking space at the auction. It had the top down to show off its cream leather seats, walnut dashboard, and leather steering wheel. He was obviously waiting for a reaction.
“Very nice,” was all she could manage.
“Nice? This is only a mint condition MG V8 Roadster. Nice, indeed!”
“Does it go?”
He clutched at his heart. “I am wounded! Just get in. You’ll see.”
He put the metal detector on the tiny space behind the seats and opened the door for her, before jumping into the driver’s seat. They left Marlborough, and the pretty summer countryside flashed by as the MG purred along. She was relieved Liam did not question her further. She realized then that his apparent flippancy was his way of letting her off the hook. If he admitted he could see how serious the whole thing was to her, he would have to know more about it. This way he could help her without pressing her for more answers. Impossible answers to impossible questions. There was no traffic to slow them down. Even the tractors seemed to have taken a day off. With each passing mile she worried more and more that she would not find what she was looking for. It was a huge area to search, even with a metal detector. At last they came to the village that had sprung up around the estate, and wound their way along the lanes to the house itself. She asked Liam to stop at the top of the long driveway. For a moment she felt completely disorientated. Great Chalfield had been extended and enlarged over the years but was still recognizably the same house, and just for a few seconds she was unsure not where she was but when. She could have been sitting in the back of an open carriage rather than an open-topped car. She could have been about to call on the Lovewells, or meet Samuel in the Great Hall. With a pang she thought of his beloved screen and how she had loved working on it with him. Was it there, she wondered. Had he succeeded? Had his creative vision been translated through craftsmanship into something that had lasted centuries? Because the auction had been held in the old barn she had not been inside the house itself. She wished she could do so then, so that when she next saw Samuel she could make him believe that all his hard work and skill would bear fruit.
“Where d’you want to start?” Liam asked, jolting her from her thoughts.
She glanced around. “Can we park the car here somewhere? I don’t want to get too close to the house or we might be seen. I need to loo
k in the area to the south of the stables. It reaches down across the fields to a small stream.”
Liam turned the car off the drive onto a farm track and found a place for it behind some trees. The track only led to more fields, and they decided to trust to it not being used so early on a Sunday morning. Taking the detector, they made their way as far along the drive as they dared before dropping down across the sloping pasture. Xanthe heard a dog bark somewhere, but no one seemed to be up. The day was already beginning to heat up, the cloudless sky hosting a warm sun, despite the early hour. She had grown accustomed to the autumn weather and found herself squinting at the brightness of the morning.
“When do you want to use this?” Liam asked, holding up the detector.
“Not here. Not yet. Alice … the person who hid the pieces, she ran from the house, past the stables, down across the parkland. There were no hedges or fences here then.…”
“Then?”
She did not respond to his query. “I don’t think she could have found a hiding place out here in the open.” She stopped, hands on hips, looking around. The landscape had changed little, but there were changes, and they weren’t helpful ones. Had that small bunch of trees been there in 1605? Or that run of hazel hedge? Or that pond? They walked on. Further down the slope the stream came more clearly into view. It had quite steep-banked sides. Alice might have been able to reach it, and then those muddy banks would have provided a place where she could have squashed the scissors and needle case in. It would have been the work of a moment. Liam followed Xanthe as she started to walk along the water’s edge.
“Here,” she said, pointing. “Can you search the bank on this side?”
He switched the gadget on. There was a nerve-racking moment when the flickering charging light seemed to indicate loss of power, but then it steadied and set up a quiet, rhythmic beeping. To cover as much ground as possible they had to move horribly slow. They had made sure to set the detector to silver, so there were no time-wasting finds along the way. Just the beep-beep-beep of nothing to see here, nothing found. They trudged on. With a heavy heart she realized that anything pushed into such soft, wet mud, washed over by the river year after year, could easily have been dislodged. In fact, it was more than likely that the banks would have eroded, so that something so small and light could easily have been swept along and carried downstream to who knew where. She was on the point of despair when they reached the little stone bridge. She stopped so abruptly that Liam almost tripped over her.
“Seen something?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. Actually, yes, in a way, I have seen something.” She could not tell him she had seen it in a vision the first time, and then the second time when she had stood at the fire-damaged stables and looked down toward the stream. She had noticed the bridge then, but not thought of its possible significance. Only at this point did she work out that, when she had traveled back that time and arrived in the middle of the fire, if the building had not been burning, if the hayloft had not been filled with smoke, and if she had looked out of the loft window, it was this very bridge that she would have seen. That was what she was supposed to see. That was why she had been sent back to that exact place.
Suddenly, she felt hopeful. “It’s here somewhere!” she told Liam. “Here in the bridge, I’m sure of it. If Alice ran quickly she could have reached here before they caught her. And if she hid the chatelaine pieces among the stones, not in the mud, they could still be here.”
Liam did not question her thinking but raised the detector and swept it slowly from side to side over the start of the bridge. They paced across it. Nothing. They searched in the low stone walls on either side. Still nothing. Not a twitch from the machine. Not a glimpse of anything out of the ordinary. Just stone and stone and more stone.
“Not a glimmer,” Liam said, shaking his head.
“It has to be here. It has to be.” She walked back to the house side of the stream and stared at the bridge. If she had been Alice, running, breathless, terrified, knowing she had seconds maybe before she was caught, where would Xanthe have hidden those things that might get her hanged? What would she have done? And then it struck her. “Underneath!” she cried, scrambling down the bank beside the bridge. “It makes sense. They wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing as they caught her up.”
Liam followed her as she waded into the stream, the cool water making her gasp. It was no deeper than her knees and the flow gentle, but the weeds grabbed at her ankles, and the chalky river bed was unstable beneath her sandals so that she nearly fell in. Liam splashed through the water behind her, holding the detector high.
“Try it there,” she told him. “Right under the arch of the bridge.”
He did as she asked and almost at once the device started to squeal. It gave a high-pitched whine that rose and dipped depending on where it was pointed. Liam followed its lead, moving in the direction that appeared to set the thing off most. The sound grew louder, stronger. Xanthe searched where it seemed most definite, pulling at the moss that had grown to cover the gaps and crannies between the stones. There was mud. There were smaller stones. There were snails. She searched on. At last the detector settled on its highest note, insistent and shrieking. She clawed at the loose mud, mortar, and moss.
“Anything?” Liam asked.
“No. No … wait … there is something here. Jammed between these two stones. Look, here!” She scraped away a layer of lichen and yet more moss and then could clearly see something smooth and metallic and dully gleaming in the shadows. It was the handle of the scissors. Carefully, she wiped the mud from it with her T-shirt. She was then able to grasp the tiny handle between her fingers. At first it felt stuck solid, but as she wriggled it she felt it give. A tiny amount of movement became more, and then more, and at last she was able to pull the scissors free. She stared at the tarnished, muddy silverwork in her palm. Such a small thing, and yet of such significance to Alice. And to Flora. She probed inside the tiny gap again and easily found the needle case, which came free with less persuasion. She turned to show Liam their treasure.
“Cool,” he said. “I’m not going to ask how you knew they were there, or why they are so important, but they look like they might have been something special once.”
“They were. They still are,” she said, smiling.
“That’s better,” he said, smiling back.
At that moment they both heard the barking of dogs. Dogs getting nearer.
“Someone’s up,” he said, “and it sort of sounds like they’ve seen us. We should go.”
“Wait, I have to put these back,” she told him.
“Put them back?”
“Yes. Otherwise they won’t be there when I go to look for them. And they can’t travel back with me because they are already there.” She hastily jammed the pieces back into their hiding place.
“Run that by me again?” Liam could not keep the bafflement out of his voice.
“There isn’t time. I can’t explain.” She pushed moss over the gap, sealing it with more mud.
The dogs were close now, and a man was with them.
“Who’s there?” he called out. “This is private property.” He was less than pleased to find two strangers on his land before breakfast.
Liam scrambled up the bank and gave a cheery wave. “Good morning! Hoped we wouldn’t disturb you, getting out here so early,” he said.
“There is no footpath on this part of the estate,” the man informed them, peering past Liam to try and see what Xanthe was up to.
She joined Liam on the riverbank.
“Sorry,” she said, mustering another smile. “We were treasure hunting and following this lovely stream. Got a bit off the path, I suppose.”
“Yes, you did,” said the landowner. His expression suggested he was a long way from being convinced. His dogs, two black Labradors, turned out to be laughably friendly. Not the fearsome guard dogs Xanthe had anticipated, they panted and wagged around Liam and Xanthe and did
nothing more than jump up with muddy paws.
“Sorry,” she said again. “We’ll go straight away, of course. Could you point us in the best direction?”
The man refused to soften, however polite she was. “Go straight up to the drive and follow your nose. Away from the house.” He gave another hard stare and then turned on his Wellington-booted heel and marched away. His dogs bounded after him, oblivious to any tension.
“Right,” said Liam, shouldering the metal detector, “I think we’ve earned a decent breakfast.”
She tried her best to dissuade him. All she wanted to do was return to Marlborough, return to the blind house, and return to the seventeenth century. But Liam argued that it would not take long, and that she looked in need of a proper meal. She realized that this was his way of not letting her simply disappear again. However hard he was trying not to quiz her, he must have wanted to know more about what on earth was going on. How was he to know that minutes with him could mean hours or even days for Alice, either in the stinking prison in Salisbury, or already embarking on her fatal journey to the colony? In the end Xanthe decided it was quicker to agree with him and do what he wanted than it would be to argue. Twenty minutes later they were parked in a clearing off a busy road that led to the motorway, ordering bacon-and-egg sandwiches from a mobile stall that regularly served there.
“Best bacon butties for miles,” Liam assured her as they leaned against the boot of his car, tucking into their calorie-laden breakfasts, tomato ketchup dripping onto their laps. “Lorry drivers stop here to refuel before the M4. Don’t worry. It’s a faster road back to Marlborough from here. I’ll have you back in no time. Although, I have a hunch you will be off somewhere else the minute we arrive. Am I right?”
She nodded. “Yes. And, no, I can’t tell you where. I’m sorry. You’ve been such a help. I would have been stuck without you.”
“Oh somehow I think you’d have found a way, even on your own. I don’t think there’s much Xanthe Westlake can’t do if she sets her mind to it. Just don’t ask me to try to make sense of it all. You turn up at silly o’clock on a Sunday morning, desperate to find something, which you then leave where you found it?”
The Little Shop of Found Things--A Novel Page 32