by Mavis Cheek
When Dorcas arrived Molly was deep into reading her grandfather’s notebook II – in case she had missed anything. But so far as she knew she had not. ‘Marvell?’ she said, looking up dreamily, ‘Marvell, marvell, marvellous … Oh well, he probably meant marvellous. Something to marvel at.’
Dorcas said, ‘Miles is very curious.’
‘He is,’ said Molly. ‘Very, very curious indeed.’
Which set them both off.
The fire crackled as Dorcas threw on another log or two. Then she leaned back, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes, ‘No but seriously,’ she said, ‘he’s seen the covers go up. And he wants to know why. Shall I tell him something? Shall I? Tell him something?’ Dorcas tried to look innocent but did not succeed. People with honest noses are unlikely to be convincing when in deceptive mode. Dorcas was being appropriately nosey.
‘Not half as much as you want to know why,’ said Molly. Which Dorcas had to admit was perfectly true. ‘I’m saying nothing to anyone,’ said Molly. ‘Until I have something to say. Until then, I work alone and hidden from the world.’ Dorcas rolled her eyes. Molly clamped her lips over the rim of her glass by way of conviction. ‘But I might let you come up some time if you can do it without anyone else – especially Miles – knowing. Otherwise it will be come one, come all – and that would be disastrous.’
Donald went back indoors and, after closing the front door, leaned on it with a look of painful confusion on his face. He had still not eaten and he had just watched Winifred stride down the village street, in a manner in which he had not seen her stride for many years, and push her way into the Old Holly Bush with a determination that would not have been amiss in Monty approaching Rommel. Why? What on earth was Winifred doing going into the pub? She never went into pubs, let alone the local. He feared, very much, that it was hormones again. He feared very much that she would buy a drink and then throw it over someone. Or worse … He ran a distressed hand over his forehead. ‘My God,’ he whispered, ‘she’s taken to drink.’ He took a deep breath and removed his sagging back from the front door and without seeing the irony he went swiftly into the sitting room and picked up the bottle of Macallan (ten-year-old fine oak, Waitrose) and poured himself a very stiff measure, very stiff indeed. Medicinal. He often recommended it to his patients.
In the pub Dorcas and Molly were embarking on their second half-pint of ale when a voice behind them said softly, ‘Miss Bonner. I saw what happened to your camera.’ Molly, her mouth still fixed around the rim of her beer glass, turned slowly – as did Dorcas, who was merely holding her beer, and there was Winifred Porlock, eyes bright with excitement, cheeks aquiver and looking slightly mad.
‘I’m quite adept with the things, or I used to be – a correspondent who does not understand the art of camerawork is a fool – though latterly I was more involved with television. The last film I ever presented in that medium was about archaeological finds in this region. I’ve still got the video of it.’ She sounded slightly wistful. ‘I expect such cameras are even easier now. And I’m discreet. Nothing would be said of the venture unless you spoke of it first. Discretion is my middle name. You cannot be the wife of a doctor without being discreet … And I did do a course, quite an extensive course, in digging. One had to get to know the process in order to talk about it.’ She held up her little trowel. ‘And I still have this.’
Winifred’s eyes peered hungrily at Molly as if she had not eaten for a month and Molly was food. Molly put down her glass and darted a quick look at Dorcas, who nodded and then said, ‘Winifred, how nice to see you. Sit down. What can I get you to drink?’ But Winifred Porlock’s bright eyes were still fixed on Molly. Molly, she could see, was considering her offer. After a moment, taking Dorcas’s nod as a sign, Molly smiled at Winifred. ‘That,’ she said, ‘would be so very helpful … Mrs Porlock.’
‘Please call me Winifred. Winnie, if you like. Anything. But let me help.’
‘Winifred. Thank you. But are you sure?’ What Molly really meant was could she be sure. She already knew that this was a two-person job, at the very least, and if Winifred Porlock really had done a proper course – if she knew how to use a trowel and brush as well as a camera and how to keep her counsel – how useful that would be.
Winifred nodded. It was a firm nod. A supreme nod. A nod that said it was the mother of all nods. ‘You can trust me absolutely. I was a good journalist once, and excellent in my documentaries on television. I also know enough about archaeological matters to be useful. I would love to be your camera wielder. I would do it for nothing and it would be a pleasure.’
‘It’s a movie camera,’ said Molly. ‘Or it will be, when it arrives. They’ll bike it over first thing. State of the art.’
‘I’m your woman,’ said Winifred firmly.
At which point Dorcas got up and repeated her question about buying a drink. Winifred looked up and said happily, ‘Why not? Yes. I will. A gin and tonic, please.’ Dorcas turned towards the bar. She had never seen Winifred in the pub before, never, she thought, bought Winifred a drink before – or even sat and chatted with her. All these years … Well, well. How things were changing. Dorcas decided that they were definitely changing for the better.
The door of the pub opened. There stood Donald looking about him anxiously. Seeing her husband, Winifred put out her hand and touched Dorcas on the arm. ‘And if you wouldn’t mind, could you make it a large one? Perhaps a very large one?’
Dorcas good-naturedly put aside her annoyance that it was now impossible for her to wheedle anything further out of Molly, and even more generously put aside her little spurt of jealousy at Winifred getting to do something up there while she could only watch from afar, or sneakily when invited, and went smiling to the bar. Despite these little irritations she was beginning to enjoy herself again, which was miracle enough.
Donald assumed he had not been seen and exited the pub as soon as he heard the words ‘a large one’. He had no intention of being around when his wife displayed yet another example of high spirits – both literal and metaphorical. What she was doing sitting with the archaeology girl he had no idea. Nor what it was that made her so pink of cheek. That archaeology girl seemed to be stirring everything and everyone up. He wanted to feel very cross with her. He wanted to tell her to leave Winifred out of the equation, whatever the equation was – but there was something about the way Winifred looked as she sat there between the two young women that made him stay silently by the door. The look he saw on his wife’s face seemed very much akin to happiness.
Four
A LETTER ARRIVED for Molly the next day, just as she was drying herself after the hottest shower she could manage. She took the hottest shower she could manage because the day had arrived not sunny and dry as hoped for but raw and damp, despite the season. One of her tutors told her that if you began the day at the site warm, you tended to stay that way. It worked. When Peter knocked at her door, Molly slipped a bare arm and shoulder (with a flash of knee) through the small opening she had made between door and jamb, took the envelope, closed the door. Peter went back down the stairs. Just as he skipped down the last few steps, Julie Barnsley arrived at the bar. She was on her way to a shopping jaunt in the town nearby and the bus went at half-past eight. She saw Peter was coming downstairs – and that Peter was smiling. He was smiling in that way even the most decent men will smile when they have disturbed a woman in her nakedness – no matter if it’s unseen – and almost immediately she heard a cry of pleasure from the top of the stairs. ‘Oh thank you Peter,’ sang out Molly. ‘That was just what I wanted.’
Bloody hell, thought Julie, the woman is at it with him now. But then she remembered. No business of mine, thought Julie Barnsley, none at all. It is of no consequence (a phrase noted by Julie and taken from the BBC’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice wherein the heroine got her wealthy man) – but when she asked Peter for a sub of her wages and saw that he was still smiling, her voice, which was normally rather gentle where he wa
s concerned, was icy and harsh. ‘Have you got a cold coming?’ he asked, as he handed her a couple of notes from the till. She marched out without a word. Peter was a good-natured fellow and simply shrugged at the unknowability of women. He had long thought that they were a breed which, if you required them to call a spade a spade, would immediately ask why you wanted them to do that and might find any number of reasons why it was a threat to their individuality.
Upstairs Molly was dressing as if for Antarctica. The weather was to be no more kind to her than it had been for her grandfather at first and she intended to be on site until it was dark. At least she would have a companion now, which cheered her up no end. Who would have thought that the doctor’s wife had such hidden talents? A reminder, she thought, hearing her grandmother’s admonishing voice, that you dismiss the older generation at your peril.
In The Orchard House Donald was peeping over the banisters at his wife. She was in the hall putting on a variety of garments that included mittens without all their finger lengths, earmuffs, a sou’wester and sturdy boots. As far as he knew, this was market day in Bonwell, Winifred always went on market day (he enjoyed the fruits of her labour in that there was always something particularly fine for their evening meal and quite often a treat for their lunch as well) but she did not, usually, dress as Captain Scott for the outing. When she slung a small rucksack on her back with the confidence of a youthful backpacker he had that sensation hitherto only read about in military histories: his bowels turned to water. A rucksack? Why? What on earth was in it? He watched in some horror but he said nothing. What was there to say?
Winifred opened the front door on to the early morning street and called up the stairs, ‘I’ll be out for lunch if you were intending to come back, but there’s kipper pâté in the fridge and bread and tomatoes. I’ll be late. Good-byeee.’ And the door slammed shut with a definite air of exaltation.
Donald sank to his knees. ‘Kipper pâté?’ he moaned. ‘Tomatoes?’ So it had come to this. Cold food. Madness. Winifred had always provided him with something hot when he came home for lunch. Always. One needed decent sustenance after a morning of coughing, moaning, unhealthy people. He was always telling his patients to eat a proper cooked lunch. Apart from which, he could not abide fish and she bloody well knew it.
In Hill View House, Miles was feeling irritated. Dorcas refused to tell him anything. Dorcas said that she knew nothing so had nothing to tell, but he knew that she had been in the pub with Molly the night before, and women always talked – it was their nature. Dorcas, however, remained absolutely mute on the subject he most wanted to hear about. When pushed she began on a minute description of what they had talked about which was, amongst other things, the perilous state of the Global Economy, and varicose veins. Miles did not wish to consider the perilous state of anything, or veins, or anything else not connected to the project. But Dorcas remained adamant. So Miles felt he must go to the Old Holly Bush himself that evening and see what he could discover.
He watched Molly trudge up the Hill with her hands in her pockets and a determined air and wished he could be a fly on the wall, or a beetle in the turf. But it was forbidden. If he broke the agreement she would go home. She could invite whomsoever she liked up there, of course. He gnawed his knuckles and watched. As if all that were not disturbing enough, as he watched, he saw – of all people – the doctor’s wife setting off up the Hill after Molly at an unusually determined pace. He flew out of his front door and called to her, very sharply, ‘Come down at once, Winifred. You are not allowed.’ But she paid no attention beyond smiling back at him and continuing. It was Molly who stopped and called out that it was quite all right. And both women continued the climb.
‘Dorcas? What in the world is Winifred Porlock doing dressed like a militant and going up the Hill?’
Dorcas merely shrugged. ‘I know nothing,’ she said, keeping her fingers crossed beneath the desk.
Miles threw on his coat and his cap and raced down the street to The Orchard House. Donald was looking pale and distressed.
‘Why is your wife going up that hill?’ he demanded.
Donald shrugged. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘But if it’s any help she’s intending to be up there all day and has left me kipper pâté and tomatoes for my lunch. So it’s not good news.’
Miles looked at him for a moment and tried to run his mind over these facts usefully – but he could come up with no connection. ‘She must have told you what she’s going up there for?’ he said sharply.
‘I just told you,’ said Donald. ‘Out. For the whole bloody day. Probably rambling – in more ways than one. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m late for my surgery.’ And he pushed Miles out of the house and followed him down the path.
Miles returned to Hill View. ‘The doctor’s wife, of all people, going up there. Why her?’ But the question was rhetorical. Dorcas shrugged again and waited to be asked something specific so that she could tease him further, but nothing more was said about Winifred. So she left Miles nicely in a state of suspense and fury and went on with her work. He stomped up the stairs to his bedroom and, as he so often did when in distress, he removed the solitaire from its hiding place and ran it through his fingers a few times much as a Greek will use his worry beads, but it did not calm him as much as it usually did. He felt that something was happening, something out of his reach, something taking place behind a veil of mystery. Or was it a monstrous deceit? He turned to the window and looked out at the Gnome, the monstrous Gnome indeed. Oh my Lord, he wondered, quite beside himself, what the hell have I unleashed?
With the covers in place the two women were quite hidden from view and protected from the wind-blown rain. April was, indeed, choosing to be the cruellest month. Winifred opened her rucksack and took out the camera and a battery-operated power light. ‘What is remarkable,’ she said, giving the machine a careful inspection, ‘is that cameras have become less complicated to use and more sophisticated in their abilities. This will be fine.’ Molly pointed to an oblong that she had marked with her tapes. Winifred did not, Molly was very pleased to see, make any comment on the fact that this oblong cut right across the most sensitive point of the Gnome’s vital equipment. Winifred merely pointed the camera at the shape, and then up at Molly, who spoke. After which, with much excitement, Molly and Winifred got down on their knees and began, very carefully, to remove the first layer of the shape, putting it into baskets for checking later. Who knew what they would find?
The hours passed cheerfully, the work went well and their hopes intensified as the baskets were filled. Both kept their hopes in check and were rewarded eventually by a find. Molly gave a little gasp of pleasure, for there was another pebble of shale – and this one was drilled with two small holes. Molly handed it to Winifred. ‘Kimmeridge shale,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
Winifred took the perfectly round pebble in her palm and peered at it. ‘Drilled. For jewellery, do you think?’
Molly peered at it again and keeping her voice calm said, ‘I hope so.’
Winifred nodded. ‘The rain has stopped. Do you want to take it into the light and I’ll film while you speak about it.’
It was good to be out in the air again. Molly took the other pebble from her finds box. She placed one on one hand, the other on the other hand, and held them both out to the camera. They were of the same size. A matching pair. Molly, trying to keep her voice even, pointed this out and said it might indicate that they were decorative beads rather then weights for weaving. ‘We cannot be certain,’ she said to the camera. ‘But without a doubt these two pieces of shale have been worked by human hand, and have been brought here for some purpose. Arthur Bonner found at least one of these back in 1914, though it is now lost. There is something profoundly moving about being the first to find them again.’
And, despite all her experience, so there was. To hold something in her hand that might have last been touched by a far-off ancestor never ceased to be a thrill. It was one of t
he experiences that made up for the weather, the disappointments, the unanswered. ‘All archaeologists hope that their work will shine a little more light upon the past. We think we know so much about our ancestors and the way they lived, but we really know so little. But I hope that by the end of this project we might solve the mystery of the Gnome. Why is he here? Who put him here? The Gnome is mysterious. There is no straightforward explanation of why he was placed where he was placed, or why he was made into such a – to our modern eyes – gross image. My grandfather undoubtedly found something – but he was not given enough time to mark it and log it properly. Maybe we will be able to do that. If so, it would complete the work my grandfather began and the laurels would be his.’
At which point Winifred shut off the camera and said, quite firmly, back in her media mode, ‘Enough talking. Let’s get on with it. But I could do with a pair of knee pads, not being quite as young as I was.’
From below the Hill Dulcima watched Molly skip down to her trailer, fish something out and race back. To her surprise Dulcima then saw the doctor’s wife take whatever the object was, appear to attach something to her knees, and crawl under the covers that had appeared overnight. Dulcima watched her heels and her bottom vanish within. Most strange. Winifred was always such an upright sort of a person. Wonder of wonders, thought Dulcima. Catching sight of Dorcas she toddled over to her. ‘What are they doing up there?’ she asked.
‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ said Dorcas. ‘Why not ask her yourself?’
‘Do you feel she is a force for good? I don’t know why, but I do. And it would be so nice to get Marion to go back up the Hill just once. I’m sure she’d be less inclined to devote herself to her horses if she did. It really is time she settled down with someone.’
Dorcas said thoughtfully, ‘Well, Molly’s certainly a force for something. I like her.’