The Lovers of Pound Hill
Page 24
Pinky went even pinker.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, the three of them. The floating clouds occasionally sent shadows across the sun and the landscape showed up its every bump and dip. ‘When you look down from here you could believe that nothing has changed for thousands of years,’ said Pinky.
Marion pulled at tufts of grass and looked thoughtful. ‘I wonder if the people who lived then were the same as the people who live now?’ she asked.
‘Oh I hope not,’ said Susie, ‘I hope they were a great deal nicer then, even if they did run around in animal skins and know nothing about salads.’
Pinky added, ‘Or plumbing.’
‘Both their own innards and a method for piped water,’ added his wife. Which they found extremely funny and which Marion did not. ‘Oh don’t mind Pinky,’ said Susie. ‘He takes plumbing very seriously, being that it’s his profession.’
‘Well,’ said Pinky defensively. ‘Try living for just one day without plumbing. No wonder they all died at thirty-five.’
‘Those that didn’t die at twenty from having a baby. Dangerous business, babies,’ said Susie, who rather enjoyed a touch of lugubriousness in everyday life.
‘Does anybody know what’s happening up on Pound Hill?’ said Marion, very quickly and suddenly appearing to come to life.
‘That girl—’
‘Molly, Pinky. Call her by her name.’
‘That girl Molly says they are coming on a treat and that we should know all about it in a week or two. But I don’t think it’s treasure. Miles asked her if she’d found anything valuable and she said something about it not being what some might find valuable but that she herself thought of it as archaeological riches. Miles has put his own twist on it and thinks it will be worth a bit.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows. It might all be nothing.’
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ said Susie. She sat upright and looked about her and gestured to the landscape with her fat little fingers, then pointed behind her. Both Marion and Pinky looked in the same direction. ‘Just think,’ she said. ‘Around the other side of that hill a secret is being unfolded from the earth. I think that’s very romantic. And under his wotsit, too … Or very near it. The number of times we’ve sat on that place – and nothing. Zilch.’ Susie brushed herself down with a satisfied air. ‘No one has sat on him as many times as me,’ she said proudly. ‘We’ll get going again when they’ve finished up there. Maybe the old fellah will be better after a bit of a rest.’
Pinky said nothing and appeared to be much involved with brushing himself down. ‘Maybe,’ said Susie, ‘there’ll be a little Pinky or a little Susie this time next year …’ She winked at Marion. Marion got up and also brushed herself down, though without the appearance of either amusement or satisfaction. ‘I have to go home,’ she said forlornly. ‘I’m courting, according to my mother, or learning how to be courted. At least it’s with Nigel so it’s not too bad.’
‘He’s a little sweetheart,’ said Susie. ‘Losing his mother like that. I hope you’ll be kind to him.’
Marion, looking slightly shifty, or possibly not, said that she intended to be very kind to Nigel. Very.
And leaving the two of them sitting there she mounted Sparkle and off she went. Riding, decided Pinky and Susie, like the devil was after her.
In his sermon that Sunday, the vicar dwelt on the doings of St Basil the Great. Who had, he reliably informed his parishioners, been very short. Had the vicar been able to see right over the pulpit and down into the front row, so to speak, he might have noticed that Sir Roger’s eyes were closed, and that Lady F. was staring up rapt at the glass in the east window (Victorian, c.1858/59) among which imagery was depicted a marriage ceremony. Dulcima thought it might be a sign. She had never thought about it much before. But then, as she told herself comfortably, she had never really thought about much over the last twenty years. Besides, it was one of those wimpish modern attempts at magnificence that so betrayed the beauties of the mediaeval stained glass it had replaced (small cannonball, courtesy of Oliver Cromwell, 1645), all heavy-browed lady saints and dismal-faced knights apparently going about God’s business with a severe cold and hair cut in a bob.
Nevertheless, the feeling of a marriage was very marked; no man held a girl’s hand in that way unless it was either a betrothal or matrimony. Jesus was doing something with jugs and the bridegroom was looking absolutely enchanted with what he had got in his goblet – and so were all the other men grouped about. Strangely, it had the look of a Spanish bar about it, with those jugs. It was obviously the Wedding at Cana and the moment when the water became wine. Dulcima, considering this, was surprised that the sense of craving did not creep into her. Over the last few days she had been so preoccupied with Marion that she had scarcely thought about drink but now, looking at it anew, the bride in the window appeared a touch bored and the setting oddly continental. She nudged her husband in the ribs. He snorted and awoke, astonished to find himself in a pew facing the lower steps of a pulpit. ‘There’s a wedding going on up there. It looks very odd, don’t you think?’ Sir Roger smiled to himself. He could see nothing near or around the altar except a couple of servers yawning. Certainly no wedding. That was more like it, that was more like the old Dulcie, seeing things after – he looked at his watch surreptitiously (19th-century gold Longines Admiral) – after eleven o’clock in the morning.
‘It’s where they usually have weddings, isn’t it?’ he said happily.
‘What, in a tapas bar?’ asked his wife.
Sir Roger snorted delightedly again but a pair of eyes, looking slightly strained perhaps because their owner was standing on tiptoe and was not in the first flush, appeared over the top of the pulpit with a look of deep disapproval. This immediately melted when the slightly strained eyes met the cheerfully twinkling eyes of their patron, but Sir Roger nevertheless squeezed his wife’s hand, and put his finger to his lips. It was one thing to have Dulcie back in her usual sweetly confused form, quite another to have to deal with the downside of that form, another little outbreak.
Dulcima Fitzhartlett did not mind being shushed. She continued to stare up at the stained glass. And the more she stared, the more she was certain that the woman in the window looked much as her own daughter would look one day – serenely bored. That was the outcome of a so-called good marriage. It was all a woman could expect in the world of good bloodstock. Until the children came along, of course, and then … Dulcima had thought it would never happen to her, the dulling of the spirit, but it had. She looked up at the scene in the window set above the wedding. Jesus the baby in his little manger – all fat arms and legs – and gazing down on him the sweet-faced Mary without so much as a clue as to the future pain. Dulcima sank back against the pew. Give me good old Roman Catholic Virgin Queens of Heaven, she thought, for they, at least, showed in their depictions the sorrows the new mother had to come. Still – if you were looking for signs, and you wanted your only daughter to be married, these two images were as good as any.
A sound of scuffling and thumping broke into her thoughts. It came from the pulpit. No doubt it was the vicar making heavy work of his desire to raise the floor of the place. Philistine that he was. The pulpit was fashioned from ancient tawny marble – even the iconoclasts had not harmed it in their brutalities, and Dulcima would be damned if she would allow it to be covered up or removed. It was a darn sight better to look at than the vicar. It was beautiful, it spoke down the generations, it was not to be covered by something grotesque. For some reason that made her think of the Gnome and the work on Pound Hill. She spoke the thought out loud. ‘When will it be finished?’ she asked the air in front of her. Sir Roger wished there was some way to stop one’s vicar on earth going on so long, too. ‘Soon,’ he said, patting her hand this time. ‘Soon.’
‘I can’t wait,’ said Dulcima, sounding alive to the world suddenly.
Sir Roger knew what that meant. ‘I’ve already asked Orridge to put it on ice, my dear.’
In the Old Manor, while her parents were at church, Marion Fitzhartlett was sitting awkwardly on a bench just outside the tennis court. She had been excused church for the occasion. Nigel was standing, with equal awkwardness, by the side of the bench and looking with horror at a tennis bat he held in his hand. On the bench, next to Marion, was a box of brand new, bright yellow balls. Nigel was not, thank God, wearing shorts – but he had borrowed a pair of Orridge’s plimsolls (space cut out for bunions, c. 1986) and was preparing to make a fool of himself. Marion wore a white skirt, pleated, to just above her knee, and a navy blue cardigan over a white Fred Perry shirt. She looked perfectly correct. Almost, he thought, attractive. She, also, thought it a matter of almost spiritual gratification that Nigel had covered his legs. There was something distinctly spine freezing about a man’s hairy legs, in Marion’s opinion.
Conversation was not going well. This was not helped by Marion’s stating at the outset that she was here to learn how to spend relaxed time with young men and to eventually marry one of them and that he was the nearest her mother could find. Rather a bald statement, in Nigel’s opinion. Even he, not known for his seductive arts (unless you considered throwing yourself at almost every available woman under forty an art) thought the statement a bit too direct. Hence the conversation not going well.
‘Well, what do you want me to say to you?’ she asked. At which Nigel could only shrug. They both seemed to realise that a game of tennis was out of the question. Nigel did not know the rules and kept referring to the white markings on the court as ‘the touchline’, which Marion found slightly offensive. Then Marion had a brainwave. ‘Why don’t we go indoors and watch some tennis? Queen’s Club?’ Nigel, having first established that this was not code for something weird, agreed.
After a while Nigel began to find two grown men batting a ball to each other very entertaining and relaxed into the sofa. Marion also relaxed into the sofa, but at the other end. It was a big sofa, big enough for five bottoms, very squashy and covered in something faded and flowery (‘Camoensia’, Rosebank Fabrics, c.1950). And so time passed pleasantly enough. Marion pointed out what was happening, why the feet had to be where they had to be, what deuce meant, what love meant – and had the grace to laugh at the silliness of the word in the context of tennis – which made Nigel laugh too. At some point Orridge arrived with a tray of tea and a plate of thin bread and butter which Nigel wolfed down without finesse. Marion relaxed even more. It was exactly like being with her brother.
When the front door slammed shut and a voice called out ‘Marion, Marion?’ Marion jumped amazingly high, perhaps a trick learned from a horse, thought Nigel, and as she landed she said, ‘Oh heck, there’s my mother and she’ll expect me to have engaged your interest.’
Nigel looked around the room. It was a nice room. A comfortable room. One of the oldest in the house. It had dusky pink walls with beams running through them, a pair of old dark red rugs on the floor, a huge fireplace with a pile of unlit logs sitting inside a curly iron fire-basket, cheery pictures of hunting scenes and little old ladies in frilly caps hanging above an upright piano, and some watercolours of ducks and pheasants above a table full of games – dominoes, cards, marbles and the like. The two windows were small and the glass diamonds let in very little light. Nigel was comfortable here, he was beginning to quite like tennis-watching, he had been told to come up to the Manor by his father so that was all right – and now it would all come to an end. So it was Nigel’s turn to have a brainwave. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we pretend to be – well – getting on together? That lets us both off the hook.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Marion. ‘Absolutely brilliant.’
And awkwardly they both moved towards the middle of the sofa and held hands just as the door of the room opened slowly and two sets of parental eyes appeared. Both sets blinked. Nigel immediately stood up and said ‘Hallo, sir. Hallo Lady—’
But he was stopped by a hand, held up to still him. ‘Sit down again,’ said Marion’s mother sweetly. ‘Go on with what you are doing.’
The expression on Marion’s father’s face did not altogether match the mood. If he had come upon Nikita Krushchev in the bath with his wife he could not have looked crosser. Nigel smiled nervously and looked away as Lady Dulcima appeared to nudge her husband. Both sets of eyes disappeared behind the closing door. Marion and Nigel giggled (the noise of which made one of the listeners at the door thoroughly approve while the other bit his tie) and slid back to their seat. Play resumed. Though it might be noted that the couple remained where they were, close together in the middle of the sofa.
Up on Pound Hill the Gnome was giving up his secret – but slowly, slowly. The weather continued kind and the two women were down to the most delicate of brushwork now, and trying to keep their hands steady despite the excitement they felt. By late afternoon one day towards the end of the second week they realised that they had only stopped for drinks of water – and both felt a little giddy from bending, concentrating – and not eating. ‘We ought to stop now,’ said Molly, with regret, ‘We might start to make mistakes if we carry on …’
Winifred stood up and made several little groaning noises as she straightened her knees. ‘I don’t want to leave it,’ she said, also with regret. ‘But I think you are right. Tomorrow will be the day.’
‘Shall we tell Dorcas before anyone else? Tomorrow night?’
‘Well, I’d say that’s a good idea – after that she could help. Not with the trench work, but if I show her how to use the camera and what to do and where to stand and everything, then Dorcas could make the film while we work on the very last bit. I’d like to be in that final part.’
‘So we tell her?’
‘I think so.’
‘She’ll be amazed.’
‘Not as amazed as us … No wonder the Gnome looked so angry when we started to dig.’
Miles wanted the job done, the silliness over, so that the building of the barriers and the museum and the little car park (good profits to be made from parking, as he had learned from NHS hospitals) could begin. He also hoped that what they had found was valuable, despite the girl saying it was not what one would expect. Miles wanted control back and it seemed he would have to go on waiting for a wretched eternity before he could get it. The only cheerful note in all this was that the other evening in the bar Molly had said that she might have some very good news for him shortly. But when he pressed her to give him a hint, just a hint, of what she might have found, she looked surprised. ‘Oh – it’s nothing to do with the dig. Nothing at all. It’s just possibly very good news, that’s all.’ And after that, ask all he might, she would say no more.
When Miles brought up the subject with Dorcas the following morning she looked at him in amazement and said that Molly had said almost the same words to her on the previous night. ‘Perhaps,’ said Dorcas, ‘she’s just stringing us along after all. Perhaps she’s the mistress of smoke and mirrors. Perhaps there is nothing to find and she will do a moonlight flit.’ And then Dorcas could not resist adding, ‘Or maybe what there is to find is so precious that she’ll keep it to herself for ever … Or sell it. The word treasure has been used …’ Miles had to sit down in his armchair for several minutes until his pulse returned to normal. After such disturbing matters, when he went upstairs for his post-lunch ten-minute nap for comfort and calm he took out the diamond ring again, and as he dozed he held it in his hand, much comforted by its sharp coolness.
On the following day Dorcas and Miles were working together in Hill View House. Miles had slept badly and woken early and was not in a good mood. He was growing very impatient – not least for the second payment which would not happen until the investigation of the Gnome was at an end.
‘What have they said to you on the subject, Dorcas?’
‘Miles, I’ve told you – they sai
d they are getting on well and will let us know as soon as it is time to make an announcement.’
Miles went back over to his window, pulled aside the curtain and stared up at the two figures who were just beginning their journey back down to the village. They concentrated on their stepping as the steepness of the Hill required, they were in their usual end of the day strictured shapes and it was impossible to tell if there was anything jaunty or satisfied about them. He watched them come down every evening but it was always the same. Immutable motion. And Winifred, according to Donald, was much the same at home. ‘Her lips are sealed on the matter,’ said Donald – and added that he had not managed to get a word out of her in connection with what was up there, nothing at all. But he did say that she seemed unusually good-natured nowadays, hadn’t thrown drink over anyone for a while, and was prepared to eat up anything he prepared. Over a gin and tonic at the bar he said, ‘I am becoming,’ to Miles who could not resist a free drink, ‘as good as that television chef Fearnley something – though perhaps not as vulgar. I follow his advice. I like to think I am quite a success in the kitchen department nowadays.’ Miles could see that Donald Porlock was rather enjoying himself, which is always upsetting when one is not enjoying oneself.
‘Here they come again,’ said Miles wearily. He turned back to Dorcas whose head was bent and who showed no sign of interest. ‘Surely they’re nearly there with the damn thing now?’ Still Dorcas’s head did not rise from her papers. Miles strode across to her and rapped the desktop with his fingers. ‘Pay attention,’ he said. Slowly Dorcas looked up and connected her gaze to his. ‘Yes, Miles?’
Miles sat on the edge of the desk and crossed his legs. Unfortunately this showed a large expanse of pale leg between sock top and trouser bottom to which Dorcas transferred her gaze. Dorcas found it a comfort that Miles was so unattractive. Not only was it helpful that she was not reminded of Robin all the time, but it cheered her enormously when she felt a little down about her luck and her life to contemplate some unappetising part of the man. Sometimes it was the ears, sometimes the nostrils with their little sprouting of hair. Today the leg would do it. She continued to stare at the gap. ‘I want you to find out what’s going on up there, Dorcas. You get on well with the girl, and with the doctor’s wife, so pump them for information. OK?’