The Lovers of Pound Hill

by Mavis Cheek

‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Over by lunchtime?’

  ‘Easily.’

  Dulcima leaned back on the sofa and looked pleased. ‘Then we agree. We will come. And we will have a little drinks party here afterwards and ask some of the young men around about. Marion has been learning to –’ she did not want to use the word socialise in case it caused Harty to explode again, so instead she said – ‘get along with them. And who knows, vicar, you may be conducting another kind of ceremony altogether before the year is out.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said the vicar, quite at sea but happily so. Perhaps she meant the blessing of a new pulpit?

  ‘Might see a pigeon or two up there,’ said Sir Roger, thoughtfully. ‘Big hill.’

  ‘Roger!’ said his wife sternly.

  He said no more on the subject of birds. He began to think how peaceful and easy life was when she used to make those little trips to the cellar. ‘How about a little sherry?’ he said, with hope. The vicar rubbed his hands and swung his little legs again. But Dulcima rose from the sofa and held out her hand to the vicar, who took it and was immediately aware of being pulled up out of his seat. And before he knew it, with the polite sound of Her Ladyship’s ‘So good of you to come’ in his little ears, he was shown the door.

  ‘Are you never going to drink again, Dulcie?’ said Sir Roger.

  ‘Never,’ she said confidently. ‘Never again.’

  Outside the door the heart of Orridge sank to his bootstraps. As did, on the opposing side, the heart of Sir Roger.

  Donald, leaving the house for the surgery, looked up and saw nothing on the Hill except the covers and some figures darting about. One of which was his wife. If he screwed up his eyes he could just make out a familiar bottom in its rather fetching dungarees. He smiled contentedly. He thanked his stars she had found sanity. It was as he said: a woman without anything to do tends to go peculiar. Pity she didn’t find kitchen stuff enjoyable any more but he’d rather have her sane and out on Pound Hill than in the kitchen getting tight and flinging teapots about. Besides, the best chefs were men. He was a man. And his daughter, Charlotte, who had never had two words to say to him that were not of criticism, had actually said on the phone last night, ‘Well done, Dad.’ Tonight he would master macaroni cheese. It looked easy enough on the television. He opened the door to his car and was just about to get in when he saw Dryden Fellows coming down the street. He looked unwell again.

  ‘Dryden, my dear chap! You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Whereupon, much to his amazement, Dryden Fellows burst into tears.

  Donald Porlock would once have thought this showed lack of control and sissiness. Now, strangely, still fondly thinking of the macaroni cheese and the new lease of life he had embraced, he found his arm going around the shoulders of his unhappy patient, and heard himself saying, ‘So sorry. An unfortunate choice of words. Want to slip into the surgery with me again, old fellow, and let’s have a talk about it? Yes? I’ve got a bit of spare time.’ And off they drove together, with Donald cheerfully telling Dryden how much better a cook he was than ever Winifred had been.

  ‘Taken me all these years to find out that I’ve got a touch of the Master Chef in me. I love it. And Winifred is very good about clearing up the kitchen, very good. Not my thing, really. What’s good enough for the television chefs is good enough for me.’

  Dryden did not seem very interested in macaroni cheese, though when Donald got him to the surgery he thought he would give him a stiff noggin of medicinal brandy. They could both have one. Poor chap. Donald gave him a sideways glance. My, he did look pale. A wee drop of five-star would help. Donald found it did him a great deal of good when he was creating in the kitchen. He had come to think of it as a heart-starter. Strange how many dishes he cooked had alcohol in them, too. Great fun, this cookery lark. Great fun. Cheese dishes, so he read, benefited from an additional dash of kirsch. So would he.

  Miles returned to his sitting room and slumped into his armchair. Sometimes one could feel quite alone, he thought. And even if Dorcas had been here with him, and not up with those two women, he would not have been able to share his thoughts for they were not – he knew – the most acceptable. Too much was talked about community and social responsibility, in Miles’s view, far too much. An iron hand was what was needed. People being told what to do. And self-reliance. Miles brought his fist down hard on the arm of his chair, which made a loud puffing noise. He felt chilled, even though it was June – it was so early that the sun had not yet shone into the sitting room.

  Montmorency, in his customary place curled on the seat by the (unlit) fireside woke at the unaccustomed disturbance. Normally all there was to be heard in this room was the gentle tapping of Dorcas’s keyboard, and Miles’s voice and pacing feet. The cat opened one eye. He was weary. He had been out for most of the night and he needed his sleep. If human beings went on hitting things, how could he catch up? He stretched, he yawned, he put out both sets of front claws, admired them, and then retracted them as he slid down to the floor. In a trice he had jumped on to Miles’s lap and curled himself up again. Miles balanced the knowledge, recently learned, (BBC Radio 4, You and Yours), that a sleeping cat on your lap gave out an impressive amount of wattage and should be employed by poverty-stricken pensioners, with his total lack of warm feelings for the creature. In the end the latter won. Miles stood up, shedding Montmorency (who was quite ready for the drop for a cat knows when a lap is at rest and when it is not) and went upstairs. He would put on another jumper. It was June. It was a warm day. He was getting old.

  In his bedroom he first went over to the window and peered up the Hill. There was the Gnome, grinning down at the village as usual – or was he grinning? Was he looking quite so full of himself now that his – er – appendage was under the tender mercies of Molly and Winifred (Winifred?)? Or maybe it was just earlier than usual and the light made him look a little less gung-ho?

  Miles shivered again and turned away from the view to the chest of drawers from which he selected a thick jumper. He slipped it over his head and was about to close the drawer when he saw the little box. Go on. Just a little peep. Just a little feel. His talisman. While he held the diamond the world was in his control. He took it out and opened the box and immediately felt better. A diamond that size was worth a lot of money. He rubbed it on his sleeve and saw how it sparkled against the black velvet in the box. As so often, the sight of this stolen asset made Miles feel warmer and much better. Sometimes he just gazed at his investment statements – and they cheered him up immensely, too. What good would this ring have done Dorcas anyway? She mourned Robin, she had no money to speak of, and she was better off in the Squidge at a peppercorn rent and working for Miles. Apart from anything else – he shivered again – it cost very little to keep her place warm. Unlike here. He longed to be settled in the matter of his ownership of Robin’s assets. Red tape. Always red tape. But at least he knew that he was officially the next of kin. Very lucky that Dorcas had not married Robin before he went off to South America. Very lucky.

  He gave the diamond one last look, closed the drawer, and went back downstairs feeling much more cheerful. He would just have to wait for Dorcas to report back to him. Nothing more to be done. He slipped this morning’s teabag back into a cup and poured on some boiling water. He had never liked strongly flavoured drinks.

  Pinky was at the library in Bonwell – libraries, he had suddenly realised, were cathedrals of knowledge – and he was deeply engaged in reading a book called The Good Parenting Guide. He might have gone out and bought the book but he did not want any evidence left around at home. Just in case. It would not do to be proved wrong.

  Susie was having her hair done. She was having the purple bits removed and the whole fluffy mass of it thinned and controlled. Pinky reminded her that when they first met at the 77a bus stop, she was turned out the usual sort of way: a pair of jeans, a jacket that hid her bum (he’d tried to gauge its rough circumference and couldn’t) and pixie boo
ts. Nice and simple. Her hair was longish and smooth – though she did wear a beret. Come to think of it, he should have been a bit wary of the beret. But – generally – she showed no hint of the forces that were to unleash themselves – in every way. So Pinky plucked up the courage to say that these purplish effects had created difficulties for him in the bed department, her explosion of curly hair so often got up his nose and in his eyes and it took his mind off anything else, and her clothes did – yes, he dared to say it – nothing for her. Or him.

  Susie had fixed him with a pondering look and shed a tear or two, before visiting her crystal garden for guidance. So far Pinky was not entirely sure what the crystals had suggested but it was looking good. And since the absence of visits to the Gnome in their lives, and the apparently somewhat reduced nature of his power now that he had a couple of women in dungarees crawling all over him, Susie said sadly that she feared he was not as powerful as she’d first thought. When she returned from the crystal garden Susie’s eyes were dry and she said very firmly, ‘I think that it might be the place itself that is alive with ancient forces, rather than – well – that. Possibly.’

  Pinky was overjoyed. He had no problem with the landscape being anything she wanted it to be – it was certainly full of tumuli and stuff. But the Gnome might have no power? Suddenly their future together opened up in a glorious landscape of ordinary daily life. They would go for walks together without his footsteps being directed towards that bloody Pound Hill. His wife had even left off the patchouli at night, which helped his breathing no end. His customers said he looked like a new man and his pipework was becoming the talk of the area as his name was passed from household to household. He loved his Susie all over again and in every way. And if he was right – he smiled into the book – then this was the result. And bollocks to the Gnome, large as you like. Vile, vulgar and gross creature. What man would want to carry a thing like that around with him all day? Why, you’d go faint from loss of blood to the brain. It made him feel queasy for the Molly girl and the doctor’s wife who were constantly being exposed to it all up there; he hoped they were not becoming tainted. That was why Susie gave them the flowers – mind over matter, was how she put it. Though the Molly girl said that she took a very straightforward view of the site. Apparently when you were up close and digging you never saw what you were digging as a whole, just a bit of it, a part of the jigsaw. Then they had both laughed at the appropriate use of the term jig.

  Susie entered the library. ‘I’ve had a text message from that archaeologist girl. She wants me to ring her back. I wonder why?’

  Pinky tucked The Good Parenting Guide beneath Plumbing for Cowboys and smiled up at her. ‘Won’t know until you find out,’ he said.

  He looked at his wife admiringly. She looked wonderfully ordinary. Beautifully ordinary, in fact. And completely devoid of pretension. I am, he told himself, a man of water and of sewage, a man with no pretensions either, a man who does not think that if you suck a dandelion it will make you urinate but who merely makes a flushing receptacle available should it be so. I do not need to be helped along life’s way with ancient herbs and incantations. Therefore, the more my wife straightens herself out, the more I love her. I hope she will not abandon everything that adds a touch of magic and mystery to her, because those, too, have become a part of her – but a man can have too much of it. Getting rid of Susie’s crystal garden and planting something useful like veggies, now that would be an achievement. The crystals, as he muttered over his plumber’s flux from time to time, had not grown very much anyway.

  Susie, in a moment of supreme restraint, had not gone off on one at her husband for keeping this all to himself for so long. But if only he had spoken out they would have saved themselves a lot of bother. She stood there, looking down on Pinky’s little pink bald spot and she wondered what was a woman to do and why had he not spoken out? He always seemed to like the exotic and she had obliged. Susie was not one to be perverse – if he wanted straight, she would give him straight. It was all the same to her. It did not damage the inner spirit. But she did wonder, as they left the building quite happily together, why they – like so many others before them – and many to come, no doubt – had only found harmony after stumbling over the rocks of unexpressed desire in the darkness of repression until finally they found the light switch.

  ‘I wonder what the archaeologist girl wanted?’ said Susie, neutrally. Much safer.

  ‘Let’s find out,’ said Pinky. Ditto.

  Up on the Hill, crouched next to Molly and Winifred, Dorcas looked into the trench and the opening they had dug. Dorcas gasped. It was not an empty space and it was directly under where the cushiony part of the phallus ended. But now, where once had flourished the Gnome’s greatest accoutrement, there was a dish-shaped dugout and in it, not yet entirely emerged but very recognisable nevertheless, were a pair of skeletons that seemed to be in an embrace. Scattered near them were more of the shale beads.

  Molly gripped her shoulder and said softly – ‘Most extraordinary … Most unusual. A grave for two …’ Her voice softened. ‘And you can just make out what they’re doing. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life before … It speaks down the ages. It tells us something rare about our ancestors. It tells us how they felt.’

  But Dorcas was scarcely listening. A lump had come into her throat and her eyes were a little wetter than the wind up on Pound Hill might have caused them to be. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Quite, quite beautiful. They are beautiful.’

  Molly put a finger to her lips. ‘Say nothing for the moment.’

  ‘Cross my lonely heart,’ said Dorcas.

  Below them, Nigel set off from Beautiful Bygones in the direction of the Old Manor. He was whistling and walking with the cheery air of a man at one with the world – a man, thought his father, watching him go, who had nothing but happiness in mind. Dryden Fellows also noted, with great relief, that Nigel did not so much as turn once to spy on the Molly person up the Hill. Which was, perhaps, the best news of all. And if, by the time he turned on to the gravel drive of the fine old house he remembered that he had not looked for her before he set off, he did not seem very concerned. Much more concerned, was he, with the way Marion came running up the drive to meet him, her green eyes full of enquiry about his poor bruised face and body.

  Two

  FOR THOSE WHO may be wondering what was the other bit of good news that Molly might or might not be able to give to Miles and Dorcas, it was decided by that young lady that she would, after all, bide her time before bestowing it upon them – and therefore we will respect her caution and put thoughts of it to one side for a while. With such things, she knew, you must be certain. And so, since Dorcas seemed content to think that the news was something to do with the half-excavated grave on the Hill, which she had found wholly enchanting, and since Miles was content to think it was to do with something wonderful in the treasure line that had been found on the Hill, there were no more questions.

  Molly also had other things on her mind. Now that she had posted up a notice about it in the pub, she and Winifred must finish their work and be ready for the ceremony due to take place on the Sunday in question. It was then that everything that Molly had set out to do would be accomplished and announced. It was now very clear that where she and Winifred had dug was the place that grandfather Bonner had dug before. And she supposed it was a marvel – or Marvell, as he wrote it in the notebooks – what they had found. How pleased she was to have vindicated him and the project he was unable to complete due to a bullet lodged in an archduke’s jugular in Sarajevo and its miserable aftermath. And how pleased, too, to have proved herself worthy of her grandmother’s faith – and to have achieved something in her own right. She allowed herself one small spurt of pride.

  *

  That evening, Molly tapped on the door of the small bedroom along the passage from hers, in which lay Julie Barnsley. Although there were no bones broken, Julie was much bruised from her ordeal, still shak
en, and not keen for anyone to see her. A barmaid with a black eye and a swollen lip was not an appetising sight and might put Nigel off even more. So when Peter insisted that she stay at the pub, tucked away until she was quite recovered, she agreed. She tried, unsuccessfully, to glare at Molly. Glaring is not easy with a damaged cheek and eye socket. While she knew that Molly in her dungarees and old T-shirts was not likely to be seductive to him, Molly in her dungarees and old T-shirts compared to a woman who looked as if she had just gone three rounds with Mike Tyson might just have the edge. That Molly herself seemed unaware of the tensions she caused did not help either.

  Julie Barnsley could cheerfully have throttled her in her seemingly happy ignorance. How unfair to be so balanced. How unfair. Nevertheless, she managed to smile at Molly and say, with difficulty, ‘You should see the other guy …’ To which Molly responded that – if the state of the quad bike was anything to go by – the other guy was not a pretty sight. A large tear formed in Julie’s shut eye. ‘Nor am I,’ she said. And while this might be the opinion of many in the village who had seen Peter Hanker carry her semi-conscious body towards the Old Holly Bush, it was not the view of everyone. Not by a long chalk. Peter Hanker privately thought that the sight of his barmaid, her bruised head laid against the snow white pillows (courtesy of Bonwell’s laundry, fortnightly) of his single room (with h/c and w/basin – £28 b&b per night) was pleasing. Very pleasing. Even more pleasing was that Nigel had not been anywhere near Julie, not even with a card to wish her well. A state of affairs that Peter did not find at all surprising and which he hoped might make an impression upon his barmaid’s bruised and battered brain. Apparently not.

  That evening, just before he opened up, the patient asked Peter, in an oddly meek tone (odd for her) if anyone had enquired about her. And Peter said that everyone had. Which did not seem to cheer her up very much. Now she transferred her enquiries to her visitor.