The Lovers of Pound Hill

by Mavis Cheek

  ‘Have you seen Nigel?’ she asked Molly and Molly replied that she had not. Molly said this with such an air of detachment that Julie breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Do you find him interesting?’ asked Julie. Molly looked at her in amazement.

  ‘My grandmother used to call my mother’s cooking interesting,’ she laughed. ‘And you should have seen it. The one joke my father ever made, and he often repeated it, was that since he was married he had not put on an ounce. And my grandmother said it was hardly surprising … Interesting? Nigel? Well, not really. I mean – he’s very nice.’

  Julie relaxed completely. Eat your heart out, any hopeful lover, for being called nice by the object of your love is tantamount to being called sweet and therefore, in the privacy of your own consciousness, should make you want to smack them. The next thing you know she will be saying that you are her very best friend – which means, though it is possible that the likes of Nigel would miss the point, that there will be no carnal knowledge.

  This statement, that Nigel was very nice, was greeted with a look of profound relief on Julie’s part, followed, though she tried to hide them, by another large tear or two. Molly thought for a moment and added, ‘Nor do I fancy Peter – in case you wanted to know that as well. My interests in that department lie elsewhere. Very elsewhere at the moment,’ she added grimly. ‘And with a shockingly bad communicator. Two lines of straightforward information and that’s it. You try reading between the lines where there’s only two of them.’

  Molly laughed, seemingly at herself. Julie blinked out a couple more tears though she was uncertain why they should come at the mention of Peter. ‘You’ve had a shock,’ said Molly. ‘You’ll need rest. But you’ll have to be better soon – we love Mrs Webb’s cooking but we can’t stand hearing about her naughty little gnomes and what she thinks they get up to. And it’s not helped by mine host’s long face, either. And anyway, you must be better by the time we have the ceremony up the Hill. I once fell down a shaft in Wiltshire – went all the way from the Roman level to the Mesolithic – talk about your previous lives passing you by – but I was all right eventually.’ Julie shed another tear at this. It is never helpful when one whom you seek to despise shows you kindness.

  Molly closed the door of the sickroom behind her and went to her own place. Here she sat at the table that stood beneath the window, from which she could look out at the Gnome and the Hill. The evening sky was a clear, deep blue, most of the tarpaulins were folded and gone, with just one stretched taut and fixed over the grave. The trailer had been taken down the Hill for the last time and emptied and now stood near the top cleared, cleaned up and ready for the vicar. And the stars were just beginning to appear. Rabbits, deer and birds were apparently at rest.

  Nothing stirred up there. It seemed it was a hill in waiting. Somehow, though she could not explain it, Molly felt she had won. She picked up her grandfather’s notebook. If the Gnome wished to make his presence felt to one whose plans had caused his most important attribute to be hidden from view, he would have to do more than glower down the Hill at her lighted window. For Molly’s head was bent over the last few pages of her grandfather’s last letter to her grandmother. The section began: ‘I wrote of the Marvell. You will know precisely what I mean by that. Marvell is overcome, then. And I have proved it. But let me say these are grave thoughts and leave it at that until we meet. When I might be allowed to give you the truth of it. Does it help for you to ponder on the name of the village? Lufferton Boney? Try that. If you cannot – then you must wait until we are together again – and all is well and all will be revealed. Just a few more weeks, my love …’

  Molly had pondered and pondered these words, and wondered and wondered why – when they ran off to be married – her grandmother did not immediately make him tell her exactly what he meant by it all. I would have been desperate to ask, she thought, I would not have rested until I had asked and been answered. But her grandmother had not done so. Women in those days, so her grandmother told her, even young, forthright and feminist women, were nowhere near as liberated as women were today. If a man decided to remain silent on a subject, then he remained silent. Or you became known as a nagger and a scold. Besides, as her grandmother delicately put it, for Molly was very young then, they had other things on their minds than digging up bits of England for old artefacts and solving riddles. Running away to get married then was much more radical than nowadays. And – yes – once they were married they had more enjoyable things to pursue. Newly married things. And little time in which to indulge them before he went away to war. What was the making of holes in a little bit of hillside when they had these other considerations in their lives? It was all going to be over by Christmas, that war. It was only after his death, so she told Molly, that she realised, from his notebooks and letters, how much the discovery meant to him and then it was too late. Yes, she regretted it, but no, she did not think herself foolish for not asking – she was a very young woman in love, they were lovers who had just eloped: why would she even think of the Gnome of Pound Hill?

  Molly looked at the reference to it being a marvel again. It was awkward and strangely constructed, and the syntax was not quite right, and she was as confused as ever by it. It seemed so slight a reference, a love-letter thing rather than a thing of significant archaeological reference – and yet … something niggled away at Molly. Her grandfather was the writer of perfect copperplate – and his spelling was good throughout. Until this. Niggle, niggle went the thought. It was extremely vexing.

  You could say that our Molly Bonner was a victim of government education policy. At her school they had concentrated on the national curriculum – and also on the government’s dictum that science was supreme. One way and another, Miss Bonner the archaeologist’s granddaughter had missed out on a liberal education – arts had not featured greatly – with only a sprinkling of English literature as required by law. It is therefore not surprising that it should take an older woman, one who had been educated in the old way and by teachers who were unafraid to stretch their pupils’ minds further than the settled median standards, to realise what it was that grandfather Bonner was hinting at to his beloved, and to explain it to Molly. But, for yet another night, Molly was left in ignorance. On her bedside table was the letter of two lines (well, actually, three if you included the signature which did have the grace to include several xxx’s) from exotic parts, in response to hers and which added to her feelings of excitement about the way the world was unfolding.

  Up at the Manor, Marion’s father and mother exchanged a questioning look; they had just heard their daughter making her way up the stairs, laughing and singing to herself. ‘She’s gone potty,’ said Sir Roger.

  ‘In a way,’ said Dulcima. They listened again.

  ‘What is she singing?’ asked her father.

  Dulcima listened. ‘James Taylor.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  The soft, slightly out of tune sounds of ‘How sweet it is to be loved by you-oo’ floated downwards.

  ‘Yes you have. They’ve been going through your records in the games room. You used to sing this to me …’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘You did. How swee-eet it i-is …’

  ‘Taylor, Taylor – do we know him?’

  Dulcima was about to admit that he was American but she wanted Harty in a good mood. So she said, quite truthfully, ‘Lives in Berkshire – parents southern Scottish – old family.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ Sir Roger hummed the tune.

  ‘Yes. It is.’ Massachusetts and the American deep south did not need to enter into it.

  ‘Good shooting on those estates near the Nith. Damn fine.’ Her husband hummed on. Orridge, who had been listening both to Miss Marion’s warbles and his employers’ conversation, appeared with a hopeful look on his face. ‘Will there be anything else before I retire?’ he asked. Sir Roger was not one to sing unless in his cups. Yet again the answer was no. And yet again, i
n avoiding the dogs who were splayed around the room, Orridge tripped over a spare footstool on the way out.

  ‘Oh Harty,’ said Dulcima. ‘Those dogs.’

  ‘Oh Dulcima,’ he replied. ‘Those footstools.’

  The door closed silently and disapprovingly. Above him, floating down from her room, came the voice of Marion who had moved on to ‘All You Need Is Love’. Some of the records were very old indeed. Orridge made his way along the corridor to the green baize and another miserable night with only himself to drink with. It was hardly worth the effort of going down the cellar steps. Life had become empty and meaningless. Meaningless. All they seemed to do nowadays was put their heads together about Miss Marion – and all she seemed to do was either go out with that Nigel person who knew nothing of billiards or tennis, let alone fine wine, or go around the house laughing to herself and singing. Humbug.

  It did not help that Orridge had a double reason for being at odds with his employer. On the night he had huddled by the steps of the Old Holly Bush to wait, Mrs Webb, having finished with her kitchen duties and departing the public house, spied him and, taking pity on him, took him into her home to warm up with a noggin or two. Not the best brandy, it was true, but a kindness nevertheless. Alas, he had made the mistake of admiring her gnomes next to her path that night, on his way to collect his master, and she had insisted that he call and be introduced to them in daylight hours. Twice he had received the summons by telephone and twice he had found an excuse. But he felt he could not go on finding reasons not to go – not least because a man craved a drinking companion, dammit, especially when the bottle he had in mind was a very nice ’83 Cornas.

  Marion mused on the forthcoming ceremony. Nigel had confessed to having fantasies about knights and ladies. And she then confessed to having the same little thoughts. In the end she attached her handkerchief to Nigel’s wristwatch, which made them both laugh and say, ‘Aha – my lady’s favour.’ He had not given the handkerchief back to her when he went home this evening and she wondered, as she pulled the curtains in her room, whether he meant anything by it. She looked into her mirror to try and gauge what Nigel saw when he looked at her. Not so bad, she thought, still humming as she undressed. But when she caught sight of her nakedness she thought of the Gnome again, threw her nightdress on immediately and stopped humming. Instead she shivered, diving under the covers and pulling them well over her head. That would never do, she thought, but all the same, she could not – quite – stop smiling at how the handkerchief had fluttered every time he looked at his watch.

  In Chrysalis Cottage Susie was snoring. Snoring so loud that Pinky imagined it was not unlike sharing a bed with a navvy. Good, good, he thought, nodding to himself – that’s right – that’s just how it should be, that’ll be the upper airways narrowing. And, having rearranged his earplugs, he fell soundly asleep. Susie slept on, quite oblivious, and dreamed of a chocolate lake that was warm and thick and sweet as love.

  In Beautiful Bygones’ upstairs rooms father and son lay in their beds in their separate quarters. On Dryden’s face sat a beatific smile of full satisfaction – though he kept his eyes closed in case he should see what he did not want to see. Nigel lay in his bed and felt – well – quite as confused as Julie – who was also lying awake in her little bed in the pub. He had put the handkerchief under his pillow – only for safekeeping he insisted to himself, and ‘Molly, Molly, Molly’ he mouthed as he usually did before falling asleep, ‘I love Molly’. But somehow the pleasure he once enjoyed at the saying of her name did not quite knock in the dowel for him now and he found his thoughts straying to getting up very early and continuing his work on the sporting gun and how interested Marion had been in the process when he described it to her. In his dreams, when he eventually dropped off, instead of Molly he saw Sir Roger Fitzhartlett’s face, full of smiles and good cheer, as Nigel knelt in front of him and presented him with the Churchill. He had a feeling, in the dream, that this ceremonial took place on Pound Hill – which seemed extremely odd. Why would Sir Roger be up there? He had not shown the slightest interest in the work, or the lovely Molly. But that’s dreams for you. They never get it right. For example, now that the dream-scene had moved to a new frame, he was kissing – not the archaeologist’s granddaughter – but the Baronet’s only daughter, and – what’s more (he tried to wake and could not) – he appeared to be enjoying it. And not half as much as she was.

  The vicar was so excited at the prospect of an early morning ceremony on Pound Hill – and the splendid freedom the occasion brought him for a modern Sermon on the Mount (the New Beatitudes, he thought, with his own particular example of Blessed Are the Generous or maybe Blessed Are the Little Men) – that he had quite forgotten to be annoyed by the height of the pulpit. On the Hill he could stand above them all – placed on the trailer – and look down on them without the indignity of what Her Ladyship would insist on calling tippy-toes. He would preach of loving thy neighbour, of course, but he would also preach that humility was a very good thing. Maybe that would make its mark on the Fitzhartletts who should take him, though small (and his earthly needs), more seriously. Love and humility. Excellent combination. Now – what to wear to cut a dash?

  Miles lay in his bed reading The Complete Tutankhamun by Nicholas Reeves with an introduction by the 7th Earl of Carnarvon. Good sense told him that what was found would not be so grand as that – couldn’t be, for the size of it – but something had excited the Molly girl, he could tell. And such excitement could only mean a find of substantial value. He might have climbed up the Hill to take a look tonight except that the person in question was sitting, yet again, at her lighted window in the Old Holly Bush and was bound to see him. He wondered if the wretched girl ever slept. It crossed his mind that, unlike Susie, Molly Bonner might really have second sight – or witch blood in her veins. She always seemed to know when Miles wished to be on the prowl. Well, as long as her gift took her to where the treasure lay, who was he to complain. He skipped most of the chapter about the various calamities that befell various members of the Carter team. All nonsense. Lord Carnarvon died a few weeks after the discovery of the tomb but people died all the time: Howard Carter’s pet canary was eaten by a cobra – but cobras probably liked a bit of poultry. And what if Carnarvon’s brother died a few months later, too? Such was the way of things. Miles smiled to himself, not entirely unhappily – he should know about brothers. No point in getting all emotional over things like that. He passed over the pages. There would be no such calamities here.

  Winifred was sitting up in bed with indigestion. Perhaps it was not such a good idea to let Donald loose in the kitchen. Macaroni topped with grilled goat’s cheese and flavoured with something that was oddly cherry-like (she did not like to ask) was probably not the best meal to go to bed on. And, truth to tell, her joints were feeling a trifle stiff now – the bending was pretty acute on the site in these last days of careful cleaning for they did not want to disturb even the tiniest item – and she was not – she told herself but no one else – she was not as young as she once was. Donald seemed to have got a second wind. How interesting it was, she thought, that providing he could be seen to be The Best at something, he would do it. Shades of the man she had married, only then she had seen him as honourable, a fighter for the world. Winifred smiled. She would always be her husband’s sous chef. Better not to rail against it any more. The Hill provided a great lesson in what was important and what was not in a marriage. Presumably gritting one’s teeth had been part of it since time immemorial. At any rate, he seemed to be laying off the bottle nowadays, and thank heavens for that.

  Beside her, also lying on his back, Donald slept serenely. She realised that her arm was draped across her belly and that Donald was holding her hand. We are, she thought, comforted despite the whizzing and popping in her gastric regions. We are in exactly the same pose as the Arundel Tomb. How appropriate … And she searched her mind for a bit of lost poetry. Winifred had loved poetry as a girl and poetry
was part of the pattern of schooling, but Donald was a medical man and poetry was not part of his cure for anything. He should, really, redress that – for poetry, she thought, can mend much. She remembered Larkin’s line … ‘What will survive of us is love …’ Not what might, not what could, not what should – she nodded sleepily – but what will … But of course, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep, but of course – that is what the Hill is all about.

  And Dorcas – Dorcas who knew the secret of the Hill and yet had to stay silent – how was Dorcas that night? Well, despite being privy to the secret and feeling, rather cheeringly, that she was one of the trusted inner circle, which always makes one feel loved, that night Dorcas was very, very sad. Sad, yes, that is how Dorcas was. She did feel loved, being in the inner sanctum, but not loved entirely in the way she would like to be loved. And although she slept in a little narrow bed which, in its singleness gave a comfort, nevertheless, that night, she did reach for someone, for the grave on the Hill had made her remember, and when she reached, of course, there was no one there. It was almost as if she had never, really, been cured of Robin – and that she still loved him exactly as before. Suddenly, and for no reason she could think of, she remembered the feel of him and the way he smiled and almost, almost she could remember the smell of him. That is what was unearthed in Dorcas when Molly and Winifred showed her what they had found and that is what had made her sad that night.

  With a moonbeam settling on the empty Spode dish, eventually she slipped away to sleep. But her dreams were filled with people running away from her, and always when they turned around in the distance they were Robin. And, like a parody of Cinderella, all she had to hold on to in the dream was a scuffed old boot. Which is, she thought, when she briefly awoke in the night, what I have now become – both the lost one, and the one who has lost. Some tame gazelle, or some gentle dove: Something to love, oh, something to love! Dorcas, self-taught, also liked poetry. It came in small books that could be slipped in the pocket when you were on your travels. And thinking about gazelles and doves she, too, fell asleep.