by John Preston
“That is correct.”
“But that could take — goodness — another three weeks. Perhaps even longer if this weather doesn’t clear. While I naturally do not want you to feel under pressure, Mrs. Pretty, I must point out that any protracted delay might jeopardize a potentially important find. The site at Stanton could well prove to be the largest Roman villa north of Felixstowe.”
We gazed at one another. “Perhaps I have not made myself clear,” I said. “I would like Mr. Brown to excavate one more mound.”
Reid Moir stared back at me. His gaze was direct, his foot still carefully crooked. Even with the door closed, I could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway.
“However, I do not wish to be unreasonable,” I went on. “If Mr. Brown has not found anything by the end of next week, say, then I shall release him to do your bidding.”
This time he barely hesitated. “By the end of next week … The end of the month, as it happens. Very well, then.”
“I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr. Reid Moir,” I said. “Now, was there anything else you wished to talk about?”
“As a matter of fact there was.” He held out the book he had with him. “I thought you might care for a copy of my latest work.”
“How very kind.”
“It’s about flints.”
“Flints?” I repeated, sounding rather more surprised than I might have wished.
“With particular reference to the Cromer field bed in Norfolk.”
“I shall greatly look forward to reading it,” I told him.
He uncrossed his legs and stood up. Maynard followed suit. At the front door I wished them goodbye. Reid Moir lowered his eyelashes, while Maynard gave a mournful-looking smile.
It continued to rain throughout the day. Robert stayed indoors and played with his train set in the nursery. He insisted that he was perfectly happy on his own, even claiming that he preferred it. From downstairs, I could hear the noise of the engine going round and round the track. I found I could not wait for the day to end. Both of us went to bed even earlier than usual.
The following morning the weather had barely improved. Despite the rain, Mr. Brown had insisted on returning to work. Together with Jacobs and Spooner, he removed the earth that had buried him, placed planks along the side of the trench to ensure that there were no further landslides and continued with his excavation.
At eight thirty Mr. Lyons drove me into Woodbridge to catch the London train. On the journey I started to read Mr. Reid Moir’s book about flints. However, I am afraid I found it rather heavy going and put it aside after only a few pages.
When we reached Liverpool Street, I queued for a taxi and asked to be taken to Earls Court. As we drove down the Strand, I was aware of a strange atmosphere of gaiety, of excitement. A tightening in the air that I had not noticed before. People sauntered along the pavements and peered into shop windows as they had always done, the men in shirtsleeves and the women in blouses. Yet there seemed to be something exaggerated, something not wholly plausible, about their nonchalance. They moved like loosely knotted figures who at any moment might snap into rigidity.
The cabbie told me that on the previous evening there had been an air-raid drill near to his home in Battersea. A warden had driven round the streets, throwing out different-colored tennis balls from his car. Yellow and green balls denoted gas; red denoted high explosives, while those with red stripes represented incendiary bombs. The exercise, said the cabbie, laughing delightedly, had been a fiasco. Despite the warden’s entreaties, people had immediately picked up the balls and begun throwing them at one another.
In Hyde Park, trenches had been dug. A mass of zigzagging lines now fanned out from Speaker’s Corner. In order to dig the trenches, a great many trees had also been felled. Several of the stumps were still sticking out of the ground. The wood looked very soft and white, like chicken flesh.
Further down the Bayswater Road, on the western side of the Serpentine, I was astonished to see that an enormous crater had appeared. This crater must have been forty feet deep and easily twice that across. Around the top the earth was dark brown, shading down to yellow at the bottom. On the road beside it was a queue of cars. Several of them were towing trailers.
Without my asking, the cabbie leaned back and told me that twenty sites had been identified around London where large deposits of sand could be found. People were being encouraged to fill sandbags and place them around the doors and windows of their properties. As yet, however, scarcely anyone had bothered to do so.
He dropped me in Nevern Square. Certainly there were no sandbags here, or any other signs of preparation. Everything appeared just the same as always: the same orange-brick terraces with their long, sceptical-looking windows, the same flowerpots with stiff and crinkled blossoms, the same clusters of unpolished bells beside the front doors.
I rang the bell of Mr. Swithin’s flat. He was waiting by his front door when I came out of the lift and led the way down the corridor into his living room. As usual he sat at the end of a gate-legged table while I sat on his left. The wallpaper was patterned with an endlessly repeated trellis of bamboo, relieved only by a circular mirror above the fireplace and four chalk drawings of Sealyham terriers on the wall facing me.
For a few minutes Mr. Swithin chattered away about the news and the weather. He did so almost apologetically, as if he knew quite well that I had no real interest in talking to him directly.
Eventually, he entwined his fingers, leaned forward on his elbows and peered into that shadow world through which threads of personality run like just-dissolving colors. I knew not to take too much notice of those spirits who came through first of all. As in life, it was the ones who were keenest to make themselves heard who invariably had the least to say. But only when they had spoken their fill could others, less frivolous and more diffident, be allowed to take their place.
Whenever I try to imagine the afterlife, I find myself envisaging an anxious, shiftless crowd. Lines of colorless people queuing endlessly for a series of public telephone boxes where operators, struggling with defective equipment and only able to speak a few phrases of their language, attempt to connect them to whoever awaits their call.
It is not a happy picture, however much I try to bathe it in an appropriately amber glow. Yet somewhere in there, too courteous to make a fuss or to shoulder his way to the front, is Frank. Of that I have no doubt. In time, he must come through. It is just a matter of being patient, of not expecting too much. In the meantime, though, there are only stray phrases and occasional glimpses to sustain me. A thimbleful of endearment. A familiar white line of parting on a head unaccountably twisted aside. Nothing more. Or rather nothing except for the same amorphous blanket of reassurance, the same anonymous balm.
But today nothing seemed to be strained through the trelliswork. Nothing that anyone with a modicum of discrimination could permit themselves to latch on to.
Mr. Swithin offered a young man with beautiful hands and a port-wine stain down one side of his face. “He’s mumbling a little,” he said, “although I can see his face quite clearly.”
“I have no recollection of anyone like that.”
Swiftly, he transferred his attention elsewhere.
“An older lady with an ample bosom who always took particular care with her appearance?” Mr. Swithin spoke with the regretful air of a butcher who knows that all his choicest cuts have already been taken.
I shook my head.
“Are you quite sure?” he asked. “It can often take some time to work out a connection.”
“Quite sure.”
We continued to sit there. Mr. Swithin’s fingers flexed hopefully away, while the Sealyhams gazed down from the wall. We carried on like this for another twenty minutes. In the end, Mr. Swithin said, “I don’t appear to be having much luck today, I’m afraid. Sometimes it’s just like being lost in a fog.”
Pushing his chair back, he escorted me down the corridor. I glanced into the
kitchen as we went past. On the table, two pork chops lay sandwiched between glass plates. At the door Mr. Swithin stopped and exhaled. I took two half-crowns from my purse. Pocketing them in one fluid movement, he asked if he should expect me at the same time next week.
I told him that this might not be convenient — just at that moment I was not sure if I could face any more disappointment. But I could see my terseness had upset Mr. Swithin; it’s not for nothing that he calls himself a sensitive. Softening my tone, I said, “Perhaps I could telephone you when I have decided.”
“Of course.”
He stood aside, holding the door by its top corner so that I had to pass underneath the arch of his arm. In the lift, I sat down on the bench seat as it made its descent. When it reached the ground floor, I found I scarcely had the strength to pull back the gates. Slowly, I descended the steps to the pavement.
Once there, I held on to a railing for support. As soon as I had done so, I found that I did not dare take my hand away. Everything tipped and lurched around me. People walked past. One or two of them glanced in my direction without appearing to notice anything unusual. Several minutes went by and still this tipping sensation continued. I began to wonder what I was going to do. I could not help thinking that I was being punished somehow, principally for my lack of faith. This was what happened to people who did not believe, or who did not believe enough. They were cast out, abandoned, left struggling to fend for themselves.
Despite the sunshine, the railing was very cold to the touch. So cold that I seemed to be losing all feeling in my fingers. Reaching behind me, I transferred my grip from one hand to the other. At that moment, a taxi cab turned off the Earls Court Road and drove into the square. The leap of hope that this brought with it was immediately dashed when I saw that its “For Hire” sign was not illuminated.
Then, as the taxi continued to come closer, I noticed that nobody was sitting in the back.
I held up my spare hand and waited. The taxi drove round the remaining two sides of the square and drew up beside the curb. I remained where I was, unsure how I was ever going to cross the expanse of pavement that lay between us. It was like having to ford a stream.
The cabbie sat waiting behind the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, his motor idling. Still, I could not bring myself to let go. The cabbie turned to look at me, his brow knotting into a question mark. As he did so, I launched myself, quite certain that I would fall — yet finding my legs scurrying about beneath me, carrying me forward.
Once inside the taxi, I asked to be taken to Liverpool Street. The journey seemed to pass in a long horizontal blur. By the time we had arrived, however, everything seemed to have righted itself: the buildings, the lamp-posts, even the people. Even so, I found that I had no desire to be in any closer proximity to anyone than necessary. I therefore bought a first-class ticket and shut myself away in an empty compartment, hoping that nobody else would come in. Mercifully, no one did.
The train steamed through deep brick gulches and out towards the suburbs. When the houses at last disappeared, an enormous sense of relief came over me as all around the fields flattened and stretched away.
Ellen was unusually quiet that evening. She scarcely spoke as she helped me out of my traveling clothes and into my dinner dress. I was touched by her tact, by the way she moved around me in this understanding silence.
It was only while she was fastening the buttons on my sleeves that I noticed her fingers were trembling.
“What is it, my dear?”
She did not answer; she simply continued fastening my buttons.
“There we are,” she said, pulling my cuffs straight once she had finished. While her voice sounded steady enough, there was some uncertainty about her lower lip.
“Has something upset you?” I asked. Still she did not answer. “If there is anything you wish to tell me, I can promise that nothing will go any further than this room.”
At this, she pulled back abruptly. “There’s nothing the matter with me, ma’am,” she said. “Nothing at all … Although it’s very kind of you to ask.”
I stood and waited by the mirror while Ellen fetched the clothes brush. She wielded the brush with her customary dexterity, only just letting the bristles touch the material. While she was doing so, I realized it had been several days since she had asked if I would like my hair combed before dinner. Perhaps this too was a form of tact.
The following afternoon it started to rain again. When I went out to the mounds after tea, I found Mr. Brown by himself in the shepherd’s hut. Immediately, he offered to come outside, but I told him that I was quite happy to join him. He helped me up the steps, shook out my umbrella and swept a place clean with his hand for me to sit.
Jacobs and Spooner, it turned out, had already left for the day, it being impossible to do any further digging in this weather.
I had barely sat down when Mr. Brown said, “I don’t think there’s anything there, Mrs. Pretty.” He spoke in more of a rush than usual, as if this was something he’d been brooding on for some time and wished to get off his chest.
“Are you sure?”
“Not sure, no. But I’ve got a feeling, if you like.”
“Is that what your nose is telling you?”
“I’m afraid so.”
The sense of dejection was even stronger than I had expected. It seemed to sweep through me like a river, pushing everything aside.
“What do you suggest, then, Mr. Brown?” I asked.
“I don’t rightly know. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Trying to work out what’s best.”
He appeared just as downcast as I was. We sat in silence for a while. Partly in order to give myself something else to think about and partly because it was something that had made me curious for some time, I asked how he had first become interested in archaeology.
“My granddad used to do a bit of scratching about,” he said. “Just as a hobby, mind. Then my dad taught me about soil. He’d made a special study of it — Suffolk soil. He knew just about everything there was to know. They said you could show him a handful from anywhere in the county and he could tell you whose farm it had come from.”
“How extraordinary.”
“When I was fifteen, I received a certificate signed by Arthur Mee himself, saying that I had a reliable knowledge of geography, geology and astronomy. After I left school, I tried all sorts of things — farming, keeping goats, being a milkman. I even sold insurance for a while. Trouble was, I couldn’t stick at anything. I spent all my time reading, anything I could find. It scarcely mattered what. May says I have far too many books. They nearly drive her mental.”
“And how did you meet Mr. Maynard?”
“I met Mr. Maynard at the Suffolk Institute. The Reverend Harris from Thornden introduced us. Do you know the Reverend Harris?”
I shook my head.
Mr. Brown chuckled. “He reads even more than me, the reverend does. About archaeology especially. And scripture, of course. I’d done some digging of my own by then. Mainly around the Roman kilns at Wattisfield. Mr. Maynard asked if I might like to do some freelance work for the museum. Bits and pieces, you know. Whatever they chose to send my way.”
We sat and listened to the rain falling on the roof. The smell of wet grass came up through the floorboards. Mr. Brown was sitting with his elbows resting on his knees.
“I wonder if I might ask a question, Mrs. Pretty,” he said.
“By all means.”
“It’s just — it’s just that I can’t help thinking, why now?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“Well, I’m wondering to myself why you want the mounds excavated now. After all, it’s not as if you’ve just arrived here, or anything like that.”
As soon as he had finished speaking he glanced away. I suspected he thought he might have overstepped the mark.
“You are quite right, of course,” I said. “I often discussed it with my late husband. It was a subject
that greatly interested us both. But unfortunately he died before we were able to make a start. Then, after he died, I found that it did not seem appropriate somehow. As for what changed my mind, I can only say that I felt that if I did not do it now, then it might be too late.”
He nodded several times. Slowly, the sound of the rain died away. When it had stopped completely, he said, “Shall we go outside and take a look?”
The air was warm and humid. Steam was already rising from the mounds and the surrounding fields. In places, the rain had beaten the barley flat, the stalks snapped through. The expanses of exposed earth were dotted about with brown puddles.
We stepped around the puddles, scattering rabbits as we went, and walked over to the largest of the mounds. It rose before us, a good four or five feet taller than the others, with a bulkier, much less graceful shape.
“I know you’ve always fancied this one, Mrs. Pretty.”
“Yes, but plainly there is no point in excavating it if you are sure it has already been robbed.”
“Even so, let’s have another look, shall we?”
As he had done on our first meeting together, Mr. Brown ran up the side of the mound, his feet sliding on the wet grass. When he had reached the summit, he stood there, looking down, with his hands on his hips. Then, as before, he vanished. Just when I was beginning to wonder what had happened to him, he reappeared.
“No, it’s definitely a flute, Mrs. Pretty. Deeper than most too, so it looks as if they must have dug quite a wide shaft.”
He started to come back down. But after only a couple of steps, he stopped. I thought at first that he must have caught his foot in a rabbit hole. Then, turning around, he climbed back up. Once at the top of the mound, he began to pace, very deliberately, around its circumference.
When he did come down, he scarcely looked where he put his feet, slithering the last part of the way. Then he started pacing, just as deliberately, around the base of the mound. First, he went one way and then the other. As he was on his second circuit, I saw that his face had taken on the same pointed look he had had when he found the butcher’s tray. I heard something too: his tongue had begun clicking against the roof of his mouth,