The Dig

by John Preston

  “You must be Mr. Brown’s wife, May,” she said. “I have heard so much about you.”

  “You have?” said Mrs. Brown, clearly taken aback by this.

  “Indeed. And I know how much Mr. Brown has been missing you while he has been here.”

  “He has?” said Mrs. Brown, even more taken aback now.

  Mrs. Pretty’s gaze passed over each of us in turn, pausing briefly on her nephew and myself. “I do hope you have all enjoyed yourselves this afternoon.”

  “Very much so,” I said.

  “I am glad … I think it has gone as well as could have been expected.” Her eyebrows rose fractionally. “Bar the odd intrusion.”

  Unusually for him, Robert stood quite still by his mother’s side, not saying anything.

  “Hello there, young man,” said Mr. Brown.

  Robert looked up at him. He seemed to be coming to a decision. “Hello, Mr. Brown,” he said.

  People were already beginning to leave. They came to say their goodbyes to Mrs. Pretty, queuing up to thank her for her hospitality, before drifting away. Lengthening shadows undulated across the cropped grass. It wasn’t until most of the guests had gone that Rory asked, “What are you planning to do now?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “I hadn’t really thought.”

  “It’s just that I wondered if you had any plans.”

  “Plans?”

  “For later. I thought perhaps you might like to go for a walk in the woods. To see if we can hear a nightingale. I can’t promise anything. As I said before, it’s a bit late in the year for them now. But you’d be very welcome to come along, if you like.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I would like that.”

  “You’d have to change first, of course. I mean, you couldn’t possibly go tramping about like that.”

  “Couldn’t I?”

  “Absolutely not. You’re far too smart. I should bring a sweater too, if I were you. It can turn quite chilly after the sun has gone in. Why don’t we meet outside the squash court at, say, eight o’clock?”

  “At eight, then,” I said.

  When I arrived at the squash court, Rory was already waiting. He was wearing a long herringbone overcoat I had not seen before, along with his Irish tinker’s cap, worn the right way round this time.

  “Hello,” he said, and held up a thermos flask. “I’ve brought along some coffee to keep us going.”

  There was a cinder path that skirted the house and crossed the top of a meadow — it must have been a meadow once, although now it was choked with bracken. Running along our left-hand side was a white paling fence. I smelled the sweet, louche smell of gorse, then honeysuckle, and then, just as intensely, wild garlic. The smell was so strong that someone might have rubbed their hands together and opened them right under my nose.

  Rory turned on a torch.

  A wand of light illuminated our way. At the end of the cinder path was a stile leading into a wood. When we were on the other side he said, “Everything becomes much steeper from now on. Be careful where you put your feet — there are rabbit holes all over the place. And do remember to watch out for brambles, won’t you?”

  We descended through the trees, our footfalls giving out muffled thumps. The torch beam swung about. I couldn’t see the river — not from here — but there was a cool breeze blowing up the slope. The smell was quite different now, although almost as strong. Dry sand overlaid with the tang of pine.

  I stumbled and, without meaning to, cried out.

  “Here,” said Rory. “Take my hand. Just for this bit. Until it becomes flatter.”

  I scarcely hesitated before putting my hand in his. Yet once I had done so, I felt as if my entire being had become concentrated in my fingers. After we had been going for a few minutes the ground leveled off into a narrow shelf that ran along the side of the bank.

  “Why don’t we try here?” he said, and released my hand.

  We both sat down. The ground was covered with dead leaves. They were quite dry — it was like sitting on a mound of kapok.

  “Cup of coffee?”

  Although I didn’t want any, it seemed churlish to refuse after Rory had taken the trouble to bring it. He poured out a cup and passed it to me. The coffee tasted vile, like burnt biscuits, but I drank it anyway.

  “Aren’t you having any?” I asked.

  “There’s only the one cup. I forgot to bring another one. Stupid of me.”

  “Have some of this.”

  “No, no. Honestly.”

  “But I insist,” I said, and handed the cup to him.

  He drank what was left and then poured himself some more. When he had finished, he pushed his cap back and turned off the torch.

  “All we can do is wait and hope we’ll be lucky,” he said. “Most of the nightingales have paired off by now. There are just the odd few left. The unlucky ones. Mind you, they say that desperation makes them sing all the harder.”

  We sat in silence. Rory leaned back with his head resting against the trunk of a tree. I was sitting up with my arms clasped around my knees. Through the trees I could see narrow streaks of silver where the moonlight hit the water.

  After a while he said, “Do you know this part of the world?”

  He sounded so solemn that I almost burst out laughing.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve never been here. Not before.”

  “The first time I came here, I didn’t think much of it. All flat and featureless. When people said how much they liked it, I couldn’t understand what they meant. But it rather steals up on you. Perhaps it’s the lack of variety that makes you notice things more.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Oh, I don’t know really. Small things. Things that might otherwise pass you by.”

  “Where were you brought up?” I asked.

  “Essex,” he said. “Near Chelmsford. Do you know it?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s pretty too, of course. But in a different sort of way. They grow a lot of fruit round there. For jam,” he added, almost as solemnly as before.

  “Jam?”

  ‘That’s right.”

  A few stars had appeared above the tops of the trees. Down below, the foliage was too dense for any light to penetrate. Everything was quite black.

  “What about you?” he said.

  “What about me?”

  “Where do your people come from?”

  “I’m not really sure if I have any people,” I said.

  “How do you mean?”

  There’s something about the darkness that invites confidences, of course. Or draws them forth without one realizing. Almost before I was aware of doing so, I found myself telling him how my father had died when I was very young. And how the four of us — my two sisters, my brother and myself — were taken in by my uncle and aunt.

  “Did your father die in the war?” Rory asked.

  “No,” I said. “No, he didn’t. He drowned. We went on holiday to Cornwall. He had petit mal. He’d had it since he was a boy. He must have had an attack while he was swimming. I saw him being pulled out of the water. They tried to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but I think he was probably dead by then.”

  “That must have been very hard for you.”

  “It was a long time ago now.”

  “But what about your mother?”

  Closing my eyes, I felt as if I had been transported to the top of a cliff. A chalk cliff, high above the sea, with a great wilderness of blue laid out before me.

  “My mother ran off with an army doctor a few months before my father died,” I said.

  Rory didn’t reply, not immediately. I wondered if he disapproved — either of my frankness or my circumstances.

  “Did she die soon after that?”

  “No,” I said, “she didn’t die.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She just didn’t want to see us any more.”

  “You mean you’ve never had any contact wit
h your mother?”

  “Never. But I believe she lives in London.”

  “I see … And how did your uncle and aunt treat you?”

  “They were very kind,” I said automatically. But even as I was saying it I found myself remembering the swing door that separated their part of the house from ours and the reproving shush it made whenever it closed. I remembered, too, waking up and seeing a charity box on our bedroom mantelpiece. A cast-iron figure of a little black boy with “For Foundlings” printed on the base. I always assumed this must refer to us.

  “Are you all right?” he said. “You’re shivering. Here, let me put my coat around your shoulders.”

  “No, please …”

  “But it’s no trouble.”

  He draped his coat around me. As hard as I could, I tried to stop this jumping and twitching in my veins.

  “Why don’t you tell me how you first became interested in archaeology?”

  “You can’t possibly want to know that.”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

  And so I told him how, when I had been a child, a friend of my uncle’s had come for lunch one day. I couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time. A keen numismatist, he had given me a coin that he told me dated from the time of Augustus. I knew about Caesar Angustus from Bible reading. At least I knew that Christ had taken out a coin and told his disciples to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s and unto God the things that were God’s.

  “I don’t know why exactly,” I said. “I don’t think it was anything the man said, not directly, but I became convinced that the coin I’d been given was the same coin that Christ had showed the disciples. It made such a big impression on me, I can’t tell you. For years afterwards I used to take the coin out and marvel at being able to touch it myself. I used to think it would bring me luck.”

  “And did it?”

  “I’m not sure. I suppose it must have done.”

  “Then what happened?”

  With no prompting at all, I told him how my uncle and aunt had insisted that I become a debutante. How at one of the balls I’d attended I had met a young man who said that he was going off to excavate an Iron Age village in Bosnia. At the end of the evening, I’d asked if I could go with him.

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He was a bit taken aback at first, but after a while he said yes.”

  “You mean you went off on your own with this person that you’d only just met?”

  “It was all perfectly above board, I assure you. We were out there for a month — we both had the most marvelous time. Then, when I came back, I applied to study archaeology at University College.”

  “How did your uncle and aunt react?”

  “Oh, they were absolutely furious. They thought I had let the family down. And myself, of course. On my twenty-first birthday, my uncle told the maid to set my place on his right-hand side. He said I was no longer a member of the household. I was only a guest. The next morning I left. I’m sure they were relieved to see the back of me. I can’t really blame them. I was very troublesome, you see. I always have been. Even as a child, I never stopped asking questions. That was bad enough, but what made it even worse was that their answers never seemed to satisfy me.”

  Rory gave a shout of laughter.

  “There,” I said, relieved to have finished. “That’s all there is to me.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There must be lots of things you haven’t told me.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, for instance, you haven’t told me how you met your husband.”

  “Stuart?”

  “Yes,” he said, amused. “Stuart.”

  “He was my tutor,” I told him. “At the university.”

  “And did you know straightaway?”

  “Did I know what straightaway?”

  He paused. “It’s none of my business,” he said.

  “Tell me. I don’t mind.”

  “I just wondered if you knew straightaway that you wanted to marry him.”

  “Not straightaway, no,” I said. “But we had a lot in common. Shared interests are very important, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s never happened to me. I wish it had, but it hasn’t. Not yet anyway. Still, I live in hope …”

  We sat in silence. I rested my head against the bark of the tree. The only sounds were the occasional rustle in the undergrowth and the odd splash from the river. I could no longer see Rory. I could only hear him breathing.

  After we had sat there for a while I said, “Now it’s your turn.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing much to tell. Nothing as dramatic anyway.”

  “Let’s see, I already know where you were brought up. Where they make jam. Why don’t you tell me what made you become interested in photography?”

  “I suppose — I suppose it seemed a way of trying to fix moments as they went past. To try to capture them and give them some physical existence. Stop them from being lost forever. Not that it necessarily works like that.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Not really. For instance, do you know why there aren’t any people in photographs of Victorian London? Take a look sometime. In early pictures, the streets are completely deserted. Obviously, they weren’t deserted. It was just that the plates needed to be exposed for such a long time that people — moving people — didn’t register at all. Occasionally, you can see a misty outline, but nothing more. It’s a strange thought, isn’t it? All these ghostly, transparent people making no lasting impression …” He broke off. “I don’t know if that makes any sense.”

  “Yes. Of course it does.”

  “Really?”

  “It makes perfect sense. That’s why I wanted to study archaeology. So much of life just slips by, and with so little to show for it. I suppose I wanted to make sense of what does endure.”

  Rory had rolled over towards me. I could see the pale oval of his face close to mine. “That’s it!” he said. “That’s it exactly! Especially now. I mean, what do you think people are likely to find of us in 2,000 years’ time? Do you think they might find this thermos and wonder who it belonged to? Who drank from this cup? And even if they do wonder, they’ll never know. Not about us. Who we were. What we were thinking and feeling at the time. At best, only this thing will have survived. Everything else will simply have disappeared.”

  Once more we sat in silence. I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure if I trusted myself to. I could feel the blackness in my nostrils. It was like inhaling tar. I found myself remembering a story I must have read as a child, about an old lady who sneezed and her whole body flew into pieces.

  “I wonder …” said Rory.

  “What?”

  “I’m just wondering if we should move. We’re not having much luck here, are we? What do you think?”

  “If you like.”

  The air felt sharper and colder when I stood up. Rory insisted that I keep his coat around my shoulders. We walked down to the water and made our way along another path. After a few hundred yards, it veered away from the river and through a farmyard. Then came a sharp left-hand bend. The path started to climb back up the bank. I could see Rory’s cap bobbing about in front of me. There was sand underfoot now. My shoes slipped as the gradient grew steeper. Rory stopped and held a bramble out of my way.

  As we began climbing up a long, shallow ditch, it occurred to me that this was almost certainly the same route used to haul the ship up from the river to the mound. Once, in this same ditch, hundreds of men had heaved and pushed. Moving the great ship from its natural home to a new, unfamiliar element. Hundreds of men, all feeling that another world lay just beyond their reach, perhaps just beneath their feet. I tried to imagine them now, materializing between the trees. Hauling on ropes and bending their backs. A distant clamor r
ising all round. Momentarily, they knotted before me, and then slipped away.

  Rory turned his torch on again. We were close to the top of the ridge now. The ground reared into a kind of lip before starting to flatten out. I could see his tent, the guy ropes fanning out. There were some pots and pans outside the entrance, soaking in a bowl of water.

  We continued on up the slope, emerging from the wood just by the shepherd’s hut. Ahead of us lay the ship. Seeing it in the semi-darkness, approaching from an unfamiliar angle, I couldn’t get over how raw it looked, how wanton. Pegged back like a giant wound. The wind had got up. I could hear the dry scratching of sand being blown across the tarpaulins.

  Walking towards the mounds, I became aware of something dancing in the air. At first I thought it must be sand. But this didn’t look like sand; it looked more like a cloud of snowflakes. As they fell to the ground, they caught what little light there was.

  Rory had seen them too. He reached out his hand, palm upwards. Then he held it up to me. I could see something shining there.

  “What is it?”

  “I think it must be gold leaf. I remember Phillips saying how there was a lot of it lying around.”

  The gold flakes continued to swirl about in the breeze. I could see them quite clearly now. I gazed in wonder, watching the flakes settle on my shoulders and my chest. Holding my hands out, I wanted as many of them to fall on me as possible. I had this absurd fancy that I would be all garlanded and crowned, like a princess.

  But when I reached up to feel my hair, all I touched was a piece of twig. It must have become caught there when I’d been lying against the tree. I tried to disentangle it, except it wouldn’t come. I only succeeded in making it even more tightly snagged.

  “Here,” said Rory. “Let me.”

  I stayed still while he began unpicking the twig from my hair. He did so very carefully, not tugging at all. Parting the strands and then unwinding them. It was as if he was picking me apart. All the while tiny specks of gold leaf continued falling around us. I could feel them in my mouth, catching in my throat. But still they were not enough to stop this awful confessional urge that rose within me. It seemed to gather up everything hidden, everything secret, and carry it all out into the open.