“Of course not, dear boy,” Sel appears, hands outstretched, “I’ve just been speaking to your wife, and –”
“My wife?”
“Yes, said she’d been delayed. An accident to a friend; she rang from the hospital.”
About to ask what friend, Sam thinks better of it. “I see,” he says, though he doesn’t.
Clarrie looks at him, surprises herself with a feeling of compassion; he seems so sad and lost, yet so determined to do the right thing. “Come in and have a drink,” she says, smiling at him, “and tell us all about it.”
“I don’t think I’d better, I seem to have had rather a lot of alcohol today as it is,” he says, following her meekly into the sitting room. “Actually what I’ve come for is to give you this.” Thrusting a hand into his jacket pocket he produces the tiny parcel, unwraps it, holds the cup up to the light.
“Holy mackerel!” Ron, wide awake now, stares mesmerised, as do the others.
Silence. Four figures in a tableau, frozen in a moment in time, enchanted by the perfect thing held up for their inspection.
“Dear Ron,” Philippa says at last, her voice trembling a little, “always ready with the apt expression…”
Sam, aware of their awe, a little awed himself, says he hasn’t cleaned the cup, just removed the outer casing of earth, as he’d seen the archaeologists do on TV; he hoped that was alright.
“Where did you find it?” Ron, unable to contain himself any longer, “Did you know where to look?”
“In a way, well, I must have. And I really am most frightfully sorry about the mess I must have made under your ash tree, I was asleep, you see, and I didn’t –”
“We know, old man, we know. Not your fault of course, these things happen.” Do they? What the hell was he talking about? Sel puts an arm round Sam, indicating with the other Ron should take the cup.
Ron does, trembling a little himself. “I’ll look after it, Major Mallory, there’s no need to worry.”
But Sam, at the loss of the cup, seems to be becoming increasingly uneasy. “It is essential you look after it,” he says, taking what can only be described as a menacing step towards Ron, who discreetly takes several steps back, “the cup belongs to my son. I should not have stolen it, but that is what the Guardians seemed to be saying and there was no choice.”
Sel, always the peacemaker, intervenes: “We understand absolutely, dear boy, and will guard the cup, if needs be, with our lives, you can be assured of that. Now why don’t you come and sit down, and Clarrie here will organise a cup of tea.” Sam does as he’s told, albeit reluctantly; sits himself down on a rather uncomfortable Conran chair and closes his eyes.
While Clarrie disappears in the direction of the kitchen, Ron, still holding the cup, slides unobtrusively out of the room and back upstairs to his bedroom. Once there, he holds the precious object up to the light, examining with something like awe the perfection and intricacy of its decoration. The tiny animals round the rim seem to be dancing their dance especially for him; the warm silver, in spite of the dirt still clinging to it, alive in his hands. He scrabbles in his holdall for a magnifying glass. As he thought, it’s there, the Chi-Rho monogram. The baby must have been Christian, or his father was. Perhaps… but he’d go into all that later. Meanwhile, what a day; what a splendid, fabulous day! Holding the cup above his head to catch the last rays of the setting sun, an inane grin on his face, Ron Head, TV presenter and archaeologist par excellence, dances a dance of pure, unequivocal joy.
Downstairs things are not quite so ecstatic. Sam appears to be becoming less sure of his identity by the minute: the act of giving away the cup had, it seemed to Sel and Pippa, anxiously watching, been some sort of catalyst. Philippa crouches beside him, his hand firmly in hers. “Mother,” he says, “the rooks commanded me, I had no course but to obey…”
Flushed with excitement, but reasonably calm, having wrapped the cup in a pair of clean underpants in a drawer in his bedroom, Ron returns to the fray. Sel meanwhile has another go at ringing the shop and this time strikes lucky. “Sel Woodhead here. Mrs Mallory, you’re back then. Just ringing to say your husband is now with us, and I have to admit not quite himself. I wonder –”
“Well that’s something I suppose, but as to him being not quite himself, perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me in what way. I’ve only just arrived back and was forced to break into my own home, as my husband went off with his key and our girl forgot to leave hers under the stone when she left at closing time. Quite frankly I’m in no fit state to listen to you talking in riddles.”
“What a chapter of accidents you do seem to have had, dear, and I’m truly sorry to be the bearer of more disturbing news. What I suggest is that you make yourself a nice cup of tea, or even a stiff drink, and when you feel a little more relaxed, drive over to us at Browns for a light supper and we can all put our heads together and try to sort this tangle out. How would that be?”
“Well… I don’t know…” Emmie is torn between gratification at being asked to supper by a TV personality, and fury at Sam’s strange and thoughtless behaviour, not to mention Karen’s stupidity forgetting to put the key under the stone when she locked up.
“Look, dear,” Sel tries to keep the impatience out of his voice, “I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important. You must be tired after all your troubles and the last thing I expect you want is to have to go out again, but we do need to discuss the state of your husband. You see, dear, from time to time he seems to think he’s someone else. He talks of rooks and his mother, there’s a cup…”
Emmie closes her eyes. Let me wake up soon, she prays, please let me wake up soon. “Very well, Mr Woodhead, I’ll be over shortly, although what assistance I can be of I do not know…”
She’d better have a shower, get out of these clothes, put on something decent. In the kitchen, making a cuppa, she switches on the radio (permanently tuned to Radio Belchester; Sam has the one in his office on Radio 4).
“…And now for a message to Granny Bogg,” intones Tommy Thomson, “who, wait for it, will be ninety-two next week! Good on you Granny Bogg! The message is from her great great niece, Marlene Snokesbury – or is it Smokesbury, the writing here I have to say’s a tiny bit hard to make out – of No 2 Railway Villas, Frisbury, and reads: ‘Hullo Gran! All good wishes for next week; hope you make it, ha ha, of course you will. We won’t be round to wish you happy returns on the day as we’re off on holiday, but see you when we get back. All the best from Mar and Bimbo.’ Got that Granny Bogg? We’re all rooting for you out here…”
Emmie switches him off. She’s not in the mood, really she isn’t. She’s just sat down again when the front door bell rings. The front door bell never rings, people tend to use the shop… Could it be the police, because she had to break in? She only smashed the window in the outside pantry, but someone might have seen. Palpitating, she hurries into the hall and peers through the spy-hole in the front door. All she can make out is a smallish man in a hat – a detective in mufti perhaps? Trembling a little she pulls back the chain and opens the door.
“Yes?”
“Hallo, Em,” says Sidney Parfitt. “Long time no see…”
*
“Look,” says Clarrie in a not wholly successful effort to move things on, “we can’t wait any longer for Mrs Mallory; Juan says dinner will be ruined if we don’t have it now. He’s beginning to get upset again and the last thing I want to do with all this going on is to lose him. What can have happened to the wretched woman?”
“I could give her another ring, but I’m sure she’ll be along in a minute.”
“We’ll hold it for another ten minutes – no more. I’m sure Major Mallory must be getting hungry.” Clarrie smiles encouragingly at Sam, who smiles back.
“I had no choice Madam, no choice,” he tells her earnestly, “the rooks, you see, they –”
“Of course, dear boy, of course,” Sel, hastily intervening, pats him on the shoulder.
“Is he to
eat with us?” Philippa whispers to Clarrie, “I don’t think he should be left.” They look at him doubtfully.
“Don’t worry,” Ron, himself again, steps into the breach. “Leave him to me. I’m going to try an experiment.”
“Well for Christ’s sake don’t mess up, if anything goes wrong we’ll all be in for it.”
“Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.” Oddly enough, he does. How he knows is a mystery: perhaps in some way he’s still attached to that other world, the world that for those few, glorious minutes he’d so briefly inhabited. God alone knew and who was he to argue? His ancient Irish, he had to admit, wasn’t up to much, but he’d have a go; tonight he’d have a go at anything. Sauntering over to the still seated Sam, he bows courteously. “You will share our bread tonight, Brother?” he asks, hoping he’s got the accent right, but doubting it. It seems, however, he has at least been understood, and Clarrie and Sel watch mesmerised as Sam, gently withdrawing his hand from Philippa’s grasp, rises to his feet, and although his words are unintelligible to three of those present, and only just intelligible to the fourth, it’s plain he has accepted Ron’s offer to dine with them. In the light of this latest development they decide not to wait for Emmie, and at a gesture from Sel, the party move off in stately fashion in the direction of the dining room.
*
Dark now; the moon not yet up. The fox from the Grove passes silently through the sleeping garden, under the monkey puzzle tree and along the path that leads to the barn; a farm cat eyes him warily as he slips by. He hurries across the yard into the paddock, pausing for a moment to sniff the various holes and mounds of earth under Tavey’s tree, before making for the field next door and commencing the night’s business.
Ron, at his bedroom window, notebook on knee, moths attracted by the light flapping about round his head, writes busily. “Silver, almost certainly third century AD, made for a child perhaps; decorated with animals – deer, fox, badger and so on. The Christian monogram I believe to have been added at a later date, probably some time in the fourth century, but cannot be sure until tests are made. From the evidence to date the vessel appears to be a ceremonial cup, possibly handed down from one generation to the next and perhaps when the family – presumably of Romano-British stock – in whose possession it was, became, partly anyway, Christianised, they employed a silversmith to add the Chi-Rho monogram. Tomorrow, I hope, will reveal more, as I plan to investigate the area where the cup was found. Unfortunately random digging has taken place and therefore to make a comprehensive investigation of the terrain will be virtually impossible.”
That’s it for now. He’s too tired and excited to write more tonight. He shuts the notebook and, drawing the curtains across the still open window, carefully placing the cup on the bedside table, climbs into bed. But before he switches off the light he allows himself just one more look at the tiny animals as they dance their interminable dance round the rim of the cup. A deer, a fox, a badger, possibly a hare although it looked a bit odd, but what on earth was that creature with the long nose? Might be an anteater, although surely it couldn’t be – could it? Switching off the light at last, Ron slept.
Philippa lies on her back, pads over her eyes, plugs in her ears, deaf and blind to the sleeping world around her. Without her nightly seven hours she’s no good to man or beast, and it’s essential she’s at her best tomorrow.
Clarrie and Sel are naked in the eighteenth century repro bed. Clarrie rests her head on Sel’s stomach, her hair brushes his thighs. “Sometimes I wish things were different.”
Sel’s until now limp cock slowly begins to stiffen. “A vain hope, love; things are as they are, and we have to cope with them as best we can. This man, this salesman; why him?”
“I suppose because he was the only one around and he was so, well, basic. I know that’s no excuse, but what else can I say? Do you mind dreadfully?”
Sel is quiet for a minute, then: “Do you mind I don’t mind?” he asks. Clarrie closes her eyes in exasperation. He has, as always, managed to elude her.
“What will happen tomorrow, Sel, what will they find?”
“The baby, dear, the baby, what else?”
Chapter 12
Emmie wakes with a start. It must be late; she can hear the milkman outside. Then it all comes back to her: last night; Sid; everything. In the excitement she must have forgotten to set the alarm. Crikey it’s eight thirty! Karen must have arrived; well, at least she’d have been able to let herself in. Dragging herself out of bed, Emmie pads over to the mirror; gives herself what the women’s magazines refer to as a frank appraisal. She looks different somehow; not happier exactly, but different. Be that as it may if she didn’t have a nice hot cup of tea she’d die, she really would. And after that she’d ring Browns, find out about Sam. Mr Woodhead had sounded a bit miffed last night when she rang to say she wasn’t coming after all, but she couldn’t have gone, not with Sid arriving like that out of the blue. In any case by what Mr Woodhead had said, it looked as if Sam had gone clean off his chump, for the time being anyway, and what could she have done about that? She wasn’t surprised really, he’d been heading for some sort of breakdown ever since they’d moved here – come to think of it, ever since they got married.
Downstairs, as she plugs in the kettle and sets out her own personal brown teapot with the cup and saucer from Margate her Gran had given her when she was eight years old, and was, miraculously, still going, she wonders what will happen to Sam – hospital or the bin? She’d visited her Aunt Aggie in the bin once, Mum had taken her. Pale faces and locked doors, she remembered. An old man had shown her his privates. “Don’t look, Em, turn away,” Mum had ordered, but she had.
Whatever happened she’d have to stick by Sam; she was his wife after all. But then of course she wasn’t his wife, was she, she was Sid’s wife, and if that got out not only would Sam be in the bin, but she’d be in the nick for bigamy. The water boiled, she pours it on the tea bag in the pot and sits down at the kitchen table. She won’t have a biscuit this morning, somehow she isn’t hungry.
What had possessed her to tell people Sid was dead? OK, he’d buggered off without giving a forwarding address. Just a note to say he was sorry: there was no one else, but he didn’t think he was the marrying kind after all. And what a shock it had been, coming home from work that Monday to find her marriage up the spout. She had to admit she’d not been too broken hearted to see the back of Sid. On the whole they’d got on pretty well, but somehow or other things between them had never, so to speak, caught fire, had they, and there were no kids to think about. It was a shock all the same, mitigated somewhat by the fact he’d paid a year’s rent in advance on their flat and made all his savings (a sizable amount) over to her. It had been a stupid thing to do, though, she reflects, taking a sip of tea before it’s had time to settle down properly and burning her mouth in the process, to tell people Sid had died, not just buggered off and left her. But she’d felt such a fool, and believing her to be a widow had somehow made people more sympathetic. And it wasn’t as if she’d gone to that Bureau to find a husband, just someone to take her out now and again and be a friend. But meeting Sam had driven her off course: she’d known at once there was no way someone like him would have looked at her if she’d told him she was still married and couldn’t get a divorce because her husband had left her without a forwarding address. Of course, as things turned out it would have been a great deal better if he never had. looked at her. But there you go.
Anyway, it was all water under the bridge now, she tells herself, taking another sip of tea; let’s face it, she’d been a fool, and there was nothing she could do about that. However, it was all very well to be philosophical, but dwelling on past mistakes, coupled with the inexplicable events of the here and now, not to mention knowing she’d made an idiot of herself over Jack Fulton, does nothing to raise her fluctuating spirits. Indeed, everything suddenly seems altogether too much and the tears start to flow in earnest. Take me away, Sid, ple
ase take me away, she prays between sobs, to anyone who might be listening, and at that very moment, miraculously, the phone rings.
“Sid here, Em. Just thought I’d give you a tinkle, I was worried see… last night…”
Emmie gulps, stands up straight, comes to a decision. “Sid,” she says, aware of a totally unexpected and unlooked for feeling of joy at the sound of his voice, “Sid, can you come round please, I don’t think I can cope much longer…”
*
“Bring back the child’s body,” his mother orders, “the old woman has killed him, she was seen. Go, go quickly before it is too late, she leaves today with her mistress and the wedding party.”
He, Sam/Brian, looks at her, desperate, pleading. “Mother, I have done what I can, begged and begged for the body, but was turned away with insults and denials. I offered gold, it made no difference. The old woman took the cup I offered to help the boy on his way, but would not be bribed, said it was better that I did not know where he lay; that Octavia’s father, even the bridegroom were asking questions, said surely if I loved Octavia I would not want her to suffer her father’s wrath if he discovered the truth.”
“If you will not, I will go.” She looks at him with scorn. “The boy was of your loins, my son, he must have decent burial according to our Faith; the Christ to watch over him, Peter and Paul to guard him.”
“He has the cup,” he pleads again, “to help him on his way –”
She does not answer, turns from him.
Now he’s stumbling along the track as it winds steeply down through trees, the ground hard and rutted with wheel marks; hair in his eyes, sweat pouring from him. Stung by his mother’s words, he’s returning once again for one last try. Would he be too late? It was a hopeless errand anyway, he knows this. The old woman had refused to give the body up, she will refuse again, there was nothing more he could do to persuade her. And Octavia, the new Octavia he no longer knew or understood? He had gone down on his knees, begged her to tell him where the child’s body lay, but she had smiled and shrugged her shoulders in disdain: “I neither know nor care,” she’d said. “Forget him, he is gone – as will I before long. Marry one of your own kind, a girl who can give you sons – forget me as I surely will forget you,” and she’d turned away and left him. He’d done his best, what more could he do? Anyway, was it so important, after all? The Christian God was merciful, Marcus the preacher had told them so. Surely He would not be angry if the boy’s body was buried without due ceremony? The child possessed a soul, Marcus said, and it was this that journeyed on to heaven, leaving the body an empty shell within the earth to rot. Surely the Christ would understand?
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