Treasures of Time

by Penelope Lively

  But at the moment, in the Gower Street pub, Tony was enjoying a spell of optimism. He had dropped in, as he often did, on the off-chance of finding Tom. He never, Tom realized, ate or drank alone; his own company (except, presumably, at night) appeared to alarm him and he took steps to avoid it as much as possible. He said, ‘We shall do a day’s filming at Danehurst itself, and one or possibly two up at Charlie’s Tump, where Paul Summers is going to talk about the finds there and its significance. Laura has been frightfully cooperative. I get the impression the sister is less enthusiastic.’

  ‘Look,’ said Tom, ‘I am not seeing her. I am not writing to her. I am not furtively telephoning her. Truth to tell, I haven’t much thought about her. I did go to bed with her. I don’t expect I ever will again. But I can’t absolutely, unequivocally promise. There. Honester than that you cannot get. I love you. I find you more attractive than anyone else. But I have, I suspect, over-developed natural urges, and from time to time they get the better of me. I’m sorry about them.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You’ve bitten all your finger-nails off again.’

  ‘That’s a natural urge too.’

  ‘His parents?’ said Laura to Barbara Hamilton. ‘No, I haven’t met them, of course they’re rather a different type… Yes, Tom went to Oxford. Yes, it is a marvellous thing, the way everybody does nowadays.’ She stared in irritation at the lawn – distressingly unmown, what had become of Mr Lucas this week? – while two villages away Barbara talked of her daughter, Olivia, satisfactorily married to a young MP said to be tipped for an interesting career. Olivia had two pretty little girls and a house in London for which Barbara had devised and procured the décor and furnishings. ‘Yes,’ Laura said, ‘I imagine Olivia’s wedding must have been lovely, you are so lucky that she’s such a nice homey girl, Kate frankly is just not interested in that kind of thing. It comes of being clever, I suppose, it can’t be helped.’ Nellie, now, was propelling herself across the lawn, a gardening implement in her hand, stabbing infant thistles as she went. ‘I shall have to go, my dear, Nellie is in the garden needing her tea and as you know I am single-handed.’

  She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. My wedding dress was heavenly, she thought, I can feel it now, that tissue-y ever so slightly rough feel, ivory raw silk, with a tiny, tiny waist and heart-shaped neck. I was so slim then. And Granny’s veil and diamonds. And my hair done at that place in Brook Street.

  She loaded the tray and took it out onto the terrace. She said to Nellie, ‘I was thinking about our wedding, goodness knows why… Do you remember the awful photographer? And Mother ordering the wrong size cake from the caterers?’

  I put the dress on; it is lovely; I am lovely. Everything is fuss and excitement; it is all for me. Mother says, ‘Stand still, dear, don’t fidget, I can’t get the veil fixed right. You’re not nervous, are you? There, that’s better…’ But I am not nervous: I am not anything. I don’t feel anything; this is the happiest day of my life and I don’t feel anything. I see the shiny black car in the drive outside, waiting, and father in his wedding clothes. Nellie comes into the room, looking funny in the sort of frock she doesn’t like wearing, and a hat. Hugh is in the church now. I think of Hugh, and nothing happens. There is not that delicious, confusing rush of something there was at first, there is nothing much at all. I see Nellie looking at me; she has a funny look – she is… she is sorry for me.

  Laura stands at the mirror in the dress. The dress over which we have all been so much exercised, which has been debated and constructed and reconstructed and despaired of and delighted over. She looks beautiful. She looks like a Botticelli angel; her hair shines like water in the sun. Mother is doing something with the veil and Laura stares out of the window and as I come in she turns to see who it is. Her mouth is a little sad cross button like when she was a child: like when she was a child and had got the present she wanted for Christmas or birthday and then it had turned out to be not what she wanted after all. Her eyes are miserable, and a bit scared. She says, ‘You look nice, Nellie.’ I laugh: because I cannot remember Laura ever saying anything like that before and because I don’t think I look nice at all, in my tight, slippery blue silk dress and embarrassing hat. I want to make Laura laugh; I want to cheer her up; it is all wrong for her to be like this today.

  Nothing is as it seems. Always, anyone would think, it is Laura who has had everything; as I get older, I see that it is not like that at all. Laura has very little, and sometimes she knows.

  ‘Opinionated,’ said Laura, ‘and cast a blight on an otherwise perfect afternoon. When it had been so sweet of John Barclay to take us there.’

  ‘It’s a point of view.’

  ‘Oh, Tom has points of view about everything. He’s that kind of person. It’s a pity. Slightly unpredictable, one can’t help feeling.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘But he is attractive, that one has to admit.’ Laura studied the inside of her tea-cup and added in amendment, ‘Good-looking, I mean, of course. More tea?’

  ‘I think I’ll go in and get on with Hugh’s pottery sequence notes.’

  Laura said, not looking at Nellie. ‘How is that going?’

  ‘Quite nicely, I think. But slow, mainly because I write at a snail’s pace. It is like trying to make do with someone else’s hand.’

  ‘I could help. I could – well, you could dictate or something.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  There was a silence. ‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘Well, we must do that, then.’ She stood up, bent to lift the tray. ‘They rang again about the television filming, some business to do with electrical things. I hope it is not all going to be a great bother.’

  She went into the house. Nellie watched her go. She saw, for the first time, an absence of agility in her sister’s step, the slightest suggestion of a stoop. Somewhere out of sight, but not out of recollection, there hovered a little girl with straw-pale hair, tramping with anguished expression through the splintered fragments of a toy shop.

  Born Oct. 17th 1952, Tom typed. He pondered, hesitated, filled in the details of his education, culminating in the First Class Honours Degree in Modern History (1974). So far so satisfactory. The typewriter (Tony’s, borrowed) was a marvel of modern technology. Japanese, compact but with wide talents; it could make columns, change its own ribbon, erase its (or your) mistakes. Internationally-minded, too; dollar sign, French accents. What it could not do was extend or improve on a curriculum vitae, which is a poor bare thing at the best of times.

  Currently engaged in post-graduate work on the career of William Stukeley. Engaged also to be married to one Kate Paxton about whom one’s feelings veer from the proper ones of love and lust to worrying spasms of irritation and from time to time, indifference. All of which, of course, is irrelevant from the point of view of the University of the West Midlands which is looking for a Lecturer in History. The University of the West Midlands is also looking for an Assistant Lecturer in Film Studies and a Director of the Media Research Unit. The prospectus of the University of the West Midlands is quite a tome through which to browse; it makes interesting browsing, too, the diversification of higher education nowadays is remarkable, there is nothing they haven’t thought of, or not much. It comes as a welcome reassurance to stumble across such familiar old landmarks of learning as the metaphysical poets, the causes of the French Revolution and Romance Languages. Still around, for the time being at any rate. Meanwhile, the problem is how to convince the Chairman of the History Department in the University of the West Midlands that he would do well to spend his disposable cash on Tom Rider rather than anyone else.

  Laura, told of this venture by Kate, is alleged to have asked where the West Midlands was. Enlightened, she went on to say that it was all rather horrid up there, she imagined, but she expected Tom would settle down all right. There is something rather splendid about Laura, considered with complete detachment. One is the richer for having known her.

  Kate, wash
ing her hands in the museum Ladies, saw in the mirror the door open and the Assistant Director, Mary Halliday, come in. Since she believed that Mary Halliday did not like her the prospect of an enforced conversation filled her with panic and she dived into the lavatory (to which she had already been), pretending not to have seen Mary Halliday. There, she sat uneasily until she heard the door open and close once more. Mary Halliday noticed the retreating back of that odd grumpy girl who was Hugh Paxton’s daughter, thought it would be nice to get to know her better, but for some reason she seemed vaguely hostile… washed, tidied and went out again.

  In the Underground, staring blankly at the row of blankly staring faces opposite, Kate thought suddenly that she had hardly any friends. If something awful happened to me there is no one, really, that I could ring up and say, look, can I come round at once, I must talk, something awful… But then, I am not the kind of person who would ever make that kind of phone call in any case. I don’t tell people things. I’ve never been able to be cosy with people; other girls haven’t usually much cared for me. Men have, more, which surprised me very much at the beginning, when I was nineteen or so and it first happened. I hadn’t thought I was attractive, either. Being attractive for going-to-bed purposes must be quite different from being attractive for friendly purposes, which I find depressing.

  Tom has been, amazingly, both.

  Has been?

  Back at the flat she made herself a meal and settled down with a book. When the phone rang she leapt to it. ‘Kate? It’s Tony – Tony Greenway.’

  ‘Oh. Tom’s away for the night – he’s having this interview tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I know. I thought, you’re on your own, maybe you’d like to come out for a drink?’

  ‘Oh. Well, actually – yes, all right, I suppose I could. Thank you,’ she added after a moment.

  ‘Right. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes or so, O.K.?’

  They sat opposite one another in a crowded pub of carefully preserved Edwardian ambiance. Tony said, ‘Well, here’s to Tom’s prospects.’

  ‘He thought there were probably a lot of other people after the job.’

  ‘Ah. Tell me, Kate, what took you into the museum business? You never thought of following in your father’s foot-steps?’

  She hates talking about herself, he thought. A rare quality. Most people, it’s like turning on a tap. The problem is to shut them up, interviewing, not get them going. ‘Yes?’ he said encouragingly, with his detached, friendly, professional look of enquiry. ‘Yes, I see – it was all a bit accidental. The usual process of one thing leading to another. But I’m sure you were right not to go into the civil service. I can’t see you as a civil servant, Kate.’ There, he thought, that’s better, she can unbend, it just needs the right approach. ‘But you must have picked up a bit as a child, hanging around your father’s digs, and just all the stuff there is at Danehurst… Of course I know you’re not involved particularly now with prehistoric things, but even so… Tell me about Charlie’s Tump, for instance, how much do you remember of all that? Was there some kind of moment of truth, or did they always suspect what they were on to?’

  Moment of truth?

  There is this moment, that I seem to have by me still, a moment when I am inside the Tump with Daddy and Aunt Nellie. It is dark inside, and a bit wet, but cosy, it is like being in a dark earthy cupboard, I pretend I am a mole, a mole in a hole, my hole, my safe cosy hole where no one can get me… I make myself a nest and I curl up in it and watch them dig. They are digging up a person. A skeleton person. Slowly slowly, because they mustn’t spoil it. I see the bones, and Daddy brushing the earth away from the bones, and I look at my hand and think that I am like that inside, too. There is the hard part of people that is their bones and the soft part on the outside, and when you are dead the soft part goes away. Where does it go to? I ask Daddy and Aunt Nellie where it goes but they are busy, they are not listening. What is dead? The person they are digging is dead. Everybody is dead one day, when they get old. Daddy and Aunt Nellie and Mummy will get old and be dead. I am six and a half, after Christmas I will be seven. Before you are born you are inside your mummy’s tummy. I think that is horrid, it is disgusting, sometimes I think of that when I am having lunch and it makes me feel sick, I can’t finish my lunch.

  I can hear sheep noises from outside, and birds, and Brenda talking to somebody. In here it is quiet. The dead person has been here for a long time, a long long time, I don’t know how long, Daddy says they lived thousands and thousands of years ago, the people he digs. Suddenly I feel sad; it is like being not well, there is nothing I can do about it; I lie on my side and tears drip down my face and melt into the ground.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I can’t remember all that much. I was only about six. I suppose I must have been up there sometimes. Honestly, it’s all very hazy now. I do vaguely remember a bit of fuss and excitement, and the people I remember – a woman called Brenda Carstairs who was Dad’s assistant and a Spanish man who came to help, and Paul Summers who you’ve met. And…’

  ‘Yes?’ Funny, Tony thought, she’s going all buttoned-up again, just as for once one thought one had got her relaxed. She’s a nice girl, that’s the trouble. Nice but bloody difficult. Too difficult for Tom. They won’t marry, of course, in the end. ‘Yes?’

  ‘… oh and silly little things that aren’t relevant, like Aunt Nellie giving me a trowel of my own. I adored it – I can see it now, Woolworth’s, with a bright blue handle. I dug a burial mound for a dead bird with it. But otherwise it’s all a bit blank, I’m afraid.’

  ‘A Spaniard? Do you remember his name?’

  ‘No,’ said Kate.

  ‘Paul Summers put me in touch with Miss Carstairs, which was rather nice. We had a talk.’

  ‘Goodness. I don’t expect any of us have seen her since then.’

  ‘She teaches in Durham. Rather a gym mistress type.’

  But voluble enough over a couple of drinks and a meal in Durham’s plushiest hotel.

  ‘Oh, it was a smashing dig, we all enjoyed it, Hugh Paxton was great fun to work with though he had a temper, mind, I remember him flaring up once or twice when he thought someone had done something daft. Mrs P frankly I never much cared for. One always felt he ought to have married the sister – what was she called? Nellie something – but of course Mrs P was a real sex-pot and Hugh was rather a one for the girls. Dear me, I shouldn’t be saying all this – don’t you go plying me with drink before we do this film thing. How long do you want me to talk for? Only a minute or so – well, whatever you like but of course there’s lots to say about it, after all it was an important dig. Mind, once Hugh cottoned on to just how important there was a lot of pressure on, the appointment to the Directorship of the Council was coming up and he realized he was in with a chance so long as people knew about Charlie’s Tump. He did rush things a bit, maybe, towards the end of the summer.’

  ‘Paul Summers I remember quite well,’ said Kate, ‘because he could do that thing where you put a piece of grass between your hands and blow and it makes a squeaking noise. I was deeply impressed.’

  ‘Paxton. How does one describe Paxton? Well, to lay all one’s cards on the table, I must admit that we didn’t always see eye to eye. His methods wouldn’t always be my methods. His trenching, for instance… And he wasn’t a man who took advice kindly. Very opinionated. Oh, he had flair all right – one of those archaeologists who just seems to know by instinct where to put the spade in. I never know whether it’s luck or inspiration. I mean, Charlie’s Tump wasn’t, on the ground, all that promising a site – a dozen other barrows spring to mind that might have seemed more worth doing, at the time, but Hugh Paxton has to pick the right one, straight off. And of course the burial was a secondary insertion anyway – a piece of unexpected luck. It had been tampered with in the past, inevitably – Stukeley mentions one of his contemporaries having a go at it – fascinating dig, one was glad to be there, I remember it all well – Laura drifting about in f
ashionable outfits, and Nellie working like a Trojan as ever. There was a bosomy girl called Brenda something, and a Spanish chap whose name escapes me. I suppose the daughter must have been around – she’d have been a small child. And it was a break-through in many ways, there was a lot of very valuable evidence and it all fits in nicely with post radio-carbon theories. But of course the person who got most out of it was Paxton himself It got him the Directorship, no doubt about that. And Paxton was only too well aware. I’m not saying he manipulated things. Let’s just put it that once he knew what he was onto he went like the clappers. He was determined to publish before the appointing committee met. It could legitimately be said that the excavation of the final chamber was done in an unholy scramble. Not that I’m going to put it quite like that for this recording of yours. I’ll temper it. De mortuis etc.’