The Buried Circle (11 page)
He’s grinning at the camera in that photograph, but what I sees now is the hurt in his face.
Frannie
, he says to me,
what did you want to go and do that for?
Yes, I say, but you wasn’t exactly whiter than whatsit, was you? Didn’t understand then, but I reckon you had your secrets too, up on Windmill Hill on that motorbike. How was it you caught Mr Keiller’s eye so he give you a job? But no good asking: he and Mr K never come back, for all I go looking in the moonlight.
Percy Lawes had set up his movie camera on the bit of green opposite the Red Lion when I got off the Swindon bus coming home after my Thursday-afternoon shorthand class. There was a group of kids hanging round him as usual.
‘Back down the high street,’ he was saying to Heather Peak-Garland and her pals. ‘Go on. You were too quick for me last time. I didn’t get you all in the picture.’
They trooped down the road towards the shop.
‘Further.’
Back they went again, almost to the school.
‘Further.’
I left them to it and crossed the road. I had decisions to make, about what I was going to do with my life–didn’t intend spending it all being a skivvy for Mam and Dad–and the best place to think was in among the stones. There was a big old lad fallen on his side that I liked to curl up on when I needed time and space to myself. The Rawlins boys used him as a sliding stone, tobogganing down his polished flank to land with a splash in the puddle at the bottom, then clambering back on over and over till they near wore out the seat of their pants. But today they were dancing round Percy having their pictures took on that camera of his, so I had the stone to myself.
Except no sooner had I settled myself, pulling up the collar of my wool coat and shoving my hands in my pockets, than the breeze blew the sound of voices my way.
It was two of the archaeologists that worked for Mr Keiller. You could tell they was archaeologists because one was carrying a tall measuring pole painted black-and-white, and the other had some sort of survey equipment on folding legs. They were over by one of the few stones that was still standing in this part of the field. One had his back to me, bending over his tripod. The other, holding the pole, was the same tall, languid fellow with sloping shoulders and floppy hair I’d seen in the Manor gardens. They’d either not seen me or thought me not worth the noticing.
‘Keep the flaming pole steady, Cromley,’ shouted the shorter one. He had darker, wavy hair, and a thick tweed jacket. ‘You’re waggling it about like a wog with an
assegai!
‘It’s too bloody cold to stand still,’ yelled the other. ‘This’ll have to be the last one. The light’ll be going soon.’
They were both young men, in their twenties, with carrying voices, like they didn’t care who heard ‘em say what. I wondered what made them want to spend their lives digging up old stones, but maybe it wasn’t that brought them here: maybe it was Mr Keiller. You could imagine him marching up to some smart young lad, coming all innocent out of a college gateway in Oxford or Cambridge, and saying,
Follow me
. And they would.
‘There,’ said the tall one called Cromley, lowering the pole. The rays of the low sun caught his soft little moustache, the colour of Demerara sugar above fine, sculpted lips. ‘That’s where there should be a stone buried, if the spacing’s constant. And another…’ He moved along the rim of the ditch, sweeping the pole over the grass, then stopping and jabbing the ground with it. ‘The next here.’ Finally he speared the striped stick into a molehill, and took out his cigarette case to light up. The match flared and fizzed.
The dark-haired chap ignored him, dipping a long pointed nose towards his notebook. He took his time writing something, then folded the legs of the tripod.
‘You know, Piggott…’ The taller man was using the pole like a hiker’s staff as they walked back in my direction, his cigarette trailing from the fingers of his other hand. ‘AK’s driven off to London again with the Brushwood Boy. Don’t you think someone ought to enlighten Doris?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Piggott, revealing a glimpse of big, flat teeth. There was irritation in his voice, and he looked quite red in the face, though that was maybe the cold.
I didn’t hear any more, because I felt suddenly shy and thought they might laugh at me for being a gurt grown girl climbing on the stones like the children did. Besides, the light was fading, and the moon coming up already, and Mam would be wondering where I’d got to. I slid off the stone, tugged my skirt down, and ran off between the trees, before they reached where I’d been sitting.
Running back the way I’d come, running widdershins. First time I didn’t think to follow the light round the circle, like my mam always told me.
The hobble across the circle seems to take for ever, Fran’s hand on my arm tightening every time her soaked slippers skid on the frosty grass.
‘I’m going to take you into the pub,’ I say.
No response. Frannie glares straight ahead, brows knitting in concentration. We cross the road, and as we approach the light on the outside of the Red Lion, she lifts her eyes up and stares at it as we pass underneath, like she’s never seen it before.
Although the snug is still packed with reminiscing villagers, the main bar is almost empty. My grandmother settles herself in the corner, sees Carrie coming out of the Ladies and waves. But weather conditions haven’t entirely returned to normal on Planet Fran: still cloudy, with patches of freezing fog.
‘Where are my cigarettes?’ She pats her cardigan pockets. ‘You got one on you, Meg?’
‘I’m India, and you know I don’t. I’ll bring you a packet with the drinks.’ Which would be better: whisky or hot coffee? I order both, scribble my mobile number on a scrap of paper for the TV people, and ask Carrie to look after Frannie while I fetch the car.
The shortest way home is through the field, but after several days’ rain, the Winterbourne’s nearly as high as the bridge. Moonlight glimmers on water round the foot of Silbury Hill, and without a doubt the meadow will be one big sucky bog. The path’s never been tarmacked: locals claim that’s another of the ways Keiller and the National Trust exiled ordinary folk from Avebury Better to take the longer, dryer way: along the lane, past the outlying cottages with their thatch and Range Rovers.
At night I don’t much like either route, my townie instincts not yet comfortable in the darkness of the countryside. Something’s made me more than usually twitchy this evening. The tiniest whisper of wind in dead beech leaves. I could swear that was a footstep behind.
Nobody. I know there’s nobody there.
All the same, I cast an uneasy glance over my shoulder as I take the fork for Trusloe. In the far distance there’s a light, moving slowly in the darkness across the slopes of Windmill Hill. Telling myself it can only be a late dogwalker, I sprint along the last stretch of lane towards the streetlight.
Frannie becomes suspiciously quiet once I persuade her into the passenger seat of the Peugeot.
‘You’re sure you’ll be OK?’ asks Carrie, as I close the car door. ‘I don’t mind coming along if you need a hand. She seems fine, now, but…’ Neither of us can define what
but
is.
‘Did she say anything to you about what she was doing there?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Come over for supper next week,’ says Carrie. ‘Both of you. You’re not getting out enough, India. What do you do in the evenings? We’ve hardly seen you since Christmas.’
What do I do? I watch television with my grandmother. I know every twist of the plotline of
EastEnders
and
Holby City
. After she’s gone to bed, I open a bottle of wine–bugger the new-year resolution–and play Free Cell on the computer. Can only manage the card games, these days; too much blood and destruction in anything else.
‘Oh, I don’t mind a quiet life,’ I say. ‘After London–you know…’ Too late I realize that the wave accompanying this, meant to convey I’m weary of the shallow pleasures of the metropolis, makes it look as if I’m rudely batting away Carrie’s invitation. ‘I’d
love
to come to supper some time,’ I add. ‘If Frannie’s…up to it.’
All through the conversation, my grandmother sits in the front seat with a puzzled, shut-up-don’t-interrupt-me expression on her face, like she’s working out a difficult sum in her head.
On a cold February night, Trusloe seems bleaker than ever, looming out of the windy darkness under rags of cloud backlit by the glow of Swindon to the north. There are not enough streetlamps, and most windows are unlit. On our road everyone, apart from the couple next door who make amateur porn films in their living room, apparently heads for bed straight after supper. Either that or they still use blackout material for curtains.
‘You OK?’ I haul on the handbrake outside Bella Vista.
Frannie stares straight ahead, brows knitted.
‘I said, are you OK?’
‘What have you brought me here for?’
‘So you can go to bed.’
‘I don’t want to go to bed.’ There’s a petulant droop to her mouth. ‘Too buggerin’ early.’
‘Come on, let’s get you out of the car.’
‘India, I’m not a bloomin’ parcel. I’m perfectly capable of getting myself out.’ She’s adopted that posh tone she puts on when she wants to be bloody-minded.
‘Please yourself.’
‘I will.’ Frannie waggles the catch on the car door. ‘Won’t open.’
‘That’s not the way. Stop messing about. Use the handle.’
‘Locked.’
‘It’s not locked.’
Now she’s wrestling with the seatbelt. ‘I’m
trapped!
Just for a second, a feeling of utter panic seizes me. I’m close to tears: frustration, grief, despair, the sheer bloody unfairness of having to watch the person you love most in the world start to lose it, all vying for the honour of making me bawl.
But I won’t give way.
Pressing my nails hard into my palm to stop myself screaming, I reach across and press the button to release her.
While I’m boiling the kettle for her hot-water bottle, Frannie comes into the kitchen wearing her nightie inside out, one strap slipping off a bony, stooped shoulder.
‘You’ll catch your death. Get into bed, or put your dressing-gown on. And your other slippers.’ Her feet are purple. Have I noticed before how scrawny her arms have become, flesh hanging in loose, empty pouches?
She reaches out a swollen-knuckled paw and touches my face. ‘Sorry. Don’t mean to be a trouble.’
‘You’re not a trouble.’ I catch her hand before she withdraws it. It feels like a piece of raw chicken out of the fridge. I squeeze it helplessly, not knowing what else to do. ‘You’re no trouble at all, you old bat.’
She smiles up at me, her eyes showing a ghost of their familiar twinkle. Then she turns and shuffles out of the kitchen. The glow of the lamp in her bedroom backlights her, turning her into a bent shadowy thing crossing the hallway.
Suddenly I recognize what’s been bothering me. Frannie, silhouetted against the sky, stumping along the top of the bank. Going widdershins round the circle, anti-clockwise. She never goes widdershins.
Always sunwise, girl. You follows the light. Bad luck else
.
Steve’s open eyes…
I will
not
think about that.
Keiller’s papers are kept in the curator’s old room, tucked under the eaves above the stableyard museum, in a series of box files. Eventually all the Keiller material will be moved to the main offices, but the curator, a world expert on obscure bits of Neolithic pottery that look like digestive biscuit to me, is too busy cataloguing finds from a dig at Stonehenge.
‘There you are,’ says Michael, wheeling a library stool into place. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be
this
keen.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Thought I should start soonest.’ It’s the morning after the film show, ten minutes short of nine, and my first opportunity to tackle the job of ordering the archive since I’m not on shift in the caf today. The sun is already bright outside the window at the end, but its leaching light doesn’t penetrate the room. Even with the radiators on, the attic office is freezing.
‘Top shelf, photo albums,’ explains Michael. ‘Organized, possibly, by AK himself.’ Bound in brown morocco, the year in gold lettering on their spines. ‘Next shelf down, correspondence–letters received and flimsy copies of letters he sent. Not so organized, I’m afraid, and certainly not complete. His executors threw away anything they didn’t consider strictly relevant to the archaeology.’
‘So nothing juicy in there?’
‘One or two hints, maybe. Haven’t read them all’ Michael scoops up an armful of files and descends with them. ‘The really spicy stuff went on the bonfire. Legend has it that W. E. V. Young–the museum’s first curator–scattered the ashes on the Thames.’
‘Makes it sound like there was something frightfully scandalous.’
‘Well, there were four wives and God knows how many mistresses. He put it about a bit, did old AK. But the big secret–not very well kept, obviously, or we wouldn’t know about it–is supposed to be correspondence relating to what may or may not have been ritual sex magic’
‘I
beg
your pardon?’
Michael grins wickedly as he steps onto the library stool again. ‘Put it another way, he was a bit kinky. According to the diary of a reputable lady novelist, he asked her to step into a large wicker basket wearing nothing but a rubber mackintosh so he could prod her with an umbrella through the gaps.’
‘The old goat. Did she oblige?’
Michael shakes his head, dumping another armful of box files on the table. Suddenly this is starting to look like a harder task than I’d expected. ‘Which box is which? They don’t seem to be labelled.’
‘Told you they needed organizing.’
I open a box at random. It’s stuffed to the brim with flimsy blue sheets of paper.
‘Those are copies of the letters he wrote. After dinner he’d retire with a brandy snifter and dictate into the small hours. He was a prolific correspondent, employed several secretaries to transcribe. You never know, you might be looking at something your grandmother typed.’