The Buried Circle (40 page)
I sit on a stile, with a view of the fields below. A creature is moving through the young grain, too distant to identify in the fading light. The night we trampled out the crop circle, a hare danced across our path, long-eared and leggy. John spotted it first, grabbed my shoulders and turned me so I saw it run across the field. When he became a shaman, he took a hare for his power animal.
In 1989, the landscape seemed touched with promise, under a rising moon near the full, made enormous and golden by dust in the atmosphere. Tonight the same fields are tired and colourless, sticky grey air thickening to twilight.
Across the valley, a long cigar shape looms on the misty downland. That night, it seemed between worlds, drenched in moonlight. I sat cross-legged in the barley, gazing up at it on the ridge, while John and his friends called out instructions and song titles to each other, all their old favourites, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Echo and the Bunnymen, Angelfeather. ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’. ‘Hot Summer Night’. ‘Killing Moon’. ‘Callin’ In The Mothership’.
The other mothership. Watching us. Tall stones like teeth.
The Long Barrow.
The path climbs the downland towards the barrow. A pulse throbs in my temple. Panting in the claggy air, I can’t stop myself glancing uneasily over my shoulder, sensing someone or something behind, shadowing my footsteps.
Like one who on a lonesome road, doth walk in fear and dread
…But when I turn the whole narrow valley is laid out below me, empty.
And having once turned round, walks on, and turns no more his head
…
The ground levels out towards the barrow, sinister in the fading light, with its massive stones guarding the forecourt.
Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread
.
Pressure builds up in my ears, my heart kicks, pumping ice-water and adrenalin and superstitious terror. The fiend isn’t behind, but ahead: a shape wrapped in darkness, on the mown grass in front of the barrow. Twilight has wiped blank its face. Wearing a cloak emblazoned with mystic symbols, motionless, cross-legged, stiff-armed, head tipped back, it stares at a starless sky. Behind it, an unearthly light seeps out of the barrow between the megaliths.
Not cool to run, but on this occasion…
Too late: I’ve been seen. The shape moves its head. A grey shadow slips from its side.
‘I knew you were coming,’ says Bryn.
Cynon the Barbarian, giving up the struggle to masquerade as Hell Hound, is as pleased as ever to see me, leaping up and trying to land flying licks on my face, dancing away, then coming back for another slobbery go.
Bryn’s wrapped in a dark, fleecy blanket, beaded with dew, whose mystic symbols turn out to be the crest of Newcastle United Football Club. The unearthly glow between the megaliths is a small campfire in the mouth of the barrow.
His rucksack is open beside him, by his bare feet an enamel mug and a half-empty tin of baked beans with a plastic fork sticking out of it.
‘Your boy around too?’ I ask. ‘Weren’t you going to bring him with you for Solstice?’
‘Didn’t work out.’ He reaches for the beans. The blanket slips from one shoulder, revealing he’s bare-chested beneath it. ‘None of it: home, boy, lady. Goddess told me I’d be better off alone.’ He rummages in the rucksack and produces a plastic cap that fits exactly over the can’s rim. Waste not, want not. ‘Tomorrow’s breakfast,’ he says apologetically.
‘You haven’t got a paracetamol in there, have you?’ I ask. My head is still thumping.
‘Got something better.’ He pulls up a Velero flap on a pocket of the rucksack, with a tearing sound that sets my teeth on edge. ‘Try one of these. Tramadol. It’ll take the edge off anything. Headache?’
‘That’s it.’
He nods. ‘Give it ten and it’ll be gone.’ He pops the pill out of its blister pack and proffers it on a grubby palm. ‘Sorry. No washing facilities up here. There’s bottled water to wash it down, though. Have two–that’ll magic away the pain.’
I take a long swig of water with the pills–headache probably dehydration as much as anything–and settle myself on the ground. ‘What–’
‘Sssh,’ he says. ‘Give it time to work. Breathe steady.’ We sit in companionable silence, gazing upwards, looking for stars coming out, but the cloud’s too thick. The air’s still, the quietness occasionally broken by the far-away hum of traffic on the A4. The ache in my temples eases. With it, the huge over-inflated stress-zeppelin that is Frannie, the row with John, dead Steve, live Ed, television that may or may not be about my grandfather, seems to shrink and float away into the distance. A sense of well-being steals over me.
Eventually Bryn shifts his position and smiles.
I smile back. ‘Better already.’
‘Good.’ Quiet confidence in his voice; he’d known it would work. ‘I were thinkin’ of walkin’ up to the Wansdyke, spend the night watchin’ for crop circles. If you’re there when one forms…amazin’. Sun comes up and there she is, grown like a mushroom in the dark. But now…’ He pats Cynon, snuggled against the Newcastle blanket. ‘Have to wait for your walk till mornin’, boy.’
‘Are you camping in Tolemac?’ I ask, massaging crampy calves.
‘No, no. Sleepin’ here, in the womb of the Goddess.’
I’m used to John chucking the odd mysticism into conversation, but how seriously does Bryn take this Goddess stuff? He strikes me as a lost soul, casting about for a philosophy to make sense of his life. Last year it was Newcastle United, this month the Goddess. Next week he could move on to bodybuilding, computer gaming or creative writing.
But there’s something lovely about his devotion to simplicity. He pulls the blanket closer, not ashamed of his bare skin but sensitive to what I might think. ‘Washed a couple of T-shirts at the spring, didn’t dry quickly as I thought.’ He does the nature-boy bit well, knows how to look after himself, builds a neat fire.
He’s looking at me hopefully, an invitation in his eyes.
‘Cynon and me are well set-up here,’ he says. ‘Come and see.’
‘Bit spooky for me.’ I’m reluctant to go into the barrow. ‘At Tolemac, you’re not far from people. This…well, it’s a tomb.’
‘Told you, it’s beautiful,’ he says, clambering to his feet, and holding out his hand.
We step over the small fire that dances in the forecourt of the Long Barrow. Perhaps this is how it looked five, six thousand years ago. Fragments of what I’ve read, or Martin’s told me, come back. The stones guarding the entrance are later additions: someone decided that what happened in the forecourt and the tomb should be secret, hidden from uninitiated eyes. Both Bryn and I have to stoop beneath the massive stone lintel to enter the narrow passageway. Not all of it is constructed of sarsen. Some of the drystone walling between came from as far away as Bristol. They built the barrow of stones that meant something to them, stones they brought with them from their original distant home, or familiar stones used for generations to polish flint tools and axes.
To left and right are dark, empty chambers, two on each side. When Stuart Piggott opened the barrow, in the 1950s, he found the skeletal remains of more than forty individuals, children as well as adults. Many skulls and jawbones were missing, probably removed for use in rituals, and in some chambers the long bones of legs and arms had been neatly stacked together against the walls.
Piggott rebuilt the barrow, placing a porthole of thick glass in the roof of the passageway to let daylight in. Tonight the stone passage is illuminated by small flickering flames. On every ledge, in every cranny, Bryn has put tea-lights: Neolithic Fairyland. In the end chamber, glittering with candles, a black plastic groundsheet is spread over the muddy floor. On top he’s laid a worn Indian bedspread like a carpet, and unrolled a straw beach mat under his sleeping-bag to insulate it from the chill of the tomb’s earthen floor. The Gurdjieff book from the bender is open, face down, on the sleeping-bag.
He’s looking at me for a reaction, nervous pride in his eyes.
The light from the candles winks and shifts, as if the earth around us is breathing. The barrow insulates us from all notions of the real world outside: it’s another space, another time, a parallel universe, between worlds. The mothership, maybe. So when he touches my breast, it seems…
…natural.
Shit, shit, shit. I come awake with a start, hoping to see the familiar walls of my room at Frannie’s, a sliver of charcoal sky through the curtains.
Instead there’s a star overhead, misty and wavering like it’s reflected in water. I’m lying on my back, looking up at Stuart Piggott’s glass porthole in the roof of the Long Barrow. Something underneath is digging uncomfortably into my shoulder.
The tea-lights are still burning, but Fairyland has lost its glamour. The chill of damp earth strikes up through the groundsheet. The air inside the tomb is cold, but thick and unpleasant, musty with baked-bean farts and the spillage of male seed. While my back is clammy against cold plastic, my hip and thigh are unpleasantly hot. Something warm and rough-haired is snuggled against me. It twitches, emits a low dreaming whimper. Cynon, who smells very doggy indeed, up close and personal.
Across the chamber, Bryn is curled in a foetal shape, caramel curls over his eyes, his buttery skin smooth and perfect in the flickering candlelight. He’s breathing softly, slowly, like a child, clutching a corner of his Newcastle United blanket bunched up to his mouth. His jeans are concertinaed at his feet.
Oh, no. How could I have done that?
I’d known it was a terrible mistake less than five minutes in. His fingers tangling in my hair (grubby fingers, how had I forgotten?), his soft, damp mouth exploring my face and neck like he wanted to suck me in; the somehow rubbery feel of that smooth skin against mine as he butted for entrance.
But by then it was too late to draw back and make apologies.
What followed was…awful.
Tears spring into my eyes, tears of shame, disgust, anger with myself for letting it happen. Poor bastard, it wasn’t his fault. I should never have followed him into the tomb. Should have retreated the moment he touched my breast. There was nothing gross about his approach: his fingers were delicate, hesitant, and I–
–behaved like a slut. Forgot how to say no.
I roll over, careful not to disturb the sleeping dog. I’m even embarrassed about the dog being there. It feels sordid, like parents who make love in the same room as their children are sleeping. He tried, he really tried. None of it worked for me. Not a quiver. Everything getting more and more sore. Easiest to fake it, and let him finish.
Then, right at the end, I thought of Ed, and felt the blood gather and my breath starting to quicken but it was too late.
After it was over he wiped himself. ‘She said you’d come.’
‘Who?’
‘The Goddess. She told me you’d be here with me.’
That was all I needed. I fucked a fruitcake. Feel sick to think of it.
The hard object under my shoulder turns out to be Bryn’s Gurdjieff book. In the wavering light it’s hard to read my watch, but–
Oh, my God
. Frannie. On her own all evening, no idea where I am, probably frantic with worry.
Mustn’t wake him. I crawl off the ground sheet, dragging my clothes into the muddy passageway, not caring how filthy they get, hauling them on any old how…Bryn hasn’t stirred. One last look into the chamber–
no. I don’t believe it
. On a ledge in the corner, so high I’d missed it before, watching me, mocking. It’s one of the figurines you can buy in the village gift shop, a resin copy of a stone carving, in primitive style: bulging eyes, big-breasted, big-bellied, a crude slit between its legs. The Goddess. We shagged in front of the Goddess. That’s somehow…even sicker.
Cynon trembles all over, as dogs do when they’re dreaming, and I back slowly out of the chamber.
* * *
It’s nearly eleven o’clock when I limp into Trusloe. John’s pickup is parked outside the house. The front door swings open as I come up the path; he’s been looking out for me. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
I lift my shoulders in a weary shrug. ‘Walking. Lost track.’
‘Frannie’s been worried sick.
I
wasn’t, mind. Knew you’d gone off with your arse in your hand. No convincing her, though, that you weren’t lying with your throat cut under the stars.’
‘Can I come in now?’
He stands back to let me step into the hallway, under the light. ‘Jesus, you’re a mess. You been rolling in mud?’
Frannie comes out of her room, and utters a shriek. ‘India, you bin digging. What you bin digging, this time of night?’ There’s panic in her eyes. ‘You
mustn’t
dig.’
She’s still fully dressed, probably refused to go to bed until I was home safe. My heart twists, my eyes start watering again. I can’t bear having made her suffer. ‘Sorry, Frannie, I–I fell over. No digging, I promise.’
‘What were you doin’, then? You all right, darlin’?’ She reaches up and strokes my cheek. Her hand is icy.
‘Honestly, I was walking on the Downs and went too far south, lost my way.’
A tear spills onto her seamed cheek. ‘It’s me, isn’t it? I don’t want to be a trouble.’ She turns her head away, her purplish lips trembling. ‘Wouldn’t blame you for going. Did a bad thing, didn’ I?’
‘I knew you’d turn up eventually, Heartbreaker,’ said Mr Cromley.
Pilot Officer Cromley, DFC, now, and billeted at the caravan site behind Rawlins’s garage. Would have to happen I’d bump into him eventual in the village. Every night I had to get off the bus at the stop by the Red Lion, where the airmen drank outside under the tree on summer evenings. He stepped out from a group of men in RAF grey-blue, an unlit cigarette cupped in his hand. The uniform made his shoulders seem broader. ‘Come and join us. They’re not a bad lot–Poles, mostly.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He smiled, stuck the cigarette into his mouth and strolled back to the others. I heard the fizz of a match as he lit it, and began talking to his chums, glancing back over his shoulder at me. The Lodge, where I had my room in the attic, was close by the pub. Instead of turning in through the gate, I walked down the high street and sat in the church, praying they’d have left the Red Lion by the time I came out, wiping angry tears from my eyes.