Читать книгу Lovers and Newcomers - Rosie Thomas - Страница 12

The digger driver reversed smartly away from the trench. A flock of gulls rose from the raw earth and banked over the ochre tree tops, wheeling back as the machine trundled off to dump its hopper-load of soil and flints on a swelling mound. It was a soft, windless morning. The grinding of the digger and the cries of the gulls carried a long way in the still air.

Two workmen towed a heavy roll of polythene sheeting from the back of a truck whilst the site manager in a fluorescent jacket and hard hat talked on his mobile at the door of the Portakabin office. On the lip of the trench a young man in a helmet was standing alone with his hands in his pockets. He studied the loads of earth as they were sliced and scooped away, from time to time glancing over at the contractor or his client. He was the first person at the site to notice two women and a tall, thin man strolling towards them from the direction of the main house. He sighed to himself. They were entitled to be here, of course, but in his experience visitors at an excavation meant nothing but delays and questions. He didn’t know Mrs Meadowe personally, but he came from Meddlett where she had the reputation of being unfriendly. He stuck his hands deeper in his pockets and concentrated on the digging.

Amos was also watching the work. He was in an excellent humour. Something that was ingenious, fitting and intricately designed was going to be created here out of nothing, on the rim of a field in an attentive landscape. Satisfaction that construction was at last under way spilled all through him. His sense of happy anticipation even increased when the digger momentarily halted and he caught the sound of laughter and raised voices close at hand. As soon as he saw Katherine he raised his arm and waved, beckoning the visitors across. Miranda and Colin followed her, picking their way past the contractors.

‘We thought we’d come and see what’s happening,’ Miranda called to him.

‘Progress,’ he shouted back.

The three of them scuttled towards him, bundling out of the path of the digger and gathering to inspect the work.

Amos put a proprietorial arm around his wife’s shoulders.

In the course of their married life Katherine and he had lived in a dozen houses, from the first cramped terrace to the latest sprawling mansion in half an acre of suburban garden. He thought of all the different property viewings, the potential homes with actual merits to be decoded from the hyperbole of various estate agents, the subsequent measurings and deliberations, and the final compromises that had to be made in order to fit a family within a set of walls, like a crab into a pre-existing shell, with the boys arguing over who was to have the bigger room and Katherine saying that really she was going to miss the old house. Now for the first time his family would have a home designed around it, not the other way around. Not that they were any longer precisely a family, of course; Sam and Toby had their own places, he had seen to that. But they would still come. Children took a long time to detach themselves nowadays, he had noticed, if they ever really did so.

Now his wife turned her head and remarked to Colin and Miranda that she couldn’t imagine what their home was going to be like when it was finally built.

‘There’s so much space, and air and sunshine. It’s hard to picture what a house will look like plonked down here.’

Amos frowned. Her vagueness as well as her choice of words irritated him.

‘Darling, you’ve seen all the plans a thousand times. Drawings, computer simulations, every single stage of the process.’

She only shook her head, and laughed.

‘I know. Weird, isn’t it?’

Miranda had brought a basket. ‘I thought we should have a celebration,’ she announced, to cover the momentary awkwardness. She led the way to a vantage point under the trees and unpacked a bottle of champagne and a carton of orange juice. Amos waved to the workmen and followed the others.

Miranda had found a reason for a celebration almost every other day at Mead. It was as if she were the entertainments secretary and they were freshmen newly arrived at university, needing scheduled social events and copious supplies of drink to kick-start their friendships. Four days ago Selwyn had announced that a major phase of his demolition work was complete, and they had gathered between the ceiling props and barrows of rubble to admire the open space and to drink wine poured into the plastic mugs that were all Polly had been able to muster. It was two in the morning before they finally dispersed to bed. Amos had joked that he wasn’t sure he could stand the pace and Selwyn countered that he couldn’t see why not, since they had little else that was significant to occupy them these days. At that point Polly took his arm and guided him off to bed in the tarp shelter.

Miranda threw herself into all these events, carrying the others on the tide of her high spirits. She was already screwing the plastic feet into a set of picnic wineglasses as they sat down in a row on the dry turf. Colin leaned back against a tree trunk. He was tired, but he raised his glass when Miranda handed it to him.

‘Here’s to the perfect house. May you live like a king, Amos. A solar-heated, green-spirited monarch.’

‘What about me?’ Katherine demanded. They all turned to look at her.

‘And a queen, K, of course,’ Colin added.

They sipped champagne and watched the digger as it rolled to and fro like a sturdy toy. The sun rose higher above the trees, but the outlines of the copses and field crests in the distance were blurred by mist, suggesting a cold night to come. The digger came up with another hopper full of earth, and they heard the note of the engine change as the driver backed up a short distance.

He jumped from the cab and walked across to look down into the trench. At the same time, the young man who had been watching slid his hands out of his pockets and walked briskly to the edge.

Amos was leaning on one elbow. He propped himself a little higher to see what was going on.

The digger driver returned to his seat and Amos nodded his approval, but then the man turned off the engine, dismounted once more and hurried away towards the site office. The other workmen stopped what they were doing.

‘What now?’ Amos groaned.

‘Maybe he’s found some buried treasure,’ Miranda teased, but she sat up straighter too. ‘After I’ve gone and sold the land to you, as well.’

‘It’s some bloody annoying thing. I just know it.’

The site manager left the Portakabin. There was now a cluster of hi-vis jackets and helmets gathered about the raw slit in the ground. Amos launched himself to his feet. He charged off with his head down and his elbows jutting at an angle. His trousers rippled over his broad shanks. Rather uncertainly, Katherine got up and followed him.

‘Better take a look?’ Colin murmured to Miranda. She was already on her feet.

A line of gulls settled on the roof of the stationary digger. They rotated their heads as if they were waiting for a curtain to go up. A sharp smell of sour earth and torn roots hung in the air.

A few inches below the surface the cut edges of turf, roots and a few inches of topsoil gave way to dense earth, packed with stones. Protruding from the bottom of the trench, where a band of earth seemed to be darker than elsewhere, Miranda saw what appeared to be a long piece of flint. It was grey, clogged with dirt, and splintered where the sharp edge of the digger blade had smashed into it. The young man ignored her, and everyone else. He knelt to examine the find.

‘Just caught my eye, didn’t it?’ the digger driver was saying to the other workmen. He was big with a red face, his yellow helmet perched above it looking much too small for his head.

‘Right you are, Alan. Let’s take a look,’ the site boss said. He vaulted into the trench, but the young man snatched at the collar of his jacket and pulled him back.

‘Wait there,’ he snapped, with surprising authority. ‘Everyone, just stand where you are.’

Silence fell over the little group. Even Amos hesitated.

The young man slid down into the trench. With his right thumb he rubbed the earth from the protruding flint, stroking it as if it were a baby’s fist. Then he took out a tiny trowel, and with infinite care began to scoop the debris from around it.

‘Who is he?’ Colin murmured.

‘The archaeologist,’ Amos said curtly.

‘The what?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s the planning regulations. One of the hoops you have to jump through to get anything done. The county bloody archaeologist assessed the site, told me and the architect that there was a minimal chance of there actually being any old bits of Roman pottery or anything else buried here, but he was sending someone in on a watching brief just in case. Someone I end up paying for, naturally. That’s him.’

It was obvious to Miranda now that what was protruding from the ground was not a flint but a broken bone. She watched intently, only half hearing Amos’s tirade.

The archaeologist gently worked the bone free. He placed it in a bag, carefully labelled the exterior, and laid it on the lip of the trench.

‘Right, then. Let’s get going again,’ Amos called.

The men shuffled, and the archaeologist continued to ignore them all. He was kneeling again and scraping at the earth. A moment later he came up with a smaller bone. He cupped it in his palm and brushed away the dirt.

Amos trampled forwards. Miranda wanted to restrain him, and when she caught Katherine’s eye she knew she felt the same.

Amos called, ‘Look. I know you’ve got a job to do. But I can’t allow the remains of some animal to hold up the work of an entire site crew for half a morning.’

The second bone went into a separate bag.

Amos raised his voice. ‘It’s a dead…’ there was a second’s hesitation while he searched his mind for a farm animal, any animal ‘…cow.’

The archaeologist did look up now. Beneath the plastic peak of his helmet his face looked startlingly young, almost unformed. To Colin, standing beside Miranda at the end of the trench, his features seemed vaguely familiar. Until recently he would have searched his memory for where and when, and what they might have done together.

‘These are human remains,’ the young man said.

A deeper pool of silence collected. Bowing his head, one of the workmen took off his helmet and held it awkwardly across his chest. Shocked, Miranda gazed down into the freshly sliced earth at the bottom of the trench, and then at the labelled bags. Who was it, buried here in this peaceful place? Who, and when?

Amos broke in again, ‘This is my land. We have all the necessary permissions in place to build a house right here, and that’s what you are delaying.’

Katherine put her hand on his arm. ‘Amos, please.’ But he shook it off. He marched to Alan’s side and tried to nudge him backwards towards the digger. The two of them performed a tiny dance with their chests puffed out. The gulls rose in unison from their perch, their wingbeats loud in the stillness. Alan scratched the back of his head under his hard hat and retreated a couple of reluctant steps, followed by the site manager making pacifying gestures. Miranda reached for Colin’s hand and held it, but her eyes were still fixed on the disturbed ground. Amos measured up to the contractor and Alan, as if he were going to manhandle them back to work. His face was red and he was puffing slightly. Amos was not used to having his orders ignored. For a moment it looked as if he might win, as Alan placed his boot on the step of the machine and prepared to climb up.

The archaeologist put down his trowel. He stood in front of the digger with his hand raised.

‘Work at this site is temporarily suspended,’ he said, ‘pending further investigation.’

‘On whose authority?’ Amos demanded.

‘On my own, for the time being,’ the young man answered. ‘I am just going to notify the police, and the coroner’s office.’

‘The police? The police?’ Amos came to a standstill, his arms flopping to his sides.

Katherine looked at her husband, then turned away from him.

‘What is it? Who was it?’ Miranda murmured.

The workmen were already filing cheerfully in the direction of their caravan, pulling off their helmets as they went.

‘I’m sorry,’ the young archaeologist said to Miranda and Amos and the others. He had a stud in his nose, and ropes of hair pulled back and buried under the loose collar of his plaid flannel shirt. His hands, heavy with dirt, hung loose at his sides. Colin tried to recall where he had seen him before.

‘I can’t say for certain, not immediately, but I’m fairly sure, based on what I can see, that this is not a recent interment. But I’ve got to act by the book.’

Miranda lifted her head. Her face was white. ‘Recent? What does that mean? I’ve lived here for more than twenty years. It’s my home. This was my husband’s land, he grew up here. Who would be buried in a spot like this?’

‘Are you sure these are human bones?’ Colin asked.

‘Yes, I am. There is part of a femur, and a patella.’ He tried to sound authoritative but a flush coloured his face, showing up the scattered pocks of healed acne. He was probably in his early twenties. Hardly a match for Amos, Colin thought, the poor kid.

The archaeologist continued, speaking directly and gently to Miranda because of the shock in her eyes. ‘The way the thigh and the knee were uncovered makes me think that the corpse may have been buried in a semi-crouching position. The remainder of the skeleton will be there, almost definitely.’ He raised his hand and pointed to the wall of the trench. Grass roots and a few bruised daisies overhung it.

‘How long ago?’ Miranda asked.

‘I’ll really have to check with my field supervisor. I’m not all that experienced.’ His colour deepened. ‘There are tests, of course. But he’s probably prehistoric. That would be my guess. Bronze Age, or Iron Age. Something like two thousand years old.’

‘Two thousand?’ Amos muttered, in spite of himself.

They looked out over the plateau of grass and the sweep of farmland and dappled country beyond it.

The regular perspective tilted, and swung out of alignment. Miranda steadied herself against Colin’s arm. She and the others had been thinking about their present concerns, she realized, and speculating only about the new house and next month and next year, but now their attention was forcibly dragged back through the centuries. Under the thin skin of earth, hardly more than two spade-depths below the grass, lay history. Silently she wondered what this landscape had looked like so long ago, and who it was who had come out of the opaque past to be uncovered in front of them.

Miranda found that she was shivering.

Amos recovered himself first. ‘The local CID are going to be most helpful with that, then.’

‘It’s a formality, sir. But this is a human body.’

‘How long is all this going to take? As a formality, of course?’

The archaeologist met his eye. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

Amos went to the site manager’s Portakabin and Miranda could see him vigorously making his points while the builder shook his head and fended him off with raised hands. Then Amos took out his mobile phone. Colin walked away and stood at a little distance, apparently contemplating the view. Katherine and Miranda were left at the side of the trench.

Seeing Miranda’s pallor Katherine asked, ‘Are you all right?’

Almost to herself Miranda said, ‘I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it before, but bones are so intimate when you’d really expect them to be quite dry and inanimate, wouldn’t you? It’s so apparent that once there was flesh and sinews and smooth skin. We were looking at a person’s leg, part of the body of a real person who lived and breathed, and then you have to take in the fact that they’ve been lying there in the ground for thousands of years. Jake and I used to come here sometimes and have a picnic, looking out over this view. It rather changes the picture, doesn’t it?’

Katherine touched her arm. ‘Do you want to go back to the house?’

Miranda was grateful for her concern. Realizing that she was still holding her picnic glass, she tipped the residue of her drink into the grass. The plastic was smeared and there was a scum of orange pulp sticking to the sides.

‘No, I want to see what’s going to happen. Champagne seems suddenly a bit off key, though, doesn’t it? Shall we go back and just sit down for a bit?’

They could hear Amos still shouting on the telephone. The archaeologist had made some calls too, and now he took out a camera and started snapping the open trench from various angles. The workmen were gathered around the caravan with their sandwiches and copies of the Sun.

The two women went back to their vantage point and sat down. Miranda dropped the empty champagne bottle into her basket and unscrewed the foot of her glass. It was becoming clear that they were going to have to wait some time for any developments. Miranda rested her chin on her knees. She had been thinking about Jake, and the quiet graveyard of Meddlett church where he was buried. Then her thoughts switched to Colin as she watched him strolling down to the distant fence marking the boundary of what had once been Miranda’s land and was now Amos’s.

She asked suddenly, ‘K? Do you think Colin is any happier living here with us, or is he just going through the motions?’

‘Of living, or trying to be happy?’

‘Doing one, while feeling obliged to attempt the other. There’s a glass wall around him, don’t you think? Ever since Stephen was killed. It’s as if he’s here because of not knowing where else to be? Although, come to think of it, maybe he’s not alone in that. Do you remember the times when we all used to live our lives, not just inhabit a corner of them?’

Katherine turned to look at Miranda’s face. After a moment she answered, ‘I don’t know what it must be like for Colin. Polly may know more, with her and Colin being so close, but probably none of us can do more than imagine. But, yes. He has put up barriers. Do you remember how exuberant he used to be?’

‘I do. The Ibiza trip?’

Laughter chased the sadness out of Miranda’s eyes as they acknowledged the memory.

In the mid-1970s, when Amos was insisting to Katherine that he was going to marry her so she had better get to know and like his friends, he had rented a holiday villa near San Antonio and invited a dozen people for a summer holiday. In the party were Miranda and the actor she was at that time considering as a potential husband, and Colin and the man with whom he had recently fallen in love.

Stephen was five years older than Colin. He was a compact, rather unsmiling businessman who didn’t try very hard to integrate himself into the group. He didn’t particularly enjoy the island nightlife, he didn’t take any drugs or even drink very much, and it was obvious that he had only come on the holiday because he wanted to be with beautiful and extrovert Colin, whatever that might take.

It was a big enough group to absorb his differences without them seeming particularly noticeable, Miranda recalled, and in any case it was the time when Amos was remodelling himself as a traditionalist barrister and upholder of family values, which was much more remarkable and amusing to them all.

One day, when most of them were too sunburned and hungover to do anything but lie in the shade beyond the pool, Colin and Stephen whiled away the siesta hour by dressing up.

Miranda remembered waking up from a nap. Done up as Carmen Miranda, ‘As a tribute to you, of course,’ he had told her, Colin was kneeling precariously on a lilo in the middle of the pool. He was wearing a flamenco skirt, a bra top, gold hoop earrings, full make-up and a hat made out of a laden fruit bowl topped with a crest of bananas. He wobbled to his feet and began to strum a guitar. He managed a passable samba rhythm and a warble of ‘Bananas is My Business.’ But even with this apparition in front of them, it was Stephen they were all gaping at. He was arranged on a second lilo, two legs crammed into one leg of a pair of lime green trousers and two feet into a single swimming flipper. He was slowly combing the strands of a very old and matted long blonde wig to tumble over his hairy chest and looking at Colin with a parody of adoration that very clearly had real devotion embedded in it.

That was the first inkling that Miranda or any of Colin’s friends had of the extreme contradictions in Stephen’s nature. There were, they understood, all kinds of warring elements concealed under the solid exterior. It suddenly became much less surprising that Colin found him so interesting.

It was only a few seconds before Carmen Miranda very slowly and with great dignity tilted sideways into the water. Stephen neatly caught the guitar as it fell past him. Miranda’s actor cine-filmed the whole sequence.

‘I wish I had that film,’ Miranda sighed. ‘I’d give anything to see it again.’

‘Do you ever see whatshisname? The actor?’ Katherine wondered.

‘No. What was his name? Although in fact, I did see him about three years ago. In an episode of Holby City.’

‘Any good?’

Miranda laughed delightedly. ‘As a psychopathic father on the run while his teenaged daughter haemorrhaged in casualty? Absolutely excellent. I’ve probably got some photographs of the Carmen Miranda event in a box somewhere.’

‘We should get the old pictures out.’

‘Maybe.’

Katherine said, ‘It’s good to have these shared memories. It’s historic glue.’

Miranda considered for a moment, and then asked, ‘Do you ever feel that you’re only inhabiting your life, K?’

Katherine studied the patch of turf framed by her knees. There were ants busy between the blades of grass. Then she lifted her head. The archaeologist had descended into the trench once again.

‘I did. Sometimes. I think being here has changed that.’

‘Has it?’ Miranda was pleased. ‘Has it really?’ She seized on any confirmation that the Mead collaboration was working as she hoped.

Katherine said quickly, ‘Of course, I had Amos and the boys, and work, and people coming to dinner, all those things, so I wasn’t exactly lonely, but I did feel that I was sort of watching from the sidelines rather than pitching into the scrum myself. And I would use a bloody rugby metaphor, wouldn’t I, as if even the language for framing my own experiences has to be borrowed from my menfolk?’

She attempted a laugh at this, while Miranda only raised her eyebrows.

‘But I feel different here, being with you and Colin and Selwyn and Polly. It’s old ground, yet new at the same time. There’s a sense of anticipation, definitely hopeful anticipation. It’s not all to do with the glass house, although of course that’s exciting.’ She made this dutiful nod out of habit, and consideration to Amos and Miranda herself. ‘It’s almost a rebirth, isn’t it? A completely different way of living, and that leads to general crazy optimism, which is rather at odds with the reality as far as Amos and I are concerned.’

There was a pause. This was quite a long speech, for Katherine.

‘Any news about that?’ Miranda asked, treading carefully.

The reason for Amos’s departure from London and the law wasn’t discussed at Mead, although everyone knew that everyone else knew about it. She was relieved when Katherine answered matter-of-factly.

‘About whether the young woman is finally going to press charges? The most recent notion is that she won’t. I think she may be on dangerous ground because she almost certainly reciprocated some of Amos’s attentions, at least to begin with. Then she probably withdrew, and he naturally refused to accept her withdrawal, and then he would have crossed the line between pursuit and harassment somewhere along the way. I imagine that would all be rather delicate to prove in court, don’t you? Particularly against an adversary like Amos.’

Katherine picked a blade of grass and thoughtfully chewed on it.

‘Now he’s left the chambers that may be enough to satisfy her. I don’t know if he’ll go back to the Bar some day. If he’ll need to, that is. I don’t mean for the money, God knows he’s got enough of that piled up, but just to stay the Amos he is, in his own estimation. That’s why this new house, seeing it take shape here, is so important. It gives him a reason for being. He’s not the kind of man who retires to the golf course, particularly against his will. He’s been bored, lately, and it makes him more difficult.’

There were opposing notes of sympathy and of dismissal in her words, chiming together, that took both women a little by surprise.

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Miranda agreed.

Colin turned back from the boundary fence. He walked slowly, on a wide arc, but he was drawn steadily back to the trench. The young archaeologist was still on all fours, gently scraping with his trowel. He was so absorbed in what he was doing that he didn’t hear Colin’s approach, and it was the shadow falling across his work that made him jump. He jerked upright on his knees but his expression relaxed as soon as he saw that it wasn’t Amos.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

‘Why? You’re doing your job.’

The boy wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was fixed on the earth.

‘There’s something here.’ He knew he should keep the discovery to himself, maintain a professional detachment, but he couldn’t help blurting it out. His fist closed tightly on the handle of his trowel and it was all he could do to stop himself in his eagerness from lunging back at the find and gouging at the remains.

Colin heard how his voice shook.

‘What? What is it?’

The boy glanced quickly past him. Miranda and Katherine sat a way off, talking. Amos was still telephoning, the site crew lounged in the sunshine.

‘Look.’ He pointed downwards.

Out of the earth close to the edge of the trench, the rim of something smooth and curved now protruded. Crusted with dirt, it might have been taken for a large piece of broken glass or pottery, but the archaeologist had already rubbed an inch of it clean. The sun struck a dull gleam out of precious metal.

‘Good God,’ Colin said.

‘Yeah. And a bit,’ the boy agreed.

‘What happens now?’

‘Well, it doesn’t happen every day, does it? It’s killing me but I’ve got to wait for my field supervisor to show up. I don’t know much, but I’m pretty sure this is big.’

In the middle distance, a car drew up at the point where Amos’s driveway would one day meet the curving route to the main house. A uniformed policeman got out and opened the gate, then the patrol car bumped slowly over the builders’ track to the site.

‘Christ, now here’s the cops. I hoped the boss would get here first,’ the boy sighed.

‘You can handle it,’ Colin told him. The boy’s resemblance to someone he knew was no longer troubling. It came to him that this wasn’t actually Jessie’s boyfriend from the first evening in the pub, the one she had squabbled with about ownership of the dog, but the two of them were certainly sufficiently alike to be mistaken for one another.

A second solid policeman emerged from the car. Amos made straight for the pair of them, with the site manager bobbing at his side.

‘Here we go then,’ said the archaeologist as he climbed reluctantly out of the trench.

Across the field, alerted by the sighting of police in the driveway of the house, Selwyn was hurrying towards them with Polly moving more slowly in his wake.

‘Has there been a murder?’ Selwyn asked.

‘Not recently, by the look of it,’ Colin told him. ‘Although I think Amos would prefer it to be a straightforward drug-related shooting. History may take longer to unravel.’

Amos said, surveying his site later that afternoon: ‘So, the monkeys have taken over the zoo.’

A van arrived, with ‘Anglian Archaeological Services’ painted on the sides. Several archaeologists of various degrees of seniority climbed out, donned helmets and fluorescent jackets with AAS printed on the back, fanned out and began measuring, pegging lines and scribbling on clipboards. The field supervisor, a lean bearded man in his forties, made a series of urgent calls. A frame tent was brought out and quickly erected over the trench, and the white nylon fabric sucked and billowed in a rising wind. The policemen conferred with the supervisor, the intermittent crackle of voices from their radios carrying across to where Selwyn stood joking about how English Heritage and the county archaeologist would never let Amos dig the channels in the earth for his futuristic ground exchange heating now that there was known to be treasure beneath.

‘Buried gold,’ Selwyn murmured. ‘Who knows, Amos, you might just have got even richer.’

‘Probably not, under the 1996 Treasure Act,’ Amos retorted. But that they should be even discussing this sharpened the sense that an unwelcome change was coming to Mead.

Another car wound its way towards them and yet another archaeologist emerged, bearing a licence from the Ministry of Justice to allow the human remains to be excavated. A copy of it was formally pinned to the door of the Portakabin. Amos read the licence and gave a curt, unwilling nod to acknowledge that, for now at least, he would have to agree to a suspension of work. It was clear that there would be no more progress on the site for the time being, so the builders packed up and went home. The police lingered long enough for the osteologist who had arrived in the van to assure them personally that the uncovered bones were hundreds of years old, then they folded their double bulk back into their patrol car and drove away.

The bearded field supervisor introduced himself as Christopher Carr. He promised that as soon as his team had had a chance to make a first assessment of the finds, Mr Knight would be informed. In the meantime, it was important that the excavation be conducted methodically in order that no vital information or clues were lost in the process, and they would understand that, wouldn’t they? His young assistant, Kieran, had acted correctly in calling a temporary halt to the site work. He thanked Amos for his cooperation.

‘When can we have a look?’ Katherine asked him, then glanced away, as if she suspected it had been in some way wrong of her to ask.

‘As soon as there is anything interesting to see,’ Christopher told her. ‘But I would be grateful if for the time being you wouldn’t mention the find to anyone at all outside this group. Sightseers and the press are never helpful on the scene until we are ready for them.’

Amos struck his forehead quite hard with the heel of his hand.

Katherine and Polly left the site to go back to the house and make sandwiches, but Miranda found that she couldn’t leave the site while so much of Mead’s unimagined history was being uncovered. The archaeologists moved in and out of their tent, watched by Miranda and the others from their picnic place. They could hear the metallic clink of trowels. Bags and buckets filled with spoil were brought out, and a young woman with dreadlocks longer than Kieran’s knelt to sift the loose earth through a sieve.

Amos ate smoked salmon sandwiches and loudly fumed about the delay, until Miranda snapped at him.

‘It’s my land too. My home for twenty years, Jake was born here. Can’t you acknowledge that whatever is lying in that trench might have at least a comparable importance to your house?’

At once Amos put his big hand on hers. ‘Of course, Mirry. I do apologize. How thrilling for Mead if this does turn out to be a major discovery. But I don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of what a disruption it may turn out to be.’

‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’ Miranda said quietly. Colin lay back and seemed to fall asleep.

At the end of the afternoon, Kieran came out of the tent and crossed to where they still waited. His face was flushed under the faint pockmarks.

‘Would you like to come and take a look?’

They got to their feet and followed him.

Within the white tent, sheltered from the wind that had got up, it was warmer and surprisingly still. The fabric rippled and snapped with small popping sounds. The pleasantly diffused light coupled with the strong scent of trampled grass was reminiscent of a garden fête or agricultural show. The archaeologists were lined up beside their trench, mostly with their hands folded, looking downwards like proud but modest exhibitors. A photographer’s tripod and camera stood in place at one end of the tent.

Miranda looked down and caught her breath.

The earth had been cleared partially to expose the skeleton. It was dark, discoloured and broken, but still shockingly human. It lay on its left side, the legs bent up towards the chest and the forearms extended. Earth filled the collapsed ribcage and crusted the pelvic bowl. The skull was tilted at an angle, the eye sockets blinded with dirt and the jaw with a rim of teeth seeming to grin into infinity.

Two feet away from it lay a second skull, much smaller, and the ribs of a young child.

Only when she had taken this in did she see that resting between the jaw of the larger skeleton and the framework of its ribcage lay a band that once would have circled the neck. To the side of the body, the curved edge of metal that Colin had glimpsed had been further exposed. It looked like the edge of a large plate. A raised pattern that might have been part of a scroll or leaf design was just visible.

Stillness spread outwards and seemed to press against the nylon walls and roof of the tent, where the wind chafed.

At Miranda’s side, Colin remembered Stephen’s funeral in the village on the edge of the Yorkshire moorland, and the priest and the mourners gathered at the edge of the open grave as handfuls of earth thudded on to the coffin lid. He raised his head now in an attempt to blot out the memory, searching along the line of silent people as if he hoped to see a priest amongst them.

He was not a religious man, but he would have liked to hear some words of blessing or a simple prayer spoken over these bones.

The first person to break the silence was Christopher Carr. His voice was low and they had to listen to catch his words.

‘This is an important discovery,’ he said. ‘Perhaps very important. We have a rich burial here, probably dating from the later Iron Age. We may be looking at a prince, a tribal leader at least, who was buried with his symbols of rank and power and provisions for the afterlife.’

‘What about the child?’ Katherine asked. This time she looked directly at Chris. He nodded sympathy at her.

‘We can’t tell yet. Perhaps it was an attendant, maybe even a human sacrifice as part of the funeral ritual. Our osteologist, that’s David over there, may well be able to establish the cause of death.’

David was a small man with glasses. He smiled and then suppressed it, all the time looking as if he couldn’t wait to start handling the bones. The atmosphere was slowly lightening. The archaeologists began quietly to stack their tools. Kieran ducked out of the entrance with one more yellow plastic bucketful of loose earth.

One by one, the Mead people turned away from the trench and its contents. As the shock of staring death in the face subsided, they became aware that these relics were from a time so distant that they could hardly connect with it.

Chris said, ‘There’s one more thing. We’ll be leaving a security guard here overnight. The site will have to be protected until the artefacts have been removed to a safe place.’

Miranda demanded ‘Why? This is a private estate. No one comes here.’

‘Forgive me, Mrs Meadowe. We don’t know yet what these grave goods are, or what else we might find. If they should turn out to be alloys of precious metals, or even solid gold, imagine what the material alone might be worth, without adding up the historical value.’

Amos began to say something, then stopped himself.

‘I see,’ Miranda said, although she was only just beginning to. This discovery was going to change the delicate balance of life at Mead, the life she had wanted for them all, that much was already clear.

Chris continued, ‘With your help, we’ll keep this discovery quiet for as long as possible. But in my experience news inevitably leaks out sooner or later, and you’d be surprised at the nighthawks who will turn up looking for a piece of treasure to keep for themselves.’

Outside the tent it had grown chilly and the sky was overcast. Another van had arrived, this one marked ‘Lockyer Security’. A very large shaven-headed man sat in the driver’s seat, frowning over a print-out.

Amos stood in front of Chris. ‘Can you give me any idea of how long?’ he asked yet again.

‘How much time my team will be granted to complete the excavation is the decision of the county archaeologist, and that depends on how important he judges the findings to be, in terms of local and national history.’

Amos’s lower jaw was protruding now, a dangerous sign. ‘And so?’

The archaeologist sighed. ‘If I have to put a frame on it I’d say something more than a few days, but not as long as several months. We’ll do the job as quickly as we can.’

‘Thank you,’ Amos said, as if he were dismissing the most unreliable of witnesses.

Chris turned to Katherine, who stood a yard behind her husband. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.

Katherine’s smile was transforming. Miranda saw it, and so did Polly, although Amos wasn’t looking at her. ‘Please don’t be,’ she said. ‘There’s no need.’

As he passed Kieran, Colin asked him, ‘Did I meet your brother, at the Griffin in Meddlett, with a girl called Jessie and a dog?’

‘Yeah, that’ll be him. Damon.’

‘I thought so. You’re very alike.’

‘Not really,’ Kieran frowned.

The security guard lumbered out of the shelter of his van, and Amos made his comment about monkeys and the zoo.

They sat in the kitchen, over the remains of dinner. Selwyn had taken the blue chair next to the range and he balanced it on two legs and drank whisky as he surveyed the room. They had been talking all evening about the day’s discovery. Amos insisted that he was no expert on the exact terms of the Treasure law, whilst leaving no doubt at all that he knew far more than the rest of them. He explained that if they fell within the definition of treasure, the finds would belong to the Crown. If they turned out to be spectacular, or historically significant, they would probably be bought by a museum. There might be a reward for the landowner.

‘The best reward I can think of would be to get my house built,’ he growled.

The others sighed. They had heard this enough times already. Miranda cupped her chin in her hands and looked at Amos.

‘Jake would have loved the Warrior Prince of Mead.’

‘The Warrior Prince?’ Selwyn tried out the sound of it, dangerously tipping his chair and steadying himself with one hand burrowed amongst the tea towels and laundry hanging from the bar at the front of the range. ‘This could make us as famous as Sutton Hoo. English Heritage will come and put up a tearoom. There will be boxed fudge, and a coach park.’

‘No, there will not,’ Miranda said sharply.

‘Amos might decide otherwise. He owns the land, I believe.’ Whisky made Selwyn malicious.

‘Shut up, Sel,’ Polly advised.

Amos got up from his chair and crossed to Miranda’s side of the table. He hovered behind her chair, not quite able to do what he wanted, which was to hug her.

‘Mirry, let’s promise each other this minute in front of witnesses that whatever happens, this land business and prince business and the skulls and archaeology drama will not compromise our friendship. I solemnly promise there will be no tearoom, and certainly no fudge. Can you forgive me for happening to own the little acreage under which the bones have turned up?’

Miranda had never been immune to the force of his deliberate charm.

She answered solemnly, ‘I promise, too. And there’s nothing to forgive. The prince belongs to Mead itself, regardless of whose bit of turf he’s lying beneath. That’s what Jake would say.’

‘I wish he were here, too,’ Amos said. He sketched a sort of kiss in her direction and went back to his seat. Smiling dangerously over the rim of his glass, Selwyn studied him.

Polly’s mobile rang. She took it out and inspected the display.

‘Omie, hello darling. Are you all right?’

‘Doesn’t anyone else want another drink?’ Selwyn called out.

‘Yes, that’s Dad.’ Polly glanced up. ‘Sorry, all. No, Omie, that’s not what I meant. Of course I’m not apologizing to anyone for you ringing me. What’s the matter? Wait a minute.’ She got up and went out into the hall. They could hear her talking, and then she moved further away. Selwyn let his chair crash forward on to all four legs.

Katherine carried dishes to the sink, then leaned to look out into the yard. It was raining hard, and puddles glimmered in the porch light from their wing. Polly and Selwyn’s side was a darker slab of darkness.

‘Pretty bleak for the guard,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be out there with only the dead for company, would you?’

‘They’re not going to come back,’ Colin said.

Miranda broke in, ‘No. Except, in a way they have, haven’t they? We’re thinking about them, peering down the centuries, dressing them in our minds in their necklaces and attaching stories to their lives and deaths. I can’t get that child’s skull and ribs out of my head.’

Amos took Katherine’s arm. ‘Come on, old girl. History’s all bones. We’re going to bed now.’

The Knights went out into the yard. Colin collected up his book and laptop, and said goodnight. Selwyn and Miranda were left alone.

‘Barb,’ Selwyn began softly, in the voice that he used only for her.

‘No.’

His mouth curled, making him look dangerous again. ‘Is that no generally, as a blanket edict, or in relation to something specific?’

Since the bathroom day, Miranda had avoided being alone with him. Now the possibility that Polly might step back into the room at any moment held her in a bubble of tension. Each of her senses was amplified. Miranda could imagine so vividly what it would be like if he left his chair, took her in his arms and put his mouth to the hollow formed by her collarbone, that it was as if he had actually done it. She swallowed, her mouth dry.

‘Just no,’ she whispered.

‘I want to touch you.’

‘I know.’

They listened to the rain.

‘What shall we do?’ he asked, as much of himself as to her.

‘We’ll live here at Mead, value our friendships, and get old together.’

There was a shocking crash as Selwyn’s glass hit the red tiles at his feet and smashed into fragments. Neither of them could have said for certain whether he had thrown it or accidentally let it fall.

‘I don’t want to get old.’

There was so much vehemence and bitterness in his voice that it frightened her. ‘I don’t want to hear any more about death. Jake’s dead, Stephen’s dead. There are skeletons at the bottom of the fucking garden. What happened to the fairies, then? I want to live now, Mirry. I want you.’

‘I know,’ she whispered again.

If Polly hadn’t come in at that moment, she would have gone to him.

‘That was Omie,’ Polly said. She flipped her phone shut.

‘Was it?’ Selwyn sounded dazed.

‘I just said it was. There’s broken glass all over the floor.’

He sighed. ‘I dropped my drink.’

‘Probably just as well.’ Polly had already gone for the dustpan. He took it from her and roughly swept up the broken pieces. Miranda stood up, very stiffly, as if all her joints hurt.

‘It’s been an interesting day, hasn’t it? I’m going to bed. Sleep well, you two,’ she said.

Polly and Selwyn lay on their bed under the tarpaulin. Water dripped steadily above their heads and ran off into an enamel bowl. The various drips into various receptacles around the room sounded like an elaborate piano exercise.

‘Are you ready?’ Selwyn asked.

‘Yes.’

He leaned up on one elbow, his shadow looming grotesquely on the opposite wall. He fiddled for a moment with the knob and then turned out the gas lamp. The mantle glowed red for two seconds and then they were in darkness.

‘Were you and Miranda arguing?’ Polly asked.

‘No.’

She waited, but he didn’t add anything.

She was intensely conscious of her heavy thigh and the six inches that separated their two bodies. If Selwyn and Miranda hadn’t been arguing there was something else going on, and that possibility worried her much more than routine squabbling. History meant that there was always a buried connection between the two of them, but Polly was beginning to realize that she had underestimated the pull of it. Living here as closely as they did, seeing each other constantly, was disinterring the ancient foundations.

The dripping seemed to grow louder, as if the drops were hitting her skull.

‘I’m concerned about Omie,’ she said at length, casting her fears in a less threatening mould.

Selwyn gave an impatient twitch. ‘That’s nothing very new. What is it this time?’

‘She’s angry with us. We’ve sold their home, moved up here. She says it’s as if we’ve abandoned them.’

There were five drips, then six. Three of them came very close together, almost as one.

‘Poll, our children are all adults. We’ve brought them to this point, healthy and educated and relatively normal. Or you have, mostly, I’m not claiming any particular glory for it. But we’ve got to let them live their own lives, now, and in the future. You can’t be their guardian and safety net for ever. Even you can’t do that.’

‘I could. Isn’t that what parents are meant to do?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Omie says she thinks there’s something up with Ben. Alph does, as well.’

Despite her anxiety, Polly felt drowsiness beginning to smother her. She was always tired, these days. She knew that her voice had taken on a meandering quality.

As if from a long way off she heard Selwyn say, in an impatient mutter, ‘If there’s something up with Ben, as Omie says, then we’ll hear about it.’

‘Yes,’ Polly finally agreed. She turned on to her side, away from him.

Selwyn lay on his back, unmoving.