An Affair to Remember (25 page)

“It’s certainly the skull of a small child. As we’re nowhere near the Roman level yet, it must be of a more recent date than the one we hope to find. Probably no more than a hundred years or so old, but of course I can’t say for certain…”

“Are you telling us, Professor Head,” the vicar fails to keep the excitement out of his voice, “that what we have here cannot be the baby we’re looking for? In other words other babies have been buried here, long after the Roman period?”

“It looks like it.” Ron, wondering wearily what the hell’s going to happen next, carefully lays the tiny skull on the tray laid out for finds. “Now, Daren, show me exactly where you found the object, and nobody else touch anything until I give the order…”

*

“I wonder if I might speak to Beatrice Travers? Sylvia Campbell, I’m a friend of hers.”

“I’m afraid Beatrice is unavailable at the moment, can I give her a message? Selwyn Woodhead speaking.”

“Her boss?”

“I have that honour. You know Beatrice well?”

“I’m her ex-flatmate actually, and yes, I think I could say I know her pretty well. You say she’s unavailable. Does that mean she’s left Brown End, or is she ill? A friend and I are staying in the neighbourhood for a couple of days, and thought it would be nice if we could meet up. But of course if she’s left your employ –”

“No, no, nothing of the kind. Beatrice is now very much part of the family. It’s just she’s a little under the weather.” Sel makes a snap decision. The woman on the phone sounds reasonable, and Beatrice could do with a friend. “Look, this is all a bit difficult to explain over the telephone and things are a little hectic round here at the moment. Can I get her to ring you? If you can give me the number of where you’re staying?”

“I’ll have to ring you back as I’m in a call box, but we’re booked in at a pub not far from you, The Trojan Horse, on the Belchester road – I don’t know if you know it?”

“I do indeed, dear, yes. And no need to ring back as I have its number. Beatrice is sleeping now, the doctor gave her a sedative, but as soon as she’s up and about I’ll get her to ring you.”

“She is ill then?” Oh God, there really must be something wrong. Sylvia tries not to panic. There’s no air in the phone box; it being sited under what appears to be a wasp infested tree doesn’t help. “I mean can’t you give me some idea…?”

“Nothing to be concerned about – I’m sure the presence of a friend is just what’s needed. Now I’m sorry to have to rush you, dear, but I simply must go – we’re having a rather busy afternoon. Incidentally, before I do, a man by the name of Sidney Parfitt is I believe staying at The Trojan, has been in Australia and wears a green anorak. You haven’t come across him have you?”

“Afraid not. We’ve only just arrived. Why –?”

“It doesn’t matter…”

Sylvia replaces the receiver, opens the call box door, thankfully breathes in some fresh air; Tris, looking anxious, awaits her outside. “Well?”

“I don’t know. All I do know is something’s very wrong. What it is, we’ll have to find out…”

*

“What do we do now, Sid?” Sid and Emmie are back at the shop, Emmie preparing sandwiches for a late lunch.

“Wait and see, I suppose.”

“Wait and see for what? For me to be locked up and Sam carted off to the bin.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense, Em, and you know it. Just calm down while I get you a drink. Leave the sandwiches for a minute.” Emmie sits down, waits meekly while her erring husband pours her a large whisky from the bottle he’d brought round last night. Surely he hadn’t been so masterful in the old days. Australia had done him a world of good, no doubt of that. “To my way of thinking,” he goes on, as he pours himself a whisky and sits down beside her, “we should close the shop for a day or two until things have settled down a bit and before they get too complicated –”

“But they are complicated,” Emmie interrupts, a note of desperation in her voice, “you can’t change that.”

“Answer me just one question, Em. Do you or do you not want me back? Once you’ve answered that, apart from a bit of argy-bargy, everything else is straight forward.” Emmie takes a gulp of whisky, feels the warm, tingling liquor permeate her body, giving it life; hope. She thinks of Henry from the supermarket, big, randy, useless Henry; the years of loneliness; the smiling lady at the marriage bureau who promised so much and delivered so little; that faithless slob Jack Fulton; Sam’s look of bored distaste…

“Yes,” she says at last, “yes Sid, I think I do.”

Sid puts a tentative arm round her. “That’s my girl,” he says, kissing her long and lingeringly on the lips. “If that’s what you want, that’s what I want too, so that’s what we’ll have.” Emmie’s Scholl sandals click on the bare boards, as arms entwined they slowly climb the stairs to her bedroom.

*

“Five thirty p.m. We are now approaching the Roman level, having so far exhumed the complete skeletons of six babies, as well as numerous bones, mostly of animals, although there is a possibility that some of these are human. By the selection of artefacts so far found, the area was undoubtedly used as a site for rubbish in the Middle Ages, after which there seems to have been a gap and then again in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We will continue to dig into the Roman level until we either find what we are looking for or the weather breaks.” Ron flicks off the switch on his pocket stenorette, and after a doubtful look at the lowering skies, calls his motley helpers to order, following a twenty minute tea break. His audience, he notices grimly, is growing by the minute, and by the number of cars outside in the lane, set to grow even larger.

Meanwhile a harassed Sel, hurrying into his office bearing another plastic bag containing the mortal remains of yet another tiny victim, is waylaid – to his considerable annoyance: how did the bastard manage to get in? – by a young man from the local rag. They have in fact met before – over the fracas at The Trojan Horse.

“I wonder if I might have a word, Mr Woodhead?”

Sel carefully places the plastic bag on a tray with the other tiny bundles and covers it with a cloth. “Not now, dear boy, not now. As you can see, we are all rather busy.” He waves towards the half open window, through which can be seen, to the accompaniment of honking horns and angry shouts, a slow procession of motley vehicles crawling up the lane from the river, their imminent arrival at Brown End, owing to the considerable number of parked cars already outside the yard gates, inevitably resulting in a traffic jam of mammoth proportions. Sel, watches wild eyed; this is not the sort of publicity he had envisaged.

“Just a few words, Mr Woodhead, a taster…” the reporter pleads. He’ll never get a scoop like this again, not with
The Trumpeter
, he won’t. But Sel has spotted Clarrie and is already summoning her to his aid.

“Darling, here’s that nice reporter from
The Trumpeter
. He looks as if he’s in need of a drink. Can you put him in the picture. There’s a press conference tomorrow of course, but as he’s such a nice young man and local to boot, perhaps you could let him have a few snippets.” (Always make sure you stay on the right side of the Press, no matter how humble.) The young man, blushing, gets out his notebook. Clarrie, smiling serenely, takes over. Sel mops his brow in relief, as the strains of
The Teddy Bears
’
Picnic
, emanating from the mouth of the pink polar bear on top of Bogg’s ice cream van, echo out across the valley.

“Number seven,” Ron intones from across the yard. “Possibly from the Saxon era. Remnants of cloth adhering to the abdomen, together with a small clay figure of the type normally used in the practice of witchcraft…” The dig continues.

*

“Our Beatrice has certainly picked a lovely spot to work in.” Tris and Sylvia, having unpacked and showered, on the assumption that Beatrice wouldn’t be ringing until evening, and having walked the couple of miles to Kimbleford to stretch their legs after the drive from London, are standing on the bridge looking down into the river. Tris O’Hara, otherwise known as Father Joseph, and Sylvia have been friends since childhood, and despite Tris, at the age of twenty-five, having joined the Catholic priesthood and Sylvia’s rather rigid agnosticism, remain so. They have, after all, very similar aims in life, and she helps him out in a hundred different ways.

“Something a bit spooky about our pub, though, don’t you think? I’m sure its haunted. I know the building’s modern, but there does seem a rather odd atmosphere.”

“Now you know better than to ask me that. Gosh, look, Syl, a heron – there on that stone in the river.” Syl looks.

“I can’t see it,” she says…

*

Meanwhile Sel and his wife, taking a brief respite from the day’s events, are consuming a quick mug of tea in the kitchen. Clarrie has already seen off the young reporter, but with such charm and efficiency that although in reality he’s none the wiser as to what’s really going on at Brown End, he remains under the happy impression that he is, and Baby No. 7 seeming to be the last, at least for the time being, Sel himself is taking a breather before the next crisis.

“Do you know, my love, this is one of the very few occasions in my life when I get the feeling I’m not wholly in control of events; indeed feel they are, in some extraordinary way, in control of me. Do you think we should call the police?”

“Do you good,” Clarrie says. “It’ll shake you up a bit. And don’t worry about the police, someone’s already called Traffic Control.” Sel places his mug on the draining board and puts an arm round his wife. In silence they watch the line of angry motorists snaking up the lane from the bridge.

“Do you know what I think?” Sel asks.

“I never know what you think, darling, you know that.”

“I think that tiresome Roman bitch must have had a sense of humour. I bet she’s laughing her head off in Hell or Hades or wherever Romans go to when they’re dead.”

“She probably is…”

“So it’s tea break time, is it, you skivers!” Philippa looks radiant. This is, after all, her day. Books, TV documentaries, serial rights flow ahead in one, long, continuous stream, revitalising her, it has to be said, waning career for the foreseeable future and beyond. “I’ve just spoken to Izzy,” there being no tea left in the pot, she helps herself to the last of the diggers’ ginger biscuits, “and he says he thinks Sam should be alright to join us downstairs, he’s getting a bit restive in his bedroom, and has now returned to normality and seems perfectly focused. The news that his wife committed bigamy and isn’t his wife at all has, according to Izzy, apparently induced a state of euphoria, and so long as he’s prevented from joining the dig, he should be fine.”

“And Beatrice?”

“Still asleep.”

“Let’s hope she remains so, at least while this circus continues…” Clarrie looks at her so-called friend with distaste. She’s revelling in it, she thinks, she’s bloody revelling in it.

*

“Prof – Prof can you come?” It’s past eight o’clock, and although the stifling air under the ash trees is a little fresher, and a faint breeze seems to be getting up, the spiralling clouds overhead remain ominously dark, when Ron looks up to find an excited youth in a baseball cap hurrying towards him.

“What now?” Tired to the point of exhaustion, he tries to keep the note of exasperation out of his voice; he can’t take much more.

“Hazel says to tell you she’s found something,” the youth informs him in a hoarse whisper; the diggers have been instructed to keep their voices down and any ‘finds’ are to be handled as unobtrusively as possible so as not to arouse the already over excited onlookers. “Can you come…?”

Is this it? Oh God let’s hope so. Heart beating, mouth dry, Ron hurries over to where Hazel, a pretty red head and much the best of the students, is sitting back on her heels in the trench nearest the foot of Tavey’s tree, looking dazed; beside her a small, unadorned, lead casket. “I’ve cleaned a little of the mud off, Prof, and look,” she whispers, as Ron climbs into the trench and squats down beside her. They look. Ron puts out a hesitant hand and very gently scrapes away the powdering of earth from the crudely scratched letters on the side of the casket. Reads.

Petrus
…
Vale
in
Pace

Oh cripes! And there’s more. Underneath the writing, to the left, barely discernible, the real clincher: someone has scratched that enigmatic, and to many archaeologists, almost magic, emblem of the early Christian Church, the Chi-Rho symbol. So someone had cared enough after all to try and give the poor little devil a proper send off. For a moment the two of them, the archaeologist, worldly-wise and cynical and the young student, full of hope and enthusiasm, kneel in silence in front of the casket. Neither are religious; both, without having to say so, are aware a gesture of respect is called for. And both know that for as long as they live they will never forget this moment.

“I’m sorry, Head, but the crowd senses something’s up. I doubt if I can keep them at bay much longer.” Reality kicks in in the form of the vicar down on his knees beside the trench: he’s seen the casket.

“You’ve found something – is it –?”

“We think so.”

“Oh, goodness me!”

The other diggers also sense something’s up; begin to gather round. Hazel jumps to her feet, Ron remains kneeling beside the casket. Everything all of a sudden seems to have gone a bit hazy; the vicar doesn’t look quite like the vicar. Fatter, younger. Why is he wearing his surplice and why is he smiling? There’s a silver cross…

Hazel, aware of his bewilderment, takes over. “I think we’d better get this one back to the house as quickly as possible, Vicar. The Prof can examine it there, we don’t want to damage anything. If you could just keep everyone distracted for a few more minutes.”

“I’ll try, but it won’t be easy – they’ve waited a long time for this.”

Ron pulls himself together, gets to his feet; the mist seems to be clearing now. He wishes there is more time to interpret what has just happened to him, but there isn’t. “Get them to sing a hymn or something, Vicar, and tell them I’ll be issuing a statement very shortly, that might stall them for a bit.”