A Month in the Country (4 page)

Then I carted my kit up the ladder and laid it out – a lancet (for lifting limewash), a jar of alcoholic solution of hydrochloric acid, brushes, dry colours, a jar of distilled water to dilute ammonia … most of it handed on to me by Joe Watterson when he announced that he'd done his last job and wished me luck.

‘It's a profession, my boy,' he had said. ‘And a bloody perilous and penurious one but, if a profession's a skilled job that not so many men can tackle, then it's a profession alright.' And he'd laughed sardonically into his beard. ‘Why we're near enough extinct; there's only the two of you now, and George Peckover's eyesight's getting so bad he'll fall off a ladder any day now. Then you'll be able to starve without competition.'

I moved gingerly about my new territory. Just above head level the roof's keel drove back to bed itself into the tower wall, punctuated at its crossings by three quite extraordinary bosses, their original colour preserved by the gloom which lingers perpetually in the fastnesses of high roofs. It was a splendid medieval gallery – nearest me, an almost Spanish head of the stricken Christ caught amid the leaves of a gallows tree; further along, a golliwog devil thrusting his grinning head between a couple trapped in the wrong bed; finally, a plump woman holding a blue shield of lilies. It proved what every true church-crawler knows –
there's always something of surpassing interest in any elderly building if you keep looking.

Then the door squealed and a middle-sized sturdy chap was gazing up at me, appraising, taking in as much as he could. He had a confident-looking round face, blue, knowing eyes. ‘Good morning,' he said. (He had a highish voice of exceptional clearness.) ‘Good morning! I'm Charles Moon' and he pulled a squashed tweed hat off his tousled fair hair. ‘I'm digging next door. In the meadow. You may have seen my tent? I'd meant to let you settle in but felt I
had
to come and have a look at you. Well, partly, but really because I get so stiff in the night my legs get me up, so that I make a point of stumping across most mornings to see if Laetitia's managed to climb out during the night.' He waved a hand at the south aisle.

‘I'll come down,' I said and did. He was twenty-seven or -eight, a stiff shortish man who stood as though he'd taken root. And his ‘All thy waves and billows have gone over me' look gave him away earlier even than the three holes in the tunic's shoulders where his captain's pips had been.

I liked him from that first encounter: he was his own man. And he liked me (which always helps). God, when I think back all those years! And it's gone. It's gone. All the excitement and pride of that first job, Oxgodby, Kathy Ellerbeck, Alice Keach, Moon, that season of calm weather – gone as though they'd never been.

We went out into the sunshine and leaned on the wall. I asked him if he would be staying long and he pointed to his tent. ‘Till the first frosts close me down. I'm reckoning to save enough to get me to Ur this coming winter. Woolley's uncovering the Ziggurat: he'll give me a job when I turn up.'

Later, I recognized this as vintage Moon – absurdly ingenuous in his belief that all would be well. ‘Woolley'll give me a job!' And, of course, he would. One had this fantastic vision of him dropping off the once-daily Basra–Baghdad train at Ur Junction, three huts and no platform, slogging across stones and sand, calling, ‘Here I am. We've not met before so you don't know me. The name's Charles Moon. What can you find me to do?'

I asked him what he was looking for. He laughed. ‘Well, officially, for
the grave of Miss Hebron's forebear, one Piers Hebron, 1373✠. She'd come across a reference to his excommunication and decided he must have been put outside the yard. I'm to find him or, at any rate, look for him. She set aside £50 to fence him in.' He hurried through the items as if they didn't interest him.

‘No bones, no cash?'

‘Lord, no. I'm not a bounty hunter. The contract says I'm to make “reasonable efforts over a reasonable period”. The executors agree that three or four weeks will satisfy them and not to worry too much if nothing turns up.'

‘And do you really expect to find it … him? I mean he could be anywhere. And didn't families like the Hebrons have the priests in their pockets? He's probably settled in a prime site under the altar.'

Moon grinned. Much later, I recalled it was an old-fashioned grin (as they call it in those parts). ‘Well,' he said, ‘perhaps you're right', and waved vaguely, taking in not only the meadow but the entire parish. ‘That's exactly what I told the old boy. The old boy? Her brother, the Colonel … no, no, Boer War. He saw my point. “Absolutely damned right, Moon. Just what I told Addie. Lot of nonsense, Addie, I said. Could be anywhere. Could be those bones Mossop turned up by the cucumber frame. Made no difference. Always came back to the same story – ‘I suppose I can spend my money how I like, Ted. I'm going to leave you more than you'll ever need.' Damned silly woman!” '

Moon sniggered. ‘I'm mortified that I never met her,' he said and fished into a pocket for his wallet. ‘Look, here's a snapshot of our benefactor: Mossop lent it me. It's a bit faded.'

I examined Miss Adelaide Hebron with immense interest; my first employer! She was a long-headed woman, her fair hair combed straight back, a faintly cynical smile turning up one corner of her lips, pale eyes, very fine nose. A colonel, particularly a Boer War colonel, hadn't an earthly against that field-marshal's face.

‘I've a feeling I might have hit it off rather well with her,' Moon said. ‘I think she'd understand my not giving a damn whether I do or don't dig the old devil up. Pity she didn't put up the money without waiting to die first: I just might have enjoyed her daily inspection.'

‘Well, if you feel like that about it – I mean not bothering to do
the job, why did you come?' I had to ask: it seemed a bit of a fraud.

‘Why, I saw at once what was here,' he replied, as though astonished that I hadn't seen too. ‘Well, perhaps that's not strictly true. Probably fairer to say I recognized its possibilities. So I didn't clinch the deal till I had an RFC pal fly me over in his old stringbag. All very unofficial. We came over here in the late evening. That's the time of day to see what went on in the year dot …

‘I was right; it showed quite distinctly – a basilica. If the Saxons had had such things, it would have been called a chapel. Probably about 600 … 650. Very very early, can't have been long after their first sharp attack of Christianity, because it's built in the middle of an earlier cemetery. Not like yours of course – earthenware cremation jars, hundreds of them; the meadow's a pincushion. But not a hope of anyone casually noticing.

‘I ought to let Someone Official know about it. And of course I shall. But not until I've plotted the building's foundations and got answers to two or three things that puzzle me. The locals have it fixed in their heads what I'm looking for, so any stones they see are what's left of an old cowshed. I'm only telling you because you're bound to have tumbled to it anyway, living on top of me as it were.'

Well, I wouldn't have had the nerve to have got away with it. Being paid for one job and doing another!

‘I've no pricks of conscience about it,' he went on, as though guessing my thoughts. ‘None whatever. It's too early to go off to Ur. I've no people and I don't get on with my sister's husband. Well, that's not strictly true; we rub along, but we're not each other's cup of tea. But that's not here nor there. I feel it's Addie's money well spent. Anyway, I wouldn't put it past her not guessing this was no ordinary meadow. Besides, when I've finished the survey, I'll find time to prod around for the old boy's bones. Just for the look of the thing …'

Hindsight, of course, but it came later to me that, even as we stood there talking, he knew exactly where he'd find the grave.

‘Well, what are we standing around here for?' he said. ‘Come over and I'll brew up.'

I told him that I'd already eaten breakfast.

‘Oh come on,' he said. ‘I don't need to be told you didn't catch that
twitch on the North-Eastern Railway, so we may as well start straight away swapping stories about the same bloody awful place. Come over and have a mug. God knows we both must have wondered if we'd ever drink another. And anyway, it's your turn to tell me about
your
job.'

So we walked over his magic meadow to the tent. To my astonishment, it was pitched over a pit. ‘It's better insulated,' he said. ‘And besides, it's like old times: I developed a great affection for holes. You up your ladder, me down my hole … we're survivors. Look, this evening, we could have a jar at the Shepherds' Arms and you could meet a few locals.'

I didn't say yes and I saw that he guessed money was tight and that Keach hadn't handed over any yet, because he didn't repeat his suggestion. Instead, he patted his left leg and said, ‘I told you I stiffened up in the night. Well, that's not strictly true: it's shrapnel they didn't dig out.'

All this time he was boiling a kettle and, when he'd poured out a couple of mugsfull we wandered back to the churchyard wall. ‘There – to your left,' he said. ‘See that slight subsidence. No? Never mind, take my word for it, there is one; perhaps you'd see better if the grass was shorter. Roughly, it's about nine by five, which is about right, and part of it's under the wall. Proves that it's been rebuilt … the wall … several times.'

He looked at me. Evidently I wasn't getting the message. ‘Look,' he said, ‘they weren't like us. Their minds worked differently. Religion was magic. They believed all they were told. If his folks couldn't wangle him into the church or its yard, they'd plant him as near as they could. Even if he'd been a nobody, they'd have done that. And they wouldn't have dropped him in like a dead cat; he would rate a stone coffin which probably will have survived intact.'

He stroked his chin and looked speculatively at me. Then he grinned.

‘We're two of a kind,' he said. ‘Experts! Damned irritating!' He sat down and leaned his back against the wall.

By this time the sun was well up and someone was crossing the meadow … perhaps Keach to check progress. But it wasn't.

‘Oh Lord, it's the Colonel,' Moon exclaimed. ‘He wanders around like a lost soul. Look, don't go. Wait a couple of minutes: you might as well because he'll only pursue you up your ladder.'

He was a tall drooping man, carelessly dressed, disorganized, remote, the sort of man you couldn't make any contact with, who didn't even
look
as though he was listening. Maybe he was a very shy man who made himself butt in on people and affairs which didn't really interest him. Perhaps his sister, the redoubtable Adela, had been his life-line and now he was adrift.

‘Ah!' he said. ‘Hello! Yes. Making progress, pushing ahead?'

Moon evidently had learnt exactly what response was expected; he said nothing but rearranged his face so that it could have meant anything. I thought his performance admirable. He also stood up and, as far as I recall, he did this for no-one else unless he happened to be standing already.

Anyway, the Colonel stirred around a bit and unknowingly prodded his ancestor's grave-designate with his foot. ‘Ah!' he said. ‘Yes. Very interesting. Like having you chaps around. Makes a change. Stay as long as you like. Well, must be getting along. Getting in your way.'

‘This is Mr Birkin, Colonel,' Moon said. ‘He's come to put us in the picture about what's above the chancel arch.'

The Colonel looked at my boots. ‘Jolly interesting,' he said. ‘Stay as long as you like, Birkin. Care to umpire for us on Saturdays? Mossop says he can't stand for too long at a time these days. Well, would have liked to have stayed longer. Another morning perhaps. Must be on my way. I'll tell Mossop you'll take over the umpiring. Very civil of you.'

He dawdled off. Then he turned. ‘Found anything out of the ordinary, Moon? Artefacts? No gold bits and pieces I suppose?'

Moon looked more mournful than ever but acknowledged the reasonableness of the enquiry by uttering a strangled sound.

‘Mustn't mind my asking. Just showing an interest. Stay as long as you like.' And he shambled off.

I never exchanged a word with the Colonel. He has no significance at all in what happened during my stay in Oxgodby. As far as I'm concerned he might just as well have gone round the corner and died. But that goes for most of us, doesn't it? We look blankly at each other. Here I am, here you are. What are we doing here? What do you suppose it's all about? Let's dream on. Yes, that's my Dad and Mum over there on the piano top. My eldest boy is on the mantelpiece. That cushion
cover was embroidered by my cousin Sarah only a month before she passed on. I go to work at eight and come home at five-thirty. When I retire they'll give me a clock – with my name engraved on the back. Now you know all about me. Go away: I've forgotten you already.

That was a fairly typical beginning to most days – a mug of tea in Moon's dug-out, usually not saying much, while he had a pipe. I'd ask him how things were going, who'd looked into his hole; then he'd ask me how things were going up my ladder, who'd wandered across to the church and, now and then, through pipe smoke, he would look speculatively at me. Now who are you? Who have you left behind in the kitchen? What befell you Over There to give you that God-awful twitch? Are you here to try to crawl back into the skin you had before they pushed you through the mincer?

I saw his questions but didn't answer them. Not because I lacked candour but because talking wouldn't help. They'd told me that only time would clean me up, and I believed them. Anyway, all that was past and gone and, in those first days at Oxgodby, I was engrossed in my work. It was tremendously exciting: perhaps you can understand if I explain that, to begin with, I wasn't sure what I was uncovering.