Lovers and Newcomers (55 page)

He was the only person who had ever called her Kath. The only one she had ever allowed to do so. Polly poured each of them a second glass of wine. The baby obligingly slept.

‘What about you, K?’ she prompted.

Katherine looked from one to the other. Polly managed her loss, talking about it when she could and keeping quiet when she couldn’t bear it. Katherine loved her and admired her bravery. But Miranda, she thought, had almost the harder time.

Compared with her friends’ lives, her own happiness seemed intemperate, too vivid and insistent, as if at any minute it might explode inside her.

With precise, quiet articulation she told them, ‘I am fine. Everything has changed so much, but I wouldn’t change it back again.’

They waited, looking at her.

‘I love him,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know how it has happened, but I do.’

‘Lucky you,’ Polly said, in her brisk way.

The pressure of their different circumstances seemed to ease as they all laughed.

‘Here we are then, the three of us,’ Miranda said. ‘After all these years.’

Colin helped Katherine to take down a pair of English watercolours that had hung in the small hallway of the cottage. Amos had given them to her one Christmas. They sealed them in bubble-wrap and placed them beside the front door with a suitcase and a couple of packing cases. They worked quickly, without saying much, and were relieved when the job was done and Katherine’s belongings had been transferred to her car.

Stripped back to its holiday-rental bareness the place echoed as they closed doors and clicked off lights. Katherine was reminded of the fenland cottage where she had stayed with Chris that first time, and without warning found herself blushing. Colin glanced at her with amused speculation. He had woken up again to sexual nuance, Carlos in New York had done that much for him, and he saw that Katherine’s sheen suited her.

There was no such thing as too old, he acknowledged. Only too sad, or too afraid, or too lacking in self-belief.

‘Are you happy, K?’ he asked.

‘I believe I am,’ she said. ‘But I feel guilty about it.’

‘Don’t,’ he advised.

They were in the kitchen, confronted by the blameless pine cupboard fronts and furniture.

‘Are you really going to live here?’ she asked him.

‘I know what you’re thinking. It’s not really gay enough, is it?’

Colin had thought hard about it. If Miranda would sell the place to him, he would have an investment at Mead that would draw him back and help to keep him anchored here. It wasn’t to do with money or property, but with physical commitment to a place and people.

‘I can change things, of course. Rip out the pine, bring in the granite and my Basquiat.’

The places he had lived in since breaking up with Stephen had been just the sort of settings you would expect for a gay, middle-aged set designer. He saw them now as superficially glamorous but fundamentally un-homely, and he was not at all sentimental about leaving the current one. Nothing could be more different than this little house attached to Mead in its landscape of fields and copses, with Polly living opposite and Miranda next door. He had asked himself if this was a final camouflage act, another way of hiding rather than of coming home at last, but he knew that he could conceal himself from just about anyone anywhere in the world, except from his oldest friends, who were right here.

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ he said.

Katherine glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go, Col.’

Chris was waiting for her.

Colin walked with her to her car. She didn’t look back.

‘Have you seen Amos’s new place?’ he asked, putting the last of her boxes into the boot.

‘I have.’

‘What did you think?’

Katherine got in and started the engine.

‘Needs a woman’s touch,’ she said.

Amos was too busy even to find a builder to improve the Georgian house, let alone worry about soft furnishings. There was a series of meetings to negotiate, with a variety of people and organizations ranging from the parish council, English Heritage and the county planning authorities, to the vicar of Meddlett and his own wife’s lover. But Amos was single-minded. He reported back after each session to Vin Clarke and the customers in the Griffin, Roy’s wife whose name was Patricia, Mrs Spragg in the shop, and anyone else in Meddlett who was interested or had an issue, which turned out to be most of the population.

At a public meeting held in the sports pavilion he said, ‘We’re not talking the curse of crop failure or foot and mouth if we don’t bring the princess home, of course not, let’s not be superstitious, although I have heard such things mentioned. It’s a matter of doing the proper thing by her, according her the respect her position and her history deserves.

‘It was my excavations that disturbed her rest, and although we as a community as well as the archaeologists and prehistorians have all benefited from a great discovery, I take responsibility for that original disturbance. That’s why I’m standing here in front of you this evening.’

There were various murmurings in response to this, not all approving, but Amos took disapprobation in his stride.

‘This is an occasion for Meddlett, present-day modern Meddlett, to show the county and indeed the whole country what we can do. We should make it a solemn day but a splendid one.’

‘What does that mean, exactly?’ someone called.

‘Fundraising, mate, as per,’ someone else shouted back.

‘I believe we shall get some funds for the purpose from the county archaeologist’s department, and I will also be supporting the event personally,’ Amos purred.

‘You can afford it, can’t you?’ said the same heckler.

The meeting broke up on a positive note, however. To the general approval of the village, there would be a Meddlett Princess Day in June.

Amos relayed this news to Jessie when she called at his house at the end of her shift. Jessie seemed to prefer to spend her time at his place. Not that he objected to that, particularly. Gulliver busily sniffed around the margins of the kitchen.

‘This is my dream house, you know. I’d never even been inside before you bought it,’ she sighed. ‘Hey, Gully. Oh God. Sorry, Amos.’

‘Use this.’ He threw her the kitchen roll. ‘What’s wrong with your own home these days?’

‘Bloody Kieran and Nic, sitting on the sofa with cups of cocoa, watching romantic DVDs and having a bit of a kiss when I’m not looking, that’s what. It’s like living in an old folks’ home,’ she complained.

‘That’s not my impression of how old people’s homes are run.’

‘So it’s not like that up at Mead, eh?’ Her smile could take on a flicker of gleeful cruelty.

‘Not at all.’ He laughed back, in spite of himself. Jessie was always good company. He went on telling her about Princess Day, and the more elaborate plans that he was beginning to formulate.

‘One thing I’d like to know,’ he concluded.

‘What’s that?’

‘Who was it who stole the treasure?’

Her eyes widened. ‘Why do you think
I’d
have any idea?’

‘Damon?’ Amos suggested.

His own theory was that Jessie had told Damon about the find, and Damon had then passed on the information, for a consideration. But he had no way of knowing this for certain and Jessie was much too smart to let on. He hoped she wouldn’t, in any case.

What Amos did know, because the police had told him so, was that a likely set of suspects had been identified, but by the time their premises were raided, just before Christmas, there was no sign of any of the stolen goods. None of the recovered items had borne any trace of a fingerprint, or any evidence that would link the suspects to them. Amos was also fully aware that unless a new lead should present itself, police time was too valuable to be expended on a hunt for thieves of goods that had all been found, or even for the attackers of a guard who was now fully recovered and back at work.

‘Why Damon?’ Jessie wondered, glancing up from a prolonged examination of her Golden Virginia packet.

‘All right, let me put this another way. If I were able to persuade the authorities to let us put the treasure on temporary public display at Mead, what’s the likelihood of persons you may or may not know mounting an all-guns-blazing assault on the treasure for a second time, and whacking another innocent security officer over the head in the process?’

She thought about this. ‘How would I know? But my guess would be, people around here are such losers, if there was, like, proper security, they wouldn’t be able to do anything much, would they?’

‘I see. Good,’ Amos answered.

He would go ahead and make the arrangements.

The white surplices of the clergy fluttered in the June breeze, a string quartet stopped playing and the expectant crowd fell silent. The only sound was the calling of wood pigeons in the tall trees and the creak of canvas from the marquees.

Miranda watched a small procession making its way from a line of vehicles drawn up at the margin of the field, where the wood opened up to the broad plateau and its view of pastureland. The bishop’s chaplain bearing the crozier led the column, followed by the bishop himself in cope and mitre, the vicar of Meddlett, and then Kieran and Christopher Carr, both dressed in dark suits and ties. The archaeologists each carried a casket woven from willow branches. Behind them walked more county officials, one wearing a mayoral chain, and bringing up the rear of the procession came the Meddlett Brownie pack, with the tallest two children carrying the poles of the St Andrew’s church banner. A local television camera crew, a radio team, a group of press photographers and the accompanying journalists moved alongside the official procession, jockeying for the best angle. Behind Miranda the crowd of onlookers pressed forwards to the white ropes that marked off a square of ground and a deep trench. Joyce’s wheelchair was positioned at centre front, and Miranda moved her slightly so she maintained the best view.

Patches of shadow swept over the fields and then sunlight blazed again. Cabbage white butterflies wove exuberant patterns over campion and oxeye daisies in the long grass.

The Meddlett church choir was drawn up inside the rope square. When the bishop and his retinue reached the edge of the trench, the choir mistress lifted her hand and the string quartet’s violinist drew out the note.

Miranda smiled to think that the form this brief service was to take had caused more debate than any other aspect of Amos’s glorious Princess Day celebration plans. It was a pre-Christian interment, one faction declared. The opposition insisted that there must be a religious aspect to it, the bishop could hardly be asked to preside over a pagan ceremony.

In the end, the bishop himself had settled the matter. He had a keen interest in archaeology. There would be a single hymn, a short and wholly ecumenical prayer, and then the committal.

The choir sang,
And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green
. Miranda heard her mother’s quavering soprano as the crowd joined in, more than three hundred people raising their voices to the summer air. Looking along the line she saw Amos singing lustily, flanked by his sons. Nic carried her baby in a sling against her chest and sang, with her eyes on Kieran. Alpha Davies slipped her hand with the new diamond on the third finger through Jaime’s arm, Jessie somehow sang without moving her lips, Polly and Katherine stood shoulder to shoulder singing, and the hymn rolled out over the decorated marquee and faded away into the grass-scented breeze.

Miranda found that there were tears in her eyes.

Till we have built Jerusalem, in England’s green and pleasant land.

She thought that she had never loved Mead as much as she did today.

The crowd shuffled, settling into silence once again. Overhead, a plane stitched a white thread against the blue sky.

‘Dear friends,’ the bishop began.

After the prayer, Kieran and Chris fitted broad green ribbons into slots in the two wicker caskets. The musicians played a piece of Elgar as the ancient bones of the princess and her cup-bearer were lowered back into the ground. The smallest Brownie came forward and dropped two white roses after them.

The final role was Miranda’s own. She stepped forward to the very edge of the pit, dug a spade into the mound of earth, and shovelled it on top of the bones. At once, as if in collective relief, the crowd gave a great sigh. Someone at the back clapped their hands and the applause was instantly taken up, dying away only as the gravedigger from Meddlett churchyard took the spade from Miranda, and soil thudded down to cover the remains once more.

‘We can all rest easy now she has come home,’ Roy’s wife sobbed to Amos. Amos patted her arm, already regretting his own insistence that there would be no alcohol served at the celebration party. Miranda caught his eye, and winked at him.

The media crews were heading for the smaller marquee outside which stood two policemen and several uniformed private security guards. The people streamed away from the burial place, hesitating between the choice of tea or a close-up of the actual Mead treasure.

With Ben and Toby’s help, Miranda and Polly half-steered and half-carried Joyce’s wheelchair towards the marquee.

‘Where are we going? What’s happening now?’ Joyce cried.

Miranda leaned down to her.

‘We’re going to look at the princess’s treasure, brought back to Mead in all its glory.’

Only Colin loitered behind, one hand in his pocket, apparently watching the gravedigger.

When he was sure that no one was looking, he took a few quick steps to the edge of the half-filled grave. Then he withdrew his hand and let fall a heart-shaped piece of quartz into the loose earth. A moment later it was covered. Colin bent his head in what might have been a salute, then walked away between the daisies and the spires of sorrel.

Joyce’s wheelchair was borne into the tent in the wake of the bishop’s party. Cameras flashed and the news crews pressed after them.

‘I feel like royalty myself,’ Joyce said.

Miranda wheeled her into place, then stood at her side. Glancing down she saw her mother’s tiny, veined hand resting on the arm of the chair. She reached down and clasped it.