The Buried Circle (39 page)
Or was that part a dream?
At any rate, it was a disturbed night, lying awake mithering, as John would call it. Worrying what to do about Frannie. I’m afraid she’s becoming too confused to look after herself, but it’s no exaggeration to say putting her in a home would kill her.
Old folks wither in them places like rows of dead runner beans
, she says.
Rot from the inside
. I couldn’t do that to her.
Mithering, too, about other stuff, Ed and piles of paper that keep growing, letters that come in bank envelopes and tell me I owe thousands of pounds, bank statements that are endless columns of numbers, changing faster and faster until they become a flickering blur, streams of numbers running down the windowpane, streams of numbers bubbling down a hillside, pouring into stone pits in the circle, dark holes under the trees, mud slides of numbers, fragments of paper and bone, the dark thud of helicopter vanes overhead, whirlwinds of letters that make no sense, old photographs that fade and grow unfocused, Alexander Keiller smiling like a Cheshire cat at the camera, the water dissolving his face into a mask of carved bone, nothing left of his essence but the grin, a grin that wavers and becomes a ripple on water, water making everything sodden and unreadable, water that explodes into fragments of glass and fire under the trees…
Then I’m awake again and a miserable damp Friday dawn is bleaching the curtains.
In spite of Kit’s promise to finish before Solstice, this is the last day we can work before the masses start to arrive, and it’s clear to everyone the stone won’t be cemented in place by the end of the afternoon. The megalith is fully uncovered, lying in its pit under a heavy sky, but at two o’clock the students still haven’t finished trussing the sarsen with honeysuckle ropes to Kit’s satisfaction.
‘Look at the size of him,’ says Ibby, admiringly, as Harry pans along the side of the stone where a brawny lad in shorts is tugging away on the Neolithic equivalent of a reef knot.
‘Her,’ says Martin. ‘Assuming you mean the stone. This would be what Keiller categorized as a Type B, lozenge-shaped rather than a straight-sided pillar, therefore symbolically female.’
‘A Goddess stone, in another words?’ suggests Ibby, ignoring Martin’s pained expression.
‘You’re not going to attempt to raise it, now, are you?’ says Martin, to Kit. ‘Maybe we should hold on, till after Solstice.’
‘Martin,’ says Ibby. ‘Stop fussing.’
‘There won’t be time to cement it in place. I cancelled the delivery’
‘We can still make it safe,’ says Kit. ‘Chalk blocks, that’s all the original circle-builders needed. But if you want to leave raising it until the week after next…’
‘No,’ says Ibby fiercely. ‘I don’t have a crew to film it the week after next. Now or never, Martin. Leave Kit to it. You and India go and do a piece to camera about stone types.’ She squats down by the portable monitor again and concentrates on the screen.
‘Yeah, go on, piss off,’ says Kit. ‘We’ll be faster without you.’
‘No problem.’ Martin picks up his satchel, huffily extracts a Mars Bar and strides away. ‘I’m only the bloody archaeologist, after all’
Carrying the mini-DVC and a lightweight tripod, I follow, scanning the bank, hoping that Ed might appear. As a result, I almost trip over Martin, who has squatted to examine something on the ground. ‘Hey, India. It’s a modern offering.’
At his boots is a newly turned mound of earth, easily mistaken for a molehill if it weren’t for the wildflowers strewn on top, and the protruding corner of a glossy photograph. Martin starts to scrape off the dark brown soil, mixed with pellets of chalk.
‘Hold on,’ I say, kicking open the legs of the tripod. ‘This would be good to film.’
‘You want me to talk?’
‘Of course. Describe what you’ve found. I’m shooting over your shoulder.’ I focus the camera close-up on his big hairy fingers. ‘Speed. In your own time.’ The fingers brush away the final layer of dirt, revealing a family snapshot, a fair-haired boy holding a pink and green plush-furred dinosaur up to the camera and peeping from behind it.
‘Oh.’ The camera catches only a glimpse, before Martin’s fingers go into reverse and start sweeping earth back quickly to cover it. ‘I don’t think I want to describe this after all,’ he says.
Someone was standing next to the boy, probably his mother, her arm round him–but all that shows is her hand and a few strands of blond hair. Her face has been fiercely scribbled over with black biro, so heavily that the glossy surface is pitted and scored, and part of the photo has been torn away, the jagged edge bisecting her breast. There are ashy flakes mixed with the soil.
‘Sorry,’ says Martin. ‘It seems–sort of private. And creepy, too. I think he’s burned the rest of the picture.’
‘You don’t know it’s a he.’
‘Take my word for it, it’s a he.’ Martin has completely covered the photo. ‘Let’s leave it, OK?’
I turn off the camera. ‘Sorry’
‘No, I’m sorry. Stuff like that–well, it makes me feel a bit sick. Kind of black magicky Not that I believe in that twaddle, but I am the son of a vicar. Dad was always having to clear up peculiar things from the churchyard. Let’s go talk girl stones and boy stones.’
He strides off briskly. I fold the tripod and follow, with a faint sense of unease.
At three o’clock, Kit pronounces herself satisfied with the ropes and prehistoric-style pulleys, and assembles three teams of students and onlookers to haul on them, as well as a fourth team (mostly girls) to dart around slotting timber props into place as the stone starts to come upright.
‘Can we do the whole thing twice?’ asks Ibby. ‘It’d be easier to film.’
‘No,’ says Kit. And keep your people well out of the way. This is dangerous. Remember what happened to the Barber Surgeon?’
Ed and Graham have been co-opted to help. There are beads of perspiration sparkling in Graham’s blond beard as his team takes the strain, and the stone judders an inch or two above the lip of its pit.
‘Get a prop under there,’ shouts Kit. ‘Reuben, your team mustn’t slacken off.’
Ed’s navy T-shirt is dark with sweat, his arms as corded as the honeysuckle rope. A blonde student in shorts and a bikini top darts under the hawser to jab a prop into place.
‘She’s coming up,’ calls Martin. ‘Steady…’
Ed clenches his jaw and grunts, catches sight of me filming, and mouths something that will have to be pixillated.
‘Don’t let her twist!’ yells Kit.
Rain starts to fall as, slowly, inch by inch, the stone is levered from its bed. We’ve gathered quite a crowd, standing under umbrellas on the henge banks for a grandstand view. There’s scattered applause at the moment when the huge diamond finally comes upright.
‘You can’t relax,’ shouts Kit. ‘Hold her there while we check the props.’
Chalk blocks are packed into the stone hole. Eventually Kit announces she’s satisfied the megalith is secure. The teams release the ropes, which are attached to stakes in the ground. Kit tests every one.
Martin is still looking worried. ‘I’d have liked to cement her in. And backfill the trench.’
‘It’d take an earthquake to shift her. Even without the ropes, the blocks would hold her. We’ll come back and finish the job when Solstice is over.’
‘Well, on your head be it.’
‘Or yours,’ she says, punching him lightly on the arm.
I miss the rest of the conversation because I’ve caught sight of Ed, chaining together metal barriers to keep the public away from the trench containing the trussed stone. The blonde girl in shorts is leaning on one, helping steady it while he loops the padlock through. He bends his head towards her and says something; she grins and laughs.
Rather than go straight home, I walk down to John’s. Frannie woke this morning before I left the house, entirely lucid, though without any memory of having caused so much fuss. John has been with her most of the day, leaving mid-afternoon for a couple of reflexology appointments.
By the time I reach his cottage, the weather has done one of those conjuring tricks it likes to pull in June and unexpectedly hauled out a steamy sun. Raindrops are sparkling on the summer jasmine outside the door.
He looks tired: he’s wearing his old glasses, instead of contact lenses.
‘So, did Adele have anything useful to suggest about Frannie?’ I ask, as he makes tea for us.
‘Yes.’ His voice through the kitchen door is unusually wary.
‘And Frannie was OK when you left?’
‘Not too bad.’ He comes back in carrying two mugs. I’d swear that’s guilt on his face.
‘You said on the phone she was fine.’
‘Yes, of course, that’s what I meant.’ His eyes slide away towards the brick hearth. ‘Sorry, fire’s a bit miserable. It’s been so damp today I thought it worth getting one going. I’ll stick a log on.’
‘So she seems OK now?’
‘Well…’ He throws some kindling onto the embers, then kneels to hold a sheet of newspaper across the fireplace to improve the draw. ‘You know what she’s like. Weather conditions variable on Planet Fran.’ He seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time building an elaborate pyramid of coal and repositioning the newspaper.
‘John. What’s going on? Did you find out something else about what happened yesterday?’
‘What?’ The newspaper catches fire. ‘Ouch.’ He lets the flame take it up the chimney in a roar of sparks, and finally turns to face me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve never seen you this tense.’
‘Sorry.’ Getting to his feet, he wipes a hand across his face, leaving a black smudge on one cheek. ‘This is a bit difficult.’
My heart’s thundering. ‘What is?’
‘I told Adele I thought you needed help. That it’s too much to ask you to cope with Frannie by yourself. I told her about the helicopter crash, and how badly it affected you…’
The bastard. How dare he?
I storm straight out of his cottage, leaving the tea undrunk, slamming the front door so hard the window panes rattle. The door opens again behind me before I’m more than a couple of yards down the path. ‘Don’t flounce off with your arse in your hand,’ roars John. ‘This isn’t about you, it’s about what’s best for Frannie.’ The front porch frames him with pink sprays of summer jasmine, like a parody of an old-fashioned Valentine card.
‘I was managing fine until you and sodding Social Services stuck their oar in.’ I lash out at a molehill on the lawn, which disintegrates in a shower of damp earth. The garden gate has warped in the rain, and I have to struggle to open it.
‘Indy’ He’s holding out a sprig of jasmine. ‘Peace offering? I agree, we shouldn’t have let them take her to the day centre. But…’
‘There is no but,’ I say. ‘I
have
to look after her because she took me on after…after…’ The words are sticking in my throat. ‘When Mum didn’t want me any more.’
His hand tightens on the framework of the porch. ‘Life’s not a series of emotional IOUs,’ he says. ‘Frannie’d hate you to crucify yourself on her behalf. Besides, it wasn’t that way, you know it wasn’t. Jesus, I’ve been stupid. I should never have suggested you came back to Avebury after the crash. Didn’t take into account this place has other memories for you. I should’ve understood that’s unfinished business too.’
‘Yeah, yeah, time wounds all heels, et cetera,’ I say, with pressure building up in my chest. ‘But I was eight. I got over it. Gone, done, forgotten.’
‘Forgotten?’ He throws the piece of jasmine onto the damp Tarmac of the path. ‘If you’re not limping, ask yourself why you hit the bottle every night. Why you can’t convince yourself you weren’t responsible for that lad dying in the chopper, why you still see his eyes every night when you go to sleep…’
‘How do you know about the eyes?’
‘…why you won’t let anyone talk about what happened in Tolemac to Mick Feather.’
My throat closes up completely. ‘I don’t
know
what happened to Mick Feather,’ comes out as a croak. ‘I don’t. Want. To hear.’ I turn and run down the path, and my eyes are so blurry I can hardly find the catch on the gate.
On the Ridgeway, the air is thick and still, thunder on the way. My T-shirt is clinging to my back, and my head is pounding.
Gone, done, forgotten
.
I’m walking fast, punishing the ground with the impact of my heels, away from Avebury. But it doesn’t matter which direction I take. I can’t escape the vortex: I’m still going round in circles. This was the path we took in 1989, the night I first watched John make a crop circle: guiding the mothership in.
Mick Feather, Keir’s dad, was with us that night, though Keir stayed with Mum at the van in Tolemac, in case his hayfever flared up. Mick, with skin that always looked grimy like a coalman’s, irrespective of how often he washed. I was afraid of Mick. There was something forbidding about him, with those heavy black eyebrows and muddy skin. Keir said he was fun when they did things together. Much of the time Keir was with us, though, in our house, and then in our van under the trees at Tolemac.
Keir and I were almost the same age, best friends because he spent so much time at our place. Mick and the others had nowhere else to be apart from the pub, or the smelly vans and crash pads they inhabited after their wives and girlfriends had kicked them out. Mum wasn’t just saddled with me to look after, she had a tribe of dysfunctional kids who’d never grown up. No wonder she wanted rid of us and ran away.
I can picture her, face hard as sarsen, cheeks the same dirty, stained white as the chalk scars on the hillside. She grabbed hold of me by the shoulders, her hands trembling with anger, and shook me like a beanbag. ‘You stupid little cow. Who did you tell?’
I didn’t know what she meant. There was the sound of a helicopter overhead, and the air smelled of burned plastic. ‘Don’t you realize what you’ve done?’
I’ve lost track of time and place, under a lid of thick grey cloud, clamped over the Downs like the headache that’s screwed itself onto my skull. The sun is hidden, but it must be close to setting. Somewhere around here we made the crop circle. I’ve watched the Barley Collective, friends of John’s from Bristol, make crop circles half a dozen times since, but that summer was the first and most vivid. The western sky still on fire, though it was past ten o’clock at night, May bugs dive-bombing the flashlights. No one to see us, a mile at least from the nearest farmhouse, sculpting a field of ripening barley hidden in the folds of the downland. The little fellow with hair like a black man’s, the one who came into the church–what was his name? Rizla?–moving in a huge arc with the string and the pegs to mark out the design to John’s orders. ‘Callin’ in the mothership, babe,’ the little guy kept shouting. ‘Lovin’ the alien and callin’ in the fakkin’ mothership.’ Afterwards, he hoisted me onto his shoulders, and said: ‘Back to the mothership.’ Back to Margaret’s camper van.
