The Buried Circle. Jenni Mills

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СКАЧАТЬ photographs of my mother–part of my sad Goth phase again–but Fran has a little one, in her bedroom, of Margaret in her teens, with white lipstick and three layers of false eyelashes. Maybe she keeps others, too, locked away in the bureau.

      You know, Ind, one day you might regret that, said Fran on the day I burned my mother’s things. Never get ‘em back, that’s for sure. Then she stumped away to the garden shed to fetch the rake, and spread the ashes of the bonfire across the flowerbed.

      I’m heading for the loo, admiring the dark-eyed cameraman’s profile as he tips back his head to swallow the last of his lager, when the TV woman and I nearly collide in the doorway.

      ‘Sorry,’ she says.

      ‘My fault, not looking where I’m going.’ We both stand back to let the other through first, then, when neither moves, step forward simultaneously.

      ‘You first.’

      ‘No, you. There’s more than one cubicle in there, anyway.’

      Of course, when we go in, they’re both occupied. A sickly manufactured scent of rose pot-pourri hangs in the air, and a volley of old-lady farts comes from behind one of the doors. We exchange smiles.

      There’s never going to be a better moment.

      ‘This programme you’re doing…’

      ‘If it gets commissioned. Not always a given, these days.’

      ‘Would you be interested in an idea for it?’

      This look comes over her face, the one that says she’s had a million people offer her ideas and only two and a half have ever been remotely any good. It’s replaced immediately by a polite, bland mask. ‘Try me.’

      ‘Next spring’s the seventieth anniversary of Keiller starting work in the circle.’ I’m gabbling to spew it all out fast before one of the toilet doors opens. ‘I understand about commissioning, I’ve worked for Mannix and other TV companies–’ (go on, India, tell a really big lie about your qualifications to keep her listening, and hope your nose doesn’t grow to give it away) ‘–and I did a master’s at Bristol University in archaeology and media, with my thesis on Keiller’s work. Only he never finished–you’ll know this. He never managed to reconstruct the whole circle.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’ She’s interested now, I can tell–in fact I’ve a feeling she could be way ahead of me.

      ‘So I thought…’

      ‘You want to finish the job for him and put up the rest of the stones.’

      ‘Well, no, not actually all the stones.’ I’m explaining now in the bar. My bladder aches because I never did get round to that pee. The TV woman marched me straight out and collared the white-haired man, who was talking to Carrie Harper over by the windows.

      ‘Daniel, you’ve got to hear this.’

      ‘Ibby, I’m talking to someone.’ Rude to her, though he was schmoozing Carrie like she was lady of the Manor.

      ‘Seriously, it’s a really good idea.’

      His eyes went hard, and for a moment I thought he was going to cut her down to size in front of Carrie and me, but instead he said smoothly, ‘Would you excuse us a moment, Mrs Harper?’ I could tell he’d already sussed that Carrie wasn’t going to be as much use to him as she’d like to think, since she only arrived in Avebury ten years ago. Now she’s hanging onto the edge of the conversation, as I explain my Big Idea. I’ve pulled open the curtains to show them. There’s a fine view, across the darkening roadway, of the space where Frannie’s parents’ guesthouse stood.

      ‘Doesn’t matter which stone. The Second World War interrupted Keiller’s excavations, so nearly half the outer circle hasn’t been touched–there could be twenty or more buried stones in the north-east quadrant alone. The point is to do something that would get press coverage and set people talking about Avebury and Keiller again.’ And secure me a job on this production.

      ‘India’s family have lived in the village for generations,’ says Ibby. Weird name. Maybe she was conceived on Ibiza. ‘She works with the National Trust.’ In the caf, but they don’t need to know that. Lucky that Michael isn’t here to put them straight. I raise my eyebrows at Carrie in the hope she’ll keep her mouth shut.

      ‘So you could get us permission to film?’ says White Hair. His name is Daniel Porteus.

      ‘Well, that would be up to someone higher than me. But I’m sure…’

      He doesn’t seem to have noticed that I’m making most of this up as I go along. ‘It’s bloody brilliant. I like it already. Can I get you a glass of wine?’ He shoots a triumphant smile at Ibby. ‘Get us a bottle, lb. Merlot, if they have it. All right for you, um, India? So what exactly is it you do for the Trust?’

      ‘Sorry,’ Carrie butts in. ‘India, don’t want to interrupt or anything, but I think I saw your gran out the window. She could break a leg, you know, walking round the dykes in the dark.’

      There’s still enough light in the sky to outline the small figure making its uneven way along the top of the bank, near a clump of beech trees.

      ‘Fran!’

      She stops, turns and waits, thank goodness. A waxing moon is coming up over the horizon, and as I dash through the stones, there’s a disconcerting glimpse of it, like a tilted D, between Frannie’s bandy elastic-stockinged legs.

      The grass is slippery with frost. My ankle goes over with a sickening twist. Daren’t stop, so I go hobbling on, terrified that Frannie will start slithering down the bank into the darkness of the ditch and her ankle will go too, pitching her over and snapping her leg like the dry old twig it is. At her age, broken bones can kill.

      ‘Stop right there. I’ll come and get you.’ A risky strategy: out of sheer cussedness she might do the exact opposite. Panic’s making me breathless.

      She sits down, plonk, on a big tree root curving out of the hard, chalky slope. The wind rattles the bare beeches. A smile cracks her face, as if this is a game. She must know it’s going to be hard to get her up again. She’s not even wearing a coat, for God’s sake. Her feet are in slippers, soaked.

      My breath scrapes in my chest from the climb up the bank, and the fear. ‘What are you doing?’ I puff.

      Frannie lifts a hand and brushes her fringe off her forehead, a 1940s starlet posing for the camera, the rising moon backlighting her hair and turning it silver. She stares straight ahead over the stone circle, gaze lasering between the pair of massive entrance stones. Something in the inner circle has caught her attention. There’s movement down there, someone in a long dark coat, a bluish light that could be torch or camera-phone. Frannie shakes her head, chewing over some possibility that apparently she regrets having to reject.

      Then she says, like she’d heard me thinking the exact same words earlier this evening in the pub: ‘They never comes back, that’s for sure.’

       CHAPTER 8 1938

      They СКАЧАТЬ