The Buried Circle. Jenni Mills

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СКАЧАТЬ Had another missive this morning from those bloody Druids. Want a coffee? Kettle’s already on.’ I follow him downstairs. ‘Are there skeletons in the cardboard boxes?’

      ‘Lord, no. Not human, anyway. We only keep Charlie in this building, in his glass case, and I’m sure the Druids aren’t fussed by the dog and the goat on display. All the rest are in secure storage.’ He puts his head round the door into the gallery where one of the volunteers is manning the till. ‘Chris? Fancy a cuppa? Don’t know anyone who’d do a couple of months part-time as assistant warden, do you?’

      ‘Why won’t you take me on?’ I ask, as Michael returns to the kitchen and sets out a line of mugs.

      ‘India, you are a splendid woman of many talents but you don’t have the right qualifications. I don’t mind letting you do the odd day, but I’d prefer someone with a grasp of landscape archaeology.’ He dispenses instant coffee into the mugs with unnerving precision. Every spoonful probably has the exact same number of granules. ‘Besides, I understand you’re now archaeological consultant to a film crew.’

      This is news to me. I’d been half expecting to hear nothing more from Overview TV. And, oh, shit, if Michael knows–

      ‘Don’t look so worried.’ Michael clamps the lid onto the coffee jar and swings round to face me, but I can’t look him in the eye. ‘Daniel Porteus called me this morning and asked me to tell you he’d be in touch. He wants you to go to London for some meeting next week. And, no, I didn’t tell them your main function for the National Trust was making cappuccinos. Indeed, I told them on the phone not ten minutes ago that you were labouring in the archive.’

      ‘Thanks.’ With some difficulty, I meet his eyes, and discover only amusement.

      ‘We’ve all at some point embellished our CVs. By the way, I like your idea of putting up another stone. Don’t look smug, though, you aren’t the first to have it–nobody’s yet succeeded in persuading a broadcaster to part with enough money to do it. Anyway, how are you getting on with the letters?’

      ‘Slowly’ I cast around for milk. ‘I can’t help reading them. Hey, you know this woman who says my grandmother used to work at the Manor?’

      ‘Said,’ says Michael. ‘She died in December. She was something like ninety, mind.’

      Damn. ‘Anyone else left who was around then?’

      ‘That’s what the TV people wanted to know. Gave them all the names I had, but everyone I could think of was at last night’s meeting. Most of them were tots in the thirties. It’s a pity your gran is so confused because, by my reckoning, she’s the last surviving person who worked at the Manor then.’

      At home, Frannie is ensconced in her favourite armchair, watching Flog It!.

      ‘Why do you find it so fascinating?’ I’ve asked her this more than once.

      ‘All this stuff,’ she says. ‘People’s treasures. Never think it was worth so much, would you? I live in hope, Indy. One day there’ll be something come up and I’ll think, Ooh, blow me down and bugger, I got one of those.’

      On the television, someone’s holding up a truly hideous pottery figurine, turning it this way and that so the camera takes in every porcelain dimple and simper.

      ‘You know these television people want to make a film about Alexander Keiller? I’ve spent the whole morning in the archive sorting out his letters. Michael at the National Trust says you used to be one of AK’s secretaries.’

      Frannie rearranges her features to look more than ever like she should be serving drinks on a budget airline, face utterly bland and unreadable. Strikes me you can hide a lot of dirt in wrinkles. ‘How’s he reckon he knows that?’

      ‘Somebody else who used to work at the Manor.’

      ‘That’d be the interfering old bitch below stairs. Dead now.’

      Well, knock me down with the duty-free trolley. ‘So you did? Work for the Great Man as a secretary?’

      ‘Before the war I did, yes.’

      ‘You never told me. What was he like?’

      ‘You never asked. ‘Sides, told you, I prefer not to ‘member those times. Bad for everyone.’ She heaves herself out of the armchair. ‘Thing about diggin’ up the past, like Mr Keiller did, don’t really know what you’m turning over with your spade, do you?’

      ‘Where are you going? Your programme’s not finished.’

      ‘Call of nature.’ She shuffles out of the room. ‘You wait till you’re my age. Getting old’s no fun. No fun at all’

      I should wait till tonight, after she’s gone to bed, but I can’t. As the loo door closes, I’m across the room, hand diving down the side of her armchair.

      My fingers come up empty. The letter has gone.

       CHAPTER 10 1938

      There’s a man on Flog It! with a lovely Victorian cow-creamer. Black Jackfield lustre glaze, he says, little gilt flowers painted on its hide. It has a lid on the top, where you fill it, and the tail curls into a handle so you can lift her up by the arse end and pour the cream out of her mouth. Mr Keiller had one just like it. No, I’m wrong. Our mam had one just like it, and Mr Keiller wanted to buy it off her, but she wouldn’t sell. Said it had belonged to her mother. I wonder what became of it. We never used it. It sat on the Welsh dresser with the Royal Albert.

      Mr Keiller collected them. They had a whole room to themselves at the Manor. He had six hundred and sixty-six. Can’t remember why I know how many. I surely to goodness didn’t count the blasted things while I was dusting them. He was particular about who was allowed to touch them, wouldn’t let the housemaid do it, said she had fumbly fingers and he preferred me, even though I was secretarial. I washed them once, with him stood over me while I did it. Made me uncomfortable. I told him to get out a tea-towel and dry them himself, if he didn’t trust me, and that made him laugh.

      Six hundred and sixty-six. The number of the Beast. Did he always keep just six hundred and sixty-six, and have to sell one every time he bought one? No wonder some in the village said he was the devil incarnate.

      My mam used to say I had the devil in me. She didn’t know the half of it.

      My feet were dragging when I crossed the road after getting off the bus. I was about done in. Mam was in the kitchen. The wireless was on, but you could hardly hear it because the Frigidaire was making a terrible racket, somewhere between a wheeze and a beehive-sized hum. It couldn’t cope with the heat when Mam was baking.

      ‘Any luck?’ she said, without looking up from rolling pastry.

      ‘No. They all said I was too young.’

      I wanted a secretarial job. I couldn’t go on working with Mam and Dad in the guesthouse. Not that it was going to be a guesthouse much longer. Heap of rubble was next on the agenda. Mr Keiller was our landlord, and Mr Keiller wanted us out, so he could knock the place down and put up more of his old stones.

      Wouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ