An Affair to Remember (26 page)

“Will do.” The vicar hurries away, and Sel, bearing a brightly coloured tartan car rug, fairly gibbering with excitement, takes his place beside the trench. News travels fast.

“We can cover it with this, Ron, the gate’s open,” he hisses, “and we’d better get our skates on; Josh and his boys are doing their best, but we won’t keep them back for much longer.”

There’s a hush both outside and inside as the casket, under its somewhat garish covering, is carried across the yard, through the back door and into the kitchen where it’s laid reverently down on the large, scrubbed table in the centre of the room. Someone prudently locks the door into the yard, from whence a rather ragged rendering of
Abide with Me
can be heard. The vicar, it seems, is doing his stuff.

This is it. Behind him people murmur. A lot of pushing and shoving seems to be going on. Philippa, no doubt desperate to be in on the act, is blowing down the back of his neck. Ignoring her and them, and thanking God for Hazel standing sentinel beside him, he very gently slides the lid from the casket. It comes off easily; in the long years of incarceration the hinges have broken apart and a dusting of earth has penetrated the box. Not much though; the tiny skeleton inside appears to be in pristine condition. Remnants of cloth adhere to the leg bones of the baby, some sort of shroud perhaps and, wonder of wonders, around its tiny neck has been fastened a minute golden torque in the shape of a serpent. Whoever it was who so carefully laid the child to rest had, it seems, hedged their bets: tribute made, not only to the Christian God, but to the pagan predecessors.

Chapter 14

“Beattie, love, how are you feeling?” Beatrice opens her eyes to find Sylvia, of all people, seated beside her. The curtains have been drawn back and there’s a tray with two cups of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits on the bedside table.

“Bloody awful, if you really want to know. It’s probably a stupid question but how did you come to be here? I thought it would be that ghastly Dr Moss, that’s why I kept my eyes shut, then I smelled your perfume.”

“Is he so ghastly?”

“Pretty grim, yes. He keeps filling me with dope, Syl. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. Anyway how do you come to be here? Surely Sel didn’t ring you, did he. Because if he did I –”

“Your letter.” Syl, already primed not to mention the dig or any of the day’s events, chooses her words with care, “I was worried. So Tris and I popped down for a day or two. I rang Mr Woodhead and he said you were asleep but would call back. Then Mrs W. rang and suggested we came over. And… well here we are.”

“You’re staying at Brown End?”

“No, at a local pub a few miles away – The Trojan Horse.” At the mention of The Trojan Beatrice’s face darkens. “Have I said something wrong?” (Oh God, things were going so well and now I’ve put my foot in it – trust me.)

However, after a tense moment her worries turn out to be groundless. Beatrice’s face clears; she takes Syl’s hand and squeezes it. “No, of course not, silly. It’s just it was at the Trojan I apparently had one of my so-called fits, that’s all. Over now. Not to worry.”

Moving on rapidly, Syl remarks on her friend’s palatial bedroom, not to mention the out of this world bathroom; “Like something from a movie,” she says, “and what about that pink mirror?” This makes Beatrice giggle, which seems a good sign.

“I know – it could make a seventy year old look young, couldn’t it? Clarrie says a lot of actresses have one in their bathroom, they’re thought to be good for the morale.”

“They would be. Yours took at least ten years off me. I think I’ll have to get one fitted for the flat.”

But Beatrice isn’t listening: “When are they going to let me out of here, Syl? I’m beginning to feel I’m in prison; every time I make a move someone gives me a pill or jabs a needle into me. You don’t know what it’s like, honestly…”

Feeling inadequate, Syl pats her hand. (Please God don’t let me make another boob.) “Very soon, love, it’s just… Look would you like to have a word with Tris? He’s downstairs, and the two of you always get on so well…” her voice trails off as it’s obvious Beatrice has again ceased to listen. Sitting up, she’s noticed the line of cars out of the window, and to Sylvia’s considerable unease is watching, with what appears to be mounting anger, the slow stream of traffic, directed by a policeman on a motorbike, as it crawls over the bridge and up the steep hill towards the Grove. The natives of this part of rural Suffolk, happy participants in an event which will inevitably go down in the annals of Kimbleford and its surrounding villages as the most breathtakingly exciting occurrence ever to have taken place in those quiet parishes, at least in living memory, are making for home.

“What’s going on Syl?” Syl looks wildly round for inspiration; finds none. “They’ve been watching the dig, haven’t they.” Beatrice glares at her friend accusingly, her eyes both angry and frightened. “And now they’re going home so it must be finished. What did they find?” Syl’s mouth opens but nothing comes out. “Tell me, you fool. What did they find?”

Half out of bed now, she seizes the horrified Syl and, nose to nose, starts shaking her, at which point the bedroom door burst open, to reveal the excited figures of Izzy Moss and Tris, who prudently perhaps, in the light of subsequent events, have been listening outside in the passage and now rush to the rescue.

Izzy strides over to the bed. “You know what they found, you foolish girl,” he thunders, taking Beatrice by the arms and pushing her quite roughly back on to the bed.

“Get out of my chamber, old man, and don’t interfere in my affairs again or you will pay for it,” shrieks Tavey, now back with a vengeance, and to prove her point, she picks up the small antique candlestick on the bedside table and hurls it at Izzy’s bald head.

Dodging the missile with practised ease, he addresses his fulminating patient. “For that, Octavia, you will be whipped,” he hisses, hypodermic at the ready. Syl and Tris watch in horror as with the speed of light the needle is inserted into their friend’s arm, and after a brief struggle, she falls back on her pillows, unconscious.

Through the open window the jaunty strains of
The Teddy Bears
’
Picnic
can still be heard from across the valley, as the last of the line of cars disappears over the brow of the hill. Out of a leaden sky the first heavy drops of rain begin to fall.

*

Not far off midnight now. Sam sits in the conservatory smoking a cigarette and watching lightning flicker over the drenched landscape, an empty coffee cup beside him. There’s a smell of wet grass and rotting vegetation in the air and the scent from the tobacco plants planted by Clarrie in the ragged bed under the monkey puzzle tree makes his nose – he’s prone to hay fever – twitch. In the room behind him the rest of the party, high on excitement and brandy, are still discussing the day’s momentous events. He’s unable to make out what they’re saying owing to the rain rattling on the glass roof above his head. He’s not sure he wants to anyway, somehow the euphoria engendered by the news he and Em are not after all married has evaporated, and seemingly unable to be of any practical assistance to Beatrice, he feels not only useless, but filled with a dull foreboding.

They’ve pushed her too far, he’s sure of that. If only they’d let him see her he knows he could have been of help, but that charlatan, Moss, had been adamant. Claiming without a vestige of evidence that at this stage for them to meet would be dangerous. How did he know? The answer of course was he didn’t, he’d been working in the dark like everyone else, he simply thought that in his so-called capacity of expert he had to exert his authority. And now of course it was too late. Tomorrow his beloved would be carted off in an ambulance by the men in white coats, as old Mrs Hodgkins who lived at the corner of Kitchener Road when he was a boy, used to call them, and incarcerated in some ‘nice, quiet nursing home’, where she’d be drugged and interrogated by another posse of so-called experts and he would never see her again.

What could he do? What could he bloody do? His tired mind simply refuses to function. Too much had happened; too much to take in. As far as the ‘finds’ under Tavey’s tree were concerned, the thought that for all those centuries the area had been used as a dumping ground for the neighbourhood’s unwanted babies simply made him feel sick, and he had to admit he cared little or nothing for the historical implications of the dig and its aftermath. All he cared about was Beatrice.

What about Petrus, then? He did, or thought he did, feel something about Petrus. ‘Go in Peace’ someone had scratched hopefully on the casket containing his remains, sending the little boy on his way with two coins, a silver cup and for good measure a pagan torque. Had they helped ease his passage into another world, he wonders, as through a mist of rain he looks morosely out on the dark garden. A flash of lightning illuminates the monkey puzzle, followed by a hefty burst of thunder and he feels a cool hand on his shoulder.

“It’s been a long day,” Clarrie says, from behind him, “are you feeling okay?”

“A bit dazed, Mrs Woodhead, and wondering what to do next, that’s all.”

“For heaven’s sake call me Clarrie.”

“Sorry. Clarrie. It’s as though I’m in a sort of limbo. When my wife… Emmie told me this afternoon we weren’t married after all, it seemed marvellous news, I thought I could see the way forward, everything was clear, but now…”

Clarrie sits down beside him, takes his hand. “But that was good news, surely? You and Beatrice can get married now and –”

“But can we?” Sam’s eyes are those of a hurt and bewildered child. “There is no Beatrice now, only this, this Octavia,” the words come out in a sort of hiss. Clarrie shivers in spite of herself.

“Now that’s defeatist nonsense, Sam Mallory, and you know it. Of course Beatrice will come back, and very soon too. After all the dig was successful – they found what they needed to find. Surely, now, the curse is broken.”

“We don’t know that, do we? I mean nothing’s happened yet to show us it has.”

“It must be – surely…?” Sam doesn’t reply, and for a while they sit in depressed silence. The rain’s eased off a little. The party behind them is breaking up, its members wearily making their way upstairs to bed, goodnights called, bedroom lights coming on. Clarrie, unable to think of anything very positive more to say, is about to suggest they too retire, when Sam, with all the appearance of someone who after a struggle has finally come to a decision, lowering his voice, despite there being no one there to hear but Clarrie, asks:

“What you said this morning – do you still believe it? That I, otherwise Brian, have to perform some task before the curse is broken? Or do you think that now they’ve found the baby everything’s changed? As you haven’t mentioned the idea again, I thought you must have abandoned it, but I’ve been thinking about it all day – even while all those other things were happening. And although at the moment I can’t quite get to grips with it, I’m becoming more and more convinced you were right.”

Clarrie swallows nervously. She knows she must be very, very careful. Dr Moss had been adamant that no one must try out any unsupervised therapy with Beatrice or Sam. It was dangerous and the consequences could be grave. “Leave these things to the professionals, my dear,” he’d told her, when she’d tried to voice an opinion on the matter, “contrary to what the majority of people believe, we do know what we’re doing – most of the time anyway.”

“To be honest, I don’t know whether I was right or not,” she says at last, “but I do know it’s something you have to work out for yourself. For what it’s worth I think you probably will and what’s more, when you have, it’ll be the right decision. Now, if I don’t take myself off to bed pronto I’ll be in no fit state to face the rigours of tomorrow. Goodnight, dear Sam, and good luck.”

Sam, surprising himself, leans forward and kisses her on the lips. “Goodnight, dear Clarrie, and thank you.”

“What for?” she asks, rising to her feet.

“I’m not quite sure,” he says, watching her go, “being yourself, I think And if poor old Brian had had someone like you around things might have gone a little better for him.”

He hears her laughter as she disappears into the shadows behind him. “Don’t be too long and don’t forget to switch the lights off.”

He’d have one more cigarette, he decides, and then turn in. But before he does he needs to work out his campaign. Curiously at peace now, he knows what that campaign has to be, but like all good generals he must first work out the details.

*

“And what were you and the mad major talking about?” asks Sel. “I’d a mind to come and rescue you.”

“He’s not mad, Sel, you mustn’t call him that.” Clarrie kisses her husband’s belly button. They’re lying naked on the Louis Quinze bed, thunder still rumbling away outside. “And I didn’t need rescuing. Sam was telling me a bit about his so-called marriage, that’s all.”

“Oh that. Well it was certainly an odd business. I gather the woman is probably going back to husband number one, and good luck to her. Clarrie, darling?”

“Yes?”

“I have an odd feeling that today’s excitements have somehow got my adrenalin on the move. If you don’t mind too much I think I’d like to have a go at testing my manhood.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Rolling obediently on to her back, Clarrie smiles into the darkness.

Sid Parfitt snores quietly into Emmie’s ear, and she too smiles into the darkness. She’d forgotten Sid snored; such a comfort somehow, you felt safe with a man who snores, she thinks, as she drifts away into unconsciousness.

Ron, Philippa and Izzy Moss, in their respective beds, sleep the sleep of the just and inebriated. Today has been quite a day and who knew what tomorrow would bring. And Beatrice? Well, Beatrice lies on her back, angry eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Fools, she thinks, fools.

Sam alone is awake. Not since he was a boy of twenty, waiting with his platoon to go over the side at Suez, has he felt an adrenalin buzz like this, as fully dressed, he stands at his bedroom window running through final details of his plan. The rain has stopped, but the night sky remains wild and stormy and it looks as if there’s more to come: water gurgles in the overflowing gutter above his head. Out in the garden a black shape crosses the shaggy grass beneath the window; he watches it in wonder as it disappears round the corner of the house. He’s never seen a fox in the wild before, town boy that he is, and finds it somehow comforting to think of all the wild creatures there must be round about, quietly carrying on their lives undeterred by the idiotic activities of the human race. He looks at his watch. Two am. Everything seems quiet. Surely people will be safely asleep by now. All Systems Go, then! Bracing himself, Sam takes a deep breath and, shoes in hand, opens the bedroom door.