The Dig (6 page)

“We have spoken to him,” interjected Maynard.

Reid Moir turned to Maynard. He remained staring at him until Maynard changed color, then he turned back to me.

“We did happen to have a quick word with him before we came here,” he acknowledged.

“And what did he say?”

“Brown is a very uncomplicated man,” said Reid Moir. “He sees the world in starkly black and white terms. That, of course, is one of his great virtues. His attitude is that, as you are paying his wages, his allegiance is to you.”

“But you do not see it that way, Mr. Reid Moir?”

“I too am an uncomplicated man, Mrs. Pretty — in my way. My only interest is the welfare of the museum. As I say, the excavation at Stanton is an important one. If successful, and we have, I believe, ample grounds for optimism, it might considerably increase our understanding of the entire Roman occupation of Suffolk. In the light of current events, one has to balance that against a more, you will forgive me for being frank, minor venture. One that, while fascinating in many respects, has so far failed to yield anything of significance.”

Possibly lack of sleep had made me irritable, possibly not. “Let me make sure I understand you clearly, Mr. Reid Moir,”
I said. “You are suggesting that Mr. Brown should leave my employ forthwith and resume working for you at Stanton.”

“Not for me, Mrs. Pretty,” said Reid Moir with an indulgent laugh. “For the museum. Always the museum …”

“Do forgive me.”

He gave an absolving tip of the head.

“I am aware that the excavation here must strike you as a very silly, even an indulgent affair,” I said.

Reid Moir started to speak, but evidently thought better of it.

“I do hope, though, that you will be able to humor me a little,” I went on. “After all, I have been an enthusiastic and, I trust, helpful patron of the museum in the past.”

“Indeed you have, Mrs. Pretty. Indeed …”

“Perhaps, therefore, I might presume on your goodwill for a little longer.”

He remained quite still, with one stationary foot arched upwards.

“How much longer did you have in mind, Mrs. Pretty?” he asked.

Looking through the window, I saw that it had begun to rain. The rain clattered on the ivy leaves outside and kicked up little spouts of mud in the flower beds.

“I would like Mr. Brown to excavate one more mound for me. Then, when he has finished doing so, he will be free to go back to Stanton.”

“One more mound?” said Reid Moir, his voice a little less lacquered than before. “You mean, another one entirely?”

“That is correct.”

“But that could take — goodness — another three weeks. Perhaps even longer if this weather doesn’t clear. While I naturally do not want you to feel under pressure, Mrs. Pretty, I must point out that any protracted delay might jeopardize a potentially important find. The site at Stanton could well prove to be the largest Roman villa north of Felixstowe.”

We gazed at one another. “Perhaps I have not made myself clear,” I said. “I would like Mr. Brown to excavate one more mound.”

Reid Moir stared back at me. His gaze was direct, his foot still carefully crooked. Even with the door closed, I could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway.

“However, I do not wish to be unreasonable,” I went on. “If Mr. Brown has not found anything by the end of next week, say, then I shall release him to do your bidding.”

This time he barely hesitated. “By the end of next week … The end of the month, as it happens. Very well, then.”

“I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr. Reid Moir,” I said. “Now, was there anything else you wished to talk about?”

“As a matter of fact there was.” He held out the book he had with him. “I thought you might care for a copy of my latest work.”

“How very kind.”

“It’s about flints.”

“Flints?” I repeated, sounding rather more surprised than I might have wished.

“With particular reference to the Cromer field bed in Norfolk.”

“I shall greatly look forward to reading it,” I told him.

He uncrossed his legs and stood up. Maynard followed suit. At the front door I wished them goodbye. Reid Moir lowered his eyelashes, while Maynard gave a mournful-looking smile.

It continued to rain throughout the day. Robert stayed indoors and played with his train set in the nursery. He insisted that he was perfectly happy on his own, even claiming that he preferred it. From downstairs, I could hear the noise of the engine going round and round the track. I found I could not wait for the day to end. Both of us went to bed even earlier than usual.

The following morning the weather had barely improved. Despite the rain, Mr. Brown had insisted on returning to work. Together with Jacobs and Spooner, he removed the earth that had buried him, placed planks along the side of the trench to ensure that there were no further landslides and continued with his excavation.

At eight thirty Mr. Lyons drove me into Woodbridge to catch the London train. On the journey I started to read Mr. Reid Moir’s book about flints. However, I am afraid I found it rather heavy going and put it aside after only a few pages.

When we reached Liverpool Street, I queued for a taxi and asked to be taken to Earls Court. As we drove down the Strand,
I was aware of a strange atmosphere of gaiety, of excitement. A tightening in the air that I had not noticed before. People sauntered along the pavements and peered into shop windows as they had always done, the men in shirtsleeves and the women in blouses. Yet there seemed to be something exaggerated, something not wholly plausible, about their nonchalance. They moved like loosely knotted figures who at any moment might snap into rigidity.

The cabbie told me that on the previous evening there had been an air-raid drill near to his home in Battersea. A warden had driven round the streets, throwing out different-colored tennis balls from his car. Yellow and green balls denoted gas; red denoted high explosives, while those with red stripes represented incendiary bombs. The exercise, said the cabbie, laughing delightedly, had been a fiasco. Despite the warden’s entreaties, people had immediately picked up the balls and begun throwing them at one another.

In Hyde Park, trenches had been dug. A mass of zigzagging lines now fanned out from Speaker’s Corner. In order to dig the trenches, a great many trees had also been felled. Several of the stumps were still sticking out of the ground. The wood looked very soft and white, like chicken flesh.

Further down the Bayswater Road, on the western side of the Serpentine, I was astonished to see that an enormous crater had appeared. This crater must have been forty feet deep and easily twice that across. Around the top the earth was dark brown, shading down to yellow at the bottom. On the road beside it was a queue of cars. Several of them were towing trailers.

Without my asking, the cabbie leaned back and told me that twenty sites had been identified around London where large deposits of sand could be found. People were being encouraged to fill sandbags and place them around the doors and windows of their properties. As yet, however, scarcely anyone had bothered to do so.

He dropped me in Nevern Square. Certainly there were no sandbags here, or any other signs of preparation. Everything appeared just the same as always: the same orange-brick terraces with their long, sceptical-looking windows, the same flowerpots with stiff and crinkled blossoms, the same clusters of unpolished bells beside the front doors.

I rang the bell of Mr. Swithin’s flat. He was waiting by his front door when I came out of the lift and led the way down the corridor into his living room. As usual he sat at the end of a gate-legged table while I sat on his left. The wallpaper was patterned with an endlessly repeated trellis of bamboo, relieved only by a circular mirror above the fireplace and four chalk drawings of Sealyham terriers on the wall facing me.

For a few minutes Mr. Swithin chattered away about the news and the weather. He did so almost apologetically, as if he knew quite well that I had no real interest in talking to him directly.

Eventually, he entwined his fingers, leaned forward on his elbows and peered into that shadow world through which threads of personality run like just-dissolving colors. I knew not to take too much notice of those spirits who came through first of all. As in life, it was the ones who were keenest
to make themselves heard who invariably had the least to say. But only when they had spoken their fill could others, less frivolous and more diffident, be allowed to take their place.

Whenever I try to imagine the afterlife, I find myself envisaging an anxious, shiftless crowd. Lines of colorless people queuing endlessly for a series of public telephone boxes where operators, struggling with defective equipment and only able to speak a few phrases of their language, attempt to connect them to whoever awaits their call.

It is not a happy picture, however much I try to bathe it in an appropriately amber glow. Yet somewhere in there, too courteous to make a fuss or to shoulder his way to the front, is Frank. Of that I have no doubt. In time, he must come through. It is just a matter of being patient, of not expecting too much. In the meantime, though, there are only stray phrases and occasional glimpses to sustain me. A thimbleful of endearment. A familiar white line of parting on a head unaccountably twisted aside. Nothing more. Or rather nothing except for the same amorphous blanket of reassurance, the same anonymous balm.

But today nothing seemed to be strained through the trelliswork. Nothing that anyone with a modicum of discrimination could permit themselves to latch on to.

Mr. Swithin offered a young man with beautiful hands and a port-wine stain down one side of his face. “He’s mumbling a little,” he said, “although I can see his face quite clearly.”

“I have no recollection of anyone like that.”

Swiftly, he transferred his attention elsewhere.

“An older lady with an ample bosom who always took particular care with her appearance?” Mr. Swithin spoke with the regretful air of a butcher who knows that all his choicest cuts have already been taken.

I shook my head.

“Are you quite sure?” he asked. “It can often take some time to work out a connection.”

“Quite sure.”

We continued to sit there. Mr. Swithin’s fingers flexed hopefully away, while the Sealyhams gazed down from the wall. We carried on like this for another twenty minutes. In the end, Mr. Swithin said, “I don’t appear to be having much luck today, I’m afraid. Sometimes it’s just like being lost in a fog.”

Pushing his chair back, he escorted me down the corridor. I glanced into the kitchen as we went past. On the table, two pork chops lay sandwiched between glass plates. At the door Mr. Swithin stopped and exhaled. I took two half-crowns from my purse. Pocketing them in one fluid movement, he asked if he should expect me at the same time next week.

I told him that this might not be convenient — just at that moment I was not sure if I could face any more disappointment. But I could see my terseness had upset Mr. Swithin; it’s not for nothing that he calls himself a sensitive. Softening my tone, I said, “Perhaps I could telephone you when I have decided.”

“Of course.”

He stood aside, holding the door by its top corner so that I had to pass underneath the arch of his arm. In the lift, I sat
down on the bench seat as it made its descent. When it reached the ground floor, I found I scarcely had the strength to pull back the gates. Slowly, I descended the steps to the pavement.

Once there, I held on to a railing for support. As soon as I had done so, I found that I did not dare take my hand away. Everything tipped and lurched around me. People walked past. One or two of them glanced in my direction without appearing to notice anything unusual. Several minutes went by and still this tipping sensation continued. I began to wonder what I was going to do. I could not help thinking that I was being punished somehow, principally for my lack of faith. This was what happened to people who did not believe, or who did not believe enough. They were cast out, abandoned, left struggling to fend for themselves.

Despite the sunshine, the railing was very cold to the touch. So cold that I seemed to be losing all feeling in my fingers. Reaching behind me, I transferred my grip from one hand to the other. At that moment, a taxi cab turned off the Earls Court Road and drove into the square. The leap of hope that this brought with it was immediately dashed when I saw that its “For Hire” sign was not illuminated.

Then, as the taxi continued to come closer, I noticed that nobody was sitting in the back.

I held up my spare hand and waited. The taxi drove round the remaining two sides of the square and drew up beside the curb. I remained where I was, unsure how I was ever going to cross the expanse of pavement that lay between us. It was like having to ford a stream.

The cabbie sat waiting behind the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, his motor idling. Still, I could not bring myself to let go. The cabbie turned to look at me, his brow knotting into a question mark. As he did so, I launched myself, quite certain that I would fall — yet finding my legs scurrying about beneath me, carrying me forward.

Once inside the taxi, I asked to be taken to Liverpool Street. The journey seemed to pass in a long horizontal blur. By the time we had arrived, however, everything seemed to have righted itself: the buildings, the lamp-posts, even the people. Even so, I found that I had no desire to be in any closer proximity to anyone than necessary. I therefore bought a first-class ticket and shut myself away in an empty compartment, hoping that nobody else would come in. Mercifully, no one did.

The train steamed through deep brick gulches and out towards the suburbs. When the houses at last disappeared, an enormous sense of relief came over me as all around the fields flattened and stretched away.

Ellen was unusually quiet that evening. She scarcely spoke as she helped me out of my traveling clothes and into my dinner dress. I was touched by her tact, by the way she moved around me in this understanding silence.

It was only while she was fastening the buttons on my sleeves that I noticed her fingers were trembling.