The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [12]
‘I mean your husband,’ I say, knowing I’m crossing a boundary from the uneasy look on her face. ‘What was his name? David?’ I’d seen his photograph once, when I was a kid and nosing through the drawers of Fran’s dressing-table. It was in a polished rosewood box, Fran’s name engraved on the lid, that must once have contained a watercolour set, though its pans were empty and scrubbed clean. Now it held only a faded watercolour sketch of the stone circle, seen through the window of one of the cottages, an early sun lengthening the shadows of the stones, and Grandad’s picture. Even with the ageing parted-and-slicked-back hairstyle men affected in the 1940s, he seemed hardly more than a boy: a Brylcreemed cowlick falling over his forehead, wide, heavy-lidded eyes, and a cheeky grin. When I’d asked whose photo it was, Fran had been surprisingly curt.
Lovely chap. Navigator in the RAE Hardly trained, then he was killed. Long time ago, though.
Killed on a bombing raid?
A flicker of impatience around her mouth. On a mission, she said firmly. Her lips pursed.
So…
So that was it. Sad, but it happened a lot in the war. Had to get used to it. Frannie had eyes like knives. That’s why I don’t talk about ‘im, easier not to, see?
Her eyes have that same steely flash now. ‘Davey,’ she says. ‘That was his name.’
‘Where’s he buried? You never–’
‘He in’t buried. He’s with what was left of his aeroplane, ashes mostly. There’s a headstone to him in Yatesbury churchyard.’
This is so much more than I’ve gleaned previously that it almost drives the gruesome picture of Grandad’s cindered remains out of my head. ‘Yatesbury? That’s–’
‘Coupla miles away, yes.’
‘So…’
‘India,’ she says, ‘not tonight. I’m bone tired. Don’t mind if I crawl off to bed, do you?’ Her supper is only half finished.
‘Didn’t mean to upset you.’ I take her hand again.
‘You didn’t. All a long time ago. But I don’t like digging them days up, bad time for everyone.’ She pulls her fingers out of my grasp, and stands up, leaning on the table to balance herself. ‘Can I leave you with the washing-up?’
The line of light under Frannie’s door winks out as I sit at the kitchen table after supper, the washing-up done, turning the stem of my wineglass between my fingers, seeing how the overhead light slides inside it and sparkles. My mother had a bag of polished stones she took everywhere, arranging them some nights in a circle on the fold-down table in our travellers’ van. My memory crystals, she’d say. The clear oily one with a rainbow in its heart is a Herkimer diamond. It can remember things for you: you pour thoughts into it and retrieve them later. That milky pink-banded crystal–agate–is layered, like your mind: it helps you tease out memories that are laid underneath each other. The blue boji stone is for healing hurtful ones. This is phantom quartz–see how there’s another crystal inside it, a ghost crystal? It reveals what you’ve forgotten. And that black one’s onyx, a stone for secrets. It will soak up your memories, the dark ones you want to hide.
I’ve managed to forget almost everything that led up to the moment of the crash. What time we took off, how long we were up there, what I filmed, Steve’s instructions in my headset. I hardly even remember the last part, the moment when the helicopter started to spin, the sounds of grinding and tearing as it skidded on its side over the barley field. But I do remember that we spun widdershins. And Steve’s eyes. I don’t think I’ll ever succeed in blanking out Steve’s dead eyes.
Through the party wall comes the thud thud thud of the neighbours’ stereo. It’s chilly: the central heating must have gone off, though it’s not yet ten. The kitchen’s never warm: draughts sneak through its seams from the wind-raked fields. The previous owners were into a fatal