The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [131]
‘You want me to talk?’
‘Of course. Describe what you’ve found. I’m shooting over your shoulder.’ I focus the camera close-up on his big hairy fingers. ‘Speed. In your own time.’ The fingers brush away the final layer of dirt, revealing a family snapshot, a fair-haired boy holding a pink and green plush-furred dinosaur up to the camera and peeping from behind it.
‘Oh.’ The camera catches only a glimpse, before Martin’s fingers go into reverse and start sweeping earth back quickly to cover it. ‘I don’t think I want to describe this after all,’ he says.
Someone was standing next to the boy, probably his mother, her arm round him–but all that shows is her hand and a few strands of blond hair. Her face has been fiercely scribbled over with black biro, so heavily that the glossy surface is pitted and scored, and part of the photo has been torn away, the jagged edge bisecting her breast. There are ashy flakes mixed with the soil.
‘Sorry,’ says Martin. ‘It seems–sort of private. And creepy, too. I think he’s burned the rest of the picture.’
‘You don’t know it’s a he.’
‘Take my word for it, it’s a he.’ Martin has completely covered the photo. ‘Let’s leave it, OK?’
I turn off the camera. ‘Sorry’
‘No, I’m sorry. Stuff like that–well, it makes me feel a bit sick. Kind of black magicky Not that I believe in that twaddle, but I am the son of a vicar. Dad was always having to clear up peculiar things from the churchyard. Let’s go talk girl stones and boy stones.’
He strides off briskly. I fold the tripod and follow, with a faint sense of unease.
At three o’clock, Kit pronounces herself satisfied with the ropes and prehistoric-style pulleys, and assembles three teams of students and onlookers to haul on them, as well as a fourth team (mostly girls) to dart around slotting timber props into place as the stone starts to come upright.
‘Can we do the whole thing twice?’ asks Ibby. ‘It’d be easier to film.’
‘No,’ says Kit. And keep your people well out of the way. This is dangerous. Remember what happened to the Barber Surgeon?’
Ed and Graham have been co-opted to help. There are beads of perspiration sparkling in Graham’s blond beard as his team takes the strain, and the stone judders an inch or two above the lip of its pit.
‘Get a prop under there,’ shouts Kit. ‘Reuben, your team mustn’t slacken off.’
Ed’s navy T-shirt is dark with sweat, his arms as corded as the honeysuckle rope. A blonde student in shorts and a bikini top darts under the hawser to jab a prop into place.
‘She’s coming up,’ calls Martin. ‘Steady…’
Ed clenches his jaw and grunts, catches sight of me filming, and mouths something that will have to be pixillated.
‘Don’t let her twist!’ yells Kit.
Rain starts to fall as, slowly, inch by inch, the stone is levered from its bed. We’ve gathered quite a crowd, standing under umbrellas on the henge banks for a grandstand view. There’s scattered applause at the moment when the huge diamond finally comes upright.
‘You can’t relax,’ shouts Kit. ‘Hold her there while we check the props.’
Chalk blocks are packed into the stone hole. Eventually Kit announces she’s satisfied the megalith is secure. The teams release the ropes, which are attached to stakes in the ground. Kit tests every one.
Martin is still looking worried. ‘I’d have liked to cement her in. And backfill the trench.’
‘It’d take an earthquake to shift her. Even without the ropes, the blocks would hold her. We’ll come back and finish the job when Solstice is over.’
‘Well, on your head be it.’
‘Or yours,’ she says, punching him lightly on the arm.
I miss the rest of the conversation because I’ve caught sight of Ed, chaining together metal barriers to keep the public away from the trench containing the trussed stone. The blonde girl in shorts is leaning on one, helping steady it while he loops the padlock through. He bends his head towards her and says something; she grins and laughs.
Rather than go straight home, I walk down to John’s. Frannie woke this morning before I left the house, entirely