The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [193]
Our eyes meet again.
‘That is, if you do want me?’ he asks.
He leaves an hour later. The stones are pale in the midsummer dusk, the henge banks dark against the sky, the lights of Swindon already casting a dull red glow on the underside of the clouds. Lamplight spills out onto the tiny front garden as I stand in the doorway to see him go.
‘You going to be all right on your own?’ he asks. ‘I’d come back later, but if it’s anything like the usual booking, the clients probably won’t even be on the brandy and cigars when I land. Unlikely to be back until two or three in the morning.’
‘You’d give me a heart-attack, hammering on the door at that time of night. I’ll be fine.’
He glances at the rosy-pink sky over the village. ‘Lovely night for flying. Good weather on the way.’
‘D’you think?’
‘Trust me, I’m a helicopter pilot. I’ll give you a wave when I fly over.’
‘Are you allowed to over-fly the village this time of night?’
‘Of course not. I’m joking.’ A few steps down the path, he comes back and gives me another kiss.
‘Better hurry,’ I tell him. ‘Your clients won’t be quaffing brandy all night.’
‘Oh, God, I hope they haven’t had too much. Better check the sick bags are on board.’ He lets himself out through the gate onto the lane, where his Land Rover is parked next to my Peugeot.
After washing up, I mount the narrow stairs to the one and only bedroom–just big enough for a brass bedstead–and check my mobile. I’d hoped the cottage would have a landline, but there isn’t one. At least I can pick up a faint and intermittent signal upstairs. Slightly puzzled there’s no further message from John, though it’s nearly half past nine, I send him a text to let him know I’m fine.
Outside, people are still wandering through the stone circle. A torch–or maybe a mobile–flashes between the stones at the back of the cottage. Lights, buggerin lights. It’s too early yet to undress and go to bed, but I switch on the bedside lamp, rest my head on the pillows and close my eyes.
I come awake again with a jerk, sweating, heart thudding, thinking I’ve heard something–phone? Knock on the door? The lamplight makes the bedroom windows seem shiny black, but the hands on my watch have hardly moved at all: a few minutes after ten, not yet full dark. I swing my legs off the bed, but there’s no further sound from downstairs, only the creak of the floorboards as I patter across the landing.
In the living room, the fire has died to embers. The short doze has disoriented rather than refreshed me, making everything feel muffled. I switch on the lamp and pull the curtains closed, half afraid I’ll see in the window Steve’s flat dead stare, or even Mick’s stoned pupils, but my ghosts have taken the night off and the only eyes in the glass are mine. I’m irritated with myself for feeling so uneasy alone in the cottage, and try to cheer up by thinking about Ed, thinking about me, on his lonely flight across the darkening countryside.
It doesn’t work. Instead I find myself worrying he’ll crash again.
I go back upstairs and check the phone. Still no reply from John. The only channel I can tune into on the television is showing a documentary about war casualties in Iraq. Martin’s travelling library consists of three academic paperbacks on Neolithic monuments, and a biography of Alexander Keiller. It’s the least daunting of the collection, so I brew myself a mug of decaff coffee and flip it open, looking at the pictures as much as the words. Keiller in a kilt, standing by a Bugatti racing car. Keiller driving some extraordinary vehicle with caterpillar tracks across a field. Relaxing on a deckchair, reading a newspaper under the trees, an open picnic basket beside him. Keiller grinning beside a huge pile of excavated chalk. The caption tells me this is on Windmill Hill, in the 1920s. Lights, buggerin lights. Who’s up on the hill now? Not Karl and Pete because they weren’t nighthawks after Bronze Age treasure. They were looking for…
A crashed plane on Easton Down.
Keiller in his wartime police uniform, grim-mouthed, gimlet-eyed.