The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [209]
The note of the rotors changes, and I can feel myself tightening up in panic, but when I whip round to see what’s happening at the controls, Ed’s leaning back, relaxed, his hand light on the stick, feet easy on the pedals. We come round the circle again, the camera catching a flare from the late-afternoon sun over the beech trees. The archaeology students are putting tension on the ropes that truss the stone–modern technology’s toughest, this time, no more honeysuckle–heaving it upright. I feel something tighten, then release in me. Frannie, bless her, waves again. Weather on Planet Fran occasionally misty, but sun breaking through. She hasn’t once talked about the attack, and I’m inclined to think she genuinely doesn’t remember: that, and the complicating factor of the operation, being the reason she doesn’t figure in the charges against Bryn. The helicopter is turning west again, a slow, circular unwinding, round and round until everything is done. Or undone.
It will be all right, won’t it? The inquest, my non-existent career, my stuttering relationship…I turn off the camera, and look back, and Frannie’s still waving.
In the end, it’ll be all right. People find ways through. Or round. Or something. So long as they keep going sunwise.
Ed lands the helicopter on the cricket pitch, which won’t please Outraged of Avebury He lets the rotors settle, then climbs out to undo my harness.
‘Not so bad, was it?’ he says. ‘Or am I going to have to make you pay a valeting charge?’
‘Piece of piss,’ I say.
‘Yep, that’s what I was afraid of.’
Martin’s approaching over the grass. Ed releases the final strap, and I slide under the camera mount and onto terra firma.
‘So, did my grandmother agree to be interviewed?’
Martin shakes his head. ‘Not even after an afternoon of my boyish charm.’
‘I think she might be immune to boyish charm. Though she has taken, unaccountably, to Ed.’ Under the trees at the edge of the field, a billow of yellow catches my eye. ‘She’s here?’
‘Sitting on the bench. She’s hoping for a helicopter ride, I think. Wanted me to escort her along the path to watch you land.’
Ed laughs. ‘Your gran’s outrageous.’ He unclips the camera from the mount and hands it to me, glancing at his watch. ‘Tell her sorry, not today, I promised to have the chopper back by five. I’ll fix a trip next week, if she feels up to it. See you in the pub in an hour?’
Martin and I walk across the grass. He starts to say something as we reach the trees, but the noise of the rotors drowns it, the down-draught lashing the heavy green foliage above the bench where Frannie’s sitting.
‘What did you say?’ I have to yell to make myself heard.
‘Your grandmother keeps asking me about the badger sett on Windmill Hill. Said she saw me on the telly talking about it.’
‘What have you told her?’
‘That we have to apply for a licence to dig, not to mention funding, and it’s unlikely we’d have either in place until next year or the year after, at the very earliest.’
‘I don’t know why she’s so het up about it.’
‘Het up? She seemed curious, that was all. Said something about preferring me to dig there than that devil, by which I assume she means Keiller.’
I glance towards the bench. Frannie waves, a custard yellow blur under the tossing leaves.
‘I have to rejoin the crew,’ says Martin. ‘I’ll leave the pair of you to it.’
He disappears through the gate, and I sit down next to Frannie on the bench, as the helicopter rises above the cricket pitch.
She grins at me, the old Frannie peeping through the mask of wrinkles. We sit for a while, not saying anything, watching the helicopter grow smaller and smaller in the sky as it banks away towards Yatesbury. Then she turns to me as the noise of the rotors finally fades to nothing.
‘Met Davey on