The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [211]
‘Thank God no one was hurt.’
I hadn’t noticed Mr Keiller come up behind me. He looked exhausted, and his hands trembled as he lit himself a cigarette. He offered me one from his battered old cigarette tin, but I shook my head.
‘I’m terrible sorry about the cars,’ I said. The Mercedes was a blistered shell, pinned under a roof beam.
‘Hang the cars.’ He took a deep pull on his cigarette, but it made him cough; the stink of the fire scratched the back of your throat. ‘Though I do mind about the Caterpillar.’ He pointed to a piece of twisted metal. Couldn’t hardly recognize it as a section of track. ‘Remember the day we picnicked at the Long Barrow? Good times, eh, Heartbreaker?’ When I said nothing, he put an arm round my shoulder and tugged me to him, like he wanted to squeeze a yes out of me.
‘We were storing cases of finds in there as well,’ he went on. ‘All damaged beyond recovery, I imagine. Ironic, isn’t it? The earth protected them for several thousand years, and we can’t keep them safe for more than a decade or so. It’s the Barber Surgeon all over again. Maybe we should’ve let them be.’
‘Might not be as bad as you think,’ I said, and patted his arm, like I did with Dad when he started coming over upset remembering Mam. Or, worse, when he forgot she was dead, and began walking up the street searching for her and the old guesthouse. ‘At least the museum wasn’t touched, nor the boxes stored in the dovecote. Anyway, the flints won’t have burned.’
‘Yes, but the labels will have gone up in smoke. A piece of flint can’t tell you much without a record of where it was found.’ He coughed again. ‘Damn American tobacco. Damn war. None of us has had much luck since it began.’
Mr Young came round the side of the unharmed barn across the yard, followed by a couple of the land girls from Mr Peak-Garland’s farm, carrying rakes. He was curator of the museum now, working for the National Trust.
‘You’d have married the Brushwood Boy, wouldn’t you?’ said Mr Keiller, suddenly. ‘You had your ups and downs, I know, but it would’ve worked out in the end, don’t you think?’ There was summat wistful in his voice, and I wondered if it was for those far-away days when he and Davey rode the motorbike over Windmill Hill.
Barns burn, but hope’s like flint. Might not be able to say exact where you found it, but it comes through the fire. He was right, I should’ve married Davey, but wasn’t Davey I was in love with.
Mr Keiller put his hands on my shoulders, and I felt his breath on the top of my head, lifting my hair. There’s moments, only moments, that you live for, and know they’ll never last, maybe never come again.
And what am I thinking that moment? See, I know that even if I were to stay in Avebury, he won’t be with me for ever. Like Mr Cromley said, I’m only a tobacconist’s daughter, too young for Alec, ill-educated, with no more than a splash of young-girl prettiness to catch his eye, a little bit of talent with my drawing and that fading through lack of practice. One day, sooner or later, could be next year, could be next month, Mrs Keiller will be back, or there’ll be some other woman, a writer or another archaeologist, maybe a sportswoman, athletic, cleverer than me, richer than me, older than me, more beautiful, out of the same social drawer as him, a woman who’s meant to be with him: and he’ll be with her.
But in the meantime, you can’t help who you fall in love with. And who knows, maybe Mr Cromley was right after all, and what you will shall be?
We watched Mr Young and the land girls picking their way through the embers of the ruined barn, looking for what could be saved.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There are some alternative realities in this novel, so this is for people who like to know what is true, and what is made up. It is also my chance to say thanks to all the people who helped bring the book to print.
Avebury has intrigued me for years. When I commuted