The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [50]
Today I wasn’t sure if I was glad or not there was no sign of him. I kept thinking of the great big chalk thing Mr Keiller had been carrying the night Davey and I watched the ceremony in the garden. Whatever had he done with it when they disappeared between the box hedges?
I wanted to ask Mrs Sorel-Taylour what she’d seen. If she was there, it couldn’t have been anything too dreadful, could it? Surely Mr Keiller wouldn’t…
There was a step behind me on the cobbles. I whipped round to see Mr Cromley crossing the stable yard towards the Manor. He’d been there too that night, I remembered, the moonlight silvering his light brown hair. ‘Mr Cromley!’ I called.
He turned and came towards me. ‘What can I do for you, Miss Robinson?’
He was delicate-looking, but strong too. I’d seen him lift them crates effortlessly from the floor.
‘I was interested in what you were saying in there,’ I said. ‘But what I was wondering was…how you know what they did?’
His face lit up in a smile. ‘Always pleased to enlighten the genuinely curious,’ he said, eyes raking me like I was a seed patch. ‘It’s all conjecture, of course, but I’ve made a study of primitive magic, in various parts of the world.’ I’d thought of him as cynical and knowing, but now he seemed surprisingly young and earnest. ‘The urge for ritual is always close to the surface, even in modern life. There must be superstitions in the village connected to the stones.’
‘Only superstition I know is not to go round them widdershins,’ I said. ‘My mam told me that. Always has to be sunwise.’
‘Widdershins!’ Mr Cromley was delighted. ‘Must tell Alec. Widdershins is the direction he’s chosen to take excavating the circle.’
‘Well, my mam would say he was storing up trouble for himself.’
‘Perhaps he is. In more ways than one.’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘Sorry about the ragging in there. Piggott and I don’t entirely see eye to eye. For all his schoolboy bluster, he’s a prude. Won’t admit these places were about sex and death.’
‘I think you’re trying to shock me, Mr Cromley.’
‘Merely making an academic case for ritual magic in the Neolithic’ He threw me a mischievous look, then glanced up at the church clock. ‘I’m so sorry, but I’m expecting a telephone call in the Manor from my uncle. He’s visiting friends in Wiltshire, and we’re hoping to arrange dinner this week. Otherwise, I’d happily…initiate you in the mysteries. But there’ll be other opportunities. Strikes me you’re a lot brighter than you let on, Miss Robinson.’ He raised an eyebrow like other men might raise a hat, and let himself into the Manor garden through the wrought-iron gate.
So I went back to the guesthouse and hung around the kitchen, pinching scraps for a sandwich, while Mam toiled over preparations for the evening meal, and ran in and out of the dining room with lunch for any guest who hadn’t gone out for the day. She threw me an impatient glance and the tea-towel, and I ended up, as I often did, doing the washing-up. Then when I started shooting worried glances at the clock, she touched my hair and said, ‘Go on, I can manage without you–you’ve more important things to do.’ I can feel her fingers now, after all these years, smoothing my curls.
I ran across the road to the barns again, in the hope Davey was back and I’d sneak ten minutes with him before I had to return to Mrs Sorel-Taylour. But he was off to London again with Mr K, according to Philip the other driver, and staying overnight.
A few days later Mrs Sorel-Taylour and I were in the office upstairs, typing up notes Mr Piggott had dictated, when there was a terrible bang from outside. A couple of years later a noise like that would have sent us scurrying under the table, thinking German planes were bombing us, but this was still six months before Mr Chamberlain and his piece of paper and it hadn’t sunk in, to me at least, that there was a war coming.