The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [65]
They were the other side of the big stone nearest the gate. Would have been hard to see them in the dark, as I went past, but for the petticoat and the glimpse of pale leg, hooked around his waist. I recognized the voices, though, hers high and excited, his low and controlled.
‘Give I your coat to lean back on,’ she said: it was the housemaid who’d let me into the Manor. ‘This stone’s powerful rough.’
‘You like it powerful rough, do you?’ said Mr Cromley’s voice.
Mam was cross with me that evening. ‘You’re late back, Frances. Where’ve you been?’
She could always see into the belly of my thoughts. It made me sharp back. ‘At the Manor, of course. Where else would I be?’
‘Only asking. I made your supper…’
‘Well, you won’t be having to do that soon enough. When I’ve my own place, it’ll be a relief not to have to answer all these questions.’
Mam’s eyes widened and went shiny under the kitchen light. She turned her back to me and started stirring something on the stove. I didn’t care. It was my life.
Spring was coming. The museum was almost ready. I’d thought of it as a job that would go on for ever, but now I could see I’d be let go after it opened. For all my bold talk of finding my own rooms, it looked like I’d be off to the cigar box in Devizes with Mam and Dad, come September. The thought of leaving the Manor was almost unbearable, for reasons I didn’t want to put into words. But I found myself looking up, every time the museum door opened, to see who it was. When Mr Keiller’s tall shadow fell across us, I’d feel the warmth in my face, and an extraordinary, unreasonable happiness.
Mrs Sorel-Taylour was running out of work to give me. The flow of crates from London had dried up completely. The last one, with the skeleton of Charlie, the child they found at Windmill Hill, had been unpacked last week. Or Charlotte, said Mr Keiller. Could as well be a girl. There was something funny about the head: a clever doctor who was down from London had been brought over to the stable block to take a look, and he said the skull was distorted, too big for the body; some disease had swelled the brain and pushed the bones out of shape. The skeleton had been laid out careful, in a glass case sunk into the floor, a strange last resting place for a little boy thousands of years old. Every time I went into the museum I took a look, poor little mite. I didn’t want to believe he might’ve been killed deliberate, like Mr Piggott suggested. Yooman sacrifice: I hated the way he’d laughed, showing his large, prominent teeth. Instead I pictured Charlie’s mother laying him to sleep in the ditch as the sun sank over Cherhill and Yatesbury, stroking his clumsy misshapen head. ‘My special boy,’ she said, her eyes wet and shining. ‘You sleep quiet.’ They said he’d been laid to face the sunrise.
It made me think different about Windmill Hill. I’d always liked sitting on the old barrow mounds, wind rippling the grasses and the wild flowers. But now I went up there and thought about Charlie. I could see him in my mind’s eye, running through the tall grass, chasing butterflies. He was as real as real to me. This morning, we’d finished the last of the labels. Mrs S-T had to go to the dentist in Swindon and she told me I could take longer for lunch, only be sure to be back by three thirty when she’d show me how to type up the excavation notes Mr Young had found from last season’s digging. I’d walked to Windmill Hill to enjoy the sunshine. Could’ve gone to look for Davey to see if he was free to come with me, but to be truthful I was no longer so keen on Davey’s poky Angers. It was someone else’s hands I’d have liked roaming, strong, manicured hands. I wondered what it would be like to be Miss