The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [77]
‘In’t every day a man has money burning a hole…’
‘I told you, not tonight.’ It came out sharp.
Davey tried to be light about it. ‘Later in the week?’
‘I’m not interested, right? Too busy here.’
The hope died in his eyes, and his jaw tightened with the effort of hiding he was hurt. I felt bad, but sometimes his smooth skin looked so girlish I wanted to make him cry.
Mr Cromley caught my eye, and winked.
When I wasn’t at the site I now had a desk in the Map Room to work up my sketches of the dig. All that brown made it a dull place to me, everything laid out neat and tidy and just so. If someone moved anything, Mr Keiller’d come and rant at Mrs Sorel-Taylour. She’d do her best to soothe him, but he’d sometimes sulk for days.
I drew the stones one by one as they were stripped bare, shading the sides of the pits with neat cross-hatching, making sure everything was to scale according to the measurements Mr Piggott and Mr Cromley supplied. The leather brownness of the room was oppressive. Sitting at the tall stools in there, bent over my drawings, sometimes I caught myself looking down to check there was a skirt on my legs, afraid the place would have redressed me in a brown woollen suit too, like a man.
The consolation was Mr K. He was often in the Map Room. He worked there himself, hunched over big charts with his set-squares and rulers, his big hands tracing delicate lines with a fine-nibbed pen.
‘I learned my draughtsmanship in an engineering factory, Heartbreaker,’ he’d say. ‘No room for inexactitude in car design or archaeology.’ I became used to him standing behind me, watching me as my hands moved nervously over the paper. Sometimes he’d lean over to correct a detail of my drawing, and the spicy smell of his hair oil would lift me like incense. Or he’d explode on the room, filling it with colour.
‘Miss Robinson! Haven’t you finished that drawing of the Barber Surgeon yet? Never mind, too fine a day to hang about indoors. Come for a jaunt.’
Mr Keiller believed in jaunts. If he had to give a lecture, he preferred not to go alone; it was an excuse for a trip with a whole party of pals. They’d stay in some posh hotel, seeing the sights, maybe traipsing out in the evening after cocktails to a boxing match. Or he’d chivvy Mr Piggott and Mr Cromley and anyone else he favoured that week into a convoy of cars to visit a cathedral or castle, or some other archaeologist’s site. I’d never been invited, though sometimes Mrs Sorel-Taylour would go with them because she was friendly with Miss Chapman.
So when he come bursting into the room announcing a jaunt that sunny morning, I could feel myself puffing up with excitement.
‘Bring the drawing with you. We can look at it over lunch,’ said Mr K. ‘The Kegresse is outside.’
Oh. My spirits was sinking already. Couldn’t go far in the Kegresse, which was a funny old car Mr K used to trundle about the fields. He’d bought it years ago for the snow in Scotland; instead of proper wheels at the back, it had a caterpillar track like a tank, so it’d go anywhere. Mr K loved it, called it the Caterpillar, and claimed he’d even taken it up a mountain for a shooting party.
‘We’ll have a picnic at the Long Barrow,’ he went on. ‘You look like you need fresh air–far too pale and peaky. The course of true love not running smooth, eh, Heartbreaker?’
I coloured up then, like I always did, and that would usually make him torment me more. But today he was in too much of a rush. All he said was ‘Be outside in ten minutes,’ then disappeared into the main part of the house, calling for Waters the butler to bring the hamper out.
There was room for four in the Caterpillar, two in the front and two in the back. By the time I left the Manor, the drawing of the Barber Surgeon tucked safely inside my handbag,