The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [92]
He blows out the candle on the window ledge, draws the curtain to shut out the darkness, then throws another log on the fire. ‘It’s not just ghosts of Neolithic farmers, doing whatever they did. It’s generation after generation, reshaping their beliefs on these stones, but probably coming up with remarkably similar stuff. Fertility and death. The endless round.’ A rueful smile twists his mouth. ‘Sorry, petal, ignore me–it’s the vicar’s son lecturing again, I’m afraid, after several glasses too many. Blame the mead.’
‘So what kind of rituals did they go in for when it was first built?’ I ask, reaching for my coat. ‘Sacred mysteries, I suppose. A socking great bank and ditch, to keep the uninitiated out.’
‘There’s another way of looking at it,’ says Martin. ‘Maybe the bank and ditch were supposed to keep something in.
CHAPTER 22
1938
Miss Chapman never did apologize. She avoided me from then on, whenever she came to see the excavation work, stalking around with her arm through Mr Keiller’s and her nose in the air. Mr Cromley was keeping his distance too. That irked me. I needed him to explain what all that weird talk in the graveyard had been about.
They’d found a barrowload of broken bits of stone under one of the cottages they’d taken down, which Mr Young was putting together like a jigsaw puzzle by the gate onto the high street. Mr Cromley was helping him. How did they know which bit went where? Peculiar old thing it looked, too, when it was finished, stuck together with metal rods and seams of cement. It was time to pack up for the day, but Mr Keiller was back from a trip to London, doing the rounds to see what had been going on in his absence, and nobody dared stop work while he was on site. Mr Cromley and Mr Young were still hard at it, and I was trying to finish a drawing of a newly discovered stone hole, further along the circle. I’d lost confidence, and it wouldn’t come right, especially with Mr K breathing down my neck.
‘You know, young Donald’s going to be a brilliant archaeologist, eventually,’ said Mr Keiller. ‘He has a questioning mind, and he doesn’t give up.’ Mr Cromley was holding up a piece of stone, turning it this way and that, running his long fingers over the broken edges. ‘He’ll puzzle away till he finds an answer. Loses me, though, when he starts on about theoretical physics and all the other gen he picked up at Cambridge. Too clever for his own good sometimes.’
‘He doesn’t seem a happy person,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Mr Keiller. ‘Well, losing his father so young–he and his mother having to rely on that uncle of his…’
‘He said something about his uncle.’ I remembered what Mr Cromley had told me, about the men and their club. I didn’t believe it for a minute–nobody would do that, would they? Not Mr Keiller, surely.
I have made studies of various branches of the erotic impulse…
Mr Keiller stopped smiling. ‘Yes, his uncle’s a strange chap. Has a high-powered post with the Air Ministry, but he’s also said to be one of the foremost ritual magicians in London.’ He laughed at my disbelieving expression. ‘Well, maybe civil-service politics and the occult aren’t such strange bedfellows after all. Can’t say I took to him on either of the occasions I met him. Donald won’t hear a word said against him, of course. Hero-worships the man.’
Miss Chapman had come through the gate, and stopped to talk to Mr Cromley. My jaw tightened with jealousy. Seemed to me she wasn’t happy unless she had everyone dancing attendance. Her smile was lazy, confident.
‘Excuse me, Miss Robinson,’ said Mr Keiller. ‘Doris has probably come to remind me we have dinner guests tonight.’ He started across the grass towards her, then checked himself and turned back, his hand delving in his blazer pocket.
‘Almost forgot. I picked up something for you in London, at Mowbray’s.’ He pulled out a square, flattish rosewood box. ‘Go on, open it.’
Stamped on the inside were the magic words ‘Winsor & Newton’. It held a tray of coloured pans and a ceramic palette, even a tiny dish to