Humpty's Bones (2 page)

2. Monday Afternoon: 5.45

Eden Page found her aunt. She was at the bottom of her garden, and under a large gazebo. Why she stood shoulder-deep in a hole beneath an awning in the rain, and why she picked lumps of mud from that chasm Eden didn’t know or care. The walk from the station had been punishing. The road that pierced the village was dead straight and encouraged vehicles to speed dangerously. Passing farm trucks had splashed her. The hold-all’s dead weight hurt her shoulder, she was sure a whopper of a bruise was blooming there from her skin.

‘Heather! You were supposed to collect me from the station. You promised!’ Eden threw the hold-all down onto the grass. ‘I kept calling! Why didn’t you answer the phone?’

‘Eden! Watch where you’re putting your feet. Those are fragile. I’ve just spent the last two hours getting them out in one piece.’

‘What?’

‘Move back from there. Further back. No, to your left. Oh! You’ve trod on one. Whatever you do, don’t do any more damage! No, stand still. Stop tramping round like a - oh!’ Heather slapped her hand down onto the rim of the pit in which she stood. ‘Eden! You stood on the tile, you - ’

Idiot girl? Don’t ever call me ‘you idiot girl’ again!

Her aunt finished the sentence, however with, ‘you’ll break the only complete tile I’ve found.’

Eden hadn’t seen her aunt in almost a decade. Back then, the woman hadn’t been slow to address her with that scathing, ‘you idiot girl’. Now events had moved on. Eighteen months ago, her aunt, Heather Laird, had inherited Dog Star House from her mother. Heather was an accountant; her only child served in the Merchant Navy; at fifty-three she possessed the same youthful vigour as the Page side of the family. Right at that moment Heather (always ‘Heather’ to Eden - never ‘Aunt’) stood in a hole up to her shoulders. Above her stood a portable gazebo shelter of the type that can be bought in garden centres. Raindrops hung and dripped from the sides in slow procession.

Grimly suggestive, the oblong slit in the earth in which Heather stood resembled an open grave. Heather’s body possessed a wiry toughness, her hair had been scraped back tight into a pony tail. Her hands were thick with dirt right up to the elbows. As Eden stood there glaring, Heather reached down into the hole and hoisted out a boulder the size of a water melon. The muscles in her arms protruded from her skin with perfect definition. Handling the rock confidently, she rolled it across the rough grass away from the pit’s side

Eden wasn’t for one moment going to let talk of cracked tiles brush aside her complaint. ‘Heather. Why didn’t you pick me up from the station? I’ve had to walk for the best part of an hour. I’m soaked.’

Heather cried out. ‘Ah! Here’s another one! My God, not just one... I don’t believe it. One, two, three, four. There must be another dozen. Here, hold out your hand. I’ll give you one at a time. Careful, careful! Put them in the plastic tray over there by the chair. Not the white tray, the green one. Gently, don’t drop it in. Do you see? Green tray for coins, white for potsherds. The big red bowl’s for bones.’

Eden looked from what appeared to be a small pebble that Heather had placed in her open hand to where the woman stood in the grave-shaped pit. A battery-powered lamp lit the bottom of it brilliantly. It was as if Heather stood in a bath of silver radiance. Rich, brown walls of earth gave way to a black floor littered with lumps of stone the size of shoe boxes. The rich soil odours were almost intoxicating.

Heather crouched to scrape dirt with a trowel. ‘I can’t wait for the rain to stop so I put this up.’ She pointed up at the canvas awning with her trowel. ‘The work must go on.’

‘Work? You mean this hole?’

‘Excavation. I’ve found the remains of a Roman outbuilding; the actual villa is over in that field; alas, the villa’s discovery is nothing to do with me - it was uncovered by the county archaeological unit a couple of years ago. Naturally I’m not allowed to touch that. English Heritage whacked it with a preservation order. If I so much as look at it I’ll be sued. But this is my land, so this is my Roman tool-shed, or stable, or whatever it is. I’ve spent the last three weeks excavating. And no bloody rain’s going to stop me.’

‘Or picking your niece up from the station?’

‘Sorry about that.’ Heather briefly glanced up as she scraped crumbs of earth from the bottom of the pit. ‘I only hope this damp won’t make the sides collapse.’

‘You said if I phoned from the station that you or Curtis would - ’

‘Yippee, another one. Heavy. At least three fused together. Big - could be early sestertii.’

‘Heather! I had to walk an hour... in the rain... with that bag. You don’t - ’

‘I said I’m sorry.’ Heather’s eyes flicked from the fused lump of coins to Eden standing above her. ‘But you didn’t confirm what day you were arriving. I thought it was tomorrow.’

‘I said all along, Monday.’

‘Well, never mind. The main thing is you’re here, safe and sound. Nice to see you again, by the way, after all these years. Do the honours, will you?’ She handed Eden the coins glued together by decay. ‘Make yourself useful. Green tray, remember.’

Eden sighed, realising that there was no point in pursuing a heartfelt expression of regret from her aunt. She laid the green-brown lump in the tray alongside the other grimy objects.

‘So these really are coins?’

‘They are. Masses of them. A real hoard. Isn’t it fantastic!’ Heather spoke with gusto. ‘And all at the bottom of my garden.’

‘Valuable?’

‘I’ve winkled out about five hundred Roman so far, all bronze. In that uncleaned state I might be lucky to get fifty pounds for them. If I spend six months brushing them, soaking them in olive oil, brushing again and again and again - always careful to preserve the patina - I might get three hundred quid. It’s hardly worth the effort, is it?’ She wiped her brow. Some of the dirt from her hand painted a dark streak across her forehead. ‘It’s not the cash, it’s what I can learn about the Roman settlement here that’s so interesting.’ Her eyes shone. ‘No. More than interesting. Fascinating!’

Eden looked at the state of Heather. ‘You’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.’

‘What, this? Best antique earth there is. And it soon washes off. Listen, Eden, I’ll make it up to you later. Have a hot shower. A change of clothes, then plenty of Curtis’s pizza - and loads and loads of ice-cold wine.’ She continued to rattle the words at high velocity, hardly pausing for breath. ‘So far I’ve found a brooch, a leather loop, you wouldn’t believe it, leather is eternal; I found a Roman shoe complete with hobnails. All this because we decided to plant apple trees at the bottom of the garden. Just under the turf I found twentieth century pennies, sixpences, shillings. The deeper I got the older the coins got. Edwardian. Victorian. Eighteenth century - you should see some of those whoppers; there are pennies the size of jar lids. I kept digging, the coins kept coming. Medieval groats, tenth century Norman then all the way back nearly two thousand years. Right back to when this country was part of the Roman empire and chariots would be zipping along that road across there. That’s Roman too, of course, the
Via Britannicus
. Here. Look at this. You’ll find this interesting.’ She wiped her muddy hand on her shirt and then delved into her jeans pocket to draw out a little plastic envelope, which she handed to Eden. ‘See that? A sestertius of Claudius Gothicus. Great name, eh? It’s the best example I’ve got. See the emperor’s profile? The chin shaped like a cake slice? He claimed to be a descendent of Zeus.’

‘The coin’s not even round. It’s more like a half moon.’

‘Deliberately broken to make it worthless. In ancient cultures they believed if you made something on Earth a counterpart came into existence in heaven. Breaking a pot on Earth left the heavenly counterpart intact. Same with coins; this one is chopped in half by a sword or whatever, but the exact twin in heaven is still in one piece. It’s a bit hard to explain, but folk in ancient cultures often transferred the value in an object to the gods by destroying it on Earth - burning, chucking in a river, sacrifice.’

Eden could see that the excavation exerted a formidable grip on her aunt. The woman’s grey eyes danced with joy when she enthused about the coins.

‘Shouldn’t you report buried treasure to the authorities?’

‘Buried gold and silver, yes. These bronze coins don’t have much monetary value. All the pots are broken and even the bones are all burned. But this has really grabbed my imagination. At night I dream that I’m in this hole digging out wonderful objects.’

Heather ducked down into the hole again as she talked, scraping and worrying at something with her trowel. There was a moment’s silence. Then she stood again, eyes shining. ‘Eden, be an angel and pass me the red bowl.’

‘The one with the bones?’

‘That’s the one. It’s obvious now. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.’ She gently pulled out a bone that was as slender and as cylindrical as a water pipe that feeds a domestic sink. Where the mud had flaked off it revealed a smooth black surface. ‘Thigh. Like I said, burnt. But not cremated.’

‘Oh no.’ Eden grimaced. ‘You’re not saying that these are... ’ She deliberately ditched the concluding word.

‘Oh, yes, human, I’m sure they’re human.’ She stared down into the pit. ‘That means this is - ’

‘Heather? Heather!’

‘Ah,’ Heather sighed, placing the bone carefully in the red bowl. ‘Time for you to meet the husband.’

A man in a cream linen suit, his long silver hair tied into a pony tail, bounced along the path. Eden could tell he blazed with so much energy he was an ideal partner for the equally vigorous Aunt Heather. He didn’t so much speak into the phone he carried as fire words into it with explosive force.

Heather patted the top of Eden’s foot, the only part of her niece she could reach from a pit that was becoming increasingly redolent of a tomb. ‘Don’t let his manner bother you. His bark his worse than his, you know... ’

‘I’m sure I’ll be fine. Besides, I had an encounter with a ferocious dog earlier. It wouldn’t let me walk along the path that runs up to the back wall across there.’

‘So that’s why you walked the long way round? Eden, you should have told me that a dog had frightened you.’

‘Not frightened - ’

‘It must have given you a scare. Give me your hand.’ Before extending hers Heather rubbed her palms on the legs of her jeans to remove some of the dirt. ‘Thanks.’ With Eden’s help she athletically scrambled out of the hole. ‘Where was this dog? What did it look like? If it’s one of those great things from Hezzle Farm I’ll bring the police down on them again, bloody pests.’

‘No, don’t worry. Besides, I never saw the dog. It kind of... ’ She shrugged. ‘... lurked in the bushes.’

‘But it must have terrified you, poor thing. Curtis?’

Her husband marched across the lawn, still speaking with formidable energy into the phone.

‘Curtis. Come off that thing. There’s dog trouble again. Eden here, she’s been terrified out of her wits.’

Eden felt awkward. ‘No, really. It wasn’t as frightening as - ’

‘Curtis?’ Heather pressed on. ‘Leave that while later.’

Curtis signalled ‘one minute’. His brisk, professional tones were at odds with the bohemian hair-style that could have carried the caption: LOOK AT ME. DEEPLY UNCONVENTIONAL, BUT THOROUGHLY BUSINESS-LIKE. SO WATCH YOUR STEP! ‘Klein can’t have the studio tomorrow. No, I don’t care if Wayne gave a verbal assurance that he could. All bookings must be in writing with an upfront deposit. I’ve got the Dutch band in all week with a weekend option. That’s right. They’re paying in full for studio time on Saturday whether they want it or not. One’s got some big birthday hosanna on Saturday night in Amsterdam. If I pull them out tomorrow, so Klein can noodle around adding pops and squeaks to his computer games, they’ll end up having to record through the weekend, and miss the party... they’ve shelled a lot for the studio, Ben, I’m not going to frick them around. Yeah, well, tell Wayne to say NO to Klein. If he’s too much wind and water to do that then kick him out. I’m having no light-weights in the company. And if you won’t read the riot act to Wayne... yeah, okay, see that you do.’

Heather must have noticed the expression on Eden’s face. ‘Told you about the barking, didn’t I?’ She picked up the plastic bowl to examine the bones. ‘Tibia, rib, skull - but that’s not right... look at the skull fragment.’

Her husband barked out a louder ‘NO! No preferential rates! Klein pays full! Especially after last time. The place was a pig-sty. I found a vodka bottle in the toilet bowl.’

Under her breath, Heather said, ‘Curtis opened a recording studio in York early this year. We still have,’ she raised her eyebrows, ‘teething troubles. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who book studio time then never turn up. Last week the studio’s loo flooded. Crap all over the new carpets. Curtis ignited. I’ve never seen him so angry.’ This seemed to remind her. ‘Curtis. We’ve a guest.’

‘Heather, just one moment!’

Heather shrugged, then said to Eden, ‘Look at the fragment of skull.’

‘Human?’ Eden made a point of not touching it, even though Heather offered it to her.

‘No.’ She sniffed. ‘Odd. No human fragments of skull. This is dog.’

3. Monday Evening: 7.11

In the living room, Curtis poured three glasses of white wine. ‘Eden, I’m sorry to hear about your apartment. Were all the rooms affected?’

‘There’s smoke damage to the living room and the bedroom; they need repainting. Worst is the kitchen. The fire ruined the cupboards and even part of the floor burned through.’

‘Good heavens. But the insurance will take care of it?’ Even though Curtis had changed into a smock-top and jeans, which could best be described as rural hippy, he still sounded like the no-nonsense business man. Eden decided that many people Curtis met would be surprised by how his bohemian, easy-going appearance was at odds with the waspish manner.

‘I’m covered, so they’ll pay for the repairs in full. The trouble is the time it’ll take. It’s been nearly impossible to find a builder, they’re all so busy these days. I finally managed to get someone who can start at the end of the month.’

‘Long job?’

‘Two weeks to get it liveable again.’ There was something about Curtis’s expression that prompted her to add quickly, ‘Are you sure it’s alright for me to stay with you for so long?’

‘Fine... its fine.’

‘It really is good of you to put me up.’

‘No, the pleasure’s all ours.’ The smile was a tad professional, his eyes cold looking. ‘Heather could do with some company. We’re isolated out here... we love the peace of course. And that landscape, once you get use to the flatness, is really quite beautiful you know. Vast open spaces, enormous skies. You can almost reach out and touch the tranquillity of it all.’

Eden found she could only repeat her gratitude. ‘Thanks for inviting me to share it with you. I’ll do what I can to help out around the house.’

‘That’s very generous. With Heather standing in that damn hole in the garden all day sometimes the more mundane day-to-day stuff slips. And she has her accountancy work, too.’ He laughed. ‘We don’t want her clients banging on the door, do we? Howling about delayed tax returns. Now... seeing as Heather won’t come out of her lab and leave those bloody bones alone. Shall we take these to her?’

Eden picked up two wine glasses. Curtis followed with his.

‘Right to end of the passageway, Eden. Last door on your left. Duck your head; it’s the oldest part of the house. The doorways were built for goblins.’

The door was part open, so even with a glass in each hand, Eden managed by pushing it ajar with her elbow. Heather leaned over the long table in the centre of the room, with the kind of expression of concentration someone might wear when immersed in a jigsaw puzzle. On the table were laid fragments of bone; most still coated with mud. The low-ceilinged room accommodated ‘treasures’ from the dig: plastic trays full of those greenish copper coins, fragments of pottery, pieces of tile. On a desk in the corner, a microscope and a laptop sat side by side. Heather was oblivious to the new arrivals.

‘Have you put the chap back together again, yet?’ boomed Curtis.

Heather flinched. She shot him a glare that clearly said,
Don’t you dare interrupt me like that!
With Eden being there, Heather managed a polite. ‘Oh, you’ve come to see if I’ve made any progress? Eden, welcome to the lab, by the way.’

‘Lab?’ Curtis chuckled. ‘This is where they used to do the laundry way back when. So? Humpty Dumpty here... a Roman Legionnaire stabbed in the vitals, or a Vestal Virgin done horribly to death for being a tease?’

‘Ooh, wine. Lovely, thank you.’ Heather took the glass, her fingers still coated in good Yorkshire earth. ‘And at least it’s not too dry.’

‘White wine can never be too dry.’ As he sipped his he pulled a face that suggested he thought the wine mediocre. ‘Please note, Eden, your aunt isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. I tell her that stuff sticking to her fingers... if what she’s digging up is a stable... is two thousand year old poop.’

‘Hardly a stable. The dimensions are too small.’

‘A lavatory then. With contents thereof in situ.’

‘And these bones. There is definite charring.’

Heather offered a thighbone for her husband to examine more closely. He responded with a terse, ‘I’ll stay with the
vin blanc
, thank you.’ Then: ‘Eden was telling me about the fire damage to her apartment. Terrible state of affairs, isn’t it?’

Again Eden felt as if she had to reassure them that her visit wouldn’t be a long one. ‘And thanks again, Heather for inviting me to stay. I’ve told Curtis that I’m more than willing to help out around the house; I won’t get under your feet.’

Heather gulped her wine. ‘A boy, wasn’t it? Didn’t he do it deliberately?’

Eden tightened her grip on the glass. ‘I invited a friend home.’

‘But it turned out he didn’t give you his real name, did he?’ Heather’s gaze became uncomfortably penetrating as she regarded Eden.

‘That’s right. For whatever reason he didn’t want to... ’ Simply voicing the events that led to the destruction of half her home weren’t only painful, but they made her feel so foolish.

Curtis uhmed. ‘And you’d only met him the once, I understand?’

‘Yes. I feel such an idiot.’

Heather turned back to her bones. ‘You’re a very trusting person. Your mother’s like that. The trouble is that people aren’t always nice.’

Curtis took the empty glass from Heather as she picked up a jaw bone; it still had brown canines embedded in the sockets. Almost as if he couldn’t stop himself, he added, ‘The police think it was arson, don’t they?’

Heather murmured, ‘You can’t be too careful who you let into your home these days.’

‘Drug addict, was he? Or insane? Did he look right to you when you met him in the pub?’

Eden’s face burned. ‘He looked perfectly normal. There was nothing odd about him.’

‘Outwardly, maybe. But, with hindsight, you must remember some strange quirk about his behaviour?’

Eden’s hand shook enough for a drop of wine to spring over the rim to fall onto the bones laid on the table.

‘Careful!’ Heather used a tissue to dab wine from a rib bone.

Curtis laughed. ‘Did he spend the evening fiddling with a cigarette lighter?’

‘Look, I’d had a drink, I was lonely - ’

‘Eden, there goes more wine. Stand back from the table -
please
.’

Curtis still laughed. ‘But a dirty, great keg of diesel would have been a dead give away. I wonder what turns people into arsonists?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Eden’s eyes pricked. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. People could have died that night. My neighbours have children - ’

‘Uh, there it goes again.’ The phone in the passageway began to ring. ‘Excuse me.’ Curtis vanished back through the door. A second later Eden heard his brisk voice dealing with what appeared to be more problems. ‘You’ve tackled Klein, I hope? He gets no more studio time unless he pays at least half upfront... what’s that? If it’s not Klein, what is it then? The heating? What do you expect me to do about it this time of night? No, don’t call out the engineer. We can’t afford to run up more bills. The studio’s supposed to generate income for us. At this rate we’ll be pouring more cash in than we’re getting out. Damn it, Wayne. Look at the thermostat. Somebody’s probably just dicked around with the thing. Turn it down; don’t expect me to hold your hand while you do it.’

As Curtis fought his battles by phone Heather murmured, ‘Tibia, ribs, though not quite a full set. Vertebrae. Shins. Part of a pelvis. Do you know what we’ve got here?’

‘What?’ Eden had been so wound up by this couple’s insensitivity that she’d not been listening. If anything, she found herself thinking about her apartment. The stench of smoke that clung to everything. The heat in the kitchen had melted the windows so they hung down the wall like surreal icicles. The mess, the bloody awful, stinking mess.

‘Eden, do you know what we’ve got here?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I’m sorry that my mother asked you to put me up. It’s not working out. In the morning I’ll - ’

‘Oh, don’t let Curtis bother you. It’s just his way. Ever since he set up this studio he’s been like an old dog with a sore backside. Growl, growl, growl... I don’t even listen to what he says half the time. Water off a duck’s back. Now, see this ankle joint. Hardly any wear.’

Eden stared in disbelief. How can anyone take part in what had been a bullying interrogation, then switch subjects like nothing had happened?

Heather pressed on, clearly fascinated by the skeleton. Eden could smell the wet soil. It added to the oppressive air of the house. She longed to go out into the fields and walk and walk until sheer exhaustion released the emotional pressure she felt building inside of her. Heather purred her observations as she lovingly touched each bone in turn. ‘No sign of disease, or wear, certainly no arthritis in the big ball joints of the hips. We’re looking at the skeleton of a youth, I’m sure of it. Late teens at the most. From the lightness of the bones I’d say he was slightly built. Almost willowy you could say. Eden? We’ve been thugs, haven’t we? You come here as our guest and we’ve talked about that fire like it was nothing more than broken plate. You must have been devastated, poor thing.’

‘It’s not fair!’

‘Of course, it isn’t. The boy who started the fire must have been psychotic.’

‘No, I meant - ’

‘Wait here. Time for more medicine.’

‘No, I meant
you’ve
not been fair.’
But Heather had already vanished through the low doorway and so didn’t hear. Meanwhile, in the passage, Curtis loudly reminded the luckless Wayne that all studio bookings required a deposit.

‘Poor Wayne,’ Eden breathed. ‘Poor me.’

For some reason, Heather was delayed long enough for Eden’s temper to cool. By the time Heather returned with two more bottles of wine, Eden had begun to take an interest in the trays of coins. One about the size of her thumbnail revealed a human figure through the corrosion.

‘That’s one of the better preserved ones.’ Heather filled Eden’s glass. ‘Medicine. Drink up.’

‘I can make out a man; although it’s faint. Almost a ghost.’

‘If he’s wearing clothes it will be an emperor, if he’s nude it will probably be a god. Roman gods loved to disrobe.’

‘It’s impossible to tell. It’s so worn.’

‘It’ll have gone through a lot of Romano-British hands, no doubt buying flagons of ale. The money might have even belonged to Humpty here.’

‘Humpty?’ For the first time in a while Eden smiled.

‘We have to call this mess of bones something. Humpty Dumpty makes sense. At least until I’ve put him back together again.’ She perused the bones. ‘But I’m missing a skull. I have almost a complete human skeleton, but no skull.’

‘Only the coins can’t be his.’

‘Hmm?’ Thoughtful, Heather laid neck vertebrae in a line extending from the collar bone.

‘The coins. I mean they can’t all be his, can they?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Humpty’s bones were found
beneath
the coins. You said some are twentieth century.’

‘Of course, you’re right. Yes, absolutely - some date from the 1990s.’

‘So, why have generations of people dropped coins into that exact spot at the bottom of your garden?’

Heather scratched her nose with a dirt crusted finger. ‘There was a circular depression there; something like a bomb crater, but only about so big.’ She held out her hands to indicate a yard across. ‘It did look peculiar, though. It was quite deep. At the time I thought that it might be where a tree had been taken out and the root had pulled out a big chunk of soil. At the bottom of the crater was a hole. I assumed a rabbit had dug it.’

‘That’s where people had been dropping in coins through the centuries.’

Heather pursed her lips as she thought about it. ‘I guess you’re right. Perhaps it was the equivalent of a wishing well. You know, toss in a penny and make a wish. So, Humpty.’ She addressed the skeleton. ‘You’ve been lying there while folk chucked money at you. Hardly resting in peace, is it?’

‘Or they were paying him?’

‘Come again?’

Eden nodded at the bones that so much resembled dirty twigs. ‘Paying him. Making offerings of coins.’

‘Paying him to do what?’

‘Stay where he is. Not to harm them.’

Heather stared for a moment, then gave sharp-sounding laugh. ‘That’s beautifully imagined, Eden.’

‘Don’t laugh. It’s possible.’

‘You mean for the last eighteen hundred years men, women and children have been creeping furtively up to the hole and dropping their hard cash into it before scurrying away again before a bony hand darts out to grab them by the ankle?’

‘I’m serious, it adds up.’

‘Now you’re pulling my leg, Eden. Here let me top you up. Is that the time? I must switch the oven on.’

‘I’ve beaten you to it.’ Curtis stooped to enter through the low door. ‘The pizzas are already in.’

‘Is Wayne coping at the studio?’

‘The bloody fool. He didn’t realise that all he needed to do was to turn down the thermostat to lower the heating. He’s had the Dutch band cooking in the control room as they’ve worked on a sound mix. If Wayne screws up one more time... ’ He helped himself to wine. ‘Stick with your work, Eden. It’s got to be less stressful than running a recording studio. Ah, your bony wee chap has got a neck now.’