Lovers and Newcomers (46 page)

‘Enough,’ he gasped.

The three men fanned out as soon as they reached the margin of trees. They began combing through the undergrowth.

‘About here, I reckon?’ one of them shouted.

‘No, further to the left it’ll be. I saw ’er come down.’

‘More likely to be caught in the branches up there, that’s what usually happens,’ called the third.

They plodded up and down through dense thickets of brush and bramble, searching for the lost model plane.

‘I can’t go back and tell my Tina it’s gone on my first bloomin’ day out,’ the youngest of the three said.

‘We’ll find ’er,’ the others insisted.

It was the youngest who stopped beside the thickest sprawl of bramble. He prodded with a stick, which met sudden resistance. Forgetting for a moment the lost plane, he shouldered into the damp mass of prickles. Beneath the vicious spines there was a slab of crumbling concrete.

‘Look at this.’

The others came to his side.

‘Old wartime pillbox, isn’t it?’

‘I never knew this was ’ere, Ken, did you?’

On the far side, away from the edge of the wood, the leaves and branches appeared slightly trodden down. The pillbox entrance gaped darkness, lopsided from the partial collapse of the structure.

‘Don’t go inside, the whole bloody lot’ll come down on your head. What’d we tell Tina then?’

Too late; the youngest was already inside. The other two, peering up into the branches in search of the model plane, heard him call out.

‘Now what?’ Ken sighed. ‘Liam? What you got there?’

Liam came out backwards. He was dragging an Adidas sports holdall by the handles. It was clean and dry, not even dusty. They gathered around as he unzipped it. There was a moment’s silence.

‘Load of scrap,’ Ken said.

There was a rough jumble of misshapen plates, cups blackened with age and earth, objects less easy to identify because they seemed fused together almost as if melted. Two or three green metal discs fell and clinked to the ground as Liam lifted out the topmost plate. A scrape at the rim of the plate with his thumbnail, and grey metal appeared.

He murmured, ‘It’s not scrap at all, mate. I know what this lot must be.’

They fell silent then, understanding what they had found, with the bag held between them and the ancient coins scattered over the wet earth.

FOURTEEN

‘Not in the least,’ Selwyn insisted when Polly asked if his legs were hurting. But when he got up from his chair he moved as if every step drilled his thigh bones deeper into his knee joints.

‘Not at all. I could quite easily have run back again,’ he elaborated.

The Davies and Knight children had adopted the barn as their preferred gathering place, and the five of them and Nic were polishing off a substantial lunch after the race. Polly saw Alpha’s grimace of amused disbelief and flashed her a warning glance. Sam and Alpha had both put in good times in the Fun Run, and Toby had come in second overall and was proudly displaying the medal around his neck. Delighted with this performance the three of them were already making plans to enter a bigger race in the New Year. This coalition had the effect of driving Omie and Nic into an anti-hearty alliance, and to seal it the two of them were planning to spend the afternoon watching television and eating chocolates. Ben hovered as close to Nic as he could, although she gave him little encouragement.

Selwyn scowled. His genial paterfamilias performance had lasted only for Christmas Day itself. The sprawling children and their banter were irritating him and he made no attempt to pretend otherwise.

‘I’m going to have a sleep,’ he announced, shuffling towards the stairs.

Polly was startled. He had never taken an afternoon nap in his entire life, even in the throes of the worst hangover after the wildest party. She asked if he would like her to bring him some tea, but he replied that all he wanted was an hour’s peace and quiet. What she most wanted was to leave the children downstairs and go up to lie beside him, but the time in their relationship when she could easily have suggested such a thing seemed to have slipped into history. She wondered bleakly how they would ever recover their old closeness.

The truth was that they knew each other too well to be intimate, that was one of the sad secrets the old kept from the young. Intimacy belonged to lovers and newcomers, lasting until the abrasion of time rubbed away the glamour of it. In the end it faded and disappeared altogether, and familiarity was all that was left.

Polly realized that Omie and Alph were both looking at her. She gave them a smile ripe with normality.

‘Ben,’ she called, ‘I need some fresh air. Won’t you come for a quick walk with me?’

Ben grumbled that she should have come on the morning’s excursion across the fields to Lockington, if fresh air was what she wanted. As far as he was concerned two walks in one day would be major overkill.

Nic looked up. ‘If Polly would like a walk you should go with her,’ she told Ben.

‘Don’t you want me to stay with you?’

‘No. I’ll be fine here, thanks.’

It was clear even to Ben that there was no point in argument. He pulled on his knitted beehive and followed Polly out into the raw, smoky twilight of mid-afternoon. They took the path through the wood and on past Amos’s site, where the deserted excavation with its torn remnants of polythene coverings and the contractor’s trampled markings struck a note of absolute desolation. Once they were out on to the Meddlett road, however, the bracing air flooded into Polly’s lungs and her spirits soared. As they turned up the hillside she stuck her arm through Ben’s and hugged it against her side.

‘I love you, Mum,’ he murmured, as he often did.

‘Do you remember when we had that picnic lunch in the park near your work?’ she asked.

‘Um, yeah.’

‘And you told me I should write another book?’

‘That’s right, I do remember.’

‘You’re very clever, and I wanted to say thank you. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but the suggestion must have been working away in the back of my mind. When Dad showed me a whole room full of records and letters belonging to Mead, and I started reading through them, the thought was already there inside me because you had planted it. I want to edit those papers, put them into a narrative and write a history of this place. It would make a wonderful book, Ben, a miniature of English rural history, if only I could do it justice.’

Even during the rush and work of Christmas Day, her thoughts had kept turning to her project and the speculation about whether Miranda would give her blessing. She had wanted to tell Ben where his suggestion was leading her, and this was the first opportunity.

‘Course you’ll do it justice,’ he replied. ‘Sounds brilliant.’

They were panting as the incline steepened. Polly stopped to catch her breath, looking back at the unfolding view.

‘It’s not quite that simple.’

‘No?’

Polly knew her son could only properly handle one train of thought at a time, and now his attention was plainly elsewhere.

‘It’s up to Miranda. The papers belong to her.’

‘She’ll be all right with it.’

‘How do you know?’

Ben was gazing with melancholy longing in the direction of Mead, and Nic.

‘She wants to keep you sweet, doesn’t she?’

A gust of wind rattled in the trees and Polly shivered.

‘What do you mean?’

Ben might be unworldly, but he could sometimes be intuitive in a way that his more down-to-earth sisters were not. Had Ben noticed a connection between Miranda and Selwyn, as a result of which she herself had to be propitiated? She felt cold with foreboding.

‘Uh, I guess with her wanting you and Dad, you know, to go on living up here and keeping her company and all that.’

Polly breathed again. Ben only meant that Miranda wanted to defend the Mead community. She drew his arm closer and they walked on uphill.

‘I hope so,’ she smiled. ‘I’m so in love with the idea of my book.’

Ben was absorbed in his own thoughts.

‘Is it Nic?’ Polly asked gently.

He gave a gusty sigh.

‘She’s being totally impossible.’

Polly put her own concerns aside. ‘Let’s talk about it.’

Ben needed no encouragement. Why wouldn’t Nic recognize how much he cared about her, how much he wanted their baby now he had got used to the idea, how good they would be together if only she would let him back in? He waved his arms in the air to emphasize his questions, walking backwards so he could look Polly in the eye at the same time.

She said, ‘Darling, don’t keep insisting to her what you want and what you’ll do. You can only show her what you mean over time, by being it and doing it.’

He gave her his sweetest, most unfocused smile.

‘How weird. That’s exactly what Nic says herself.’

Polly sighed. ‘So are you going to try it?’

At the top of the hill where there was a view over to Meddlett they passed within a few feet of a patch of freshly dug earth, but neither of them noticed it.

‘Mum, you don’t understand. I
love
her.’

Polly’s patience was wearing thin. She wanted to shout at him, what do you know about love? What do you know about time, and the protracted measures of loving another human being – not just the impatience of desire, but the pathos of its absence?

She answered these questions for herself. Ben knew nothing yet because he was barely out of childhood and such knowledge came only when you got old, when love was mostly past so you could see it for the obstinate business it really was.

‘Wait and see what happens. Help her in whatever way you can.’

Ben ran a few steps down the hill, swung around and punched his fists in the air.

‘I’m going to write, get my column, make some cash, prove to her that I can buy what she needs. Her
and
the baby,’ he added, remembering.

That wasn’t the sort of help that had been uppermost in Polly’s mind, but she agreed that it would be a good start.

Miranda had invited them all for six-thirty on Boxing Night. Amos and Katherine were the last to head for Miranda’s house, bringing Jessie with them.

Amos had been out most of the afternoon, and whilst the boys were over at the barn, Katherine took the opportunity to pack some of her clothes. She folded blouses and skirts and put them into a suitcase, not bothering to deliberate over the selection. It was more a symbolic gesture of withdrawal than needing extra clothes to wear in London. Her phone beeped a text alert but she left it for a few minutes, expecting the message to be an update on his whereabouts from Amos. At the start of the race this morning he told her that he was going to help the young girl whose dog had been so horribly run over on Christmas Eve, and Katherine wondered whether Jessie was going to be the next object of his attentions. She was good-looking enough. Then she had remembered that it didn’t matter to her whether the girl was or was not Amos’s current target.

When she did look at the text, she saw that it was from Chris.

She searched on the dressing table for her glasses. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she noticed the reflection of her fond smile.

Am
I a fool? she wondered.

Miracle! Police found yr treasure. On way to check it out. Big secret 4 now.

Katherine’s smile broadened. But it’s not my treasure, she thought, or Amos’s.

Happy for you & archaeology. Already have all trsure I need tho’ x K

When Amos did call, it was to ask whether he should bring Jessie back with him. He had helped her to bury the dog, she was all on her own in a bleak cottage, and it was Christmas.

‘Of course you must bring her back. But you’ll have to ask Mirry, won’t you?’

‘Mirry will say, the more the merrier.’

When Jessie arrived, her muddy boot prints tracking Amos into the cottage, Katherine led her into the kitchen and Jessie sat down, looking at her with frank curiosity. Amos had told her that his wife had left home, so it was obviously intriguing to find the same wife ensconced here. Katherine gave her tea and Christmas cake.

‘I am so sorry about your dog.’

The girl looked straight back at her. Whatever Amos’s intentions might be, it was evident on Jessie’s part that she wasn’t going to be one of his acquisitions.

‘Thanks,’ Jessie said. Her expression indicated that the quaint marital arrangements of old people were a legitimate focus for speculation, but her own losses were private.

Katherine was amused. She could see why Amos was interested. She chatted to the girl about Meddlett and her job at the Griffin, and Jessie made a noticeable effort to respond with questions of her own, recognizing that a polite conversational code was being observed.

‘Do you like it in Meddlett? I mean, it must be a real pain, not being able to get your house built, with the princess being dug up and all that?’

Amos had opted for whisky rather than tea. He broke in now.

‘Katherine’s ambivalent. She likes Meddlett all right, but she’s decided she doesn’t want to have the new house built, or to live in this one with me. So it’s a bit of a conundrum.’

‘Yeah?’ was all Jessie said. She gave Amos the briefest glance and it was Katherine’s impression that her husband subsided.

She continued to Katherine, ‘What kind of dinner is this going to be? It’s very kind of you to ask me, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure what I’m doing here, really.’ Then she grinned. ‘Curiosity, I expect you’re thinking.’

Katherine smiled back at her. Self-reliant Jessie made a sort of counterpoint to Nic, not that Nic wasn’t strong in her own way, and the Davies girls were like the other two corners of a square. It was going to be an interesting evening.

‘You’re very welcome. Ours might seem an odd set-up, but people, families, make allowances at Christmas, don’t they?’

Jessie raised her eyebrows a fraction, suggesting that her own standards were more exacting.

‘There’ll be nobody you won’t recognize. We were all in the Griffin on Christmas Eve. There’s my two sons…’