To Dream of the Dead (33 page)

‘And you . . . believe that, do you?’

‘Well, no, my guess is that Tom Bull left instructions for the
eyes to be left open so he could lie here for all eternity ogling visiting women. How can I help you, Mrs Winterson?’

Merrily sat down and gathered her cape across her knees, all prim and priestly. Mrs Winterson didn’t join her.

‘You’re probably thinking I haven’t chosen a particularly good time for this.’

‘Well, the village is slowly flooding, and I’m sure there must be something I could be doing out there, but . . .

‘This really is a
horrible
place.’

Merrily nodded. It was, sometimes. Interesting that the atmosphere, which she’d always felt was distinctly unholy, should get to an atheist.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we
could
’ve gone to the vicarage. Only I didn’t want to disturb Jane. She might be in the middle of a ritual to persuade the river god to turn back before the flood water reaches the grave of the high priestess, Lucy Devenish.’

Mrs Winterson stared for a long moment, exhaled a brittle laugh. Then she sat down opposite Merrily, unpopping her jacket.

‘All right. Point taken. I listen to gossip. I
like
gossip, I’m a journalist, it’s what I do. I’m sorry. I’m guessing you’ve had bad experiences with the media.’

‘Not so far. But then, they usually make a direct approach.’

‘I’m sorry. When I met your daughter, I . . .’ Mrs Winterson hooked an Ugg-booted foot around the strap of the camera bag, dragging it in front of her chair. ‘What did my husband have to say?’

‘He asked me a lot of questions.’

‘It’s not something you can easily turn off, professional curiosity. Besides, if you’re looking for somewhere to settle, you like to know how the place works. And the people.’

‘Yes, he
was
asking how I worked.’

‘Look, if we’ve offended you, I’m sorry. Elliot can be . . .’

A bank of rain washed against the leaded window and Merrily sensed the water rising, the sudden urgency of life and what a waste of energy it was, all this tap-dancing around the truth.

‘Disingenuous?’ she said.

‘What are you saying, Mrs Watkins?’

‘That’s what you call him is it? Elliot?’

‘It’s what I’ve always called him.’

‘You didn’t
like
Mathew?’

Leonora made a small noise in her throat.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s saved a bit of time.’

The site was isolated by the rain, Cole Hill mired in cloud. Couple of long tents and the two caravans. Puddles turning into pools, where they’d hit clay. And nobody around, thank God, except Gregory, the security guy, standing in the doorway of his caravan. Jack-the-lad in his bomber jacket, leather trousers, Doc Martens. The caravan behind him a big boom-box vibrating to a hip-hop stammer.

‘What a shithole, eh?’ Gregory said.

Jane could only agree. It looked no prettier than a building site. If Eirion thought she’d feel better seeing it like this, he was wrong. No connections were made. It wasn’t hers, wouldn’t be again.

‘Last day for me, anyway,’ Gregory said. ‘I’m out of here tonight.’

‘What, there’s going to be no security over Christmas?’

‘Not me, anyway. I’ll be getting pissed with my mates. Will you miss me?’

Jane said nothing.

‘He’s a bastard, Blore, isn’t he?’

‘No, really?’ Eirion said.

‘This your boyfriend?’

‘Eirion,’ Jane said. ‘Gregory.’

‘Eirion? Wassat, Welsh?’ Gregory stood back, gesturing inside. ‘You guys wanna beer? On the house?’

Jane flashed
no
at Eirion.

‘Why not?’ Eirion didn’t look at her. ‘Thanks.’

Tight-lipped, Jane followed Gregory. Inside, it was surprisingly respectable, with a bed-settee and a car battery for the yellow and black DeWalt ghetto blaster. Gregory switched off the music, fetched three bottles of Budweiser lager from the kitchen area.

‘They’re all bastards.’ He snapped off the bottle tops, dropped them in a waste bin, handed bottles to Jane and Eirion. ‘The students, too. Think they own the place, wherever they are.’

‘
All
students?’ Eirion said.

‘We done a few digs for Blore’s outfit. He’s a bastard, like I say, but he’s straight. He’s a straight bastard.’ Gregory laughed. ‘Look, don’t stand around, girl, sit on the bed.’

‘It’ll get all wet.’

‘It’ll dry out. Students’re a pain in the arse. All wannabe celebs . . . like the professor. They come back wetting themselves laughing yesterday, after you and him . . .’ Gregory pointed his bottle at Jane. ‘You were a gift, girl, that’s what they were saying. Never do TV with the professor, I coulda told you that.’

Jane took off her parka, sat on the edge of the bed.

‘What was
he
saying?’

‘Blore? Nothing much, far’s I know. TV – he despises it. He come in here, one night – not this job, one we done down the Forest of Dean – and the TV’s on, and he just switches it off. Never watch it, he says. And I go, what, not even your own show? And he’s like, that’s the
last
fucking thing I’m gonna watch. Comes in here quite often, stretches himself out on the bed, where you are, and we have a couple of beers.’

Yeah, Jane thought, he’d do that. Hang out with his security guy to get away from people who wanted to show him their bit of Roman pottery.

‘Anybody wants to be on TV, they deserve all they get. Easy meat. We done this one in the Cotswolds last year and Blore’s doing a bit of a recce of the site – jeans, jacket covered with badges. Along comes this old colonel type, cravat, bristly moustache, shooting stick, face like a beetroot.’ Gregory extended his neck, nose in the air, did the gruff and grumpy. ‘Devil’s going on here? Don’t you know there’s going to be an important archaeological dig on this site? You have any idea how much damage is done by you bloody treasure-hunters with your damned metal detectors?’

‘I think I saw this one,’ Eirion said. ‘Blore keeps quiet, playing him along with expressions of dumb insolence. Winding him up, before completely paralysing the poor old boy with a lecture on the history and the potential of the site, with chronological references to every excavation there since about 1936.’

‘And then, as the Colonel’s walking away, he goes . . .’

‘
Didn’t you used to be in
Dad’s
fucking
Army?’ Eirion smiled. ‘I could never figure how the old boy didn’t see the cameraman.’

‘Back of the van,’ Gregory said. ‘Little peephole in the side. They often do it. Then they invite the old guy for a drink, all have a good laugh and he’s more than happy for them to use it. Signs the form, no problem. People will take any shit from TV. That’s what Blore says.’

‘He doesn’t
care
what he does to people?’ Eirion said.

‘’Cause it ain’t
real
, mate. It’s TV. Whoosh, gone. And you pick up the money and on to the next one. It
ain’t real
.’

‘It is for the viewers.’ Jane sat up, both hands around her beer. ‘For some people, he’s the only thing they know about archaeology.’

‘That’s their problem.’

‘He’s right, I suppose.’ Eirion said. ‘TV’s been degraded. Too many channels, it is. Instead of variety, it all goes into a cheap mush.
Trench One
– you used to think quality, but they all go the same way. People interested in archaeology, that’s just a minority audience. There’s a much bigger one for like . . .’

‘People getting made to look small,’ Jane said.

‘
He
don’t do it,’ Gregory said, ‘some other bastard will and he’ll be out on his arse. I could show you half a dozen guys here who’d have his job, no messing, if he starts to go soft. Walk over his corpse.’

‘That’s scary.’ Jane drank some lager. She didn’t really like lager, but she didn’t want to look like a girl. ‘I mean, if—’

‘It’s survival, darlin’.’

‘But if the only way you can get on in archaeology is to, like, become a bastard on TV—’

‘It’s not the
only
way.’ Gregory grinned. ‘You seen the big caravan over there? Bigger than this, anyway. That’s his. Blore’s.’

‘He sleeps here? I thought he had a room in the Black Swan.’

‘It’s not for
sleeping
in, my love. King-size folding bed?’ Gregory spread his hands. ‘I got some spare keys, if you wanna look.’

‘Well,’ Eirion said, ‘that would be—’

‘We’d rather
not
,’ Jane said firmly.

‘Like I say,’ Gregory said, ‘I’ve done security on a few of these gigs now. Shagfest, or what?’

‘Bill Blore . . . and his students?’

‘Well, not all of them, obviously,’ Gregory said. ‘Not the
blokes
.’

Out, then. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Leonora Winterson had relaxed into her seat as if a weight had been lifted from her body. Her turquoise coat was hanging open; underneath she wore a white sweater with a deep neckline, and the tops of her breasts were tanning-salon brown.

‘No way he was going to hide,’ she said.

‘The police actually wanted you to adopt a new identity?’

‘For a while. The traditional book-burning by red-neck morons in the US Bible Belt, that’s part of the package. Islam, however . . .’

‘
The religious are as cringe-makingly predictable as the doctrines they follow
.’

‘My God, you’ve read the book?’

‘Dipped into it. There was a Muslim threat?’

‘Wasn’t a
fatwa
or anything, just mutterings by a couple of crazy imams, but the police and the security services have been very nervy since 7/7. But, you see, he’s a journalist. We don’t
hide
. And if you can’t stand up for what you believe in, it makes a mockery of the book.’

‘So this is a compromise.’

‘Only because we don’t want people on our back all the time. He’s become a kind of anti-guru, so you get the
disciples
. Almost worse than the religious bigots, for whom just knowing he’s around is enough to provoke a need to confront him. As if, by not doing it, they’re betraying their faith?’

‘Really no accounting for some of these people,’ Merrily said.

‘Hates being recognised, anyway. Hates the thought of becoming a
personality
. Hid behind that beard for a while and now people have that rather messianic image of him he’s got rid of it. The weight – that was an exaggeration anyway. People with big beards always look heavier.’

‘So . . . the Wintersons.’

‘His mother’s maiden name. Now you know.’ Leonora paused. ‘Jane, huh?’

‘Easy to underestimate Jane.’

‘You’re not going to out us, are you?’

‘That would be unchristian.’

Leonora smiled briefly, stood up and walked over to the tomb, making eye contact with Tom Bull.

‘Bizarre. First person in this village I get to talk to without having to watch what I say, and it’s the vicar in the bloody church. A vicar and a dead lech.’

‘Some irony here that escapes me?’

‘I’m from a solid Church family.’

‘Ah.’

‘Went to Church schools, all the bullshit that goes with that. Why are you nodding?’

‘Your reaction to being in here was . . . somehow, not the reaction of a lifelong atheist.’

‘Do
not
. . .’ Lensi levelled a finger ‘. . . get too clever.’

Merrily smiled.

‘My father worked for the diocese, in an administrative role. My mother was a Sunday School teacher. Not many of those left, even then. Village in Buckinghamshire, not
so
unlike this one. My old man became increasingly, insufferably devout. Anglo-Catholic. Hounding the local vicar into installing a statue of the Virgin. Then finally, in middle age, he was ordained himself, and it all became
seriously
stifling. I used to walk around our church, as an adolescent, muttering obscenities, just for the thrill of the guilt, the almost erotic joy of blasphemy.’

‘You’re trying to shock me?’

‘Hell, no.’ In the ice-white light, Leonora’s skin looked thin, almost translucent. ‘I’ve met a lot of priests. They don’t shock. They simply become lofty and disapproving.’

‘But you
were
trying to shock your parents.’

‘You wouldn’t believe how many honourable God-fearing, High Church public-school boys were around, even fifteen years ago, and I must’ve been introduced to every one of the genuflecting tossers. Which is why I threw myself at Elliot. Good-looking, ten years older than me. Worldly, married, and a bloody atheist. My
God
.’

‘When was this?’

‘When I was still at university. London. He was a reporter with the
Guardian
then. I was always attracted to the media, but I
didn’t particularly want to start off on some provincial rag, so I used to hang around their pubs. He was married but I made myself . . . you know, hard to resist. Don’t ask.’

‘You threw yourself at a religious-affairs correspondent?’

‘Well, he wasn’t, then. Just a general news reporter. That came later, when their religious-affairs guy was off sick and they asked Elliot to stand in.
Guardian
reporters get a fair bit of leeway on how they handle a story, and Elliot . . . well, you can imagine. Good writer, very funny . . . and
Guardian
readers are liberal, and liberals tend to be atheist . . .’