The Lifers' Club

by Francis Pryor

  ‘It means that I’m concerned enough to investigate further.’

  Alan realised he was holding his breath. Lane was still speaking.

  ‘But my main concern is your safety, Alan. You said you were staying with a colleague?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And is he aware of your suspicions about the fire?’

  ‘She. No. You said this should stay strictly between us.’

  ‘And so it should, at least for now.’

  ‘But I am worried, Richard. She’s a very pleasant person and a damn good archaeologist and I’d never forgive myself if she came to any harm. You don’t think she’s in any danger, do you?’

  There was a brief pause, before Lane replied,

  ‘Not at this early stage, and besides, there’s no point in alarming her when we don’t have all the facts. However, I’ll see to it that the local officers are aware of the situation. We’ll keep an eye out for anything suspicious. What’s your exact location?’

  Alan reeled off Harriet’s name and address. Lane repeated it back to him verbatim.

  ‘Thanks, Richard, I really appreciate it.’

  ‘Just doing my job. We’ll speak again soon.’

  Alan put the phone down and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Maybe the Kabuls – if they were indeed involved in the arson attack – had, in a strange way, done him a favour. Lane was finally taking his concerns seriously. And now that the local police force would be informed he could relax about Harriet’s safety. He also knew that part of his relief was due to Lane’s insistence on confidentiality. From now on he wouldn’t be deliberately telling her half-truths, he’d be simply following instructions.

  Alan ventured downstairs in time to hear the back door slam shut. There was a blast of freezing cold air and a few snowflakes. Alan wandered through to the sitting room: it was empty. He peered into the kitchen. Nobody there. The Aga’s lids were down. But there was a beautifully set table, complete with candles. The bottle of wine was half-drunk. He went back out into the corridor. Then the back door opened wide and Harriet stood framed: furious, the large pan in her hand, dripping herb butter onto patches of snow on the doormat.

  ‘So much for your “quick chat”! That Dover sole cost me eighteen quid. If you want a meal of rubber fish, it’s waiting for you out there in the bin. I’m off to bed.’

  And with that she stormed upstairs.

  Fifteen

  Four days later, and the start of another week. The snow had gone, but as so often happens in England, clean, crisp white was replaced by grubby brown. Even the overcast sky seemed brown; passing lorries, piled high with beet or potatoes fresh out of the clamps, covered both lanes with a mist of fine slurry. Alan was driving Brutus across Dawyck Fen. He needed to get to site on time. So he kept his foot down. Like most fen minor roads this one was a mass of humps and bumps, as pockets of deeply buried peat dried out and shrunk. Locals knew that patching the surface was pointless, because it would be just as bad next year. But the Council did it all the same: if not, mouthy Southey incomers would complain – and they had the votes.

  He pulled into the small car park at St Guthlic’s and walked across to the churchyard, which now looked more like an excavation, than a place of worship.

  Late on Thursday afternoon, when he had been away talking to The Lifers’ Club, the County Building Control people had phoned the Parish Council and told them they would have to install a different type of septic tank. It would require a larger hole, which in turn would mean the archaeological trench would have to be extended. It was only a small job – an hour or two at the outside – so Alan suggested they hire a self-drive mini-digger and do it then and there, on Friday afternoon.

  But Paul would have none of it. No, he insisted, PFC had a long-term contract with their usual firm, AK Plant, and they must stick to it. And the earliest AK could provide a digger and driver was Monday morning. Alan was furious, as deadlines were now starting to look tight. But Paul was absolutely adamant.

  He strode into the churchyard. The JCB driver, a young Asian man from Leicester, had just finished the morning lubrication and was replacing the grease-gun and some oily rags in the digger’s tool box. He looked up and greeted Alan with a cheery:

  ‘Ready to go when you are, boss!’

  He had a large open smile and spoke with that distinctive light Leicester–Asian voice.

  Alan took him over to the trench and showed what had to be done. As they walked across he had also checked the back acter bucket to make sure it had a good, straight cutting-edge and all the teeth had been removed. The driver saw what he was doing and said,

  ‘I’ve done this sort of work before, mate.’

  ‘Oh yes, where?’

  ‘On another church job, over Melton way. For your boss, it was.’

  ‘Paul Flynn?’

  ‘Yea, that’s the bloke. Tall. Doesn’t smile a lot.’

  Then it came back to him. He could have had the same conversation with a closely similar digger driver, but years ago, at Flax Hole. He almost smacked his forehead: AK Plant. K as in Kabul! Christ, how could he have been so thick? Meanwhile the driver was waiting for a reply.

  ‘Yes, he’s quite serious, but that goes with the job, when you’re excavating churchyards…’

  The young man thought this was partly aimed at him.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry boss, I’ll show respect.’

  Alan looked him in the eyes. He meant it.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Alan was amazed at how many church jobs PFC had done. They were becoming one of their major earners, encouraged by Lottery grants that had paid for toilets and mini-kitchens, in churches and parish halls throughout the country.

  The septic tank was to be sited over by the sexton’s shed, just outside the churchyard wall. Alan headed over there, while behind him he could hear the digger start up with a throaty roar. A few minutes later they had set up and begun work.

  Soon they came down on the layer of brick rubble that had sealed the two babies’ skeletons. The broad bucket simply couldn’t cut through it. Alan had hoped they’d be able to find the edge of the rubble spread, and then they could work inwards from the outside. That way they wouldn’t have to fit teeth, which always made a mess and often cut into the archaeology below. But it was not to be. So they stopped, changed to a smaller, toothed, bucket and began again. But this time very gently; the engine revs dropped.

  Alan was watching closely as the digger driver carefully inserted the bucket’s teeth below the base of the rubble. Alan signalled him to stop, got into the trench and dropped down on his hands and knees behind the bucket to have a good close look. This part was crucial. If there were any bones visible now, he’d have to stop the digger and clear the rest of the rubble by hand. And that would cause delay, which wouldn’t please Paul, or indeed the clients.

  He scraped around the lowest of the broken bricks and crushed mortar with his trowel, then stood back with a sigh of relief. There was nothing. He gave the digger driver a thumbs-up. Slowly the bucket was eased back, while curling up. As soon as the digger arm was out of the trench, Alan jumped back in and scraped down vigorously with his trowel. Again there was nothing. So he gave another thumbs-up, stepped out of the trench and poured himself a much-needed coffee from his flask.

  The coffee was warm and comforting. For a moment he took his eye off the digger as he watched the PFC minibus drawing up in the small grass car park, which was already beginning to look muddy, from all the coming and going of the dig. Behind was Harriet’s car with her young assistant, Amy, sitting in the front passenger’s seat. She gave him a little wave and he doffed his hard hat in return.

  Harriet had been a little frosty at home after the Dover sole incident – or Fishgate as Alan had come to think of it – but to give her credit, she was every bit the professional and clearly wasn’t going to bring an
y personal feelings to site. But he still felt guilty about the whole thing. He had tried to explain, told her he was helping out a friend in need but it was obvious she hadn’t believed a word of it. In fact, she’d told him that his private life was his own business and who he called and why was hardly at the top of her priority list at the moment. So he was making it up to her the only way he knew. He’d spent the last four evenings up in his room, fine-tuning his work on the landscape contexts of the early Saxon burial sites, in her book. He’d present it to her along with a good bottle of red and he hoped that should do the trick.

  Alan forced himself to refocus on the moment; on the job in hand.

  When he looked down again he almost leapt out of his skin.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he cried out loud, ‘where the fuck’s that come from?… STOP! STOP!’

  He shouted to the digger driver as he waved both hands and made the throat-cutting gesture. Seeing that, the driver immediately killed the engine.

  He beckoned the driver to come out of his cab and asked him to show precisely where he’d dumped the last bucket of rubble. Then together they carefully sifted through the loose earth and bricks with their bare hands. They found half a dozen tiny bone fragments, just like the ones they’d revealed two weeks ago.

  Satisfied that they’d recovered everything from the spoil heap, Alan returned to the trench, where Harriet was already kneeling and gently probing with her trowel. Everyone had heard his shouting.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Harry,’ he said defensively, ‘I’d checked the first few buckets carefully and was having a mug of coffee. Then I looked down and…’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s easily done and you did manage to stop in time.’

  He gave her a grateful smile and again silently admired her professionalism. Plenty of other people – Paul for example – would have used this as an opportunity to publicly humiliate him and pull rank.

  Harriet looked up anxiously.

  ‘Alan, have a close look at this. Tell me what you think.’

  She stood up to let him in the trench.

  ‘I don’t see anything…’ His voice tailed off as he carefully scraped the soil directly above the bones with the point of his penknife. Then he leant back, this time with more assurance.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I see what you mean. Those bricks lie directly on top of the bones…’ gently he scraped away some more loose earth. ‘So that must mean they’re both contemporary, they were buried when the wall was built. So the rubble was dumped directly on top of the bodies, maybe to mark or conceal them. Otherwise the grave fill would lie just an inch or two below the topsoil.’

  His voice tailed off as he thought the implications through. Then he continued, more confidently, ‘Or else, of course, the builders of the sexton’s shed had dug down into the ground and disturbed the bones, sometime later.’

  Harriet was now kneeling close to him. He could feel the warmth of her thigh against his. She was completely absorbed in what lay before them.

  ‘If that was what happened,’ she replied, ‘the babies’ skeletons could have been disturbed by digging foundations for the hard core of the new sexton’s yard. But surely, that’s what you’d expect, isn’t it?’

  Alan shook his head.

  ‘No. On a dry site, perhaps. But not here. Any hole in the ground is likely to fill with water – especially in winter. No, I’d have used any rubble I could find to raise the surface. Not lower it.’

  Harriet hesitated before responding.

  ‘Surely that must mean those bodies have been concealed – hidden by the rubble, doesn’t it?’

  Alan sighed. It seemed so improbable.

  ‘On the face of it, yes. But I’d have expected more fragmentation, wouldn’t you?’

  Harriet was frowning.

  ‘Not necessarily, neonate bones are very flexible. They have to be, if you think about it… ’

  Alan stood up.

  ‘We won’t be able to understand this through a keyhole. We’ve got to extend the trench anyhow, so I suggest that’s what we do.’

  Then Harriet broke in.

  ‘But you can’t leave these bones in place, Alan, not while you’re extending the trench. They’re far too fragile.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t planning to. You and Amy lift and record them, but we’ll do no more digging around them until we’ve enlarged the trench. How does that sound?’

  ‘Fine,’ she agreed.

  Alan was pleased she’d accepted his plan, they worked well together – made a good team. Even so, he didn’t dare confess that in his entire digging life he had never come across such a strange set of bones in such weird contexts. The gut feeling he had when they discovered the first lot was growing stronger by the minute.

  * * *

  While Harriet and Amy lifted and recorded the baby bones over by the sexton’s shed, Alan took the digger into the body of the churchyard to strip the trench for the pipe-run. By midday they had exposed a dozen graves, all of which showed-up as dark rectangular marks in the paler silty subsoil. None had any bones exposed at this level, except for one which had disturbed a much earlier burial, whose bones were mixed-up in the later grave’s filling.

  Unlike today, sextons in the past didn’t worry too much if they cut through older graves and churned up a few bones. They took the view that so long as the bones remained in sanctified ground, it wouldn’t matter if a few got muddled. And anyhow, the Church taught that on the Day of Judgement, all bodies would miraculously be made whole again. For a moment, Alan’s imagination conjured up a Stanley Spencer image of resurrected bodies pushing out drawers and climbing off the shelves in forensic laboratories and museums around the world. The ultimate curatorial nightmare.

  But nothing could be excavated until the graves had been carefully mapped. Alan and one of the digging team worked for the rest of the day on the detailed plans. By the time they knocked off, they had counted a grand total of sixteen whole or partial graves. In addition, the machine had revealed another three baby burials close by the wall, immediately alongside the two they’d exposed two weeks ago. They had to be part of the same group – most likely the same family. Alan was putting the finishing touches to the plan of the babies’ graves, when he saw Harriet approaching.

  ‘Harry,’ he asked, looking up, ‘these three neonates look rather like the first two. A bit compressed?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘they were bundled-up in some way.’

  ‘Maybe they were buried furtively. At night, when nobody was around? That sort of thing happened in the Middle Ages.’

  ‘And later, as well…’

  For a second, Alan had a flashback to his earlier waking nightmare: Sofia, being buried in the dark earth of Flax Hole, with that faceless man looming over her. He vigorously scraped some dried mud from off his trowel’s cutting-edge to shake the image from his mind.

  ‘I know,’ said Harriet. ‘Poor woman.’

  Alan slipped the trowel into his back pocket and refocused on the bones in the trench in front of him.

  ‘You reckon they were all stillborn?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, no doubt about it. But late. Probably even full-term.’

  ‘Horrible,’ Alan replied. ‘But not altogether unexpected, when viewed in historical context. There’s a memorial in the church to someone in the seventeenth century, who had ten stillbirths. It wasn’t that rare…’

  ‘No,’ Harriet cut in, ‘and to make matters worse, in Victorian times it was quite often the husband who caused it all, by sleeping around with prostitutes as a young man.’

  ‘Yes. Sowing his wild oats. It was almost expected in some upper-class circles. People turned a blind eye to it.’

  ‘Quite. But then the young men-about-town caught a dose of syphilis, gave it to their young wives, who then had endless abortions and stillbirths. Many of them went insane before they di
ed. It was gruesome.’

  Alan shivered again. Harriet patted his arm briefly, but sympathetically. He smiled back. He couldn’t, of course, tell her the truth about his reaction.

  Yes it was a horrific historical detail. And yes the collection of the baby bones were disturbing to look at. But there was more to it than that. People and power structures don’t change all that much over time. Sofia, in her own way, was equally a victim of her patriarchal family.

  * * *

  The dig had to end on Friday, and it was Wednesday morning. Alan was working with mattock and shovel at the base of the churchyard wall, but on the graveyard side. On the other side, Harriet was finishing the excavation of the third baby. As soon as she’d done, Alan, who was also the site photographer, would take a picture; then they’d draw the tiny skeleton, and survey it onto the general site plan. Finally, and with very great care, they’d lift it, bone by minuscule bone.

  An hour or so later, Harriet’s head popped over the wall.

  ‘Alan,’ she asked, ‘any chance of another quick record pic?’

  They could hear the low sound of thunderstorms rumbling away in the distance and they both knew a sharp, heavy shower would undo all her patient work.

  ‘OK,’ he replied, ‘with you in a jiff. I’ll just finish this.’

  He immediately began to clear up the loose earth, ready to abandon his excavation and fetch his camera from the Land Rover. As he scraped up the last few scraps, the tip of his trowel hit something pale. He instantly recognised it as pottery. It was white, glazed and quite a big piece. At first glance it looked fairly recent.

  After about five minutes, and at least one gentle reminder about the photo from the other side of the wall, he had exposed half a saucer. He picked it up, turned it over and identified it at once as mass-produced blue-and-white tableware. He guessed it could only be late nineteenth or early twentieth century. It was un-chipped and still had sharp edges. This suggested it had been lost and broken when the wall footings were being dug. It was also at precisely the same level as the baby skeletons.