“You must be Sarah Hanover,” he said, scrutinizing my companion. “You have your great-grandfather’s eyes as well as his nose. And you,” he went on, surveying Adam, “must be Sarah’s young man. She tells me you’re an Anglo-Saxon scholar.”
Adam, who’d turned beet-red when he’d heard himself described as Sarah’s young man, could only nod.
“Fascinating period,” the old man observed. “Not my bailiwick, of course, but I’d like to hear what you have to say about it. We shall have to postpone our tête-à-tête, however, because I wish to speak privately with”—his hawklike gaze came to rest on me—“the third member of your party. I’m Stephen Waterford, by the way, though Ms. Shepherd knows me by a different name.”
I felt a strange sense of recognition as his eyes met mine, as if Aunt Dimity had brought him to life for me before he and I had ever stood face-to-face. The years seemed to fall away as he held my gaze, and I saw in him the young man who’d sat at a rickety table in a badly lit café and opened Aunt Dimity’s mind to the beauty that would revive her war-weary soul. The vision lasted for no more than a breath, but when he turned away, the world seemed to spin for a moment as I left the past behind and returned to the present.
As if he understood what was expected of him, Stephen extended his right hand. After Sarah and Adam dashed forward to shake it, he addressed his son.
“Steve? Would you be a good fellow and give these youngsters a cup of tea and a biscuit? I believe they might be persuaded to consume them in the library.”
“Your son won’t need to persuade us, sir,” Adam assured him, looking as though he would happily spend the next five years exploring the great man’s library.
“May we handle your books?” Sarah asked.
“I’d be baffled if you didn’t,” Stephen replied. “Books are meant to be handled. You’ll find a few odds and ends in the library that may interest you as well. Please feel free to handle them, too. I’ll ring you when Ms. Shepherd is ready to leave.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Sarah, and she came very close to dropping a curtsy.
“It’s an honor, sir,” said Adam, with a neat head bow.
“The honor is mine,” Stephen said courteously, returning the bow.
Steve collected my raincoat, then ushered Adam and Sarah out of the room. When they’d gone, Stephen motioned for me to sit beside him before the hearth.
“Silly children,” he said as he eased himself gingerly into his chair. “They act as though I’m a national treasure. A month of fieldwork would disabuse them of the notion. Once they’d seen me covered in sand, sweat, and blackflies, they’d realize that I put my trousers on one leg at a time, the same as everyone else.”
“Not everyone else has made remarkable discoveries and written books about them,” I pointed out.
“You flatter me, Ms. Shepherd,” he said.
“Please,” I said, “call me Lori.”
“I will,” he responded, “if you’ll call me Badger.”
“I’d love to,” I said, relieved. “I keep forgetting that your real name is Stephen.”
“My father gave me my soubriquet,” he said. “If I had any brains, I’d have done the same for Steve. As it is, we’ve spent the past eight months opening each other’s mail.”
“Did you move in with your son eight months ago?” I asked. Though I was eager to gather details to share with Aunt Dimity, I would have used just about any excuse to postpone the moment when I would have to ask Badger how he’d come by the garnet bracelet.
“Other way round,” he replied. “Steve and his wife left their country house eight months ago to move in with me. My wife died, you see, and they were worried about leaving the old man on his own. They could have packed me off to a nursing home, but they came here instead. They created a bed-sitting-room for me on the ground floor, took over the upper stories, and installed Mr. and Mrs. Callender in the basement flat. Mrs. Callender looks after me when Steve and his wife are away. She is, to use a time-honored cliché, a gem.”
“Sounds ideal,” I said.
“Nothing on this earth is ideal,” said Badger, “but we rub along well enough. Steve and Penny moved to the country to raise their kiddies, but the chicks left the nest long ago. After years of commuting, they were only too glad to shed their great barn of a house and move back to town. It’s all worked out rather well, apart from my wife’s death, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” he said with a dignified nod. He frowned suddenly. “How on earth did we start talking about my living arrangements?” He pursed his lips, then nodded. “Ah, yes, Steve’s name and how much simpler life would be if I’d called him Tutankhamen.”
“Simpler for you, maybe,” I said, laughing, “but I think little Tut’s classmates would have given him a hard time.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed, smiling.
“Why did your father call you Badger?” I asked.
“Therein lies a tale,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “But before I tell it, I think you should tell me how you came to know Dimity Westwood.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, discomposed. “I should have told you about Dimity and me right away.”
“I distracted you,” said Badger. “Forgive me. I will not do so again. Please, proceed.”
I gave him as much of the truth as I could and steered it onto safer ground when it veered into the improbable. I said that I’d gotten to know Dimity Westwood through my mother. I explained that, after my mother died, her best friend and I had grown even closer. I then took a small but familiar detour from the path of total honesty and told him that, before she’d passed away, Dimity had asked me to find a man called Badger and to give him a message she’d wished she’d given him in the Rose Café.
Having successfully negotiated the trickiest bit of my story, I went on to tell him how Adam had taken me to Carrie’s Coffees, how Carrie had introduced me to Chocks, Ginger, and Fish, how the Battle of Britain boys had led me to Sarah Hanover, and how Sarah had made the final connection needed to bring me to Wilmington Square. I then paused to make sure that Badger was all right.
“An admirably succinct account of what could have been a convoluted tale,” he said. “Well done.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said, feeling as though I’d passed an exam without knowing I’d taken it.
“Now for the conclusion,” he said. “Go ahead. Deliver Dimity’s message. My heart won’t stop beating, I promise you. As my son is fond of telling people, I’m remarkably healthy for a man my age.”
I took a deep breath and told him about Dimity’s unwavering love for the doomed fighter pilot, Bobby MacLaren. I told Badger that she’d never married. I told him how much his friendship had meant to her and how grateful she’d been to him for his advice and his guidance. Finally, I withdrew the gold and garnet bracelet from my shoulder bag and held it out to him in the palm of my hand.
“Dimity kept your gift until her dying day,” I said. “The bracelet reminded her of a turning point in her life, a turning point you made possible. But it also reminded her of the regret she felt for the unhappiness she’d caused you.”
Badger took the bracelet from me and tilted it back and forth in his hand. The garnets glittered in the firelight like ruddy tears.
“It’s not a bracelet, you know,” he said softly. “It’s an armlet.” He tapped his biceps. “Meant to be worn here.”
I nodded, recalling that when I’d first seen the armlet, I’d thought it was too large to be a bracelet.
“I intended to tell Dimity that it was an armlet, but . . .” He shook his head. “I was a fool. I was the architect of my own unhappiness. I expected too much of her, and I couldn’t bear the disappointment when she failed to meet my absurd expectations.”
“What did you expect of her?” I asked.
“I expected Dimity to recognize me,” he said, smiling wryly. “I knew her the moment she walked into the Rose Café, but my face meant nothing to her.”
“Why would she recognize you?” I asked. “Had your photograph been in the newspapers?”
“No.” He closed his hand over the bracelet. “I’d been in her village.”
I gaped at him, thunderstruck.
“You’ve been to Finch?” I exclaimed.
“Oh, yes,” he replied. “I spent two weeks there one summer, between the wars. My father and I camped in the meadow behind Dimity’s cottage.”
“I live in Dimity’s cottage,” I told him, my mind reeling. “She left it to me when she died. My husband and I have lived there for over a decade. Our children are growing up there.”
“Then you’ll be familiar with the meadow,” he said. “I’ll wager it floods in the spring.”
“The lower part of it does,” I said, “the part closest to the brook.”
“It’s a lovely place to camp in the summer,” he said. “Protected from the north wind by the oak grove, carpeted with wildflowers, and provided by nature with a ready supply of fresh water.”
“It’s a very nice meadow,” I agreed. “My sons play cricket in it, and we have picnics in it, and I think my friend Emma has identified every wildflower that grows in it, but what I’d really like to know is: What brought you and your father to Finch?”
“A desire to delve into history,” Badger replied. “My father was an amateur archaeologist. He taught Latin at a London prep school, but in his spare time he immersed himself in the past. He dreamed of making a groundbreaking discovery—a Roman villa, an Iron Age hill fort, a medieval monastery—and he identified places where he thought such a site might exist. My summer holidays were spent traveling with him to those places and helping him to dig exploratory trenches. Hence, the name Badger.”
I smiled and urged him silently to go on.
“My father knew that there had once been a Roman villa near Finch,” he continued, “in a place called Hillfont Abbey. Are you familiar with it?”
“I am,” I said. “I’ve seen the remains of the Roman well in Hillfont’s main courtyard.”
“My father hoped to find further traces of the villa,” Badger informed me, “so off we went to Finch. Mr. and Mrs. Westwood were only too happy to let us pitch our tent in their meadow. I think they felt sorry for us because we lived in London, where fresh air was in short supply.”
“Didn’t your father explain to them why you were there?” I asked.
“My father never told anyone what we were doing,” said Badger. “He’d read about looters plundering archaeological sites, so he conducted his surveys and dug his test trenches quietly and unobtrusively. It’s common practice among archaeologists, but it made life rather difficult for a young boy in love.” The wry smile reappeared. “And I was quite desperately in love.”
“With Dimity?” I asked.
“Naturally,” he replied. “I saw her every day. She rode a black bicycle with a silver bell and a willow basket, and she seemed to me to be the most beautiful girl on earth. I was at an impressionable age, to be sure, but when I saw her years later, I still thought her beautiful.” He paused, as if to savor the memory, then went on. “My father cautioned me against speaking with her, and she was far too busy to speak with me, but she would give me a friendly wave whenever she noticed me. On those days, I walked on air.” He pulled his cardigan more closely around him and peered at the hearth. “Would you be so kind as to throw more coals on the fire, Lori? I find that I don’t cope with the cold as well now as I did when I camped under the stars with my father.”
I scooped a shovelful of coals from the scuttle beside the hearth, slid them carefully onto the glowing embers, used the bellows to ignite them, and returned to my chair.
“Did your father make any groundbreaking discoveries?” I asked.
“Just one,” said Badger, “but he didn’t make it until after I’d joined up. While I was dodging tanks in North Africa, he discovered an Anglo-Saxon hoard.”
I was glad that Adam had gone to the library. I was fairly sure his head would have exploded if he’d heard Badger say that his father had found an Anglo-Saxon hoard. I, on the other hand, was too ignorant to be more than vaguely impressed by the discovery.
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’m not really clear on what a hoard is.”
“It’s a collection of objects hidden in the ground or elsewhere,” Badger explained. “Hoards can contain coins, weapons, armor, gems—anything of value. Current theory holds that hoards were used as a kind of safe deposit box, to be emptied as needed. Hoarders sometimes failed to retrieve their possessions, however, which is why hoards continue to turn up, intact and untouched.”
“Your father must have been ecstatic when he found his hoard,” I said.
“He believed it to be the largest and most valuable hoard ever found in the British Isles,” said Badger. “Since he lacked the financial resources to conduct a proper excavation, he took one artifact from the site”—he opened his clasped hand to reveal the glittering armlet—“to show to those who would understand its significance.”
“Your father took the armlet from the hoard?” I asked quickly. “Not you?”
“Since I was in North Africa at the time,” said Badger, “it would have been rather difficult for me to remove anything from the hoard.”
“Yes, of course, how stupid of me,” I babbled, but my heart was singing. If Badger’s father had removed the armlet from the hoard, then Badger was in the clear. He hadn’t stolen the armlet from the British Museum or from anywhere else. His father might be considered a thief, but Badger couldn’t be accused of breaking the law. A great rush of relief flooded through me as I realized that I would never have to share my suspicions with Aunt Dimity.
“As I was saying,” Badger went on, “my father hoped to persuade an individual or an institution to provide him with the funds he required to excavate, record, and protect the hoard.”
“Was he successful?” I asked, refocusing my attention on the matter at hand.
“Quite the opposite,” Badger replied. “No one responded to his telephone calls or to his letters, and his unannounced visits ended before they began. His discovery was ill timed, you see. There was a war on. People had more important things to do than to listen to crackpot claims about buried treasure.”
“He must have been incredibly frustrated,” I said.
“He was, but not for long,” said Badger. “On the sixteenth of June, 1944, a V-1 rocket obliterated our house. Mother was out at the time, but Father was in his study, writing yet another letter. The rocket destroyed his notebooks, his maps, his life’s work, so perhaps it’s just as well that it killed him, too.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “It must have been terrible to lose your father when you were so far away.”
“It was terrible,” he acknowledged, “but it wasn’t wholly unexpected. If the Blitz taught us anything, it was that one didn’t have to be on the front line to die in battle. Anyone could be killed at any time, anywhere.”
“A harsh lesson,” I said.
“Wars tend to deliver harsh lessons,” he observed dryly. “My father would have been pleased to know that the armlet survived. It was rescued from the rubble by a scrupulously honest fireman, who handed it over to my mother. When I came home, she gave it to me.”
“And you gave it to Dimity,” I murmured. “You must have loved her very much.”
“It was a young man’s grand romantic gesture,” he said, “a prelude to the moment when I would reveal myself to Dimity as the boy who’d camped in her parents’ meadow. I knew at once that it was pointless. I’d seen the look before, in other eyes, the undying devotion to the dead. One grew accustomed to it after the war, but when I saw it in Dimity’s eyes, I felt
as if I’d been dealt a double blow. By failing to remember me, she’d erased me from her past. By failing to accept my love, she’d ruined my future—or so I thought. Like a young idiot, I stormed out of the café, too caught up in my own misery to consider hers.”
“Idiocy is the hallmark of youth,” I observed.
“It is indeed,” he agreed. “I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the gift she’d given me, though. It was a soft toy, a badger. I don’t know why I kept it, but I did. I still have it.”
He nodded at the bird’s-eye maple desk. I looked over my shoulder and saw the pointed, black-and-white face of a badger poking out from a jumble of books, papers, penholders, and notepads.
“Maybe the badger reminded you of a turning point in your life,” I suggested. “If Dimity hadn’t let you down, you might not have gone on to achieve such a high level of excellence in your field.”
“When one door closes, another opens,” he said, “if one tugs on it hard enough. And I did work very hard after the Rose Café debacle.”
“Dimity tried to find you after you stormed out of the café,” I told him, “but no one knew where you were. Where did you go?”
“Cambridge,” he said. “I gathered an armload of degrees and took them with me to Egypt, where I spent the next twenty-five years of my life. I met my wife there, and our children were born there.”
“Children?” I said curiously.
“Steve isn’t my only child,” he said. “I have two other sons and a daughter, and they’ve all turned out rather splendidly.” He laughed. “When I left the Rose Café, I was convinced that true happiness would be forever beyond my reach. How wrong I was! And how foolish I was to run away from someone who could have been a lifelong friend.”
Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure Page 19
