by Jenny Kane
Forty-Six
October 1st
Thea stared down Mill Grange’s driveway, but no cars, vans or camera trucks drove towards her.
The church floor tiles, on further investigation by the medieval curator at Truro museum, had proved to be of great interest, and so they were waiting for another expert on the subject to come up from London, and Phil wanted the moment captured on camera. That meant Shaun had had to stay in Cornwall until the interview was in the can. Yesterday afternoon, that still hadn’t happened.
Knowing she was wasting her time standing on the drive, willing a Landscape Treasures van to appear as if by magic, Thea headed to her office. If the TV crew didn’t make it, then Sam was poised to call Sophie’s bluff and accept the Treasure Hunters offer. She didn’t blame him, although it galled her that, despite how hard everyone at Guron had worked, Shaun might still miss out on digging the fortlet.
*
Sweat trickled down Sam’s back, as for the eighth time in the last eight seconds he’d questioned why he was allowing Bert to do this. Then his stomach rumbled and he remembered.
Mabel had left his lunch on the kitchen table, just like she had for everyone else. And just like everyone else, Sam had to go inside and fetch it. The only difference was that Sam would double back at top speed to eat outside, rather than sitting at the table.
This was the third day of the experiment, and only Sam’s sandwiches remained on the table. On the first day he hadn’t made it at all. Visions of fainting and embarrassing himself by falling over in the kitchen again had stopped his feet going more than toe-to-toe with the back door’s threshold. Tina had gone through agonies not going in and fetching his food for him; but Bert had drummed it into her that if Sam really did want a quick, short-distance, one-room cure, it wouldn’t be easy. It could even seem cruel.
*
Yesterday had been better. His need to eat lunch had made him more determined. Waiting until everyone else was done, and checking no one was watching him, Sam had dropped to his knees at the doorway and then, lying almost flat on the floor to avoid the sensation of falling, he’d slithered to the table. Once there, he’d knelt up, grabbed the packet of food, and slithered outside.
It had been ten minutes before he’d been calm enough to eat, but he’d done it. Sam knew, however, that it was not a technique that would look good in front of guests.
Sam checked his watch. It was almost two o’clock, and although Thea had assured him that at least Shaun would arrive at Mill Grange that day, even if the rest of Landscape Treasures had to admit defeat and stay in Cornwall, he was conspicuous by his absence. He hoped she was right. Guilt at keeping the Treasure Hunters offer open until the last minute, and potentially disappointing his friends, was gnawing at him, despite knowing it was the right thing to do for Mill Grange
‘Probably just as well they aren’t here anyway.’ Sam mumbled as the aroma of Mabel’s fresh-cooked chicken sandwiches on home-made bread taunted his nostrils. ‘Ajay and Andy would have a field day if they caught me on my belly on the kitchen floor, working an army-style assault mission just for a sarnie.’
Sam stared at his food. ‘Less than ten seconds. That’s all it will take. Less than ten seconds. The door will be open the whole time. I walked into Malvern House kitchen to prove a point to Father, so I can do it here for food.’
Sam’s stomach gave another nudge of encouragement. He needed to eat if he was going to last until the evening meal with or without their guests. And if he wanted to escape the kitchen before Mabel came in and fretted about not knowing how many people she’d be catering for that night, his time was running out.
Getting cross with himself for having to adopt such an unscientific approach to conquering his problem, Sam dived into the room at high speed, whipped the package off the table, spun on the soles of his boots and was back outside before he could register he’d ever been inside at all.
Crashing onto the nearest bench, Sam tore off the paper wrapping and sank his teeth into the delicious bread and meat.
‘You did it!’ Tina was by his side in seconds. ‘I was watching from the corner.’
‘That’s a bit sneaky.’ Sam spoke with a full mouth.
‘Yep.’ Tina gave a conspiratorial wink. ‘I was also making sure you didn’t sneak off to Sybil’s, the pub, or the village shop.’
‘And how did you imagine I was going to go inside any of those places, if I can’t walk into my own kitchen?’
‘Don’t be prickly – you could have asked someone to go in for you.’ Tina pointed to the sandwiches. ‘I’m also glad to see they’re sandwiches. Mabel was going to leave you soup. I’m not sure that would have survived such speed. You’d probably be wearing it down your front.’
‘These are delicious.’ Sam chewed as he listened to Tina.
‘You just went inside to fetch your lunch. And tomorrow you’ll do it again, and it’ll be easier, because you succeeded today. By Monday you’ll be able to walk inside rather than run, I’m sure of it.’ She hugged Sam as he ate. ‘Bert will be delighted. Mabel tells me he is feeling guilty for suggesting this.’
‘But it’s working.’
‘I know, but it’s a bit harsh. I felt bad eating my lunch at first, knowing you were hungry.’
‘No need.’ Sam took his last mouthful. ‘After all, I agreed to this, and Bert would never have suggested it if there was any medical reason why I shouldn’t do it.’
‘I know.’
‘Perhaps we should go and see him. I don’t like to think of Bert worrying, when he’s trying to help.’
‘We could, although shouldn’t we wait in case Shaun turns up.’ She checked her watch. ‘What time did you tell Shaun you’d email Treasure Hunters?’ Tina’s smile faded.
‘Midnight.’ Sam sighed. ‘You know I’m not happy about this don’t you, but…’
‘It’s okay. I understand completely.’ She patted Sam’s leg. ‘This place, getting it up and running, that’s what matters. Shaun and Thea understand that.’ Tina’s gaze shifted towards the walled garden. ‘And I would love that greenhouse to be restored to its former glory, so if Treasure Hunters do end up digging here, at least something good will come from it, as well as the endless TV marketing.’
Giving Tina a gentle kiss, Sam got up. ‘I’m going to find Bert and invite him over to dinner tonight. Time we stopped worrying about these television types and got on with things. Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
‘Come on then, I’ll go and see Tom and Helen, you find Thea and we’ll tell them we’re having a meeting.’
‘Aren’t we going to see Bert?’
‘We are. The meeting is going to be around a bonfire later, with jacket potatoes cooked in the flames, just like we did before I bought the house.’
‘That was after the fire, after the last time you came into the kitchen properly.’
‘So it was.’ Sam glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen door. ‘Yes. So it was.’
*
The bonfire roared as a whistling Bert threw on another old chair leg. Mabel, wrapped in a thick winter coat and startling pink bobble hat, was busy laying out old travel rugs under the trees, so that everyone had something dry to sit on. Trying, but not quite succeeding in wondering if he should email Treasure Hunters now and simply accept that Shaun wasn’t going to make it, Sam poked another potato wrapped in foil into the flames as Thea and Helen came out of the kitchen with trays of bread, butter and crispy bacon.
‘That smells incredible.’ Tom looked on in amazement. ‘If I’d known this sort of thing happened at work meetings here, I’d have been picketing the gate until you let me in long ago.’ He surveyed the scene. ‘Dylan would love this.’
Sam smiled. ‘He could come. The spuds won’t be ready for half an hour yet if you want to fetch him.’
‘That’s kind, but his mother is difficult about access as it is. I don’t want to push my luck by turning up unannounced.’
Realising he’d hardl
y asked Tom about his private life, Sam turned a potato over with a long stick. ‘Then we shall do this again when he is here.’
Taken aback, Tom muttered his thanks before asking if he could help.
‘You most certainly can.’ A voice from the side of the house boomed across the garden. ‘You can fetch another three cans of beer and chuck some more potatoes on the fire.’
‘Shaun!’ Thea ran towards her boyfriend. ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’
‘Same place as these two.’ Shaun pointed to where the AA were rounding the corner of the house into the gardens.
Sam and Tina ran to where Thea was half hugging, and half telling off Shaun.
‘I’m sorry it’s so late.’
‘I don’t care what time it is, mate.’ Sam clapped Shaun on the back as he shook Ajay and Andy by the hand. ‘Just tell me, once and for all, are you guys going to be filming this place or not?’
Forty-Seven
October 2nd
Thea and Tina watched as Ajay walked at a painfully slow pace, up and down, holding the sophisticated machinery just above the ground. It was like witnessing an elaborate magic trick. As Andy downloaded the first set of readings from Ajay’s survey, they popped up onto the laptop screen before him in a haze of lines and smudges.
Determined to make the most of the one day of funding that Phil had said the geophysics team could have, they were concentrating on the area of the garden Thea and Helen believed to conceal a later extension to the fortlet’s structure.
Studying the growing number of results on the screen, Thea knew that if they were right, it would make the Upwich fortlet bigger than any previously found in the south-west. If they were wrong, although she’d be embarrassed, they would at least know the boundaries of the site, and would quite possibly come away with an underground plan of how the Victorians had terraced the garden.
‘What time are you expecting the cameras?’ Helen asked Thea, as Ajay turned direction with regimented precision, and started to walk again.
‘About ten apparently. Keen to be a star?’
‘Actually, I think it’s best I don’t appear. I’m not sure how my bosses will react to seeing me on screen when I’m supposed to be on holiday. They might think I’m moonlighting.’
‘But you’re on holiday. We aren’t paying you, although we ought to be, the amount of hard work you’ve put in here.’
‘I wasn’t touting for money, just playing cautious. I don’t think Tom is keen to appear on screen either.’
‘Really?’ Thea kept her eyes on the survey team. ‘I think Phil’s expecting Shaun to interview Tom about his work here.’
‘But he hasn’t started work here yet, not beyond preparing for the first guests on Monday and sorting the equipment lists. Anyway, there may not be any guests in the first group who want to train in archaeology.’
Thea smiled. ‘I know Tom has one guest for the first week, keen to stay on site the whole time.’
‘Really?’
‘Woody has booked in as a proper guest. The poor guy has the archaeology bug bad.’
Helen laughed. ‘That’s great. He’s lovely. Be nice for Tom to have a friendly face on Monday as well.’
‘He’s okay, isn’t he? Tom, I mean.’
‘A bit down about his son. Seems his ex doesn’t always play ball with access.’
Thea tilted her head on one side. ‘You like him, don’t you?’
Instantly bright red, Helen stared at her feet. ‘I just happen to have overheard a conversation Tom was having on the phone and when I asked if he was alright, he told me, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t ask you how you knew about his ex-wife. I asked if you fancied him.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous – what do I know about men with children? Or men without children for that matter?’
‘As little as the rest of us I imagine.’
‘The thing is, Thea…’ Helen tugged a spiral of hair, which leapt back into place as soon as she let it go ‘… I don’t know if I like him or not. And I can’t imagine he’d like me.’
‘Would you like him to?’
Helen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been on my own so long.’
‘But you’ve reached the point in your life when you’d like someone to come home to.’ Thea spoke gently, knowing this was a big deal for Helen. Always so together and independent, it must be disorientating to suddenly question whether she wanted to be single forever.
‘Maybe it’s something to do with being nearly forty. I’m probably having a midlife crisis.’
‘Or you could be human like the rest of us, and just need a cuddle sometimes.’
‘There’s that as well.’ Helen extracted some of the mud buried under her fingernails.
Resting on the ranging rod she’d been positioning to show the geophysics boys where she guessed the extended area of the fortlet might reach to, Thea said, ‘I know I’ve asked this before, but things are okay in Bath aren’t they?’
‘I’m drowning in work and—’ Helen waved an arm around her ‘—I miss this sort of work far more than I realised.’
‘I never dreamt they wouldn’t replace me. Why didn’t you tell me at the time?’
‘Because you’d have blamed yourself. Your coming here was the best move for you.’
Thea gave her friend a hug. ‘Do you think it could be the best move for you too?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Sam, Tina, Shaun and I had a chat after the bonfire last night. We wondered if you’d like to stay. We weren’t going to mention it until after the filming, but as the subject has come up, I thought I’d let you know what’s in the air. Give you time to think.’
‘Stay here?’ Helen gazed across the excavation and up at the house.
‘The wages wouldn’t be anything like as good, and the dig won’t last forever, but the writing of reports, articles and so on will. As will looking after the site in the future so visitors can enjoy it.’
‘I thought you were going to do that.’
‘I was, and will if you want to go back to the Baths – which I’d totally understand by the way. But there is more than enough work involved in managing the house for me. And with Tina doing the accounts and housekeeping, and Sam running the workshops and overseeing everything, we’ll need to employ more help eventually.’
‘Does Tom know about this?’
‘No. It didn’t seem fair to mention it as he is only on a four-month contract. After all, once the dig is complete, we won’t have anything for him to do.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The techniques could still be taught. You could create a false find site. An area in which to learn the skills, then use local sites to practise on. If Sam connects with local archaeology trusts and offers free skilled labour, he’d be very popular. It would give the guests here a chance for social interaction beyond Mill Grange too.’
Thea rammed the ranging rod home. ‘That’s brilliant. Sam will certainly be interested in learning how that could be arranged.’
Helen frowned. ‘Don’t say anything to Tom though. I’d hate to raise his hopes, especially as he’ll be keen to stay near his son.’
‘And you’d hate to disappoint him.’
The memory of Tom’s face when she’d told him she was only staying a few weeks flitted through her mind. ‘I hate to disappoint anyone.’
*
The sound of three large Landscape Treasures vans, one towing the porta-shed of tools, driving their awkward way up the drive to Mill Grange, was loud enough to wake the dead.
Tina and Sam ran from where they were stacking the brand-new wheelbarrows and shovels in the stable block, in time to see Shaun and Thea emerging from the house with equal speed.
Shaun didn’t have time to open his mouth to ask what had kept them before Phil was gathering the two cameramen, Hilda the make-up lady, a runner, the sound man, and the editor; issuing very firm instructions.
�
�Ladies and gentlemen, we have three and a bit days. That’s it. No extensions as Mill Grange opens on October 5th, so we need to be gone by then. We’re up against the clock on a small dig site. With the exception of Shaun, we are not doing the digging in-house. Mill Grange’s resident archaeologists are doing that. The focus will be on how the dig is going to be used as a form of therapy for recovering military personnel, and how this, a Roman military installation, is the perfect place for that.
‘Okay, lecture over! Shaun, over to you.’
Tina was feeling breathless just watching as Phil finished his speech and Shaun took over.
‘Thanks to all of you for giving up your precious time off to help us. So, let me introduce Sam and Tina; they own the house and grounds. It is Tina you go to with inside enquiries and Sam for outside. Thea and I will work on the dig with our colleagues Helen and Tom, who are up by the fortlet looking at the AA’s survey results.
‘There is a bathroom just inside the back door to the house, and if you go along the corridor there, you’ll reach the kitchen, where the fabulous Mabel will provide lunch on a rolling basis between twelve and two.’
Shaun turned to Phil. ‘Do you want to use the trucks for make-up, office et cetera, or would you like to go inside?’
‘We’ll stick to the vans. Takes less time.’ Phil grabbed his holdall and pointed across the garden. ‘Right then, it’s taken us long enough to get here, so let’s go up to the site and get on with it.’ He suddenly stopped. ‘Oh and can someone find a Christmas tree from somewhere please? A real one. With decorations.’
Forty-Eight
October 2nd
From the moment the Landscape Treasures team arrived, Tina felt as if life was being lived in fast forward. She didn’t think she’d ever walked so fast, or for so long, around such a small patch of ground in her life. Moving back and forth from the house and excavation, Tina was acting as runner, guide, coffee and tea dispenser and Mabel’s co-sandwich producer. It was a shock to realise she was enjoying every second. Her usual shy reserve was lost in her fascination with what was happening. Watching Thea talk Shaun through the work already done in front of the camera, Tina felt the weight of the last few weeks lift from her shoulders.
