by Jenni Mills
‘You OK?’ I haul on the handbrake outside Bella Vista.
Frannie stares straight ahead, brows knitted.
‘I said, are you OK?’
‘What have you brought me here for?’
‘So you can go to bed.’
‘I don’t want to go to bed.’ There’s a petulant droop to her mouth. ‘Too buggerin’ early.’
‘Come on, let’s get you out of the car.’
‘India, I’m not a bloomin’ parcel. I’m perfectly capable of getting myself out.’ She’s adopted that posh tone she puts on when she wants to be bloody-minded.
‘Please yourself.’
‘I will.’ Frannie waggles the catch on the car door. ‘Won’t open.’
‘That’s not the way. Stop messing about. Use the handle.’
‘Locked.’
‘It’s not locked.’
Now she’s wrestling with the seatbelt. ‘I’m trapped!
Just for a second, a feeling of utter panic seizes me. I’m close to tears: frustration, grief, despair, the sheer bloody unfairness of having to watch the person you love most in the world start to lose it, all vying for the honour of making me bawl.
But I won’t give way.
Pressing my nails hard into my palm to stop myself screaming, I reach across and press the button to release her.
While I’m boiling the kettle for her hot-water bottle, Frannie comes into the kitchen wearing her nightie inside out, one strap slipping off a bony, stooped shoulder.
‘You’ll catch your death. Get into bed, or put your dressing-gown on. And your other slippers.’ Her feet are purple. Have I noticed before how scrawny her arms have become, flesh hanging in loose, empty pouches?
She reaches out a swollen-knuckled paw and touches my face. ‘Sorry. Don’t mean to be a trouble.’
‘You’re not a trouble.’ I catch her hand before she withdraws it. It feels like a piece of raw chicken out of the fridge. I squeeze it helplessly, not knowing what else to do. ‘You’re no trouble at all, you old bat.’
She smiles up at me, her eyes showing a ghost of their familiar twinkle. Then she turns and shuffles out of the kitchen. The glow of the lamp in her bedroom backlights her, turning her into a bent shadowy thing crossing the hallway.
Suddenly I recognize what’s been bothering me. Frannie, silhouetted against the sky, stumping along the top of the bank. Going widdershins round the circle, anti-clockwise. She never goes widdershins. Always sunwise, girl. You follows the light. Bad luck else.
Steve’s open eyes…
I will not think about that.
Keiller’s papers are kept in the curator’s old room, tucked under the eaves above the stableyard museum, in a series of box files. Eventually all the Keiller material will be moved to the main offices, but the curator, a world expert on obscure bits of Neolithic pottery that look like digestive biscuit to me, is too busy cataloguing finds from a dig at Stonehenge.
‘There you are,’ says Michael, wheeling a library stool into place. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be this keen.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Thought I should start soonest.’ It’s the morning after the film show, ten minutes short of nine, and my first opportunity to tackle the job of ordering the archive since I’m not on shift in the caf today. The sun is already bright outside the window at the end, but its leaching light doesn’t penetrate the room. Even with the radiators on, the attic office is freezing.
‘Top shelf, photo albums,’ explains Michael. ‘Organized, possibly, by AK himself.’ Bound in brown morocco, the year in gold lettering on their spines. ‘Next shelf down, correspondence–letters received and flimsy copies of letters he sent. Not so organized, I’m afraid, and certainly not complete. His executors threw away anything they didn’t consider strictly relevant to the archaeology.’
‘So nothing juicy in there?’
‘One or two hints, maybe. Haven’t read them all’ Michael scoops up an armful of files and descends with them. ‘The really spicy stuff went on the bonfire. Legend has it that W. E. V. Young–the museum’s first curator–scattered the ashes on the Thames.’
‘Makes it sound like there was something frightfully scandalous.’
‘Well, there were four wives and God knows how many mistresses. He put it about a bit, did old AK. But the big secret–not very well kept, obviously, or we wouldn’t know about it–is supposed to be correspondence relating to what may or may not have been ritual sex magic’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Michael grins wickedly as he steps onto the library stool again. ‘Put it another way, he was a bit kinky. According to the diary of a reputable lady novelist, he asked her to step into a large wicker basket wearing nothing but a rubber mackintosh so he could prod her with an umbrella through the gaps.’
‘The old goat. Did she oblige?’
Michael shakes his head, dumping another armful of box files on the table. Suddenly this is starting to look like a harder task than I’d expected. ‘Which box is which? They don’t seem to be labelled.’
‘Told you they needed organizing.’
I open a box at random. It’s stuffed to the brim with flimsy blue sheets of paper.
‘Those are copies of the letters he wrote. After dinner he’d retire with a brandy snifter and dictate into the small hours. He was a prolific correspondent, employed several secretaries to transcribe. You never know, you might be looking at something your grandmother typed.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your grandmother worked at the Manor.’
I stare at him. ‘Where on earth did you get that from?’
‘She must have told you,’ says Michael, reprovingly, as if holding me to account for all the neglectful young people who never listen to what their elders tell them. He leans over my shoulder and opens one of the photo albums. ‘Lilian reminded me last week, after you’d left the office. There’s hardly anyone left alive who knew him, so we’re keen to get memories on tape. She’s in here somewhere…’
As he turns the pages, separated by leaves of tissue paper, there are glimpses of men in Panama hats and plus-fours, lean women in droopy skirts. ‘We had a Memories of Avebury day last spring, and I invited the old dears who’d lived in the village all their lives to come and talk about it. Where is the bloody thing? We blew up copies of some of the pictures in the albums…There…’ he lays the album in front of me ‘…and asked people if they could tell us who was in them. Your grandmother didn’t come, but one of the other old ladies identified her…’ He points to a group photograph that takes up most of the page. ‘She told us that was Frances Robinson, who’d done secretarial work at the Manor, and that she’d come back recently to live in Trusloe. Lilian went to see your gran, but couldn’t get a useful word out of her, unfortunately–bless the poor old love, Lilian thought she seemed confused by all the questions. If there’s any chance of you getting her to talk…’
Confused? Or simply being Frannie, keeping her mouth shut? In the picture three women, seated on wooden crates, flank a man who is leaning forward and smiling at the camera. Behind, there is a line of men, standing, most in waistcoats and cloth caps, but the younger ones at the end of the row are in sports jackets.
‘Nineteen thirty-eight,’ says Michael. ‘They’re excavating the southwestern quadrant of the stone circle. Keiller in the middle, of course, with Doris Chapman on his right, soon to become the third Mrs K. Piggott and Cromley at either end of the back row, both cutting their teeth as archaeologists with him. Piggott, as you know, went on to excavate at Avebury long after Keiller was gone–pity about Cromley, though, great loss to archaeology. Keiller thought a lot of his abilities.’
These are people I’m not interested in. Impatient, I pull the album towards me to see better. ‘So which…?’
Michael’s manicured fingernail moves along the photo to the slight figure at the end of the front row, shielding her eyes against the sun. ‘Would you say that was your grandmother?’
She look
s shy, younger than the other two women. Although there’s a smile on her face, she seems more solemn than the rest. ‘I don’t know,’ I say slowly, disguising my mounting excitement. ‘Might be Frannie…’ The age looks right, the set of her mouth. ‘To be honest, Michael, couldn’t say one way or the other. Who was it reckoned her to be my gran?’
‘I forget her name. Used to live in a bungalow in Berwick Bassett.’ He lays the tissue paper carefully over the photo, and shuts the album. ‘She worked for Keiller too. Not one of the women in the picture. She was a housemaid.’
After Michael has gone downstairs, I open the brown leather album again and leaf through it, looking for the photo. Archaeologists today wear funny hats, walking boots and woolly jumpers; in most of these pictures Keiller is in suit and tie and golf shoes. He was fabulously rich, the heir to a marmalade fortune, a playboy who loved fast cars and the ski slopes. A good-looking man, too: wide, sexy mouth, oddly haunted eyes.
No wonder Frannie–if it was Frannie–looked awkward in front of the camera. As well as being hardly out of school–fifteen? Sixteen?–she wasn’t from anything like the same background or class. How did she manage to talk her way into a job on the excavation? I try to remember what else I’ve gleaned about Keiller since I’ve been in Avebury. He was an egalitarian employer, and at least one of his wives worked alongside him as a professional archaeologist. Until he divorced her, that is, and moved on to the next Mrs K.
I stare at the photo. No, it can’t be Frannie. She’d have said something.
But…the letter hidden in her armchair. Anyone with eyes in their head at the Manor knew what was going on.
I pick up one of the box files, and set to work.
As well as Keiller’s letters, the boxes also contain, in no particular order, correspondence from other archaeologists, friends, tradesmen and the occasional nutter. Keiller seems to have replied to everyone, even the weirdos. Did Frannie really type some of these letters? And what else might she have done for the Great Man? Wear a mask and cast a pentangle, like something in sixties Technicolor starring Christopher Lee?
The room is darker. Outside, the sun has disappeared behind heavy cloud. Almost two hours have passed. I stand up to stretch, wondering if I can be bothered to go downstairs to the staff kitchen to warm up. There are several large cardboard boxes in a stack by the door, waiting to be transferred to the main storeroom. I kneel down to lift the lid of one, catching a glimpse of about a billion polythene bags containing tiny fragments of yellowish-white honeycomb, then scramble guiltily to my feet as footsteps rap on the stairs.
Michael.
‘I came to see how you were getting on.’ There’s a hint of reproach in his voice. ‘That’s animal bone from Windmill Hill, by the way.’
‘Sorry. I…was curious.’
‘Thought for a moment you were after our skeletons too. Had another missive this morning from those bloody Druids. Want a coffee? Kettle’s already on.’ I follow him downstairs. ‘Are there skeletons in the cardboard boxes?’
‘Lord, no. Not human, anyway. We only keep Charlie in this building, in his glass case, and I’m sure the Druids aren’t fussed by the dog and the goat on display. All the rest are in secure storage.’ He puts his head round the door into the gallery where one of the volunteers is manning the till. ‘Chris? Fancy a cuppa? Don’t know anyone who’d do a couple of months part-time as assistant warden, do you?’
‘Why won’t you take me on?’ I ask, as Michael returns to the kitchen and sets out a line of mugs.
‘India, you are a splendid woman of many talents but you don’t have the right qualifications. I don’t mind letting you do the odd day, but I’d prefer someone with a grasp of landscape archaeology.’ He dispenses instant coffee into the mugs with unnerving precision. Every spoonful probably has the exact same number of granules. ‘Besides, I understand you’re now archaeological consultant to a film crew.’
This is news to me. I’d been half expecting to hear nothing more from Overview TV. And, oh, shit, if Michael knows–
‘Don’t look so worried.’ Michael clamps the lid onto the coffee jar and swings round to face me, but I can’t look him in the eye. ‘Daniel Porteus called me this morning and asked me to tell you he’d be in touch. He wants you to go to London for some meeting next week. And, no, I didn’t tell them your main function for the National Trust was making cappuccinos. Indeed, I told them on the phone not ten minutes ago that you were labouring in the archive.’
‘Thanks.’ With some difficulty, I meet his eyes, and discover only amusement.
‘We’ve all at some point embellished our CVs. By the way, I like your idea of putting up another stone. Don’t look smug, though, you aren’t the first to have it–nobody’s yet succeeded in persuading a broadcaster to part with enough money to do it. Anyway, how are you getting on with the letters?’
‘Slowly’ I cast around for milk. ‘I can’t help reading them. Hey, you know this woman who says my grandmother used to work at the Manor?’
‘Said,’ says Michael. ‘She died in December. She was something like ninety, mind.’
Damn. ‘Anyone else left who was around then?’
‘That’s what the TV people wanted to know. Gave them all the names I had, but everyone I could think of was at last night’s meeting. Most of them were tots in the thirties. It’s a pity your gran is so confused because, by my reckoning, she’s the last surviving person who worked at the Manor then.’
At home, Frannie is ensconced in her favourite armchair, watching Flog It!.
‘Why do you find it so fascinating?’ I’ve asked her this more than once.
‘All this stuff,’ she says. ‘People’s treasures. Never think it was worth so much, would you? I live in hope, Indy. One day there’ll be something come up and I’ll think, Ooh, blow me down and bugger, I got one of those.’
On the television, someone’s holding up a truly hideous pottery figurine, turning it this way and that so the camera takes in every porcelain dimple and simper.
‘You know these television people want to make a film about Alexander Keiller? I’ve spent the whole morning in the archive sorting out his letters. Michael at the National Trust says you used to be one of AK’s secretaries.’
Frannie rearranges her features to look more than ever like she should be serving drinks on a budget airline, face utterly bland and unreadable. Strikes me you can hide a lot of dirt in wrinkles. ‘How’s he reckon he knows that?’
‘Somebody else who used to work at the Manor.’
‘That’d be the interfering old bitch below stairs. Dead now.’
Well, knock me down with the duty-free trolley. ‘So you did? Work for the Great Man as a secretary?’
‘Before the war I did, yes.’
‘You never told me. What was he like?’
‘You never asked. ‘Sides, told you, I prefer not to ‘member those times. Bad for everyone.’ She heaves herself out of the armchair. ‘Thing about diggin’ up the past, like Mr Keiller did, don’t really know what you’m turning over with your spade, do you?’
‘Where are you going? Your programme’s not finished.’
‘Call of nature.’ She shuffles out of the room. ‘You wait till you’re my age. Getting old’s no fun. No fun at all’
I should wait till tonight, after she’s gone to bed, but I can’t. As the loo door closes, I’m across the room, hand diving down the side of her armchair.
My fingers come up empty. The letter has gone.
CHAPTER 10
1938
There’s a man on Flog It! with a lovely Victorian cow-creamer. Black Jackfield lustre glaze, he says, little gilt flowers painted on its hide. It has a lid on the top, where you fill it, and the tail curls into a handle so you can lift her up by the arse end and pour the cream out of her mouth. Mr Keiller had one just like it. No, I’m wrong. Our mam had one just like it, and Mr Keiller wanted to buy it off her, but she wouldn’t sell. Said it had belonged to her mother. I wonder wh
at became of it. We never used it. It sat on the Welsh dresser with the Royal Albert.
Mr Keiller collected them. They had a whole room to themselves at the Manor. He had six hundred and sixty-six. Can’t remember why I know how many. I surely to goodness didn’t count the blasted things while I was dusting them. He was particular about who was allowed to touch them, wouldn’t let the housemaid do it, said she had fumbly fingers and he preferred me, even though I was secretarial. I washed them once, with him stood over me while I did it. Made me uncomfortable. I told him to get out a tea-towel and dry them himself, if he didn’t trust me, and that made him laugh.
Six hundred and sixty-six. The number of the Beast. Did he always keep just six hundred and sixty-six, and have to sell one every time he bought one? No wonder some in the village said he was the devil incarnate.
My mam used to say I had the devil in me. She didn’t know the half of it.
My feet were dragging when I crossed the road after getting off the bus. I was about done in. Mam was in the kitchen. The wireless was on, but you could hardly hear it because the Frigidaire was making a terrible racket, somewhere between a wheeze and a beehive-sized hum. It couldn’t cope with the heat when Mam was baking.
‘Any luck?’ she said, without looking up from rolling pastry.
‘No. They all said I was too young.’
I wanted a secretarial job. I couldn’t go on working with Mam and Dad in the guesthouse. Not that it was going to be a guesthouse much longer. Heap of rubble was next on the agenda. Mr Keiller was our landlord, and Mr Keiller wanted us out, so he could knock the place down and put up more of his old stones.
Wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the day he came to call to try to persuade Mam to part with her cow-creamer that he’d heard about from one of his friends who’d stayed with us. Mam said ever so polite she wouldn’t sell, but she was happy to show it to him. She took him into the front parlour where it stood on the dresser, and Mr Keiller spotted the big stone that made the lintel over our fireplace.
