by Jenni Mills
Dr Martin Ekwall,
A Turning Circle: The Ritual Year at Avebury,
Hackpen Press
CHAPTER 29
1941
Mam was terrible thin when I went to see her and Dad in Devizes. I’d taken her eggs from the hens at the Lodge, and a bit of extra butter I’d laid hands on.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ she said, with a weak smile. ‘Keep ‘em for yourself–you’re a growing girl, Frances, you need ‘em more ‘n me.’
‘I should have,’ I said. ‘Look at you, Mam. I swear there’s less of you every time I come. Dad working you too hard, is he?’
‘It’s only the Change,’ she said. ‘Some women get fat, some thin down. I’m one of the scrawny old birds.’
She was barely thirty-nine. But I didn’t understand then–or didn’t want to know–how young that was for the menopause. It was a relief to have something to explain the way she looked.
‘How’s Davey?’ she asked. ‘And the village?’ We’d finished Saturday tea and I was at the kitchen table while Mam dried the crocks. She wouldn’t let me help, said I was a guest now, not a skivvy.
‘Oh, Davey’s doing fine,’ I said. Letters came regular from Scotland, where he was in the thick of his navigation training. ‘But I don’t see much of anyone in Avebury. I’m hardly there, working long hours at the hospital. I’m thinking maybe I should find a room in Swindon. It’d be easier all round.’ Especially now Davey was gone. There was no one to drive me home if I missed the last bus.
‘Oh, don’t do that,’ said Mam. Her hand slipped, and a couple of spoons dropped with a clatter on the draining-board. ‘I’d worry terrible about you in the air raids.’
‘Swindon hasn’t had much. I’d be safe as…’ Well, no one could say houses were safe any more. But there’d been hardly any bombing there. Bristol was getting it bad night after night, and we all knew what was happening to London, but there was probably as much chance of a bomb landing on me in Avebury as there was in Swindon. More, maybe–the base at Yatesbury was only a mile or two off, and the countryside was full of dozens of little out-of-the-way airfields, as well as Starfish and Q-sites begging the bombers to dump on them. Still, I wasn’t going to explain that to Mam: she worried enough as it was. I took out my cigarettes and looked round for an ashtray.
Mam wrinkled her nose. ‘You want to do that, you go out and join your dad in the garden.’ She peered out of the window at Dad, pink and perspiring, digging over the trench ready to sow his runner beans. The sky was full of massing grey clouds. She hung the tea-towel on the back of a chair and sat down with a sigh. ‘I could do with closing my eyes for five minutes anyway. Have to put up with it in the shop, I suppose, but the smoke makes me sick as a dog, these days.’
Garden was hardly the word for the miserable sunless patch that lay behind the tobacconist’s shop. Dad had done his best and dug up the lawn for a few rows of veg and some raspberry canes but, what with his tool shed and the Anderson shelter, there wasn’t room for much. All the same, he spent what time he could out there, trying to coax green treasure out of the exhausted soil.
‘Needs a bag or two of manure from the Manor,’ he said, straightening up as I came out with my cigarette in my mouth like Bette Davis. ‘Couldn’t get your Mr K to drop some off, could you?’
The idea of Mr Keiller loading sacks of manure onto the back seat of his posh car was absurd enough to make me laugh, which was what Dad intended. ‘No horses at the Manor now,’ I said. ‘If Davey was still here, I bet he could wheedle some from the stables where he used to work.’
‘You heard from him yet?’ asked Dad.
He’d sent me a poem, yesterday. A letter the day before that. And his photo, in his new air-crew uniform, lit like a glamour boy off the films: must’ve had it taken special. He’d been gone hardly a fortnight.
‘He’s a bit homesick,’ I said. ‘Scotland’s a long way…’
Dad gave me one of those looks. He never said much, Dad, but he could convey paragraphs in a look. This look said: Careful what you’re doing, girl. He’d heard what I hadn’t said: Scotland’s a long way, but not far enough. I knew I shouldn’t have given Davey encouragement, that night after the Starfish, but I couldn’t bring myself to write and dash his hopes all over again. All I could hope was that he would find himself a nice Scottish girl. I wanted Davey to be happy, but I wasn’t the one to make him that way, and I didn’t know how to tell him so. When he said he’d be looking for a posting south as soon as he was trained, I wrote back telling him that would be lovely, couldn’t wait. Thinking to myself, the real action was along the east coast. That’s where they’d send him, wouldn’t they? And so he might be killed, and wouldn’t it be better for him to die thinking I loved him back?
‘I was lucky with your mother,’ was all Dad said.
Waiting at the bus stop, it started to pour. I’d forgotten my umbrella. While I was struggling to hold my coat over my head, a black car came hushing through the puddles. It stopped twenty or so feet beyond me, and came reversing back.
‘Get in before you drown.’ Mr Keiller leaned across to open the passenger door.
He was in his police uniform. I sank into the leather seat, relishing the smell of cigarettes and hair oil.
‘Where’ve you been hiding yourself, Heartbreaker?’ he said. ‘Haven’t seen you for months.’
‘The hospital keeps me busy, sir.’
‘Not at weekends, surely. Come over to the Manor tomorrow afternoon. I’ve invited some chaps from the convalescent home. Delightful young men, all Scottish, pining for the sight of a pretty face.’ No ‘would you like’ or ‘please’ about it. Mr Keiller always assumed everyone would fall in with his ideas. ‘Put on a nice frock and turn up about half past three. Damn…’
Ahead, a soldier had stepped out into the road and was waving us to stop, to let a convoy of trucks out of the army barracks on the outskirts of town. Mr Keiller slowed the car and took out his battered old cigarette case. He could’ve afforded a brand new solid silver one but he always kept his Russian cigarettes in that old tin with the engraving worn right off. ‘Smoke, Heartbreaker? We’ll be crawling behind them for miles. Tell you what, let’s take the pretty way’ He dropped the case in my lap, swung the wheel into a U-turn and we roared back the way we’d come, then branched off past the sports ground. It was a good straight road and Mr Keiller took it fast, but I felt completely safe as I lit cigarettes for both of us. Flat fields showing the green of young barley flashed past. We crossed the canal, speeding through tiny hamlets with the steep scarp of the Downs rising to our left, past isolated airfields, hangars turfed like long barrows, planes hidden under camouflage. There used to be a white horse carved into the chalk up there but, like the one at Hackpen, he’d been allowed to grow over in case the bombers used him as a landmark.
I sneaked a glance at Mr Keiller. His profile was as clean carved as ever, but his eyes, fixed on the road spooling out under our wheels, looked tired. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was for being young, that sometimes you behaved a certain way because you didn’t know better, or thought it was expected of you.
Perhaps he sensed me looking; he turned his head and grinned. ‘Speed doesn’t bother you, Miss Robinson?’
‘The faster the better,’ I said. Ahead of us, a plane was banking to make its approach to the airfield at Alton Barnes.
‘Training flight, I expect,’ said Mr Keiller. ‘Yes, it’s an Avro. I took one of those up, in ‘thirty-six. He’s coming in a bit low.’ The plane was dipping towards the field at right angles to the road. Mr Keiller pressed the accelerator down hard and the car leaped forward. ‘We’ll give him a run for his money’ We raced along the road on what seemed a collision course with the little biplane. Even I could tell it was far lower than it should have been. There was a smile on Mr Keiller’s lips as he gunned the car along the road. ‘Fast enough, Heartbreaker?’
I could hear the plane, an angry wasp. It was wobbling as it made its approach, t
he wings dipping and lifting as the pilot fought to keep it on line. Perhaps this was his first solo. Surely Mr Keiller would ease off the accelerator–the plane was low enough to catch the car with its undercarriage. But, no, he pushed the throttle even harder. The plane was huge now, bearing down on the car from our left. The wheels seemed level with my window. Raindrops streamed off the cockpit glass. I could see the pilot behind it, his goggles insect eyes under his leather helmet. Impossible to see an expression but I could sense panic in the movements of his head as he wrestled with the controls. I closed my eyes. The buzzing turned to thunder.
And then the thunder rolled away. I opened my eyes, let out my breath, and turned in my seat in time to see the plane cross the road behind us, wings swaying. He came down in the field on the other side of the road, his wheels bouncing right off the ground and the wings tilting alarmingly, a flock of sheep scattering before him, but somehow he brought the plane to a halt safely. There were at least two hedges between him and the airstrip.
‘That’ll teach him to keep his nose up,’ said Mr Keiller, easing off the accelerator. And much as I’m enjoying it, you can let go my arm now, Heartbreaker.’
I wanted to impress him the next afternoon so I put on my favourite frock, the one I went dancing in, red polka dots on a cream background. Was it too formal for tea? But I didn’t want to wear blouse and skirt, or either of my flowery summer dresses. The horse-chestnut candles were like gnawed corncobs now, and June not far off, but the sky hadn’t got the message: the grey clouds were as heavy-bellied as fat ewes in February. So I put on the red polka dots–it was the Manor, after all, where they dressed like film stars–and a pair of red shoes I’d bought off one of the nurses at the hospital, to replace the ones I’d lost at the Starfish, then set out with my umbrella.
The tea party was held in the Great Hall, the biggest room in the Manor. Seven or eight young men in RAF uniform, their faces white and fragile, were sitting uneasily on sofas and dining chairs; a couple of crutches were propped against the wall. Mr Keiller was standing by the vast fireplace, china cup and saucer in his hand, holding forth about the visit of Queen Anne who’d had her dinner there hundreds of years ago. The young men were trying to look fascinated. There was no sign of Mrs Keiller.
‘Heartbreaker! A sight for sore eyes,’ said Mr K, as I came in. ‘You’ve put your glad rags on. I’m sure these young chaps will appreciate it. Help yourself to a scone.’ There was a teapot and crockery laid out on the dining-table, and two platters of scones, with dishes of jam. I filled a cup and plate for myself and sat down on the edge of one of the settees next to a young man who was biting his lip nervously.
‘Aren’t you having a scone?’ I said cheerfully to him. He shook his head. I glanced down, and saw metal gleaming below his trouser turn-up: an artificial foot. ‘Let me bring you one. They’re delicious.’
‘Honest, I don’t want one,’ he said, in a Glaswegian accent. He was a tall, solid lad, with strong features and thick dark hair swept back from a widow’s peak. ‘But you could fetch one for my pal.’ Beyond him sat a blond boy with bandaged hands. He leaned forward and smiled at me.
‘Jam?’ I asked, putting my cup down on the side table–the tea was almost cold anyway.
‘Just a bit o’ marg.’
It was butter, of course, from one of the local farms. I halved two scones and spread a good thick layer on them. The dark-haired Glaswegian mouthed knife, and mimed cutting something up with a knife and fork, so I divided each of the halves again and took them back to the boys on the sofa. The Glaswegian fed his friend, a mouthful at a time, while the blond boy raised his eyebrows and winked at me. My own scone sat unfinished on the plate. Something in my throat was choking me, and I couldn’t have swallowed to save my life. I could have asked what had happened to them, but their stories would have been like the others I heard on the wards: hands burned trying to heave a friend from a blazing cockpit, legs lost when the impact of a crash landing shunted a red-hot engine onto a lap.
The door swung open under its massive carved pediment. The latecomer sauntered into the room, another young man in air-force blue, this one the picture of health, wearing a pilot officer’s chevrons.
It was Mr Cromley.
He caught up with me in the passage when I went to ask for another pot of tea. ‘Hello, Heartbreaker.’
‘I can manage,’ I said. ‘No need…’
‘Every need.’ He was laughing at me again. ‘You were playing lady of the Manor so nicely. Doing good works. But you haven’t quite the hang of it, have you? You shouldn’t go yourself to tell Cook to put the kettle on.’
‘I don’t see what business…’
‘Oh, and another thing. That dress. Lovely, I admit, but not the thing for tea-time.’ Before I could stop him he’d run a finger over the curve of my breast. ‘Nor the shoes.’
‘Take your hands off me.’ I was trembling.
‘Don’t be too proud, Heartbreaker. You might be grateful one of these days for what I can do for you.’
‘Fuck off’ The men on the wards sometimes forgot themselves and used it, but I’d never said that word before.
‘Well, well,’ said Mr Cromley. ‘Aren’t you spirited, these days, Fran? But remember who and what made you that way.’
I was too angry to speak. I turned and clacked on my second-hand platforms down the passageway, tears leaking from my eyes. Mr Cromley didn’t follow, and I told Cook it was the young men, so brave, poor things, so hurt, that made me cry.
What was he doing in Avebury? Last I’d heard he was in Kent, on a fighter base. I spent the rest of the afternoon talking as brightly as I could to the boy with burned hands and his pal, avoiding Mr Cromley’s eye. But he was watching, all right. I could feel it in the prickle of my skin.
I wanted to leave, but he might follow, so I was determined to stick it out. I heard every story those boys could tell; I laughed at every one that needed a laugh; I touched their arms when they told me how they’d been hurt. They were bomber crew, both of them, one a gunner, the other a wireless op. I told them my feller was training in navigation, up in Scotland; maybe one day he’d be posted to their squadron. Did they have sweethearts? The blond boy shook his head, and raised an eyebrow hopefully. The tall tin-footed lad blushed, and said he missed his special girl back home.
Mr Cromley was bored. He was fidgeting next to Mr K on the other side of the room, like his faithful dog, but where Mr K was all gracious-ness and easy chat–he loved planes, and he could talk flying for hours–Mr Cromley was sullen and superior. I used to think of him as charming, but now I could see through that front. He left after about three-quarters of an hour.
Mr Keiller was about to move on to the next group of airmen, so I made my excuses to the boys, stood up and put my hand on his arm. ‘You didn’t tell me Mr Cromley was coming.’
‘Didn’t I? I meant to. Awfully good news he’s back, isn’t it? I’ve always liked young Donald. I was worried he’d be killed–a terrible loss to archaeology. Odds aren’t good for the fighter boys, but he’s done his tour of duty and lived, and won a DFC–his squadron shot down thirty-seven Hun in a single day during the Battle of Britain–so they’ve given him a cushy posting as a rest.’
‘Where’s he stationed?’
‘Didn’t he tell you? He’s flying trainee wireless ops at Yatesbury before he rejoins his squadron. If I were five years younger…’ Mr K grinned ruefully. ‘Well, maybe ten. He’s living in the caravan park behind Rawlins’s garage with a lot of other chaps from the base.’
I sat through another half-hour, jaw aching with my clenched smile, then made my excuses and left. The clouds were blowing away and there was blue in the sky as I walked down the Manor drive, the breeze wrapping my silly silky dress round my legs, scared half to death he’d be waiting for me. But he wasn’t. He was a lot cleverer than that.
CHAPTER 30
Avebury has become an Ed-free zone. There is no sign of him for most of May, and the start of June
.
‘What did you do to him?’ asks Corey, adding another layer of shine to the countertop. ‘He’s not been in for coffee for weeks.’
‘I don’t know.’
Don’t like to admit it, but I miss the clunk of those stupid cowboy boots on the cobbles outside the caf. I’m regretting the way I blanked him after our argument. Perhaps what he was asking wasn’t so very terrible after all. Or, at least, it’s understandable he’d want to do anything to avoid losing his pilot’s licence. When I catch sight of Graham, unloading bin-bags from the back of the Land Rover, I ask him what’s happened to Ed.
He taps the side of his nose mysteriously. ‘Personal business, I guess.’
‘He’s working on his dissertation for the MA,’ says Michael, en route to the museum. ‘On archaeology from the air. He’s been helping with a Lidar survey of Savernake Forest.’
‘Wow,’ I say, little the wiser. Later, I look it up–laser photography that penetrates tree cover and can detect earthworks.
Meanwhile, with the academic year almost over, the film crew are back and Martin has taken up residence again in the cottage the Trust have lent him. He seems quieter and more distant, disappearing at frequent intervals to Bath. Permission has at last been granted to raise a stone. Although Martin’s favoured option was to lift the Bonking Stone, local opinion was against the idea, and instead the excavation will focus on a buried one, in the untouched northern part of the circle. Nobody seems to remember that it was my idea.
By mid-June Martin’s archaeology students have finished exams and arrive, pale and slightly twitching, to start the dig. The men whip off their shirts to make up for lost tanning time. The girls are all thinner than me and wear shorts to display sleek thighs. Graham decides it’s an opportune moment to repair the pathway and starts to spend most of his time on the henge banks, trundling barrowloads of gleaming chalk, with his shirt off too. Two days later, Ed’s with him.
