The Buried Circle

by Jenni Mills

  ‘Should you be telling me that?’ I said. ‘My fellow usually keeps mum about what he flies.’ Davey had passed his exams in the summer, top of his class, and had been posted to a night-fighter squadron in East Anglia. His tight-lipped letters gave little away about his job, though I gathered he was kept busy patrolling the coast and chasing German bombers. But they revealed far too much about his feelings for me, and his longing for a transfer back to Wiltshire.

  ‘Pilot or wireless op?’ asked the airman. He wasn’t interested enough to wait for my reply. ‘Anyway, Don shouldn’t fret. He’ll be operational before Christmas, I bet–too good a pilot to waste in training, though I hope to Christ Yatesbury will have calmed him down.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Silly bastard was taking too many risks. Final straw was when he chased a bomber all the way to France, against orders I might add, and was shot up so badly he only just made it home on one engine. It looked touch and go, and he told his wireless op to bale out. Don brought the plane down safely, but Tony landed in the drink, and washed ashore dead. After that, word went round the squadron he was bad luck. No one wanted to fly with him.’

  Donald was very drunk by now, sitting close to Mr Keiller near the middle of the table and doing his best to compete for the attention of the woman in the violet dress. For all my fear of him, I could pity him that night. He’d always been a good-looking boy. When you caught him unguarded, there could be gentleness in his face, but he seemed to want to slough off that side of himself. And I knew, because I’d seen it in the house in Swindon, that he was terrible frightened of his uncle. I wouldn’t have liked to be the one to tell him he shouldn’t come to the party.

  The clock chimed the quarter hour. Forty-five minutes to midnight. The dessert plates were being cleared. Mr Keiller looked at Mr Cromley. Mr Cromley lurched to his feet, banging his cake fork against his glass, leaving a yellow smear of custard. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he slurred, ‘when you have finished your coffee and brandy, please assemble in the Library to prepare for our sss-solemn ritual in honour of the late Barber Surgeon of Avebury’ On cue the door of the dining room swung open, and the surly housemaid came in, carrying two tall coffee pots. She scowled when Mr Cromley beckoned to me and I stood up, full of dread, aware of curious eyes on me all around the table.

  In the Library, I was shaking as he dressed me in the hooded white cloak and the black domino mask. I had known for several days what would be expected of me: he had come knocking, bold as brass, at the door of the Lodge one evening and made me go with him to the Red Lion where he bought me a port and lemon and explained the ritual. Hadn’t seemed so much, then, just more silly games like I’d seen them play in the Manor garden with the white chalk pizzle.

  But now, after the humiliation of the evening, with midnight approaching and the mask on my face, for two pins I’d have run away if it weren’t for the power of his whisper to harm Mam.

  He stood back, eyes narrowed, then reached to adjust the set of the cloak on my shoulders. ‘One more detail.’ He took from his breast pocket a five-pointed silver star on a chain and hung it round my neck. A trace of white powder was caught in his moustache. ‘There.’ His fingers brushed my collarbone, and I flinched. ‘Ready to draw down the moon. They won’t be long. You remember what I told you?’

  I nodded. ‘Where’ll I find–’

  ‘Where I told you. I’ll leave it on the path behind the hedge; you pick it up before you enter the Half-Moon Garden. We’ll show them something,’ he said, his eyes glittering.

  So now I waited in the cold, under a fat moon a few days off the full. They’d surely be out any minute. I thought I’d seen a chink of light as someone lifted the edge of a blackout curtain, though that might have been the staff watching, curious as Davey and I had been once. My instructions were to bow, lift my arms to the sky and disappear as fast as I could down the hidden path between the hedges and the curved wall. Mr Cromley and Mr Keiller would lead the guests into the Half-Moon Garden, and I would then reappear, emerging between the horns of the tall yew hedges in the centre.

  The door from the Library swung open, a dark yawning mouth because no one dared show a light in the blackout. But it was only Mr Cromley, who ran down the steps with something white in his hands. ‘They’ll be out any second,’ he hissed. ‘Careful with it, mind, or Alec will murder me.’ He pressed the white thing into my hands, and dashed back to the steps, at the same moment as Mr Keiller appeared in the doorway at the top. He had a brandy glass in one hand, and was looking back over his shoulder to talk to the lady in the violet dress.

  Something was amiss. It was all happening too fast. This object was to be part of the ritual later: I should have been empty-handed when I saluted the moon in the topiary garden. But I did what I’d been told. As they came out, I dipped my head, then rose as tall as I could, lifting high under the moon the thing he had given me. It was cold in my cold hands, yellow-white under the yellow-white moon. Only when I lifted it did I understand what it was: not one of the plaster skulls, not a fake as Donald had told me it would be.

  It was Charlie’s, bulbous and misshapen.

  Moonlight poured ice-water through my blood, running down my arms, like the relic was channelling it from the white orb in the sky to my heart. I near dropped the child’s skull with the shock, because this felt wrong, there was something cruel bad about it, a horrible parody. Charlie was only a little boy: he deserved to be left in peace.

  Mr Keiller knew it was Charlie too. He swung round looking for Donald, his face furious, bellowing. The brandy glass hit the bottom of the steps with a gurt smash, where Mr Cromley had been a second before. I didn’t stop to see any more. Mr K’d never forgive me.

  Didn’t know what else to do, so I slipped between the tall bushes and sped along the hidden path by the curved wall, clasping Charlie’s skull. In summer this path was scented with catmint and honeysuckle, but tonight there was a dank, rotting smell behind the yew hedges, like I was carrying death with me. Had some idea if I ran fast and far enough, I might be able to hide from them all, so I kicked off my shoes and pelted past the gap in the hedge that led into the Half-Moon Garden, on to the end of the path, near tripping on the hem of my long dress as I turned the corner into the Italian walk bordering the ha-ha at the Manor boundary.

  He caught me there, stepping out onto the paved walk in front of me so I had to slow.

  ‘Give it to me, Heartbreaker,’ he said, holding out his hands for the skull. ‘Poor old lad’s lasted five thousand years–I’d hate for him to be smashed now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Keiller,’ I said, cowering, expecting his temper would flare as soon as he had the skull safe. ‘I didn’t think it would be a real skull, I swear.’

  ‘I know,’ he said gently. ‘Donald overstepped the mark, I think.’ He put his free arm round my shivering shoulders, and walked me into the orchard. The night sky was enormous over us, a mass of white pinpricks, and there was a sparkle of frost on the grass.

  ‘What about everybody else?’ I asked.

  ‘I have no doubt Mrs S-T has everything in hand. Waters will be serving another round of brandy in the Library’ He led me to a bench under one of the apple trees. There were still windfalls underfoot, slippery against my bare feet. ‘Sit down. Remove that ridiculous mask and pentacle Donald’s made you wear. I take it you won’t want to go back in for the moment?’

  I shook my head, shivering violently, tucking my frozen feet under me as I sat. He set Charlie’s skull down carefully on the end of the bench, and stripped off his dinner jacket to wrap round my shoulders over the white cloak.

  ‘You’ll catch your death,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense.’ He gave an elaborate, theatrical shiver under his starched white shirt, and sat down next to me on the bench. ‘If Donald’s sensible, he’ll have fled to his billet in the caravan park. I’d have half killed the little sh–if he’d been near enough. As it was, seemed to me saving the find was more important. I was
afraid you’d trip. Now, snuggle up because you’re absolutely right. I’m cold as charity.’ He put his arm round me, and hugged me against him. ‘We’ll give it five minutes for Cromley to exit the premises, then I’ll ask Waters to walk you home. You’re at the Lodge, aren’t you?’

  I curled against him in the moonlight, wanting to be part of him. The Manor was a dark shadow against the sky, blacked-out and blank-eyed. For a second I thought I saw a gleam again from one of the upper windows, but perhaps I was mistaken, and there was no watcher.

  ‘Why did he do it?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s lost, Heartbreaker,’ said Mr Keiller. ‘First his damned uncle ruined him, now it’s the war. And Cocaine Bill’ He began to sing into my hair, a jazz song I’d heard before at a dance in Swindon.

  ‘Cocaine Bill, and Morphine Sue

  Strolling down the avenue.

  Honey, have a sniff, have a sniff on me,

  Won’t you have a sniff on me.’

  He pulled away, and looked down at me. Then his mouth touched mine, only for a moment, so quick I wondered after had it happened at all, and he pulled me to my feet. ‘Go and find your shoes,’ he said. ‘Time you were leaving, before I do something I’ll regret.’

  I bent to pick up my evening shoes, lying on the path where I’d kicked them off, between the yew hedges. My lips were tingling, like there was electric in them. In the orchard, Mr Keiller was still singing as he strolled towards the house to put Charlie’s skull back safely in his study, and call for the butler.

  ‘All o’ you cokies is gonna be dead

  If you don’t stop a-sniffin’ that stuff in your head.

  Now where they went no one can tell

  It might have been heaven or…’

  I felt the lightest of pressures against the small of my back, no more than a pinprick, tracing a figure of eight against my kidneys. My knees locked and I could hear my breath coming in little snorts, like an animal’s when it’s dragged into the butcher’s pen. A hand snaked over my hip and under my belly.

  ‘So you finally made him kiss you,’ he whispered. ‘Though you don’t really understand the power you have, do you?’

  ‘You’re…sick,’ I said, straightening up slowly. ‘I don’t understand why he doesn’t see that. He always forgives you.’

  Mr Cromley took hold of my arms, and turned me to face him, walking me back until I was against the curved wall. He slipped a hand under the hem of my dress and lifted it until I could feel woody stems of clematis prickling the backs of my knees. Then he let the hem of my dress fall back. He had that little bronze dagger in his hand.

  ‘What’s that for?’ I said.

  ‘You know what it’s for.’

  ‘I know it’s harder than what’s in your trousers.’

  ‘You’re very brave all of a sudden,’ he said. ‘Alec’s gone indoors.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare hurt me,’ I said. ‘Because it matters to you that he forgives you, doesn’t it? You’re only trying to frighten me again.’

  He used the dagger to push back my hair from my forehead. Then he ran it across my lips, cold and rough, where Alec had kissed me. ‘Don’t fool yourself,’ he said. ‘You see, this little knife goes with me wherever I go. Earthbound, or in the air, it’s my charm. And that’s how I shall be for you. Your special charm. I’m never going to leave you, Heartbreaker. Wherever you go, you take me with you. And I take a piece of you.’

  The dagger was sharper than I’d thought. He had lopped off a curl from my temple and was gone.

  When Davey wrote to say he had leave due, I replied saying I’d be sorry not to see him, but better not to waste it on me because I was with Mam every minute I could get away to Devizes. She was becoming sicker. Even Dad had to admit now that there was something wrong. Her skin was the colour of a pub ceiling, like it had been smoked, and a pain in her side woke her nights.

  Davey wrote back that it didn’t matter, he’d be seeing me soon enough. His transfer had come through at last, and though he’d flown enough missions to choose a quieter posting, instead he’d asked to go to a night-fighter squadron in Kent. He’d be right in the thick of the action, he said, and the best news of all was that some time in the new year, they’d be moving to an airfield in Wiltshire.

  He was joining Mr Cromley’s old squadron.

  CHAPTER 38

  ‘Let me go over it again,’ says Martin. He stirs his cappuccino thoughtfully, and gives a Monday-morning yawn. ‘Sorry, petal, hard weekend caving. It’s difficult keeping track of your love life. I go off for a couple of days, and when I come back everything’s changed. So, there’s your ex living on his ownsome in a caravan–’

  ‘Not really my ex,’ I butt in.

  ‘Now I am confused. You’re still carrying on with him as well?’

  ‘No. I meant there wasn’t a proper relationship in the first place.’

  ‘Fine. Leave him aside for the moment. Then you happen across some Goddess-worshipping nutcase at the Long Barrow, and you leap into bed, or rather onto plastic ground sheet, with him–’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’ Corey is wiping tables, working her way down the caf towards us, ears flapping. ‘I wasn’t myself. I had a headache–’

  ‘That’s usually a reason not to sleep with someone, rather than the other way round.’

  ‘You seem to find this funny’

  ‘Petal, it’s the only way to look at these things. Otherwise I’d’ve slit my wrists years ago.’

  Whenever Martin discusses relationships, he slips back into camp banter. Even if I wasn’t at loggerheads with John, Bryn isn’t someone I’d want to discuss with my spirit-father: he’d be far more judgemental. Martin never confides what his own relationships are like, but he seems to understand the principle of lurching from one sexual disaster to the next.

  He’s looking thoughtful. ‘The more worrying aspect is that you accepted a couple of Tramadol from this gentleman. You do know what Tramadol is?’

  ‘I thought it was like Anadin.’

  ‘In the same way a chainsaw resembles a pair of scissors. It’s one of the more powerful painkillers, prescription only. Induces a pleasant euphoria, though it has also been known to give people hallucinations. You can buy it on the Internet from dodgy Mexican pharmacies. We might ask ourselves where your friend obtained it.’

  ‘Perhaps it was prescribed?’

  ‘Not unless he’s had major surgery recently. Still, let’s look on the bright side. At least it wasn’t Rohypnol.’

  ‘What, date-rape stuff?’ I can’t imagine Bryn doing anything so underhand. All the same, I find myself asking hopefully, ‘Don’t suppose it could have been Rohypnol rather than Tramadol?’

  ‘Most unlikely, given that you seem to have total recall of every sordid detail. Rohypnol victims tend to wake up with a sense of unease, but remembering very little. Sorry, petal, that ain’t your get-out-of-jail-free card.’

  ‘What about you?’ I ask, anxious to change the subject, because this is starting to prick my conscience as effectively as any conversation with John. ‘How was your weekend in Bath?’

  Martin looks away. ‘Not exactly marvellous…’ he begins, but then Ibby walks into the caf.

  ‘There you are, Martin. Shift your fat arse. I’ve a couple of old codgers waiting to be interviewed in the Manor garden, and I don’t want them to expire before you get there. You’re not with us this week, India, are you?’

  Reluctantly I wrap my apron round my hips again. Much as I’d rather be filming, the television company has not paid me so far. Corey catches my eye and waves J-cloth and disinfectant spray. To be translated as: coffee break over, tables to clear, toilets to clean.

  Martin hangs back as Ibby strides out of the door. ‘Mind, there’s the other worrying question too,’ he whispers.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What your ex has done with his wife. I can tell you for a fact he isn’t going home at weekends.’

  ‘How do you know?’

 
; ‘Spotted him in the cinema in Bath, on his own, on Saturday night.’

  I could walk up to the Long Barrow, and tell Bryn: sorry, big mistake. Or–I could do nothing. Doing nothing is as good a way as any of ending a relationship. Though this isn’t exactly a relationship, is it?

  So what does constitute a relationship in your book, Indy? That’s what John would say. Everything has significance. Under Wyrd, the web of fate, all things are connected: a smile as you pass a stranger is a bond.

  Bond meaning tie. Obligation.

  Walking back to Trusloe at the end of the day, that prickling feeling between the shoulder blades hits me again, as if I’m being followed. I remind myself Bryn knows nothing about me, not where I live, not even my name. In a few days, once Solstice is over, he’ll be gone again. But who am I kidding? I shagged a man who sleeps with a plastic replica of a Celtic mother goddess looking down on him. No telling what that might have unleashed. And this isn’t London. It’s hard to hide in a place the size of Avebury.

  I knew you’d come

  The feeling grows on me again that I’ve been walking widder-shins since the helicopter crash. So, when I let myself into the house, it isn’t exactly a surprise to find a letter on the hall table from the Wiltshire coroner’s office. Steve’s inquest is scheduled for the end of July.

  He opens the caravan door before I’ve even knocked, like he knew I was coming.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘You’ve had a letter too?’

  A weary nod. ‘Want a drink? A proper one?’ Behind him, on the fold-down table, there’s a bottle of Waitrose Sauvignon Blanc, three-quarters empty. ‘I’ll open another.’

  ‘I’d rather have something soft. No, bugger it, pour me a smidge of the Sauvignon. I’ll see how that goes down.’

  Ed uncorks the bottle and fills a straight-sided tumbler. ‘Ooh dear, better open another after all.’

  ‘You’re not trying to get drunk again, I hope? That won’t solve anything.’ Listen to me, the Queen of the Solpadeine. Never let a crisis pass without a crippling hangover.