by Peter Helton
‘I’m not his psychiatrist. But if anything can make you jumpy, then having the chap next to you get shot usually does the trick. It didn’t do much for my own Zen, I assure you. Are your digs always like this?’
‘There’s usually plenty happening but this is quite exceptional, even for us. In the past we’ve had scaffolding collapse, all our tools stolen, a river breaking its banks and putting the site under three feet of water. We’ve had permission to dig withdrawn halfway through filming because of a dispute among the owners and once the diggers went on strike. You see? I’m no stranger to directing shoots under difficult conditions, but this is scary even by my standards. What do you think? Was it meant for Morgan or Guy?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘The police have put a guard outside Morgan’s room at the hospital but haven’t offered to protect Guy in the same way, so they must think the dart was meant to kill the one it hit. And I don’t see a single police officer here now. Are they just going to let it lie? They haven’t arrested anyone for it, have they?’
‘They never ignore a violent crime like yesterday’s; I wouldn’t worry too much about that. They’ll be back.’
As Emms went inside to coax Guy Middleton into another day’s performance in front of the cameras my attention was claimed by the arrival of Annis Jordan, mural painter to the stars. She had packed the Landy to the gunnels with painting gear and strapped two ladders and planks to the roof rack. I helped her unload and carry the equipment inside.
‘So where’s Lurch?’ she asked as she stepped into the gloomy entrance hall. ‘I had expected a creepy butler. Or a footman with staring eyes at the very least.’
‘No butler. There’s a housekeeper. Carla.’
‘Is she spooky?’
‘Self-possessed. Very good to look at.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Oh yes. But she only has eyes for the Stone King. Guy Middleton tried to grope her in the pool. Be warned, that man has roving hands as well as an expensive single-malt habit.’
‘Gossip at last.’
Mark Stoneking found us depositing boxes of paints and jars full of brushes in the pool house. I introduced them. Dauber and muso stood among the paint pots and sized each other up; both seemed delighted by what they saw. Stoneking started by telling Annis how much he admired her painting – even though he had only seen them on a computer screen – and Annis told him she had all his albums – even though she had only recently dug them out again. I left the mutual admir-ation feast before they started autographing each other and went back to the dig.
Guy was in front of the cameras, fluffing his lines. Even the ordinarily patient Emms had a sharper tone this morning as she corrected Guy’s mistakes. Middleton was only saved from a roasting by the arrival on the terrace of Hilda Carson, the Roman food expert. Emms came up to greet her but stopped next to me to vent her frustration. ‘That’s the problem with using actors to speak the lines instead of archaeologists; he doesn’t actually understand what he’s saying. If he knew anything about archaeology he wouldn’t constantly get things muddled up.’ She looked me in the eyes, laid a hand on my arm and smiled. ‘I’ve no idea why I’m telling you. Probably because you’re not part of it. Don’t mind me. Just make the right noises.’
‘There, there.’
Her hand remained on my arm. ‘I’m sure you could do better than that.’
‘OK, how’s this: Emms, you’re so right. It must be very trying having to deal with an alcoholic actor because the punters adore him when Andrea, the head archaeologist, could do it standing on her head.’
‘That’s much better. Come and meet our food historian. I have it on good authority you’re a bit of a foodie yourself.’
‘Whose authority?’
‘A large police superintendent’s.’
‘He can talk.’
‘Hello, Hilda,’ she said. The two women kissed on both cheeks. Hilda was about fifty, a whole foot shorter than the director. She wore a blue and white checked shirt, jeans and trainers and had slight sunburn on her nose and forehead. ‘I’m glad you came out to help us again, and on a bank holiday at that.’
‘Couldn’t have done it otherwise, I’m so busy at the moment. But I love doing these demonstrations, and Roman is such a good period, too.’
Emms introduced us. Before she could explain why I was hanging around the place Mark Stoneking arrived on the terrace to greet Hilda. It appeared they had spoken on the phone.
Hilda buried her hands in her jeans pockets. ‘Mark, you said you might be able to provide a few rabbits for the cooking demo. Any luck?’
Mark slapped a hand to his forehead. ‘I did, didn’t I? Rash words. I’ll go and see what we can do. And Chris here promised to help shoot some, I seem to remember. Let’s see if we can pot some now. When do you need them?’
The sooner the better, it turned out. In the cluttered gun room Mark handed me a fine Browning over-and-under shotgun, a mate to the one he was loading for himself. They were engraved with autumn game and worth an absolute fortune. We walked down to the lake along the edge of the wood where the diggers were encamped.
‘Broad daylight is not the best time to hunt rabbit,’ Mark said. ‘Much easier with a lamp at night, but at least we’re less likely to kill anyone this way. Place is crawling with people.’
‘At least the Britons have left the field.’
‘Yes, that poor man,’ Mark said. ‘I hope he’ll be all right. I still can’t believe someone here wanted to murder him.’
‘Or Guy.’
‘Or Guy. Or you, for that matter.’
‘It had occurred to me. And unless it was one of Morgan’s own troop it means that person is still here. Have you changed your mind about the urn falling from your roof at all?’
‘It’s beginning to look dodgy now, isn’t it?’ He pointed. ‘Go that way. We’ll skirt the lake and the wood for a bit. You can see the diggers’ tents up there now.’
To our left, about thirty yards beyond the fringe of the woods, a collection of tents, blue, red, green and silver-grey. Their camp had been set up close to the weed-fringed stream that ran through the length of the wood and then out to feed the lake. Lengths of washing line were strung between trees; clothes and sleeping bags were hanging up to air. Soon the ornamental lake began to narrow and curve a little to the right. Here an area of bracken encroached on the path and reached out towards the lake from the fringes of the woodland. Another hundred yards further and I could see the end of the wood and of Stoneking’s private domain, marked by a low electrified fence, designed to keep out sheep or cattle. There were none in the grassy fields beyond.
‘This is a good place; we’ll wait by those trees there. Our bunnies love this area. It’s the bracken, gives them cover from buzzards. But they’ll show themselves . . . Oh, there’s one right there, see?’
A tiny fluffy thing had appeared at the edge of the bracken cover. ‘That’s barely a mouthful,’ I complained.
‘We’ll wait.’
‘Until he gets bigger?’
I was never a hunter. Occasionally I’d get the notion to shoot a rabbit in the long grass around Mill House but as often as not I was outwitted by the things or simply missed by a mile. There is, however, something primevally exciting about watching and waiting for prey, a deeply buried hunting instinct that awakens as soon as you hold a weapon and see edible critters move about in the wild. Mark had chosen the place well. Not five minutes after our arrival four rabbits were hopping about on the grassy slope between the bracken and the edge of the lake.
‘All right,’ Mark murmured in my ear. ‘You’ll take the left, I’ll take the right. When you’re ready, on the count of three. One . . . two . . .’
On three I squeezed the trigger. Mark let fly with both barrels, killing two rabbits. I killed a bracken.
‘You really are quite a lousy shot, aren’t you? If you’re ever accused of shooting anyone I’ll be your character witness.’
&n
bsp; ‘Told you.’
‘You can be gun dog then. Fetch.’
I picked up the rabbits, Mark paunched them and we moved on. ‘Are you beginning to regret the Time Lines thing yet?’ I asked.
At first I thought he was ignoring the question but he was merely taking his time before answering. ‘I thought it would be great. I mean, I liked the programme. I was thrilled to meet them. But I had no idea there would be so many of them. The diggers. Geo-physicists. And the re-enactors. All the people you never see – sound man, camera man, the technical staff and the caterers.’
‘At least the re-enactors will leave tonight.’
‘Oh, yeah, and in a couple of days we’ll get a busload of school kids to be shown around and they’ll stay and wash all the finds that have come up so far.’
‘You must have agreed to all that.’
‘I didn’t read the contract.’
‘I didn’t read mine either, not beyond the agreed fee. Presumably they’ll pay you well.’
‘Reasonably well. But if I break the contract and tell them to leave I’ll be paying them. A huge amount. Couldn’t afford to.’
‘Grin and bear it?’
‘Don’t know about that; it’s not something I’ve ever been good at. Wait, see what I see?’ He lifted the gun, aimed, fired and two more rabbits keeled over. ‘That’ll have to do; I’m getting bored with this. I want to go back and see whether Annis has made a start on my mural. If I like it I might get her to do the whole pool house . . .’
Back at the dig I found Hilda at the edge of the legionnaires’ camp. With the help of some of the diggers and the production team she was setting up her Roman kitchen which she had brought complete in the back of a Land Rover. Was I the only person left who wasn’t driving one? A huge iron barbecue had already been set up and lit. There were rustic tables and a lot of terracotta and iron implements, all reproduction but looking ancient enough. Faggots of herbs, mysterious bottles and stoppered jugs promised exotic ingredients and new tastes. I waved the rabbits at Hilda who was now dressed in a brown tunic and cream shirt rolled up at the sleeves and had changed from trainers to leather sandals.
‘You got some!’ she said when she received my offerings. She was delighted with Mark’s murderous efforts.
So was Cy. ‘I want the whole thing, the skinning and all that.’
Emms was unconvinced. ‘People don’t watch Time Lines to see animals being skinned. And it’ll probably upset the vegetarians.’
‘It’s living history, blood and guts. We’ll show it. And sod vegetarians, they’re always upset. Not enough zinc in their bloody diets, or something.’
‘We’ll do that first then,’ Hilda suggested. ‘They’ll take time to cook.’
‘OK,’ Emms agreed, ‘we’ll do the passage about food introductions afterwards. The helicopter is due any minute, too. Paul will go up to do the aerial shots, then return and do the rest of the food cameo. Can you work around that?’
Hilda waggled a vicious-looking knife and smiled. ‘I’m easy.’
Paul set up his camera and focussed on the chopping board. Emms waited until everything was in place, then called: ‘Action!’
‘I was keen to include rabbit in our Roman feast because we take rabbits for granted, seeing them in the countryside, that is, but it was the Romans who first introduced and farmed them. We have a lovely example of a rabbit here and I will show you how to skin it now.’ With two swift strokes of her big knife Hilda chopped off the feet. ‘We don’t want these, but you can keep them if you are superstitious. They’re supposed to bring good luck though it doesn’t seem to have worked for the rabbit. We take off the head like so.’ The knife easily separated it from the body. ‘Then you start peeling the fur back, freeing the hind legs, and then you pull.’ She stripped the fur off the rabbit’s carcass in one swift movement. ‘And there you have one skinned rabbit ready for the pot.’
‘And cut,’ Emms said, appropriately. ‘I didn’t expect it to be that quick.’
‘Forty-two seconds,’ Paul said admiringly. ‘You have done this before.’
I found myself a knife among the utensils and helped with the skinning of the bunnies, but Hilda skinned the remaining two in the time it took me to do one. While I struggled with it I noticed that we were being intently watched by Delia, the caterer.
Hilda had noticed it too. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Interested in Roman food?’
I introduced her. ‘Delia – sorry, Adèle, everyone calls her Delia – is our excellent Time Lines caterer. She feeds the multitudes during the dig.’
‘You’re a cook, are you?’ said Hilda. ‘Gosh, I couldn’t do that day in, day out; it would bore me rigid. I just do the odd historical demo, the rest of the time it’s refectory food for me, too busy with my real job. Right, Chris, joint your rabbit the way I did these and then we can start that dish off. I like to give it at least two hours with wild rabbit, three if they’re on the large side.’ She turned her attention to the giant barbecue.
Delia gave the Roman kitchen one more critical look, then walked off. ‘Everyone needs a hobby.’
The charcoal had burnt down nicely to a steady glow and Paul was ready for the next shot. Hilda started her stew by glugging a historic amount of olive oil into a cauldron, followed by the rabbit pieces and wine from a stoppered jug. Next, in went a slug of vinegar and a faggot of fresh herbs. When she covered the cauldron with a lid the filming stopped.
I was still nosing around the unusual and unlabelled jugs and covered terracotta pots when the unmistakable noise of a low-flying helicopter approached. One minute it was just an ear-popping churning of the air, the next it appeared over the house and lawns like an evil bird ready to pounce. There was ample space for it to land and the pilot picked a likely spot. Even at a distance the wash of the rotor blades was making itself felt.
‘We’ll go up three times,’ Emms told me. ‘First I go up with Andrea and Paul, so Andrea can tell us what she sees and I’ll throw together some lines for Guy. Then Guy, Andrea and Paul go up, Paul shoots the chat they have. Then Paul goes up again to take long shots of the area and you can go with him then.’
‘Great, ta.’ In the sober light of day my enthusiasm for helicopter rides had somewhat subsided. I had always been scared of flying but an enforced flight home from Corfu earlier that year had taken the edge off my terror, since I had quite clearly survived it. Though now that the thing stood churning on the lawn I wasn’t so sure this would be fun.
Annis, who had come out to take a break from staring at the blank wall of the pool house, thought it would. ‘You survived three hours in cattle class from Corfu to Bristol. This will be a breeze. You’ll kick yourself if you don’t do it – it’s fun.’
‘Oh yeah? Been on many helicopter rides?’
‘Loads. Parents used to drag me to the Isles of Scilly on a regular basis.’
Stoneking, who seemed to be shadowing Annis now, pulled a face. ‘I always hated the damn things. As soon as we got famous that was how we were supposed to arrive everywhere. I never got used to it, felt sick every time.’
The helicopter took off with archaeologist, director and cameraman, sweeping off towards the lake in a climbing turn. It did occur to me that, on an accident- and sabotage-prone dig, putting those three in the air together looked like tempting fate. If that load crashed it would spell the end of Time Lines. For nearly ten minutes the helicopter just hovered around above us and soon no one paid much attention. The dig was progressing and the three of us took a walk around, now that we could not get in the way of the filming. Large amounts of finds had come out of the ground, looking like so much rubbish to me; they were piled up in black seed trays waiting to be cleaned by excited school kids but, as Adam and Julie told us, nothing very exciting or unexpected had turned up. ‘But I’m sure it will,’ Julie said from the bottom of her trench. ‘Remember what I told you; Time Lines is famous for the unexpected.’
‘I think we’ve had enough of the unexpected alread
y,’ said Stoneking.
After a short break for writing lines it was Guy and Andrea who went up with Paul. ‘I hate the damn things,’ Guy hissed as he stomped past us. ‘And they always fly them like it’s bloody Apocalypse Now.’
Their flight looked sedate enough to me until a few minutes later when all of a sudden the helicopter swooped in low over the bottom of the lawn near the last hedge before the lake, then hovered at tree-top height, churning up leaves and making the hedges sway in the wash. Then it swooped off again and came in to land, much sooner than I had expected, considering they were going to film Guy delivering his lines. I ambled towards the landing place since it was my turn next. Even before it had properly settled on the ground Guy jumped from the helicopter and stomped off towards the lake, followed more sedately by a happily smiling Andrea.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
Paul was changing seats and repositioning his camera. ‘Hop in and you’ll see. I’ll make sure to get a good shot of it, though I doubt it’ll appear in the final cut. Buckle up.’
I did. This was me, in a helicopter. With the doors wide open. What had I been thinking? Of course I was going to buckle up, and where did they keep the parachutes on these things? Up it went like an express elevator and swooped round, first towards the hall, then in a tight climbing turn. So that’s what that felt like. I had often wondered. Could I get off now, please? It was bloody noisy, too.
Paul pointed at the pair of headphones beside me. Once I had put them on I could actually hear what he was saying. ‘I don’t think Guy is having such a good time on this dig. There he is. Have a look down there.’
I could now see Guy, easily recognizable by his hat, Emms with her red hair and Andrea all standing at the bottom of the lawn near the hedge. Guy was waving his arms around a lot. They were standing in front of an area where the lawn had wilted to a sickly yellow, forming two-foot-high letters. They spelled SORRY IT MISSED YOU. We hovered above them.
