‘It’s good, yes.’
‘Found anything yet?’
‘From what I’ve been told, we’ll be lucky to get anything more than some micro-flints and a possible button from a careless picnicker.’ I held out my cup. ‘But, yes, you were right, it’s nice to be doing something different, and it will be something to talk about in the staff room come September. You know, “my time on a mud-encrusted field in the middle of nowhere”, I’ll finally be able to give the camping fraternity some competition.’
‘And you’ve got some colour in your face at last.’ Tabs scrutinised me, ignoring the proffered cup from the digger standing next to me in the queue. ‘Okay, so that colour is mostly dirt, but it’s still an improvement.’ The digger coughed and jiggled his mug, but Tabs just tipped her head to one side and carried on looking me up and down. ‘And you’ve stopped looking like you’re haunting yourself.’ Then her attention moved off me. ‘Hi, tea or coffee or – what the hell are you wearing?’
I went to sit down. There was a large empty space in the middle of the tent – for some reason all the diggers seemed to want to sit around the edges in little clusters, like agoraphobics on a day trip – so I sat on my own at the bare table. I peered into my mug and realised, with a little shock that sent ripples across the surface of whatever brown liquid Tabs had poured me, that I hadn’t thought about Jamie for hours. Normally I performed all my tasks with a kind of internal monologue: ‘Jamie would have loved it here. Wonder what he would have thought of this? He would have liked the view, if nothing else,’ and the realisation that I’d let him slip away from my mind hit me like a sandbag across the skull.
The chair next to me moved. ‘D’you mind?’
I didn’t look up. The shock that I’d actually gone through nearly half a day without Jamie in my thoughts felt like an iron thing in my brain. How could I? How could I not have thought of him?
‘Okay then, I’m just going to sit here and hope you don’t bite me. Not that I don’t deserve it, I was shockingly rude to you earlier and I’m sorry, but you don’t seem to be listening at all so I’ll just save my breath, shall I?’
The accent told me it was Duncan McDonald who was sitting slouched in the empty space next to me on a canvas folding chair, with his legs stuck out straight in front and making the table rock.
‘Yes. No, sorry, I’m just …’ I sipped at my mug, trying to still that little voice of guilt that whispered to me that I’d forgotten Jamie. Forgotten about the greatest love of my life, let him slip away from me as though he’d meant nothing more than a casual hook-up.
‘That’s pretty much how it looks, yes.’ He stopped talking. In fact, he also stopped moving, became just a presence beside me, until I had to look up to check he hadn’t lapsed into unconsciousness. He was staring out into space across the catering tent, hands wrapped around his mug without lifting it, lost in some serious dream.
I pulled myself together. ‘No. I really am sorry, I was just … thinking.’ I found myself looking at his grazed, reddened knuckles, stark against the white of his mug. ‘It’s very kind of you to let us join your dig.’
He snorted without moving his eyes from the square of canvas they were fixed on. ‘Believe me, kindness is not on my agenda. Boots on the ground, hands to the pump, that’s where I’m coming from.’ A flick of a glance at me out of the corner of an eye. ‘It’s my job. And you don’t have to be polite about being up to your elbows in runny mud, y’know.’ There was a hint of a smile in his voice now, just a slight lightening of tone that made me look away from his hands and up at his face, where a corresponding crease around his eyes had lifted his expression from ‘dour and grim’ and into ‘accountant registering a small profit’.
‘Well, it’s a change from teaching. Actually, no, there’s a lot of similarities between being up to my elbows in runny mud and marking books for Year Eight, but, there you go.’
Duncan laughed, a sudden, explosive shout, that silenced the chatter around us for a second and, when it resumed, there was an air of watchfulness about it, as though everyone had an eye cocked in case something really interesting was going on. The table rocked again as he leaned sideways, closer to me. ‘They’re all waiting for me to do something. Everyone behaves as if I’m some sort of loaded weaponry, it’s getting a bit wearing if you want the truth.’
I looked at him. His hair had beads of dried mud hanging from it like corks around an Australian hat, his battered waxed jacket was frayed and one of the pockets was hanging off, and there was a slight smell of ‘hot man in damp conditions’ rising like steam from him.
‘Well, you are rocking the “shouting at buses” look quite hard,’ I replied, equally quietly.
He sighed. ‘You have a point. Although I have to say that nobody is exactly dripping with Armani in here either, and you aren’t really talking from a position of strength …’ A nod at my mud-streaked jeans. ‘… even if it’s a much better style than that uptight, everything-ironed thing you had going on when you arrived.’
‘Standards. Not just battle flags, y’know.’ I prickled. Uptight? Why had he thought I was uptight? The man had barely exchanged a sentence with me, what gave him the right to pass judgement on me?
‘All that goes out of the window after three days in a wet tent. That’s when you start to appreciate rubber waders and a really sturdy hat.’ Another sway of the table as he put his mug down and stood up. ‘Well. Glad we sorted that out. Enjoy your time up on those wet sieves, won’t you?’
As he strode out of the tent, someone round the back of the boilers applauded. It might well have been Tabitha, but I didn’t hang around to find out. I could feel my face heating up in a way it usually only did when someone criticised my teaching methods; an upwelling of a desire to pointlessly justify myself made me grit my teeth and stalk from the catering marquee, leaving most of my coffee undrunk.
I caught up with Duncan McDonald as he started his descent back towards the dig site, feet sliding on the wet grass. ‘Hang on, did you just call me “uptight”?’
He carried on walking. ‘I said your clothing had been uptight, which is, semantically, not really the same thing, is it now?’ Then he stopped abruptly, so I slithered into him, having to catch at his encrusted jacket to save myself from sliding past and looking like some kind of comedy sketch. ‘Look … Grace. You’re probably a lovely wee thing, but you’re only here for a fortnight, so what I think of you and you think of me doesn’t really matter a tuppenny damn now, does it?’
‘I don’t think anything of you.’
‘Lassie, you wouldn’t be the only one.’ He was looking rather pointedly at my hands on his jacket. ‘Well, it’s been lovely bantering with you, but you’re really going to have to let go of me now.’
‘Banter … what, you think I’m coming on to you?’ I released his sleeve and dug one foot into the grass for stability. ‘Because I pull you up on calling me names, that’s flirting? God, remind me never to go to Scotland, yell at someone for nicking your parking spot and you’re probably married with four kids before you can get away.’
Duncan stared at me as though I were some kind of madwoman and shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Okayyy, I think this is where I start backing away slowly.’
At this point, the rotund bearded man that Katrin had called Richard came slithering up. ‘Shit, Dunc, there you are.’
‘Problem? Apart from this lady who seems to think that north of Hadrian’s Wall we’re still painting ourselves with woad and stealing cattle.’
‘Tessa has disappeared. Probably sloped off to York to meet some bloke, but her parents have reported her missing and the police are coming to “have a word”. Dunc? You okay?’
Duncan had gone very still. I looked from him to Richard and back.
‘How long has she been gone?’ I asked. Sometimes it was hard to lose the in loco parentis of teachin
g. Although I didn’t have any actual children, in some ways I had six hundred of them. ‘Who saw her last?’
Richard kept his eyes on Duncan, but answered me. ‘She’s twenty-two. Parents a bit over protective and insist on her phoning in every day, which is why I think she’s dipped out and run off to somewhere with real shops, but we have to treat it seriously.’ He nudged Duncan. ‘It’s okay, mate. I’m sure she’ll be fine.’
I found myself hurried into a nearby tent, bustled between the two men until we were under cover. The tent clearly housed a couple of young diggers, and was full of guitar, empty beer cans and crisp packets. My inner teacher wanted to call them in off site and get them to tidy up. Duncan was shaking slightly, I could see his shoulders hunched up and trembling and the lumps inside his coat that indicated his hands were in fists. ‘What’s going on?’
A shout from outside. ‘Richard! Kyle says the wood goes back and back, do you want us to open the trench up more?’ and Richard hesitated halfway through the tent flap.
‘Shit.’
‘You go. I’ll be all right.’ Duncan’s voice had that tight, low tone that made it sound as though he wanted to bite through metal. ‘Sort it out, Rich.’
‘But you …’ Richard, hovering in the zipped entryway, sort of vacillated, moving back and forth very slightly.
‘I’m good,’ said Duncan, looking anything but. ‘Go. Before they start making decisions. You know how badly it goes when you let students make decisions.’
‘Bloody hell, man, is it your life’s mission to be rude about everyone on the planet?’ I glared at him, pasty-faced in the orange wash of the tent’s interior. ‘What’s your position on, I don’t know, otters? Too fishy for you?’
With what looked like an effort, Duncan smiled. ‘See, I’m in good hands, Rich. Grace will look after me. Or savage me like a mad dog. Either way, it’s fine.’
Looking dubious, Richard withdrew, and I heard him talking to someone, their voices receding into the general background noise of the camp.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked, trying to stop myself from sounding confrontational. He really did look distressed.
‘Aye, I’m fine.’ But his hands came up and covered his face and he sank down onto an old beer crate, which seemed to do tent-duty as a stool. ‘God, I hope Tessa turns up safe and well.’
‘I’m sure she will. Unless she’s soluble or something.’ I tried to lighten him up a bit.
‘No, I really mean, I hope she turns up before the police get here.’ Duncan had dropped his head until his chin was hidden under the opening of his coat and was rubbing his hands over the back of his neck. ‘Before they get to me.’ Now he lifted his head and eyes that were shadowed with worry met mine. ‘Does that make me a bad person, Grace?’
‘No. Calling me “uptight” makes you a bad person, worrying about a missing student doesn’t.’ I shifted my feet about on the damp groundsheet, aware that my wellies had tracked slimy grass in on both heels. ‘Why are you so scared of the police? Oh God, you’re not an international drug smuggler under cover, are you?’
He gave one of those smiles that has absolutely no sense of humour about it at all and dropped his head back down so that he was staring at the unprepossessing sight of about forty cheese and onion crisp bags, all blown against the side of the tent by our entry. My fingers itched to pick them up.
‘I have a bit of an aversion to the police,’ he said. ‘No fault of mine, they just seem to think I’m guilty of something and they won’t rest until they get me. And you know the really stupid thing?’ He raised his eyes again and now they were burning with something, something deep and dark that made his pupils huge. ‘I don’t have so much as a fucking parking ticket.’ A huge sigh, which made his shoulders rise. ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m being a prick.’
‘I think that might be your default setting, actually.’ I turned around to make my way out of the tent. Duncan McDonald, his misplaced sense of persecution and his general snarkiness, were none of my business.
‘Thank you, Grace.’ This was said in a tone that lacked his previous edge. The words were soft, sad, almost as though they weren’t meant to be heard by me at all. I stopped exiting the tent, which left the flap swinging damply over my head.
‘Why? What have I done?’
‘Stopped my self-pity in its tracks.’ Voice still soft, but I could hear the rustle of his jacket as he stood up behind me. ‘People are normally too busy trying to be nice to pull me up on my self-centred stupidity.’
‘Glad to help.’ I lifted the wet tent flap and now carried on out. ‘But, really? Your interpersonal skills could do with some work.’
I heard him give another one of those snorty kind of laughs, but I didn’t wait for him to come out behind me. His hang-ups were really not my problem.
That evening there was a muted atmosphere around the camp. Maybe the disappearance of Tessa had affected everyone, not just Duncan, but nobody seemed inclined to hang around after Richard declared that the light was going and we might as well shut the dig down for the night.
Lights from tents showed that most people seemed to be settling down for the night, following a batch ‘feeding frenzy’ up at the canteen, during which I’d seen neither Duncan nor Tabitha and, as the evening continued to fade from the sky, I decided to go for a walk down the valley again.
Katrin was lovely and her chat had kept me going during an afternoon of sieving, which turned up a few little bits of unidentified flint and something that may or may not have been some preserved leather fragments. But now … now I wanted to watch night come in and the stars light up without a constant feed of opinion, gossip and observation in my ear. I wanted some of the peace I’d been trying to find for the last two years. Distraction, I thought, as I picked my way down towards the pinch-point in the valley, was all very well, but I still needed space and time; to be alone and to come to terms with my thoughts and feelings. After this morning’s slip-up, Jamie hadn’t been far from my thoughts all afternoon, hovering in the back of my mind like a shadow, haunting my actions with memories. I needed to breathe, to process and I needed clear air to do it in.
This time I slithered over the rock wall and got closer to the campsite that lay on the other side. There were fires burning inside all the huts; the flickering light and billows of smoke almost felt as though they were calling to me. An uncomplicated life, no electricity, no television, everything seemed gathered off the land, even the sheep/goat things were grazing uncontained around the huts without benefit of fencing. Was this the kind of life I was looking for?
I watched a woman come out of the hut that stood alone, separate from the others. She flipped aside a curtain that covered the entry to the hut and stood outside, hands folded in front of her. She was backlit by the fire that burned inside, making her outline glow, her dark hair flickering in the breeze but otherwise completely still, facing towards where I stood, just beneath the rise that led up to the settlement. Smoke puffed through the rough thatch of the roof. I saw her turn for her eyes to follow its path, up into the sky where stars were just beginning to prick their way through the dark. In one of the other huts a child called out and laughed, an adult’s voice replied and the firelight intensified for a moment as though another log had been thrown on. Somewhere a dog barked, but otherwise it was quiet.
From what I could see of her in the rapidly growing twilight, this woman looked a little less ‘worn’ than the woman I’d seen yesterday, a little younger. Her loose rusty-red hair looked cleaner, unmatted, as though she brushed it regularly. Maybe she was a newcomer to the site. As I watched, she walked down along the hurdle and hedge lined path that lay between her hut and the others, almost like a suburban street, and then down through the grass, picking her way over the stones towards the river that the little beck running past our dig camp became as it rounded the corner. Wide and shallow, more like a flooded mars
hland, it stretched off down the dale, pocked with reedy islets and with a wooden walkway running along the bank and ending in a little ‘pier’ jutting out into the middle of the boggy area. She stood for a while, staring across the water and I found myself looking too, trying to see what was so arresting about the sight of peaty pools and acres of bog cotton.
The light faded still further and the woman was no more than a darker shape against the dusk. I could smell the drifting smoke now, bitter against my tongue, and the drone of the midges that followed the water’s edge whined into my ears, but I still didn’t move. There was something magnetic about the silhouetted figure standing on the outskirts of the tiny settlement, something peaceful and calming. Had I been right the first time? Was this some kind of particularly spartan religious community, subsisting out here away from everyday life?
In the moonlight I could see her again, and she wasn’t looking out over the water now, she had turned to look towards one of the houses, almost as though she was about to walk up the beaten earth path to the door, but stopping herself by wrapping her arms around her waist. Inside the hut was the sound of happily raised voices, as though a mild and humorous family dispute was taking place, followed by a shrieked laugh and a flash of firelight, as though someone had flicked the doorway open briefly, and when I looked away again the woman was making her way back towards the house she’d come from, both hands cupped over her face, as though she was crying.
Chapter Seven
Duncan pulled the sleeping bag higher around his shoulders to stop the ghost fingers of draught that were teasing his neck. Threw his whole body around on the camp bed in the hope that another position would help sleep come and jerk his brain from the relentless cycle of dread it was currently riding through the night. What if something has happened to Tessa? What if they think there’s a connection between us? Can they pin anything on me – have I looked at her funny these past few weeks? Talked to her inappropriately?
Living in the Past Page 4
