Living in the Past

by Jane Lovering

  ‘Sorry.’ Now Grace had turned her head away. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her looking out of the opposite window, but he kept his eyes front. ‘It must be upsetting for you, of course. Have you been back at all? Since your girlfriend – ran off?’

  ‘“Ran off.” I don’t know that she did “run”. I suspect that she strolled, actually.’ And then he hated himself for the dark, sarcastic tone of voice he’d used. It wasn’t Grace’s fault, none of this was anything to do with her. If she hadn’t been standing there when he came out of the tent after his humiliation at the hands of Sunley, she’d still not know what it was about. Maybe she’d believed him, maybe she hadn’t, but whichever, he’d managed to discredit himself in her eyes. He was either the killer of his girlfriend, or a man who is so intrinsically unloveable that his girlfriend takes off and is never seen again.

  Grace was quiet for a moment, staring out over the moorland, where the heather darkened as the sun dropped low in the sky, hesitated over the hill for a moment and then dropped out of sight.

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe you,’ she said eventually, not looking at him.

  Duncan checked his side mirror. In it, the old house was receding into the night that bubbled up, filling the dale now that the sun was gone. The outline faded and blurred and became nothing but a hump, mirroring the barrow that, even from this distance, defined the opposite hilltop.

  ‘Thank you.’ It was all he could say. Plenty of people had believed him, over the years. Given him ‘the benefit of the doubt’. But he knew, knew deep down in his belly, that they all thought the same thing, when the night was dark and he was there, alone with them, walking, talking, buying them drinks or sleeping on the next pillow. ‘There’s no smoke without fire.’ He’d seen that creeping doubt in too many pairs of eyes.

  ‘So, what’s this all about then?’ Now Grace turned away from watching the moor flickering past and looked at him directly. ‘Asking me for a drink. Or do you take all your diggers out, one at a time? Must get expensive.’

  Duncan became very aware of his hands on the steering wheel. Drummed them a few times. ‘I … ah … no, of course I don’t. Well, maybe a few. Sometimes. Look, it gets boring of an evening when there’s no internet and Richard really really likes motorbikes and there’s only so many stories you can hear about the Norton he’s going to buy when he retires, before even going out for a drink with Kyle and his incredibly musical arse seems like a good move.’ Plus, and he wouldn’t have said this even under fairly extreme torture, he’d seen the way she was around food. As though denying herself gave her some way of holding her grieving. As though hunger pangs and the misery of bereavement could be compared, lined side-by-side and held close. Holding on to her husband by keeping food at bay.

  Grace gave a slow nod. Her hair flounced at the ends. ‘Okay, as long as you don’t expect me to have any musical orifices, that’s fine, I’m glad to be able to entertain you.’ Now she went back to looking out of the window again. ‘But you are taking a risk that I don’t secretly covet a racing bike myself, aren’t you? I might sit and talk about power to weight ratios and valve sizes all night.’

  ‘You might. But you have a much smaller beard than Richard and you smell nicer, so it could be worse.’ He gave her a grin. It felt like a proper grin too, he could feel his face relax into it. He knew he’d never lose it all, those tiny stress lines that had formed fifteen years ago were carved into his skin now, like tiny scars. They wouldn’t leave him, just as that dark shadow that padded along in his dreams would never leave; that shape made of doubt and self-loathing and fear and rejection would always dog his steps. But sometimes … sometimes he could forget it. And there was something about Grace, the way she seemed so contained, so self-managing, as though she thought every word through before she said it, and weighed its impact … maybe it was being a teacher? He thought back over all the teachers he could remember – had they all had this air of being separate from the world? Or was it just something about her? Because she’d lost someone too?

  ‘What was your husband’s name?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh. Jamie. James Robert Nicholls.’

  Duncan gave himself a moment to process that. Then, ‘You still miss him that much?’ Don’t be bloody daft man, you’ve rationalised the way she eats because of the way she’s missing him, don’t sound surprised when she confirms your suspicions.

  She gave him a brief, surprised look. ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Sorry, yes. Yes, of course you do, take no notice of me. I’ve never lost anyone … not like that, I mean, of course I’ve lost someone, but I literally “lost” her, if you see what I mean, and it’s different. Everything’s all bound up with resentment and … and wondering how she could do that to me. Just to leave and not tell anyone where she was going, and then never to reappear and say something like, “Yes, sorry, just met the love of my life and nipped off for a furtive shag, lost track of the time a bit.”’

  He leaned hard on the wheel and the Land Rover swung into the car park of the pub, which stood alone and windswept beside the road. ‘Here we are.’

  ‘What do you think happened to her?’ Grace had pulled her hands up into her sleeves. It was a childlike gesture, one that made her look, temporarily, less in-control of herself. A little doubting, perhaps? Was she still so sure he was innocent?

  ‘What do I think?’

  He turned off the engine and it rumbled into a quiet that was broken only by the sound of the wind hissing through the gaps in the metal.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Grace, I have no idea. It was misty the day I went to York, one of those real low cloud days we get this high up in the summer sometimes. She didn’t know the area, so she was bloody stupid to walk off, however angry she was at me. She was a frigging med student, you’d think she would have had more sense, but, like I said, she’d done it before. Lost her temper, got fed up with waiting for me, I dunno, but she’d always come back before. Said that going for a walk cleared her head, helped her calm down, so I expected her to return.’ He let his voice drift under the skirl of the wind. ‘Kept waiting for her to come back. Still half expect her to turn up, walking along that road.’

  A deep breath as the image of Anya floated through his mind, as she’d been all those years ago. That feeling of never knowing what to say to her, the sense that she was always on the edge of fury or tears.

  ‘So, what do I think happened? No one saw her walking down towards the bus stop, or getting on the bus. Maybe someone stopped to pick her up? Some kind of magician, who removed her from the face of the earth, or maybe he was an Australian and she went off to live happily ever after on another continent, with no word to me or anyone else. Or …’ He opened the door, trying to lose the thought in an easy, everyday action. ‘… someone killed her.’

  ‘Duncan …’

  ‘It’s really the only thing that makes sense.’ He was talking fast now, locking the doors, ushering her along through the nearly empty car park towards the low, stone building. ‘The police said there’s been no use of her bank account, she never went back to visit her friends, never picked up her car – she didn’t know the territory around here, and it can be a bitch on a dreich day. I hope she met an incredibly rich man who never thought to ask her to contact anyone to say she was safe.’ He held the door open for Grace, smelling the wet sieves on her as she brushed by, a mixture of mud and oil from the pump. ‘Because I feel guilty every single day that something else happened to her.’

  ‘Wow. You have really thought about this a lot, haven’t you?’ She walked to the bar, easily, not waiting for him to show her the way, for which he was glad because the bar, to be honest, was bloody obvious. ‘Glass of white wine, please.’

  ‘Tell me you haven’t thought “what if” about your husband, every day since he … since it happened.’

  ‘Well, of course I have!’

/>   Duncan liked that. She didn’t prevaricate, like a woman who had him in her sights and wanted to brush off the memories. She didn’t flirtatiously try to overwrite his view of things. In fact, he thought, as he ordered her wine and a shandy for himself, she treated him like a person. It felt like an odd novelty.

  ‘Oh, and by the way, I haven’t forgotten that remark about my beard being smaller than Richard’s, and for that you owe me a bowl of chips.’ Grace went to sit down, hovering for just a second before she hit the chair.

  Duncan bit down the surprise that was his first response. ‘We’ll make an archaeologist of you yet.’ He raised his glass to her, and went to order the chips from the bar.

  Chapter Eleven

  2000 BC

  Hen was woken by the rustle of the door curtain being pushed aside. She lay for a moment, eyes picking details out of the dark; the fire had died back to nothing but a dim glow of the hot rocks in the base of the firepit, but illuminated enough to show a figure standing in the doorway. Just a black shape that blotted out the stars. Not Tor, he would have spoken or woken her with a gentle hand to her shoulder. Not round enough for Airwen, not tall enough for Caerlynn.

  ‘Fair night, Vast.’ She spoke gently. Tor’s niece was nervous, easily given to upset.

  Vast jumped. ‘I … I am sorry, Lady Hen. I …’ she trailed off, her outline bunching and wavering as though she was twisting, ready to run.

  Hen wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to Vast during her brief settlement with the man who had left her with two very young babes. Vast was slender, too slender for childbirth to have been easy for her, with the worn teeth of one raised on too much sandy bread. She bore a dark shadow over her, kept her head averted and her eyes cast to the ground, and flinched when touched. Hen had also seen, once when Vast was grinding corn at the huge stones, marks up her arms that looked like healed burns.

  ‘It’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping,’ she lied. She was worried that, if Vast even thought she was being a slight hindrance, she would run. ‘What brings you to me?’

  ‘It is Ninian, Lady Hen.’ Now Vast came closer and Hen could see she was wearing only her shift, and her hair was coiled around her head; Vast had come straight from bed. ‘He is barking like a dog.’

  Hen was already up, pulling her tunic over her shift and belting it. She saw Vast’s head move as her eyes tried to keep Hen’s necklace in sight before the tunic concealed it. Everyone regarded it as magic; the black and white shapes that hung around Hen’s neck had marked her out as different from the first day.

  ‘How old is Ninian now, Vast?’

  Vast bowed her head as though ashamed. ‘He has just passed his third Midsummer, lady.’

  ‘And has he been ill?’

  ‘Not ill, lady, no, but he came back yesterday from helping Arthfael and Morcant move the beasts higher on the hill coughing and sneezing.’ A sudden thought seemed to strike her, as Hen shook the fire and put new wood to encourage it to burn up, and she stiffened at the bright glow. ‘You don’t think that the boys did anything to enrage the ancestors, do you, lady? Might they be cursed? Was Caerlynn wrong to send them up on the hill unaccompanied?’

  Hen pulled her bag down out of the rafters. ‘Why would the ancestors curse a bunch of playful young boys, Vast?’ She slung the bag across her body. ‘Even the ancestors were young once, I doubt they would be upset by your children and their cousins, even had they set games upon the sleeping place! It would do the ancestors good to hear the laughter of young children, don’t you think?’

  Vast seemed to relax a little. ‘Do you believe that?’

  No. I don’t believe in the ancestors as anything other than a bunch of old bones, but I know you and the others do. ‘I think the ancestors would be more likely to protect the boys than curse them,’ she said, putting another log on to keep the fire in whilst she was gone and following Vast out.

  They observed the ritual of walking down the yew-edged path from Hen’s hut, even though it would have been faster to step over the hedging and cut across. Ritual was important, even more so to Vast than to the others; the rituals she believed kept her safe, even though Hen knew that it was more likely Tor’s strong arm and way with a spear that protected them. They went down the muddied path that smelled of crushed herbs and into Vast’s small hut. Vast’s little black and white dog sniffed at her ankles as they went in, tail moving uncertainly, but, at a word from Vast, scuttled off to curl by the fire, one eye open. Hen didn’t blame her for keeping a dog in her home. It seemed Vast had more reason to be afraid than most, and if the dog made her feel secure, who was Hen to judge?

  Ninian was on his small bed, his sister Genofeva by his side. She was sleeping fitfully, whilst he was sitting, arms clenched around his frail body, issuing a coughing bark and struggling to breathe.

  ‘Boil water,’ Hen said as soon as she saw him. ‘In your biggest pot. And bring me a hide.’

  She held Ninian on her lap, holding his sparrow-boned frame in her arms and letting him hold her necklace whilst his mother set water to boil. She spoke soothingly, sang meaningless songs until he relaxed and stopped his struggle to draw in air then, when the water was steaming, threw the hide over the pot, herself and Ninian and let him breathe in the steam. Hen had to stop herself from hugging the child, from holding him close to her body and smelling that scent of childhood from him; mud and grass, dung from the sheep he’d helped to herd, hot flesh and mischief.

  ‘Lady?’ She lifted the flap of skin to see Vast hovering uncertainly beside the fire. ‘Will he live? Will my son live?’

  Hen put Ninian down, still under the makeshift tent. ‘He will. His throat had become inflamed, probably from breathing in dust from the flowers on the hill. It’s a disease called croup, if it happens again then treat him the same way. The steam from the pot helps to soothe his chest … and don’t let him up on the hill when the flowers are blooming and the grass is long.’

  Vast was crying now, long silent tears like bubbles on her cheeks. ‘Thank you, lady. For my son’s life, thank you.’

  That is why I’m here. The reason you tolerate me as part of your family group, the reason you all turn away from remembering how and why I came here. My skill with healing, my knowledge of illness and the things that will soothe it earns me my place among you.

  ‘It’s all right, Lady Vast.’

  ‘Lady Caerlynn thinks I don’t care for my children. She says I allow them to run too wild, that Genofeva will never find a man if she will not learn to spin and sew and bake bread.’ Vast looked down at her daughter, whose sleep had settled now her brother had stopped coughing. ‘But I want her to have her freedom while she may.’ Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. ‘Having a man is not always the boon it seems.’

  ‘Vast, I saw Caerlynn yesterday running after Morcant because he was rolling in the pellets that the sheep had left on the hillside. I do not think you need to compare your children to your aunt’s unfavourably,’ Hen said as she checked on Ninian, who had fallen asleep in his little steam-filled tent. His breathing was easier now and his cheeks looked less pinched. Gently, carefully, she took the necklace from his sleep-slackened fingers and fastened it around her own neck again.

  Vast let out a sudden laugh that seemed to take her by surprise. In this flickering half-light she looked younger, and Hen realised that she was probably still only a teenager, seventeen or eighteen. ‘Thank you, lady. I shall try not to do that. Will you take a little ale while you are here?’ Her eyes flickered to the necklace and then slid away again, as though it may be offended by her reference to their other strong talisman. The drink that they brewed and the solid tiles of the necklace were the things they believed held them safe.

  Hen sat down by the fire and accepted the beaker of sweet mead. She scratched at a louse bite high on her leg and listened to the sound of Vast tucking her son back int
o his bed alongside his sister, feeling that sour tug deep in her stomach that kept her anchored to this place.

  Chapter Twelve

  Millie burst onto the site the next morning like another sun rising over us. Any sun would have been welcome, but today there was a reddish orb sitting behind a fogbank that made the dig look like a scene from a Swedish horror film, and Millie, dressed in a bright yellow shirt and terracotta trousers, looked like its more effective cousin. She was as tall and effortlessly elegant as Tabitha, slightly younger and with very long auburn hair, so she closely resembled a lit candle.

  Tabitha met her with squeals of joy and I resigned myself to spare wheel status. Tabs and Mills had been great immediately after the loss of Jamie, but had started to retreat more recently, back into their coupledom, which was great, but … sometimes it hurt, seeing two people so happy in one another’s company. Jamie and I had been like that once. But I could hardly expect the whole world to slump around in miserable single status just because I was widowed, so I kept quiet and never let them know how much it jabbed me in the heart to see two people hugging and kissing. That was my own private pain and nobody else’s business.

  ‘Does Duncan know you’re back yet?’ I asked her when she and Tabs disengaged for long enough for me to get a word in. ‘He’s desperate for you to look at some … I dunno, wood, or something.’

  Millie looked at me and raised her eyebrows. ‘Duncan is it now?’ A look exchanged with Tabs. ‘Wow, I’ve known the man for five years and I’ve only just got to call him Prof. A more prickly soul I never knew. And, no, he doesn’t know I’m back yet, I wanted to see Tabs first.’ She gave her girlfriend a squeeze and a wink. ‘Since you’re on such good terms with him, why don’t you go and break the good news?’

  ‘Why don’t you just give me a tenner to go to the pictures?’ I grumbled. ‘All right, I’ll go and find him and tell him that you’ll meet him in a water-filled pit, shall I? To stare at some slimy black stuff?’