by Rosie Thomas
Miranda found that there were tears in her eyes.
Till we have built Jerusalem, in England’s green and pleasant land.
She thought that she had never loved Mead as much as she did today.
The crowd shuffled, settling into silence once again. Overhead, a plane stitched a white thread against the blue sky.
‘Dear friends,’ the bishop began.
After the prayer, Kieran and Chris fitted broad green ribbons into slots in the two wicker caskets. The musicians played a piece of Elgar as the ancient bones of the princess and her cup-bearer were lowered back into the ground. The smallest Brownie came forward and dropped two white roses after them.
The final role was Miranda’s own. She stepped forward to the very edge of the pit, dug a spade into the mound of earth, and shovelled it on top of the bones. At once, as if in collective relief, the crowd gave a great sigh. Someone at the back clapped their hands and the applause was instantly taken up, dying away only as the gravedigger from Meddlett churchyard took the spade from Miranda, and soil thudded down to cover the remains once more.
‘We can all rest easy now she has come home,’ Roy’s wife sobbed to Amos. Amos patted her arm, already regretting his own insistence that there would be no alcohol served at the celebration party. Miranda caught his eye, and winked at him.
The media crews were heading for the smaller marquee outside which stood two policemen and several uniformed private security guards. The people streamed away from the burial place, hesitating between the choice of tea or a close-up of the actual Mead treasure.
With Ben and Toby’s help, Miranda and Polly half-steered and half-carried Joyce’s wheelchair towards the marquee.
‘Where are we going? What’s happening now?’ Joyce cried.
Miranda leaned down to her.
‘We’re going to look at the princess’s treasure, brought back to Mead in all its glory.’
Only Colin loitered behind, one hand in his pocket, apparently watching the gravedigger.
When he was sure that no one was looking, he took a few quick steps to the edge of the half-filled grave. Then he withdrew his hand and let fall a heart-shaped piece of quartz into the loose earth. A moment later it was covered. Colin bent his head in what might have been a salute, then walked away between the daisies and the spires of sorrel.
Joyce’s wheelchair was borne into the tent in the wake of the bishop’s party. Cameras flashed and the news crews pressed after them.
‘I feel like royalty myself,’ Joyce said.
Miranda wheeled her into place, then stood at her side. Glancing down she saw her mother’s tiny, veined hand resting on the arm of the chair. She reached down and clasped it.
The entire Mead treasure was laid out on a series of stepped display stands draped in black velvet. There were no ropes or protective panels. The glory of the princess’s regalia lay there, close enough to touch, as if it belonged inside this tent in a field of dappled summer sunshine. The pure, soft gold of the torc and the cup was sumptuous. The huge shield, the hair and cloak adornments, bracelets and wrist protectors and everything down to the last silver coin from the hoard had been cleaned. The precious metal glittered in the camera flashes. This simplicity and immediacy of access had been Amos’s idea, and he had fought hard for it. He had brought in the guards for protection, but had instructed them to stay in the background as far as possible.
Amos himself looked on in modest self-effacement as the VIPs were given a tour by the director of the county museum.
‘Magnificent,’ pronounced the bishop, peering over his spectacles. ‘Quite magnificent.’
Joyce’s white head nodded.
‘I’m glad I lasted long enough to see this. I did better than Jake and Selwyn, didn’t I?’
‘You did,’ Miranda agreed, still holding her hand. Jake was there, she was sure of it, but Selwyn’s absence was an ache in her bones. She missed him deeply at this moment, and she knew she would miss him in the same way tomorrow and every day to come. But, she told herself, you’re not the only one and you are not alone. Polly was here, and Colin, and Katherine and Amos, and it was the same for all of them. Selwyn would not come back, but they had all shared him.
Chris was in the bishop’s retinue. Katherine waited for him near the marquee entrance with the two girls.
‘You must be feeling proud of your dad,’ she said to them.
Daisy nodded unwillingly. Gemma only jerked her chin.
‘It’s just a load of old stuff, isn’t it?’ she sighed. She dismissed her father’s passion and expertise without a flicker of mercy.
Looking beyond her shoulder, at a loss for what to say, Katherine caught sight of Jessie. She was standing alone in the middle of the field, smoking and staring into the distance, the picture of detachment. Gulliver squatted next to her bare ankles. It was the age, she understood. The conformity of youth reassured her but the depth of their ennui also struck her as funny, set as it was against the day’s reverencing of the joint gods of history and treasure. Had she ever been as mulish herself? She didn’t think so, unfortunately. She would probably have been a better person now if she had been. All she could remember was her eagerness to please.
Katherine laughed. Chris’s girls only stared at her.
‘It is just a load of old stuff,’ Katherine agreed.
The VIP party emerged, blinking and looking suitably impressed. They were steered towards the tea marquee, and the queue of ordinary visitors that was by now snaking a long way across the grass began to move into the display area. The Carr girls backed away and Katherine found Amos at her shoulder.
‘Well done,’ she said, composing herself.
He eyed her. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes,’ she told him. She was proud of what he had done here, where the idea of their house had once dominated.
It was a beautiful day. There was stately music playing, and the smell of grass in the air. Crowds of happy people were eating strawberries and chocolate cake and cucumber sandwiches, talking amongst themselves about prehistoric gold as they strolled to the edge of the plateau to look at the view that the princess of the Iceni would also have known.
Ben Davies, hatless, passed in front of them, carrying Leo in his arms. ‘My son,’ he explained to Gemma Carr. Not far away Alpha in her white dress already looked bridal, swinging her hand in Jaime’s as Jaime chatted to Colin. Nic and Kieran sat down on the grass, beside Leo’s empty pram. Nic’s narrowed eyes followed Ben’s circuit with the baby.
‘Thank you,’ Amos said.
He began telling her about his intentions to get funding for a permanent display space in Meddlett itself, so the collection could be brought back and put on show every summer. He wanted to make sure it would stay in the county for the remainder of the year. He mentioned plans for a study centre, maybe even a recreation of the tribal village using contemporary materials and techniques, with an on-site classroom for the use of local schools.
Gazing through the crowds to the roped-off square of the filled grave, Katherine heard his voice rather than what he said. In time the turf would be replaced, and all the signs of the excavations for their foundations and of the burial site itself would be obliterated. The place would be as it had always been.
She saw the image of their house that had never materialized, trembling like a mirage over the grass, and then as silently as a soap bubble it burst and was gone.
She put her hand on Amos’s arm.
He seemed to stiffen, as if only now remembering their circumstances. ‘I’d better get over to the tea tent and make sure everyone’s being looked after.’
‘Of course,’ she said gently.
Sam came across in his father’s wake.
‘You OK, Mum?’
‘Fine.’
‘Dad’s becoming quite the local figure, isn’t he?’
‘He’ll do local figure just as well as he’s always done everything.’
‘Yes. Shall I get you some strawbe
rries?’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.
In the evening of Princess Day, there was a village barbecue. It was held on the village green and there were to be absolutely no fireworks, by order of the parish council.
Once Amos had overseen the safe removal of the treasure by security van, he went to the party with Colin. The twins and their boyfriends and Ben and the Knight boys went with them. Nic had gone home with the baby, Jessie was working at the Griffin, and the three women said they had had enough of Meddlett celebrations for one day.
In the summer twilight, it was a benign event. People sat on folding chairs and ate barbecued food, and as darkness crept up, lanterns hanging from the branches around the duck pond were reflected in the rippling water. There was none of the threatening crackle and smoke of November the Fifth. The lanes leading away from the green were quiet, the gardens and hedges starred with the ghostly bloom of white roses.
The young people had disappeared into the hubbub inside the pub. Colin and Amos sat outside on a hay bale, drinking beer. Bats swooped overhead, missing the tangle of telephone lines. Colin was thinking of the evening back in September, when he had dawdled in the bar in order to put off the moment of arrival at Mead, and Jessie had spilled a drink into his shoes.
Amos interrupted his thoughts. ‘You missed the Fifth, didn’t you?’
‘Yes I did.’
Selwyn’s face had been blackened with cork, and he and Amos had run down the lane opposite, firecrackers exploding around their ankles. Over at the far side of the pond the Meddlett Princess people had waved their placards, and at the end of the evening Jessie had told Amos stories about strangers he had in the intervening months come to know. And then Selwyn had loomed out of the darkness, his head tragically bandaged.
Amos swallowed the last of his pint. ‘Christ, I miss him,’ he said.
‘We all do,’ Colin acknowledged. ‘But you and he were such necessary adversaries, as well as friends.’
‘We were. Necessary adversaries, that’s just what we were. Life is pallid without him, isn’t it?’
They sat for a while longer. As the rush in the pub quietened down and people began to leave the green, a number of them saying goodnight to Amos as they passed, Jessie and Geza came out. Jessie bumped down on the hay bale, a mass of boredom and irritation, while Geza hovered in the shadow behind her.
‘I can’t stand that pub,’ she snarled, to no one in particular.
‘Get out of there, then,’ Amos advised.
‘I am doing my best, aren’t I?’ she snapped back.
Colin looked up, and Jessie remembered her companion.
‘Oh. You two don’t know each other yet do you? Colin, Geza. Geza, Colin.’
They shook hands.
‘Good evening Colin,’ Geza said, very formally. ‘I am pleased to meet you.’
The day had been exhausting for Joyce. Miranda helped her out of the wheelchair and up the stairs, negotiating a single tread at a time. Before long, she thought, if she were not to become a prisoner, her mother would need a ground-floor bedroom, and a bathroom would probably have to be put in next to it. She ran through in her mind the possible ways of doing the work, and the likely cost of it. Once they reached the bedroom she lowered her mother into a chair and knelt down to unroll Joyce’s stockings. Her shinbones stuck out as sharply as blades, the fragile skin blotched with yellow and purple bruises.
Joyce looked anxiously around her room. She seemed surprised to find herself there.
‘Where is my…where is my…’ she groped despairingly for the word.
‘Here it is,’ Miranda said. She put Joyce’s fleecy dressing gown over her shoulders. ‘Are you warm enough?’ The windows stood open on the purple night and a pale moth spiralled towards the bedside light.
‘All those people. Who were they, do you think? Such a crowd, and I don’t know that that music was at all suitable for a funeral, you know.’
‘It wasn’t quite a funeral. A homecoming, I heard one of the campaigners calling it. I’m glad it all happened. Amos did very well, I think.’
‘A homecoming? Is that what they’re calling death these days?’
Joyce had forgotten what the occasion had been; she seemed to wander more and more often in the confused thickets of her own mind. Sometimes she came out into a clearing, then got lost again in a place where words and entire days and people she had known slipped out of reach in the untracked jungle.
Miranda turned back the covers and helped her into bed. Joyce lay back against the pillows, a sigh of relief puffing out of her.
‘Here’s your book.’ Miranda put the large print volume within reach. ‘Goodnight, Mum.’ She bent down to kiss her.
‘Night night,’ Joyce said, like a child. And then, as Miranda reached the door, ‘Barbara? Where’s my book?’
It was still warm in the courtyard. The heaviness of the air suggested that there might be thunder coming. Miranda found Polly and Katherine sitting out at a rickety metal table under the scented tendrils of a climbing jasmine. She took the chair that was waiting for her and sat down.
Then, in the fragrant dusk, she noticed Polly’s face. She was glowing with half-contained excitement.
‘I’ve got some news,’ Polly announced.
Miranda thought it must be Alpha and another grandchild on the way. But when she asked if that was it Polly shook her head, pretending to be annoyed.
‘Please. Do you mind? Grandchildren are not my sole interest, you know.’
Miranda and Katherine both smiled back at her.
‘Come on then. Don’t keep us in suspense,’ Miranda ordered.
Polly’s face settled into its noodle-lady lines again.
‘I wanted to tell you two first, before anyone else. I had a call this morning from my agent. We’ve had an offer from a publisher. They’re going to take my book.’
Delighted, Miranda clapped her hands. ‘But that’s wonderful, wonderful news. Well done, Poll.’
Polly leaned across the table, all her features slanting in upward lines.
‘Wait until I tell you what the deal is.’
She named the sum that was offered, drawing out the syllables in proud emphasis.
‘I can live on that for three whole years. Longer, even, if I’m careful. So I shall have all that time to research and write. I can go right back into the history of Mead.’ She broke off, and her gaze travelled over the line of darkened windows, the old brickwork and the chimneys outlined against the fading sky. Miranda’s eyes followed hers, and the history of the house seemed to march past them both, drawing them together and folding them in its long progression.
‘I was so sure it would make a good book, and now I know it will,’ Polly breathed.
Katherine leaned forward and took both their hands.
‘Do you think she’s asleep again?’ she asked.
Polly lifted her head. ‘Joyce?’
‘I meant the princess.’
‘Yes, I think she is,’ Miranda said.
In the rustling quiet they each pursued the notion of peace having returned, settling around Mead and the fields like a long summer.
The reality of what such peace might bring was different for each of them, and they were wary of talking about it. Instead, they let their linked hands make a circle of three. Without words they acknowledged memory and superstition and the necessity of connection.
Beneath their wrists the table was dusty with pollen.
JUNE
Miranda
I can’t any longer count on sleep. Some nights it withholds its blessing altogether, on others it moodily withdraws after two or three hours. I’ve learned not to be angry about insomnia. What would be the point?
This morning, the day after Princess Day, I woke up and lay in the darkness. I was thinking about Selwyn, as I often do in these empty small hours, remembering how we were when we were young. I spend so much time with Joyce, and I know how her memories now escape from her; I keep mine a
live deliberately, exercising the muscle while it is still mine to command. I bring to mind faces and dates and sequences of events, clothes and names and smells and views. This time I had been recalling the initial full cast rehearsal for The Tempest, held in a stuffy gym hall where we perched on a circle of stacking chairs, our copies of the play held on our knees. The day I saw Selwyn for the first time.
There were dust motes floating in the shafts of sunshine coming in through high windows, the lines of a badminton court painted on the floor, a choir rehearsing in a room nearby.
I was pleased with my role as leading lady, and not much interested in the actors taking minor parts. We read through most of the play, and afterwards went to the pub. Selwyn was wearing a tight orange jumper, maroon trousers with exaggerated flares. He told me casually that I had read well but a little too fast, and I responded with some prickly observation about the relative importance of Miranda and Trinculo and what that indicated about our talents as actors. He laughed at me, and in the end I joined in. I certainly deserved his mockery.
In those days, important discoveries were made quickly and easily. By the end of that same evening I was taking it for granted that from now on Selwyn Davies and I would be significant to each other.
At nineteen, the discovery of love, friendships, any new experiences, seemed not just possible, but distinctly glorious. Forty years later life feels more like a ramshackle piece of machinery, pulling you along with it, tangling you in the spokes of its dilemmas, merriment and agony spilling out as it trundles towards the horizon.
