The Lives She Left Behind

by James Long

  Jo found herself next to the one called Jonno. ‘Did you enjoy this afternoon?’ he asked. He had the build and the broken nose of a rugby player but his voice was light and lilting. Jo thought he might be Scottish.

  ‘Enjoy?’ she said. ‘Endure is a bit more like it.’

  ‘Clearing’s never fun,’ he answered. ‘Tomorrow will be better.’

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ put in Ali. ‘There’s nothing like hard physical work.’

  Conrad, the student next to her, nodded in approval, wiped his thick glasses and his brow with a spotted handkerchief. His pale chin was outlined by a dark, sporadic beard. ‘Spot on,’ he said. ‘Just right.’

  There was a tired buzz of contented people around the fire until Rupert stood up and called for silence.

  ‘That’s enough relaxation,’ he said. ‘Time for work now.’ There was a chorus of catcalls. ‘No, I mean it,’ he went on.

  ‘I thought this was going to be fun,’ Lucy muttered.

  The boys turned and grinned at her. Rupert seemed to be smiling in the darkness. ‘I’ve asked one of my students to prepare a health and safety lecture for you tonight. Please welcome Conrad.’

  Conrad sprang up into the firelight. His voice was rich and his words were confident.

  ‘There are clear rules to be followed when working on this site,’ he said, ‘particularly when digging into its depths, as the following cautionary tale will demonstrate.’

  He spun round and thrust out an arm to point towards the banks of the castle. ‘Once upon a time, some time before now and since then, a man called Jehosh dropped a coin down a rabbit hole in the castle mound and heard it clink, clink, clink as if against metal far below. Buried metal spelled treasure to Jehosh so he went to fetch a spade, intending to dig it up. But Jehosh was a lazy man.’

  A log fell out of the fire in a cascade of sparks and Conrad strode to the other side of the circle. He seized a cup from a woman sitting there, drained it of wine in one gulp and tossed it back at her, then he wiped his lips and started again, turning constantly as he spoke so that his voice rose and fell, rose and fell in the thickening dark.

  Ali turned, smiling, to Jo and Lucy, her eyes shining. Lucy shrugged. Jo smiled back.

  ‘Jehosh summoned his brother Joseph to help him dig. Joseph was a better man than Jehosh but far worse than their brother Jacob, who was a holy man. They dug all evening until at last they rubbed the dark crumbs of earth away from the lid of a treasure chest made of solid silver, glinting in the last of the sun. In his black impatience, Jehosh tried to pull it out but when the earth still clutched it tight, he swore a terrible oath, damning his brother, the heavens and the earth, in a stream of words so violent that they hung, crimson and hissing, in the air after he had spoken them. As they faded, leaving a shadow of sulphurous smoke behind them, the birds fell silent, the sky turned a foetid purple, and with a scraping groan the treasure chest slipped deeper into the hole.

  ‘Jehosh swore again, louder, and the earth crumbled again, taking the man with it so that his head disappeared below the surface of the ground. Joseph, who was a better man than Jehosh but not nearly so good as Jacob, leapt in after his brother.’

  Ali nudged Jo and whispered, ‘He’s really good.’

  Conrad glanced all around him and hunched forward conspiratorially.

  ‘The sharp hobnails on Joseph’s boots landed on the head of Jehosh and this time they both took the name of the Lord in vain. Their words hung, steaming and hissing, in the air above the hole and the earth below heaved and rumbled. Then it crumbled once more and down they both went.

  ‘A wandering horse tamer happened by – a man from the high and frozen north. He heard their calls and ran to fetch their brother Jacob, who was, as you will recall, a better man than Joseph and a far better man than Jehosh. He recognised this as the work of the Devil so he shaved his head in the proper manner and said thirteen prayers before hastening to the castle mound. When he arrived he took great care to make sure that he walked around it in the right direction and did not go . . .’ here Conrad dropped his voice . . . ‘widdershins.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Lucy whispered and before Ali could answer, Andy said, ‘Anticlockwise.’ Ali noticed that he and Lucy seemed to be leaning against each other for support.

  ‘He exhorted his brothers far below to avoid all blasphemy but as he climbed down, he dislodged a shower of earth and small stones which fell on to the heads of his brothers below and he heard their voices join in a fresh invocation of Satan’s name. At that, the day turned to full night and the entire mound shook. The earth tumbled in, taking Jacob, Joseph and Jehosh down into the far distant depths where voices can no longer be heard. When the sky lightened again there was not a movement to be seen and there was nobody there to see it until a roe deer stepped cautiously from the fringe of the wood to sniff at the tumbled earth. An entire night passed and in the morning, the searchers raised by the itinerant horse tamer came upon Jacob, white-faced and white-haired, crawling, shaking, from a badger’s sett a full furlong from the mound. It is said to this day that if you find that same badger’s sett, you may discover a human bone or two in the excavated earth around it – for that is all that was ever found of Jehosh, Joseph and the treasure of Montacute.’

  Jo trembled. It was thirty-six hours since her last tablet and she wondered if this was the first touch of adrenalin anxiety that often came as the effect wore off. The flames of the fire seemed sharper and brighter. Conrad’s voice still hung in her ears and she saw in her mind’s eye a clear image of the hole and the treasure as if she had heard the story, or a story very like it, some time before. It felt long ago.

  He stopped, bowed, and they all clapped. He held up a hand until they were silent again. ‘That’s the health and safety dealt with then,’ he said. ‘Shore up any trenches deeper than four feet. Test the ground beneath you for security and remember what happens when you swear.’

  Rupert jumped to his feet and thanked him, then yawned. ‘I’m for bed. Early start to catch the weather. Breakfast seven thirty. Briefing at eight. Someone else’s turn to tell the story tomorrow. Night, all.’

  Conrad came back to the log and Ali made space next to her. ‘That was really good,’ she said.

  He smiled back at her. ‘Thank you. Why don’t you do one tomorrow? You could do it together. It’s fun.’ And to their horror, Jo and Lucy heard Ali agree.

  Jonno joined them and the wine bottles went round, and at some point Lucy and Andy disappeared into the dark and it was much later into the night when Lucy slid back into the tent, trying not to wake her friends and failing in the attempt.

  They slept soundly on the hard earth, and when Jo woke in the morning from a dream she could not quite remember the tent seemed nearer to a home than anywhere else she had been. Just one day of shared experience had turned the marquee into a place full of friendly faces and kind enquiries. Dozer winked and waved at them. Conrad brought Ali a mug of coffee and she drank it as if it was what she had most wanted, though the other two knew she only ever drank tea. They stormed the slopes of the hill laughing and chattering in the middle of the group of students and when they got up to the high terrace, Rupert separated them out and gave them their very own end of a trench to work in, tucked in under a small, overgrown cliff with the hill rising towards its summit above them.

  ‘You came back so late,’ Jo said to Lucy. ‘Come on, what happened?’

  ‘This and that.’

  ‘You were giggling when you crawled into the tent. How much of this and what sort of that?’

  ‘That’s better,’ said Lucy. ‘The real Jo is coming back again.’

  ‘I don’t think we should be chatting,’ Ali said sternly. ‘We’re meant to be concentrating.’ She hoped the other diggers couldn’t hear them.

  ‘Oh really, Ali? Then you won’t want to hear what Conrad said about you.’

  ‘Conrad? About me? What did he say?’

  ‘I would tell you,’ said Lucy, ‘bu
t I have to concentrate on this very, very dull bit of earth I’m kneeling on. It needs me to scrape at it very carefully in case I miss something that could change our entire understanding of the world of the wotsits, William the thingy and all that.’

  ‘The Normans. Come on, what did Conrad say about me?’

  Lucy held up a piece of root at arm’s length and stared at it. ‘No, no. Don’t distract me. Look, this is obviously a Saxon’s leg bone and it shows that they suffered from a mineral deficiency which made their bones all floppy which explains why they were beaten by the Normans because if you—’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Ali. ‘Please tell me.’

  ‘Put her out of her misery,’ said Jo.

  ‘Conrad likes you.’

  Ali’s voice squeaked. ‘Does he? How do you know that?’

  ‘Andy told me.’

  ‘Really? What did he say? Exactly.’

  ‘He said Conrad thinks you’re a good sort. I do have a slight concern that his turn of phrase shows he must actually be about fifty years old and I could have sworn he was forty tops, but that’s exactly what he said.’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Ali. ‘He’s only nineteen. And?’

  ‘What do you mean, “And?” That’s it.’

  ‘That’s it?’ said Jo. ‘A good sort? You get her all excited and that’s the best you can come up with?’

  Lucy sniffed. ‘There might have been something else.’

  ‘What?’ Ali demanded.

  ‘It’s not a word I care to utter,’ said Lucy loftily. ‘He said you were . . . no, I can’t. My lips just won’t form around it.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Oh, all right. He said you were . . . cute.’

  ‘How did he say it? Just like that? “She’s cute”? What did he look like when he said it? Was that all he—’

  ‘Look at your face.’ Lucy said, and she whipped out her phone and took a picture of Ali before she could compose herself. Ali shrieked. Lucy frowned. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘I don’t know why I’m being nice to you. I’ve just remembered what you let us in for.’

  ‘Oh, well, I—’

  ‘You volunteered us to tell the story tonight, didn’t you? “We’ll tell it,” you said, not “I’ll tell it.” You said “we”. Why exactly did you do that? No, don’t answer. I know why. You were trying to impress Conrad.’

  ‘Oh, come off it,’ said Ali sheepishly. ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. I just thought we could—’

  Lucy reached out her hands and covered Ali’s mouth. ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘I don’t like public speaking and I don’t have anybody to impress and I’m not going to do it.’

  ‘Nor am I,’ said Jo, and they both looked at Ali.

  ‘All right then, I’ll do it by myself,’ said Ali. There was a silence. ‘I don’t mind standing up and speaking,’ she said in a smaller voice, ‘but I don’t know what to say. Will you help me?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘I need some ideas.’

  Lucy pouted. ‘I said maybe.’

  Jo relented. ‘I’ll help you. There’s nothing guys like more than a good story.’

  ‘Really?’ Lucy said. ‘Is that true? Oh, all right.’

  They stopped talking and got busy with their trowels because Rupert was walking towards them with a man they hadn’t seen before – an older man with thinning hair and a drawn face.

  ‘This is my friend Michael,’ said Rupert. ‘He’s joining us for the day. I like to make sure he gets out in the fresh air sometimes. Mike, this is Lucy, this one’s Jo and this one’s Ali. Don’t stand for any nonsense.’ He smiled at the girls. ‘Mike’s a schoolteacher, so you’ve been warned.’

  He walked away and the man shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Ignore him,’ he said.

  ‘Are you really a teacher?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Not at weekends.’

  ‘What sort of school?’

  ‘King Arthur’s at Wincanton.’

  ‘That sounds posh.’

  ‘No, it’s a comprehensive. Where are you from?’

  ‘We all live in Exeter,’ said Ali. ‘My mother’s an archaeologist.’

  Jo was staring at him, remembering the map and the name. ‘How far away is Wincanton?’ she asked.

  ‘Half an hour,’ he said and pointed vaguely. ‘That way.’

  Jo was still staring at him, disconcerted by the disturbing feelings in her gut. Common sense told her this was another stage of the pills wearing off but it wasn’t the way she was used to. Normally, she was nervous and frightened, feeling her pulse racing as everything looked too bright and sounded too sharp. This was a slower feeling, a deep ache more like sorrow and a further disturbing something as if the pain written on this man’s face might be somehow her fault. She dismissed it as absurd. He was a stranger, and when he looked at her there was no flicker of recognition.

  ‘What are we doing?’ the man asked.

  ‘Just scraping this down,’ Ali told him.

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘No,’ said the teacher. ‘I suspected that any trench Rupert let me into was unlikely to contain anything I might damage.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Lucy. ‘That stinks. I’ll show him. I’m going to find something.’

  He settled himself a few feet further down the trench and scraped away with his back to them. The girls talked quietly.

  ‘Come on then,’ said Ali. ‘What about this story, then?’

  Fifteen minutes later they had the rough outlines of two different stories, one from Lucy and one from Ali, and they couldn’t agree which one was best, then Lucy squealed, ‘I’ve found something. What’s this? It’s metal, isn’t it? I think it’s silver.’

  She had uncovered the curving top of something too smooth and regular to be natural. She rubbed away the dirt with her fingers and they stared at a thin grey rod, the thickness of a ballpoint pen, emerging from the earth and disappearing back into it three or four inches further along.

  Ali knelt by it, scraping, and more and more emerged until they had a foot showing with no sign of an end. The teacher was looking back over his shoulder curiously.

  Lucy levered the pointed end of the trowel underneath it. ‘It’s like a cable,’ she said in disgust. ‘I think it’s modern.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Ali urgently. ‘You have to scrape round the edges.’ But she was too late. Lucy had hooked her fingers underneath it, got to her feet and yanked hard upwards. It was immediately clear that she was right about the cable and entirely wrong about the correct way to behave in a trench. The cable ran close to the exposed earth surface all the way down the long trench to where Rupert was working with some of the others twenty feet further along. It ripped up in a spray of earth, past the startled teacher and on down, all the way to Rupert who reared up on his haunches and turned with an expression of complete astonishment to look back to the culprit, caught red-handed and red-faced with the cable still in her hand.

  Rupert beckoned to them and the three of them, followed by the teacher who seemed as embarrassed as they were, walked slowly to the far end of the trench.

  ‘What on earth have you done?’ said Rupert.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Lucy. ‘But it’s just some sort of wire, isn’t it?’

  Rupert looked at the damage she had done to the even surface of the trench and shook his head. ‘I’ll get Mike to explain a few things to you,’ he said. ‘You have to be more careful.’

  Dozer had walked over from his trench, drawn by the fuss, and he broke in. ‘Hey, Rupe,’ he said. ‘You know what? This is lead sheathing, old electrical stuff, and it’s got the jolly old broad arrow stamped all along it. War Department stuff. And guess what? It’s heading straight towards our hole.’

  ‘Five-minute break,’ Rupert said. ‘Let’s have a think. Everyone – take a breather.’

  The teacher joined the group standing round Rupert discussing the cable. The girls walked away into the trees and
sat down on the grass. They were silent for a long time then Ali said, ‘I wish you hadn’t done that. It makes me feel like a complete idiot.’

  ‘You? Why’s it about you? I did it, not you.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my mother. I feel responsible.’

  ‘Do me a favour!’

  ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Jo suggested quickly. ‘What about these stories?’

  There was a further long silence before the other two took the olive branch. In the end Lucy said, ‘Let’s tell both of them. I’ll tell mine and you tell yours. They needn’t be very long.’

  Ali got to her feet. ‘They’re all going back to work. Come on.’ They walked back to the other trench, where Dozer was peering at the surface of the earth. ‘I’ll get stage fright if I’m doing one by myself,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve done school plays.’

  ‘I was dressed up as someone else. I can do it then.’

  ‘All right, we’ll dress up.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘We’ll find something. Old rags.’

  ‘What old rags? Anyway, what about Jo?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Jo. ‘I can’t think of anything to say.’

  ‘Could you help me, maybe?’ Ali asked. ‘You could be there to remind me if I go wrong.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jo. ‘I’d rather just . . .’ but that was as far as she got because there was a loud gasp from the cliff above them and the dark shape of a body, arms spread out, crashed down into the trench right next to them in a shower of leaves.

  CHAPTER 5

  Miles away and hours before, a boy blinked awake from a warm dream of love to find himself in an empty bungalow, momentarily unsure of his name. The room’s sour smell drove his dream away in tatters. He stared at the wall facing him, pale blue and streaked white where water had leaked down. His pyjamas were too short for him and the polyester slither of the sheet across his bare ankles filled him with a revulsion that drove him out of bed. Barry’s car battery stood on the hall table, casually dumped on top of his photography project, and when he strained to lift it off it left wide black marks across the folder. He remembered it was Saturday, then that his exams were over and his holidays had started early. The thought gave him no pleasure. A note on the kitchen table said ‘Luke, gone to the boot sale. Back later.’ With the last tendrils of the dream still twitching, that did not feel like his name, nor did this thin and flimsy house feel like his home.