by James Long
Fleur looked at her. ‘You don’t have to call me “Mum”,’ she said. ‘I’ll try to be as much of a mother as you want, but I doubt that’s very much, eh? You haven’t had a mother so far, so I don’t suppose you’ll be needing one now’. She took the torn note from Gally. ‘Just so I know, just to make quite sure I don’t wake up one morning and start causing trouble again, what about doing this anyway? I’d like to see it.’
Gally looked at her and nodded. ‘The green cheese test,’ she said. ‘All right. Let’s put everything beyond doubt. Let’s find the other half.’
‘Now?’
‘Why not? We should tell Rachel. She should be there.’
‘I can’t. I’ve got Lulie,’ she said when Mike called her. ‘I’m going to be on the road most of the day and I’m taking her with me.’
‘Bring her along.’
‘How would I explain that?’
‘You don’t have to. We won’t say anything. It can just be some sort of treasure hunt.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We’re going in half an hour. You won’t want to miss this.’
‘I have to be in Yeovil at eleven thirty. I don’t think I can.’
‘You’ve got time if you come right now.’
‘I’ll see. Where are you going exactly?’
They finished washing up and set off along the road that marked the western fringe of the village. Ferney and Gally walked in silence, hand in hand. Fleur walked with the two girls. Mike brought up the rear, looking behind him whenever he heard a car coming. They were yards away from the field entrance which led to Ballands Castle when he was rewarded. Rachel’s car pulled in and parked on the grass verge and two Rachels got out. The first was the Rachel he knew, the second was Rachel seen in a trick mirror, stretched thin, a little blurred and paler but with so much about her the same. Her eyes locked on his as soon as she got out of the car and she came straight up to him with the direct confidence of someone twice her age, calmly assessing him then smiling as she held out a hand. ‘I’m Lulie,’ she said. ‘I know who you are because I’ve seen you at school.’
‘I owe you some thanks,’ he answered. ‘You saved me from Caroline Oaks.’
‘I enjoyed that.’
Mike introduced her to the others.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘In here,’ said Ferney.
‘This is the boring castle, isn’t it?’ said Lucy. ‘The one with the little bumps that’s hardly there at all,’ but then they stopped in surprise as two worlds came together. A line of cars was parked inside the field. Six tents and a familiar green marquee were lined up along the far hedge.
‘That’s Rupert’s Land Rover,’ said Ali.
Conrad was waving from the marquee. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Hurray! You found us. I’m doing tea. We’re a bit short-handed. Hello, Ali – how lovely to see you. Lucy, Jo, how are you? And who’s this?’
He led them in a stream of words through the line of trees to the slope that steepened to the valley below, and there, across the grassy swell of the old ramparts, they saw a handful of diggers working in a long trench.
‘Rupert,’ he called. ‘Look who’s here.’
Rupert got up from his knees and walked over to join them. Dozer followed him, waving.
‘Hello, Mike,’ he said, ‘Hello, girls and, let me see . . . Luke too. Well, well.’
Ferney stared at the trench. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Just trying to sort out the site. There’s some confusion over the Norman features. There’s supposed to be a church here but I can’t see it myself.’
Mike looked enquiringly at Ferney, who pointedly looked the other way.
‘We’ll be back in a minute,’ Gally said. ‘We’re just going to do something.’
‘We’ll stick around here,’ said Ali quickly. ‘I’m sure they could do with some help.’
‘Lulie, you can stay if you want. We won’t be long. Perhaps you might like to see what they’re doing?’ Rachel suggested.
Dozer grinned at the girl. ‘Come and take a gander at my trench. Your keen eyes might spot something I haven’t noticed.’
Gally led them north along the edge of the slope. She was casting around, looking hard at the trees and the line of the hedge. She stopped a hundred yards from the diggers, where three rough stones broke the surface of the grass, the soil dipping away beside them where a sheep path had worn down the ground.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Stand in front of me. I don’t want them to see.’ She knelt and got to work with a knife, scraping away around one of the stones until she could rock it forward. The underside had damp earth embedded in it, filling rough chiselled lines of lettering.
‘This is their church, by the way,’ said Ferney. ‘You can tell them later on, Mike, after we’ve done. It can’t do any harm.’
Below the stone was a square of opaque plastic. Gally freed its edges with the knife blade and lifted out a shallow box. She handed it to Mike.
‘Here’s your token, but like I said, it doesn’t have to mean anything.’
Mike passed it to Fleur. ‘You open it. If you’ve got any doubt left in your mind, this should fix it.’
She peeled off the tape and levered the lid open, looked inside and nodded slowly. ‘I’m sure it will match,’ she said, ‘but let’s do it anyway.’
He fitted the two halves of the banknote together.
‘That may be the most interesting thing anybody digs up round here this week,’ Ferney said, watching the diggers.
‘Oh really?’ said Mike. ‘It’s a castle. There must be something worth finding, surely?’
‘Plenty, but nothing over there except earthworks, unless of course they move their spoil heap.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because Harold is right underneath it.’
Walking back to the dig, they could see Lulie laughing with Ali, Lucy and Dozer. ‘They’re looking after her,’ Gally said.
‘You may find it’s the other way round,’ Rachel replied. ‘She has a way with people.’
‘You sound like a proud mum.’
‘Do I? Sorry. Well, no, you’re right – I am a proud mum.’
On the way back to Rachel’s car, Gally walked with Lulie. ‘Did you enjoy that?’ she asked.
‘I think Mum should go on a dig,’ said the girl. ‘She spends too much time at home. She’d like Dozer – he was the one with the ponytail. I mean just as a friend. He’s way too old for her. It’s just the sort of thing she needs. Simple stuff – a trowel and some dirt and good chat.’
‘Do you spend a lot of time thinking about what your mum needs?’
‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Someone has to.’
‘I’ve got to get on,’ Rachel said to Mike as she unlocked her car. ‘I suppose that’s it then?’
‘You’ve been amazing,’ Mike replied. ‘I can’t begin to thank you.’
‘I’ll certainly never forget it. I suspect that’s the high point of my professional life.’
‘What now then?’
‘Next on my list? A briefing ahead of an employment tribunal for a redundant office manager. Oh what fun.’
He shook her hand and it seemed wrong, then she got in the car and Mike saw Lulie talk to her urgently. Rachel frowned, asked her something, raised her eyebrows at her reply and got out again.
‘Mike, just on the off chance, are you free next Saturday? It seems I’ve got a spare ticket for Carmen in Salisbury. You wouldn’t like to come, would you? I bought one for Lulie but she’s just told me opera’s not really her bag.’
‘Oh, thanks, but it’s not really mine either.’
‘It’s a touring production and they’re quite good. They – oh, never mind.’
Mike stared at her blankly and she looked away, fiddling with the ignition key. ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he said.
She looked up quickly. ‘Yes, what?’
‘Do you do property stuff – what’s it c
alled, conveyancing? I want to do something about the house.’
‘I don’t. The firm does. Ring the office.’
He stepped back as she drove off in a spurt of gravel then he saw her brake hard. Lulie jumped out and ran back to him. She stopped in front of him and stared at him, shaking her head. ‘I go to all that trouble and you blow it straight away,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I do like opera as it happens. Think about it.’
He did, and got nowhere. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You’re meant to be clever,’ she said. ‘You’re a teacher. I fix up a date and you turn her down.’
‘A date? You – oh shit. Wait here.’
He ran to Rachel’s car.
Later that evening, as the sun settled down on the rim of the western lowlands, the girl and the boy who were older than the oak trees and as young as saplings sat on their hilltop, as they had always done, watching the colours growing under the distant terraces of cloud. ‘I have something to say to you,’ said Gally.
‘I might know what it is.’
‘You might not. Do you know me well enough to be certain?’
‘After all this time? No, probably not.’
She smiled at him, ‘We still have a few mysteries. What chance do they have, all the rest of them – Mike, Fleur, Rachel? One lifetime to know someone else. It’s barely enough to get started.’
‘Can I try?’ he said. ‘Can I see if perhaps I do know what it is you want to say?’
‘All right.’
‘When I heard your letter,’ he sounded tentative, ‘and when I saw the way he was this morning, I finally realised how much we had both hurt him. I wouldn’t want to hurt someone like that, someone who mattered, ever again. Is that it?’
‘That’s my starting point,’ she said, ‘but it goes much further. I think there might be another way to tackle all this.’
He waited quietly as she put the words together.
‘We both know how much harder it’s getting,’ she said. ‘You said it yourself. Everything has numbers and files and records. There are more and more rules about schools and houses and taxes and ownership. Cameras watch us and these days, there always has to be an answer to the question “Who is he?” or “Who is she?”’
‘It’s been hard before in many different ways. We always manage.’
‘It’s much harder now.’ She leaned her head on his shoulder. ‘I think there’s a better way and everybody else knows it except us. People adapt because they have such a short time. They do what they have to do to get by because they’ll only have to do it once. They take the world for what it is and they don’t mind because that’s the only one they know. They have children and that’s how they deal with the world – that’s how they throw their spear onwards, one generation to another.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘I think that’s what we should do,’ she said. ‘We should have children again. They’ll be much better at this changing game and the world is bringing too much change.’
‘But you know what happens then. They break your heart.’
‘Ferney, most children stay alive these days.’
‘All right, but we have them, then we get old and die and come back and we see them getting it all wrong, and—’
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘Then . . . what?’
‘I’m saying enough is enough. I’m saying we should stop this time. We have children and they have children and then we stop when our time comes just like everybody else.’
‘And throw away all this, you and me? All our futures? All our history and knowledge?’
She touched his face with her fingers. ‘Where’s it got us?’ she asked him. ‘Let’s live in the here and now, not in the future because we don’t know it and not the past because we know it far too well. Let’s have the most joyful life with the most joyful family and prepare them to face whatever the world throws at them. Then, when the candle flickers, let’s make sure we snuff it out together and let that be our ending in the full sunlight of our love, and the best part is we won’t even know we’re missing anything. Let’s make this the last time and the best time and find no regret in that at all.’
He took her hands. ‘Do you think we can just decide to stop?’
‘Who knows?’ she answered, ‘Let’s try it and see.’
