The Lovers of Pound Hill

by Mavis Cheek

  Dorcas dropped her earrings into the Spode dish, touched it for a moment with gentle fingers, realising that it, too, gave her pleasure. How could she have overlooked that? How could she have been so caught up in her own sad experience that she forgot to look for ways to be happy? You, Dorcas Fairbrother, have many years ahead of you and you must seek your happiness in both the small and large things of life, she thought, or you will miss them. Time to slough off the coat of many sorrows and get cracking with making the coat of little pleasures. With that resolution under her belt, she slid into her bed. Tomorrow evening she would meet up with Molly in the pub and however exhausted or unwilling Molly might be, Dorcas would wrest from her the information, any information, she might have discovered. And she would not tell Miles one word of it. There were, she thought regretfully, bits of her life in which the small pleasures she experienced came from perpetuating her old insubordination to Miles. She just could not stop it. She supposed that true inner happiness would occur when she no longer enjoyed that rather negative process. She kissed the photograph of Robin she kept by the bed, and turned out the light.

  Five

  NOT EVERYONE IN Lufferton Boney had slept peacefully. Miles was pacing back and forth at his window the following day. She was there again. What on earth was the ruddy doctor’s wife doing up the Hill? He had no idea. On attempting to question the woman when she returned to her home last night he had found that she appeared to be drunk. Beyond speech anyway. Yawning in his face. He must talk to Donald about that. He had seen her part from the Molly girl at the door of the public house and they had each given the other a victory sign before going on their separate ways. What did that mean? It looked like conspiracy to Miles. Perhaps there was treasure up there? Perhaps the Molly girl was not as innocent as she seemed. Perhaps there had been no mystery surrounding her grandfather’s activities – maybe the Gnome held a clue to buried riches? Gold? Perhaps they were all in on it. Dorcas, Winifred Porlock, the Molly girl – maybe Donald? Could it be another Saxon hoard?

  He broke out in a sweat at the very thought. Had he missed something when he slipped up the Hill last night? After the strangeness of the doctor’s wife and the lack of information from anyone else he had decided to take the risk of visiting the site despite the Bonner girl’s dictum that no one was allowed on site without her permission. That was suspicious in itself, wasn’t it? And she looked like she meant it. Nevertheless Miles had known that he just had to go. Not that it had produced anything.

  Miles, congratulating himself, had climbed the Hill on the side that faced away from the Old Holly Bush. It was a difficult climb – craggy, rocky and not a path that was ever chosen when the Gnome side was so much easier. It took him over two hours. When he reached the site he had tried to peer under the tarpaulins to see what was what – but without a torch to light him he could make out nothing. If he used a torch then the wretched Molly might see (her window in the pub faced, he knew, the exact spot on the Hill) and then all would be up. If he knew nothing much about the girl, he knew one thing: she meant what she said. She was a person, he could see, full of infuriating integrity – and not only that, she was – like all women – stubborn. You could bet that if she had found a hoard of gold she would own up to it and very probably tell the world – and there were treasure trove rules and export restrictions, were there not?

  He had come back down none the wiser. It looked very dull up there. Not a glint or a glimmer in sight. And now he paced. He paced and paced. Dorcas was saying nothing, though she insisted she had nothing to tell. Why did he always feel uncomfortable with the way she looked at him when he asked her anything about it? There seemed to be a strange light in her eyes when he wanted information. He threw the cat on to the floor which made him feel slightly better. He might have kicked it but since it had belonged to Robin and since Dorcas was due any minute – he thought better of it. Montmorency flicked his tail, looked over his shoulder with sleepy, malevolent eyes, and stalked from the room.

  Miles, temporarily relieved, returned to the subject. They were thick as thieves those two, Dorcas and the Molly girl. They were probably thick as thieves in the pub every evening. They probably spent hours on the phone – although maybe not, since Lufferton Boney was useless for mobiles – no signal could penetrate. If you wanted a walkabout you needed a satphone which was somewhere in the region of £800. So they all got by with landlines. It was quite soothing, really, to find no one walking along with a phone stuck to their ear, or booming out their personal information while queuing at the post office.

  When Dorcas arrived and settled herself down Miles crept up to her and walked his fingers as casually as possible along the edge of her desk. ‘Nice morning,’ he said.

  Dorcas nodded but did not look up from her paperwork. There was that funny smile on her face again. The cat returned, feeling safe now with Dorcas in the room. He returned to his perfect circle shape on the chair by the fire and breathed deep.

  ‘Are you seeing Miss Bonner this evening, Dorcas?’ Miles asked casually.

  ‘You bet,’ she said, with a rather more wicked smile now. His heart turned over with rage. ‘Poacher’s pie in the pub tonight. Like you, Miles, I want to know what’s what. But I doubt she’ll tell me anything. She’s keeping it all to herself.’

  Miles felt this like a further pain and he pondered. Could he? Could he change the habits of a lifetime and saunter to the pub as if it were the most normal, agenda-free act in the world? If he did he might learn a little more about what was happening. If he didn’t, then he wouldn’t. No contest. ‘I see,’ he said, and removed his walking fingers to the other side of the room where they fastened themselves around Montmorency and threw him out on to the village street. Which felt much better. But not, obviously, for the wounded Monty who immediately made for the pub with a suitably woebegone expression about his whiskers. Twice was too much.

  Marion hoped that the matter of marriage had been forgotten. She was giving Coco another going-over – such a soothing activity – when her mother appeared at the stable door. ‘Ah Marion,’ she said, very sweetly. ‘There you are. I want you to come to the pub with me tonight. I believe it’s quite jolly in there and you can meet up with some people of your own age … and practise with the young men.’

  Young men? Practise? The prospect was hell on earth. But when she looked at her mother’s face, instead of that nice, blurry look about it, she saw a line of resolution around the mouth that both alarmed and reassured her. Her mother was being a mother again. She thought of Peter and how sad it was that he should love Julie and and Julie should prefer Nigel. She could help. Nerve-racking thought. Contemplating doing something romantic with divided lovers was one thing when locked away in the stable, but to have it moved out into the paddock? To find that it had shoes on its hooves after all? That what was just a slim possibility of going over the jumps was in fact a definite possibility. Oh.

  Uncertainty made her slump against the comforting, warm flank of Coco. She breathed out through her nose like a frightened horse. Coco nuzzled her. She nuzzled him back. What could her mother be thinking of? The pub? Her mother never went to the pub. Had no need of the pub. Indeed probably couldn’t get to the pub by the time evening was upon her. And Marion certainly never went to the pub. Well, she went to it for the tethering of her horse, but she never went into it – it was simply not done. No – Peter always came out to talk to her.

  ‘The pub, Mother?’ she said.

  Dulcima did not slow her pace, merely nodding as she strode away. ‘Seven-thirty. We’ll walk. And we’ll eat there.’ She turned and gave her daughter a cheerful smile. We’ll have chips …’ And without waiting for a reply, Dulcima Fitzhartlett swept on. Marion looked at her watch. It had happened again. Her mother was walking very straightly down the little brick path that was lined with spears of early hollyhocks. Her mother’s dainty hand brushed the bouncing buds and it was like watching a new woman. Amazing. Over her shoulder she called, ‘It’ll be fun darl
ing. You’ll see.’

  Marion made a show of clearing her hearing but she knew she had heard right. They were going to the pub. Actually going inside the pub. Cripes. She gave what could only be regarded by a member of the equine family as a whinny. Bloody hell, thought Coco, who was all nice and relaxed from the grooming: not Spindle Tor again.

  Up on the Hill the two women were down to the lower layers, and almost certainly there was a gap of some sort just below where they were digging. Molly did not dare speculate. It was quite evident that this ground had been cleared before. They had even found an electroplated button – pretty likely to have been lost by someone on her grandfather’s team – or it might even be his – but it showed that their theory was right and that this was not the first time the trench had been dug out. At least as far as where the button lay.

  The trench she had marked out was just over a metre wide and about two metres long. It coincided almost exactly with the hollow sound the bosing produced. Winifred alternated her digging with the camerawork and she was so calm and competent that Molly found speaking into the lens easy and natural. She imagined she was talking to someone dear to her, if an infuriatingly long way away at the moment. Only when she spoke about the decision that the ground had been disturbed before did she get just a little palpitation of excitement. ‘My guess is that this is where Arthur Bonner also cut his trench. Now we must hope that we can find out why.’ Then, her lips twitching with mischief, she pushed her face right up the camera and said, ‘But if we don’t find anything I vow I shall take the veil.’ Winifred’s surprised eyes appeared over the camera top. ‘Oh – we can erase that in editing,’ said Molly. ‘I just wanted to let off a bit of steam … and frighten someone who ought to be here with me, and isn’t. Which reminds me. Will you shout “letter” when we all meet up tonight? I keep forgetting.’

  Occasionally Winifred filmed a few shots of the landscape, the way the light changed, and any bits of wildlife that came their way: birds, rabbits – the odd deer on a distant hill; to break up the filming, she said, and to give it a bit of tension.

  ‘Any more tension,’ said Molly, ‘and we’ll be on the high wire. Hoping we are on the right track makes me feel quite tense enough.’ But she laughed as she looked across at her small finds box, which contained just the three items: the shale beads or weights and the electroplated button. ‘And I hope that isn’t all there is to find.’

  Winifred, thinking of Donald’s thunderous face as she left the house that morning, hoped so too.

  Today the light was good and the rain kept off and it seemed that early summer had arrived. Molly was tempted to remove the tarpaulins – but she remembered notebook II:

  We made the great mistake of removing the covers as the weather was more balmy – and we left them off. In the night there was a great torrent of storm water and we were baling out most of the next morning. The trench might only be quite small – about forty inches by seventy inches, but it is deep now, perhaps just less than a yard. I am certain we are nearly at our goal, if goal there be. The day before we found another piece of black shale that has been worked which caused us much excitement. By the time we found that piece the light was nearly gone, despite the covers being off, and we held our breath to continue the following day. It was very foolish and neglectful of us to leave the trench exposed. And to return and find it ankle high in water was frustrating, not a little embarrassing. The kind of mistake a rookie would make. ‘So ’ark an ’eed you rookies …’ to put it mildly. My carelessness badly delayed us. A good lesson: never trust anything, especially an early English summer. I will keep my piece of shale, Margaret will keep hers, and the two will be united some day soon. When we can also, I hope, celebrate this project’s success and give those fellows at the Society something to take notice of.

  Winifred was right. There was something good about stopping to film from time to time – it was a way of thinking things through while doing something productive. Facing a camera and a microphone put her on her toes, as Molly said, and focused her thoughts. It also slowed things down, which their work needed from time to time. Winifred seemed to understand and Molly was grateful for her documentary training. The worst thing you could do at a critical point in a dig was to speed up. Speeding up often meant overlooking things or being a little less careful. ‘We are at just about the same point as stated in notebook II, a little less than a metre down. So we are not far off breaking through.’ She smiled ruefully into the camera lens. ‘But through what, and into what, only time will tell.’

  Winifred switched the camera off and returned to the dig. Above them the covers flapped a little in the breeze, though the air was still quite warm. The sound seemed to heighten the moment and Winifred’s hands were shaking as she cut away gently with her trowel. Molly’s breathing, had she known it, was loud and quick and a sign of her own inner excitement.

  They worked in silence for the next few hours. And then Molly gave a little shriek. ‘Stop,’ she said. Winifred did so. ‘Torch, please,’ said Molly for although they had a bright light shining directly into the trench, a torch would focus its light more exactly. Winifred handed her the torch. Molly kept her mouth closed. Shrieking with excitement was not very professional – yet now she was looking at something that showed how professional she had been. It was a small fissure, a tiny fissure, in the layer of rubble and soil and chalk, and when she shone the torch into the gap, she saw, very clearly, what was hidden within. The pale yellowy gleam of a bone. Not a new one, certainly. Human or animal? Who could say for certain? But Molly had already made up her mind that the little bit of bone, what she could see of it, looked decidedly human.

  Nigel had his binoculars trained on the Hill, which was perfectly pointless as all the interesting action took place under those covers. Nevertheless he had seen Molly talking into the camera (most peculiarly held by the doctor’s wife) and holding something out. So something had been found. Which meant, he hoped, that there might be an acknowledgement of that fact in the pub tonight. Surely there would? Nigel felt a momentary surge of romance – celebration – and thought he would go there now and ask Peter to put a bottle of champagne on ice – well, cava – but he remembered Julie was on duty today and he did not want confrontation. He could not even telephone through his request. That morning Julie had pushed a card under the shop door. (His father had used very strong language to tell Julie to stop calling on the shop phone and Nigel no longer answered the domestic one. So a card was her only hope of making contact.) It suggested that she and he meet at the bar any time today. Well, he wasn’t going to fall for that but he would slip in once he saw Molly slipping in, and then he would request some bubbles. They wouldn’t be very cold but he guessed Molly wouldn’t mind too much. Nice girl, he thought, quite clearly easy-going and undemanding. Just his sort. He refocused his binoculars on what appeared to be Winifred Porlock’s heels and bottom. The evening could not come soon enough for him.

  ‘Are you going out, Dulcima dear?’ asked Sir Roger, more soft-voiced than usual and somewhat baffled to see his wife perfectly upright and sitting at her dressing table with a comb in her hand. And what appeared to be a cup of tea where a glass of something stronger usually stood. Orridge had already asked him if Her Ladyship was quite all right.

  Dulcima smiled at him from the mirror. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m taking Marion to the Old Holly Bush to dabble in a little ordinary conversation with the young people in there, a little social practice, and to have something with chips …’

  Her husband turned to go out, nodding to himself absently until her words penetrated. The public house? Perhaps there wasn’t tea in that cup after all? ‘Good heavens!’ he said to the doorjamb.

  ‘Well, I haven’t had any proper mother and daughter time with Marion for ages. Do us both good, I think. We might discuss her future. Yes?’

  Her husband removed his gaze from the carved wood of ancient heritage (oak, late 17th century, not Grinling Gibbons but a follower).

&nb
sp; ‘And will you drive?’ He said this in a considerably higher voice than he intended.

  ‘Oh no, we’ll walk. That will do us good, too.’

  ‘And coming back?’

  ‘Walk, I think.’

  Sir Roger clutched the ancient carved oak to steady himself. ‘Quite sure?’ She must have been really going some after all. The public house? Marriage? Marion? Show her a man and she ran off screaming …

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said her husband trying to sound confident and bouncing the palm of his hand several times off the doorway. ‘I think I’ll just go and …’ He crept out of the room in search of Orridge. He found him looking quite upset, sitting in the hall, regarding the grandfather clock in bewilderment. By now he had usually been let loose on the cellar under Her Ladyship’s orders at least twice. ‘Everything all right, Orridge?’ asked Sir Roger. And Orridge said, ‘Perfectly, sir.’ Both men knew, however, that it was very far from it.