A Room Full Of Bones

by Elly Griffiths

  And now, after a lifetime of doing the conventional thing, Dan has finally surprised her. He has died, leaving her with three grown-up children, a house that is decorated to within an inch of its life, and a stable full of horses. Funny, Romilly had always thought that Dan would go on forever. Despite his diabetes he had seemed indestructible, part of an unchanging landscape. Whatever happened, Dan would always be there, getting up at five with the horses, going to bed by ten. Romilly feels unreasonably angry with him for letting her down like this. She needed him; she needed him there in the background, a soothing presence when she returned from her adventures, which are becoming more frequent of late. These days Romilly cares even less about the dayto-day business of looking after horses but even more about animal welfare in the abstract. Her activism lapsed when the children were growing up but in the last few years she has become involved again. Will the police find out about her criminal past? Will they find out about the group? She smiles, causing the undertaker to look shocked and Tamsin to lean over and ask if she’s all right. ‘I’m fine,’ she says. She hates solicitude. From humans anyway.

  ‘I think Dad would have liked opera,’ Tamsin was saying. ‘Something tasteful.’

  Tasteful has become Tamsin’s middle name. Her house in London is a monument to quiet good taste, her clothes are designer with just a hint of Boden, and even her dog is colour-coordinated (chocolate Lab). Romilly approves of all this (especially the Labrador) but she does wish that good taste wasn’t also the abiding principle of Tamsin’s personal life. It is years since Romilly has heard her elder daughter laugh or cry. Even Tamsin’s children seem remarkably free from emotion. Romilly wants to love her only grandchildren but Emily and Laurence seem pallid little creatures, always doing their homework or practising their violins. At their age Romilly was running a full-scale hedgehog rescue in the school grounds. She supposes that there aren’t many hedgehogs in Notting Hill. They simply aren’t tasteful enough.

  Romilly agrees that Dan liked opera and they settle for E lucevan le stelle from Tosca for the cremation. The church organist can be relied upon to muddle through Sheep May Safely Graze for the church service.

  ‘When will we know if the police want a post-mortem?’ Tamsin asks, when the undertaker has bowed himself out.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Romilly. ‘Detective Inspector Nelson was here this morning but the hospital don’t think Dan’s death was suspicious. Heart attack, they said. They’ve issued an interim death certificate.’

  ‘I know.’ Tamsin has already been to the hospital. She declined the invitation to view her father’s body – ‘I’d rather remember him alive’ – though Caroline has already paid a tearful visit. Now Tamsin is keen to get on with the business of burying her father – tastefully, of course.

  ‘Bit of a cheek, that policeman coming round,’ she says. ‘Can we make a complaint?’

  ‘For goodness sake, Tammy, he was only doing his job.’

  ‘And there was a bloody policewoman in Caroline’s house going through the CCTV footage. I told her she shouldn’t have let her in but Caro even made her a cup of bloody coffee. Typical.’

  ‘Caro’s very upset,’ says Romilly mildly.

  ‘Not so upset that she doesn’t want to go to some barmy Aboriginal thing tomorrow,’ says Tamsin, straightening her blameless little black skirt. ‘I told her it was disrespectful.’

  ‘Did you?’ says Romilly. ‘I thought it might make a nice change for her.’

  Caroline puts down the phone, having told some faceless Russian oligarch that his horses will continue to be looked after. But who will train them? Len has a licence but he’s only a few years off retirement. She knows that she would be useless. She rides out, but only on the more docile horses. Even as a child she was a bit of a wimp, dawdling along on her pony while all the other children galloped away over the horizon. She was always grateful that their mother refused to let them hunt, smugly adorning her riding helmet with anti-hunt stickers. ‘It’s cruel,’ she would say, but really the thought of galloping hell-for-leather over the countryside scared her to death. She’d only learnt to ride to please her father, just as she’d joined Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to please her mother.

  Caroline used to be close to her father. ‘A real Daddy’s girl,’ her mother used to say, in a tone comprising affection and derision in equal measure. Caroline always felt that she irritated her mother; she was too slow, too clumsy, not clever enough. Romilly used to play these word games, making up puns, poems, even songs, and Caroline remembers Randolph and Tamsin lounging around the kitchen table, coming up with outrageous rhymes, silly metaphors, clever little limericks. She could never think of anything fast enough and, besides, she didn’t like making fun of people. ‘Oh lighten up, Caro,’ her mum used to say. But the world seemed a dark place to Caroline even then.

  But Dad had understood. He hadn’t minded that she couldn’t write a haiku about Margaret Thatcher. He had been happy for her to trail around the yard after him, helping to groom the horses and polish tack. Even now, the smell of saddle soap brings back happy memories. When had it started to change? Probably when she came back from travelling, having seen the world through such different eyes. Dad had supported her when she had decided not to go to university. ‘I’m sure you could get in somewhere not very competitive,’ her mother had said kindly, looking at Caroline’s less than impressive A Level results. But she hadn’t wanted to go on studying. She knew she wasn’t really stupid; it was just that sometimes it seemed to take her a long time to absorb new ideas. That was the trouble at school. By the time that Caroline had got her head round a concept, the class had moved on to something else. Anyway, at eighteen she’d had enough of trying to understand things. Now she was just going to experience them.

  And she had. She has visited King’s Canyon, the Lost City, the Garden of Eden. She has walked in the Valley of the Winds. She has seen the sun rise over Uluru and set over the Southern Ocean. She had penetrated the red heart of Australia and walked with the dead in the Dreaming. But back home everyone still seemed to treat her like the slightly stupid little sister. She had been full of ideas about how to revolutionise the yard. She’d created a website and organised an open day. Racing’s so elitist, she’d wanted to involve the general public, get them to understand just how much trainers loved their horses. But the open day had been a total disaster. Len had refused to let anyone get near the horses, saying that they were too dangerous, and her father had strutted round all day like the worst kind of arrogant aristocrat. Afterwards they all said that Caroline should stick with what she was best at – managing the yard and keeping in the background.

  Caroline had loved her dad, and right now what she wants more than anything is to see his tall, rangy figure striding across the yard, demanding to know which horses are running at Newmarket. But she remembers how angry she’d been with him, how frustrated she had felt, how she’d longed to escape, to go back to her beloved red valleys, to do something worthwhile in life. Meeting Cathbad had saved her. He had reminded her that there were bigger causes, more important things than which horse was running in which race and whether Jumping Jack would go better in blinkers. And that’s why she can’t just run away now, though she’s sometimes tempted. She has bigger things to do…

  ‘Hi Caro.’ Randolph appears at the door. He looks pale and unshaven and she thinks she can smell whisky in his breath. She knows better than to ask where he’s been.

  ‘Hi Dolph.’

  ‘Where’s Tammy?’

  ‘In the house with Mum. They’re seeing the undertaker.’

  Randolph collapses into the chair opposite her, pushing back his hair with a hand that shakes slightly. ‘Bit quick isn’t it?’ he says. ‘He only died last night. A few hours ago.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Caroline looks across the yard towards the house. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

  ‘Nor me. I keep thinking that he’s going to stroll in and tell me what an unsatisfactory son I am.
’

  ‘He loved you.’ Even to herself, Caroline’s voice lacks conviction.

  ‘Yeah.’ Randolph slumps further into the chair.

  ‘What about me? The last thing I said to him was “I’ll never forgive you.”’

  ‘Really?’ Randolph’s blue eyes flash at her. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘Oh, nothing important.’ Caroline turns back to her files. ‘Just that we’ve all got things to feel guilty about. I know Mum thinks that she neglected him for her business and her animal rights mates.’

  ‘Rubbish. She always supported him.’ Randolph is always on their mother’s side.

  ‘Well, we’re all feeling rotten.’

  ‘Except Tamsin. Little Miss Fix It.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s very upset about Dad,’ says Caroline doubtfully.

  ‘Are you?’ says Randolph, stroking Lester who has just jumped onto his lap. ‘I’ll take your word for it. What did that policewoman want this morning?’

  ‘Just to look through the CCTV footage.’

  ‘Did she find anything?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You look nervous,’ Randolph teases. ‘What have you been getting up to in the woods?’

  ‘Bugger off, Dolph. What about you?’

  ‘What do you mean “what about me”?’

  ‘What have you been doing in the woods?’

  They lock gazes, blue eyes meeting brown. Then Randolph gets up and strides out of the office.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Elginists’ conference is held in a Quaker Meeting House in Great Yarmouth. Ruth has always rather avoided Yarmouth in the past, thinking of it as a kind of east-coast Blackpool, full of roller-coasters and drunken holidaymakers. Nelson once tried to tell her that Blackpool wasn’t like that; it had some wonderful countryside nearby, he had said. But Ruth hadn’t been convinced. She likes her seaside to be deserted, miles of lonely sand, not crammed with donkeys in funny hats. So she is rather surprised to find that the Meeting House is a delightful white-painted house dating back to the seventeenth century. If you have to have a religion, thinks Ruth, walking through the shady garden, you might as well be a Quaker. They’re non-hierarchical, non-sexist and pacifist. But a notice in the lobby reminds her of an older, rather more bloodstained religion. The house, she reads, was built on the site of a medieval monastery, an Augustinian cell. This reminds her of Bishop Augustine and of Mother Julian, the mystic anchoress. The sign also tells her that Anna Sewell, the author of Black Beauty, used to attend meetings in the house. Ruth, who loves books about horses, begins to feel better disposed towards the whole day.

  It has been a hassle getting there for nine. Although Kate was awake and ready for action at six, Ruth still found herself running round the house like a mad thing in order to get to Sandra’s at eight. By the time she had fed Flint, changed her own clothes twice, got Kate strapped in the car with a bag full of nappies and a change of clothes, and gone back because she was convinced she’d left the gas on, it was a quarter past. After a lightning changeover at Sandra’s, Ruth was finally on her way to Great Yarmouth. Now, after getting stuck behind two holiday coaches (who on earth would go to Norfolk in November?), she finally makes it to the Meeting House by nine-thirty. She hopes the seminars haven’t started.

  But when she enters the room signposted Refreshments, she realises that she has misjudged her colleagues. At nine-thirty, the assembled archaeologists are still tucking into coffee and Danish pastries. After agonies of indecision about her clothes, Ruth has finally settled on a black trouser suit to look professional (and slightly thinner). She is almost the only person not in jeans. The room also seems full of dyed hair – purple, red, pink, even a multi-coloured Mohican. Almost everyone has tattoos and multiple piercings. Someone has even brought their dog.

  In the end, though, it’s the dog that makes Ruth decide that she was right to come. As she stands uncertainly in the doorway, the animal comes bounding up to her and jumps up to lick her nose. Ruth is taken aback. She likes all animals but she is really happiest with cats and this is a particularly large and whiskery dog. Why on earth is it so pleased to see her?

  ‘Claudia!’ calls an amused and familiar voice. ‘Come here.’

  ‘Hallo Max,’ says Ruth.

  Max hasn’t changed much in the past eighteen months. If anything he looks slightly healthier than she remembers, less haunted-looking. His face is brown, making his hair look greyer and his eyes bluer. He is grinning now, a wider grin than she ever remembers him giving but, then again, there hadn’t been that much to smile about when they last met.

  ‘Ruth. How lovely. Cathbad said you might be here.’

  The druid telegraph system is as efficient as ever. Ruth can see Cathbad across the room, his purple cloak not that outlandish in this setting. Bob Woonunga is standing next to him; he’s wearing a cloak as well but his looks as if it is made of fur.

  ‘I don’t really know why I’m here,’ says Ruth. She can feel herself smiling back at Max. Her facial muscles feel rusty from lack of use. ‘Cathbad persuaded me.’

  ‘Ah, well, he is very persuasive. Would you like a coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  They walk over to the urns, Claudia following them.

  ‘She’s grown,’ says Ruth, patting the dog’s head.

  ‘Yes,’ says Max. ‘She’s eating me out of house and home. As you see, I’ve turned into one of those pathetic creatures who can’t leave their dog even for a day. Actually, the dog sitter let me down.’

  ‘It sounds worse than childcare,’ says Ruth, helping herself to a pastry.

  Max looks rather embarrassed, bending down to ruffle Claudia’s fur. ‘How’s your… how’s Kate? I’d love to meet her.’

  Max had sent a card and a present when Kate was born and Ruth had expected him to follow these tokens in person, but somehow it had never happened. She told herself at the time that she was relieved. These last months have been complicated enough without Max reappearing in her life. It’s good to see him now though.

  ‘Kate’s well,’ she says. ‘She had her first birthday last weekend.’

  ‘Her first birthday,’ Max looks startled. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘No,’ says Ruth drily. ‘It seems much longer.’ But she knows what Max means. Before she had Kate, she had noticed how the years had begun to run together, nothing to distinguish one from the other except the appearance of a few more grey hairs. Now, with Kate, every week marks a new milestone. And while, on the one hand, it does seem amazing that Kate is already a year old; on the other, it seems as if she has been around forever.

  Come and meet her, she is about to say. Come back to the house when we’ve finished discussing skulls and bones. We can walk on the beach and look at Kate and talk about life. But at that moment Cathbad claps his hands importantly.

  ‘Let’s go into the main hall now, friends. The first session is about to start.’

  The first session, entitled ‘Honouring Our Ancient Dead’, is more interesting than Ruth had expected. She is shocked to discover that as recently as 2003 working parties were advising that human remains should not be returned to their country of origin because of doubts about their ‘care and preservation’. She learns that in 2005 three hundred and eighty-five sets of Aboriginal remains were held in eighteen different institutions around Britain. ‘Many of these relics,’ says the speaker, a woman called Alkira Jones, ‘were taken from their indigenous homelands through blatant acts of colonialism.’ Ruth thinks of Danforth Smith (now deceased)… the old man had the idea that the Abos were put together differently from us, that they were linked to cave men or some such. So he started collecting bones. She learns about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 1990, passed in an attempt to resolve conflict over the storage of Native American skeletal remains and grave goods. Israel also recently passed a reburial act which could affect the remains of some of the oldest anatomically modern humans. In Scotland there is an an
cient ‘right to sepulchre’ – a right to be buried – a principle which may now be adopted by other countries. ‘Museums hold on to these remains,’ says Jones, ‘because they say they add to the sum of human knowledge while, in fact, they add to the sum of human misery. Our relationship must be with the living descendants of these people. A living relationship, not a dead one.’

  Ruth shifts uncomfortably in her seat. As a forensic archaeologist, many of her relationships are with the dead. Hasn’t she often marvelled at how much we can learn from a bone or tooth? Should she forgo that knowledge in order to ensure that the remains receive a proper burial? Does it matter, after all? It matters to the living, Jones is saying, and that’s the important thing. But is it? Ruth knows that some of the groups who have been demanding the return of Indigenous Australian relics are not in fact descended from the same tribes. The policy of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies says that ‘descent must be shown’. But what if it can’t be proved? Can just anyone demand the return of bones which could contain valuable information for generations to come?

  She remembers a Victorian painting that had fascinated her as a child. It was called Can These Dry Bones Live? and showed a woman, wearing a black shawl and a rather sumptuous red skirt, leaning on a gravestone and looking at some bones and a skull that have been unearthed by… who? What? A careless gravedigger? Animals? A very localised earthquake? The picture is sometimes said to represent Victorian doubts about the existence of an afterlife. If so, there are hints in the painting that might reassure the observer. The gravestone belongs to ‘John Faithful’ and bears the inscription, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’ A nearby stone is engraved ‘Resurgam.’ A blue butterfly rests on the skull; elsewhere in the picture flowers are springing into bloom. But, for Ruth, the painting pointed to a different lesson. What could these bones tell us about the life that their owner lived? How can dry bones recall life in all its glorious complexity? She wonders now if the picture, like the Horniman Museum, influenced her choice of career. Or maybe she just liked the red skirt – an odd choice, surely, for a woman in mourning? But now these people are telling her that the bones should have stayed buried. It’s all very confusing.