The Way, the Truth and the Dead

by Francis Pryor

  ‘You’ve got it. In fact, it’s so informative that people have excavated below barrows, below hillfort banks, just to recover samples from the OLS that might be preserved there. And then they can use the seeds and pollen grains from the buried topsoil to recreate precisely what the environment would have looked like in the past.’

  ‘So is it just about environment?’

  ‘Oh no, far from it. In certain places – the Fens for example – old land surfaces can be buried in successive layers, separated by sterile deposits of, say, peat or river-borne ­flood-clay.’

  ‘That’s the alluvium I’ve heard you and Grahame talk about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, usually it’s alluvium, because peat takes so long to grow, whereas alluvium can be laid down overnight – certainly in a few days, during a bad flood.’

  ‘So there were good bits of OLS at Stan’s site, were there?’

  Suddenly Alan’s face lit into a big smile. ‘Oh yes, Fursey was superb. Big build-ups of alluvium – and peat, too.’

  ‘And that’s what got you interested?’

  ‘Yes, it was. Plus the fact that Stan was a bit at sea. He’d worked on alluviated sites, but as he said, the people in charge didn’t know what they were doing, either. Usually they just machined everything off. Problem solved. But he didn’t want to do that – which was why he asked me back for my second visit last November.’

  Alan’s explanation was ended abruptly as the external movement sensor turned on the powerful yard light. ­Grahame’s Land Rover was back.

  * * *

  Alan was helping Liz clear up the breakfast things while ­Grahame sat back and watched. They could both see ­Grahame was tired out: it had been a long, wet and demanding autumn. For a short time they worked in silence; then the espresso pot on the Aga suddenly started spluttering and Alan took it across to his brother. A few minutes later Liz came to join them, carrying a fresh jug of milk. She sat next to her husband and looked into his eyes.

  ‘Darling,’ she said quietly, ‘you look all in. Try to get some rest during the day.’

  Grahame smiled and patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be able to take things easier today, now the last spuds are nearly in.’

  As if to emphasise his point, one of the contractor’s three 10-ton trailers, pulled by a mud-spattered JCB Fastrac, roared into the yard and backed up to the potato store.

  ‘Good crop?’ Alan asked.

  ‘Yes,’ his brother replied. ‘We should manage eighteen tons an acre, but much will depend on slug damage. We lifted a few roots first thing and they didn’t look too bad. So fingers crossed.’

  Alan could see that Liz wasn’t about to allow him to change the subject by having a farming conversation, no doubt a tactic that his brother used as much as he did.

  ‘Darling,’ she broke in. ‘While you were out, Alan was telling me about how he’s going to be writing up Stan’s researches. And it does sound an extraordinary site. Do you think there’s any chance you yourself might be able to do any work there, Alan?’

  ‘Well yes, actually. I was going to tell you about it, but got diverted into alluvium.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about bloody alluvium. Hate the stuff,’ Grahame growled into his coffee.

  ‘Yes, Grahame.’ Liz had put on her schoolmistressy voice. ‘I’m sure you do. But you’re a farmer and your brother here’s an archaeologist. And as it turns out, he quite likes “the stuff”.’ She turned to Alan and this time she was not going to be diverted. ‘Be all that as it may, Alan, you were about to tell us something important, weren’t you?’

  Alan then told her about Stan’s wake and his discussions with John, Candice, Peter Flower and Lew Weinstein: how they’d offered him a job, plus what amounted to a television mini-series. When he’d finished, Grahame was wide awake and Liz was wide-eyed.

  There was a pause before Grahame spoke. ‘Please don’t say you told them to get knotted. Did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, but I still can’t make up my mind.’

  ‘Why’s that, Alan?’ It was Liz’s turn to speak. ‘Surely that has to be a good offer?’

  ‘Oh, that’s simple. It’s Peter bloody Flower. I can’t stand the man.’

  ‘Yes, Alan, but that was a very long time ago. Surely you can put it behind you now. I mean, did he seem in favour of you?’ said Liz, ever the voice of reason.

  ‘Well, yes, he did.’ Alan sighed. ‘Almost too much. In fact, I found it rather creepy. He talked about making amends. Trouble is, I don’t trust him further than I can spit.’

  ‘I have to say, Alan,’ Grahame said. ‘I think you’re in danger of making a very big mistake here. This job sounds like the break you’ve been waiting for. Everything about it, except Dr Flower, is perfect: the people running it are reliable, local worthies, English Heritage is closely involved, and Test Pit Challenge is filming the whole operation. And who knows, if Flower doesn’t turn out to be the villain you suppose, he could even point you in the direction of academic appointments at Cambridge.’ There was something very measured about his voice. It reminded Alan of their father, whom they both still missed.

  ‘And like the loyal wife I am.’ Liz turned smiling to her husband. ‘I agree with Grahame one hundred per cent. You must take it, Alan. In fact, if I had my way, I’d insist you called them here and now.’

  * * *

  Alan’s phone alarm rang. Eleven o’clock: time to be heading south to see Stan’s parents in Peterborough. He threw his copy of Current Archaeology across to the bed and stood up. He’d been reading their news section and, sandwiched between a piece about a Bronze Age boat in Wales and a carved walrus-ivory phallus from the City of London, was a short item about job prospects in archaeology two years on from the bankers’ bubble of 2007–8. It made grim reading: staff levels were down to a third of what they had been in the boom years and dozens of small firms, partnerships and consultancies had folded. So, in the grand scheme of things, would he even be able to scratch the surface of Stan’s work? Or was it all pointless, he wondered, as he looked out of the window at the fields beyond, where the frost still persisted in a few shady places. That glimpse into the real world seemed to stiffen his resolution. No, he thought, this isn’t pointless. It’s the least I can do for Stan, for his parents. He should have added, ‘And for myself, too.’ But he didn’t.

  He put a couple of notebooks, his diary, a compact camera and folding monopod, plus a pack of spare batteries in his knapsack, then headed for the door. He looked back at his bedroom. It wasn’t quite such a mess. He’d made an effort. The last thing he wanted was to upset Liz. Right now she was the only woman who seemed to care about him.

  * * *

  The drive south towards Peterborough was interminable. Other farmers had been lifting potatoes too and the rural roads were spattered with mud. Things were made even worse by contractors hauling sugar beet across to the big Norfolk factory, now that the Peterborough one had closed. But once in Peterborough, things were very different: the traffic moved briskly, roads were clean and as he headed south towards the city centre, he could see that the big multi-storey car parks were filling up. Even in the depths of a recession, people had to go Christmas shopping. For a moment he wondered what it must have been like here in the slump of 1929. Probably very different. That was before the New Town, when the city was more of a market town with a vast and improbable cathedral at its heart – a bit like Ely today, Alan mused.

  He went all the way round the big roundabout, then crossed the main East Coast line and headed west along Thorpe Road. At another roundabout he turned right. Here the houses were smart and affluent; this was Ernie Wise country – like the comedian, smart but not too showy.

  Alan was greeted warmly at the front door by Dorothy and Jack, who immediately pressed a small glass of medium sherry into his hand. Jack then escorted him upstairs to Stan’s room, while Dorothy bustled in the kitchen, preparing lunch. They stood rather awkwardly at the door. A bunch of flowers, probably picked in
the garden to judge by their slightly faded blooms and patchy autumnal leaves, had been placed on the bedspread that covered Stan’s pillow. Suddenly Alan realised there were tears in his eyes. He took a deep breath and looked at Jack beside him. His eyes were red, too. Somehow they found themselves shaking hands. Englishmen still don’t do emotion very well, Alan thought. Then, very quietly, almost whispering, Jack said, ‘Lunch is at one. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.’ Then he closed the door.

  Alan had decided to approach Stan’s room and the archive it contained as if it were an archaeological project; he would work from the known to the unknown and always leave a clear record behind him of all the stages he had gone through. So the first step was to take a couple of pictures of the room as he had first found it. He also took a close-up of the flowers: ‘That one’s for me,’ he thought.

  Then he approached Stan’s desk. He had feared that it might be like his: a vaguely structured chaos, with books, papers and notes in various stages of being assembled, worked on or tidied away. But, no, it was impeccably organised. For a moment Alan was gripped by a thought: does this suggest he knew what he was doing? That he had tidied everything up to make life simpler for those who would have to clear up after his suicide? He opened the wide, shallow drawer above the desk’s knee-space. This, if anywhere, was where he would have expected to find a suicide note. It was filled with old ballpoints, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, little 35mm film pots, paper clips, sticky labels, parcel tape, an empty tin of Altoids, a mobile phone charger and two dead mobile phones, both with cracked screens. Alan smiled; he’d got at least two wrecked mobiles at home – both with identical shattered screens, broken on-site. The early ones were designed for office, not site work. But there was no sign at all of a ­suicide note.

  He was about to jot down the contents of the desk drawer, then decided he didn’t have the time, so he took a picture instead and recorded that it was Desk drawer above knee-hole. Two items on the top of Stan’s desk grabbed his attention. The first was a very battered double-box of index cards, each one of which had details of individual finds and layers Stan had discovered while doing his surveys. Alan knew he’d be using it a lot in the next few weeks. The second item was Stan’s original (1955) hardback copy of W.G. Hoskins’s classic, The Making of the English Landscape. Protruding from the back was a postcard printed with the Fursey Hall address and the message: Many thanks, Stan. You were right. It’s a masterpiece. Have ordered a copy from Heffer’s. So grateful. Sebastian Cripps.

  Half an hour later he had carefully searched the whole desk, and had placed anything that might come in useful later to one side, along with the card index and Stan’s copy of Hoskins’s book. He put all of this into two large shopping bags to take home. He was about to turn his attention to a row of notebooks on the lowest of two shelves on the wall above the desk when Dorothy called from downstairs. ‘Lunch is ready if you are, Alan.’

  He glanced at the time: 1.10. He grabbed the two bulging bags and hurried downstairs.

  * * *

  Over lunch they chatted mostly about Stan and it was as if he’d just popped out to buy a newspaper or fetch another book from the library and would be back soon. Still, Alan thought, that’s better than being maudlin. Life has to go on, but deep down he wondered if Jack and Dorothy would ever be able to find peace. Stan had been all they had. Now he was gone, and what Alan had to do meant so much to them.

  As if reading his thoughts, Jack said, ‘We’re both determined that Stan’s research, his work, should live on, and of course we’re very grateful to the Cripps family for the memorial and naming the new museum after him, but things like that are somehow more about death than life.’

  At this Dorothy rose and went through to the kitchen. They could both hear her quiet sobbing. Jack lowered his voice. ‘We’d originally thought about asking you to edit together a special commemorative volume for Stan, but now we’re not so certain. Such things appear – and then are soon forgotten. I’ve got several sad books of that sort on my shelves here. But we want something more …’ He paused, searching for the right word.

  ‘Relevant?’ Alan suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Something more relevant and long-lasting. So we thought it would be a good idea if we put the money we had set aside for the memorial volume into the big final report on Fursey. Do you think you could write something on Stan for that?’

  ‘Yes, I do. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s a good idea. And I plan to incorporate all his survey results into the bigger picture our excavations …’ As the words left his mouth, Alan realised that somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, he had decided to take the job.

  Stan’s father was quick to respond. ‘Ah.’ He smiled for the first time that day. ‘That means so much to us.’ He raised his voice, ‘Alan’s decided to take the Fursey job, Dorothy!’

  Dorothy hurried in, ran up to Alan and hugged him warmly. ‘Oh, Alan,’ she said through her tears, ‘we’re so pleased. So very, very pleased …’

  Alan felt humbled at this. Now, however, he knew for sure that he had made the right decision – and as for Peter Flower, he could go hang. But he was also a realist and he knew he couldn’t quit till it was all over and done with. Not just with regard to applying Stan’s research to the site, but also finding the truth about his death – and whether the Cripps family were accountable. It wouldn’t be simple: their history told him that the Cripps clan didn’t do simple. One way or another, he thought to himself, I’ve got to get to the truth, the whole truth.

  And nothing but the truth.

  Four

  The following week the coroner’s court entered a verdict of Death by Misadventure on Stan Beaton. It was not unexpected, and for Stan’s parents it was far better than suicide. After that, time had flown for Alan. There was so much to get done by Christmas, and he’d spent December working on the design for the second stage of the Fursey project, sending it off to English Heritage recorded delivery just before the holiday. In fact, they were probably opening the envelope right now, he thought, on his first day back in his Portakabin office at Fursey after the long Christmas/New Year break. He was starting to get frustrated writing endlessly about what they might discover in the future. Plans were all well and good, but Alan preferred action.

  He got out of his chair and exhaled loudly. His limbs felt stiff as he straightened out. He needed fresh air. Once outside the Portakabin, Alan looked around him: work was progressing on the conversion of the old reed barn into the new museum and archaeology centre and across the old farmyard, the Victorian small barn was still covered in scaffolding as it required extensive alterations to turn it into the new farm shop and restaurant. Despite all the work, one or two stray visitors were still being admitted to the abbey ruins, and two small caravans, one a tea stall, the other a gift shop, were intended for them – although the young couple who ran the tea stall said that most of their trade came from the people involved with the two barn conversions.

  And they make an excellent cuppa, Alan thought, as he stirred his insulated plastic mug – an exact replica of a Nikon 20–70mm lens – that had mysteriously arrived in his mail on Christmas Eve. Alan set it on the counter. It looked amazing, just like the real lens in his camera case, and it worked perfectly: kept the tea warm and never leaked. But he had no idea who had given it to him. He was just about to take another sip, when his phone rang. The voice at the other end – it was a man’s – started to break up. Then the line went down. Alan held up the phone. As usual: no signal. Sod it. He hurried back to his Portakabin.

  The landline phone on his desk rang as soon as he’d closed the door behind him. As he had half suspected, it was Lew Weinstein.

  ‘Great news, Alan. I’ve just been phoned by Charles ­Carnwath.’

  Carnwath was the commissioning editor at Terrestrial 2. This could only be about one thing and Alan was starting to have doubts. He was suspicious of Peter Flower’s role as historical adviso
r, he had no idea who would be chosen to be his on-screen advisors and, most important of all, he wasn’t entirely convinced that he wanted to be a much bigger TV personality. He didn’t really enjoy being recognised. He could see what it had done to other people. OK, they were minor and personal worries, but they were still there.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it’s commissioned! They’ve accepted it, without any major alterations. Just a few tweaks here and there, which we can discuss when next we meet.’

  ‘And the budget?’

  ‘Charles hinted strongly that it could be increased quite dramatically.’

  Alan couldn’t decide whether a big budget was good or bad. But he feared the worst: big budgets brought more pressure from the broadcasters to increase viewers, come what may. And that was how standards slipped. Inevitably, the story would be over-dramatized and the true subtlety revealed by the archaeology would be lost. That’s what Alan hated most – and of course the high-ups, the media luvvies, wouldn’t take the rap, because they were safely hidden behind the scenes. So it was the people on-camera who were made to look like idiots, both to the world at large and, worse, to their peers.

  ‘So when do we meet?’ Alan asked.

  ‘It’ll have to be quite soon.’ Weinstein paused. ‘I’ve got a great young director in mind, and I mentioned it to him when I was in the States just before Christmas. It would be good if you two could get together.’

  ‘What, an American?’ From experience, Alan knew they often found it hard to grasp the intimate scale of the British landscape.

  ‘No, he’s a Brit, Frank Jones, but he’s been working over there for a couple of years. Got lots of new ideas. I dropped his name to Charles some time ago and he was dead impressed. Probably helped us land the contract. What say we all meet up here on Friday?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Despite his new job, Alan’s diary was still depressingly empty. And a trip to London would certainly liven things up.

  * * *