Treasures of Time

by Penelope Lively

  Kate.

  Another problem.

  They drove to the point where the trackway to Charlie’s Tump led away from the road, and left the car in the layby there. The BBC cars had apparently braved the inconveniences of the track. Kate set off for the Tump without looking to see if Tom was following, walking quickly in that dogged way of hers. He was reminded of the first time they had come here. They had hardly spoken since she had arrived a couple of hours earlier; she seemed sullen and he had left her alone. Now, he did not attempt to catch up with her.

  From this point it was impossible to see the barrow, positioned as it was not quite on the crest of the hill but at a point slightly below, and hidden by a piece of rising ground before. The track, snaking ahead between cornfields, seemed indeed to vanish at that point. To the right, a quarter mile or so away, the clump of trees crowning the East Kennet long barrow made a dark patch against the long pale swelling of another field, rooks circling above it. He and Kate had walked up there once, and he had found the site more evocative than the Tump, combining as it did the two mythic stage-settings of underworld and sylvan glade. He had remarked on this to Kate, who had said, ‘Or it’s a mound with some trees planted on it…’ Now, looking across at it once more, he wondered if Stukeley had ever walked up this particular downland way and, if so, what he had seen. The scenery of the classically-fed imagination? Or a ‘Sepulchre of the Ancient Britons’? Or a suitable site for the application of certain pre-conceived theories?

  Barrows, of course, have always had their own mythology. That which cannot be explained is a subject for fantasy: the homes of the Little People, the sites of buried treasure, the graves of Arthurian heroes who will rise again. Even, absurdly, a hiding-place for Charles the First.

  They had reached the crest of the lower hill now and the Tump itself came into view, with its stone threshold and dark maw and the white track winding towards it. Just ahead, the BBC cars were parked in a gateway, having reached the nearest point possible; beyond, a line of distant figures humped equipment up the last stretch of the hill. At the top, Tony stood silhouetted against the sky, a stooped Napoleonic figure staring down at his marshalled forces. From time to time he shouted some instruction; the wind had lifted his hair in a coxcomb from the top of his head. Once or twice he looked upwards, shielding his eyes with a hand. The sky had partly clouded over, as though shut off by a slowly tilting lid; the light had drained from the eastern half of the landscape, while the rest remained bathed in sunshine, an odd effect like illustrations of an eclipse in a school text-book. Somewhere along the Kennet Valley, a stone building was caught in a shaft of sunshine, a point of emphasis which somehow gave an air of contrivance to the whole scene: the fields, the sky, the dark slash of the valley, the clustered farms and cottages. It ceased to be a piece of countryside and entered a tradition of painting. Tom was reminded of the picture at Standhill – the carefully arranged view with figures in the foreground, the representation of an inhabited world. This piece of Wiltshire, too, had for the moment the same docility, the same suggestion of order and obedience, in which utility and aesthetics combined to please.

  She could sense him behind her, some way behind. Not bothering to catch up. She thought, I’m cold, why am I so cold? It’s quite a nice day, quite sunny.

  Clouds coming up, though. That, she supposed, would muck up their filming. And there indeed was Tony on the rim of the hill above the Tump, staring across the valley at the cloud bank. Presumably Paul Summers was up there too, who was going to be filmed talking about the excavation.

  When I was a child, she thought, it used to seem miles coming up here. An endless walk. Hours. Now, it’s just ten minutes or so. Nothing is ever quite what it seems to be, that is what being grown-up adds up to, that is the one thing you do find out. That, and that you can’t count on much.

  She had always thought this a primitive place, faintly threatening. Coming up with her father and others once, when she was a schoolgirl, she had wandered off and found them gone when she got back to the Tump; in panic she had fled down the path, experiencing that atavistic knowledge of pattering, following footsteps somewhere out of sight. Today, stumping upwards, not looking back – only Tom’s footsteps, now, and those felt rather than heard – she saw it as indifferent, a scene hostile to life, peopled only by sheep and birds, that might always have been thus. The barrows and trackways suggested a victory of nature over man, rather than the passage of time. All dead; all gone. Everything goes.

  Tony and his entourage, scattered about the Tump itself, looked not so much incongruous as irrelevant. There was some kind of fuss going on around one of the BBC cars, which had apparently got stuck in a muddy gateway; the driver wrenched the wheel, someone else heaved at a bumper. Further away people were setting a camera up at the entrance to the Tump: an entrance that was itself in fact an illusion since behind the two huge blocks and the lintel stone that formed the doorway the internal stonework had long since collapsed. Kate thought of lying curled up in there, as a small child, with her father and Aunt Nellie; that was before the place had assumed for her its aura of desolation. Then, it had been somehow different.

  It’s futile, all this, she thought. Pointless. I wish they weren’t doing it; I wish I hadn’t come up. She planned to wait for Tom at the fence before the Tump: to wait inadvertently as it were, to take his arm, start talking… Planned, and then, when she got there, climbed over and went plodding on towards where Tony Greenway stood with the others.

  I don’t like that wire fence, it spoils the uninhabited effect. We shall have that in shot if we pan away from me to the view down the valley. And if we pull back instead we shall get that corrugated iron thing in the corner of the field.

  Better to put the camera the other side, pan left from me over the top of the Tump, nothing obtrusive there. The joy of filming is that anything can always be made to appear otherwise. With a bit of care and application. You can always get what you want in the end.

  I don’t like the look of that sky, not one little bit. That, of course, is the one thing you damn well can’t do anything about – the bloody weather. Are you ready, Mike? he said, let’s go, I’m worried about the light. O.K., Sue?

  The mouth of the barrow behind him, he began to talk to the camera. ‘Charlie’s Tump, this little hill is called. Charles the First is supposed to have hidden here, in flight from Cromwellian troops – or at least that’s been the local story, down the centuries. He didn’t, of course – there’s not a shred of evidence to suggest that he ever came near the place. But it has generated its own myth, like so many prehistoric sites. Because of course what it really is is a barrow – a Neolithic long barrow. And its real claim to fame is that it is here that Hugh Paxton excavated the grave goods that have since come to be known as the Danehurst hoard. The dig that established his name. And the dig that in many ways consolidated modern archaeological theories about Wessex. Paul Summers worked here with Paxton that summer…’

  Cut. And re-assemble cameras and people for the next shot. That sky is getting very dicey.

  This is all fairly boring, Tom thought. Standing here not quite being able to hear Paul Summers give a run-down on prehistoric Wessex to a camera, some people from the BBC and a few sheep. And Kate, who is not listening. And by the look of that sky it’s going to come chucking down any minute now.

  I must say something. Ask. I’ve got to know. I have known, for weeks now. Later, back at Danehurst. But there’ll be so many people around. Why is Paul Summers crawling around in front of the Tump now? Oh, I see – he’s supposed to be looking inside.

  ‘… not unfortunately restored and preserved like West Kennet. The entrance remains but the chamber had been largely destroyed by early barrow diggers and little is now left. If we look at this scale diagram of the interior of the barrow we shall get an idea of the lay-out.’

  And cut again. ‘O.K.’ said Tony. ‘I know, I know, Mike. You can’t see a damn thing. Pack it in and get the camera back to the
car before it starts coming down.’

  The tilt of that cloud lid had accelerated, bringing with it rumbles of thunder. There was a sour yellowish light. The group around the Tump broke up and began hurriedly to head back to the cars; even as they did so warm rain started to fall. There was a flare of lightning. The girl with the clipboard ran helter-skelter for the gate, a jacket slung over her head; the others followed at a more dignified pace. Paul Summers said, ‘Well, I daresay it could change again equally suddenly.’ There did seem to be a malign triumph about the rapidity with which the storm had broken.

  They crowded into the cars. Tom and Kate were squashed into a big Volvo with cameraman, lighting man, Tony, and the clipboard girl: rain thumped down on the roof. The girl said, ‘I’m petrified of thunder, I know it’s silly.’ She sat with her hands over her ears. There was reminiscence of other disastrous filmings. Someone brought out a flask of brandy which was handed round. Kate sat silent; when anyone spoke to her she made a brusque, awkward rejoinder; Tom felt a gush of irritation. The noise without was deafening; beyond the windows of the car there was nothing but a wall of water. Tom said cheerfully, ‘How much is all this costing the BBC?’

  It slackened, at last. They climbed out into the dripping landscape.

  The girl said, ‘Phew! Thank God that’s over,’ and then, ‘Funny smell….’ Looking up towards the Tump, they all became aware of some re-arrangement of the large stones at the entrance. Paul said, ‘Hello! What’s happened up there?’ He made off up the track again, followed by the others.

  The lintel stone, they saw as they got nearer, had cracked through and toppled across the entrance, bringing with it a cascade of soil and smaller stones. From the wreckage protruded the hindquarters of a dead sheep; another lay close by. That peculiar acrid smell of burnt wool was accounted for. A bolt of lightning had struck the stonework of the Tump, and with it the group of sheep that had huddled there for shelter. The party gathered round, impressed. Someone said, ‘Bloody good thing we didn’t think of sitting it out here.’ The clipboard girl took one look, walked over to the fence and was discreetly sick into the long grass. Tony said fretfully, ‘Well, I hope to God those shots we did manage to get are going to be O.K., because there’s going to be no re-shooting of that particular angle. Are you all right, Sue – why don’t you go back to the van?’ Paul Summers speculated aloud about the chances of getting the entrance restored. It was suggested that someone had better make contact with the local farmer. Sue, with Kate and one of the men, set off down the track. The others followed singly, picking their way through the watercourse of creamy mud resulting from the storm.

  Tom, looking back, saw Tony bring up the rear, considerably separated from the rest. The Napoleonic image, if pursued, suggested now the retreat from Moscow. He was hurrying down, his stoop exaggerated – perhaps by the slope of the hill. And behind him, above the Tump, as though to emphasize the caprice of the physical world, the sky had cleared to an intense and cloudless blue. Sheep were already grazing once more unconcernedly around the Tump, yards from their former companions.

  ‘What rotten luck,’ said Laura. ‘Typical. And now it’s perfectly fine again.’ She was exhilarated, a little overwrought; Danehurst teemed with people. In the kitchen Mrs Lucas and a sister-in-law prepared food, paying token and slightly cynical attention to Laura’s frequent entrances and instructions. Kate disappeared to talk to Nellie, who was remaining in her room for the time being. Tom retreated onto the terrace with Tony’s assistant, Sue, an attractive girl, now recovered from her attack of sensibility at the Tump and amusingly tart about the rest of the company. Within, the Hamiltons were in bright conversational assault upon the cameraman.

  ‘I only came onto this programme last week, because someone’s on holiday – I don’t entirely get where everyone fits in. You, for instance.’

  Tom said, ‘Oh, I’m just incidental.’

  ‘And the prickly girl – she’s the daughter, right?’

  ‘Mmnn.’

  ‘A bit grumpy – you can’t get much going there.’

  There was a pause. The girl said, ‘Oh, Christ, you’re not…’

  ‘Not to worry – you couldn’t know.’

  ‘Trust me… Now you’re going to loathe me, and quite right too.’

  Brown eyes turned on him, filled with genuine remorse and compunction. Tom said, ‘I’ll see if I can rustle up another drink without letting us in for being generally sociable.’ She was a thin girl with straight, fair hair. Not a bit like Kate. A little like Laura, oddly enough; Laura twenty years ago.

  A buffet lunch was served in the dining room. Others had arrived: John Barclay and a couple from Marlborough. In a somewhat ill-assorted party, conversation periodically withered. Tony, evidentally ruffled by the morning’s events, seemed unable to concentrate on what was said. Nellie came in and sat somewhat apart. Laura and Barbara Hamilton vied to outdo one another in sprightliness. Kate remained silent.

  To Tom, the whole day had begun to be somehow macabre. Never having previously thought a great deal about Hugh Paxton, he was now acutely conscious of his absence. It seemed an interesting instance of the power exercised by the dead: in this case the ability to fill a room with people most of whom had never known the person in question. To determine not only how they spent their day, but how several of them had been spending a good number of other days. He looked at Tony, who was rather dazedly listening to Laura. Laura, though, in mid-anecdote, had fallen suddenly silent, as though forgetting what she had been about to say, thus allowing Barbara Hamilton neatly to occupy the vacuum.

  I can’t remember what Hugh looked like, she thought. I can’t see him any more. Oh yes, there is the photo on the dressing-table, I know what that looks like, and all the others in the albums. But I just can’t see him any more. He’s gone.

  And in sudden panic she clutched the glass in her hand, jerking it so that the wine tilted over onto her skirt, dark drops on the blue silk, and she not noticing, nor hearing Barbara Hamilton either, staring with wide surprised eyes at all these people.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A hankie, Ma, you’ve slopped wine onto your dress.’

  It’s nothing; it doesn’t mean anything; he only met her today, he’ll never see her again.

  Or will he?

  She has hair like Ma’s; that straight, fair, fine hair. She makes people laugh; she makes Tom laugh; I never make people laugh.

  I’ve got to talk to him. Before we go back to London. Before we start another week in which we don’t make love once and most evenings he goes out somewhere on his own. Or we go out together to meet someone because he doesn’t want to be with just me.

  ‘I wonder myself,’ said James Hamilton, ‘why you didn’t see fit to include a legal figure among your set of influential chaps. One of the great judges. You’ve a bias towards cultural thought, if I may say so – surely moral and social viewpoints can’t be left out, I mean if as I gather you embrace religion, at least with de Chardin and Archbishop Temple. Just a notion. Not of course that one isn’t going to watch the series with enormous interest in any case. But speaking as – well, as the not-quite average viewer, I suppose one must concede – I would have thought…’

  Would you, now? thought Tony, with his concerned and attentive look, his young-man-to-older-and-more important-one worried inclination of the head. I daresay. But since I didn’t devise the damn series, merely some of it, since in the last resort I’m a nuts-and-bolts man, no more nor less, that’s hardly the point. And since I’m too knackered just now to explain that, and I’ve got too much to think about anyway, if we’re going to pull anything like a respectable amount of film out of this hellish weekend, then the best thing to do is to sit tight and let you go on enjoying a flight of fancy as man of creativity and insight. Christ, what a gathering! No wonder the poor old sister looks a bit baffled over there in the wheel-chair.

  Better today. Quite a bit better. Less of that buzzing in the ears; limbs more in contact with one
self. Oneself – ah, whatever that may be – oneself more inclined to look around and sniff the air. And goodness knows there is enough to look around at today. Such a spread has not been seen at Danehurst for quite a while now – no wonder Laura has been so tetchy these last few days. Though today she has been in a better frame of mind, if a bit over-excited. Like the cat that’s eaten the cream, when she brought breakfast this morning. One wondered what was up.

  And there is something amiss with Kate. But as ever she will go to the stake rather than say.

  It would have been interesting to have witnessed this curious little drama up at the Tump; like some mythic revenge of the gods, or an outbreak of Shakespearean symbolic weather. So the lintel stone is broken, the entrance destroyed… Well, Hugh would no doubt say the place has served its purpose now, anyway – he was never a one for sentiment. False sentiment.

  What is done is done, and we live with our mistakes. He said that once. About a bad decision over a trench, actually. I can see him now, scowling down into a bit of – a bit of Norfolk, I think – with that fan of white lines around his eyes, from screwing up his face in the sun, and his chin peppered with black stubble. We live with our mistakes.

  Laura is beginning to look a bit distracted, now. We shall pay for this, when all the commotion has died down. It’ll all end in tears, as mother used to say. Silly expression: a denial of life.

  The lunch disposed of, Tony set briskly to the redirection of his team. The visitors, relegated to a position now of onlookers, subsidiary to the real business of the day, drifted through to the drawing room. Coffee was served. The BBC party went into conclave; Mrs Lucas and her sister-in-law picked their way past them, ostentatiously unimpressed.