The Lovers of Pound Hill Page 14

  As she walked past Hill View House she saw Miles at his window flapping the cheque, part one of the payments, smiling more broadly than the cat in Alice. ‘Bank, Dorcas,’ he mouthed through the window. She nodded, pointed up the Hill, indicated that she would be five minutes – and went on up.

  The geological survey was over and the results were no different from Grandfather Bonner’s surmisings and what Molly expected. Now all was ready for the villagers to be invited to help with the clearing of the site, and then Molly – at last – could begin. So she was in a very friendly and receptive mood when Dorcas arrived with the flask.

  ‘I feel I’m one of the Beaker people,’ said Molly, smiling her thanks up at Dorcas and sitting back on a lump of stone to sip from the plastic beaker.

  Dorcas sat beside her. ‘The what?’

  ‘The Beaker people – lived here around two millennia ago – or maybe a bit less. Someone called Abercromby gave them the name because they drank from pottery vessels. They probably sat up here with their beakers just like us once.’

  They both looked about them at the peaceful scene. ‘It’s good to see it without any sheep,’ said Dorcas. ‘Feels right. They never were up here when I first came to Lufferton.’

  ‘I should think they’re taking a rest cure after all they’ve seen.’ Molly ran her hand over the grass. ‘Doesn’t look like they’ve been up here at all,’ she said. ‘No sign of lynchets or similar. Maybe they simply preferred to rear them on lower ground. There’s plenty of good pasture round about. So much to find out still. Of course it could be for another reason they never grazed it …’ She shook her head as if to remove the thought. ‘Time will tell.’

  ‘What other reason?’ asked Dorcas.

  Molly shrugged. ‘There is more to this place than we know,’ she said.

  ‘And there’s more to you than we know, Miss Molly.’

  Molly was looking down and plucking at the grass. She did not look entirely comfortable. Unusual for her.

  ‘You said two words that didn’t quite fit,’ said Dorcas firmly. ‘You said “dig” and “excavate” – both of which are somewhat different from “clearance”.’

  Molly looked into her beaker as if the answer might be there.

  ‘Clearance?’ said Dorcas. ‘Or a bit more than that?’

  Molly looked up and straight into Dorcas’s eyes. ‘Dorcas, you are right. I might not be here – entirely – for what I said I was. Not exactly only clearing.’ She looked about her. ‘Maybe it’s like the Gnome. My edges were a bit blurred.’ She gave Dorcas a sideways glance as if assessing whether or not she could be trusted. Dorcas, staring towards the horizon, nodded as if to say she was not surprised. ‘I knew there was something,’ she said.

  ‘You have an honest nose,’ said Molly. ‘So I’ll tell you the plan.’ She took a deep breath, stared at the ground, and began. ‘Now I’ll have to tread carefully here. But I decided it was best not to be specific. With laymen, if you say you are digging at a site they expect to see treasure at the end of it. Roman jewels or a Saxon hoard, perhaps. Once in a lifetime things. Usually you find burials, grave goods, the ancient midden heap at best, or nothing. And I have no idea what I’ll find, if anything at all. But I judged your friend Miles to be – um – less altruistic than avaricious in this enterprise so I thought it best to cool the idea down. He’d never stay away if he thought I was looking for treasure.’ Molly gave her a frank look and put her chin in her hands. ‘So?’

  Dorcas laughed, touched her nose questioningly, and looked sceptical. ‘No one has ever accused my nose of being a telltale,’ she said.

  Molly laughed. ‘My grandmother used to say you could tell a lot about a person from their nose,’ she said. ‘Small ones that held flat to the face were the noses of people without courage, she said – very large ones that stuck out much more than was proportionate would always be wanting more than they had and poking into other people’s business – but a straight nose that fitted its surroundings – she was very firm on the subject – would always belong to a person of balance and honesty. Yours is straight, perfectly in proportion.’

  ‘Careful,’ said Dorcas. ‘You’ll be telling me next that I’m beautiful.’

  ‘Oh I wouldn’t do that,’ said Molly.

  Dorcas turned and looked at her and could not help laughing. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you are not.’

  ‘That’s the last time I bring you hot coffee. But I suppose flatterers are generally out for something not entirely good.’

  ‘Do you think you are beautiful?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ said Molly. ‘But I’m cute, like a silly dolly – whereas you are dramatic and special looking with your dark hair and eyes and your –’ she looked her up and down – ‘willowy shape.’

  ‘I think you mean thinness,’ said Dorcas. ‘And the dark hair is flecked with grey.’

  ‘My grandmother said that I had my grandfather’s thighs.’

  Dorcas did laugh now, right out loud. ‘Your grandmother was a great sayer of things,’ she said. ‘They look all right to me.’

  ‘They are chunky,’ said Molly. ‘Short and chunky. Which is very good for what I do which is a lot of crouching, a lot of lifting, a lot of kneeling.’

  ‘They’re not that chunky,’ said Dorcas amused.

  ‘Chunky enough,’ said Molly, laughing. ‘For the job in hand.’

  Now Dorcas looked Molly very straight in the eye. ‘And what is the job in hand? Exactly?’

  ‘I’ll trust the nose,’ said Molly.

  So she told Dorcas about her grandfather’s view that there was more to the Gnome of Pound Hill than his gargantuan masculinity. ‘He visited it a few times and he felt there was something that was not quite right about the landmark, that the placing of it was odd, and according to his letters it was all much clearer to him on this visit. Mind you, I think you see everything more clearly when you are in love. It’s as if someone has wiped the world’s windows.’ Dorcas opened her mouth. Molly held up a hand as Dorcas was about to speak. ‘And before you say something rational or cynical, I should say that my grandmother described him as sensible, feet on the ground, not given to fancy, driven by intellectual assessment rather than instinct, though every archaeologist, every scientist as a matter of fact, has to have something instinctual about him or her. Somewhere beyond our conviction that we are the highest form of life and have left our animal beginnings behind, is a residual connection with things we can’t explain and will probably never know but which are real, nonetheless. Mystery. Stuff that can’t be proved by evidence …’ She shrugged. ‘Instinctual.’

  Dorcas smiled. ‘Lecture over?’ she asked.

  ‘Not quite.’ But Molly smiled back.

  ‘I just wanted to say that I concur. It certainly happened to me that way. It was like everything suddenly had an application of Windolene.’

  Molly nodded. ‘Exactly. Well, I shall dig a trench at a chosen place. I’ll know it when I find it. If necessary, we’ll test some soil samples. That should help me date it.’

  ‘Any idea when it might have been cut out?’

  ‘Open minded. Grandfather thought it was probably Roman, but it could be later – or earlier. Late Iron Age. He didn’t seem to think it was mediaeval, despite tradition. But as to why he’s there …’

  ‘But isn’t it about fertility? Just that?’

  ‘Who knows? Possibly. That may be all it is. But I’ve got a feeling, like my grandfather had a feeling, that there’s more to that Gnome than meets the eye.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s the eye you need worry about,’ said Dorcas, quite deadpan. At which they both laughed in highly unladylike fashion. Some of the London team stopped their work and looked up enviously. Molly signalled that she was taking another five minutes. ‘Then I’d better get back to work,’ she said. ‘We all help each other out on various digs but I’m supposed to roll up my sleeves with them. They’re only here for a couple of d
ays. But what do you think of the Gnome? I mean living down there and seeing it all the time?

  Dorcas considered. Did she trust this young woman? Yes, she decided. Yes I do. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘this will sound bonkers but when I look at the Gnome I get a feeling – a real certainty – of something else, something inexplicable – which may or may not be to do with how much caffeine I’ve had that morning. But it’s the strangest of feelings that he’s leering at me – at all of us. Looking down and leering. That he’s not a benign guardian or a figure of fun, but – well – the opposite. It’s a relief to hear you talk about mysteries and instincts being part of everyone’s experience.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Molly. ‘If you tell someone else what your nutty thought is then you’ll find – ten-to-one – that they think something similar. Happens to me all the time.’

  She looked up towards the Gnome’s strangely wrought cap. ‘I wonder,’ she said, putting her head on one side, ‘if there isn’t something about his head as well as his … When you are up this close you can’t see him in his full magnitude, which is something of a relief. Could be overwhelming. But from down in the village – well … And yet only in the village, really. Not far and wide. Unusual, that.’

  She looked down towards Lufferton Boney and seemed to lose herself in thought. Her gloved finger tapped the edge of her nose, which was smaller than Dorcas’s and slightly folded into her cheeks at the sides so that one might be forgiven for wondering if she was wholly honest herself. Eventually she came back to life and said, ‘I can’t fathom why it was put here. Not really. If it was cut out to represent a god or a symbol of power then it might have been put on that hill over there –’ she pointed to a higher piece of land in the distance: ‘or over there. Where it would be seen by many more people, including travellers. Not this smaller hill which is mainly to be seen by the people living locally and in the valley.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dorcas, cheerfully, ‘that’s what you’re here to find out. I’m sure you will. You’ve only been here for a short while yet you already know so much – instinct and mystery included.’

  Molly laughed and tapped her nose again. ‘I’m not as honest as you are,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Much of that comes from my grandfather’s letters. It’s just that as soon as I read it, it made sense.’

  Dorcas looked about her. There were hooks driven into the chalky soil with tapes attached.

  ‘Those indicate where I think the original line was drawn.’

  ‘It looks much the same.’

  ‘It changes quite a lot in some places,’ said Molly. ‘Goes down about twenty centimetres at the edges but it would have been cut deeper than that originally – probably about thirty. And it’s fluctuated over time from previous clearings and general erosion. But oddly enough not on the – er –’ She nodded towards the top of the phallus and her cheeks went quite a deep shade of pink. She put her hands flat on either side of her face. ‘It’s really odd,’ she said, ‘but the Gnome does unnerve me a little. I have to steel myself to approach that bit of him. Not like me.’

  Dorcas said, ‘Not surprising, really, given the scale of him. We all feel a bit uncomfortable in his presence. That’s probably what we are meant to feel.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll get used to it. But that part of him seems to have been more or less left alone entirely. No enlargement there.’

  Both women stood and stared at the Gnome’s masculinity for a second or two. ‘Well, you wouldn’t need to, would you?’ they said at the same time.

  Molly hooked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the London team. ‘They go back tomorrow – and then I’ll need my village helpers. They can remove the rest of the overgrowth and the undergrowth and then I’ll crack on by myself.’

  To Dorcas it seemed a daunting task. ‘Are you sure you can do the rest on your own? We’re all very willing, you know.’

  ‘No!’ said Molly, perhaps a little too quickly and loudly. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You looked distinctly un-doll-like just then.’

  ‘It’s just that when the delicate stuff starts you really don’t want a lot of people tramping about. It has to be me on my own.’

  ‘I think you are going to enjoy this. And make a name for yourself.’

  ‘That’s part of it,’ said Molly. ‘That’s the ambition of any archaeologist in the land. But I also want to complete what Grandfather Bonner started. And when I’ve done that …’ she bent and brushed off her knees: ‘then I can give up for a while and concentrate on having babies.’

  ‘What?’ said Dorcas, not believing she had heard properly.

  Molly laughed even more loudly. ‘You heard. Babies.’

  ‘Have you got anyone in mind?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The babies?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Molly, ‘but he’s in Brazil at the moment. He knows everything there is to know about pterosaurs – which can never be enough, apparently – but Brazil has fossils that make new links and throw new light and, well,’ she laughed. ‘Get involved with a man on a mission and you have to take your place in the pecking order … If he were a dog he’d be a terrier. Never give up until he’s shaking the answer between his teeth.’

  Dorcas smiled. She recognised the type. ‘I know all about that,’ she said. ‘South America must be full of rugged Englishmen doing wonderful things –’

  ‘Welshman in my case,’ said Molly. ‘He sings as he goes.’

  ‘Do you love him very much?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Molly. ‘But South America is hugely important from a palaeontologist’s point of view – he had to go. I suppose it’s one of the last great frontiers. What do you mean “full of rugged Englishmen”?’

  And then Dorcas, who was not one to talk about Robin or the past, decided that she would. ‘My fiancé –’ said Dorcas, and stopped herself. It sounded strange, alien, almost untrue now. ‘He was on the border between Bolivia and Brazil. He died out there.’

  Molly’s curving mouth, usually nearer to a smile than anything else, went down at the corners. ‘What was he doing there?’

  Dorcas told her about Robin’s one last major project. After which Molly shook her head and said quietly, ‘I’d heard it was pretty lawless over there. How did he die?’ And she sat back down again as if she had all the time in the world.

  ‘That’s the worst part of it,’ said Dorcas. ‘I don’t know. I got a boot and a hat and my photo and nothing else. Nothing at all. He vanished. Eaten by animals, perhaps. Dangerous terrain. Or shot. Or kidnapped. Who knows?’

  ‘That border is dangerous for other reasons than furry carnivores,’ said Molly. ‘It’s a drug runners’ paradise. And it’s policed by some of the richest families in Bolivia – who don’t like the plans for sharing the land out more equally.’

  ‘All that,’ said Dorcas with a sigh. ‘The Foreign Office said that he wouldn’t have been kidnapped – which is the other thing that happens – as they never got a ransom demand.’ She shrugged. ‘So that’s that … One day I hope to get out there and …’ She shrugged.

  ‘Where exactly did this happen?’ asked Molly.

  So Dorcas told her. ‘And now,’ she said, putting the flask back together, ‘I had better go.’

  As if to confirm her words, just at that moment from below came far-off shouting. It was Miles. ‘Baa-aa-nk, Doo-or-cas,’ he called. And he flapped the cheque.

  Dorcas pulled a face.

  Molly looked sympathetic. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘If we find anything out about this place, we’ll slap unbendable rules on him quick as you like. In the meantime –’ She put a finger to her lips. Dorcas looked across to the two higher hills. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now you come to mention it, it is odd that they should choose here to put him.’

  For the moment that was the end of the conversation. Dorcas, feeling lighter than the wind, ran down the Hill towards Miles and the money. Even just saying Robin’s name brought him alive for a moment, and that was lovely.
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br />   That evening, sitting up in her bed, Molly wrote a letter. She would have sent a text or made a telephone call, but the intended recipient of the message was not likely to be anywhere near a telephone, or a signal. And the intended recipient would go back to base from time to time, to the poste restante he had sent her, all things permitting, where this letter might be found and collected. She began by writing

  Dear Freddy – and she drew a small heart by the side of his name. After which the she wrote – I know we were not contacting each other unless it was a matter of life and death or bragging about something – and everything is going well here – but today I heard a very sad story about an Englishman with red hair and freckles who answers to the name of Robin …

  When she had finished the letter she sealed the envelope, kissed it, put it under her pillow to post the following morning, and fell happily asleep. There is nothing better in the world than drifting off to dreamland when you are feeling that your little bit of the universe is unfolding exactly as you want it to.

  PART II

  One

  SOME WEEKS LATER, and in the firm belief that looking was learning for an archaeologist, Molly sat for a long time contemplating the current shape of the Gnome, what she thought the Gnome’s shape had once been, the various likelihoods of ways that that shape might have been changed, and the drawing of 1789. The people in the village below had mixed feelings when they looked up and saw her, so still and quiet, her chin in her hand like Rodin’s Thinker. They felt admiration and anxiety about the reappearance of the Gnome. The clearing had been fun, something for everyone to get involved in and – apart from a degree of bossiness by Miles and ribaldry by some of the younger folk – it had gone smoothly for Molly. But now it was her time and with a convincing display of fierceness she sent them all away and said they were not to come back until she invited them. Now she was alone on the Hill, her back to the wind, contemplating the ancientness of the landscape all around her. Molly was taking her time and quite uncaring of what the people below her thought about it. She knew that Pound Hill and its famous occupant were connected in more than a surface way: she knew it, and she meant to prove it.