The Lovers of Pound Hill Read online

  But Molly did show an intelligent and enquiring mind when it came to the history of the earth. And although her parents hoped she would direct this talent towards their own chosen fields of chemistry and physics, she did not. The past held her interest, even her heart, and the whispered words of encouragement from her grandmother went deep. But she did learn the art of applied intelligence from her parents, and applied intelligence when you are investigating the past is extremely valuable. When you are looking for an ancient needle in a carbonised haystack, it is advisable not to get sidetracked by the dimensions of the structure.

  Molly Bonner very soon dispensed with the study of dinosaurs, considering them to be a very feeble attempt by her school to make archaeology exciting, and chose instead the more demanding pursuit of the study of the landscape through time. She loved piecing together archaeological puzzles from what the earth had kept hidden, loved the fact that its discoverers had had to fight for its recognition as a science in an age that was still heavy with religious superstition, and even more she loved the fact that they won. This was the passion that her grandmother wanted to see in her. Molly would one day go out into the field and find these material remains and interpret them for herself.

  By the time Molly reached this recognition fundamentalists were denying the truth of what archaeology taught, saying that the Bible was right and that so-called evidence, buried in the earth, was the work of the devil. Other holy books were used with equal bias. A state was even declared as given by God, and land grabbed on the basis of the words of the Bible. If ever a young woman needed that final goad to get on with it, that creationist codswallop was it. Which only went to prove that even the most nutty of religious ideologies can bring forth something good, in this case a dedicated Molly Bonner who saw that physical evidence was irrefutable, even if a lot of dangerously potty people chose to look the other way.

  Her greatest delight, as she grew older, was to look at the development of human behaviour over the millennia. She would leave the Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic and even the Neolithic to others. Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) was a wonder, Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus) was sensational, but her real excitement began with the Bronze and Iron Ages. She was, indeed, Miss Bonner the archaeologist’s granddaughter when it came to that. As she read his words they reflected her own feelings about the world of the past. Molly was hooked. And when she was also properly qualified – and not before, her grandmother warned – she could begin. A sum of money was set aside for this. Quite a large one.

  The letters and notebooks, unregarded by her parents, came to light again after their deaths. Her grandmother showed them to her once or twice but by the time Molly was of an age to read them constructively, she, too, had died. The questions they raised must go unanswered. She was only thankful that the books and letters had not been destroyed. Her parents were coolly dismissive of grandmother Bonner’s prognostications on the subject of grandfather Bonner’s greatness, referring to his work as his hobby. Only after her mother’s death, when the old home was being dispersed, was Molly sent the details of a bank strongbox – and there they were: a bundle of letters tied in faded pink ribbon, and two notebooks in her grandfather’s meticulous, elegant handwriting – kept alongside a few other papers of importance, such as the deeds of her parents’ house, copies of all their certificates and qualifications and some ancient and yellowing and wholly unexciting letters of employment from the fifties and sixties.

  Molly was rapidly becoming accomplished in her chosen field of human archaeology but she waited until she was almost thirty before she set about her preparations to begin work on Pound Hill and the Gnome. She waited in the hope that Freddy’s brother – a film-maker – would be free to create some kind of record of what took place but he never was and now she had decided that if she went on waiting for him she would never get started. Something would come up, she decided, and if it did not then she would just have to do the camerawork herself. Absolutely nothing was going to daunt Miss Molly Bonner from getting on with the job.

  One of the things she found endearing about her grandfather was that he had the occasional lapse in spelling. For example, in one of his notebooks he had written that if he carried on doing what he was doing, and was right about what he would find, then he might be able to ‘dispense with Marvell’. And he appended several exclamation marks. Which Molly assumed to mean, and rather approved of as meaning, that instead of the revelations of archaeology being seen as some kind of conjuring trick or marvel, it would be seen as yet another source of truth. What was more, the film she intended to make would show how plodding and painstaking the process of discovering the past actually was. If the camerawork was a bit wobbly, all to the good.

  Money talked, of course. Once she met Miles Whittington she understood the man. For all his protestations about protecting the site and the importance of keeping it safe for posterity, she knew perfectly well that he wanted to make money from it. He had every intention of exploiting its prurient aspect but she might, she just might, have a counter to all that … In any case, she would pay him a stipend for the privilege, and she would then be able to control the proceedings. She saw the look of pain that crossed his face when she said that she would pay him in three tranches – on arrival, after an agreed period into her work, and when her work was finally done. That way he would not be able to undermine the project before it was finished. Molly knew enough about landowners who began kindly and enthusiastically enough and who changed their minds along the way.

  The permissions were granted, the material requirements were found, her hair had been re-reddened, and all was now in order to begin. She snapped the case closed, swung it off the bed, slung her hoodie over her arm, and dragged her way down the stairs and out of the flat. She was unlikely to be coming back for quite a while. That bed of hers, when she did so, would seem – she knew – like goosefeathered heaven. From now on it would be the hard-looking bed in the small front bedroom in the Old Holly Bush, and either the grinding wet and cold (with occasional sun) of an English hillside in spring, or the occasional baking sun and warm, driving rain of an English hillside in summer.

  She climbed into the van (her adored little car was safely stowed away) and started the engine. It fired immediately and jerked forward as if it, too, could not wait to begin on this mysterious adventure. Molly had no exact idea of what she was looking for, she had no idea of where it would be in relation to the Gnome, or even if there was anything to find, but her grandfather’s letters and notebooks implied that he suspected something was there, something that had not been discovered. There were hints that he had made a find that would change the whole tenor of the place. ‘We should never dispense with Marvell,’ he had written to her grandmother, and Molly thought to herself that she never would. Archaeology was still a wonder to her and she intended to keep the promise she had made to her grandmother. But the first lesson she had learned from her studies, her own practice, and those notebooks, was that before you do anything physical, you should look. Sit and look and look and look, before you turn one stone. That was what he wrote. And that was what she would do.

  Miles invited everyone whom he considered important to an informal meeting at his house. He wanted to have a very formal meeting in the village hall but Dorcas suggested that this might alert people to the long-term relevance of the proposal. Whereas if he invited people for a sherry and a nibble and told them that he was having the Gnome properly restored over the next few months or so and it would necessitate the Hill being off bounds for the duration – that would suffice. It would also remind everyone that he was the owner; well, almost. Indeed, she opined, it would be taken as a mark of his community responsibility if he put them all in the picture.

  She said this last with what Miles considered to be unnecessary relish. He winced at the very idea of being connected in any way whatsoever with responsibility to the community – he loathed the concept – but Dorcas had a way of being right in these matters, so he conceded
to her argument. It would smooth the path for the project’s success. So far, all that was known was that Molly Bonner would arrive and take up her bed at the Old Holly Bush. Miles had felt it quite reasonable to ask for a small percentage of her rental from Peter Hanker since he had introduced her into the village, but Peter Hanker’s response was shockingly unrepeatable. Still, the Lufferton Boneyites were now aware of Molly’s forthcoming arrival and they waited to see what would happen, for while the village was used to visitors they never stayed long once the de rigueur photograph of themselves sitting on or by the critical spot of the Gnome was accomplished.

  ‘It will be an exclusive gathering, Dorcas?’ asked Miles anxiously.

  ‘Very exclusive,’ said Dorcas, who had insisted that Miles should hold a little gathering. Having obtained his somewhat tortured agreement, Dorcas then said very firmly that the sherry he provided should be of two types, medium and very dry, and should be of the very best quality. It would do no good, she insisted, to give them something inferior as it would only rattle them. They needed to be smoothed and soothed into agreement. Miles was still reeling from the bill. While he was still reeling she printed out a notice about the party and slipped over to the pub where she asked Peter to pin it up.

  Why Dorcas was helping the scheme go ahead she was not exactly certain. Something about Miss Molly Bonner appealed to her; an integrity, an enthusiasm, a happiness, that she wanted to indulge. And possibly also her hair colour and unusual dress sense. It made Dorcas, who was not yet thirty herself, feel young again just to be around her. Molly made her smile. There was little of any of these qualities in Lufferton Boney and it seemed unkind not to encourage her. Dorcas was also intrigued by the project. The words ‘dig’ and ‘excavate’ really were quite wrong in the context of Molly’s written proposal which used the words ‘clear’ and ‘restore’, yet she had spoken them both, she knew their full meaning when she used them, and Dorcas wanted to see why.

  This new interest in the Gnome made her look at him again. You could admire the shocking scale of him but there was no getting away from the fact that he was ugly – a scar of coarseness on the landscape with his immense erection that rose up almost to his ears, and testicles which, had he been a walker, would have impeded his progress greatly. There was nothing of the spiritual about it, nothing of harmony with nature. Quite the opposite. He was, quite simply, gross. If Miss Bonner the archaeologist’s granddaughter made him any more vital in outline the spinsters of the parish – of which she was one, alas – would simply avert their eyes or keel over with strange emotion. Apart, perhaps, from Julie, of course. Well – they would see what they would see. The invitation list was duly pointed out to his customers by Peter Hanker and those who did not visit the pub would hear about the gathering soon enough by word of mouth.

  The Fitzhartletts strode rather than walked towards Hill View House. Marion had ridden Sparkle and would meet up with them at the end of the village street. Her mother thought that was taking the whole riding thing way too far and tried to insist that Marion accompanied the two of them on foot but her daughter employed her not-quite-with-you stare, and won. Dulcima thought that girls might begin life liking, or loving, horses, but girls should grow up into women who knew the place of their (four-legged) mounts. Besides, it would have been helpful to have Harty on one side and her daughter on the other, to balance her up should she need it. She might not know a lot about much nowadays but she did know that Miles’s sherry was likely to be extremely poor, and had taken the sensible precaution of having a snifter or two before starting out, as well as keeping one or two tucked away in her handbag. She was still feeling rather concerned about her daughter’s sudden spurt of age and apparent lack of interest in the young bloods on offer. Dulcima had a terrible feeling that she would have to forgo her lovely half-bottles and other stimulating delights if she were to get her head around the problem. Make me good, she thought, as St A. said, only please not yet …

  As they approached Beautiful Bygones someone called out and Dulcima hoped that it might be Dryden, but it was only the vicar. Her heart sank. That vicar and his blood-curdling humility. At least she could overlook Dryden’s deference since he was the only man with whom she had ever enjoyed a cultured conversation.

  They had begun with Grinling Gibbons, some of whose carvings could be seen around the hall fireplace – and moved tastefully on. Harty was useless. When, having discovered the Grinling Gibbons, she tried to talk to her husband about him, Harty had merely said that it might be all right for Longleat but it was never going to happen here. To Dulcima’s puzzled, ‘What?’ he said very firmly, ‘There will be no zoo for our parkland. And certainly no gibbons!’ Ah well. At least she would see Dryden tonight, if only across Miles’s crowded sitting room. Though very probably Harty would want to engage him in conversation about guns and old hunting things.

  How odd it was that Dryden and her husband got on so well together and how easy that made it to compare them since they were in each other’s company so frequently. When her mother said, all those years ago, that Fitzhartlett would make a good husband, being rich, kind, hardly at home and not very interested in women in that way, her mother was right. Harty was, according to those lights, an excellent husband. But she had not been assessed to see if she would make him a good wife. She did not like his hunting friends, she did not enjoy vast meals full of meat and red wine, she did not find it easy to tolerate several gun dogs whipping around her ankles when she walked around the house. Nor did she warm to Harty’s reading matter, which consisted entirely of the Shooting Times, Sporting Gun, Horse and Hound and Country Life (ignoring the articles about anything he considered fandangly such as art). If, as she once did years ago, she mentioned a novel that he might like to read, he hid behind the sofa and appeared to be having a fit. God knew what it had been like for him at school to produce a response like that. Beautiful things to Fitzhartlett comprised, largely, four-legged creatures that could gallop, though he occasionally looked at her across the top of the Racing Post and said she was damn fine looking. If she had tried to speak to her husband of Sèvres or Fabergé, which she no longer did, he would probably think they were horses in the two-thirty.

  Once, after a conversation with Dryden, she excitedly told Harty that one of their eighteenth-century commodes might be by William Vile and all he said, without looking up from his beef was, ‘Well who’d a thought it? Vile Willy. I was at school with him – taken up furniture-making, has he? Amazing.’

  And he had been very unhelpful over Marion’s fall. Dulcima had been distraught, distraught. First thing in the morning she could remember the feeling exactly. In the day, of course, it was not so bad. Harty and his stiff upper lip? thought Dulcima. Stiff bally everything. She could have done with someone who knew how to bend occasionally.

  Despite her mother’s prescient suggestion that she might not be bothered much in that way, Dulcima had perfectly properly produced a son, Edward, who was cheerfully away at sea, as well as Marion, who seemed to combine her father’s love of horseflesh with her mother’s dreamy ways. Marion, while not exactly away at sea, was quite often away to the woods. When she had her little accident Fitzhartlett, on being assured that she was not dead nor likely to be, said that perhaps it would knock some sense into her. He was still waiting to see. He, too, thought his daughter overdid the horses – and that was saying something. It was after the suggestion about knocking sense into his daughter that Dulcima blinked once and once only and immediately moved into the adjoining bedroom.

  Marion would have preferred to avoid the Hill, even its lower slopes, and she had certainly not wanted to accompany her parents on their walk to Hill View House. But some innate sense of duty prevailed and she agreed to come. Peter Hanker and Marion had an understanding about horse-tethering. She took him a pheasant or two in season (her father never noticed that a few went missing – skilfully pilfered before the count) and he provided Marion with safe equine stowage and, if required, somewhere to c
hange her clothes. And now here she was, coming round the corner of the pub, looking reasonably well turned out for a party in a decent knee-length skirt (Hobbs, price forgotten, three years old, perfectly presentable still) that Dulcima had bought her and a small black jacket (Kenzo sale, £218) to match. Her wink was a little pronounced but it often was before a social event and usually died away a bit after a quarter of an hour.

  Dulcima liked the slightly off-key nature of her daughter’s expression. Nothing like being a woman and confusing people a little. Though the few swains that Dulcima had floated past her daughter’s confusing gaze recently had not stayed very long to admire it. Rather like her father, Marion tended to open a conversation with something of a horsy nature and not stray very far from it. Her father read this inaccurately and put some of his hunting friends’ sons Marion’s way – only to find that while she might love her horses, she hated his hounds. It always amazed Dulcima that her daughter should have such long, straight, rather fine legs having spent so much time in the saddle – but then, she was a thoroughbred. The half-bottles floated off into the distance even more as she wondered what was the point of Marion having such gifts when nobody of a romantic persuasion ever saw them?