Treasures of Time Page 11

  ‘No, of course not. Because the barrow was much older, anyway. They weren’t expecting to find that kind of thing at all. They nearly dug quite a different one, miles from here. And it was a rush getting that article out, that I do remember.’

  ‘Whose grave was it?’

  ‘One can’t possibly know,’ said Paul Summers. ‘Some Bronze Age man of substance. Anyway, an unknown benefactor to Hugh – he gave him a good reference, just in time for the Directorship.’

  The effect of alcohol, Tom thought, is not so much to hinder the perception or cloud the vision as to render same more acute. So long as not too much is required of you by way of saying or doing things, all is well. The mind fairly ticks away. The blue-rinsed up-market hotel receptionist on my right is not quite as at her ease as one might think; she is frightened of old Tony there, which is interesting, because old Tony is as harmless as they come. Disconcerted by the unfamiliar, I suppose. And her husband is a right so-and-so. And this chap who worked with Hugh Paxton didn’t in fact like him overmuch, though he thinks no one knows.

  And Hugh Paxton, like Stukeley up to a point, cashed in on the national past, though not wittingly or with calculation, as we all do who earn our keep at this particular trade. Stukeley, of course, distorted in order to get the results he wanted; Hugh Paxton presumably didn’t do that. Except in the way that convenient evidence for a theory always seems to come to hand more readily than inconvenient evidence. Convenient Wessex man, in this case.

  Laura is an attractive woman. One can be aware of that, with perfect detachment and without prejudice. Or, at least, with a good deal of prejudice, but in all fairness.

  What is odd, what I find odd, is that earlier archaeologists should have been so anxious to attribute everything to continental influence. You’d have thought it would have fitted in with good old imperialist chauvinist days to claim the culture that produced Avebury and Stonehenge and the Charlie’s Tump grave-goods for Britain. But not a bit of it – it all had to have come from the Mediterranean, via other nice civilized places like France. And that, of course, is to do with the conditioning of a classical education: anything that is culturally worth having comes from Greece or Rome. Very odd that not until the humdrum superseded retracted Britain of the nineteen sixties do we start thinking that maybe that part of it at least began here, with a bunch of homegrown Wiltshire farmers.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you could say that there isn’t anything all that culturally spectacular about mobilizing an admittedly startling amount of man-power in order to stand a lot of stones on their ends for superstitious reasons. You could say that, quite properly.’ They were all staring rather, at this not particularly sensational remark. James Hamilton, wearing an interrupted look, had his mouth open; he had very dapper teeth for a man of his age. ‘But of course,’ Tom went on, ‘the whole point is aspirations, in whatever direction. New Guinea tribesmen have never built anything; most of them haven’t even learnt how to make pottery. Primitive societies either stand still or they don’t. Wessex very much didn’t which is why in the fullness of time people like Stukeley and Hugh Paxton come along and spend their lives trying to work out what it was all about, and making a name for themselves in the process, and either getting it wrong or right, or somewhere in between, and confusing the issue with a whole lot of prejudices and assumptions of their own…’

  ‘Gracious, Tom,’ said Laura coldly, ‘what a diatribe! Well now, let’s go through for some coffee?’

  And Nellie, silent on the side-lines, thought, this is better than the hospital waiting room, thank God I am not robbed of hearing nor the powers of observation. Poor Tom, put in his place, though of course in fact it is not poor Tom at all, because Tom’s day is yet to come and is going to be a rather satisfactory one, I suspect. And he is not, as it happens, much alarmed by Laura. But it is poor Kate, chewing her fingernails there just as she used to do at sixteen, and ten, and six. And as for the rest of them, it is interesting to note people all somewhat set in their ways – and the young can be that, too – doing their best to look as though they are not. Laura’s evening could be said to be a success, on the whole, though just at the moment that is not what she is thinking.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘My sister is extraordinary,’ said Laura to Tony. ‘She had an obsession about getting in here to go through some papers of Hugh’s, and nothing would stop her, she even enlisted Ted Lucas who is slow on the uptake to say the least of it, and they heaved some sort of old door over the steps… Well anyway, she has had what she calls a sort-out.’ Laura surveyed the neat and dusted desk with disapproval. ‘The dig notes are in these boxes here, so I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’

  And Tony sits at this desk of a man he never met, and reads, and blinks through his Mahler spectacles at difficult handwriting, and takes notes. He is quite absorbed; he puzzles over technical details and wonders who various people referred to are (and lists them, for his secretary to check) and wishes not for the first time in his career that one could dally further but it is no good, his year is mapped out already with schedules and dead-lines and studio dates; there is so long for Hugh Paxton and no more. Once or twice he feels intrusive; a scrawled note in another hand falls from between the pages of an exercise book – ‘Have gone up to the dig, can you bring the cameras when you come, also water and lunch things on table, see you later J.’ J must remain an unknown quantity in Hugh Paxton’s life, and he puts the note tidily back, as also a sepia photograph showing two people, with eyes screwed up against the sun, amid a dusty landscape, Paxton himself and the sister, what is she called? her in the wheel chair, who is also irrelevant, so far as Tony is concerned. It is remarkable, he thinks, how comprehensive a picture one builds up, I have a pretty good idea what sort of a man Hugh Paxton was, if I met him I would know what approach to take, what his foibles are, his prejudices, that he didn’t stand fools lightly, went straight to the point, worked hard and expected others to. But relaxed hard too, drank quite a bit, had an eye for the girls. One gets a composite picture, talking to people, reading this stuff, the man fills out…

  While Nellie, in her room, sits, equally absorbed, before her own extracted evidence. Here are all the notes on pottery sequences, and yes, she thinks with gathering energy that it might well be possible to work up something publishable. She too reads and makes notes, but for her the job is dramatized by recollection with all its shifty tricks: what was and what one thought was and what may have been.

  Tom, also, sits at a desk. I am almost ready to start writing, he thinks. Another few weeks. He contemplates his card-index boxes and his tidy piles of notes, clipped together in a Boots file that he has had since sixth form days. William Stukeley and his contemporaries: a study… I am almost ready to pronounce judgement. I have read everything that ought to have been read and given proper thought to all that should properly be thought of. Now I must sit down and write history.

  ‘Warriner Park. Some vast comprehensive.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Help you heave all that stuff around.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kate doubtfully, ‘if you like, but…’

  ‘All right, all right. I know when I’m not wanted.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly, Tom. It’s just you’ll be bored stiff. Birmingham’s not the most attractive place in the world. There’ll probably be no end of bother finding the right teachers and getting it all set up.’

  ‘All the more reason for giving you a hand.’

  Kate’s ‘Island Heritage’ travelling exhibition was now complete and ready for release. Its debut was to take place in a Birmingham school which had been among the first to express interest, and Kate, anxious about the security and proper display of this valuable and painstakingly assembled collection, had decided to take it herself to the school and supervise its initial arrangement. An official from Birmingham Museum, who was to be responsible for its transfer to the next school on the list, was to m
eet her there.

  They drove up the motorway in pouring rain, the back of the Fiat crammed full of the boxes housing Roman lamps, coins and tiles, and facsimiles of pages from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, the Caxton Bible, the Lindisfarne Gospel, the earliest edition of Chaucer, a First Folio Shakespeare and selected passages of the Paston letters. A specially constructed case, lined with plastic foam, held some Celtic metalware and a Viking shield, buckle and sword: these were the real thing and causing Kate much anguish. ‘Just the job for a bit of aggro on the football terraces,’ said Tom cheerfully. ‘You’re going to have to make sure they put double padlocks on this lot.’ Kate groaned. There was also an assortment of more homely articles of domestic use, ranging from prehistoric to medieval, some costumes and a fourteenth century tapestry, some very fine blown-up photographs illustrating early vernacular architecture, with explanatory notes, and a huge wall-chart explaining the provenance of cultural influences from the Iron Age to the end of the sixteenth century, by means of maps, differently coloured arrows, simplified chronological tables and diagrammatic symbols. Kate and various colleagues had devised this and agonized over it for months. It had come out aesthetically satisfactory but perhaps rather confusing. ‘The trouble is,’ said Kate, ‘it is confusing. There’s no two ways about it.’ This enormous scroll now stuck into the middle of Tom’s back, as they approached Birmingham. Above him, swathed in plastic sheeting and tied to the roof-rack, was a full-size replica of the Bewcastle Cross in expanded polystyrene of quite astonishing lightness. Periodically the wind would catch its protruding end, causing the car to rock alarmingly.

  The school, when at last they ran it to ground amid Birmingham’s proliferation of ring-roads and fly-overs and dual carriage-ways, turned out to be spread out over a large area, and of fairly recent construction. It was light and bright, set down in blocks of sage green and dull orange amid playing fields and its own internal road-system of tarmac tracks with sign-posts about Language Blocks and Sixth Form Units and Remedial Teaching Centres. A satellite colony of terrapin buildings suggested a staged expansion. The windows snapped in the sunlight and children drifted about the place, many of them West Indian and Pakistani. There were motor-bikes and scooters among the push-bikes in the sheds alongside the car park. They went into what appeared to be the main building, in search of the teacher who was supposed to be expecting them. When he appeared – young, bearded and jeaned, looking, Tom thought, more like an actor than anyone’s stereotype of a schoolmaster – they followed him to the room set aside for the display of the ‘Island Heritage’. Kate inspected the doors and windows. ‘Can it be locked? Sorry, Mr – er – Mr Sanderson, but some of the exhibits are real, you see, and quite irreplaceable.’

  ‘Ron. It’ll be bolted and barred, yes, don’t worry.’ Kate relaxed a little, and entered into a discussion about trestle tables and pin-boards. Tom volunteered to start bringing the boxes in.

  He left the Bewcastle Cross until the final journey. It was awkward to carry, and he set off across the car park with it aslant his shoulders at first until it struck him that his appearance was perhaps in rather bad taste, so he shifted it to an irritating position under one arm from which it banged into each of the many swing doors that had to be negotiated en route to the exhibition room, where Kate and Ron were now busy setting up the display. With relief, he leaned it up against the wall. Ron said, ‘What on earth’s that?’ Kate explained. Children, curious, clustered at the door, also asking questions. ‘Buzz off,’ said Ron. ‘You’ll find out, all in good time. It’s a super exhibition,’ he went on, ‘we’re awfully grateful to have had first crack at it, as it were. Knowing it was in the offing, of course, we’ve tried as much as possible to tie it in with ordinary class teaching. Even so, I’m afraid it’s going to seem baffling and maybe a bit irrelevant to a lot of our children.’ ‘Irrelevant?’ said Kate, wrestling with drawing-pins and the cultural scroll. ‘We have a large immigrant quota.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, smoothing down a corner that showed Angles, Saxons and Jutes, pink-arrowed, emanating from northern Europe; under her left elbow, Normans, blue, surged out of Cherbourg. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ ‘What would be marvellous,’ Ron continued, ‘would be if one could get together the same sort of thing but pertinent to their own cultural groupings – you know, on the West Indies, say, or India.’ ‘Mmn,’ said Kate, turning her attention to Roman coins. ‘I suppose it could be done. Not my province, though, I’m afraid, you’d have to talk to someone in that field at the B.M.’ ‘Some of us feel strongly that they don’t have nearly enough in the curriculum that’s geared to their own cultures – we’d like to see classes in Urdu and that kind of thing, options on Indian history and art. But it’s not popular with the educational establishment. Not sufficiently exam-oriented. Not vocational.’ ‘This isn’t very vocational either,’ said Kate, positioning the Viking sword and shield on a display board. ‘Well, maybe I don’t mean vocational, quite. Mainstream.’ Outside, faces – pink, brown, yellow and whitish, bobbed against the glass of the door; feet rushed in the corridor; a bell rang. ‘But,’ said Tom, ‘they live here now, that’s a plain fact. They live here and they’re going to work here and probably die here. So it is relevant, it has to be. Maybe they were better at this in America.’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Ron, ‘saluting the flag and all that. I think not.’ ‘I wasn’t going to propose that. Just that you can’t suggest that this is irrelevant and propose classes in Urdu one moment and then wonder why people don’t adapt themselves better the next.’ ‘Ever lived in Birmingham?’ said Ron. ‘No, but I don’t need…’ ‘Just chuck me that ball of string, will you,’ said Kate. ‘Or taught?’ ‘No, nor that neither, and I daresay you’re in the thick of it and I’m not, but the simple fact remains that…’ ‘Sorry,’ said Kate, ‘can I just get at the scissors? Thanks.’ ‘I’m not,’ Tom went on, ‘proposing some kind of identity massacre, it’s just common sense dictates that you must…’

  The door, which Ron had closed against the intruding children, now opened.

  ‘Can I have a preview?’ said Cherry Laker. And then, ‘Good Lord! Tom! Whatever brings you here?’

  ‘Cherry! Well I’m blowed!’

  ‘Didn’t you know I taught here?’

  ‘No, I swear. Oh, this is Kate – Kate Paxton. Cherry Laker. Martin’s sister, you know.’ Kate said, ‘Hello,’ stiffly.

  ‘Of course,’ said Cherry, ‘now I get why you’re here – the “Island Heritage” exhibition. What fun. Let’s all go and have some lunch somewhere – you won’t be wanting school dinner.’ She looked extremely fetching and, like Ron, rather far removed from one’s concept of a school teacher. Kate had turned back to her display board and was saying something in a very offhand tone about having to stay here until Mr Wilmot from the City Museum arrived.

  ‘Actually,’ said Ron, ‘I’ll have to push off now. I’ve got a class. Here’s the key. Would you drop it in at the school office when you go?’

  ‘I can help,’ Cherry offered, ‘I’ve got a free period. I say, what a splendid diagram. Even I can understand it, so the kids should be all right.’ She giggled. Tom said, ‘Cherry teaches Art.’ He saw Kate’s suspicious glance swerve from the Viking shield to Cherry’s full, red cotton skirt and tight, black T-shirt; she nodded and pointed at a pot of glue. He handed it to her; Cherry was admiring the Celtic pins and brooches. ‘Look, he’s awfully late, this Wilmot bloke. Why don’t we leave a message in case he comes, and go and have something to eat, like Cherry says, I’m starving.’ ‘You go, if you want,’ said Kate, in a cool, distant voice. ‘I’d rather wait for him.’

  When, after another ten minutes, Wilmot had still not come, Cherry said, ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have something to eat I shan’t get through the afternoon. Couldn’t we leave a…’ ‘You two go,’ said Kate. ‘Go on.’ She scowled at the pin-board, aligning the architectural photographs. ‘No,’ Tom began, ‘I tell you what, we’ll…’ ‘Go on.’ Cherry said, ‘I’m just going to get my purse,
I’ll pop back and see who’s coming, if anyone.’ She went.

  ‘Look’ said Tom, ‘he’s presumably made a mistake about the time. He’ll show up this afternoon. Let’s…’

  ‘Now I know why you wanted to come.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, now I know. So much for all that let me help you heave the boxes around stuff.’

  ‘Look, what exactly are you getting at?’

  ‘You knew she worked here.’

  ‘I damn well didn’t. At least yes I knew she worked in some Birmingham school, she said something about it at Martin and Beth’s, but there are dozens of schools in Birmingham. Don’t be ridiculous, Kate. And anyway, what the hell makes you think…’

  ‘At Martin and Beth’s. You didn’t tell me she’d been there.’

  ‘Well, why should I? It wasn’t worth mentioning.’

  ‘I thought you hadn’t seen her for years.’

  ‘I hadn’t.’

  ‘Not since you were – involved with her.’

  ‘What a stupid prissy word. I wish I’d never mentioned it. Too bloody honest, that’s my trouble. Look, Cherry is the kind of girl who frequently gets – involved – as you so quaintly put it. She’s just an old friend, now, neither more nor less. So stop being so silly. And I hadn’t the faintest idea she taught here.’

  Kate snorted. ‘Friend! Now who’s being prissy.’ They glared at each other.

  Cherry put her head round the door. ‘Anyone for beer and a banger? There’s quite a nice pub down the road.’

  Kate said, ‘Tom’s going’ at the same moment as Tom said, ‘Neither of us, I’m afraid.’ There was a silence. Tom picked up his jacket. ‘Right you are. I’ll bring you back a sandwich.’ Kate did not reply. He walked out of the room.