Humpty's bones

9. Tuesday Morning: 11.30

A mound of soil that doesn’t look particularly large can be surprisingly difficult to move. Especially when it has to be lifted above shoulder height before being dumped at arm’s length. Eden’s shoulders ached. Her arms had almost locked solid with exertion. The friction of the bowl against her fingers made the skin sore. Meanwhile, dirt from Humpty’s grave smeared her hands. Her head rose above the lip of the pit before dipping below. At times she felt like a whale coming up for air before submerging again. The earth she shifted was more wet paste than individual grains. Each time her head lifted above ground level she sighed with relief at breathing fresher air. The wet odours of the pit bottom weren’t appealing in the slightest. The outside world beyond the garden seemed uncannily distant now. As if the wall and the gate formed a barrier to a realm that she’d left behind. On the wall, very faded, but just legible, graffiti issued the brutal command: Go To Hell! Under normal circumstances, Eden would have noticed such unsettling vandalism straightaway, especially in this quiet rural garden; however, it was a measure of her anger at not being picked up by her aunt from the station that she missed it entirely when she first arrived. This place had that effect on one’s emotions — it inflamed them. What’s more, she mused, did the graffiti suggest that Heather had fallen out with one of her neighbours?

‘I’m going to end up living out my life in this hole,’ she murmured, half inebriated by the intense aroma of Humpty’s grave soil. Maybe it was once a wine cellar in ancient times. So much spilt wine soaked into the ground; amphorae of fermented grape; it’s still here. Making me dizzy. Sending me daft as a loon… She swayed, unsteady on her feet. Now I’m lying in long grass… stalks become vines that threaten to strangle me. There is a river. And in that water are pear-shaped vessels… black liquid fills them… through the membrane I see shapes; they are squirming, all turning and squirming and pulsating… tiny arms… eyes that glare out at me… The way the dream-like sequence oozed through her head induced a swirl of vertigo. Where had those images come from? Is this place sending me crazy? It must be the lack of air in this Godforsaken pit. Oxygen deprivation. Exertion. That, and knowing that Dog Star House is going to burn, too. Just like my apartment burned… Dear God. What had made her think such a terrible thing? Eden reached out both hands to dig her fingertips into the dirt sides of the pit. For an instant it seemed to her that she needed to grip the Earth itself. If she didn’t, she might slip away from reality entirely, never to return. ‘You’re not used to exercise, my girl. You’ve let yourself go. Now, pull yourself together.’ She’d spoken in a jokey way, imagining that it was her old gym mistress, scolding her again for lacking in gusto. Back then Miss Jericho briskly chided all her students for lacking ‘gusto’.

Eden closed her eyes again and took a deep breath. She pictured Miss Jericho standing there in that white tracksuit she always wore, whistle in hand, and demanding that her girls scale the ropes again: ‘But this time, when you climb, put some ruddy vinegar into it!’

When Eden continued digging, she put ‘some ruddy vinegar into it’, whatever that meant.

At the next dip of the bowl she glimpsed a hard object in the goo. ‘No, don’t you escape. You’re my treasure.’ She grabbed the piece of metal before it sank back into the mud. Gratefully, she lifted her head into fresher air. Here it was brighter, too, allowing her to examine her find. Little larger than her fingernail, another Roman coin. One side had become pretty much corroded beyond the point of no return but the reverse was remarkably clean. It revealed the profile of a bull-necked man with bulging eyes. ‘Hail, Caesar.’ She smiled, although it still felt goofy. The pong of the hole took her high as the stars.

‘What in God’s name are you doing?’

The sudden voice gave her a jolt. She spun in the grave pit to find the speaker. ‘I didn’t know you were there. You gave me a shock.’

A man of around sixty leaned forward over the gate, invading the garden’s airspace, as it were. He stared at her with such a look of distaste that she tried to step backwards, her back coming up against the side of the pit. He clutched a checked cap in one hand. In his other, a carved walking stick. She noted that his thick woollen suit matched the gloomy meadows in that same dull green. One eye appeared weak, half closed; the other glared with such ferocity it easily made up for its partner’s deficiency. If anything, his crowning glory was a formidable nose; this fantasia of bony architecture protruded from his face in a way that drew her gaze.

Angry, he pointed at the crater that Heather had carved from the garden. ‘I asked what you were doing?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What are you playing at? All this.’ He jabbed a finger at the riven earth.

‘It’s a dig… an archaeological dig.’

‘You can’t… you just can’t.’

‘This garden belongs to my aunt. She can do what she likes.’

‘Oh no she can’t… not if you know the land. I was born here. Grew up in that farm yonder. My family have always worked the soil here.’

Was he suggesting that this was somehow his property? But Eden stuck to her guns. ‘This house belonged to my grandmother. My aunt inherited it.’

‘Ah… ’ His one good eye examined her face. ‘One of the Page family. I see it now. You all have the same jaw-lines. Hard. Very hard.’

She couldn’t but help notice his prominent nose again. Was that a shared feature of the old farmer’s family, too?

‘I know Heather Laird, all right.’ he said in a way that hinted of past battles with her. ‘She’s… well, she knows what she wants.’ His single good eye burned above the bridge of his nose. A surreal sun rising over a bony mountain. ‘You’re a smart looking girl. I can tell you’ve got common sense.’ His voice adopted more friendly tones. ‘But can you take a bit of neighbourly advice?’

‘Depends what it is.’ Eden sounded wary.

‘Get out of that bloody hole. Go home!’

‘I’ve got work to do. I’ll have to say good-bye.’ She climbed up the short ladder to exit the pit. Return to the house, she told herself. Wait until the old grouch leaves.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. But if I think something I’ve got to get it said. I can see you’re a nice lass. I only wanted to warn you… it’s for your own good. It wouldn’t please me you getting into any kind of bother.’ He shifted his stance so the walking stick took his weight.

After the experience of the midnight intruder this made her hesitate. ‘What kind of bother exactly?’

‘Well… ’ he scraped the side of his nose with his fingernail. ‘You should stop digging there for a start.’

‘Why?’

‘In the country it’s not a good idea to dig too deep into the ground.’

‘In case you disturb something that should remain undisturbed?’ This was meant to be sarcastic. The man took it as a serious question.

‘Aye. Farmers and the like, if they wind up with something that’s bad they put it in the ground. They always have.’ He issued his statement with utter conviction. ‘Cattle with foot and mouth, anthrax, congestion of the lung. You bury the bodies. Same goes for contaminated feed, or when the government bans an insecticide or weed-killer. All of it goes in the ground. We pile rocks over it if need be. We keep it buried.’ He tapped the walking stick as if to drive the ferule into the turf. ‘It stays underground so it can’t do any harm.’

‘Thank you for the advice.’

‘All I wanted was to give you a friendly warning. Digging holes is dangerous.’

Eden sensed he intended to slip away. Not so quickly, she thought, you’ve given me reasons not to dig. That isn’t the real warning, though, is it? ‘Last night someone came to the house.’

‘Oh?’

‘A stranger at midnight. He behaved oddly. He put his face to the door as if trying to smell what was inside. After that he broke a window.’

‘Did he get into the house?’ The old man appeared genuinely concerned.

‘Would you be worried if he had?’

His way of looking at her changed. He sensed now that she was aiming to extract facts that he wished to remain concealed. ‘You’re my neighbours,’ he began. ‘Here we look out for one another. There’s thefts of machinery. Gangs come out from the towns.’

‘Has it ever happened to you?’

‘Six months ago a tractor got taken.’

‘I’m not talking about thieves. I’m asking if you’ve ever had a stranger prowling around your property, smelling at the door like he’s some kind of wild animal?’

The man wanted to leave now.

‘Have you ever seen anyone like that?’

‘No… not at all.’

‘You have, haven’t you? What was wrong with the shape of his head?’

‘Now then.’ He breathed deeply. ‘I’ve seen nothing like that. I don’t know what you’re driving at.’

‘What did you think when you saw the head? How would you describe it?’

‘I can’t help you, Miss.’

‘What was the first word that came into your mind to describe it?’

With some of his earlier conviction he came back with, ‘Best keep your doors locked at night, then. Don’t even look out the window. And take my advice: whatever you dug out of that hole put it back. Fill it up with soil. Turf it. Then leave well alone.’

‘If the night visitor comes back, what should I do? Should I invite him in?’

‘No!’

‘Why? What is it?’

Heather’s voice interrupted the beginnings of his reply: ‘Now, what can I do for you, Mr Hezzle?’

The man’s whole demeanour abruptly changed. ‘Mrs Laird. Good morning. I’ve just been passing the day with your niece here. She’s a good looking girl, isn’t she?’

‘Like me, she’s not easily flattered.’ Heather scowled. ‘Have you been letting your dogs run wild again, Mr Hezzle?’

‘They can go where they please on my land.’

‘They’re brutes, Mr Hezzle.’ The woman kept her voice formal; even so, there was more than a hint of irritation. This must be the source of a long running argument. ‘You should keep them tied up in the farmyard, if they’re not allowed in the house.’

‘Everyone here has dogs,’ he replied evenly. ‘If you call out the police today they’ll appear next Tuesday — if you’re lucky. Those dogs of mine keep thieves away. We’d be robbed bankrupt if it weren’t for those brutes, as you call them.’

In a telling way she sang out, ‘Good day, Mr Hezzle.’

With polite restraint he nodded a farewell, then in a more friendly way to Eden, ‘Take care of yourself, Miss.’ A moment later he walked vigorously away.

‘He’s one of the notorious Hezzle tribe,’ murmured Heather to Eden. ‘They say they’ve been here since… well, from before the Romans marched in, if you believe all the tales they tell you. Take my advice, have nothing to do with them.’

‘Mr Hezzle was giving me some advice.’

‘What? The one about leaving bread and milk at your back gate at sunset? Or never cut the holly bushes down in your garden?’

‘Mr Hezzle told me not to dig holes.’

‘That’s a novel one, I suppose.’ She checked the excavation. ‘Good work. You saved the day, Eden. Will you help me lift one of those stones at the bottom? There might be an earlier floor beneath it.’

After that there was only small talk. Eden looked round the garden.

‘You don’t have any holly bushes?’

‘No, I can’t stand them. We had all the holly ripped out.’