Humpty's bones

2. Monday Afternoon: 5.45

Eden Page found her aunt. She was at the bottom of her garden, and under a large gazebo. Why she stood shoulder-deep in a hole beneath an awning in the rain, and why she picked lumps of mud from that chasm Eden didn’t know or care. The walk from the station had been punishing. The road that pierced the village was dead straight and encouraged vehicles to speed dangerously. Passing farm trucks had splashed her. The hold-all’s dead weight hurt her shoulder, she was sure a whopper of a bruise was blooming there from her skin.

‘Heather! You were supposed to collect me from the station. You promised!’ Eden threw the hold-all down onto the grass. ‘I kept calling! Why didn’t you answer the phone?’

‘Eden! Watch where you’re putting your feet. Those are fragile. I’ve just spent the last two hours getting them out in one piece.’

‘What?’

‘Move back from there. Further back. No, to your left. Oh! You’ve trod on one. Whatever you do, don’t do any more damage! No, stand still. Stop tramping round like a — oh!’ Heather slapped her hand down onto the rim of the pit in which she stood. ‘Eden! You stood on the tile, you — ’

Idiot girl? Don’t ever call me ‘you idiot girl’ again!

Her aunt finished the sentence, however with, ‘you’ll break the only complete tile I’ve found.’

Eden hadn’t seen her aunt in almost a decade. Back then, the woman hadn’t been slow to address her with that scathing, ‘you idiot girl’. Now events had moved on. Eighteen months ago, her aunt, Heather Laird, had inherited Dog Star House from her mother. Heather was an accountant; her only child served in the Merchant Navy; at fifty-three she possessed the same youthful vigour as the Page side of the family. Right at that moment Heather (always ‘Heather’ to Eden — never ‘Aunt’) stood in a hole up to her shoulders. Above her stood a portable gazebo shelter of the type that can be bought in garden centres. Raindrops hung and dripped from the sides in slow procession.

Grimly suggestive, the oblong slit in the earth in which Heather stood resembled an open grave. Heather’s body possessed a wiry toughness, her hair had been scraped back tight into a pony tail. Her hands were thick with dirt right up to the elbows. As Eden stood there glaring, Heather reached down into the hole and hoisted out a boulder the size of a water melon. The muscles in her arms protruded from her skin with perfect definition. Handling the rock confidently, she rolled it across the rough grass away from the pit’s side

Eden wasn’t for one moment going to let talk of cracked tiles brush aside her complaint. ‘Heather. Why didn’t you pick me up from the station? I’ve had to walk for the best part of an hour. I’m soaked.’

Heather cried out. ‘Ah! Here’s another one! My God, not just one… I don’t believe it. One, two, three, four. There must be another dozen. Here, hold out your hand. I’ll give you one at a time. Careful, careful! Put them in the plastic tray over there by the chair. Not the white tray, the green one. Gently, don’t drop it in. Do you see? Green tray for coins, white for potsherds. The big red bowl’s for bones.’

Eden looked from what appeared to be a small pebble that Heather had placed in her open hand to where the woman stood in the grave-shaped pit. A battery-powered lamp lit the bottom of it brilliantly. It was as if Heather stood in a bath of silver radiance. Rich, brown walls of earth gave way to a black floor littered with lumps of stone the size of shoe boxes. The rich soil odours were almost intoxicating.

Heather crouched to scrape dirt with a trowel. ‘I can’t wait for the rain to stop so I put this up.’ She pointed up at the canvas awning with her trowel. ‘The work must go on.’

‘Work? You mean this hole?’

‘Excavation. I’ve found the remains of a Roman outbuilding; the actual villa is over in that field; alas, the villa’s discovery is nothing to do with me — it was uncovered by the county archaeological unit a couple of years ago. Naturally I’m not allowed to touch that. English Heritage whacked it with a preservation order. If I so much as look at it I’ll be sued. But this is my land, so this is my Roman tool-shed, or stable, or whatever it is. I’ve spent the last three weeks excavating. And no bloody rain’s going to stop me.’

‘Or picking your niece up from the station?’

‘Sorry about that.’ Heather briefly glanced up as she scraped crumbs of earth from the bottom of the pit. ‘I only hope this damp won’t make the sides collapse.’

‘You said if I phoned from the station that you or Curtis would — ’

‘Yippee, another one. Heavy. At least three fused together. Big — could be early sestertii.’

‘Heather! I had to walk an hour… in the rain… with that bag. You don’t — ’

‘I said I’m sorry.’ Heather’s eyes flicked from the fused lump of coins to Eden standing above her. ‘But you didn’t confirm what day you were arriving. I thought it was tomorrow.’

‘I said all along, Monday.’

‘Well, never mind. The main thing is you’re here, safe and sound. Nice to see you again, by the way, after all these years. Do the honours, will you?’ She handed Eden the coins glued together by decay. ‘Make yourself useful. Green tray, remember.’

Eden sighed, realising that there was no point in pursuing a heartfelt expression of regret from her aunt. She laid the green-brown lump in the tray alongside the other grimy objects.

‘So these really are coins?’

‘They are. Masses of them. A real hoard. Isn’t it fantastic!’ Heather spoke with gusto. ‘And all at the bottom of my garden.’

‘Valuable?’

‘I’ve winkled out about five hundred Roman so far, all bronze. In that uncleaned state I might be lucky to get fifty pounds for them. If I spend six months brushing them, soaking them in olive oil, brushing again and again and again — always careful to preserve the patina — I might get three hundred quid. It’s hardly worth the effort, is it?’ She wiped her brow. Some of the dirt from her hand painted a dark streak across her forehead. ‘It’s not the cash, it’s what I can learn about the Roman settlement here that’s so interesting.’ Her eyes shone. ‘No. More than interesting. Fascinating!’

Eden looked at the state of Heather. ‘You’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.’

‘What, this? Best antique earth there is. And it soon washes off. Listen, Eden, I’ll make it up to you later. Have a hot shower. A change of clothes, then plenty of Curtis’s pizza — and loads and loads of ice-cold wine.’ She continued to rattle the words at high velocity, hardly pausing for breath. ‘So far I’ve found a brooch, a leather loop, you wouldn’t believe it, leather is eternal; I found a Roman shoe complete with hobnails. All this because we decided to plant apple trees at the bottom of the garden. Just under the turf I found twentieth century pennies, sixpences, shillings. The deeper I got the older the coins got. Edwardian. Victorian. Eighteenth century — you should see some of those whoppers; there are pennies the size of jar lids. I kept digging, the coins kept coming. Medieval groats, tenth century Norman then all the way back nearly two thousand years. Right back to when this country was part of the Roman empire and chariots would be zipping along that road across there. That’s Roman too, of course, the Via Britannicus. Here. Look at this. You’ll find this interesting.’ She wiped her muddy hand on her shirt and then delved into her jeans pocket to draw out a little plastic envelope, which she handed to Eden. ‘See that? A sestertius of Claudius Gothicus. Great name, eh? It’s the best example I’ve got. See the emperor’s profile? The chin shaped like a cake slice? He claimed to be a descendent of Zeus.’

‘The coin’s not even round. It’s more like a half moon.’

‘Deliberately broken to make it worthless. In ancient cultures they believed if you made something on Earth a counterpart came into existence in heaven. Breaking a pot on Earth left the heavenly counterpart intact. Same with coins; this one is chopped in half by a sword or whatever, but the exact twin in heaven is still in one piece. It’s a bit hard to explain, but folk in ancient cultures often transferred the value in an object to the gods by destroying it on Earth — burning, chucking in a river, sacrifice.’

Eden could see that the excavation exerted a formidable grip on her aunt. The woman’s grey eyes danced with joy when she enthused about the coins.

‘Shouldn’t you report buried treasure to the authorities?’

‘Buried gold and silver, yes. These bronze coins don’t have much monetary value. All the pots are broken and even the bones are all burned. But this has really grabbed my imagination. At night I dream that I’m in this hole digging out wonderful objects.’

Heather ducked down into the hole again as she talked, scraping and worrying at something with her trowel. There was a moment’s silence. Then she stood again, eyes shining. ‘Eden, be an angel and pass me the red bowl.’

‘The one with the bones?’

‘That’s the one. It’s obvious now. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.’ She gently pulled out a bone that was as slender and as cylindrical as a water pipe that feeds a domestic sink. Where the mud had flaked off it revealed a smooth black surface. ‘Thigh. Like I said, burnt. But not cremated.’

‘Oh no.’ Eden grimaced. ‘You’re not saying that these are… ’ She deliberately ditched the concluding word.

‘Oh, yes, human, I’m sure they’re human.’ She stared down into the pit. ‘That means this is — ’

‘Heather? Heather!’

‘Ah,’ Heather sighed, placing the bone carefully in the red bowl. ‘Time for you to meet the husband.’

A man in a cream linen suit, his long silver hair tied into a pony tail, bounced along the path. Eden could tell he blazed with so much energy he was an ideal partner for the equally vigorous Aunt Heather. He didn’t so much speak into the phone he carried as fire words into it with explosive force.

Heather patted the top of Eden’s foot, the only part of her niece she could reach from a pit that was becoming increasingly redolent of a tomb. ‘Don’t let his manner bother you. His bark his worse than his, you know… ’

‘I’m sure I’ll be fine. Besides, I had an encounter with a ferocious dog earlier. It wouldn’t let me walk along the path that runs up to the back wall across there.’

‘So that’s why you walked the long way round? Eden, you should have told me that a dog had frightened you.’

‘Not frightened — ’

‘It must have given you a scare. Give me your hand.’ Before extending hers Heather rubbed her palms on the legs of her jeans to remove some of the dirt. ‘Thanks.’ With Eden’s help she athletically scrambled out of the hole. ‘Where was this dog? What did it look like? If it’s one of those great things from Hezzle Farm I’ll bring the police down on them again, bloody pests.’

‘No, don’t worry. Besides, I never saw the dog. It kind of… ’ She shrugged. ‘… lurked in the bushes.’

‘But it must have terrified you, poor thing. Curtis?’

Her husband marched across the lawn, still speaking with formidable energy into the phone.

‘Curtis. Come off that thing. There’s dog trouble again. Eden here, she’s been terrified out of her wits.’

Eden felt awkward. ‘No, really. It wasn’t as frightening as — ’

‘Curtis?’ Heather pressed on. ‘Leave that while later.’

Curtis signalled ‘one minute’. His brisk, professional tones were at odds with the bohemian hair-style that could have carried the caption: LOOK AT ME. DEEPLY UNCONVENTIONAL, BUT THOROUGHLY BUSINESS-LIKE. SO WATCH YOUR STEP! ‘Klein can’t have the studio tomorrow. No, I don’t care if Wayne gave a verbal assurance that he could. All bookings must be in writing with an upfront deposit. I’ve got the Dutch band in all week with a weekend option. That’s right. They’re paying in full for studio time on Saturday whether they want it or not. One’s got some big birthday hosanna on Saturday night in Amsterdam. If I pull them out tomorrow, so Klein can noodle around adding pops and squeaks to his computer games, they’ll end up having to record through the weekend, and miss the party… they’ve shelled a lot for the studio, Ben, I’m not going to frick them around. Yeah, well, tell Wayne to say NO to Klein. If he’s too much wind and water to do that then kick him out. I’m having no light-weights in the company. And if you won’t read the riot act to Wayne… yeah, okay, see that you do.’

Heather must have noticed the expression on Eden’s face. ‘Told you about the barking, didn’t I?’ She picked up the plastic bowl to examine the bones. ‘Tibia, rib, skull — but that’s not right… look at the skull fragment.’

Her husband barked out a louder ‘NO! No preferential rates! Klein pays full! Especially after last time. The place was a pig-sty. I found a vodka bottle in the toilet bowl.’

Under her breath, Heather said, ‘Curtis opened a recording studio in York early this year. We still have,’ she raised her eyebrows, ‘teething troubles. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who book studio time then never turn up. Last week the studio’s loo flooded. Crap all over the new carpets. Curtis ignited. I’ve never seen him so angry.’ This seemed to remind her. ‘Curtis. We’ve a guest.’

‘Heather, just one moment!’

Heather shrugged, then said to Eden, ‘Look at the fragment of skull.’

‘Human?’ Eden made a point of not touching it, even though Heather offered it to her.

‘No.’ She sniffed. ‘Odd. No human fragments of skull. This is dog.’