To Dream of the Dead

loo. I’m going into the furthest cubicle where nobody can hear me scream.’

‘Let it go, Jane, try and enjoy your Chris—’

‘I’m pushing the main door open now. I’m completely alone. They’re listening to Lol’s wonderful concert, where I wanted to be but this is more important.’

The toilets in the Black Swan had been massively upgraded in the best New Cotswold tradition; in fact you probably wouldn’t find toilets this good in the swishest pub in the old Cotswolds. Framed photographs on the walls of Ledwardine at its most luscious, sunrise and sunset. Even the cubicles had thick walls and oak doors, and Jane locked herself in the end one and sat on the closed lid of the seat.

‘I’m going to offer you a deal, Coops. I’ll seriously aim to say nothing to anyone except Mum and Lol and, OK, maybe Gomer Parry ’cause he’s my best mate, but if I have to take it further I’ll say Lyndon Pierce told me when he was drunk, which he was. He’ll never remember he didn’t tell me. So just…’

‘Let me sit down,’ Coops said. ‘If you think this isn’t getting to me…’

‘It so obviously is. Go on.’

‘Stop me if I’m telling you something you already know. When archaeologists are called in to investigate a site proposed for development, everybody thinks it’s the council that pays for it. In fact it’s the developer. I was trying to tell you this the other night but I’m not sure it sank in.’

‘But that’s ridiculous. They’re like… they’re the very people who don’t want anything important to be found.’

‘That’s why most archaeology is just a matter of record. Establishing where something is or used to be. But building still goes ahead on the site, you can’t stop progress.’

‘But not if it’s standing stones, surely.’

‘Probably not… but only if those standing stones are found to be in the place were they originally stood, because then the site itself is of major importance.’

‘And that’s my point about Coleman’s Meadow. You only have to stand on Cole Hill…’

‘No… you only have to stand on Cole Hill.’

‘You’re taking Blore’s side, suddenly?’

‘Jane, I’m on our side, and I still think there’s enough evidence of a henge to warrant a number of separate excavations around the centre of Ledwardine. Coleman’s Meadow, however… the excavation is likely to be closed down in the New Year.’

‘What…?’

Jane stood up. The walls of the cubicle seemed tight around her, like a padded cell.

‘Blore’s submitted a private preliminary report to the council resulting from his own geophysics and limited excavation of the site. The bottom line is that the report suggests the stones were buried here quite recently and probably from somewhere else.’

‘Like… landfill?’

‘Good analogy. He says there used to be a small quarry run by the Bull family in the eighteenth century. Long disused, but—’

‘They’re standing stones! You said they were.’

‘Blore’s report says there’s no evidence that they ever stood. That they were ever prehistoric ritual stones.’

‘How… how can he—?’

‘The conclusive proof seems to be the discovery of masonry underneath one of the stones. Masonry dating back no more than a couple of centuries.’

‘That’s impossible!’

‘It isn’t impossible. If you’d asked me yesterday I would have said it was extremely unlikely but, no, it’s not impossible. The report also says the remains of a tool’s been discovered under the same stone, and it’s not a flint axe-head. It’s a… pickaxe. Probably early Victorian.’

‘He’s lying!’

‘He encloses photographs.’

‘When was all this found?’

‘They haven’t officially been found at all yet.’ Coops sounded close to tears. ‘And the chances are they won’t be found until next week, when it’ll all be filmed for… Trench One.’

‘He’s going to mock it up?’

‘You remember that edition of Time Team, when they discovered a collection of authentic Celtic swords and things on a site in South Wales, and it turned out to be someone’s private collection that had been buried? Still made a good programme, didn’t it? And so will this, probably starting off with that interview with you, showing how a young girl’s fantasy—’

‘Don’t! I can’t — It’s—’

‘It’s wrong and it’s disgusting, but if you say a word about it now there’ll be a big investigation about how it got out, and I’ll lose my job and the nice woman who read the letter to me will lose her job and probably her pension, and she’s a widow and—’

‘All right!’

‘Leave it till I get back, and I’ll find a way of hearing about it officially, and then I’ll protest and see what happens. You can tell your mum, but please, nobody else.’

‘OK.’

‘Jane, I’m so desperately sorry. I’d love to think he’s faked the evidence, but he’s a powerful and respected figure. Look, I’ve got to go, all right?’

‘Coops—’

‘Try to have a good Christmas, Jane.’

‘Neither of us is going to, are we?’

He’d gone.

Jane leaned against the cubicle wall, holding the phone in front of her, tears in freeflow now.

59 Charming Myth

Periodically, in a break between songs, while Lol was retuning, someone who recognised Merrily would lean across and whisper Where’s Jane? Usually, one of the Serpent people from Hereford. How did they know whose mother she was, out of uniform? Hoped to God she wasn’t on the CM website like Lol and Lucy.

‘We’re Coleman’s Meadow activists now.’ A guy in his sixties, completely bald, white beard, an earring with a red stone in it. ‘We lost on the Serpent, but those bastards won’t take the Meadow.’ He looked angry. ‘I’ll strap myself to one of the stones before I’ll let them take it away. Go on hunger strike — that always gets results if it en’t a terrorist.’

‘It’s important,’ Merrily said, ‘but it’s not worth a life.’

Wondering where she’d heard that. Blore. On the radio before he demoralised Jane. She could see him over by the bar, his dense hair tied back, presumably so it wouldn’t dangle in his beer. He seemed to be drinking a lot of beer and laughing a lot.

Unlike the Stookes, who weren’t talking to anyone, not even one another. Life, for the Stookes, must be tense and formless. What happened after you’d taken on the biggest target possible and would never know if you’d won until you died… and only then if you’d lost.

Merrily smiled. Stupid — she was looking at their lives from her perspective. Better go and talk to them afterwards.

Lol said, ‘I’m going to kind of hum, but if you imagine it as a cello, OK? Now. If you know Elgar’s Cello Concerto, the main bit goes like…’

She was proud of him. Totally in control, as if, performing, he was possessed by the spirit of an extrovert. Mouth close to the mike, he hummed the rolling-hill melody that would always take her back to Whiteleafed Oak on