To Dream of the Dead

‘Neil Cooper. County archaeologist guy?’

‘I know who you mean,’ Eirion said.

‘A friend, Irene. That’s all. Married.’

‘I’m sorry. Go on.’

‘I didn’t approach Blore, I really didn’t. I was just, like, standing around, and I could see him keep looking at me, like he was trying to remember who I was and what I was doing here. So I just kind of smiled and didn’t go over. I mean, it wasn’t just me, everybody was giving him a wide berth. The students, the camera crew…’

‘He’s an archaeologist, Jane, not bloody Brad Pitt.’

‘He’s a distinguished archaeologist. He has an entourage — students and… what’s the word… like fossils?’

‘Acolytes?’

‘Yeah. So then this other guy was there who wasn’t supposed to be. This dowser, with his divining rods?’

A man Jane remembered from a meeting of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society last summer. Schoolteacher-looking guy with grey hair and a white beard. A member of the British Society of Dowsers, who said he’d used his rods and his pendulum to track the ley line — the energy line — from Cole Hill to the church. Telling Jane to point out to Mum that the energy passed directly through the pulpit and if she ever felt in need of spiritual fuel for a sermon she need only become aware of the line and energy would flow through her. And then telling Jane — like he’d once put in an email — that Coleman’s Meadow had a site-guardian attached to it, some kind of elemental force, and anyone who tried to damage it could expect a hard time.

‘I mean, he wasn’t doing anything bad. Just walking round with these copper dowsing rods. He’d been waiting there since first light, apparently. Told Coops he’d been waiting weeks to get into the site, see if the line corresponded to his calculations or whatever.’

‘I had a go at that once,’ Eirion said. ‘Dowsing. Farmer near us hired this bloke to tell him where to sink a borehole. It works, I think, but that was underground water, not… earth energy.’

‘Same thing.’ Jane looked at the river. ‘That’s serious energy. Anyway, Coops said this guy could have ten minutes. Just don’t get in the way and remember that he couldn’t come in after they’d started the dig. He was this really polite, inoffensive guy, you know?’

Eirion nodded.

‘So he must’ve had his ten minutes, and he was just walking back towards the gate, following whatever his rods were picking up, when Bill Blore practically walks into him. He’s just like standing in his path, like looming over him? And he’s, like, what are you doing on my site? And the guy like smiles and starts explaining about the energy line, and then Bill Blore says has he ever calculated how far a dowsing rod would go up his arse before it—’

Eirion winced.

‘And looking like he… like he wanted to actually do it? And then… I was outside the gate with Coops, staying out of the way, so he hadn’t seen me, and he goes, Where’s that fucking girl? Let’s get all the shit out of the way, then we can do some work.’

‘So that’s when you left, is it?’ Eirion said.

‘No,’ Jane said. ‘That’s when I should’ve left.’

It was that feeling of being locked into destiny. That it was all meant. That the secret of Coleman’s Meadow would have remained undiscovered, if she hadn’t come here.

Arrogance. She was just as bad as Bill Blore, who…

‘… said we just hadn’t got time to go to the top of Cole Hill with the crew. Well, I should’ve realised then. How could I explain how I first, like, perceived the line, if I couldn’t stand up there, in the Iron Age ramparts and point to the steeple and the impression of the path across the meadow. You need to see it.’

‘Maybe he was thinking they could get some shots from up there afterwards,’ Eirion said. ‘Or from a helicopter. So they could overlay your description of it with the pictures.’

‘Yeah, that’s what he said. Don’t worry about it, they could overlay it. Whatever, I went along with it and they decided to record it on the edge of the meadow, by the gate, and he’s like, “So tell us how you first became interested in Coleman’s Meadow.” And I’m trying to explain, the best I could with nothing to point to.’

Telling him about discovering Alfred Watkins’s seminal work The Old Straight Track and realising how magically this line fitted Watkins’s concept of ley lines, which actually made a lot more sense than some people wanted to admit.’

Magically. Bill Blore nodding. I see.

Jane telling him that of course she knew how archaeologists had rubbished Watkins and ley lines both, back in the 1920s, and how it was lucky they were so much more open-minded now.

‘And Bill Blore’s like… he’s just standing there with this kind of sardonic smile on his face?’

Occasionally shaking his head, slowly. There were two cameras, one on Jane, one on him. And this director guy, Mike, who was talking more to the camera guys than to Blore, giving them signals and stuff. And, of course, there were all these students gathered round, about six of them.

‘You’ll have seen how he works with students.’

‘Points out how they’ve got it all wrong,’ Eirion said. ‘Throwing away what they thought was rubbish and it’s actually a tiny piece of Roman mosaic.’

‘Like that, yeah.’

Bill Blore had let her ramble on for several minutes about leys and earth mysteries and the incredible moment of illumination she’d experienced on the top of Cole Hill. And then he’d gone, Thanks, Jane, and turned to the students, a camera following him.

Interesting, eh? Blore had said. This, you see, is how myths are created. A youngster comes to the right conclusions… for all the wrong reasons. Ley lines. Gawd help us.

Then turning back to Jane, smiling kindly.

All the same, we’re grateful to you. What are you going to do next? University?

And Jane had gone, Maybe… hopefully, archaeology. Probably blushing a bit.

One of the students had smirked.

Bill, is there a degree course in ley lines now? Which university would that be at?

Jane wanting to deck the bastard, who was only about a year older than her, probably Eirion’s age, and so grateful when Bill Blore immediately turned on him.

George, you are so fucking ignorant!

Bill said fuck a lot on TV, like Gordon Ramsey. Like it was part of his contract to get one in every couple of minutes. But the student still backed off, red-faced, going, Sorry, Bill.

And Blore had gone after him.

So you should be, George. And then, with a barely perceptible snigger clotting in his throat, he said, Have you never heard of the University of Middle Earth?

There was about half a trembling second of hollow silence… before this explosion of laughter, probably shattering enough to distort the soundtrack.

Everyone, including Bill Blore, stepping away. Jane becoming aware that she was on her own, encircled by it. The laughter. Which had been hissing between her ears like some foul tinnitus ever since.

‘The bastard,’ Eirion said.

‘And you know what was worst of all? Because it was him… because it was Bill Blore who’d said it… I was laughing, too.’

Laughing in desperation, through the tears gathering in her eyes, the way they were gathering now.

It hadn’t even ended there. Bill Blore, still on camera, had given the students a short lecture about the