To Dream of the Dead

‘He’s a bastard, Blore, isn’t he?’

‘No, really?’ Eirion said.

‘This your boyfriend?’

‘Eirion,’ Jane said. ‘Gregory.’

‘Eirion? Wassat, Welsh?’ Gregory stood back, gesturing inside. ‘You guys wanna beer? On the house?’

Jane flashed no at Eirion.

‘Why not?’ Eirion didn’t look at her. ‘Thanks.’

Tight-lipped, Jane followed Gregory. Inside, it was surprisingly respectable, with a bed-settee and a car battery for the yellow and black DeWalt ghetto blaster. Gregory switched off the music, fetched three bottles of Budweiser lager from the kitchen area.

‘They’re all bastards.’ He snapped off the bottle tops, dropped them in a waste bin, handed bottles to Jane and Eirion. ‘The students, too. Think they own the place, wherever they are.’

‘All students?’ Eirion said.

‘We done a few digs for Blore’s outfit. He’s a bastard, like I say, but he’s straight. He’s a straight bastard.’ Gregory laughed. ‘Look, don’t stand around, girl, sit on the bed.’

‘It’ll get all wet.’

‘It’ll dry out. Students’re a pain in the arse. All wannabe celebs… like the professor. They come back wetting themselves laughing yesterday, after you and him…’ Gregory pointed his bottle at Jane. ‘You were a gift, girl, that’s what they were saying. Never do TV with the professor, I coulda told you that.’

Jane took off her parka, sat on the edge of the bed.

‘What was he saying?’

‘Blore? Nothing much, far’s I know. TV — he despises it. He come in here, one night — not this job, one we done down the Forest of Dean — and the TV’s on, and he just switches it off. Never watch it, he says. And I go, what, not even your own show? And he’s like, that’s the last fucking thing I’m gonna watch. Comes in here quite often, stretches himself out on the bed, where you are, and we have a couple of beers.’

Yeah, Jane thought, he’d do that. Hang out with his security guy to get away from people who wanted to show him their bit of Roman pottery.

‘Anybody wants to be on TV, they deserve all they get. Easy meat. We done this one in the Cotswolds last year and Blore’s doing a bit of a recce of the site — jeans, jacket covered with badges. Along comes this old colonel type, cravat, bristly moustache, shooting stick, face like a beetroot.’ Gregory extended his neck, nose in the air, did the gruff and grumpy. ‘Devil’s going on here? Don’t you know there’s going to be an important archaeological dig on this site? You have any idea how much damage is done by you bloody treasure-hunters with your damned metal detectors?’

‘I think I saw this one,’ Eirion said. ‘Blore keeps quiet, playing him along with expressions of dumb insolence. Winding him up, before completely paralysing the poor old boy with a lecture on the history and the potential of the site, with chronological references to every excavation there since about 1936.’

‘And then, as the Colonel’s walking away, he goes…’

‘Didn’t you used to be in Dad’s fucking Army?’ Eirion smiled. ‘I could never figure how the old boy didn’t see the cameraman.’

‘Back of the van,’ Gregory said. ‘Little peephole in the side. They often do it. Then they invite the old guy for a drink, all have a good laugh and he’s more than happy for them to use it. Signs the form, no problem. People will take any shit from TV. That’s what Blore says.’

‘He doesn’t care what he does to people?’ Eirion said.

‘’Cause it ain’t real, mate. It’s TV. Whoosh, gone. And you pick up the money and on to the next one. It ain’t real.’

‘It is for the viewers.’ Jane sat up, both hands around her beer. ‘For some people, he’s the only thing they know about archaeology.’

‘That’s their problem.’

‘He’s right, I suppose.’ Eirion said. ‘TV’s been degraded. Too many channels, it is. Instead of variety, it all goes into a cheap mush. Trench One — you used to think quality, but they all go the same way. People interested in archaeology, that’s just a minority audience. There’s a much bigger one for like…’

‘People getting made to look small,’ Jane said.

‘He don’t do it,’ Gregory said, ‘some other bastard will and he’ll be out on his arse. I could show you half a dozen guys here who’d have his job, no messing, if he starts to go soft. Walk over his corpse.’

‘That’s scary.’ Jane drank some lager. She didn’t really like lager, but she didn’t want to look like a girl. ‘I mean, if—’

‘It’s survival, darlin’.’

‘But if the only way you can get on in archaeology is to, like, become a bastard on TV—’

‘It’s not the only way.’ Gregory grinned. ‘You seen the big caravan over there? Bigger than this, anyway. That’s his. Blore’s.’

‘He sleeps here? I thought he had a room in the Black Swan.’

‘It’s not for sleeping in, my love. King-size folding bed?’ Gregory spread his hands. ‘I got some spare keys, if you wanna look.’

‘Well,’ Eirion said, ‘that would be—’

‘We’d rather not,’ Jane said firmly.

‘Like I say,’ Gregory said, ‘I’ve done security on a few of these gigs now. Shagfest, or what?’

‘Bill Blore… and his students?’

‘Well, not all of them, obviously,’ Gregory said. ‘Not the blokes.’

* * *

Out, then. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Leonora Winterson had relaxed into her seat as if a weight had been lifted from her body. Her turquoise coat was hanging open; underneath she wore a white sweater with a deep neckline, and the tops of her breasts were tanning-salon brown.

‘No way he was going to hide,’ she said.

‘The police actually wanted you to adopt a new identity?’

‘For a while. The traditional book-burning by red-neck morons in the US Bible Belt, that’s part of the package. Islam, however…’

‘The religious are as cringe-makingly predictable as the doctrines they follow.’

‘My God, you’ve read the book?’

‘Dipped into it. There was a Muslim threat?’

‘Wasn’t a fatwa or anything, just mutterings by a couple of crazy imams, but the police and the security services have been very nervy since 7/7. But, you see, he’s a journalist. We don’t hide. And if you can’t stand up for what you believe in, it makes a mockery of the book.’

‘So this is a compromise.’

‘Only because we don’t want people on our back all the time. He’s become a kind of anti-guru, so you get the disciples. Almost worse than the religious bigots, for whom just knowing he’s around is enough to provoke a need to confront him. As if, by not doing it, they’re betraying their faith?’

‘Really no accounting for some of these people,’ Merrily said.

‘Hates being recognised, anyway. Hates the thought of becoming a personality. Hid behind that beard for a while and now people have that rather messianic image of him he’s got rid of it. The weight — that was an exaggeration anyway. People with big beards always look heavier.’

‘So… the Wintersons.’

‘His mother’s maiden name. Now you know.’ Leonora paused. ‘Jane, huh?’

‘Easy to underestimate Jane.’