A Room Full Of Bones

Ruth shifts uncomfortably in her seat. As a forensic archaeologist, many of her relationships are with the dead. Hasn’t she often marvelled at how much we can learn from a bone or tooth? Should she forgo that knowledge in order to ensure that the remains receive a proper burial? Does it matter, after all? It matters to the living, Jones is saying, and that’s the important thing. But is it? Ruth knows that some of the groups who have been demanding the return of Indigenous Australian relics are not in fact descended from the same tribes. The policy of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies says that ‘descent must be shown’. But what if it can’t be proved? Can just anyone demand the return of bones which could contain valuable information for generations to come?

She remembers a Victorian painting that had fascinated her as a child. It was called Can These Dry Bones Live? and showed a woman, wearing a black shawl and a rather sumptuous red skirt, leaning on a gravestone and looking at some bones and a skull that have been unearthed by… who? What? A careless gravedigger? Animals? A very localised earthquake? The picture is sometimes said to represent Victorian doubts about the existence of an afterlife. If so, there are hints in the painting that might reassure the observer. The gravestone belongs to ‘John Faithful’ and bears the inscription, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’ A nearby stone is engraved ‘Resurgam.’ A blue butterfly rests on the skull; elsewhere in the picture flowers are springing into bloom. But, for Ruth, the painting pointed to a different lesson. What could these bones tell us about the life that their owner lived? How can dry bones recall life in all its glorious complexity? She wonders now if the picture, like the Horniman Museum, influenced her choice of career. Or maybe she just liked the red skirt – an odd choice, surely, for a woman in mourning? But now these people are telling her that the bones should have stayed buried. It’s all very confusing.

The next session, a canter through Indigenous arte-facts kept in British museums, is more boring. Ruth dozes and wonders what Kate is doing. Sandra is good at making the day interesting, she’ll probably take Kate to the park, maybe do some baking with her. All the same, Ruth enjoys her own Saturdays with Kate. They usually go to the beach and collect shells. There’s a whole line of them in the garden like something from Mary Mary Quite Contrary. Sometimes they’ll go to Blakeney to see the fishing boats and often end up having tea in Cathbad’s purple caravan. Kate has her own dreamcatcher, glittering oyster shells and pink feathers. So far it hasn’t succeeded in making her sleep any better. Maybe tonight Ruth will try to go straight downstairs after reading the story…

She starts, pink feathers and oyster shells scattering. The speaker, a man called Derel Assinewai, is talking about the worst atrocities of colonial trophy hunters. ‘We’ve heard of Aboriginal people being hunted, literally being hunted like animals. There are rumours that these skulls were then scalped. It was the British, not the Native Americans, who were the first to scalp their victims – and then keep the skin as a souvenir.’

Ruth thinks of the telltale marks on the skull in the Smith Museum. Was she right to tell Cathbad and Bob? She can’t help feeling uneasy about the fact that, the day after this revelation, Lord Smith was dead. It’s not that she suspects Cathbad or Bob. She looks over at Bob now and he smiles at her. He is sitting in the back row, very much at his ease, legs crossed, head back, listening to Derel’s lecture. No, Danforth Smith’s death can only have been coincidence, but even so it makes her feel glad that she hasn’t got any Aboriginal remains lying around the house. Think how much worse it is to take the very bones of our ancestors and keep them on the other side of the world.

Why had Danforth Smith been so determined not to return the skulls? They weren’t even on display anymore. And although he had seemed proud of the gruesome collection, Ruth could not see that he got much pleasure from the museum as a whole. That day (was it only last week?) when she had examined the bones, Lord Smith had seemed tired, almost frightened, and the museum itself had seemed a sad place, dusty and forlorn. Ruth can’t see it ever opening again. Who would trek down a side street full of office blocks just to look at a few stuffed animals? No, better to let the place die with Neil Topham and Danforth Smith and quietly return the skulls to Australia. In any case, Ruth has done her bit. She has written a report, stating the bones are not being kept in appropriate conditions, and has submitted it to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. She hopes this might encourage the authorities to put pressure on the Smith family to return them. But the truth is that, as the relics are privately owned, government has little or no influence. It’s as if Lord Smith really did own them, body and soul. But who owns them now? Smith had a son, she knows. Will he be the new Lord Smith?

Lunch, from a local vegan restaurant, is absolutely delicious. It’s such a lovely day that the French windows are open onto the garden and Ruth and Max sit on a stone seat with Claudia panting at their feet. It is only a few minutes before Cathbad comes up, accompanied by a dark woman in a red dress.

‘Max. Good to see you. Ruth, I’d like you to meet Caroline Smith.’

Ruth jumps up, brushing crumbs off her trousers. Caroline is a good-looking woman of about thirty. There is something oddly old-fashioned about her. Just as Cathbad often looks as if he is wearing fancy dress when he isn’t, Caroline somehow gives the impression of being in period clothing. Her hair is scraped up in a bun and the dress, an unfashionable ankle length, could be Edwardian or even Victorian. Funnily enough, it reminds Ruth of the skirt in Can These Dry Bones Live? She supposes that Caroline, like the painting’s subject, is also in mourning.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your father,’ she says.

‘Thank you,’ says Caroline. She has rather a hesitant voice, at odds with her commanding presence. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to come today. Tam… my family thought I shouldn’t, but Cathbad persuaded me.’

‘He’s very persuasive.’ Ruth echoes Max.

‘I’m fascinated by the Aboriginal peoples,’ says Caroline. ‘I once spent a year in Australia. You know that the Aborigine map of Australia is quite different? It’s literally a different country.’

‘The names are different aren’t they,’ offers Ruth. ‘Ayers Rock…’

‘Yes, Ayers Rock is a colonialist name. Its real name is Uluru. It’s part of the Ulura-Kata Tjata National Park. The red heart of Australia.’

She manages the names with aplomb but there is something so intense about her that Ruth backs away a little.

‘How do you know Cathbad?’ she asks.

‘I went to one of his archaeology courses.’

‘Cathbad runs archaeology courses?’ Ruth can’t help but be aggrieved. She’s the one who works in the archaeology department but Cathbad has never mentioned any courses to her.

‘It’s not conventional archaeology,’ says Cathbad modestly. ‘It’s more about ritual and mystic symbolism.’

‘Oh.’ Ruth stops feeling aggrieved. Mystic symbolism’s not exactly on the university curriculum.

‘Of course,’ says Max, ‘archaeology’s all about ritual and symbolism. Even people we think of as primitive buried their dead with some elements of ritual, for example. We don’t always know what the symbolism means but we know that it’s there.’

It could be Erik speaking, thinks Ruth. She looks at Cathbad, wondering if the same thought has occurred to him. Max was a fan of Erik’s, Ruth remembers (though, in some ways, she has never really forgotten). She wonders why Max, an expert on the Romans in Britain, has come to a conference on the treatment of Aboriginal relics.

‘Some museums in Sussex hold Indigenous Australian relics,’ he says, as they take Claudia for a quick walk before the afternoon session. ‘I’ve been asked to look into it. Personally, I don’t think there can be any argument against returning them. They’re so important in Aboriginal Australian culture.’

‘I agree,’ says Ruth, panting slightly (Max walks very fast). ‘But I can’t agree that human bones shouldn’t ever be excavated. We learn so much from them.’

‘Yes,’ says Max. ‘But what do we do with that knowledge? That’s the question.’

The afternoon session, led by Bob Woonunga, turns out to be riveting. The autumn sun is low against the windows. Bob, wearing a cloak that is apparently made from possum skin, sits on the floor in the centre of the room. One by one the listeners abandon their chairs and sit in a circle around him. Ruth finds herself squashed up close to Max and Claudia. She is grateful to the dog for providing a barrier between them. As she strokes Claudia’s head, her hand brushes against Max’s leg. He smiles but doesn’t move away.

‘In the beginning is the Dreaming,’ says Bob. ‘And in the Dreaming lies the sacredness of the earth. It is the beginning of all things but it is not in the past. It is the past, present and the future. When we bury them in the earth the ancestors return to the Dreaming, and in this way the circle is complete. Every place and every creature belongs to the Dreaming. It is where the spirit children live before they are born and where the dead go when they leave their physical life.’

Bob tells them about souls that are buried in the sand, marked with twigs. Anjea, the fertility goddess, picks up the twigs and arranges them in a circle. She then makes new souls from mud and places them in the wombs of