Not that you're a stiletto kind of bloke. More of a nice pair of trainers.'
She stroked his cheek.
He had laughed. 'Thanks. I think. But what about now.''
She had remained silent for a while, a brief few seconds in which he allowed his heart to slide as he imagined her getting up, getting dressed and walking away once more.
'Grief is a funny thing,' she had said eventually. 'You feel like life is something that's happening to you, that you're not in control, like you're watching a film of yourself. You let things happen. You cling to the familiar, what's easy and comfortable. You have to. But now I feel in charge again. You didn't pursue me, go all crazy. You gave me time and space -- I might have made a few mistakes, but I needed to make them.' She had looked at him. 'I want to make a go of it. With you.'
'But what about this guy . . . ?'
'Let me handle that,' she had assured him.
He hadn't wanted that time to end, but real life had to intrude. After the producer's call, he ventured out into the open air for the second time in seventy-two hours -- the first had been to buy milk, wine and bread -- to meet Guy the cameraman, the producer, Lysette, a sound recordist and production assistant on a back street in Islington on a cold November morning. The group of them were all smoking furiously against the cold. Lysette wrapped in hat, gloves and scarf appraised Nigel's long winter coat.
'Didn't you bring your tweed jacket?'
'And freeze to death?'
'You could have worn a jumper underneath. I don't like this look.'
Her assistant beside her nodded vigorously.
This isn't a look, Nigel thought. It's what I bloody wear when it's cold.
'The long coat covers too much of everything up.
Makes you look like a cop.'
'Sorry,' he said. You didn't mention anything about a look when you called.'
'It doesn't matter,' she said, in that blithe yet irritated fashion people adopt when nothing else could actually matter more to them. 'The main thing is that we get something on camera.' She brandished a wad of A4 paper.
'Here's the shooting script. We'll find a corpse and get some film of it. Nigel and the same worker will have a chat about either a tombstone inscription they've dug up or a brass plate from a coffin that identifies someone buried here and talk about that, preferably next to the skeleton.
On another day we can go to the parish records and film you finding the corpse's entry, how they died, their address, and take it from there. If we're really lucky, we might be able to film them reburying the corpse in the new burial ground, perhaps even find us some ancestors to attend the burial, though the budget might not stretch. Guy'll also film lots of GVs and other footage to flesh things out with.'
'Let me get this right. We've found a corpse that's identified by an inscription of some sort?' Nigel asked.
Lysette shook her head. 'No, we'll just film a skeleton.
We'll also find an inscription to give you something to go on.'
'OK. But we'll say that the corpse and whatever means of identification we have belong to different people?'
She looked at him as if he was an imbecile. Why? As long as we get some film of a skeleton we can say it's whoever we like. They all look the same. We'll cut it and make the viewer believe that the corpse belongs to the person you're tracing through the records.'
'Isn't that misleading, though? I
mean, the viewer will
think the corpse belongs to the person I'm tracing through the records, when in truth the remains are of someone completely different.'
From the corner of his eye he could see Guy raise his eyebrows and smirk.
'Nigel,' Lysette said, as if speaking to a five-year-old.
'They won't know that.'
He shrugged. 'Just seems wrong. Dishonest, even.'
'Can we just get on with it? We can discuss ethics later.'
They were allowed through the entrance to the dig, already well under way. Lysette handed him the script.
Nigel went to his mark. He read through it as he walked, committing it to memory without memorizing it so well that he merely regurgitated it verbatim. His heart sank as he scanned the text: it was the same banal and empty bilge he'd read while stumbling through Kensal Green cemetery.
Then, it didn't matter; he could have been reciting 'The Owl and the Pussycat'. But this was being committed to tape with a view to being shown.
When you're ready, Nige,' Guy shouted from his spot.
Sod it, Nigel thought. I'll read it and we can discuss its merits later. He took his first steps. The dead are around us all the time. Sometimes closer than we think. And sometimes our worlds and their worlds collide. The living need more space and sometimes the dead have to give way. The past must give way to the present. Here in Islington, an old burial ground is being excavated so a new development can be built. Thousands of bodies must be moved. We're here to find out about the people are who are lying beneath the soil, how they died, the story of their lives, and watch as they are found a new resting place ... I can't read this crap.'
'Cut!'
'Nigel,' Lysette said. What's wrong? That was going well.
You were a bit stiff, but there was a nice flow and rhythm.'
'It's the script,' he said. 'It's all wrong. 'The past must give way to the present'? Why? I don't believe that for a second. The present needs to have some bloody respect for the past and stop walking all over it. Because it was the past that helped build the fucking present.'
Lysette looked both hurt and angry. 'I told you I had less than twenty-four hours to do this,' she said.
Nigel felt bad. His criticism was hardly constructive. He scrabbled around for an apology, and then had another idea. 'Look, it's OK. I like it, but I just don't agree with it.
How about if I give it my own imprint?'
'Be my guest,' Lysette said.
He returned to his mark deep in thought, not even noticing when the excavator engines fell silent. He turned, and seeing Lysette give him the nod, started walking.
'Dead men don't tell tales, so the saying goes. Nothing could be further from the truth. The dead speak to us in many different ways. And we ignore their voices at our peril. It is supreme arrogance to think there is nothing we can't learn from those who preceded us. We just have to learn how to listen. In this burial ground lie the bodies of fifteen thousand men, women and children who strived and lived a long time ago; fifteen thousand stories that have never been told; fifteen thousand dreams that may never have been fulfilled. Soon they will be laid to rest once more in a new burial place. Before the developers move in, it is our job to find out how they lived. Who were they?
How did they die? What secrets can they tell us from the grave? In this programme we hope to find out.' He stopped walking. He placed his hands, which he had been using to punctuate his speech as he walked, behind his back. He fixed the camera with his most earnest look. 'In our modern age we are conditioned to forget -- yet the past is one thing we can't ignore. The dead will not be denied.'
He finished. There was a pause.
Guy's face popped out from behind his camera. 'Good stuff, mate,' he said to Nigel, who for the first time sensed admiration rather than scorn in his voice.
Lysette was nodding happily. 'From now on, you're writing your own scripts,' she said, smiling. We'll need to do a little voice-over before and after, but that was great. Still a shame about the jumper.'
Nigel shrugged, felt his cheeks redden and warm. He never knew what to do with praise. He was about to mumble something humble when a loud cry went up from the pit behind them. The archaeologists in there had downed tools. One was running towards the olive-green portable cabin that doubled as an on-site office.
