farmhouse. ‘Right. Let’s get back. Bill phoned to say they would probably be here by tea time. He wanted her to settle in before it got dark.’
‘How wise.’ Greg pulled open the front door. Behind them the flames in the woodburner dipped and flared and steadied behind the blackening glass of the doors. ‘Shall I call Allie?’
Leaving his mother to head for the Land Rover parked at the end of the rutted track which led through the half mile or so of bleak woods separating the cottage from Redall Farmhouse, he turned and walked around the side of the cottage. The small, timber-framed building, painted a soft pink, nestled in a half-moon of trees. Behind it, short rabbit-cropped turf formed an informal lawn which straggled towards the sand and shingle spit separating the estuary of the River Storwell from the beach and the cold waves of the North Sea. It was a windy, exposed site, even today when the sun was shining fitfully from behind the broken cloud.
‘Allie!’ Greg cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed for his sister. As his mother opened the door of the Land Rover and climbed in, he disappeared around to the far side of the cottage into the teeth of the wind.
Alison Lindsey, fifteen years old, her blonde hair tightly caught by a rubber band into a pony tail tucked into the neck of her yellow windcheater, was crouching in the lee of one of the shingle and sand dunes which stood between the cottage and the sea. She glanced up as her brother appeared and raised her hand, the wind whipping tendrils of hair into her eyes.
‘What have you found?’ He jumped down the small sandy cliff to stand beside her. Out of the wind it was suddenly very quiet, almost warm in the trapped sunlight.
‘Look. The sea washed the sand away here. It must have happened at high tide.’ She had been scrabbling at the sand; her fingers were caked with it. He could see where she had caught her nail. A small streak of blood mingled with the golden red grains stuck to her skin. She had dug away the side of the dune and pulled something free. ‘See. It’s some kind of pottery.’
He took it from her, curious. It was slipware, red, the glaze shiny with a raised pattern, hardly scratched by the sand.
‘Pretty. It must be something someone chucked out of the cottage. Come on Allie. Ma’s in a ferment. She wants to feed us all before she goes off to Ipswich or wherever it is she is going this afternoon, and I want to get out of here before Lady Muck turns up.’
Alison took the piece of pottery from her brother and wedged it into her anorak pocket. She glanced up at him. ‘Why do you call her that? She’s famous, you know. She’s written a book.’
‘Exactly.’ He smiled grimly. ‘And no doubt will feel herself superior in every way to us country bumpkins.’ He gave a short laugh as he scrambled up the bank and turned to give his sister a hand, hauling her bodily out of the sandy hollow. ‘Well, she’ll soon find out that living in the country at this time of year is not the same as swanning out for the odd picnic in the summer. Then perhaps she’ll go away.’
‘And let you have the cottage back?’ Alison surveyed him shrewdly, her green eyes serious.
‘And let me have my cottage back.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Don’t say anything to Ma, Allie, but I think between us you and I can find a way to chase Lady Muck away from Redall Cottage, don’t you?’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps we can give the weather a helping hand. Scare her off somehow.’
‘You bet.’ She laughed. Then she frowned. ‘But don’t we need the money?’
‘Money!’ Greg snorted. ‘Doesn’t anyone think of anything else around here? For the love of Mike, there are other things in the world. We’re not going to starve. Dad’s pay-off and his pension are more than enough to last us for years. We can afford petrol and electricity and food. They can afford to buy booze. My dole money buys my paint and canvas. What does every one want all this money for?’
Alison shrugged dutifully. She knew better than to argue with her elder brother. Besides he was probably right. She sternly pushed down a sneaking suspicion that his views were simplistic and wildly immature – he was, after all, twelve years older than she – and, pushing her wispy hair out of her eyes for the thousandth time as they reached the Land Rover, she pulled open the door and hauled herself into the front seat beside her mother.
In the farmhouse the third Lindsey offspring, Patrick, had been laying the table for lunch, walking silently around the kitchen in his socks as his father dozed in the cane chair before the Aga, two cats asleep in his lap. The silence of the room was broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and by the gentle bubbling from the heavy pan on the stove. The air was rich and heavy with the fragrance of the cooking chicken in its thick herb- flavoured gravy. Two years older than Alison, Patrick was the studious member of the family. Upstairs in his bedroom – the north-facing end room above the kitchen, according to Alison the best room in the house because of its size – computer, printer, calculating machines and hundreds of books vied with one another for space, overflowing from tables and chairs on to the floor and even from time to time out into the corridor outside his sister’s room. At the moment Patrick was lost in thought, his mind still fully occupied with his school project. He noticed neither the noise of the engine as his brother drove up outside and parked the Land Rover around the side of the house, nor the speed with which Number Two cat, Marmalade Jones, jumped off his master’s lap and onto the worktop where he proceeded to lick the pat of butter which Patrick had incautiously withdrawn from the fridge.
The opening door woke Roger, startled Patrick and gave the cat an unwonted and sudden attack of conscience.
‘My goodness it’s cold out there.’ Diana went straight to the heavy iron pan simmering quietly on the Aga and peered inside it before she took off her coat.
‘Bill rang.’ Roger stretched and reached for the newspaper which had slid from his inert fingers as he slept. Indignant at the move, Number One cat, Serendipity Smith, slipped from his knees and diving through the open studwork which separated the kitchen from the living room, went to sit on the rug in front of the fire, staring enigmatically into the embers. ‘They should be here by about three. Apparently she’s an absolute cracker!’ He grinned at his eldest son and gave a suggestive wink. ‘You might try charming her, Greg, just this once. I can’t believe as your mother’s son you are completely devoid of the art.’
‘Oh you.’ Diana gave her husband a playful tap on the head.
Greg ignored them both. Sealed in an intense inner world of frustrated imagination he frequently missed his parents’ affectionate banter. Walking through to the fire he stooped and threw on a log. ‘Half the old dune behind the cottage has gone,’ he called through to them. ‘You know the one which shelters it from the north-easterlies. A few more tides like that one last week and we’ll need to worry about the cottage being washed away.’
‘Rubbish.’ Diana, having hung up her coat was now tying a huge apron over her trousers. The apron sported a giant red London bus which appeared to be driving across the rotund acres of her stomach. She shook her head. ‘No way. That cottage has been there hundreds of years.’
‘And once upon a time it was miles from the sea, my darling.’ Roger stood up. Painfully thin, his face was haggard with tiredness, a symptom of the illness which had forced him to take early retirement. ‘Come on. Why don’t I open a bottle of wine. That stew of yours smells so good I could eat it.’ He smiled and his wife, on her way back to the Aga with her wooden spoon, paused to give him a quick hug.
‘Show Dad the piece of china you found in the dune, Allie,’ Greg called from the next room. His sister, still wearing her anorak, had seated herself at the table, her elbows planted amongst the knives and forks which Patrick had aligned with geometric neatness. She fished in her pocket and produced it.
Roger took it from her and turned it over with interest. ‘Its unusual. Old I should say. Look at the colour of that glaze, Greg.’ He held it out towards his eldest son. Reluctantly, Greg left the fire. Taking the fragment he turned it over in his hands. ‘You could take it into the museum some time, kiddo,’ he said to Alison. ‘See what they say.’
‘I might.’ Alison stood up and they were all surprised to see her eyes alight with excitement. Her usual carefully-studied air of ennui had for a moment slipped. ‘Do you know what I think? I think it’s Roman. There’s stuff just like it in the castle museum.’
‘Oh, Allie love, it couldn’t be. Not out here.’ Diana had produced four glasses from the cupboard. She handed her husband the corkscrew. ‘The Romans never came this far out of Colchester.’
‘They did, actually. They’ve found a lot of Roman stuff at Kindling’s farm,’ Roger put in. He tore the foil from the top of the wine bottle. ‘Do you remember? They found the remains of a villa there. Some rich Roman chap from Colchester retired here. They found an inscription.’
Alison nodded. ‘Marcus Severus Secundus,’ she said, intoning the words softly.
‘That’s right.’ Roger nodded. ‘There was an article about him in the local paper. And they found even older stuff too. Iron Age, I think it was, or Bronze Age or something. Are you still thinking of doing something archaeological for your project, Allie?’ He smiled at his daughter.
