Ghost Wall(20)

I spat a shell of gristle, maybe a component of a leg joint, into my hand. Dad and I find ash, I said, up on the moor tops at home, people say they want to be scattered there as if scattering is making something go away entirely and then we sit down with our sandwiches and realise we’re in the middle of someone’s granny, of course they always choose the places you’d stop for lunch, somewhere on the top of a ridge with a nice view. They were all looking at me, the students. Dad was smiling. What, I said, what is it? Nothing, said Molly, never mind. Anyroad, said Dad, when it’s my turn, the lass is right, I don’t give a monkey’s where you chuck the ashes, only don’t go making a mess on the fells, you hear me Silvie? OK, I said, fine. I will dig a hole in the woods with the camping trowel, I thought, and fill it in when I’m done. Er, Professor – Jim, I said, I’d like to see the boot too, please, if you don’t mind. Of course, he said. I’ll be taking it into town tomorrow morning, see if the police have any interest and if not I’ll send it to the department, we can at least find out exactly how old it is. I was going to pick up a couple of things anyway. For a special project. He spat out a small bone. This stew is very good by the way Alison, thank you, and what are the tubers? Roots, not tubers, I said, burdock, Molly and I found them, there’s plenty more if you want them. Please, he said, they’re delicious, which they were not. Molly was picking out the greens and roots and leaving her meat. What would you sacrifice to the bog, she said, what would the modern thing be, if you were really scared or really desperate for something? Mum was eating, not bothering, assuming as usual that none of this talk was meant for her, but everyone else paused, winced, which must have been how it was when men picked up their special inlaid swords, their most beautiful amulets and broke them on purpose and gave them to the still waters of bog and grove. In Denmark they found braids of human hair very much like Molly’s cast into the bog, because you give what you most want to keep. You would have been able to see your votive objects, Dad had told me, for months or maybe years, and there were special walkways and platforms built out over pools and marshes perhaps partly for the purpose of visiting the murdered things. People too, this particular book suggested; they weren’t necessarily gone when they were put into the bog but would have lain there, dead and still present, not going, faces wavering through the clear water, mouth and skin and hair arrested in the retreating moment of loss while time continued to pass for the rest of the community. My answer was probably honestly still Owl, not because at seventeen I was unusually attached to a stuffed toy but because I had no other particular material affections, because I had so little that I wanted.

Dan shook his head. Don’t know. My guitar, maybe. You’re crap at your guitar, said Pete. Yeah, but as long as I’ve got it I might get better, see? Anyway it was a big birthday present. What about you? Pete shrugged, but you could see there was something, something so precious he didn’t want to speak of breaking it. My father’s paintings, said the Prof, baby pictures of my kids. Old photos of my parents, before I was born. Right, said Molly, ancestors, progeny, the bodies of your tribe. Yes, he said, maybe, something like that. I felt Dad’s gaze on me and knew with a shiver what he was thinking. My daughter. Break her and stake her to the bog, stop her before she gets away. They weren’t dead, the bog people, not to those who’d killed them. They had to be pinned to their graves with sharp sticks driven through elbow and knee, trapped behind woven wooden palings, to stop them coming back, creeping home dead and not dead in the dark. A bird trilled from the bush behind me. I got up. Anyone else need more water, I said, you must have got parched up there.



The Prof had gone by the time I got up the next morning. He reappeared whistling while Molly and I were pushing rye gruel around wooden bowls that still held the flavour of last night’s stew. He was wearing jeans and an ironed checked shirt with a plaited leather belt, and had the air of having had a haircut. Spruce, I thought, almost dapper, and I wondered if he used that intricate belt on his daughters, on Charlotte and Lucy, when they made him angry. Bet he went off to a hotel and had bacon and eggs for breakfast, murmured Molly, bet he had a long hot shower and sat over his coffee with the newspaper. Well, I said, he could hardly go off to the police station in a handwoven tunic, could he, and he wasn’t going to take a bowl of rabbit and burdock stew for his breakfast. Anyway, we had ice-creams and you bought a whole bag of stuff, what happened to that? I still haven’t had a shower, she said, not for days. What had she expected, I wondered, from Experiential Archaeology? I wasn’t taking the course and I’d known it was going to be another holiday without plumbing or a proper cup of tea. All done, said the Prof, and Bill, I got those supplies we were talking about, I’ll show you later.



Mum stayed at the camp again. Would you like to come too, Molly asked her, just for the walk, but she said no, she’d things to do, though I couldn’t really see what things; in our version of Iron Age life the housework was pretty minimal and there wouldn’t be much to cook until we got back. Leave her be, I thought, she was a grown-up, wasn’t she, could have joined any of us, or gone off on her own to the beach or to Spar or even on the bus into Morbury if she’d been inclined. It was cooler that day, with hills of white cloud banking blue sky, and Dan and Molly and I set off briskly. Pete went with Dad and the Prof on some mission of violence against the local fauna, not that the rabbit stew had not been very welcome.