Ghost Wall(9)

Mum, sitting on a rock a little behind him, was gazing at her own hands. I guessed this didn’t count as sitting down, that she wanted her brown velvet armchair and the telly instead of woodsmoke and talk about the Iron Age.

But – said Dad. You can see, said the Prof, think about the stretch along Whin Sill, you’ve already got a bloody great escarpment running for miles, no possible need to stick a wall on top, doesn’t make it any harder to cross or any easier to police, it’s just a very impressive way of saying Rome Was Here. Yeah, said Dad, OK, but what about – Mum tensed. Her glance flickered towards him and away. It’s a marker, said Prof Slade, the edge of empire, it’s not to keep the barbarians out so much as to show where they are. It was never the Berlin Wall, Bill, no raked earth or watchtowers. Dad didn’t say anything. He lifted his chin, locked eyes with the fire. Mum hunched on her rock, touched her arm where I’d seen the bruise earlier.



Dad was already up and gone by the time I woke up the next morning. Mum was outside stirring gruel again; Dan and Pete had managed to set up a kind of stone trivet for her so she was standing at the fireside and there was steam rising from the pot. Her cheeks were flushed. Those stones’ll explode, I said, if they heat unevenly, and they will because one side’s obviously going to get hotter than the other. Happen, she said. But Mum, I said, if it does happen you’ll get hurt. She shrugged. Aye. Mum, I said, it’s not safe. She stirred her pot. Folk have been building stone fireplaces a long time, Silvie, I daresay they know what they were about. Yeah, I said, but that doesn’t mean those lads know what they’re about, does it? Give over, she said. All right, but why don’t you let someone else do some cooking, have a break, I could manage, or Molly. Oh, she said, I don’t mind, I’d rather eat my own cooking than whatever those students might come up with, and you know I’m not one for rambling, never was. I wondered again what my parents had ever had in common. OK, I said, if you’re happy, it just doesn’t seem very fair, that’s all. Life isn’t, she said, which was what she always said. Mustn’t grumble, can’t be helped, nothing to be gained by making a fuss, well, you wouldn’t want to make trouble, would you?

Dad and the Prof came back while the guys were eating their breakfast and Mum, Molly and I were pushing ours around. Gruel is a thing you can eat without thinking about it as long as you’re very hungry, a bit like white sauce or maybe wallpaper paste. It was the first time I’d seen the boys eat like that and I was impressed. Have mine, I said, really, I’m not very hungry. Mum, are there any of those bannock things left? No, she said, and someone’s going to have to grind some grain if you want more of them for lunch. Or we could just get sandwiches from Spar, said Molly, and grinned at me while the boys started explaining to her why we couldn’t. They were so loud we didn’t hear the bushes rustling and Dad came out saying, what, what’s this about Spar? Just a joke, said Mum, Molly was just teasing, have you two had a good time? We weren’t off on a jolly, said Dad, don’t talk to me as if I were some kid. Setting traps for rabbits, said the Prof, they count as vermin so it’s legal. Not quite authentic of course, they were introduced by the Romans, but it’s something. No, said Molly, not spring traps, they’re cruel. I was waiting for Dad to say life is cruel, get used to it, you’ll be happy enough to eat a stew. Not spring traps, said the Prof, they wouldn’t have had them. Don’t worry about it, Molly, you don’t need to know, we won’t make you deal with them if you don’t want to, but you know they would have killed animals, it would have been as ordinary as going to the shops, death would have been part of their daily normality in a way that we can’t imagine. They’d have brought the kill home and it would have been like getting back from the supermarket, unpacking, take the skin to scrape and the bones for tools, wind the sinews for sewing leather and blow up the bladder for the children to play ball. Some bloody supermarket he’s got there, murmured Dan, don’t fancy the scene in his kitchen. Molly had put down her bowl. Yeah, she said, well, whatever, I’m happy to leave it at the imagining stage, poor old rabbits.

I could see Mum wanting to ask Dad to wash his hands before eating but she didn’t. He ate fast, blindly, his gaze fixed on something near his feet. She watched him. The Prof waved his spoon around a lot and went on talking, Iron Age hunting techniques, flint knapping, someone he knew who’d nearly lost an eye which was why he himself had always been meticulous about goggles, how he thought Iron Age flint knappers might have protected their eyes, evidence for very early forms of surgery and suturing. The shadows were already shorter and sharper than they had been when I got up, the beginnings of another hot day. We were wearing a path between the hut, the fireplace and the tents, and all the rabbit droppings were turning pale and dry. We must have dispossessed the rabbits, and who knew what birds and voles, with our talking and coming and going and our fire. Right, said the Prof, so Silvie, you’ll go with Molly and the lads? He didn’t have the right kind of accent to say ‘lads’. Er, sure, I said, go where? Jesus, Silvie, said Dad, you haven’t been listening to a single word, have you?

We went to the beach. This time the Prof checked that we had the foraging book and knew where to look for edible seaweed and mussels. Low tide, he said, late morning, and I checked before we came that that beach is clean, we could have a real feast this evening. There’s wild garlic, I said, at the edge of the wood. We often ate mussels while camping, but Dad always resisted the garlic. Hungry folk want plain food, he said, the corollary being that if you didn’t want ‘plain food’ you weren’t hungry and so shouldn’t be eating in the first place. Good idea, said the Prof, we can eat the greens as well. See you later, enjoy yourselves. I don’t think he minded at all that the students were having more fun than we could reasonably assume the Iron Age community had enjoyed. I don’t think he’d have minded much about the fruit pastilles.