Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Good morning, there,’ the young man said with a smile. ‘This all looks jolly fascinating. Are you archaeologists?’

Sam looked back at Jud, who’d not noticed the new arrival and was busily arranging the people below into a search party.

‘Oh, excuse my dreadful ignorance.’ The young man thrust out a long tapering hand. ‘My name’s Hather, Thomas Hather, ah – ahm, more properly the Reverend Thomas Hather, but please call me Thomas.’

Sam shook the man’s hand and introduced himself, but stopped short of naming his own profession. ‘TV director’ would only draw some very blank looks in 1865. Then he introduced Ryan, who raised his bowler hat, automatically falling back into the Oliver Hardy role.

Thomas Hather touched his hat while looking at the top of Sam’s head. ‘You must be devilishly busy. You are quite hatless.’

At first it seemed a strange comment, but then Sam realised that a hundred years before his time, whichever side of the Atlantic you hailed from, a man would no sooner go out into the street hatless than he would trouserless.

Sam shot the man his best professional smile, usually reserved for the public and producers. ‘I think I must have put my hat down somewhere.’

‘Oh dear,’ Thomas said quite genuinely. ‘Maybe it’s, uhm.’ He shielded his eyes against the bright sunlight and began scanning the amphitheatre for a mislaid hat. ‘My word, you have been extraordinarily busy. It couldn’t have been more than a little while since I saw this place last and it was quite, quite choked with weeds and the thickest brambles you’ve ever seen. Which university are you from?’

‘Ah, we’re freelance.’

‘Freelance archaeologists?’

‘Yes,’ Sam added. ‘Sponsored by a newspaper… the New York Times .’

‘Astonishing. You know, there’s so much to be done in the way of archaeology.’ Thomas spoke with a breathy kind of enthusiasm. ‘There’s a Roman encampment across there that I know for a fact has never been properly excavated. Last year the field was ploughed, yielding pottery, glass and all manner of artefacts. I raked over the soil with a couple of friends and we found 27 different types of coins, including a gold Hadrian.’

The first time the man paused for breath Sam jumped in. ‘Ah, we seem to have lost one of our party.’

‘Goodness.’

‘A girl with long blonde hair. You don’t happen to have seen anyone like that on your travels?’

‘A child? How distressing. Are you the father?’

Sam took a deep breath. Already English usage between 1999 and 1865 was diverging enough to make it difficult for them to understand each other clearly. ‘No, the girl… the young lady was around 25. Hair: long, blonde, very curly.’

‘No, I’ve seen no one of that description. But perhaps I could help to look.’

‘Oh, no. There’s no need. But thanks for the offer. I’m sure she’ll turn up soon enough.’

The nervous young man nodded back at the church. ‘I’m rector of St Jude’s as well as St Botolph’s in Casterton itself. You see, St Jude’s no longer has a congregation: the village it served has long since disappeared. But I still have to call out here once or twice a month. There are some rough sorts who engage in all kinds of foul activities if they get access to the building. There are some who don’t respect the property of others as they used to.’

Sam thought: You should see any town or city of 1999; there’s graffiti that would blow your mind.

‘Three times this year, the church has been broken into. Ghastly business… ghastly.’ Hather shook his head sadly.

Sam began to walk across the car park, thinking of some way he could politely kiss off the young man and begin the search for Nicole. If there were more brutes like the snake-eyed barbarian he’d encountered in 1944 wandering through the wood, then Nicole might be in real danger.

The vicar pushed his bicycle alongside as he walked. It was a clunky-looking machine with a hard leather saddle, and, surprisingly, there was no visible system of braking.

When the vicar saw the car park his eyes widened behind his glasses.

‘Good heavens, when was all this work done? It must have been a good two to three weeks since I was down this far, but all this is extraordinarily quick. You’ve even built a house and put down a hard-topped quadrangle.’

‘We’ve a lot of resources at our disposal.’

‘Your sponsors must be generous!’

‘Extraordinarily generous.’ Sam noticed the vicar’s pale blue eyes darting left and right now as if it had finally begun to dawn on him that something extremely peculiar was happening down on this little stretch of meadow in one far-flung corner of his parish.

Sam noticed how the man’s eyes flicked to the bright red Coca-Cola vending machine standing outside the visitors’ centre, strayed from it, then locked back onto it with what was really quite an intellectual intensity.

Uh-oh, the man smells something fishy , Sam told himself.

Maybe there wouldn’t be any real problem. But if the cleric decided that all this paraphernalia he now saw – such as the vehicles, the visitors’ centre, the Coca-Cola dispenser, Carswell’s swish launch – was a mite too strange, he might simply jump on that bike of his and pedal for dear life to the nearest police station.

Explaining everything to a bunch of suspicious 19 thCentury policemen might become a bit too complicated, Sam thought nervously.

As Sam watched the Reverend Hather, he found himself being reminded of someone. Of course, it was absurd. He couldn’t possibly have met the man before. He’d have died long before Sam was even born. But there was something about the Reverend’s manner. The boyish enthusiasm. The way he’d talk excitedly. How he’d stammer, suddenly break off in mid-sentence and rub his jaw in astonishment. Then it hit him. The man was the spitting image of the late, great James Stewart. Right down to the long, gangling body and the, at times, high warbling quality of his voice.

And the man was no idiot. Sam realised he’d have to play this carefully, and try and find convincing answers to Thomas’s questions.

‘We’re establishing an archaeological dig that might take some months,’ Sam lied as casually as he could. ‘We’re also using the latest equipment available. Shipped in from the States.’

‘The States? Oh, I see. You mean, from America?’

Sam nodded as Thomas’s lively gaze danced over everything he could see.

Thomas went on excitedly, ‘But surely I’d have heard about such a dig?’

‘We had to keep it hush-hush.’

‘Why?’

‘In the past we’ve had thieves getting to our sites first. They dig haphazardly, thinking they’re going to find buried treasure.’

‘Oh.’ Thomas nodded understandingly.

‘Of course, they don’t find any gold, but what they do is cut through all those carefully preserved layers of archaeological material. Then our work is ruined. Isn’t that right, Ryan?’

Ryan nodded so eagerly that his face wobbled. ‘Ruined,’ he agreed.

‘So you approach archaeology as a science, analysing each stratum as it’s uncovered?’ Thomas said. ‘Recording and dating what you find, before proceeding to the next layer?’

Sam gave a tight, artificial smile. ‘Yes.’

‘So you’re familiar with the work of Richard Lepsius in Egypt?’

‘Oh, yes.’ The artificial smile tightened on Sam’s face. ‘I’ve read everything of his I can get my hands on.’

‘I’d love to hear your theories about the amphitheatre.’ Thomas’s enthusiasm was like a locomotive running with a full head of steam. Unstoppable. And, Sam guessed, if he put a foot wrong, his tissue of half-baked lies would be smeared all over the track.