Jenni Mills - Crow Stone

One late winter afternoon when we were students, at the end of a long day walking in the Peak District, Martin and I came over a bluff with the wind in our faces. There were about two miles of darkening moorland between us and our tea, and not a glimmer of light below us, just a dipping, rolling plateau of green and brown tussocks, broken only by scattered clumps of rocks and trees.

We set off down the hillside, too cold, tired and hungry to talk. And then the wind brought us, from nowhere, the sound of singing. It was the eeriest thing I’ve ever heard, voices out of a wild twilight emptiness. I could have sworn the sound came from beneath our feet, and for one primordially terrified moment I was on the point of legging it. But then I looked at Martin. There was a wistful expression on his face. ‘Hi-ho,’ he said.

Amid a cluster of broken rocks away to our left, I saw the first bobbing light. And then another. Then a third. An orderly file of cavers in their helmets, schoolkids probably, judging by their size, came tramping out of the hidden entrance to the pothole like the Seven Dwarfs.

The next weekend I hid my fear and went caving for the first time with him.

‘You’re not thinking of driving back to Cornwall tonight?’ asks Martin, as we reach the gate to the bridleway where his battered red jeep is parked. My car is at his cottage, twenty miles away.

‘Without car keys?’ I may be emotionally screwed but I never forget a cover story. Though God knows how I’ll deal with explaining– Ooh look, my keys are in my handbag after all –when we get back.

‘Curses, knew we forgot something.’ Martin tries unsuccessfully to get his own keys into the lock of the jeep, gives up and peels back the canvas roof flap so he can get his hand in to open the door from inside. ‘You could always nip back.’

‘Fuck off and drive me to the nearest quadruple Scotch.’

He holds open the door for me: the driver’s door. The passenger side hasn’t opened within living memory. He claims he likes the jeep because it’s got a sense of humour, which is something you definitely can’t say about a Range Rover.

‘Seriously,’ he says. ‘Alcohol. Food. Early bed.’

‘Provided you’ve got some sheets on the spare bed,’ I agree. He isn’t looking at me, pretending to fumble with the keys. ‘Clean ones,’ I add. Martin’s all-male potholing weekends are legendary. In case you hadn’t noticed, there aren’t any proper potholes in Sussex.

‘I’ll change them.’

‘You’d better.’

‘And I’ll cook you crab cakes, if we stop at Waitrose on the way back.’

‘Maybe it’s worth almost dying.’

‘God, Kit, you’re really going to milk this, aren’t you?’

He starts the jeep, which pretends for one heart-plummeting moment that the battery is flat. ‘Like I always say,’ remarks Martin, as the engine finally catches, ‘a vehicle with a highly developed sense of fun.’

We lurch down the bridleway, whose ruts have ruts. Branches snatch at the windscreen, squeaking on the glass like fingers on a blackboard. I keep hearing that creak again, and feeling the hail of earth and stones on my legs. I try not to imagine what it would have been like with the weight of the roof fall on my chest.

I couldn’t have dug myself out. I was pinned like a butterfly. Whatever he pretends, Martin saved my life. The jeep’s motion throws me towards him. He turns and grins. I haven’t even thanked him, but where do you find the words? We’re not going to talk about what happened this afternoon. It’s not what we do. Emotions R Not Us. We’ll eat crab cakes sitting in front of the fire and pour Californian chardonnay down our throats, but there are places Martin and I never go.

‘Well, I suppose that knocks my idea of excavating a flint mine next season firmly on the head,’ he says, as we pull on to the road at the bottom of the hill. ‘Back to the drawing board. Or, rather, back to the book on mystery cults. I’d much rather be digging. Which reminds me–how’s your job search?’

I look at him, in the green glow of the dashboard light. I hadn’t thought until now that I’d be saying this. ‘Found one,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you over supper. Filling in a bloody big hole in the ground, basically. You’d hate the job. Burying something for ever.’

Three hours later, I’m sharing the hearthrug with a pile of dirty plates. Darkness is a thick, velvety blanket round Martin’s cottage, and the chardonnay is doing much the same job to the inside of my head.

‘Have another slurp,’ says Martin, pouring. ‘It’s terrible stuff, but it reminds me of San Francisco.’ A wistful look comes into his eyes, then he smiles wickedly. ‘Only a few weeks, and I’ll be able to fill the cellar again.’

Poor old Martin. The public face of archaeology is still relentlessly heterosexual, although it’s attracted quite a few old queens I could name. And, apart from Martin, I’ve never met a real caver who cares to admit he’s gay. He gets by, but he looks forward to his Christmas trips to California. I think he lives in hope of finding himself at a party singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ next to Armistead Maupin.

We got friendly the first week at university because we didn’t find each other threatening. Going drinking with him is the nearest I get to a night out with the girls. He wasn’t out then, even to himself, and certainly not to his father who was a vicar, but I guessed he was gay the night we met. I chatted him up because he was studying archaeology; still sometimes wish I’d chosen that instead of geology and engineering. When I turn my hand to re-erecting Bronze Age stone circles for him, or rebuilding Roman siege engines, I can kid myself I’ve got some level of archaeological knowledge, but he just uses me for the practical stuff: he’s the big thinker. He jokes about not enjoying writing his book, but he adores it, really, teasing out all the esoteric stuff about Roman religion.

Firelight glints, red, gold, on my glass, brimming with pale yellow wine. I raise it to him. ‘Here’s to lots of busy little Californian Christmas elves. On rollerskates.’

‘Mmm.’ Martin drinks deeply. ‘Though naturally I would hope Santa decides to explore your chimney too.’

I cough as my wine goes down the wrong way. ‘I can’t keep up.’

‘That’s what Santa says, too.’

‘Stop it, Martin. It gets tedious.’

‘You’re just jealous. When was the last time you got laid?’

‘None of your business.’

Martin looks like a puppy that can’t understand why no one finds scratchmarks on the furniture appealing. He’s happier if he can come up with a reason for my lack of interest in sexual banter.

‘Have you been getting calls again from Nick?’

‘No, thank God. Splitting the money from the London house seems to have shut him up for a bit. And I changed my mobile number.’

‘You should have divorced him as soon as you broke up. I resent him getting half of what that house is worth now when he pissed off to Wales nearly ten years ago.’

‘More than half. It’s only fair–I’m keeping the place in Cornwall, don’t forget.’ I shouldn’t feel I have to justify myself to Martin, but I always do where Nick’s concerned.

‘You’re too soft on him.’ Martin’s frowning. He once threatened to punch the lights out of Nick on my behalf, even though I can’t imagine he has ever punched the lights out of anyone. ‘He’s always taken advantage of you.’

‘Pity you didn’t tell me that before we got married.’

‘I thought it.’

‘I’m not psychic. Next time say it aloud.’

We lapse into silence. It occurs to me that if I hadn’t come back from the flint mine this afternoon, Nick would have had the lot. I haven’t got round to changing my will.