John Preston - The Dig

“No, no… I mean, not unless you want to.”

“Of course not. Besides, it’s not a matter of what I want… Strange, though, that Phillips should ask specially for you. Strange for him, that is. I suppose he must have read your paper on Bosnian lake villages. I did send it to him, and it is awfully good, of course. Do you think this ship can really be longer than the one at Oseberg — that was more than seventy feet, as I recall… For heaven’s sake, what am I thinking of? Look, why don’t you wait in the lounge, darling, and I’ll go straight to the post office and wire him back.”

But before he could go, I put my hand on his sleeve. “What if this find really is as exciting as Phillips says?”

“Yes, but even so…”

“This might be our last chance to be involved in something really significant for a long time. We might kick ourselves in years to come, when we’re old.”

“Darling, no. It’s simply not fair on you. Besides, the weather is bound to buck up soon. I only wish the hotel wasn’t so en ruine .”

My fingers were still resting on his sleeve, the nails cut in unattractive little scallops. Staring at them, I said, “Why don’t you wire Phillips to tell him that we’re coming?”

Stuart didn’t reply, not immediately. When he did so, his words all came out in a tumble. “Are you quite sure? I mean, absolutely positive? Remember, you’ve never met Phillips. He can be a bit of a terror, you know. And there’s bound to be trouble here. I booked us in for a full week.”

“Just leave that to me,” I said.

“Really? I just hate to think of you being disappointed, that’s all.”

I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “You know you don’t have to worry about that.”

The woman behind the reception desk seemed more upset than dismayed when I told her we were leaving. “But you’re in the bridal suite,” she kept repeating. In the end, she agreed that we would pay for the three nights we had spent there — this without my having to mention the pork, or the upholstery, or the wardrobe door that unaccountably swung open in the middle of the night.

After Stuart had paid the bill, the same boy who had brought the telegram took our cases out to the car and helped strap them on the back. Despite the car’s being left out in the rain, the engine caught immediately. No doubt following instructions, the boy stayed outside and wanly waved us off.

At the end of the promenade, the road turned inwards, climbing all the time. Through the passenger window, I could see the horseshoe bay with its terraces of cream houses and the ox-blood cliffs that seemed to be pushing them towards the sea. As the road switched back and forth between the folds of hills, I couldn’t entirely suppress a sense of relief. It felt as if we were climbing out of a hole.

That night we stayed with Stuart’s sister and her husband in London — they live just around the corner from the rooms in Gower Street that I rented when I was studying for my diploma. The next morning we were on the road by nine o’clock. For the first time in days, the sun came out. Fortunately we had the road almost to ourselves and made good progress as far as Colchester.

On the other side of the town we pulled into a field to eat the sandwiches Stuart’s sister had made. Several other cars were already parked there. People sat on the verge, eating and drinking. The men were in their shirtsleeves. A couple of the women, I saw, had rolled their stockings down to their ankles. Children were playing, throwing stones at a cattle trough. Whenever one of the stones hit, there was a loud booming sound. Every so often, one of the adults turned round and told them to stop, but they didn’t take any notice.

We sat in the car with both the doors and windows open. “You’ve never been to Suffolk, have you, darling?” Stuart asked.

“You make it sound like another country,” I said with my mouth full of sandwich.

“Oh, they’re a funny lot, you know. Quite primitive, but proud of it. They rather see themselves as a race apart.”

“In what way?”

“An attitude really. A kind of bloody-mindedness and general dislike of authority. They like to think that they’re out on the edge of things, while everyone else is either soft or ignorant.”

An hour later we crossed the border from Essex into Suffolk. After Stuart’s description, I had half expected to see people jumping about in animal skins. However, all that happened was that the land grew flatter and flatter. The fields stretched away into the distance, broken only by lines of trees. It looked just like a prairie. Everything felt too big, too open, too exposed. Between the rows of barley and rye, the soil was the color of canvas.

Wind, warm yet quite odorless, blew through the car. Even the cattle looked unsure of themselves, lost amid all this emptiness. What few houses we saw all seemed to have crudely built wooden porches and windows scarcely big enough to fit a person’s head through. There also seemed to be an abnormal number of abandoned agricultural vehicles by the side of the road, most of them covered in parasols of cow parsley. Arcs of sand lay across the road and crunched beneath our wheels. Occasionally, I caught glimpses of the sea, although the flatness of the land made it almost impossible to tell where the land ended and the water began. Only a dull, metallic gleam gave it away.

It was after five o’clock by the time we arrived in Woodbridge. Stuart had arranged to meet Charles Phillips at the Bull Hotel. The Bull turned out to be a black and white coaching inn at the top of the town with a plaque on the front proclaiming that King Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont and Saxony had stayed on several occasions, but giving no indication as to what had brought him there.

A girl showed Stuart and me up to the room Phillips had reserved for us. The smell of beer, sour but strangely exotic, drifted up from the bar. Our room had twin beds and overlooked the square, with a shared bathroom at the end of the corridor. Stuart sat on one of the beds and pronounced it to be a definite improvement on Sidmouth. Then he came over to the window where I was standing and put his arm around my shoulder.

“Well done, darling,” he said.

“Well done for what?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far.”

“You can’t just say ‘well done’ for no reason,” I said.

“Yes, I can. I can say whatever I want. Although, strictly speaking, I’m the one who deserves the congratulations.”

“For what exactly?”

“For persuading you to marry me, of course.”

I turned towards him and placed my hands flat against his chest. “I don’t know if I took that much persuading. Besides, impressionable girls are always falling in love with their professors. It must be one of the hazards of the job.”

“Not a hazard — not for me. Entirely a blessing… Now then,” he said, “shall we go downstairs and see if Phillips is here?”

In fact, Phillips had not arrived, although he did so a few minutes later. While we had talked about Phillips on the journey up, nothing had quite prepared me for my first sight of him. He was a much larger man than I had expected. However, he carried his bulk, if not proudly, then with a considerable air of entitlement. By contrast, his bow tie was rather small, making him look like an inexpertly wrapped parcel.

When Stuart introduced me, his gaze ran up and down me in a quite blatant manner. Not just once either, but several times. Before sitting down, he glanced suspiciously at the other customers and then said, “I think we should be safe here.”

Once seated, he beckoned the barman over. “A pint of your best bitter for me,” said Phillips. “I’m sure you’ll join me, Stuart. And what would you like, my dear?” he asked.