John Preston - The Dig

We continued on up the slope, emerging from the wood just by the shepherd’s hut. Ahead of us lay the ship. Seeing it in the semi-darkness, approaching from an unfamiliar angle, I couldn’t get over how raw it looked, how wanton. Pegged back like a giant wound. The wind had got up. I could hear the dry scratching of sand being blown across the tarpaulins.

Walking towards the mounds, I became aware of something dancing in the air. At first I thought it must be sand. But this didn’t look like sand; it looked more like a cloud of snowflakes. As they fell to the ground, they caught what little light there was.

Rory had seen them too. He reached out his hand, palm upwards. Then he held it up to me. I could see something shining there.

“What is it?”

“I think it must be gold leaf. I remember Phillips saying how there was a lot of it lying around.”

The gold flakes continued to swirl about in the breeze. I could see them quite clearly now. I gazed in wonder, watching the flakes settle on my shoulders and my chest. Holding my hands out, I wanted as many of them to fall on me as possible. I had this absurd fancy that I would be all garlanded and crowned, like a princess.

But when I reached up to feel my hair, all I touched was a piece of twig. It must have become caught there when I’d been lying against the tree. I tried to disentangle it, except it wouldn’t come. I only succeeded in making it even more tightly snagged.

“Here,” said Rory. “Let me.”

I stayed still while he began unpicking the twig from my hair. He did so very carefully, not tugging at all. Parting the strands and then unwinding them. It was as if he was picking me apart. All the while tiny specks of gold leaf continued falling around us. I could feel them in my mouth, catching in my throat. But still they were not enough to stop this awful confessional urge that rose within me. It seemed to gather up everything hidden, everything secret, and carry it all out into the open.

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

I felt Rory’s fingers stop moving.

“What isn’t?”

“It’s not what you think,” I said again. “With Stuart.”

“What do you mean?”

“Things between Stuart and me. They’re not…”

“Sshh.”

I turned around. Rory was holding his finger up to his lips.

“Just listen,” he said.

I heard nothing, not at first. And then the birdsong came from so close at hand that I almost jumped. There were long gurgling trills, punctuated by a series of harsh little clicks. Then the nightingale waited for a response. But there was nothing, only silence. After a few minutes, the singing started up again, both louder and more passionate than before. Bubbles of sound streamed up into the night sky.

The sound was sadder than anything I had ever heard before. Full of yearning and desperation and the proximity of regret. The hope that drove the song forward seemed entwined with the knowledge that it would never be answered. Yet despite that I couldn’t bear for it to end. I felt that as long as we stayed exactly where we were, then nothing need ever change. The earth would swallow us, just as it had done everything else. I wanted this more than anything.

But even then I knew it would never happen. I knew it before another torch beam cut through the darkness. It came towards us from the direction of the house. Behind the light, I could make out a black-clad figure.

“Good evening,” said a voice.

Neither of us spoke.

“My name is Police Constable Ling,” the voice continued. “And this is my colleague, Police Constable Grimsey.”

Another man had appeared beside him. He was also dressed in a uniform and a flat cap.

“We have been asked to keep an eye on the site by the owner,” said the first policeman. “In case of unauthorized visitors. May I have both your names please?”

I started laughing. At that moment, I felt an enormous sense of relief. Relief at not letting myself down, at not betraying everything that mattered to me. It was like a kind of exultation. I explained that I was one of the archaeologists working on the site and that Rory was Mrs. Pretty’s nephew. As I did so, I could hear the babble of my voice, the words tripping helplessly over one another.

“I see,” the policeman said when I had finished. “In which case we won’t disturb you any further.”

“In fact, I must be going,” I told him. “I have an early start in the morning.”

“Let me walk you to your car,” said Rory.

“There’s no need.”

“But it’s no trouble.”

In silence we walked back towards the house. Rory kept the torch beam trained on the path in front of my feet. When we reached the car, he opened the door and waited until the motor had caught.

“Goodnight, then.” He was standing with his hand held up to his cap.

“Goodnight,” I said.

I awoke from a deep sleep to see a man’s head hovering above mine. It was only a few inches away. As I gazed upwards, he bent forward and kissed me on the forehead. His breath smelled of Plasticine.

“Hello, darling.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I managed to catch the milk train. Sorry to wake you, but there have been developments.”

“What sort of developments?”

“Rather ominous developments, I’m afraid. The papers have got wind of everything.”

Stuart held up a newspaper. Slowly, the print unfurled before me. “Anglo-Saxon Ship-Burial,” I read. “Remarkable Find in East Anglia.”

“ The Times has it as well,” he said, holding up another paper. This one was headlined, “Sunken Boat is British Tutankhamun.”

“Phillips isn’t in his room,” Stuart went on. “I assume he has already gone over to the site. I’ve been trying to call Sutton Hoo House but there’s no reply. Perhaps they’re not up yet, although they should be by now, I would have thought. I think the best thing for us to do is head off there straightaway.”

“May I have a few minutes to dress?”

“Of course, darling,” he said. “How inconsiderate of me. Why don’t I see you downstairs when you’re ready?”

I stared through the windscreen as we drove along around the bottom of the estuary. Nothing had changed. Beyond Melton, the road still ran straight for several hundred yards. The petrified oaks still jutted up out of the mud flats. The fields of sedge grass stretched away on the left. There was a white mist lying over the river, through which I could hear the muffled cries of the gulls.

Nothing had changed when we drove into Sutton Hoo House either. We headed straight out to the mounds.

Nobody was around. The tarpaulins were still fixed in place. I looked over at the woods beyond, but nothing stirred. We were about to turn round and go back when the two policemen I had seen the previous night emerged from the shepherd’s hut. Neither of them made any sign of recognition. They had no information beyond the fact that Mr. Brown had appeared first thing. Apparently he had sat on the top of the bank for a while, then gone away again.

Back at the house Grateley, the butler, answered the doorbell. Instead of lying flat, as usual, his hair rose in an oiled flap at the front. Mrs. Pretty had left word that she was not to be disturbed. He said that journalists had started calling at seven o’clock that morning. After an hour of this, she had ordered that the telephone should be disconnected.

At that moment Phillips appeared in the corridor behind Grateley. Instead of being furious, as I had expected, he seemed to be brimming with bonhomie. “Ah, Stuart,” he said. “There you are. I assume you’ve heard what has happened. It’s all Reid Moir’s fault, of course. I should have known he wouldn’t be able to keep his trap shut. No doubt he wants to make everything as awkward for us as possible. Well, if that’s the way he wants to play it, let him do his worst…