Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide: A Collection of Short Stories. Fay Weldon
special but they can’t afford to admit it’
I remonstrated with the Harrison Ford lookalike: there had to be some kind of ceremony, I said. He couldn’t just pack the skeletons up in plastic bags so they lay on dusty shelves for ever. He spoke Nottingham, which was rather a pity, not Hollywood. He dismissed me as a middle-class busybody. The life of the real world had to go on. It couldn’t be forever caught up in its past. Fine words, I thought, for an archaeologist. A trahison des clercs. Even the academics had forsaken us, and bowed down before Mammon. We had quite a row, which he won. When I got to the station to meet the children I was still quite pink with anger.
They had bought computer games with them. I took them down to the site: they were moderately interested, out of politeness, but not much.
‘They’re just old bones,’ they said. ‘Chill, Mum,’ and went into a chorus of dem bones dem bones dem dry bones; I supposed they’d seen piles of bodies on TV in their time. I always looked away at the horrors. I turned on the news to find out what was going on in the world. An official drought had been declared. Hosepipe bans had been imposed in most parts of the country. That would put paid to the lettuces, already struggling, and the gooseberries would be tiny and sour.
Their father was going to marry again. That was okay be me, and by them. They seemed to like her. We were all on good terms. It’s always rather a shock, though. The children said I should marry again; it was easier for them if there was someone to look after me. I said I didn’t need looking after and they laughed hollowly.
That night we stood around the special grave, the master grave, the grave of the tallest soldier, in the moonlight. There was Susie, Pam, Carter Wainwright and I. Riley’s didn’t run to a night watchman. Carter was a hippie silversmith: he made the kind of jewellery Pam loved to wear: crystals set in silver: a kind of feng shui approach to the art of jewellery. Beads that brought you luck: earrings to focus the chakra required. I couldn’t stand that woozy kind of thing, really, but he was a nice enough fellow. Even quite good-looking for a pagan. And not married.
‘I don’t see how we can be sure he wasn’t a Christian,’ I said. ‘People travelled a lot in those days. For all we know these are the bones of the centurion John Wayne played in the film, the one who took Jesus’ robe after the crucifixion and was converted. Why are people so sure such things can’t be?’
‘Because it’s so very unlikely,’ said Carter Wainwright. I bet he was christened something like Kevin Smith and changed his name when he came down here. People do. But he had a nice deep voice.
‘My point is, Carter,’ I said, ‘if they found an early Christian cross in this grave tomorrow, they’d have to believe.’
‘But they’re not going to find any such thing, are they,’ he said. ‘They might,’ I said. ‘You never know. If you come back to my house tonight I can show you all sorts of early Christian references. If you add mercury to the silver mix they always assume it’s old silver. Should anyone take it into their head to do any testing.’
‘I know all about that,’ he said. ‘I had a job once faking old clock faces. “Restoring” they called it, but from what they charged, I called it faking. I came down here to Rumer to live a more honest life.’
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right,’ said Pam, primly, but she didn’t sound very convinced.
‘I don’t think we’d better tell Matt,’ said Susie. ‘He’s such a stickler.’
‘You can’t do this,’ said Pam.
‘Yes we can,’ I said. ‘Then they can give these bodies a decent burial and we can all get some peace and some sleep.’
I bent down and picked out of the grave what looked like a sliver of wood, or had once been wood, in a blackened kind of way. And I gave it to Carter Wainwright and he put it in his pocket.
‘Give it the trace of a wooden frame,’ I said, ‘just to confuse the issue.’
I noticed my blistered fingers were getting better. Touch had been quite painful and cooking the children’s chicken dinner had been hell. Carter Wainwright came back with me for the books and a certain amount of canoodling did take place, I must say, before he took his leave. I didn’t want to be a burden to my children: a silversmith and a sculptor could live fairly amicably together. And he swore his name was truly Carter Wainwright and I believed him.
In the morning my back was better and my fingers unblistered and smooth. This is what a little sex can do for you, I concluded. And amazingly, it started to rain. You could practically see the lettuces breathe the moisture in, and their hearts swell and curl and firm. All the animals went out into the wet, which was rather unusual for them, and skittered about in pleasure. The ground was parched, how it drank in the rain.
I went down to the site with the children. Now that there were news teams and cameras and journalists with notebooks, they took more interest. Apparently a Christian cross, a Chi Rho, made of silver and wood, had been found in the grave of one of the centurions. They reckoned the sudden rain had loosened the earth, which was why they hadn’t seen it before. No-one had expected rain; it certainly hadn’t been forecast, and it was only local.
Harrison Ford from Nottingham was in a foul mood. This was the last thing he had wanted. Pam reckoned he was on some sort of performance bonus. He was in conference with his friend from Riley management, Marcus Dubiddy; I saw the Chi Rho lying on a piece of plastic by the grave while they argued. Both men looked thoroughly cross.
The rain had stopped pelting and now drifted in a kind of warm gentle misty shroud over the site. Those of us in jeans and T-shirts were at an advantage over the suits, whose ties began to look flabby very quickly. My son Joel even consented to join the dustpan and brush brigade, volunteers rounded up locally to help the Birmingham students sieve the ribboned-off sections of the site. They had at least five minutes’ training before setting to. At least there was stuff to find: oyster shells, bits of metal and broken Samian ware, all of which were being catalogued, plastic-bagged,and logged. Faster, faster, urged the overseers. They must cover more ground, more quickly. I felt protective of him, as if he were being whipped to build a pyramid.
Joel eavesdropped on Dubiddy’s conversation—I had been marked out as a troublemaker. The Chi Rho was to be sent by courier to the British Museum and they’d date it as a matter of urgency, and value it.
I must admit we panicked, Carter, Pam, Susie and I. We were to be discovered. The silver would be traced back to Carter: my involvement would be suspected. We had forged an early Christian cross. They would think it was some elaborate plan to make money out of the tourist trade. They would not believe our motives. Who nowadays would put themselves out to get a few old dry bones a Christian burial?
We drank too much Chilean red that night, round at my place, to quell our nerves and celebrate the removal of the triptych to Canterbury Cathedral. The carriers had come that day. The more we thought about it the more delinquent our forgery seemed, and indeed impertinent. The Roman legions came from all over the world: the centurion could have belonged to any of a dozen faiths. Many worshipped Mithras, the Sun God. Susie said she didn’t think he was a Mithraic, see, it was still gently raining; surely Mithras would have honoured his own? It was fine enough over the rest of the country: only our graves dwelt in this gentle, moist, life-giving Christian mist.
Matt, usually so wary of Pam, for his sort and her sort do not usually agree, came up and drank with us, and they told each other jokes. Susie became quite pink and giggled: Carter decided he had fallen in love with me; the