The Buried Circle. Jenni Mills
The note of the engine is rising to a howl. The tail seems to be trying to wrench itself right off. The helicopter is slewing sideways over the barley like a dragonfly with a torn wing. We’re going to crash.
‘Going to be bumpy,’ yells Ed. ‘Brace!’
Now we’re starting to spin. The rotors seem to be getting louder in my head–thoom, thhooom, THHHOOMMM, until everything else is drowned in the noise of beating air and beating blood and vibrating metal. God, the camera. If that comes loose when we crash it’ll bounce around in here like a lethal beachball. I wrap my arms round it, and try to fold myself and it into a foetal curl but the straps won’t let me and everything is shaking so much, the spin dizzying, like being sucked into a whirlpool. How long is this going to take, how high off the ground are we can only be a matter of five or ten feet at most we’re still going too fast what happens when we come down will it blow like in the films the helicopter always explodes in a fireball I don’t want to–
The helicopter hits the ground, bounces, metal tearing with an awful howl, my stomach tries to jump out through my throat, then we hit earth again and the whole thing rolls over and I’m being tumbled backwards, the camera flying out of my arms OW its whipping lead catching me on the ear and I feel sick with pain, someone’s shouting FUCK FUCK FUCK in an American accent and there’s so much noise, grinding, shrieking, smashing glass–
and the sledgehammer shatters the windscreen, my mother calling no no no, blood between my fingers–
All my fault. We shouldn’t have flown widdershins round Avebury. I should have made them take out the right-hand door, and we would have flown sunwise–
And I’d have been underneath the helicopter now, as we grind over the crushed barley and the hard dry chalk, and the metal skin on the right-hand side crumples like paper–
And we stop.
Silence. Blessed silence. Nothing. It’s all stopped, apart from a humming note that must be my ears, and the odd creak and sigh and tick of settling metal. I wait for the sound of running feet through the barley, of some sign there’s someone else alive somewhere, but nothing happens, as I hang in my straps, the helicopter suspended between worlds. I’m holding my breath waiting for the real one to rush back in.
‘Goddamn.’ It’s one of the Americans, his voice a croak. ‘You OK, Ruth?’ Then Ruth starts sobbing and the world is back with a bang, the others going Jeez that was close Didya see how we got caught in like a vortex? and Was it the forcefield of the crop circle that brought us down? and Ed’s voice saying Is everyone all right, take it easy, we’re on our side, be careful how you unbuckle and there’s a groan of shifting metal and everything sways sickeningly and something falls off outside and he shouts I said be careful you fat fuck stop panicking you’ll all be able to climb out through the side door there’s plenty of time it’s only in the movies that they blow up we came in really slowly hit the ground with hardly any force
Steve is uncharacteristically quiet.
He wasn’t belted in, crouched at the back of the helicopter behind me, watching the shots unroll on the monitor. I twist in my webbing straps to see if he’s OK.
He’s lying on his back staring up at me, on the stoved-in wall of the helicopter. It looks like he’s reaching out one hand to catch the camera, which has landed beside him, its eye pointed towards him and the red light still winking, the black plastic rim of the lens smeared with thick red. Colour, angle, geometry: all fit perfectly, all come together to centre the shot on the ugly dent in the side of his forehead.
‘India! Been a fair old time since you phoned. Orright? Did you get my birthday card?’
‘Sorry, John. Should’ve been in touch sooner.’
I can picture him in the kitchen of his cottage at West Overton, his feet up on the scarred pine table, setting September sun refracting through the quartz crystals that dangle at the window, making a dappled pattern of light. It’s late enough in the afternoon for his lovely ladies, the middle-aged country wives who drive over in their 4 × 4s for reflexology and a shag, to have gone home. He’ll be rolling a spliff one-handed. There’ll be a home-baked loaf on the breadboard, and maybe even a rabbit suspended by its feet from the hook on the back of the kitchen door, waiting for him to skin and stew it. John grew up in suburban Sutton Coldfield, but he embraced rural life with a vengeance when he moved to Wiltshire after my mother left him. He’s good at it too, maybe because he was once in the army.
‘So, how’s life in the big city? You running the BBC yet?’
‘Not exactly. Um, John, I’m ringing because…’
‘You OK, our kid?’
‘Yeah, fine, just–wanted to ask if you think it’s a good idea to come to Avebury.’
When I tell people I’ve known John for ever, he’ll give me that look that says, Yeah, really for ever, baby girl, because he’s a shaman and into reincarnation and all those books about how life is a spiritual journey and you’ll meet up with the same group of significant people every time round. John believes the three Rs get you through life: reflexology, reiki, and rebirthing. He and my mother were a lopsided kind of item for about five years, though even an eight-year-old could tell the devotion was one way: all his to her. Mum wasn’t the most faithful of partners. Or the best of mothers, when it comes down to it.
When John does my feet, kneading and probing and smoothing with his long reflexologist’s fingers, he says he can feel two big hard knots of anger just back from my toes. I walk on my fury.
‘Why shouldn’t you come back?’ he says. ‘Love to see you. There’s a band Sunday night at the pub in Devizes, if you don’t have to drive back early.’
‘Not just the weekend. I mean for the foreseeable future.’
‘Right.’ There’s a pause, John holding the idea up to the light at his end, turning it carefully this way and that, as he always does. ‘I thought you were involved with some big ghost-watching series for ITV.’
‘UFOs, actually, and it was for a digital channel. That’s been–cancelled.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘Yeah.’
Another pause. I can hear John taking a long, deep drag on his rollie. ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with a fatal helicopter crash over Alton Barnes way last month, would it? Bunch of Americans and a camera crew, overloaded chopper?’
The tears have started rolling down my face. ‘Oh, John, I’ve fucked up again, I’ve really fucked up this time…’ Voice all choked and clotted. I’m beginning to shudder.
‘Hey, hold on. Way I heard it, the pilot crashed the helicopter, not you. He’ll probably lose his licence.’
‘Yes, but–’
‘No but. Listen, darling girl, you haven’t fucked up. Not then, not now. Believe me, I’m a world expert in fuck-ups. Blame Wyrd, if you like, web of fate, will of God, karma, whatever else carries us through the night, but it was not your fault!
‘You don’t understand. I killed someone. I should have held on to the camera but I didn’t and it killed him, there was this hole in his head, it was awful–I’ll never get another job in television.’ I’ve thought this through. I ponder it every night, sweating when police helicopters fly over the block of flats, while the Australian girls heave and struggle with their lovers on the other side of the thin wall. ‘Who’d want me? I’m bad luck. And, oh, God, John, he’s dead, and I didn’t like him very much but I so wish he wasn’t dead, he was twenty-three, his parents…’ I keep remembering his mother’s stricken face when they came to the office to collect his stuff. Soon as I realized who she was I went and locked myself into the loo.