the tube station, and he walked back to the Museum alone and sat down again in front of his pile of books, his loose-leaf files, his card index box. Two and half centuries away, William Stukeley, out of doors in the fresh air of May 1721, stumped around the Wiltshire downs, measuring lumps and bumps in the turf and doing his bit to free the landscape of fantasy.
Kate did the shopping on her way back to the museum: meat for a goulash, a nice chunk of cheese, some household bits and pieces. She had said to Tom ‘Don’t be late, the thing I’m going to cook won’t keep’ – meaning, don’t skive off for a drink with some crony when the Reading Room shuts – and he had replied in that light way of his that might or might not conceal crossness, do you have to keep taking the magic out of living in sin, Kate? And this had preyed on her mind all afternoon. Do I nag? she had thought, am I going to be that kind of wife? Am I possessive? Ought we to be living together, or have we spoilt things? Does he love me as much as I love him?
She fretted and analysed, while scouring reference books and inventories, telephoning that unhelpful man at the V and A, comparing glossy photographs of Viking shields. And, flicking through back numbers of Antiquity in search of a reference to the stuff from that Orkney hoard, she found an article by her father, and read it, hunched over the trestle table with a dozen other things she ought to be doing and the afternoon half gone already: ‘… the vexed question of the British faience beads and whether or not they are of local provenance, my personal belief being that…’
Beads. Not faience beads from the Bronze Age that may or may not be a Mediterranean importation and hence a worry to archaeologists for many years, but glass beads from Woolworths, bright reds and blues and greens and orange like gum-drops. My beads that I am making into a necklace for Mummy, threading them on a string with a big needle, sitting here on the hall floor with my tongue sticking out a bit because I have to think hard what I am doing, the beads are slippy and I keep dropping them, and I am making a pattern with them too so I have to be careful which one I put next.
It is a beautiful necklace.
And I take it to her in her bedroom, where she is getting ready, sitting at the dressing-table with her face things in front of her, pots and bottles that I musn’t ever touch. ‘Lovely, Kate,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that pretty.’ And she puts it down on the table beside her and goes on doing things to her hair. And I say ‘Aren’t you going to wear it, aren’t you going to put it on?’ and she laughs and says, ‘But sweetie it doesn’t go with my frock, does it? Look, the colours simply swear at each other,’ and she holds it up against her neck, against the green-blue frock she is wearing, and laughs again. And I stand there. I say I think it looks nice. I see our faces side by side in the mirror. She sees our faces too and she says don’t talk in that whiny voice, Kate, and don’t stick your lip out like that, that’s not pretty at all, you’ll grow up with a face like that if you go on doing it and no one will ever want to marry you. She is making her hair into curls with her finger, and then she puts the comb down and powders her nose and looks at herself very carefully in the little mirror with the silver handle. ‘Run and play now, darling,’ she says, ‘I’m in a hurry, I’m going out to lunch.’
I go downstairs. I sit on the terrace at the place where there is an ants’ nest between the stones, and watch the ants. Presently, I poke the ants with a twig and they all run about in a fuss; I squash some of them; it is unkind but I go on doing it.
Aunt Nellie is in the study, writing things. I go in and say, ‘I’ve made a necklace for you, Aunt Nellie.’ Aunt Nellie says it is a lovely necklace. She puts it on over her brown jersey and she gives me a bit of paper and a pencil and goes on
Kate did the shopping on her way back to the museum: meat for a goulash, a nice chunk of cheese, some household bits and pieces. She had said to Tom ‘Don’t be late, the thing I’m going to cook won’t keep’ – meaning, don’t skive off for a drink with some crony when the Reading Room shuts – and he had replied in that light way of his that might or might not conceal crossness, do you have to keep taking the magic out of living in sin, Kate? And this had preyed on her mind all afternoon. Do I nag? she had thought, am I going to be that kind of wife? Am I possessive? Ought we to be living together, or have we spoilt things? Does he love me as much as I love him?
She fretted and analysed, while scouring reference books and inventories, telephoning that unhelpful man at the V and A, comparing glossy photographs of Viking shields. And, flicking through back numbers of Antiquity in search of a reference to the stuff from that Orkney hoard, she found an article by her father, and read it, hunched over the trestle table with a dozen other things she ought to be doing and the afternoon half gone already: ‘… the vexed question of the British faience beads and whether or not they are of local provenance, my personal belief being that…’
Beads. Not faience beads from the Bronze Age that may or may not be a Mediterranean importation and hence a worry to archaeologists for many years, but glass beads from Woolworths, bright reds and blues and greens and orange like gum-drops. My beads that I am making into a necklace for Mummy, threading them on a string with a big needle, sitting here on the hall floor with my tongue sticking out a bit because I have to think hard what I am doing, the beads are slippy and I keep dropping them, and I am making a pattern with them too so I have to be careful which one I put next.
It is a beautiful necklace.
And I take it to her in her bedroom, where she is getting ready, sitting at the dressing-table with her face things in front of her, pots and bottles that I musn’t ever touch. ‘Lovely, Kate,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that pretty.’ And she puts it down on the table beside her and goes on doing things to her hair. And I say ‘Aren’t you going to wear it, aren’t you going to put it on?’ and she laughs and says, ‘But sweetie it doesn’t go with my frock, does it? Look, the colours simply swear at each other,’ and she holds it up against her neck, against the green-blue frock she is wearing, and laughs again. And I stand there. I say I think it looks nice. I see our faces side by side in the mirror. She sees our faces too and she says don’t talk in that whiny voice, Kate, and don’t stick your lip out like that, that’s not pretty at all, you’ll grow up with a face like that if you go on doing it and no one will ever want to marry you. She is making her hair into curls with her finger, and then she puts the comb down and powders her nose and looks at herself very carefully in the little mirror with the silver handle. ‘Run and play now, darling,’ she says, ‘I’m in a hurry, I’m going out to lunch.’
I go downstairs. I sit on the terrace at the place where there is an ants’ nest between the stones, and watch the ants. Presently, I poke the ants with a twig and they all run about in a fuss; I squash some of them; it is unkind but I go on doing it.
Aunt Nellie is in the study, writing things. I go in and say, ‘I’ve made a necklace for you, Aunt Nellie.’ Aunt Nellie says it is a lovely necklace. She puts it on over her brown jersey and she gives me a bit of paper and a pencil and goes on
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