Treasures of Time (33 page)

But in the meantime, it seemed more appropriate to think about the future. He wrote letters, made telephone calls. Stukeley, two swollen typescripts, bound in inferior grey cardboard, arrived and was despatched to meet his fate at the hands of learned men: there was nothing more to be done about him.

Once, he wrote to Kate, who did not reply.

He said to his parents, ‘There’s this programme this evening I’d rather like to watch. All right with you?’

The title was suspended against a glittering backcloth of gold cups and jewellery: Treasures of Time; Hugh Paxton, archaeologist. Tom’s mother, alerted by the title sequence, said ‘Paxton? Wasn’t that…’

‘He was her father, that’s right.’

‘I thought that was a pity, Tom. Dad and I really took to her.’

‘So did I.’

‘Well, it’s a shame you didn’t see it through.’ She stared at the screen. The camera, airborne, swept across verdant landscapes, dwelt on selected features. ‘Lovely country. The Yorkshire Dales, look – remember that trip we did over there?’

Tony’s voice introduces other voices, who in turn expound and explain. The viewer is painlessly conducted to inconvenient or obscure places, given a bird’s eye view of Maiden Castle and Cadbury, a peek inside Maeshowe. It is the converse of Tony’s motorway map; this is a mirror England where roads and buildings do not exist, a place of turfed bones and melancholy stones, of scrawled markings in a field of corn, of a million broken pots. ‘The splendour of Wessex’, someone says, and the screen shows weaponry and brooches and a great gold drinking-cup. Accounts of what Hugh Paxton said and did are neatly inter-cut with the basic descriptive task: information must be given, but not offence, people don’t like to be made to feel ignorant. It is all very skilfully done.

And there, suddenly, is Danehurst, with the croquet set laid out on the lawn – that shot must have been taken just before… ‘Nice house,’ says Tom’s mother. ‘Did you go there, dear? What are those iron things for, on the grass?’ ‘It’s a game’: what you can’t see, of course, won’t know, is that a few minutes later someone died. And here is Laura, sitting on the wicker chair, by the yew hedge, talking. ‘Good-looking woman,’ said Tom’s father. ‘The mother, is that?’ ‘Mmnn’: the mother, yes. And now – juggling with time once more – we are up at the Tump. Tony’s voice tells us where we are, and why, and the camera is generous with a view from which much is excluded: inharmonious items like the BBC cars and the barbed wire fence and people and dead sheep. Except that they of course have not yet happened. ‘Lovely country,’ says Tom’s mother again. ‘Look at those wild flowers.’ ‘Yes. Just after that some sheep were struck by lightning.’ His parents jerk their eyes from the screen, incredulous – ‘Never!’ ‘Honest. We were there.’ ‘Well,’ says his father, ‘there’s a thing and it looks as peaceful as you like.’ They turn back to the picture, well and truly hooked; Paul Summers peers into the entrance of the Tump and Tom’s mother wants to know now if that is real. ‘Or, I mean, is it something they arranged for the film, like?’ ‘Oh no, that’s real.’ Or was, because of course now that is no more either, or at least no more in that particular form. And now we jump back to Hugh Paxton’s study at Danehurst, with Paul Summers discussing, in pleasant, measured tones the man’s contribution to a discipline. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘radio-carbon dating is the great watershed in twentieth century archaeology. It came at the right moment for Hugh Paxton. He…’ He holds a little bronze pin or something, taps it absent-mindedly on the desk once or twice as he talks: behind his head the glass of the book-case reflects the garden. What you cannot see is Laura, standing in the doorway; Tony, in the arm-chair; Tom and Kate, who will not thereafter say a great deal more to one another, outside in the garden. ‘Who’s that?’ says Tom’s mother. ‘Just a man.’

And now we are out of doors again. It is the end, the summing-up. Voices pronounce; the camera roams the landscape, rooting out lumps and bumps and circles and trackways like white bloodvessels on green hill-tops. A carefully selective view of things; again, much lurks off-stage. There is music; the credits roll: that’s that. ‘Very interesting,’ says Tom’s mother. ‘I enjoyed it – some lovely photography.’ She plumps up cushions, makes ready for bed; it is nearly twelve, culture is a late-night offering.

Tony said, ‘Well, I suppose it could have been worse. Not quite what one would have liked, but the background traumas didn’t show, which is the great thing. By the way, have you…?’

‘Yes, I have. I think I would.’

‘Right, then. Of course you realize to begin with it would be a bit routine. Research, mainly. But that’s your line, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘Come down here, then, and have a chat with some people. Very good to know we may have you around.’

On the other side of the windows of the London train, the country was autumnal: bleached and harvested. It had a cropped and tidy look, as though it had had its fling and would now go meekly enough into hibernation. To Tom, conditioned by the calendar of the educational year, September seemed always a time of renewal rather than of completion. A beginning, not an end. He sat, now, in contemplation of the landscape, whose ambiguities he was beginning to appreciate, drinking the measure of British Rail coffee which had cost what felt like a sizeable proportion of his remaining assets, and experienced a certain zest. Which could come only from perversity of spirit, since it was not justified by anything in the immediate circumstances. Prospects, insecure; liquidity, proving unreliable; status, not clear. Notwithstanding which – and the atrocity of the coffee, the torment induced by a heating system apparently designed to roast the thighs of passengers, the ghoulish satisfaction of the station announcement that the train was running approximately twenty-one minutes late – notwithstanding all this, it was possible to look out of the window with pleasure, and to feel a distinct twinge of well-being. I’m not altogether without resources, he thought: we shall get by. We might even enjoy ourselves in the process.

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