Small Finds
The Summer Dig
Chapter 1
Monday 28th June 2010
You know what it’s like. Things are going along just fine and then someone pulls the rug out from under your life and everything starts falling in on top of you, like Sampson in the Philistine temple. That’s how it feels. Falling masonry.
When he arrived on site, it was like a scene from a film about Passchendaele: all mud, water and ruin. It put him in mind of the poets Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen and of Vaughan Williams’ second symphony.
It had been the wettest June on record.
He had read somewhere that July was the wettest month of the year, beating December and January, but the weather seemed to have gone haywire and, nowadays, you never knew what you were going to get from one day to the next. It was climate change, or the government, or something. In light of the recent election result, he was inclined to believe it was the government.
Dark, lumbering trucks reversed up to the gate and tipped their loads of stone in the gateway and Colin Squires, perched high in the cab of his JCB, spread the stone across the corner of the field that would serve as a car park and a place to put the temporary toilets. The loos would be arriving any day now.
Colin’s JCB glowed yellow in the damp air as he parked the mechanical beast and jumped down to walk across to the shelter of the marquee.
"You’ve got a problem here," Colin said.
The problem was that the trench, covered at the end of last year’s dig, was now full of water. It looked like a giant paddling pool.
"The students will love it," Joe said.
That was what he was worrying about. How could he let fifty or sixty students loose in this battlefield? He needed a miracle.
He got his miracle.
The next day, the rain stopped, the grass dried out and the site hut and the marquee, and everything else, dripped quietly waiting for students to arrive.
For a day or two, or three, the place exists in an indeterminate state, like an abandoned city; like a ghost ship drifting on a formless sea. The emptiness of the place seems to emphasise that it is a temporary camp; the latest in a long line of occupation.
The land remains, he thinks, but the people come and go.
There is work to do if this place is going to be ready for the students when they arrive. His grandmother used to say: ‘Everything in its place and a place for everything’. That was his aim as he stood at the edge of the trench that Thursday morning. Broderick Arnot wanted to see everything in its place. He wanted to see everything located, measured and recorded.
It's Thursday evening and Broderick is watching Joe Fitchitt operate the dumpy level. Joe has the instrument on the ordnance datum point they established last year. Knowing that one fixed point, they can measure the level of everything in the trench and its height above sea level.
This skill, that of using a surveyor’s level, is one of the skills students will learn this summer. Broderick Arnot is looking forward to their arrival. He loves working with the students. They have so much life, so much energy; so much potential.
It is one more day before they start to arrive.
“Up a bit. Back a bit. Right a bit.”
Joe Fitchitt is yelling instructions to a young woman in the trench. She moves the vertical, red and white pole backwards and forwards until Joe is satisfied, then she hammers in a peg. They make a good team: Joe, the blond giant, his hair tied back in a ponytail and his face bronzed by the weather, and Mariam, petite and dark. Mariam Bandarachaka is of Bangladeshi descent, or perhaps Indian, or Pakistani, or something. He cannot remember exactly.
He knows Mariam’s ancestors came from somewhere near Calcutta but she was born and brought up here, in Lynchcombe Sandicott, in Gloucestershire. In her day jobs, she works as a librarian at Ancester College and in the town library.
Mariam Bandarachaka moves closer carrying a yellow plastic bucket with its white pegs, hammer, surveying tape and string, and the red and white pole.
“How’s it going?” Broderick asks.
“Good,” she says. “We’ll have it straight by tonight.”
There is another yell from Joe.
“Sorry,” she says. “Have to go.”
She waves at Joe and moves off to mark the next point of the grid.
A sudden voice at Broderick’s elbow makes him jump and he turns to find Sue Feenan standing next to him. She has a problem.
“There’s no electricity in the office,” she says.
“Yes, there is.”
“No, there effing isn’t.”
“Yes, there is. It’s there,” Broderick says. “You just can’t see it.”
He ducks.
The generator has stopped and Robin Gadnall has gone home. Someone has to fix it. After a few attempts, Broderick gets it going and Sue does what she needs to do. By the time she has finished and leaves the office it is almost ten thirty.
Broderick Arnot sits at the desk for a few moments longer. Here he is, he thinks. He is the director of the student summer dig for the School of Archaeology. He has mixed feelings about it, to be honest. Of course, this is where he likes to be, out in the field, on a dig with the students but it has meant cancelling the family holiday and, to add to his discomfort, today is Alison’s birthday.
He pulls the laptop towards him and types in a message:
Thursday 2 July 2010. Dig HQ. Lynchcombe Sandicott.
Hope you’ve had a good day. Happy birthday!
The students start arriving tomorrow. Everything’s ready but I’m knackered.
Turning in now. Sleep well. Love you, Brodie
He clicks the button and his email shoots off round the globe, hopping from one satellite to another and back to planet Earth before landing, he hopes, in the computer in the corner of the living room at home in County Durham. He closes the computer and pushes it away, but he doesn’t leave. He stays where he is and lets the day seep away around him into the summer night.
There is a newspaper lying on the desk and he picks it up and runs his eyes over the headlines but he is too tired to read it and he puts it back on the desk. He read it earlier. He knows what is in it.
He unplugs the computer and puts it away in the drawer, locks the desk and pushes himself to his feet. He stretches and rolls his shoulders and goes out, turning off the light and closing the door.
Outside, he shuts off the generator.
Silence.
Softly, it has started to rain.
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