loved them, in the undemonstrative way they favoured (they didn’t hold with kissing and hugging. That was for other folk, the sort who liked to make a show of things), but staying with them was boring.
At home with my working mother I got fish fingers and tinned spaghetti on toast, which was what I liked to eat, but at Nanny and Gamps’s there was bright yellow haddock disgustingly cooked in milk, complete with skin and brackish foam, and mystifying lemon curd tart instead of Wagon Wheels or mini swiss rolls in red and silver foil.
At my grandparents’ I coiled myself up and concentrated even harder on growing up as quickly as possible, in order to make my escape into a more glamorous world. I never doubted that I would do it. I must have been an unrewarding grandchild for them.
Colin says, ‘We find Jake’s pedigree remarkable now. We didn’t back then, did we? Who cared about Amos’s background except as a good joke, or anything about that etiolated guy who lived on his staircase who was the grandson of a duke? None of us was interested in what had been or what had made us, except maybe in working out how to overthrow it. What was important was what we were going to make happen. That was the gift of our generation. The absolute conviction that we could change the world.’
‘Yes. It’s only since we failed to do that and then discovered that we were going to get old as well that we’ve started to be hungry for history.’
‘And that’ll be a tenner in the box, please,’ Colin says.
‘Damn.’
What started out as a joke between Selwyn and Amos has gathered momentum at the New Mead (spoken within the same quotation marks that we now employ for New Labour).
Whenever any of us remarks that we are old, or mentions something that we did when we were young but can no longer enjoy or endorse, a fine is levied. It started at a pound, but that turned out not to be a sufficiently serious deterrent. There are plans to use the accumulated fund for the most unlikely group outing any of us can come up with. The current front-runner is a weekend’s extreme snowboarding in St Anton.
‘Jake never had any illusions about changing the world. He believed in micro initiatives like selling the estate cottages, so the people who lived in them and worked on the land could own their homes. He never went on a demo in his life. He poked fun at me about my agitprop days.’
‘Jake wasn’t a Boomer, he belonged to the previous generation. I bet he’d have gone on the countryside march, though.’
I smile. ‘Yeah, he would. I went on it for him.’
We cross the Meddlett road and climb a low hill crowned with a line of crooked oak trees. They are still holding on to their dun and yellow leaves, but through the thinning screen I can see the dense nodes of mistletoe. From the windows of Mead these trees are familiar sentries on the skyline.
We turn to look back the way we have come. Colin is out of breath.
‘Look,’ I say unnecessarily.
The land dips to the road, then unrolls all the way in front of us. There is the small natural plateau and vantage point that now belongs to Amos, and the fence that marks his boundary and mine. I have always known that it was a commanding spot. It seems obvious, now, that ancient people would have chosen it for the same reason.
In the shelter of the trees Colin sits down to rest on the step of a stile.
We can see the white tent, and people processing in and out of it. Without binoculars I can’t be sure but I assume the two figures who seem to be kneeling in prayer are in fact still patiently sieving earth from the grave. There are a couple of parked vans and a car, but no sign of any of Amos’s contractors.
‘And now six hundred years seems relatively modern. A mere interlude,’ Colin murmurs.
This chimes precisely with my own thoughts.
‘All that time, while the land was being settled and farmed, then bought and sold, plague coming and going, the crops growing, cattle grazing, Jake’s highwayman ancestor sticking his pistols in his belt and galloping off on his black stallion, those two were lying there. Ancient, invisible.’
‘Even though we’ve dug them up again they are still inscrutable,’ he says.
‘I expect the osteologist and the Iron-Age man from Oxford will soon be able to tell us everything about them,’ I sigh.
Colin glances at me.
‘Do you mind that?’
‘Not exactly. It’s more on their behalf that I regret the disturbance. Two thousand years of unbroken peace, then along comes Amos with his ground source heating system.’
‘From my own completely detached and therefore selfish point of view,’ Colin offers, ‘I rather appreciate the contrast of scale. Looking back a couple of millennia does put one’s personal, short-term problems into perspective.’
I turn my head to look at him. Polly and Katherine and I, now that we are living so closely together, have taken to describing versions of our problems to one another. But it’s unusual for Colin to touch even this lightly on his feelings.
I say, ‘Talking your problems over with your friends might achieve the same result, without the archaeological intervention.’
Unfortunately this comes out sounding like a criticism, which I didn’t intend at all.
‘Mirry, you’re a sympathetic ear, I know that. But I’m not much good at soul-baring. What can you really say to anyone, even your closest friends, about personal loss? Or about the individual slow decline, or sudden end, that’s lying in wait for us all?’
I blurt out, ‘Because that is part of the human condition. And to share the grief and the fear, those things we’ve all known by the time we get to our age, as well as the picnics and birthdays, isn’t that what we’re put here for? At the very least, to ease each other’s loneliness?’
He says very gently, ‘I’ve no idea why we’re put here. To me there seems less of a reason for our existence than there probably did to the Warrior Prince and his cup-bearer over there.’
Across the fields and floating tree tops we watch a sudden flurry of activity on the site. A large open crate is borne out of the tent and laid on the grass, and every one of the distant figures lays down their tools and crowds around to look. Colin stands up, brushing leaves and moss from his coat.
‘What’s happening, I wonder?’
I can’t help reflecting aloud, ‘Wouldn’t Jake have been fascinated?’
‘He would.’ Colin puts his arms around me and holds me close against him. He has always found non-sexual touching easy and natural, unlike a straight man.
Jake died after only a short illness, here at Mead, with me beside him. He was twenty years older than me; I can’t even say that he was snatched away before his time. Not like Colin’s Stephen, who was murdered. Almost casually, for money for a fix, by a boy he had taken up with after he and Colin broke up. Without it ever having been discussed, I know that Colin blames himself. If he and Stephen had still been together there would have been no casual sex with dangerous young men.
I’m trying to find a way to acknowledge that my loss is painful to a lesser degree than his, but it’s too clumsy a sentiment to put into words. Colin probably reads my mind in any case. I ask abruptly, ‘Tell me, how are you? What about the illness?’
To my surprise he laughs. ‘Polly wants me to get off with the luscious chef at the Griffin.’
‘Well, why not?’
It’s nice being held by Colin. I’m not cold, but the warmth our bodies hatches between us is welcome. Not for the first time I reflect what a shame it is that he’s not interested in women.
‘Dearest. I don’t need a chef in my life.’
‘I