Science and folk memories agree that a great flood was fact, but the very reasonable assumption that some community progressing towards urban civilisation might have been drowned is considered fantasy. Why? After all, London and New York within a few millennia will with absolute certainty be under either ice or the sea. Fantasy would be the accusation against me. An accusation powered by jealousy perhaps, but unanswerable.
What was I to publish? What proof had I? I remember saying that bones were not the only memorial, but bones and artefacts, decently packed in the earth, at least give dates. I had found only two arrowheads and had no evidence at all to prove that they were contemporary with the ingots, though I believe they were. My theory, for what it’s worth, is that the seamen took to the country fully armed. After the massacre, two of the mortally wounded struggled back to the landing place and died side by side. The arrowheads in their bodies are all that remained. Laughable!
All laughable. I could hear the learned voices. In the patterns of the chop of the tide I could read the reviews. ‘Mere conjecture.’ ‘I am sorry that a man like Colet should have fallen for Atlantis.’ ‘All mixed up with a bunch of latter-day prophets he was.’ ‘Yes, I’ve been shown the ingots but I’m not impressed. Peruvian probably and from a wreck.’ ‘The glyptodont? Well, I’m told it’s possible that the carapace could be preserved under the silt, while the bones had of course disappeared. Pickled in salts, if I understood it. But what proof have we that Colet didn’t find it among some curios in a shop?’ ‘I hear he had the impudence to go to the British Museum with a gold bowl which was made yesterday.’
I decided that I could not publish, that I must leave my proofs – which are not proofs – to some later time when other discoveries may incline archaeologists to accept my story.
I swear that my motives were not hypocritical. I am not in the least afraid of giving the details of how I was led to the Shoots; it would be easy to leave out the irrelevancies of the den and of the deaths of Marrin and Evans. And I did not decide to keep my mouth shut because my wife would be stinking rich if I did. I kept it shut because I had nothing to add to history, and belief in my adventurers from the ocean would be damaged rather than confirmed.
Elsa was at Sharpness and ran down the water steps to greet my arrival.
‘You met a bit of spray,’ she said as she kissed me.
Running with the tide, there was no spray. It seems that I can become overwrought when forced to choose, so much alone, between two alternatives equally detestable.
We had to wait till dawn for the dinghy to enter the canal behind a little freighter with a sweet-smelling cargo of timber. Then we set off for London, placed our wealth in a metal deed box which had belonged to my grandfather and deposited it to join the cauldron in the bank, devoid of any idea what to do with either.
After a day’s rest in the flat with my delicious girl, so level-headed in all but love, we drove down to Sharpness again to take the boats up to the Bullo mooring on the morning tide. While we were sitting in the sun on that lawn, exclaiming like a pair of children at the lovely product of nothing but silt and sheep, she asked, ‘Do you think we could go and see what’s happened at Broom Lodge?’
‘You, but not me. They mustn’t see any connection between you and me and Wigpool.’
‘Suppose the major has been chucked out?’
‘If he has been, take care that you are never alone and get out quick!’
I didn’t like it, but I knew that the commune was still a part of her life. When we first fell in love she had protested at being considered ‘maternal’. But in fact her feeling towards Broom Lodge was inevitably maternal. She could not be expected to keep away.
‘It will be all right. I’m still St Elsa,’ she said.
‘But St Elsa has the cauldron.’
‘That’s why I ought to show myself. And I have a good excuse – I need my clothes and things.’
I stopped close to the colony, and she walked the rest of the way as if she had just come down from Gloucester by bus. Then I concealed the car under the oaks – I was getting quite good at that – and took up my old post in the foxgloves where I could watch the back of the house.
The major had not been chucked out. She led him round the west wing where I could see him. To my amazement he had adopted the tonsure of the druidicals. Was he following the practice of the Celtic church and had Arthur gone pagan? No doubt he had a good reason and no doubt I should not be able to understand it.
She took my advice and did not stay long. When she returned, with a suitcase in each hand, she told me that she had not seen any of the six but had been received with touching affection by all the ordinary members of the commune whom she had met. Denzil had warned her that affairs were critical but that he would not give up. ‘Give up what?’ she asked, and only received the typical reply that he was not worthy. She tried to tell him that we knew the origin of her uncle’s gold and had the lot. He was not interested. She had the impression that he was busy with some spiritual awakening of the colonists and that finance was of no importance. Nothing was yet safe, he told her, and the pagans must be delivered from temptation, so she had better clear off. He would come to the den in the afternoon. Choice of the den seemed to indicate that the druidicals were wandering through the bracken as irresponsibly as frightened pigs and might interrupt us at the old rendezvous of the sapling stump.
After a quick lunch we went up to the den. It was much as I had left it. Again I was threatened by the melancholy of disappointment and had to shake it off. I had spent so long there, hot on the track of the mysterious cauldron. It had indeed been a Grail for me, to be revealed through danger, discomfort and the reverence of the seeker. Perhaps that is the essential mystery of any Grail. It exists but, when you know it exists, it exists no longer.
The major turned up, climbing the slope in the heat of the afternoon with the determination of the wandering friar he called himself. In the depths of his eyes, somewhat fish-like in his club, shining in the forest, I could see that he was carrying the shield of Arthur into battle.
‘I need a miracle, old boy,’ he said.
I answered that I had run through several miracles in the last few days and hadn’t one left.
‘Do they still believe I pinched the ornaments?’ Elsa asked.
‘Doesn’t matter. Executor chap called Dunwiddy has been after me. I told him how we’d found the bag digging out a new rubbish pit and were short of cash. Right, he says, we’ll sell ’em, major. He knew the name of the firm which bought from Simeon, so we took the bag up to town. Glad to see us, they were. Weighed. Assayed. Paid by cheque to late Mr Marrin’s executors. No questions asked. Broom Lodge products well known. Clever devil, Simeon was.’
It was my failure to see how the commune made a profit which had first set me off. Elsa was not so astonished. She knew her uncle did sell his wares, but no more than that. Whenever Broom Lodge needed money, it had been transformed from Marrin’s personal account which she never saw.
‘No reason why you should. Laundry. Catering. Sales of meat and vegetables. Shoulder to cry on. But uncle’s private account not your business and not the commune’s.’
‘You mean that all his work in gold had a market?’ Elsa asked.
I didn’t see why she should look at me with such sudden intensity, but the major was prompt to understand.
‘Give us half. Instalments as and when. Is it a deal?’
‘Done! But there isn’t a goldsmith among the lot.’
‘Will be, if I have my way. What do you think I’ve gone bald for, Piers?’