No doubt we were microscopic in the great order of things: the soil changed colour on the day the Germans violated Belgian neutrality. It was a sign, apparently, that something, perhaps wooden, had rotted there. The Squire stood and wiped his pince-nez on a bright red ’kerchief, and cautioned us to proceed carefully. He replaced the spectacles on his nose with a great sigh of satisfaction, looking up at the cloudless August sky as if something had been answered from that quarter.
Then a moment of absolute peace ensued, a pause in which everyone present settled into stillness, our trowels and spades motionless, our heads bowed. Over the scarps and vales came the tinkle of sheep-bells, the far shouts of thistle-pulling labourers, the delirious trill of a high lark. The Cabbage Whites and Common Blues fluttered about our heads so close we could almost hear their papery wings. Even Dart, slow, blunt Dart, wiping his nose, appeared aware of the moment’s portentousness. Only the odd creak of a leather boot and young Tom Sedgwick’s wheezes served to remind us of our corporeal reality.
That evening the Vicar came round (the Rectory dwarfs my cottage) and over a glass of sherry stressed the teleological nature of ‘this Slav business’, looking upon it as some kind of cod-liver oil for the moral order. He bestowed himself in my old rocking-chair, squeaking it frightfully as he consumed at least a quarter of my sherry, and all but flung himself to the floor at the peak of his oration. It was only on the following morning, joining the others on the barrow, that I heard the inevitable — we started earlier than the newspaper boy, and in those days before the wireless Ulverton was still a refuge from the world of affairs. It was said jovially that a certain old shepherd by the name of Flower, living in a far-flung hut to the north of the village, and only coming in once a week for his provisions, was the last man in England to know we were at war. I felt envious of the fellow.
That morning, then, there was a curious mixture of the subdued and the excited amongst us. It seemed only fitting that this was the day of the first find. ‘Marlers’ Trevick suddenly yelped just before dusk in a manner that set the rooks off cawing in the nearby clump of elms. The Squire scrambled down (we had by now a fairly impressive depression) and bent over the spot at which Marlers was jabbing a thick forefinger. A small edge of something glinted in the sun.
Within minutes the Squire had lifted up a small bronze pot in which, as we swiftly discovered, huddled the burnt remains of an ancient Briton. We whooped with delight, and my blisters were forgotten. Ernest made elaborate notes while the rest of us uncorked our water-bottles and drank a rather tepid toast. Allun was despatched to fetch champagne, and when he returned the Squire opened the two bottles without pause, an action which sent frothy jets of Heidsieck’s Special Reserve over our sweaty countenances, and only just missed soaking our Bronze-Age friend. As I supped from the bottle, I felt the headiness of victory, and grew momentarily confused as to which great event we were celebrating: the uncovering of the ancient, or the call to arms.
Percy Cullurne was the Manor’s under-gardener at the time — between bouts of ploughing and so forth. He had downright refused to take part in the excavation; a mutinous decision which had exercised the Squire’s fury. But the man wasn’t to be budged, and was too loyal and hard-working a fellow to be dismissed for wishing to tend the estate rather than indulge his master’s latest whim.
One afternoon at the end of June, a month before the whim took body, I discovered the reason for this forthright stance. I was walking around the back of the estate, down the path known as the Pightle Way, switching at the defiant yellow splashes of ragwort with my walking stick, and thinking of nothing in particular (which is why, indeed, I walk), when I felt human eyes upon me, and on looking up saw Percy Cullurne staring hard over the barbed-wire fence that, alas, was strung in the stead of a hedge for that stretch of the little meadow.
He nodded, and I stopped. He was holding a scythe and was in the process of sharpening it on a wooden strickle greased with mutton fat. In those days this was a commoner sight, but I was still new enough to the English rural scene that these simple actions held a fascination for me. Although he was then a young man, the ease with which he swept the strickle along the huge curving blade betokened a lifetime of custom. It was, in fact, because of the way even boys looked as if their working skills had been sunk deep into them that I felt a sense of humility before these humble folk. Many of them were (and still are, in this year of 1928) barely literate, yet they could read things other than words — which are paltry specimens before the rich and complex pages of our ancient country. As our roads are tarmacadamed, and the hills littered with our hideous suburban boxes, one can feel this other knowledge wither as a leaf in frost. Ulverton slumbers on (despite the stinking motor-bus and motor-car), huddled about its white dusty roads; for no one has thought it worthwhile, as yet, to lay a smooth black ribbon through here, for the comfort of the pneumatic tyre, and the discomfort of those who wish to dwell in peace.
To return to the scene: after the usual pleasantries between the even rasps of the strickle, I told him that it was a pity he had decided to keep out of the ‘treasure hunt’. He stopped and straightened up. I had used the term in jest (the Squire had insisted on the academic nature of his interest, which explained the presence of Ernest and his notepad), but Cullurne took it literally.
‘There be the trouble, sir. En’t right, disturbin’ the dead for silver.’
I smiled.
‘We hope for more than silver. We hope for gold.’
‘There. En’t right.’
‘But my dear man,’ I said, a little more seriously, ‘our object isn’t to plunder. We hope to gain knowledge, and a glimpse of the artistic achievements of our forebears. Necklaces, carved artefacts, or whatever. And what’s more, the sight of someone who lived and breathed thousands of years ago on this very soil.’
His features barely altered.
‘An’ passed away,’ he said.
I smiled again. There was no doubting it: the man was as superstitious as they come, and this provoked in me a certain pleasure that such deeply-rooted instincts still held on in a scientific age.
‘Well,’ I replied, making ready to go, ‘if I see the remotest hint of a haunting, I’ll be the first to run blubbering into your cottage. But as it is I am convinced that nothing remains there but the breeze and the grass. I’m in need of the exercise and the change.’
‘Aye,’ he nodded, ‘the master tawld I. It be a gurt loss to you, sir, I ’spect.’
I thanked him for his reflections — the mention of my late wife had cast a pall on the erstwhile subject of our conversation — and continued on down the path until the hiss of the scythe had been obliterated by the summer afternoon’s attendant din: bees hummed over the dog-rose that clung to the ancient brick wall of the estate, and a flock of starlings was already raiding what fruit was spared by the frosts in the resplendent orchard that lay half-hidden behind (about which orchard, and its dark future role in this history, more later).