Lovers and Newcomers. Rosie Thomas

      ‘How long is all this going to take? As a formality, of course?’

      The archaeologist met his eye. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

      ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

      Amos went to the site manager’s Portakabin and Miranda could see him vigorously making his points while the builder shook his head and fended him off with raised hands. Then Amos took out his mobile phone. Colin walked away and stood at a little distance, apparently contemplating the view. Katherine and Miranda were left at the side of the trench.

      Seeing Miranda’s pallor Katherine asked, ‘Are you all right?’

      Almost to herself Miranda said, ‘I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it before, but bones are so intimate when you’d really expect them to be quite dry and inanimate, wouldn’t you? It’s so apparent that once there was flesh and sinews and smooth skin. We were looking at a person’s leg, part of the body of a real person who lived and breathed, and then you have to take in the fact that they’ve been lying there in the ground for thousands of years. Jake and I used to come here sometimes and have a picnic, looking out over this view. It rather changes the picture, doesn’t it?’

      Katherine touched her arm. ‘Do you want to go back to the house?’

      Miranda was grateful for her concern. Realizing that she was still holding her picnic glass, she tipped the residue of her drink into the grass. The plastic was smeared and there was a scum of orange pulp sticking to the sides.

      ‘No, I want to see what’s going to happen. Champagne seems suddenly a bit off key, though, doesn’t it? Shall we go back and just sit down for a bit?’

      They could hear Amos still shouting on the telephone. The archaeologist had made some calls too, and now he took out a camera and started snapping the open trench from various angles. The workmen were gathered around the caravan with their sandwiches and copies of the Sun.

      The two women went back to their vantage point and sat down. Miranda dropped the empty champagne bottle into her basket and unscrewed the foot of her glass. It was becoming clear that they were going to have to wait some time for any developments. Miranda rested her chin on her knees. She had been thinking about Jake, and the quiet graveyard of Meddlett church where he was buried. Then her thoughts switched to Colin as she watched him strolling down to the distant fence marking the boundary of what had once been Miranda’s land and was now Amos’s.

      She asked suddenly, ‘K? Do you think Colin is any happier living here with us, or is he just going through the motions?’

      ‘Of living, or trying to be happy?’

      ‘Doing one, while feeling obliged to attempt the other. There’s a glass wall around him, don’t you think? Ever since Stephen was killed. It’s as if he’s here because of not knowing where else to be? Although, come to think of it, maybe he’s not alone in that. Do you remember the times when we all used to live our lives, not just inhabit a corner of them?’

      Katherine turned to look at Miranda’s face. After a moment she answered, ‘I don’t know what it must be like for Colin. Polly may know more, with her and Colin being so close, but probably none of us can do more than imagine. But, yes. He has put up barriers. Do you remember how exuberant he used to be?’

      ‘I do. The Ibiza trip?’

      Laughter chased the sadness out of Miranda’s eyes as they acknowledged the memory.

      In the mid-1970s, when Amos was insisting to Katherine that he was going to marry her so she had better get to know and like his friends, he had rented a holiday villa near San Antonio and invited a dozen people for a summer holiday. In the party were Miranda and the actor she was at that time considering as a potential husband, and Colin and the man with whom he had recently fallen in love.

      Stephen was five years older than Colin. He was a compact, rather unsmiling businessman who didn’t try very hard to integrate himself into the group. He didn’t particularly enjoy the island nightlife, he didn’t take any drugs or even drink very much, and it was obvious that he had only come on the holiday because he wanted to be with beautiful and extrovert Colin, whatever that might take.

      It was a big enough group to absorb his differences without them seeming particularly noticeable, Miranda recalled, and in any case it was the time when Amos was remodelling himself as a traditionalist barrister and upholder of family values, which was much more remarkable and amusing to them all.

      One day, when most of them were too sunburned and hungover to do anything but lie in the shade beyond the pool, Colin and Stephen whiled away the siesta hour by dressing up.

      Miranda remembered waking up from a nap. Done up as Carmen Miranda, ‘As a tribute to you, of course,’ he had told her, Colin was kneeling precariously on a lilo in the middle of the pool. He was wearing a flamenco skirt, a bra top, gold hoop earrings, full make-up and a hat made out of a laden fruit bowl topped with a crest of bananas. He wobbled to his feet and began to strum a guitar. He managed a passable samba rhythm and a warble of ‘Bananas is My Business.’ But even with this apparition in front of them, it was Stephen they were all gaping at. He was arranged on a second lilo, two legs crammed into one leg of a pair of lime green trousers and two feet into a single swimming flipper. He was slowly combing the strands of a very old and matted long blonde wig to tumble over his hairy chest and looking at Colin with a parody of adoration that very clearly had real devotion embedded in it.

      That was the first inkling that Miranda or any of Colin’s friends had of the extreme contradictions in Stephen’s nature. There were, they understood, all kinds of warring elements concealed under the solid exterior. It suddenly became much less surprising that Colin found him so interesting.

      It was only a few seconds before Carmen Miranda very slowly and with great dignity tilted sideways into the water. Stephen neatly caught the guitar as it fell past him. Miranda’s actor cine-filmed the whole sequence.

      ‘I wish I had that film,’ Miranda sighed. ‘I’d give anything to see it again.’

      ‘Do you ever see whatshisname? The actor?’ Katherine wondered.

      ‘No. What was his name? Although in fact, I did see him about three years ago. In an episode of Holby City.’

      ‘Any good?’

      Miranda laughed delightedly. ‘As a psychopathic father on the run while his teenaged daughter haemorrhaged in casualty? Absolutely excellent. I’ve probably got some photographs of the Carmen Miranda event in a box somewhere.’

      ‘We should get the old pictures out.’

      ‘Maybe.’

      Katherine said, ‘It’s good to have these shared memories. It’s historic glue.’

      Miranda considered for a moment, and then asked, ‘Do you ever feel that you’re only inhabiting your life, K?’

      Katherine studied the patch of turf framed by her knees. There were ants busy between the blades of grass. Then she lifted her head. The archaeologist had descended into the trench once again.

      ‘I did. Sometimes. I think being here has changed that.’

      ‘Has it?’ Miranda was pleased. ‘Has it really?’ She seized on any confirmation that the Mead collaboration was working as she hoped.

      Katherine said quickly, ‘Of course, I had Amos and the boys, and work, and people coming to dinner, all those things, so I wasn’t exactly lonely, but I did feel that I was sort of watching from the sidelines rather than pitching into the scrum myself. And I would use a bloody rugby metaphor, wouldn’t I, as if even the language for framing my own experiences has to be borrowed from my menfolk?’

      She attempted a laugh at this, while Miranda only raised her eyebrows.

      ‘But I feel different here, being with you and Colin and Selwyn and Polly. It’s old ground, yet new at the same time. There’s a sense of anticipation,