The Golden Child. Penelope Fitzgerald

presence here, Jones. You have already been drafted, and your place, as usual, is in Stores. The real danger point is the approach to the tomb,’ he added in a louder voice; ‘that’s been agreed, both with you and higher up.’ The bronze hand jumped the last minute, both inside and on the public face outside the building, and with the august movement of a natural disaster the wave of human beings lapped up the steps and entered the hall. The first public day of the Museum’s winter exhibition of the Golden Child had begun.

      It was the dreaded Primary Schools day. The courtyards had been partitioned by the darkly gleaming posters announcing the Exhibition. On each poster was a pale representation, in the style of Maurice Denis, of the Golden Child and the Ball of Golden Twine, with much fancy lettering, and a promise of reduced prices of admission for the very old and the very young. The moving files wound, like a barbarian horde, among these golden posters: five or six thousand children, mostly dressed in blue cotton trousers once thought suitable only for oppressed Chinese peasants, and little plastic jackets; half unconscious with cold, having long since eaten the sandwiches which were intended for several hours later, more or less under the control of numbed teachers, insistent, single-minded, determined to see and to have seen. Like pilgrims of a former day, they were earning their salvation by reaching the end of a journey.

      At one point in the courtyard a faint steam or smoke, like that of a camp-fire, rose above the cloud of breath from the swarming red-and-blue-nosed children. It was the field kitchen of the WVS, with urns at the simmer, strategically placed to help those who might otherwise collapse before they reached the steps. Here they all paused a moment, drank an inch of hot catering tea, sweetened at too early a stage for any choice to be made, threw down their plastic cups on the frozen ground and then advanced over what soon became a carpet of plastic cups, blowing on their stiff hands in order to turn the pages of the catalogue which they already knew by heart.

      They were not ignorant, these heroically enduring thousands. On the contrary, they were very well informed, and had been for months, as to the nature and content of the Treasure, past which they would file today, perhaps for thirty minutes.

      Life among the Garamantians was not really much as we know it today due to their living in Africa in 449 B.C. (HERODOTUS) says they did this. They exchanged gold for salt. (HERODOTUS) says they did this. They had gold, other people had salt, contrary to what we see in England today. They buried their Kings in caves in rocks. So the caves were (TOMBS). When the King was a small child they buried him in a small cave. The dead body was covered with gold. He had a ball of golden (TWINE) to find the way back from the Underground. This was confusing, as is the London Underground. Twine is what we call string, but the Garamantians used different words, due to living in Africa in 944 B.C. When they spoke the sound was likened to the shrill twittering of a bat. Well, personally I have not heard a bat, but it is a Faint Shriek. The child also had Golden Toys put with him to play with after death, as there was no way for him to have proper things — bikes, choppers etc. — as we know them today. I will end here as sir has told us to give in the (CATALOGUE).

      The above, one of many projects faithfully carried by their authors to the source of knowledge, was accurate as far as it went. Of the Garamantes Herodotus tells us that they lived in the interior of Africa, near the oases in the heart of the Sahara, and that ‘their language bears no resemblance to that of any other nation, for it is like the screeching of bats’ (nukterides). Twice a year, when the caravans of salt arrived from the north, it was their custom to creep out without being seen and to leave gold in exchange for the salt, for which they had a craving; if it was not accepted, they would put out more gold in the night, but still without allowing themselves to be seen.

      They dried the bodies of their dead kings in the sun and buried them in coffins of the precious salt, hardened in the air to a rock-like substance and painted to look like the persons inside; but the corpse itself was covered with gold leaf, which does not corrupt, and since the Garamantians believed that the dead would like to return often, although they might not always be able to do so, they buried with them a ball of fine golden string, to wind and unwind on their journey to the unseen.

      The schoolchildren also knew that the Golden Treasure of the Garamantes had been rediscovered in 1913 by Sir William Simpkin, then a very young man and, it must seem, considerably luckier than the archaeologists of today.

      Sir William Livingstone Simpkin was born the son of a (MAINTENANCE ENGINEER) which was then called a stoker at a warehouse. They lived down by the old East India Docks. He was named after an explorer. Some say there is a fate in names. He did not go much to school and helped at the warehouse unloading the crates, similarly to what we do for Saturday jobs. Well, this crate had tiles in it from (LACHISH) which is mentioned in the Bible. Well, all these tiles had been sent for a great (ARCHAEOLOGIST) Sir Flinders Petrie. So he took a kindly interest in him. You could train for a bit at London University, he said. Then you would understand the writing on them tiles. So this was how he got started on his work. Unfortunately, his wife is dead.

      Sir William, in extreme but clear-headed old age, and after a lifetime of fieldwork, had come to roost in the Museum itself. The vast building was constructed so that no one could see in through any of the windows; otherwise the little lean old figure, with large white moustaches like those of Sir Edward Elgar, might have been glimpsed at a desk on the fourth floor, gently turning the pages of a book. He would have been recognised, even though it was many years since he last appeared on TV, for his appearance had passed into popular mythology. His almost transparent ancient fingers lay across the sepia photographs and the letters and newspaper cuttings crumbling at the edges to dust.

      Sir William was playing at defeating Time by turning his pages at random. Here, in the section of June 1913, was Al Moussa, the Chief Minister, who had been persuaded into allowing him to examine the tombs, on condition they were sealed again for ever. Al Moussa was smiling nervously, in formal morning dress, and with many medals; he had not lasted long. There, on the next page, armed with lethal old rifles, were the band of wild Kurds, expelled from Turkey, who had guarded the expedition across the desert, raggedly devoted to their master; all went well till the return to Tripoli, when the Kurds, deprived of their women for many months, rushed headlong into the brothel quarter, scattering their cargo of notes and scientific measurements to the wind.

      ‘Poor fellows!’ murmured Sir William.

      He turned, for a few moments only, for he was quite without personal vanity, to the official photograph of the actual rediscovery of the tomb; he looked so young, like a scanty bundle of washing, it seemed to him now, there in his tropical whites, pointing to the blurred and shadowy entrance.

      ‘Pardon me, Sir William, I wonder if you’d just take a look at this.’

      It was Deputy Security who had trampled into the room and, awkwardly jolting the old man from past to present, laid a piece of bright yellow paper, a leaflet, on the open photograph album.

      GOLD IS FILTH

      FILTH IS BLOOD

      Do you realise that there are People who are Manipulating you in their Own Interests and who are seeing to it that you go to the Exhibition in your Millions in Spite of the fact that it is under a Curse. This So-called Treasure, which has been hidden from Mortal Eye for sixty years, is several times referred to in Holy Writ, where we are told that to ‘look upon Gold is the Body of Death’. When the Treasure arrived on this soil, the Dockers and Transport Workers were not allowed to Move it by Order of their democratically elected Unions. Ask yourself, Why was This? The Truth is that those who look upon the Exhibition are doomed, and yet they are paying 50p for the Privilege. Know the Truth, and the Truth shall Save Ye 50p.

      GOLD IS DEATH

      ‘Where did this come from?’ asked Sir William, always sympathetic, however inconvenient it might be, to genuine distress.

      ‘They just seemed to appear from nowhere in their hundreds among the queues, all over the forecourt. One moment there was nothing, then these leaflets all over the place, wherever you looked. They’re all picking them up and perusing them, sir.’

      Sir William turned the yellow paper over in his thin old fingers.

      ‘Is there any disturbance?’

      ‘Well,