He pushed back his cap, rubbed at his muddy forehead, and gave Ellen the ghost of a smile. ‘So it is. Of course, we were dancing at the weekend, weren’t we, Ellen, lass?’
How could it be possible that so little time had passed since the ceilidh at Inchfort Field? It felt like …
Sandy took advantage of Ellen’s archaeological drawing experience and put her to work immediately. He gave her the sketching block and pencils that he’d assigned to Jamie, freeing up Jamie to help lift away the crumbling slabs of prehistoric oak. You wouldn’t have thought it would be back-breaking work, but it was, squatting and bending and lifting. The closer we got to the bottom of the woodpile the damper, and consequently the more intact, the slabs became.
We kept working. Catriona Lennox, the photographer, either felt that she was on to something or else was genuinely interested in the hopeless project, and she stuck with us stalwartly, changing films occasionally and asking Sandy lots of questions.
We’d have forgotten to stop to eat, except that Mother conspired with Mary Kinnaird to bring us sandwiches while the library was closed for the midday dinner break. And it was brave of Mary too, knowing how many people were about – reporters and photographers and the pipeline workmen and the general summer holiday rabble, all of them staring (or trying not to stare) at her smooth, unfinished features, and her shining ear trumpet and her fearful determination not to acknowledge anybody as she passed.
She pulled up short, then took a step backward, when she saw Ellen sitting there drawing, perched on a shooting stick with a leather seat, straight-backed and glorious with her long coppery hair falling down her back like licks of flame. Sandy was leaning over her, murmuring something in her ear with one hand on her shoulder, stabbing the forefinger of his other hand with emphasis at the shapeless block of wood Jamie was holding.
I saw panic and hatred cross Mary’s face. It wasn’t intolerance this time. It was pure green jealousy. Sandy was hers.
‘Mary!’ I called.
She was carrying a net bag of provisions in each hand. I took one from her and reminded her, ‘I told you about Ellen.’
‘Yes.’ The look in Mary’s eyes was wintry.
‘She only just arrived this morning. She came back to collect her dog. But we knew she’d done the other drawings, so …’
I spoke without speaking aloud, moving my lips so that only Mary could hear me with her eyes. Sandy’s in love with the Bronze Age log boat and I think maybe with you, so please just be nice to Ellen because she is my friend.
Mary stared at me. ‘You said … ?’
I nodded silently.
Then suddenly Mary pealed with laughter.
‘Whisht, away wi’ you, Julia. You were aye a wee sook!’
I took one of her bags. ‘You’ll not be cross with her?’
‘If Sandy’s to work with her, I suppose I must as well,’ said Mary bravely.
It is possible there are some things you want so badly that you will change your life to make them happen.
*
It was at exactly that moment that Jamie prised up what looked like the last slab of the pile. Beneath it was mud.
‘Sandy, I think they’ve buried a bit of it under this.’
He scraped away damp earth with a trowel, his touch light and delicate as a musician’s. ‘Julie, give me a hand.’
There was a catch in his voice that was excitement.
I gave the net bag back to Mary and knelt down to join him. In five minutes we’d unearthed a smooth, flat plane of darkly polished oak that wasn’t in the least bit damaged.
‘Put it back!’ Sandy cried. ‘Don’t uncover any more – slap all the mud back on, keep it in the peat! No, wait, what’s that? Careful, Jamie, lad, give her a bit of room, don’t use your fingers.’
I picked at the mud with the trowel tip. I was black with peat up to my elbows. (Jean McEwen’s words echoed in my head: Och, peat never hurt anyone.) Ellen was leaning over my shoulder now, sketching as fast as she could.
What we’d found was a bit like the stern end of a punt – the corner of a flat ledge with six inches of rope still attached to a loophole bored through the wood. We’d found six inches of three-thousand-year-old rope.
Sandy identified it. I uncovered it. Ellen drew it. Catriona Lennox photographed it, and Jamie covered it up again.
When we turned to Sandy he was grey as a Tay pearl and sweating. He is in love with that boat – tragically in love.
‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘Leave it. I’ll ring the director of the National Museum. My God.’
‘Sandwiches,’ Mary told him firmly, and he laughed.
‘Oh, Mary!’
He stood up and kissed her on the mouth, in full view of everyone and as naturally as if she were already his wife. ‘Yes, thank you!’
After that we had to send Mary back to the library to telephone the Water Bailiff so he could come and chase away the crowd. He tried to chase Ellen away too, no doubt because he knows how much Mary dislikes the McEwens; but of course we wouldn’t let him. Then when he spotted all the gear Ellen had with her, he made up some non-existent rule about how only Alan McEwen is allowed to camp at Inchfort Field. Sandy coolly set him straight. Sandy’s blood was up and he was on fine form. I think he was ready to take on anyone.
We went back the next day, and the next, as if we were criminals revisiting the scene of a robbery.
The expert from the National Museum of Antiquities came out on the train and we had to show him to the site. Of course when we got to the boat there wasn’t much to see. Neither Sandy nor the chap from the museum dared to uncover the wonderful thing (‘Stern of Bronze Age log boat with tow line in situ’), but they talked and talked about it, planning how they’d uncover and preserve it and what the proposed schedule would be like and how they might get the Glenfearn School to cooperate with them, and Jamie and Ellen and I got bored.
We were kicking our heels along the mouth of the Fearn where it meets the Tay, and the tide was down. The workers from the pipeline had disappeared overnight. There was one steam digger still parked in the water meadow, but the rest had vanished, and we took this to mean that they’d finished their work.
‘They’ve run that pipeline straight through the reed beds,’ Jamie said. ‘I bet we could walk along the line they’ve cut and cross to your willow banks on the other side of the Tay. I’ve never seen the tide this low.’
‘It’s a spring tide,’ Ellen told him. ‘That’s why.’
Frank Dunbar had told me the same thing. He’d said that the river would be especially low at the end of July.
‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ I said.
So we set off along the course that the pipes for the new pool were going to take.