'Nigel,' Lysette said, as if speaking to a five-year-old.
'They won't know that.'
He shrugged. 'Just seems wrong. Dishonest, even.'
'Can we just get on with it? We can discuss ethics later.'
They were allowed through the entrance to the dig, already well under way. Lysette handed him the script.
Nigel went to his mark. He read through it as he walked, committing it to memory without memorizing it so well that he merely regurgitated it verbatim. His heart sank as he scanned the text: it was the same banal and empty bilge he'd read while stumbling through Kensal Green cemetery.
Then, it didn't matter; he could have been reciting 'The Owl and the Pussycat'. But this was being committed to tape with a view to being shown.
When you're ready, Nige,' Guy shouted from his spot.
Sod it, Nigel thought. I'll read it and we can discuss its merits later. He took his first steps. The dead are around us all the time. Sometimes closer than we think. And sometimes our worlds and their worlds collide. The living need more space and sometimes the dead have to give way. The past must give way to the present. Here in Islington, an old burial ground is being excavated so a new development can be built. Thousands of bodies must be moved. We're here to find out about the people are who are lying beneath the soil, how they died, the story of their lives, and watch as they are found a new resting place ... I can't read this crap.'
'Cut!'
'Nigel,' Lysette said. What's wrong? That was going well.
You were a bit stiff, but there was a nice flow and rhythm.'
'It's the script,' he said. 'It's all wrong. "The past must give way to the present"? Why? I don't believe that for a second. The present needs to have some bloody respect for the past and stop walking all over it. Because it was the past that helped build the fucking present.'
Lysette looked both hurt and angry. 'I told you I had less than twenty-four hours to do this,' she said.
Nigel felt bad. His criticism was hardly constructive. He scrabbled around for an apology, and then had another idea. 'Look, it's OK. I like it, but I just don't agree with it.
How about if I give it my own imprint?'
'Be my guest,' Lysette said.
He returned to his mark deep in thought, not even noticing when the excavator engines fell silent. He turned, and seeing Lysette give him the nod, started walking.
'Dead men don't tell tales, so the saying goes. Nothing could be further from the truth. The dead speak to us in many different ways. And we ignore their voices at our peril. It is supreme arrogance to think there is nothing we can't learn from those who preceded us. We just have to learn how to listen. In this burial ground lie the bodies of fifteen thousand men, women and children who strived and lived a long time ago; fifteen thousand stories that have never been told; fifteen thousand dreams that may never have been fulfilled. Soon they will be laid to rest once more in a new burial place. Before the developers move in, it is our job to find out how they lived. Who were they?
How did they die? What secrets can they tell us from the grave? In this programme we hope to find out.' He stopped walking. He placed his hands, which he had been using to punctuate his speech as he walked, behind his back. He fixed the camera with his most earnest look. 'In our modern age we are conditioned to forget -- yet the past is one thing we can't ignore. The dead will not be denied.'
He finished. There was a pause.
Guy's face popped out from behind his camera. 'Good stuff, mate,' he said to Nigel, who for the first time sensed admiration rather than scorn in his voice.
Lysette was nodding happily. 'From now on, you're writing your own scripts,' she said, smiling. We'll need to do a little voice-over before and after, but that was great. Still a shame about the jumper.'
Nigel shrugged, felt his cheeks redden and warm. He never knew what to do with praise. He was about to mumble something humble when a loud cry went up from the pit behind them. The archaeologists in there had downed tools. One was running towards the olive-green portable cabin that doubled as an on-site office.
What's happened?' Lysette asked one of the archaeologists who was scurrying past, face white.
'They've found a body.'
'And? There are fifteen thousand people buried here.'
'The last person buried here was in 1853. This body's barely two years old.'
The End.