‘I’m going now, Dad!’ He had the doctor’s permission, and the sense to be just a degree more dutiful and amenable than usual, for reassurance to parents whose nonchalance hadn’t got him fooled for a moment. ‘Ginger and Bill are outside, we shall all be together.’ Don’t overdo it! One step too far, and they’d smell a rat.
‘Push off, then,’ said Sam briskly, aware that he, too, was playing a part, and skating over even thinner ice. ‘Just as long as you all come back together, too.’ Not much could happen on a school bus full of riotous youths, and in broad daylight. No coddling, they agreed firmly. One, he wouldn’t stand for it, and two, he’s smug enough already, deploy an army round him and he’ll be unbearable.
‘Oh, yes, well, we always do. But, Dad, a bunch of our class are staying later this afternoon and going round Mottisham Abbey with a party. All right if I go with them? We’re going to do a project on it.’ Magic word, terror of all parents whose schooldays occurred before projects were invented to take the place of hard graft. ‘We’ll all be coming back together, only on a later bus. Our passes are OK for any of them. I wouldn’t want to miss it.’
That, at any rate, was a safe line. Of all the schoolboys Sam had ever known, Bossie was the least likely to want to miss what others might think a deadly dull archaeological visit.
‘Oh?’ said Sam, turning to look at his son more narrowly. ‘Who’s going from here?’
‘Ginger, and Bill, and Jimmy, and Spuggy Price – all our bunch.’
From the new comprehensive school at Mottisham to the abbey was not ten minutes’ walk, and the escort appeared to be more than adequate. ‘All right,’ said Sam, ‘just behave yourselves and keep off the walls. Don’t spin it out too late, though, we’ve got a visitor coming tonight.’
At any other time Bossie would instantly have demanded to know who, out of the practical need to adjust his own engagements according to his liking or dislike of the guest. This time he was too intent upon his own single purpose to prolong the interview, once he had got the permission he wanted.
‘Right!’ he said buoyantly, ‘I’ll see you later, then.’ And forthwith departed rapidly. Not until much later did it occur to Sam to remember this unusual want of curiosity, and feel uneasy about it.
Mottisham Abbey, according to record, had been in a sad state of dilapidation, physically and morally, even before the king’s commissioners made an end of it, and for centuries it had passed almost unnoticed among the ancestral houses of England. Only the former abbot’s lodging and a few attached buildings remained in full preservation, turned into a private house after the expulsion of the few remaining monks. Even the church had been in such a poor state of repair that it had been pulled down to provide a quarry for the enlargement of the parish church, half a mile away, and for the private purposes of the Macsen-Martel who had acquired the property. Nobody had ever investigated the relics, or suggested that a dig might be rewarding, until the family, sagging under the burden of maintaining the place, offered it to the National Trust with what endowment they could provide to accompany it. The resulting consultations had brought in various experts, and turned up evidence that the ground-plan of the vanished establishment was remarkably complete at and below soil-level, and showed some unusual features well worth investigating further. Gangs of enthusiastic volunteers had been at work under Charles Goddard’s guidance ever since, and still were, laying bare with love the intricacies of a Benedictine house in decline. The property would end up administered jointly by the National Trust and the Department of the Environment, and after renovation they would hope to find a tenant for the house.
This brief introductory history Bossie Jarvis expounded to his henchmen, as they stood waiting to be marshalled into a conducted party, just within the entrance gate at the inner end of the drive.
‘You mean they’re working like this for nothing?’ demanded Jimmy Grocott incredulously, eyeing the distant excavations where the kitchens and offices had once been, where half a dozen students were industriously brushing away at half-revealed stonework, or measuring, or fixing mysterious tags into position.
‘Of course they are. They like it!’ Bossie would have liked it, too, though he would have preferred something that would make faster headway than a small brush. ‘Not those, of course!’ he added, nodding towards the overalled men who were erecting a steel scaffolding round the walls of a huge round building half-seen among the trees of the grounds, and crowned with a fine conical roof. ‘Those are professionals, they’d never let the public do the restoration work.’
‘What is that thing?’ Spuggy Price wanted to know.
‘The dove-cote. That’s famous. Maybe they’ll let us inside there. There’s holes in that lantern in the roof for the birds to get in and out, and all inside there’ll be nesting holes in the walls, for thousands of birds. They kept them for food.’
‘Not much meat on a dove,’ said Toffee Bill disparagingly. Food was his special subject.
The entire site was a hive of activity, both professional and amateur. At this stage the gardens had naturally suffered somewhat, since half the revelations for which the enthusiasts were digging were under rose-beds and shrubberies. A bewildering number of people were moving about purposefully, paying no attention to the mere sightseers. One conducted party had vanished into the house itself about ten minutes previously, presumably those still waiting would be launched on the same round with another guide as soon as the group ahead had progressed far enough to avoid confusion. Meantime, they looked about them curiously at all this incomprehensible activity, and were not particularly impressed.
‘I don’t see why the National Trust would want it,’ said Spuggy, always outspoken. ‘There’s nothing much here.’
‘They’re only just finding out what’s here, and they say it’s turning out more important than anybody thought.’ But Bossie was tolerant of those who did not share his thirst for knowledge, and appreciated their loyalty in assisting him regardless. ‘What does it matter, anyhow? You know what we’re here for.’
A few stray adults and a family had joined them by this time. A youngish, dark, sombre man who seemed to be in an official capacity here was looking out from the ticket office, to which he had just crossed from the house, and visibly counting them, and equally visibly frowning at the sight of a bunch of schoolboys at an age he did not trust. He eyed them coldly, said something probably derogatory over his shoulder, to the girl in the kiosk, and went away as abruptly as he had come.
‘I hope we don’t get him,’ said Spuggy, his hackles already rising. ‘You know what, I’ve seen that bloke somewhere before. Up our way. He’s been hanging round Mrs Rainbow, but I don’t think she’s keen.’
Their guide, however, when he emerged from the house and crossed the sweep of gravel to collect them, turned out to be a very different person, large, blond and friendly, in a polo-necked sweater and charcoal slacks, casual and reassuring. He had sharp, quirky features, and mobile eyebrows that acknowledged juvenile scrutiny with a tilt that was as good as a wink, and a philosophical grin. He had an air of finding his role as guide, though pleasant and even important, slightly funny. That didn’t put Spuggy Price off him at all, quite the contrary. Spuggy, though aware of their reason for being there, was also finding this funny, and if his guide felt the same, the whole round might be enlivened.
‘All right, let’s go!’ said the fair young man briskly, and led his sheep off across the gravel to the arched doorway of what had once been the abbot’s lodging. Fourteen in his party, nine of them children. Some of his volunteer colleagues would have blenched, he seemed to be stimulated.