All that Glitters, page 12
‘Not too hard – it might be quite fragile, whatever’s under there.’
Their feet slithered in the mud as they carried spadefuls of earth out of the area, trying, in spite of their eagerness, to be methodical and tidy. They were soon sweating, swearing, laughing. Miss Brocklebank’s good husbandry meant that the soil was easy to work, few stones to stop the spades, no old bricks. If they hit something it would surely be treasure? Digging out large spadefuls, they stopped to examine each one by the inadequate light of the lantern to see if anything was embedded there; their hands and fingers froze with the crumbling and breaking up.
‘Here.’ Harry felt something hard. ‘No. A stone.’
He thrust the spade in again.
‘Steady on,’ Jake said. ‘Listen, something hard. Be careful.’
Harry withdrew the spade and Jake put his hand down the split it had made. Waggling his fingers round he came against something metallic. Not a stone. Another wretched horseshoe? Ancient bottle opener? This is where the metal detector had been at its loudest. He got his fingers round the object and pulled it out. While he stood squidging the wet earth off it Harry knelt down and fished about for more.
‘There’s lots,’ he said. ‘Bits.’
The two of them knelt down and scrabbled with their hands. It was true: there was a cache of objects, some quite large curved bits and button-shaped pieces, and pins and unidentifiable lumps of what felt like bronze or iron. Or gold? Jake was breathless with excitement.
‘I’ll fetch a bucket to put them in and we can go and look in the light.’
He fetched a bucket from the stable and they dropped the pieces in. Harry fixed the spade in the earth to mark the spot and they retired back to the stable and put the light on. Harry put the bucket under the tap and covered the stuff with water to clean it and they took brushes from the grooming kits and sat on the floor to brush the objects clean. The horses watched them benignly over their doors, chewing hay, snuffling softly and blinking in the unaccustomed light.
‘This piece is like the first bit I found,’ Jake said. ‘It had a sort of serpent engraved down it and so has this.’
‘This bit is a sort of hinge or something. It opens and shuts.’
‘And there’s a bracelet, look – something like a bracelet ..’
‘And this is only one handful --- there must be lots more …’
They laid the bits out as they cleaned them on the floor and sat gazing in admiration, trying to surmise what this find might mean for them.
‘I’m sure it’s the real thing,’ Jake said. ‘We must do the rest in daylight so we can see what we’re doing. It’s hopeless in the dark. I’ll take this home with me and I suppose I shall have to tell my parents about it. I wasn’t sure until tonight but I’m sure now. I knew! I knew it was for real.’
‘It’s great.’
Harry yawned, remembered he was supposed to staying over at Jake’s.
‘I’ve got to come with you. I can’t go home.’
It was long past midnight. They tidied up and put out the light and set off up to the knoll with the bucket of findings. They were wet and cold and covered in mud but gripped with excitement, laughing and chattering, and when they went indoors, although they tried to keep quiet, it was impossible. The dogs barked, sensing the unusual tension. Jake fell over the log basket and spilled their bucket of treasure on the tiled floor; Harry shrieked and the dogs barked again. As the boys scrambled to pick up the precious pieces the door opened and Susan Hodge came in in her dressing gown.
‘What on earth’s going on?’
‘Look! Look!’
Jake laid out their findings on the kitchen table, where he saw them for the first time in a good light. Having had most of the mud scrubbed off they did truly look like the sort of bits you saw in glass cases in museums.
‘I found it with my metal detector! In Miss Brocklebank’s veg patch – ages ago – we knew it was there all the time—’
He stumbled out the story. His mother, understandably, was stunned.
‘What does this mean? Is it valuable? Is it yours?’
‘Yes, yes! Mine and Miss Brocklebank’s. That’s the law. And there’s lots more. We just started on it but we can’t see in the dark. Tomorrow —’
‘We couldn’t dig it up until Miss Brocklebank went – the flood gave us the chance—’
‘It was under her leeks. We had to pull them out. It was under the stable floor but Polly cemented it over —’
‘We’ve known for ages—’
Millie came in, woken by the excitement, and shouted out when she saw the pieces on the table.
‘It’s true then! There’s more!’
Their laughing woke their father and Susan went upstairs to tell him about the find and he had to come down, rumbling and grumbling, to see the evidence. Like his wife, he found it hard to take in the significance of the find.
‘Looks like junk to me.’ But he was aware of the pot-luck way in which metal-detecting worked, having given permission to various enthusiasts to work on his land in the past, although not with any success.
‘But this is on the old girl’s land then, not ours?’
‘No, but I found it, that’s what matters.’
‘Eh, you’re going to share it with us, lad?’
His father laughed. Jake was not sure if he was serious. He glanced at his mother and she was laughing.
‘I think we should drink to this,’ she said and went to where the sloe gin was hidden behind the beer in the back of the dresser cupboard.
‘It’s all underneath the vegetable garden,’ she told her husband. ‘She won’t like it, the digging up.’
‘We’ve been waiting ages,’ Jake said. ‘We’ve known about it for months. But she won’t be coming back, not without a house to live in?’
‘She can buy a new one, if this is for real. How many millions?’
They all laughed and Susan Hodge poured the sloe gin, twice as much for herself and her husband as for the children.
‘We’ll have to contact someone who knows what’s what. And not to let the news get out, else we’ll have visitors – what do they call them – nighthawks. They come when your back’s turned and pinch it all,’ said Mike.
‘We can ring up the museum tomorrow, the curator. He’ll know the drill, surely? It’s not the first finding round here. There was one over at Appleton only a little while ago,’ said Susan.
They sat round the table, turning over the muddy pieces, drinking the sloe gin and laughing. It was like Christmas. How rich was Jake going to be? Millie thought she was still dreaming. When she went to bed at last her final thought was they mustn’t let Amy know about it.
‘What on earth were Jake and Harry doing last night, scrubbing stuff in a bucket and talking about treasure?’ Amy asked Millie when she went to feed the horses in the morning.
Millie’s jaw dropped to find Amy in residence.
‘How do you know what they were doing?’
‘I was sleeping over with Dragon. I heard them. They were
right outside Dragon’s door. They woke me up.’
‘It was nothing. They had been playing about with the metal
detector and it beeped in Miss Brocklebank’s garden – ages ago
– so now she’s not there they thought they’d have a dig. But it
was only rubbish, nails and horseshoes and things.’
‘They said it was treasure. They were really excited.’ ‘Kidding themselves. They brought it home and it was just
rubbish.’
‘Didn’t sound like it to me. Jake said they were going to be
millionaires. Who’s kidding whom?’
‘You’d better ask Jake. If he wants you to know he’ll tell you.’ Millie was fuming to think the ghastly Amy was sticking her
nose into their secret. And sleeping in the stable – their stable,
hers and Imogen’s. What a cheek! But then she remembered that
Jake’s find was a secret no longer and today their parents were getting in touch with the museum people and then everyone would know. She could not help tremors of excitement coming back at the memory of the night-time junketing with their parents and the lark of trying to think what they would do with a million pounds. Jake’s million pounds, that is. (How he was going to keep it out of his father’s hands was one of the things she really didn’t want to think about.) Her head was whirling again now that Amy had raised the subject. But Amy was the last
person she wanted to discuss it with. Change the subject. ‘Mum said we’ve got to go back to school today but we
don’t know how to get there. How do you get up here from
the village?’
‘There are workmen down by the bridge and they’ll take
you across in their work boat if you ask. It’s against the rules
of course.’
‘It’ll take ages to rebuild the bridge.’
‘I don’t think they’re going to. I heard them talking about
abandoning this road, because it’s not only the village bridge
that’s down, but the one beyond your farm as well. So they’re
saying they’re going to make the traffic go out of the village the
other way and right round, up to the main road, not past here
at all.’
‘What?’
Her father’s dream come true! Millie couldn’t believe it. Their
road with no traffic! And a million pounds as well! It was all
happening at once. But no bridge out of the village … how
would they get to school, go shopping? How would Polly get to
her horses? She would take them away. They would be on their
own again, without even Miss Brocklebank to worry about …
Millie’s head was reeling. With the livery horses gone, no competition to get involved in, no ghastly dressage debacle to think
about! What bliss! Just her and Imogen and how it all was
before Polly … a little sliver of her mind said how boring, but
she dismissed it.
‘We’ll be cut off.’
‘They’re making a footbridge, they said. Just for people.’ ‘Polly won’t be able to drive here. She’ll never walk.’ ‘She can drive the back way, as far as Standing Hall. And
walk the last bit. Down through the woods and over the
footbridge.’
Their footbridge was still standing, strangely, even with Miss
Brocklebank’s cottage destroyed.
‘Her arena’s floated away.’
Millie felt as if her brain had floated away too, so much had
changed in the last twenty-four hours. She fed the horses and
Bluebell and Barney and went out and stood looking at the
river, trying to digest Amy’s bombshells. The river now looked
benign, as if it had never gone mad and nearly drowned them
all. It was hardly swollen, and the ford was passable, the footbridge well clear of the water. The fields were all showing again,
squelchy and rather untidy with tree debris scattered, but they
were fields again, not a brimming lake. Down by the village
JCBs were removing the bridge remains out of the water. They
were the only source of traffic noise for none came from the
road. The museum people would not be able to gain access. But she reckoned without their excitement. They came, fully
kitted out with gumboots and food. She told her father what
she had heard about the road being abandoned and another
bottle of sloe wine was drunk. Jake did not go to school, showing the museum people his site, nor did Millie. Harry and
Imogen came down; Amy went off on Dragon. Later Polly and
Joe and Alex turned up and discussed their situation, sitting on
the feed-bins and smoking (in spite of Polly’s own notices saying
not to); the museum people came in to eat their sandwiches and
they all got chatting together. They had a problem they shared:
of how to get access to the stable yard now there were no bridges.
Harry and Jake, hanging around listening, told them there was
access if they had four-wheeled drive via a track from the back of the farm cattle sheds which went across the fields away from
the farm to the outlying main road.
‘Dad hardly ever uses it in that direction, only the bit to and
from the house, so it’s pretty rough,’ Jake said. ‘But it’s the only
way out for us now, so I suppose it will have to be improved.’ ‘The council will have to do it.’
‘Or we can’t go to school.’
Millie asked Polly if she had seen the lady of Standing Hall
but Polly said gloomily the lady was in Italy for the winter and
the prospect of moving there in the near future seemed remote. ‘It looks as if we shall just have to make do with here for the
time being.’
Millie was piqued by the implied insult and said indignantly,
‘We told you it flooded. You didn’t listen.’
‘Well, there are floods and floods. You never said the horses
would drown, only get their feet wet.’
‘It’s never done that before. Never.’
‘Well, let’s hope never again. Not while we’re here anyway.’ And while she was arguing with Polly, Millie thought of
something else.
‘Do you know what’s happened to Miss Brocklebank, your
poor old auntie? Is she okay?’
If she knew what was happening to her garden she wouldn’t
be. The museum archaeologists had made in one day a digging
that had destroyed nearly all the garden and great tracts of the
field beyond. The place looked terrible. If Miss Brocklebank
were to see it she would die.
And if she died half the millions would go to Polly! Millie’s jaw dropped down at the sudden realisation. She
was struck dumb.
Polly said carelessly, ‘She’s been taken somewhere, I’m not
sure where. I suppose I ought to do something about it.’ Millie wanted to kill her. She ran all the way home and
told her mother that if Miss Brocklebank died Polly would get
all the money.
‘Surely Polly is going to find her somewhere to live? I
assumed the old girl was in good hands.’
‘Polly doesn’t even know where she is!’
‘Oh my word, that’s dreadful! I must do something about
it. I’ll ring up the council offices. Someone there should know.
If the worst comes to the worst the old girl can come here
while somebody finds her a new place.’
‘She mustn’t die!’
That was the family mantra as soon as they all realised the
horror of Polly inheriting what was proving to be a considerable treasure hoard. The archaeologists came every day, set up
camp in the stable yard, appropriated the barns, established a
night-watch. The story was in all the newspapers; the television people came – or tried to come but their vans got bogged
down behind Mike Hodge’s cattle sheds, much to his delight.
He pulled them out with his tractor but they decided not to
come any further. Susan Hodge discovered Miss Brocklebank
in the council’s old people’s home and immediately contacted
Polly to find her a new home. But Miss Brocklebank said she
liked the old people’s home because it had nearly an acre of
garden in a shocking state and all she wanted were her own
garden tools so that she could get started on repairing it. ‘Her eyes were positively shining at the prospect,’ Susan
told Millie. ‘She’s being well fed for the first time in her life,
she’s warm and comfortable and she looks twice the poor
thing she was before the flood. There’s no way she’s going to
die, not with that old garden to bring back to life: it will really
give her something to live for. Poor old Polly’s going to have
to wait.’
‘Jake’s used to digging. He can take her tools up there, if he
can find them, and do the heavy stuff for her,’ Mike Hodge
decided.
The council had improved the back track out of his cattle sheds and it was now their way to get to the village, although a long way round. Harry found someone with a dinghy for sale and they bought it and used it to cross the river to the village to go backwards and forwards to school. Jake was
now something of a celebrity. A schoolboy with a fortune! ‘Everyone wants to be friends with me,’ he said. ‘Even the
teachers.’
The archaeologists had not finished digging but had already
estimated the value of the find somewhere near a million or
possibly a lot more.
The fact had sunk in slowly in the family circle. It still
didn’t have much reality, in that no one could see how it
would change anything. There was nothing they wanted
changed, not the farm, nor their way of life, not even school. ‘What would we do without the farm?’ Mike said. ‘Watch
telly all day? I’ve got my wish – the road gone. That’s worth
a million pounds to me any day.’
Jake remarked that he had no intention of putting his
father into retirement. The money was his.
‘You can’t spend it, lad. It’ll have to be put away,’ said his
father. ‘Unless you’d like to buy me a new tractor,’ he added. ‘We could all have presents, surely? I could buy Millie a
decent pony for a start instead of that spotted weed, one that
will do perfect dressARGE so that she can stop worrying
about this stupid competition.’
‘I don’t want another pony!’ Millie was enraged by the
aspersions he was casting on her beloved Bluebell. ‘The
competition doesn’t matter!’
‘You could fool me.’
‘Millie has to have something to worry about. It’s her nature,’
said her mother.
‘Of course the competition doesn’t matter. Although it would
