It struck Paul how very English it all was. Sitting in a trench, sipping tea out of the plastic top of his thermos, breathing great gobbets of steam into the cold morning air on what was going to be the longest day of the Year.

For a while he blew his clouds of steam like a smoker blowing smoke rings. Then he poured himself another capful.

He studied the colour of the tea carefully in order to stop himself from stealing another glance at Alison.

Today she was wearing a man’s shirt over her pullover. Paul tried to tell himself that it was just something that she had picked up from an Oxfam shop. It was a sensible thing to be wearing. Already, it had plenty of dirt on it from where she had wiped her gloves.

Just as he did on every Sunday, Paul thought about what she might look like under all those clothes. He imagined her at the end of the day, propping herself up in the doorway, using the toe of one Wellington boot to hold the heel of the other and struggle her foot free. Then crouching on one soggy-socked foot and gripping the other wellie with both hands and wrestling it off.

She would pull the wet socks off next and stand for a moment feeling the bristles of the hallway mat before padding across the stone floor to the laundry basket. Her footprints would make a pretty pattern. She would lift the lid of the alibaba basket and drop the socks in. She would look at her hands. She would wipe them on the shirt and look at them again and shrug. She might even laugh to herself at how pointless that was and find a clean spot on the shirt to wipe her hands again. Clean this time.

Then she would peel the shirt off over her head.

No.

She would carefully unbutton the shirt so that the grit would not get shaken off.

Button by button.

The buttons on the unfamiliar shirt.

She would slide out of the shirt and drop it onto the basket. She would hook her thumbs into the elastic of her tracksuit pants and bend at the waist. The sudden revelation of her legs a conjuring trick that would make Paul gasp.

Paul imagined that her legs would be perfect. Not a mark on her thighs. No scars. No orangepeely skin. No footballers thighs.

If things went wrong at this point, if what Paul saw was a pair of thighs that looked like they belonged in jodhpurs, like jodhpurs would be the only kind of trousers that they could possibly ever fit into, then he would stop and start again.

Alison would hook her thumbs into the elastic waist of her baggy trousers and bend at the waist. She would straighten up again and step out of the abandoned pile

‘Tea break’s over. Back on your heads again’.

It was Simon, using the same words he used every Sunday to break into Paul’s reverie.

It was the tag line of a tired old joke about people in Hell standing knee-deep in shit. There they are, millions of them, up to their knees in shit, drinking tea out of delicate cups, little fingers hooked daintily in the air, saucers held in the other hand to catch any impolite drips. Simon had told the joke to the group last winter, when the days had been so short and the crackling fire in the open grate at the Faucet Inn had been so inviting.

2

What Paul had loved most was the redness of Alison’s cheeks in the sudden warmth. He loved how her nose went a little red too, and how she pursed her lips after she has taken a sip of her crème de menthe.

Simon was a head taller than Paul. Not that anyone could measure that now, with Paul standing in a ditch and Simon looming over him from the edge.

‘How’s it going today?’.

‘Oh, you know. Nothing special. Same old. Same old. Lift that barge, tote that bale’, Paul said and then found himself grinning like a lunatic, while in his head he was throwing himself down on the ground and kicking himself for sounding like such an idiot.

Simon crouched into a squat. Something had caught his eye. It was a stone that Paul had put to one side.

‘What’s that?’

At first Paul could not see what Simon was seeing, then he saw the stone.

‘Oh that. Nothing.’

‘If it’s nothing, it should really go into Bin B,’ Simon said and straightened up.

‘Simon Says’, Paul thought to himself as Simon went off to continue his tour of inspection.

‘I thought it might be Mrs Thatcher’s heart,’ Paul muttered as he set about choosing whether to toss the stone into Bin B or throw it at Simon. Simon. Peter. Simon, Peter. Peter the Rock. Favourite of Jesus. Cornerstone of the Christian faith, with his lanky legs and his lanky hair and his cowboy boots and his Greenpeace belt buckle and his Alpha male dominance.

Paul would be taken to the walls of the city by an angry mob and stoned to death.

Paul hefted the stone. He raised one eyebrow. He threw the stone directly upward with such tremendous force that it trailed a stream of white vapour. It disappeared from view. Time passed and then, with a roar like an express train, the comet returned to earth, leaving a massive crater in the spot where Simon had been standing.

Paul looked down at the stone in his hand. He raised one eyebrow. With a look of intense concentration, Paul clenched his fist. There was a muffled crunching sound. Paul’s fingers slowly unwrapped themselves from a diamond as big as the Ritz.

He popped it in his pocket.

He would give it to Alison when the time was right.

When Paul dropped Mrs Thatcher’s heart into Bin B it made a loud plastic clunk. There was nothing else in there.

Some of the others looked up. Paul looked over his shoulder as if he too was wondering where the sound had come from.

He went back to his patch. It was neatly marked out with a crisscrossing of twine that had been strung between the pegs that Simon had planted to define the Dig.

The square was his. It had a wooden stake with his name pinned to it with a bras drawing pin. Paul knelt in the dirt. He took the tiny trowel and put it in his teeth. He took the tiny bristle brush and went back to dusting the spot that he had been dusting before he had had his tea.

‘What is this quintessence of dust?’ the worm in his ear was saying. It was in rhythm to the strokes of the brush. It wouldn’t stop. The worm had a lisp, a charming lisp like Alison’s lisp, ‘Thith quintethence of dutht’.

3

Paul could see himself as others would see him now, hunched into a ball like a Muslim at prayer. He could see the tiny man at his prayers in the dust. He could see hundreds of tiny men at their prayers in the dust.

We are all but grains of sand.

Microscopic specks in the universe.

He was sweeping them away with his brush. They were so tiny that he could not hear their screams as the brush scattered them this way and that.

First this way, and then that.

This way. That way.

This way. That way.

Rhythmically.

Quintethence of dutht.

–

Paul had first met Simon when they were both studying Experimental Psychology. The senior lecturer had named Simon the Bright Star of his Year and Paul used to call him ‘BS, and Simon had believed that it was short for Bright Star.

Whatever it was that Simon had learnt from his experiments, he had put it to good use when he got his job at the BBC.

Paul’s own experiments were into what was termed ‘Handedness’.

Are rats left-handed or right-handed? After a few weeks of putting the rats through the maze and letting them get to the food lever and taking meticulous note of which paw they used to press the lever, Paul would drop the rats into liquid nitrogen.

At -273 degrees Celsius, this has the effect of killing the rat. The rat does remain dead after it is given time to thaw out, but dissection is a lot easier when the rat is brittle and the brain comes out more neatly. Paul took photographs of the brain and measured the size and shape and made a note of all this in his Lab Book.

And then one day, Paul had had enough of killing rats.

He took Leo and Bernie out of their cage.

He put them into the pockets of his combat jacket.

Leo in the left pocket and Bernie in the right.

He walked out of the Lab.

He walked out of the University.

He got a job a bookshop that specialized in Comics.

–

3

Paul let the trowel drop from his mouth. It was slimy. Paul raised one eyebrow. He turned the focus of his x-ray vision to another spot. He knew precisely where to dig. He used the trowel like a melonballer and twirled it to take out a neat scoop of dirt. He squeezed the cone of clay with his fingers and felt the coin. He spat on the clay and wiped more of the mud away. He was starting to make out make out the letters ‘NDINIVM’.

It occurred to Paul that the Romans in Londinium might have spoken latin with cockney accents,

‘Quid est hoc?’,

– Hoc est quid. A spankin new Londinium quid. Give it ere.

‘Oi. Leave orf. I sore it firss’

– Come off it. Render unto Caesar de fings wot are Caesar’s

‘Just fukoff ahdovit, you slimey lemonsqueezer. I’m tellin’

– You Big Girl’s Blouse

‘I’ll have you know this is a toga, mate, a toga’.

–

The scream from Alison alarmed everyone. Other members of the dig began to crowd around her. Paul was the last to arrive.

His plot was the furthest out.

–

Alison has offered her find up for Simon to examine.

‘I have no hesitation at all in saying, and I say this quite categorically with no fear of contradiction, that this is definitely part of a roman terracotta drinking vessel.’

Cheers from the group. Some pat Alison on the shirt. All smile. Alison looks down in modesty and then up at Simon.

Then down again.

And then up.

Paul is watching her. The others drift back to their duties.

Simon is still examining the small fragment of earthenware.

Alison is still examining Simon.

Paul is still examining Alison, when Simon looks up and sees him.

‘Oh hello, Paul. Did you see what Alison found? Fantasic. Well done Alison.’

Alison says nothing.

Paul says nothing.

Simon says, ‘Have you two met? Alison, Paul. Paul, Alison.’

Paul says, ‘Yes’.

Alison says, ‘No’.

Paul, who has been keeping his hands warm inside his jacket, opens the fingers of his right hand.

The coin drops to the bottom of his pocket where it finds a bed of blue-grey lint spun through with short white animal hairs. The coin snuggles up in the lint and soon falls asleep.