A Bone From a Dry Sea

NOW: MONDAY AFTERNOON

VINNY WASN’T FEELING well. It was partly the argument between Dad and Dr Hamiska, and partly the heat. The heat was appalling. The sun seared down on to the windless hillside and then seemed to bounce back up under her parasol, making her feel she wasn’t in the shade at all. The plan had been to go back to the camp for lunch and rest under the awnings till it got cooler, but instead everyone had rushed out to look at the new fossil, and now Dad and Dr Hamiska were arguing about it.

Dad stood on one side of the little hole, his body stiff, his gestures short and tense. Dr Hamiska lolled against the boulder on the other side, laughing with excitement half the time. Before Dad had arrived he’d lost patience with Mrs Hamiska’s finicky picking round the fossil, and had taken over in order to explore further into the hillside, hacking whole trowelfuls of clay out at a time. Just before Dad and the others had arrived he’d found a second fossil – in fact he’d broken it in half with the trowel – and now while he talked to Dad he kept fitting the two pieces together and turning them over to look at and then holding them up as if they had magic in them, giving him power, like one of Tolkien’s rings.

The others stood around listening to the argument. May Anna caught sight of Vinny and came across.

‘You don’t look too good,’ she said.

‘I’m all right, but it’s so hot, and I wish they’d stop arguing. What’s it all about?’

‘It’s about what happens next. This bone you found . . .’

‘I didn’t find it! I wish Joe would stop saying I did. He found it. It’s just a way of getting at Dad.’

‘I’m afraid Joe’s like that. And he’s dead sure now that the rest of the skeleton is lying there right in the hillside, just waiting to be dug out, and Sam’s telling him to take it slow.’

‘But he’s got to, hasn’t he?’

‘Sure, but it’s a question of how slow. We’ve got a couple of foot-bones, right? But that doesn’t mean there’s a joined-up skeleton all neatly lying together. There could be just this foot, which a leopard or something brought here. But let’s say it wasn’t like that, and the body died in shallow water. Then the water will have moved the bones around, and crayfish and crocs could have carried bits away. The bones could be spread out right through the hill. That’s if they’re there at all, because the body may have been lying the other way round, right? Out this way . . .’

May Anna gestured to show the imaginary strata spreading out beyond the hillside, as they would have been before the endless seasons had eroded them away.

‘. . . and those two bones are all that’s left.’

‘But you’ve still got to look and see. I mean, it might be there.’

‘Right. But look how the strata run. Into the hill, see? There’s a whole lot of hill to be cleared away to get at the one we want. Tons and tons and tons of earth. That means a labour force. How are we going to raise a labour force out here in the badlands? It’ll take money, not just to pay them, but to get them here, feed them and keep them here. Money Joe doesn’t have – not till after Thursday, maybe, when the Craig people come. Then if he’s got enough to show them, he can have all the labour he wants, and real funds for next year, and real good people who’ll want to be with him next year. That’s a lot to ask for on two little bones, Vinny. But if he could maybe find a leg-bone, a knee . . . So he doesn’t want Sam hanging about, waiting for a labour force before he starts serious digging. You see?’

Vinny nodded. She felt a need to explain something to May Anna. Making her bed that morning she’d found an old tube of eye-shadow, May Anna’s colour, wedged between the leg of the bed and the hut wall. Then on the earth floor she’d seen four square marks where the legs of another bed must have stood close alongside hers.

‘I don’t know Dad very well,’ she said. ‘My step-father’s lovely, but I just decided I wanted a dad of my own, like I’ve got a mum of my own. But it doesn’t mean I’ve got to be with him all the time, or anything like that, only to know him a bit.’

May Anna put her hand on Vinny’s shoulder and held her comfortingly against her side.

‘You’re doing fine,’ she said. ‘Your dad’s a great guy. He needs a daughter like you. It’s good you came.’

‘Has he got to be enemies with Joe?’

‘They’re not enemies, but Joe’s Joe. He’s got to be always telling you he’s there. Times he drives everyone crazy. Other times we’d be lost without him. Dee Huntsman couldn’t take Joe, so she said she was sick and went home . . .’

‘She was your geologist?’

‘Right. And OK she got a bit sick, but if it hadn’t been for Joe she’d have hung in. And look at today. We’ve a whole heap of things waiting decisions which only Joe can make, but instead he takes off blind after a hunch he’s had in the night and because he wants to show you how to find fossils, and we all know he’s going to come back and decide things out of the top of his head, messing up work some guys have been doing for weeks. And he’ll still do that. But what else? While he’s off on this crazy jaunt with you he pokes into a bit of hillside and comes up with a proto-hominid foot-bone, which any museum in the world would give its eye-teeth for! So we’ve all got to forgive him. Even Sam. Sam’s as thrilled as the rest of us, if you want to know.’

‘I suppose he is, but . . .’

‘You’re like him that way, I guess. Excited he may be, but he’s still got to do the job right – slowly, methodically, not missing a damn thing. Sam would never have bust that bone Joe’s waving around now. They should’ve been a good team, you know. Sam needs Joe to raise the funding and find the sites, and Joe needs Sam to do the work right, so no-one’s going to argue about what they’ve found.’

‘I wish they’d stop arguing now.’

‘Just stopping . . . Any minute . . . Told you . . .’

Dr Hamiska laughed and jumped to his feet and clapped Dad on the shoulder in a no-hard-feelings way, then started striding round the hillside giving the rest of his team their orders. Dad came gloomily over.

‘I guess Vinny’s feeling the heat,’ said May Anna.

‘No, I’m better,’ said Vinny. ‘What’s going to happen now?’

‘What’s going to happen now is perfectly bloody,’ said Dad. ‘I suppose I accept it’s got to be done in the circumstances. Joe wanted everyone out here, the cooks even, pretty well hacking into the hillside at random, but I’ve persuaded him he’ll have to make do with two trenches. I’ll do one and Fred will do the other.’

‘What’s so bloody about that?’ said May Anna. ‘Fred’s good.’

‘It isn’t Fred. It’s the results Joe wants by Thursday. I don’t want to kill myself carting spoil around in this heat, so Fred and I are going to have to be out here by sunrise to get the heavy labour done while we can still stand it . . . I’m afraid you’re not going to see much of me over the next few days, Vinny . . .’

‘Vinny can help me,’ said May Anna. ‘We’ll have fun.’

‘If Joe gives you a look-in,’ said Dad. ‘He seems to have persuaded himself that she’s some kind of good-luck token.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ said Vinny. ‘I’m going to come and help you.’

‘I’d love you to,’ said Dad carefully. ‘But I’m not that easy to help. Most of it I’ve got to do myself.’

‘Then I’ll just come,’ said Vinny. ‘It’s all right. I won’t be bored. I want to learn to draw like Nikki.’

‘Well . . .’

Dad was looking at May Anna, who wasn’t saying anything. All Vinny knew was that she didn’t want to be left at the camp being Dr Hamiska’s good-luck token. A new thought struck her.

‘Couldn’t we come and camp out here?’ she said. ‘Just you and me and Dr Wessler. Then you can start digging as soon as it’s light and I’ll cook your breakfast and . . .’

May Anna was laughing. Dad was looking round the parching landscape, miming disgust.

‘I’ve never seen a less inviting spot for a fly-camp,’ he said.

‘Please, Dad.’

‘It’s an idea,’ said May Anna. ‘It’s only three nights, Sam, and you’re always saying any fool can be uncomfortable in camp.’

Dr Hamiska came striding across.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Ready, Sam? Let’s get an awning rigged up for you to work under.’

‘Hang on a sec,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve been thinking. Since time’s so short the best thing would be for me to set up a fly-camp here . . .’

‘Just what I was about to suggest. Good man.’

‘If May Anna can take the jeep back, with Vinny, Vinny can pack my gear while May Anna gets the other stuff together – there’s the orange tent in the store, May Anna, and we’ll need three beds . . .’

‘Three?’ said Dr Hamiska.

‘Fred, me, Vinny.’

‘You’re not proposing to bring her out here?’ said Dr Hamiska.

His attitude had changed completely. A moment before he’d been easy, genial, friendly. Now he looked thoroughly put out, but couldn’t at once think of an objection.

‘It’s all right,’ said Vinny. ‘I love camping. I won’t get in the way.’

‘Vinny’s here to see her father, don’t forget,’ said May Anna.

‘And Sam’s here to get this other little lady out of the hill,’ said Dr Hamiska, holding the broken fossil out to show what he meant. ‘It’s a long way from civilization, Sam.’

‘We’ll make a civilized fly-camp,’ said Vinny.

Dr Hamiska realized he wasn’t going to win, and bellowed with laughter to show he didn’t mind, but somehow it wasn’t quite convincing. Dad and May Anna started to make a list of what he’d need, but when they roped Dr Wessler in to join the discussion he refused to come to the fly-camp. He said he’d got work at the main camp which he had to finish by Thursday. He’d do that this evening and come out with some of the others tomorrow to start the second trench. Dr Hamiska accepted this without fuss.

It was mid-afternoon before they’d finished collecting everything that was needed for the fly-camp. Vinny was tired, but feeling better. They made tea and drank it in the shade of a tree with feathery leaves and long black dangling beans. Below them stretched the plain. The dusty air was tinged with orange and the westering sun cast sidelong shadows, so that the flat-topped trees that dotted the plain were joined to their own shape in reverse – branches, trunk, shadow-trunk, shadow-branches – a single dark shape like a letter in a peculiar alphabet.

‘Why wasn’t Joe cross with Fred for not coming on the fly-camp?’ asked Vinny.

May Anna sighed.

‘Well, I guess it was true what Fred said. He’s got his classification model to get drawn out for the Craig people on Thursday. But then again Joe wouldn’t get any satisfaction out of needling Fred. Fred’s kind of slippery. He’s like a fly you’re trying to swat. Wham, but it’s somewhere else already, you know? He just shrugs and smiles and doesn’t react.’

‘Why don’t you come?’

‘I’ve got work too – my skull. Did I tell you I found another piece fitted this morning? And I hate camping, too. This place is plenty primitive for me. I’m Minneapolis born and bred. I like streets. I say phooey to all that.’

She gestured derisively at the plain, but Vinny knew she was joking. The plain was wonderful. In England you’re doing well if you can see twenty miles, but here it could have been hundreds. The sky seemed huge. Far out across the tawny grassland something was moving, invisible itself but raising a haze of brown-gold dust. Not a car – it was too wide for that. A group of something, a whole herd, running, pounding up that dust with their hooves. Something must be hunting them. Lions? Wild dogs? Africa was incredibly old, Vinny thought. Animals had run from each other, hunted each other for millions of years. But even Africa changed. Once the plain had been sea and the badlands a sea-channel and then a marsh. She tried to imagine it then. What sort of an island, what sort of a marsh? What creatures then? Pigs, crocodiles, small deer, all under the fierce African sun? And what sort of people? But her imagination wouldn’t take hold. There was too much she didn’t know.

May Anna laughed in the silence. Vinny looked at her.

‘Just the way things pan out, I guess,’ said May Anna. ‘Were you nervous about coming?’

‘A bit, I suppose. Mainly I was just excited.’

‘It was the other way round with Sam. He doesn’t show he’s excited, but, boy, was he nervous! How d’you think you’re making out with him?’

‘I don’t know. It’s difficult with Joe trying to take me over. We were doing all right, I thought, only this morning, well, I suppose I got a bit too interested in a book I was telling him about and he didn’t approve of, and he started to go silent on me, and then, well, he sort of gave himself a shake and stopped. He told me to remember I’m my mother’s daughter.’

‘Tell me about your mom. Sam won’t. He says he doesn’t know how to be fair to her, and he refuses to be unfair. That’s typical of him, by the way. What’s she like, Vinny?’

‘Do you know any old English sheepdogs?’

‘Sure. Like that?’

‘Not to look at. Outside she’s small and neat, but inside she’s sort of all-overish and shaggy and always bouncing and wanting to play and take part and involve everyone.’

‘That figures. What was the book?’

‘It’s by somebody called Elaine Morgan and . . .’

May Anna crowed with laughter.

‘Have you read it?’ said Vinny.

‘Don’t tell anyone, but yes, I took it on vacation, where no-one would know who I was and I put a plain wrapper on it so no-one would ask me about it . . .’

‘Do you think it’s nonsense?’

‘No, not really. But I don’t go round talking about it. I think she’s wrong, but not crazy wrong. She deserves an answer.’

‘Why was Dad so upset?’

‘Because you got excited and reminded him of your mom?’

‘It wasn’t just that. It was something to do with the book.’

‘That too. Sam’s a real expert. He’s spent, oh, twenty years getting his expertise. Bones are his thing. Mine too, though I’m not as good as he is. Yet. Just think what it’s like having an amateur coming along and getting a lot of publicity saying the bones aren’t that important and the experts are all wrong. Who’s going to pay our salaries, who’s going to fund expeditions like this, who’s going to give us the respect and prestige we think we deserve, if people start taking her seriously? Those aren’t our conscious motives. Consciously all we’re interested in is the scientific truth, and we are – we really are! But by golly those other motives are there!’

‘So I’d better not talk about it again? I really want to, but . . .’

May Anna didn’t answer at once. Then she sighed.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t figured Sam out. But if you want my advice I’d say be what you are and talk about what you want to talk about. Sam wants his daughter. You want your dad. The real people, not imaginary ones. You’ve got to get used to each other. Now we’d better be moving. I don’t want to have to find my way back in the dark. Dark in Africa is real dark.’