A Bone From a Dry Sea

NOW: TUESDAY AFTERNOON

BY LUNCHTIME THERE was a large awning erected at the bottom of the hill, and a little one a few yards along from where Dad was working, to shade a second trench. By now it was too hot for work out in the open, so after lunch everyone rested. Dad made Vinny go and lie down while he wrote up his notes. She’d never have believed she could sleep in that heat, but she did, for nearly two hours. When she woke it was still roastingly hot, but she looked out of the tent and saw that the others were up on the hill again, so she climbed slowly up to see if she could still help. The moment she arrived she realized that Dad was in a bad mood, deep in one of his silences. It didn’t take her long to find out why.

Dr Wessler had (typically, Vinny guessed) got out of doing the heavy preliminary work of opening up the second trench, and he and the Hamiskas and anyone else who could be spared were spread out surveying the rest of the outcrop for possible further sites. Meanwhile, Watson Azikwe and Michael Haddu were hacking out the soil above the fossil-layer and carting it down to the tip. They were both Africans. Michael was a grizzled, roly-poly man who (Dad had told her) had left school when he was twelve. He’d been on a lot of expeditions like this in other countries, starting as a labourer but becoming interested, so that by now he knew more about field-work than a lot of highly-qualified experts.

Watson was Dr Azikwe, but Vinny couldn’t think of him like that. He was quite young, for one thing, only twenty-something. He wore three gold chains under a gaudy open shirt. Vinny thought he was fun. She enjoyed his style, and the way he assumed that all the world was going to like him as much as he liked himself. The trouble was, Dad didn’t.

It was Watson’s fault. While Michael was hacking out a fresh barrow-load of spoil, Watson squatted by Dad’s trench, chattering away about his time in Europe and America, and the well-known palaeontologists he’d met. Dad was crouched out of sight. Vinny heard one or two grunts – snorts, more like, to Vinny’s ears – but Watson treated them as encouragement to keep the conversation going. It wasn’t that Watson was shirking. As soon as Michael called to him he gangled himself up and wheeled the full barrow down the slope. Dad straightened in the trench, wiped his face with his shirt and took a swig of water from his bottle.

‘I’ve had about as much of that chap as I can stand,’ he muttered.

‘Poor Dad. Do you want me to try and distract him?’

‘It would be like trying to distract the Victoria Falls.’

‘I’ll ask him to explain about something.’

‘Why not? Try him on these – he says he’s done some work on molluscs, and he seems to know his stuff, in spite of everything. Keep them with the H-layer material – that bag there.’

He passed out his latest collection of shell-fragments. Vinny lashed her parasol to an awning-pole and laid out the pieces in its shade. By now Watson was doing his stint with the pick and shovel while Michael rested, so she had a bit of time. Most of the pieces were from something like a mussel, about the size of her thumb-joint, but there were three from a creature which must have been about as big as her palm. The H-layer was important – it was the one which had had the hominid fossils in it, immediately above the tuff. She sorted through the bag and found several more pieces of larger shell.

Watson straightened from his work, sweating. Michael rose and took the barrow. Watson took a few more thumps with the pick, but as there was nowhere to shovel the spoil to now he laid it aside and climbed out of the trench. Vinny looked innocently up.

‘Do you know what these are, Watson?’

Affably he crouched beside her.

‘Bivalves, you know,’ he said. ‘Some kind of Tridacna, this one.’

‘What about this big one? I thought I’d try and fit the bits together.’

He picked up the largest piece and turned it over.

‘Don’t know for sure,’ he said. ‘Mytilacea, maybe. Take a lot of comparison, lot of studying, be sure of something like that.’

‘Can you tell if it was fresh water or if it came out of the sea? It would be terrific if it came out of the sea. Do you know about Elaine Morgan’s sea-ape theory?’

Watson laughed, macho-contemptuous.

‘That woman,’ he said. ‘Hey! Sam! What you been telling your daughter?’

Dad hadn’t heard, or was pretending he hadn’t. Vinny knew she’d made a bad mistake. If Watson started teasing him in front of the others about his daughter’s wild ideas he’d clam up completely. Dr Hamiska would probably join in. She was with one part of her mind aware that she ought to try and repair the damage, change the subject or laugh at herself and her own silly ideas, but another part of her mind refused to let her. It mattered, in ways she didn’t understand, that she shouldn’t pretend about this, shouldn’t play the part of an ignorant little girl who couldn’t think for herself. May Anna said the ideas might be wrong, but they weren’t crazy. Vinny was certain she knew more about them than Watson did. Her reaction now was to get angry, the way Mum would have when something like this happened.

‘What do you mean, that woman?’ she snapped. ‘What difference does it make she’s a woman? I bet you haven’t even read her book. You tell me why you’ve got a layer of fat under your skin, like sea-mammals, and fur like an otter’s when you were in your mother’s womb, and a rotten sense of smell, and a lot of people have webbed fingers and toes, and all sorts of things land animals don’t need. Go on. Tell me. Don’t bother Dad about it. Tell me!’

He forgot about the macho bit, hunkered down beside her, shrugged amiably and giggled. She glared at him.

‘Don’t know about the fingers and stuff,’ he said. ‘About the fat, I think the idea is you get these cold savannah nights . . .’

‘Fur would be much better for that. Yes I know, we lost our fur because we got too hot running after antelopes and things. But in that case why didn’t any of the others? Cheetahs and so on? Losing fur’s a rotten way to stay cool. Look at the amount we’ve got to sweat compared to other animals . . .’

‘I don’t know . . .’

‘Well, you ought to, and what’s more . . .’

He laughed again. It was difficult to be angry for long with him. They were still arguing when Michael called to him to empty the barrow.

‘Finished?’ muttered Dad.

‘I’m sorry. It just came out. I’ll think of something else next time.’

‘I thought you were going to try him on the shells.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Here’s some more, anyway.’

She took the pieces and sorted them through. There were two more from one of the larger creatures, and one of them fitted exactly on to a piece she already had. Now, from the curving growth-lines, she could see how the others might go. Sorting through the bag again, with eyes that knew what they were looking for, she found several chips she had missed first time, making up two complete patches and a few outlying bits. Laid out all in place on the ground they let her imagine the whole shell.

Feet crunched and a shadow moved on the sunlit slope.

‘What are you up to, Vinny?’ said Dr Hamiska.

‘I was putting this shell together so that Watson could tell me what it was.’

‘I can’t have you distracting my work-force, young lady.’

Vinny looked across and saw that the barrow was almost full again.

‘I was trying to stop him distracting Dad,’ she muttered. ‘Can’t you do something about it?’

Dr Hamiska crouched to bring himself nearer, and whispered like a spy in a thriller.

‘I’m afraid Sam’s going to have to put up with him. Watson’s uncle is Minister of the Interior. But I give you permission to distract him when he’s not actually working. In fact I’ll give you a hand.’

He winked at her and took out his magnifying glass. Rather obviously play-acting he picked up the largest piece of shell and pretended to study it as Watson came strolling across.

‘Vinny’s doing a fine job here,’ he said. ‘She was asking me how the shell came to get broken . . .’

‘Rocks rolling around, maybe,’ said Watson. ‘You get a lot of that in earthquakes.’

‘But there aren’t any rocks in the fossil-layer,’ said Vinny. ‘Couldn’t . . .’

She stopped, suddenly aware that something had changed. Dr Hamiska wasn’t play-acting any more. He passed the shell and glass up to Watson.

‘Do you see what I see?’ he said. ‘Sam! Can you spare us a moment?’

Wearily Dad climbed out, ducking under the awning, and came over. Watson whistled astonishment. Dad took the shell and looked at it for a while through his own glass.

‘There could be a number of explanations,’ he said slowly.

‘Oh, Sam! Sam! You’re impossible! If the skies opened and the host of heaven appeared announcing the end of the world, you’d say there could be a number of explanations.’

‘Such as me having gone off my rocker. And I understood the end of the world was scheduled for Thursday.’

‘What is it?’ said Vinny. ‘Please can I look? Don’t tell me.’

‘Why not?’ said Dr Hamiska. ‘If an unschooled eye can see it, perhaps even Doubting Sam will begin to believe.’

Vinny focused the magnifying glass on the outside of the fragment, near one edge, where she’d seen the others looking so intently. There were two sorts of markings on the shell, a series of waves or rumples running from the middle of what had been the hinge side across to the outer lip, and then a lot of finer bands running parallel to the lip, like tree-rings, laid down as the shell had grown and grown. With the glass she now saw that these bands were interrupted by three small pits near the corner closest to the hinge, while on the very edge was a place like a chip on the edge of a china plate, when it’s been knocked against something.

‘Something hit it,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t just squashed.’

‘Or someone,’ said Dr Hamiska.

‘You can’t say that yet,’ said Dad.

‘I say someone,’ said Watson. ‘Yeah, I’m with Joe. Look, just these three strike-marks, all close, and the one on the break . . . Let’s see.’

He knelt to inspect the rest of the shell, looking slowly at each piece in turn and putting it back in its place before picking up the next. By the time he’d finished some of the others had arrived, and were passing the first shell-fragment round. The air was full of tension.

‘What about the piece the other side of the break?’ said someone.

‘I haven’t found it yet,’ said Vinny.

‘No more strike-marks on any of these,’ said Watson. ‘Looks like it must’ve been, you know, deliberate, uh?’

Chatter broke out, excited, wondering. Vinny stared at the broken shell, working out what Watson had meant. Yes. If whatever had caused the marks had been accidental – stones rolling down in a landslip, say – then you’d have expected them to be scattered all over the shell. If just one stone had hit it there’d be only one mark. But if someone had been deliberately trying to break it they’d have hit it several times, near the same spot, weakening it till it gave. Of course it could still be just coincidence, but . . .

‘Quiet, everyone, quiet!’ shouted Dr Hamiska. ‘You know who we have to thank for this?’

Without warning he bent and picked Vinny up and set her on his shoulder like a three-year-old. The others cheered.

‘That’s twice now Vinny has brought us the sort of luck palaeontologists dream of. Two miracles. One more, and the Pope will make her a saint. Till then the best we can do is call this site officially Vinny’s site, and I shall see it goes into the reports as that.’

Vinny managed to smile, but it was at this point that she definitely made up her mind she didn’t like Dr Hamiska. He’d been kind to her, and friendly, but that certainly didn’t give him any right to treat her as if she belonged to him. And when he put her down he patted her on the head as if she’d been a spaniel or something. No.

* * *

Vinny cooked supper out of cans and Dad at least pretended to think it was delicious. They ate in the tent by the light of an oil-lamp, with the netting down over each end, because without that all the insects in Africa would have been swarming round the light. As it was, Vinny could hear the continuous faint flutter of tiny bodies batting against the net and the sides of the tent. It was wonderfully peaceful, and cool enough for a sweater. Dad was transferring the rough notes he’d made on the site into his main notebook, and Vinny was having another go at drawing her fossil, though her eyes were tired and the light was too poor for her to see the fine detail. Neither of them had spoken for half an hour. Dad closed his notebooks and looked up.

‘Early bed for me,’ he said. ‘I’m knackered.’

‘Me too. And I can’t see to draw.’

‘I think I’ll have to tell Joe about those scratch-marks you spotted.’

‘Oh. I suppose you’ve got to.’

‘What’s troubling you?’

‘Well, you see, I found it in the first place. I’m afraid he’ll say it’s the third miracle. I hate it when he makes a fuss about me like that.’

‘I thought you were relishing it.’

‘Well, I’m not. And I’m not his lucky mascot either.’

‘Um. I’ll sit on it till you’ve gone. I can pretend to notice the marks then. I can certainly do without another bout of wild speculation.’

‘Thanks. I warn you, Dad, you’d better tell him as soon as I’ve gone. Otherwise I shall use it to blackmail you.’

‘Oh huh? What will be your price of silence?’

‘I’m going to buy the sea-ape book and send it to you, and you’re going to have to read it and tell me what you think.’

His mood changed. He had been stretching and half-yawning, relaxed, happy with her companionship, with being her father, but as she spoke she saw him shrink into himself and go cold.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know I shouldn’t have talked about it to Watson. It was stupid of me.’

‘It’s done now.’

‘May Anna says . . .’

She stopped, knowing she’d put her foot in it again. She’d been going to tell him what May Anna had said about the sea-ape theory being wrong, but not crazy wrong. That would be a disaster now.

‘Well?’

‘May Anna says it’s no use trying to pretend with you. I must just be what I am, and hope. So must you.’

He looked at her and nodded.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope.’