A Room Full Of Bones

CHAPTER 19

The Elginists’ conference is held in a Quaker Meeting House in Great Yarmouth. Ruth has always rather avoided Yarmouth in the past, thinking of it as a kind of east-coast Blackpool, full of roller-coasters and drunken holidaymakers. Nelson once tried to tell her that Blackpool wasn’t like that; it had some wonderful countryside nearby, he had said. But Ruth hadn’t been convinced. She likes her seaside to be deserted, miles of lonely sand, not crammed with donkeys in funny hats. So she is rather surprised to find that the Meeting House is a delightful white-painted house dating back to the seventeenth century. If you have to have a religion, thinks Ruth, walking through the shady garden, you might as well be a Quaker. They’re non-hierarchical, non-sexist and pacifist. But a notice in the lobby reminds her of an older, rather more bloodstained religion. The house, she reads, was built on the site of a medieval monastery, an Augustinian cell. This reminds her of Bishop Augustine and of Mother Julian, the mystic anchoress. The sign also tells her that Anna Sewell, the author of Black Beauty, used to attend meetings in the house. Ruth, who loves books about horses, begins to feel better disposed towards the whole day.

It has been a hassle getting there for nine. Although Kate was awake and ready for action at six, Ruth still found herself running round the house like a mad thing in order to get to Sandra’s at eight. By the time she had fed Flint, changed her own clothes twice, got Kate strapped in the car with a bag full of nappies and a change of clothes, and gone back because she was convinced she’d left the gas on, it was a quarter past. After a lightning changeover at Sandra’s, Ruth was finally on her way to Great Yarmouth. Now, after getting stuck behind two holiday coaches (who on earth would go to Norfolk in November?), she finally makes it to the Meeting House by nine-thirty. She hopes the seminars haven’t started.

But when she enters the room signposted Refreshments, she realises that she has misjudged her colleagues. At nine-thirty, the assembled archaeologists are still tucking into coffee and Danish pastries. After agonies of indecision about her clothes, Ruth has finally settled on a black trouser suit to look professional (and slightly thinner). She is almost the only person not in jeans. The room also seems full of dyed hair – purple, red, pink, even a multi-coloured Mohican. Almost everyone has tattoos and multiple piercings. Someone has even brought their dog.

In the end, though, it’s the dog that makes Ruth decide that she was right to come. As she stands uncertainly in the doorway, the animal comes bounding up to her and jumps up to lick her nose. Ruth is taken aback. She likes all animals but she is really happiest with cats and this is a particularly large and whiskery dog. Why on earth is it so pleased to see her?

‘Claudia!’ calls an amused and familiar voice. ‘Come here.’

‘Hallo Max,’ says Ruth.

Max hasn’t changed much in the past eighteen months. If anything he looks slightly healthier than she remembers, less haunted-looking. His face is brown, making his hair look greyer and his eyes bluer. He is grinning now, a wider grin than she ever remembers him giving but, then again, there hadn’t been that much to smile about when they last met.

‘Ruth. How lovely. Cathbad said you might be here.’

The druid telegraph system is as efficient as ever. Ruth can see Cathbad across the room, his purple cloak not that outlandish in this setting. Bob Woonunga is standing next to him; he’s wearing a cloak as well but his looks as if it is made of fur.

‘I don’t really know why I’m here,’ says Ruth. She can feel herself smiling back at Max. Her facial muscles feel rusty from lack of use. ‘Cathbad persuaded me.’

‘Ah, well, he is very persuasive. Would you like a coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

They walk over to the urns, Claudia following them.

‘She’s grown,’ says Ruth, patting the dog’s head.

‘Yes,’ says Max. ‘She’s eating me out of house and home. As you see, I’ve turned into one of those pathetic creatures who can’t leave their dog even for a day. Actually, the dog sitter let me down.’

‘It sounds worse than childcare,’ says Ruth, helping herself to a pastry.

Max looks rather embarrassed, bending down to ruffle Claudia’s fur. ‘How’s your… how’s Kate? I’d love to meet her.’

Max had sent a card and a present when Kate was born and Ruth had expected him to follow these tokens in person, but somehow it had never happened. She told herself at the time that she was relieved. These last months have been complicated enough without Max reappearing in her life. It’s good to see him now though.

‘Kate’s well,’ she says. ‘She had her first birthday last weekend.’

‘Her first birthday,’ Max looks startled. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘No,’ says Ruth drily. ‘It seems much longer.’ But she knows what Max means. Before she had Kate, she had noticed how the years had begun to run together, nothing to distinguish one from the other except the appearance of a few more grey hairs. Now, with Kate, every week marks a new milestone. And while, on the one hand, it does seem amazing that Kate is already a year old; on the other, it seems as if she has been around forever.

Come and meet her, she is about to say. Come back to the house when we’ve finished discussing skulls and bones. We can walk on the beach and look at Kate and talk about life. But at that moment Cathbad claps his hands importantly.

‘Let’s go into the main hall now, friends. The first session is about to start.’

The first session, entitled ‘Honouring Our Ancient Dead’, is more interesting than Ruth had expected. She is shocked to discover that as recently as 2003 working parties were advising that human remains should not be returned to their country of origin because of doubts about their ‘care and preservation’. She learns that in 2005 three hundred and eighty-five sets of Aboriginal remains were held in eighteen different institutions around Britain. ‘Many of these relics,’ says the speaker, a woman called Alkira Jones, ‘were taken from their indigenous homelands through blatant acts of colonialism.’ Ruth thinks of Danforth Smith (now deceased)… the old man had the idea that the Abos were put together differently from us, that they were linked to cave men or some such. So he started collecting bones. She learns about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 1990, passed in an attempt to resolve conflict over the storage of Native American skeletal remains and grave goods. Israel also recently passed a reburial act which could affect the remains of some of the oldest anatomically modern humans. In Scotland there is an ancient ‘right to sepulchre’ – a right to be buried – a principle which may now be adopted by other countries. ‘Museums hold on to these remains,’ says Jones, ‘because they say they add to the sum of human knowledge while, in fact, they add to the sum of human misery. Our relationship must be with the living descendants of these people. A living relationship, not a dead one.’

Ruth shifts uncomfortably in her seat. As a forensic archaeologist, many of her relationships are with the dead. Hasn’t she often marvelled at how much we can learn from a bone or tooth? Should she forgo that knowledge in order to ensure that the remains receive a proper burial? Does it matter, after all? It matters to the living, Jones is saying, and that’s the important thing. But is it? Ruth knows that some of the groups who have been demanding the return of Indigenous Australian relics are not in fact descended from the same tribes. The policy of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies says that ‘descent must be shown’. But what if it can’t be proved? Can just anyone demand the return of bones which could contain valuable information for generations to come?

She remembers a Victorian painting that had fascinated her as a child. It was called Can These Dry Bones Live? and showed a woman, wearing a black shawl and a rather sumptuous red skirt, leaning on a gravestone and looking at some bones and a skull that have been unearthed by… who? What? A careless gravedigger? Animals? A very localised earthquake? The picture is sometimes said to represent Victorian doubts about the existence of an afterlife. If so, there are hints in the painting that might reassure the observer. The gravestone belongs to ‘John Faithful’ and bears the inscription, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’ A nearby stone is engraved ‘Resurgam.’ A blue butterfly rests on the skull; elsewhere in the picture flowers are springing into bloom. But, for Ruth, the painting pointed to a different lesson. What could these bones tell us about the life that their owner lived? How can dry bones recall life in all its glorious complexity? She wonders now if the picture, like the Horniman Museum, influenced her choice of career. Or maybe she just liked the red skirt – an odd choice, surely, for a woman in mourning? But now these people are telling her that the bones should have stayed buried. It’s all very confusing.

The next session, a canter through Indigenous arte-facts kept in British museums, is more boring. Ruth dozes and wonders what Kate is doing. Sandra is good at making the day interesting, she’ll probably take Kate to the park, maybe do some baking with her. All the same, Ruth enjoys her own Saturdays with Kate. They usually go to the beach and collect shells. There’s a whole line of them in the garden like something from Mary Mary Quite Contrary. Sometimes they’ll go to Blakeney to see the fishing boats and often end up having tea in Cathbad’s purple caravan. Kate has her own dreamcatcher, glittering oyster shells and pink feathers. So far it hasn’t succeeded in making her sleep any better. Maybe tonight Ruth will try to go straight downstairs after reading the story…

She starts, pink feathers and oyster shells scattering. The speaker, a man called Derel Assinewai, is talking about the worst atrocities of colonial trophy hunters. ‘We’ve heard of Aboriginal people being hunted, literally being hunted like animals. There are rumours that these skulls were then scalped. It was the British, not the Native Americans, who were the first to scalp their victims – and then keep the skin as a souvenir.’

Ruth thinks of the telltale marks on the skull in the Smith Museum. Was she right to tell Cathbad and Bob? She can’t help feeling uneasy about the fact that, the day after this revelation, Lord Smith was dead. It’s not that she suspects Cathbad or Bob. She looks over at Bob now and he smiles at her. He is sitting in the back row, very much at his ease, legs crossed, head back, listening to Derel’s lecture. No, Danforth Smith’s death can only have been coincidence, but even so it makes her feel glad that she hasn’t got any Aboriginal remains lying around the house. Think how much worse it is to take the very bones of our ancestors and keep them on the other side of the world.

Why had Danforth Smith been so determined not to return the skulls? They weren’t even on display anymore. And although he had seemed proud of the gruesome collection, Ruth could not see that he got much pleasure from the museum as a whole. That day (was it only last week?) when she had examined the bones, Lord Smith had seemed tired, almost frightened, and the museum itself had seemed a sad place, dusty and forlorn. Ruth can’t see it ever opening again. Who would trek down a side street full of office blocks just to look at a few stuffed animals? No, better to let the place die with Neil Topham and Danforth Smith and quietly return the skulls to Australia. In any case, Ruth has done her bit. She has written a report, stating the bones are not being kept in appropriate conditions, and has submitted it to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. She hopes this might encourage the authorities to put pressure on the Smith family to return them. But the truth is that, as the relics are privately owned, government has little or no influence. It’s as if Lord Smith really did own them, body and soul. But who owns them now? Smith had a son, she knows. Will he be the new Lord Smith?

Lunch, from a local vegan restaurant, is absolutely delicious. It’s such a lovely day that the French windows are open onto the garden and Ruth and Max sit on a stone seat with Claudia panting at their feet. It is only a few minutes before Cathbad comes up, accompanied by a dark woman in a red dress.

‘Max. Good to see you. Ruth, I’d like you to meet Caroline Smith.’

Ruth jumps up, brushing crumbs off her trousers. Caroline is a good-looking woman of about thirty. There is something oddly old-fashioned about her. Just as Cathbad often looks as if he is wearing fancy dress when he isn’t, Caroline somehow gives the impression of being in period clothing. Her hair is scraped up in a bun and the dress, an unfashionable ankle length, could be Edwardian or even Victorian. Funnily enough, it reminds Ruth of the skirt in Can These Dry Bones Live? She supposes that Caroline, like the painting’s subject, is also in mourning.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your father,’ she says.

‘Thank you,’ says Caroline. She has rather a hesitant voice, at odds with her commanding presence. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to come today. Tam… my family thought I shouldn’t, but Cathbad persuaded me.’

‘He’s very persuasive.’ Ruth echoes Max.

‘I’m fascinated by the Aboriginal peoples,’ says Caroline. ‘I once spent a year in Australia. You know that the Aborigine map of Australia is quite different? It’s literally a different country.’

‘The names are different aren’t they,’ offers Ruth. ‘Ayers Rock…’

‘Yes, Ayers Rock is a colonialist name. Its real name is Uluru. It’s part of the Ulura-Kata Tjata National Park. The red heart of Australia.’

She manages the names with aplomb but there is something so intense about her that Ruth backs away a little.

‘How do you know Cathbad?’ she asks.

‘I went to one of his archaeology courses.’

‘Cathbad runs archaeology courses?’ Ruth can’t help but be aggrieved. She’s the one who works in the archaeology department but Cathbad has never mentioned any courses to her.

‘It’s not conventional archaeology,’ says Cathbad modestly. ‘It’s more about ritual and mystic symbolism.’

‘Oh.’ Ruth stops feeling aggrieved. Mystic symbolism’s not exactly on the university curriculum.

‘Of course,’ says Max, ‘archaeology’s all about ritual and symbolism. Even people we think of as primitive buried their dead with some elements of ritual, for example. We don’t always know what the symbolism means but we know that it’s there.’

It could be Erik speaking, thinks Ruth. She looks at Cathbad, wondering if the same thought has occurred to him. Max was a fan of Erik’s, Ruth remembers (though, in some ways, she has never really forgotten). She wonders why Max, an expert on the Romans in Britain, has come to a conference on the treatment of Aboriginal relics.

‘Some museums in Sussex hold Indigenous Australian relics,’ he says, as they take Claudia for a quick walk before the afternoon session. ‘I’ve been asked to look into it. Personally, I don’t think there can be any argument against returning them. They’re so important in Aboriginal Australian culture.’

‘I agree,’ says Ruth, panting slightly (Max walks very fast). ‘But I can’t agree that human bones shouldn’t ever be excavated. We learn so much from them.’

‘Yes,’ says Max. ‘But what do we do with that knowledge? That’s the question.’

The afternoon session, led by Bob Woonunga, turns out to be riveting. The autumn sun is low against the windows. Bob, wearing a cloak that is apparently made from possum skin, sits on the floor in the centre of the room. One by one the listeners abandon their chairs and sit in a circle around him. Ruth finds herself squashed up close to Max and Claudia. She is grateful to the dog for providing a barrier between them. As she strokes Claudia’s head, her hand brushes against Max’s leg. He smiles but doesn’t move away.

‘In the beginning is the Dreaming,’ says Bob. ‘And in the Dreaming lies the sacredness of the earth. It is the beginning of all things but it is not in the past. It is the past, present and the future. When we bury them in the earth the ancestors return to the Dreaming, and in this way the circle is complete. Every place and every creature belongs to the Dreaming. It is where the spirit children live before they are born and where the dead go when they leave their physical life.’

Bob tells them about souls that are buried in the sand, marked with twigs. Anjea, the fertility goddess, picks up the twigs and arranges them in a circle. She then makes new souls from mud and places them in the wombs of barren women. He tells them how the Bagadhimbri, two brother Gods in the form of dingoes, created the first sex organs from mushrooms. He tells them about Bahloo, the man in the moon, who keeps three deadly snakes as pets. He tells them about the Mimis, fairy-like creatures who live in rock crevices. He tells them about the Nargun, who abducts children by night. He tells them about cloud and rain spirits, about the Sun Goddess, and Yurlungar, the copper snake who was awoken from sleep by the smell of a woman’s menstrual blood, ate the woman and was later forced to regurgitate her. In Australian Aboriginal rites-of-passage ceremonies, says Bob, the vomiting symbolises boys becoming men. Ruth thinks, considering the circumstances, that the transition from girl to woman would be more appropriate.

But Bob’s greatest enthusiasm is reserved for the Rainbow Serpent, the great snake who, in the Dreaming, meandered over the land creating rivers and waterways. His body hollowed out the valleys; where he rested great lakes were formed; the stones are his droppings and his sloughed-off scales created the forests. The Snake, Bob tells them, is the totem of his tribe and he has written many poems about him. He reads some now, his words meandering over the room like the snake itself, winding themselves around its dark corners, taking shape in the last rays of the afternoon sun.

Strange, thinks Ruth dreamily, that the snake should be the big baddie in the Christian creation story. Here he seems to be both hero and villain, at once creating and destroying. One of Bob’s poems describes how the snake eats a boy because he won’t stop crying, but then the boy and his crying are absorbed into the Dreaming. Bishop Augustine, too, seems to have had rather an obsession with snakes. On one hand the snake was the demon to be destroyed, on the other the agent of his vengeance. Of course, the snake has another, more Freudian connection too, especially if Augustine’s sexuality really is in doubt. Did the snake represent Augustine’s assumed manhood? Aren’t some snakes hermaphrodites?

Bob finishes by reading from from a piece by the great Aboriginal poet Ooderoo Noonuccal. It’s called The Ballad of the Totems and is about her father and the sacred symbol of their tribe. In one place she describes it as a ‘carpet snake, which sounds rather odd to Ruth. Carpet Snake sounds more cosy than the great Rainbow Serpent, almost as if it could be used as a draught excluder.

She realises that Max is holding out a hand to help her to her feet. She scrambles up without his help, embarrassed at how stiff she is.

‘What’s happening now?’

‘I think we’re having the smoke ceremony.’ Max points to where Bob is leading the way out through the French windows into the garden. In the centre of the lawn Cathbad is enthusiastically building a bonfire.

‘Cathbad does love fires,’ says Ruth, putting on her jacket.

‘Well, fire’s important in ritual,’ says Max. ‘That was quite some session, wasn’t it? Incredibly powerful poetry.’

It is almost dark now and the wood catches light quickly. Cathbad and Bob, in their cloaks, are silhouetted against the flames. Ruth can see Caroline just behind them, her long skirt billowing. Then she jumps as a loud crack reverberates in the darkness.

‘It’s just a clapping stick,’ says a voice behind them. It’s this morning’s speaker, Alkira Jones. She smiles encouragingly. ‘They’re sometimes called singing sticks. They’re traditional Aboriginal instruments.’ Ruth sees that Cathbad and the other speaker, Derel Assinewai, are now armed with long, decorated rods which they bang enthusiastically together, creating a thunderous rhythm. Bob takes a burning brand from the centre of the fire. ‘Fire is our gateway to the Dreaming,’ he says. ‘Surrender to the fire.’

Boom, boom. The relentless beat continues. Smoke fills Ruth’s mouth and nose. The flames seem particularly pungent, as if they’re mixed with balsam. Her head starts to swim. At Max’s feet, Claudia whimpers.

Ruth turns to Max. ‘Do you want to come back to my place?’