The Tenth Chamber

SIXTEEN

The last day of work at Ruac Cave came and went.

That final night, there was a celebratory dinner of sorts, though spirits were tamped down by the twin catastrophes that had befallen the excavation, a pair of accidents that sent tongues wagging about curses, ill fate and the like.

After Hugo’s funeral in Paris, Luc had returned to Ruac and thrown himself into his work like a whirling dervish, toiling himself into a state of anaesthesia, sleeping only enough to keep going. He became flat and detached, spoke only when spoken to, maintained a professional efficiency with his team but that was the extent of it. Hugo’s death had washed away his usual witty charm like waves washed away letters etched on a sandy beach with a stick.

Matters were made worse by the unannounced appearance at Ruac by Marc Abenheim who parachuted in from Paris, hell-bent on exploiting the tragedy. The weedy martinet arrived and demanded everyone leave the Portakabin so he could speak with Luc privately. Then, like an actuary, he challenged Luc on the odds of one excavation having two fatalities in one season.

‘What are you driving at?’ Luc had spat back.

Abenheim’s voice had an infuriating nasal tone. ‘Lack of discipline. Lack of management. Lack of good sense for inviting your friend to stay at an official Ministry dig. That’s what I’m driving at.’

It was nothing short of a miraculous act of self-restraint that Luc was able to send Abenheim on his way without a broken nose.

When the officious prat drove off, Luc started fuming openly. He’d kept a damper on his anger during Abenheim’s visit but now that he was gone he retreated to his caravan and slammed the door. The first thing that caught his attention was the dent in the wall he’d left the night after Hugo died.

He had a strong urge to punch it again, finish it off by putting his fist right through the blood-stained wall but when he curled his fingers he remembered this was a terrible idea. His cut knuckle had become infected, turned beefy and swollen, and there were red streaks creeping up the back of his hand. He didn’t have the time or inclination to find a doctor. One of the students had a bottle of erythromycin left over from a chest infection and Luc had started popping them a few days earlier. He unclenched his aching fist and kicked a chair instead.

As to Sara, if Luc had harboured any designs on restarting something with her, he had suppressed them, forgotten them, or maybe he never had them at all. He couldn’t remember.

She gave him space and didn’t compel him to deal with his loss. The more he withdrew, the more she rallied, scurrying around the edges of his life, fretting with Jeremy and Pierre about his health and well-being. She knew a little bit about clinical depression.

He’d given her a case once.

The autumn night was cold, drawing people to the fire much the same way that their prehistoric forebears would have gathered. Luc felt he had to address the group one last time, though he didn’t have the appetite for much of a speech.

He thanked them for their tireless work and rattled through a list of their accomplishments. They had accurately mapped the entire complex from the first chamber to the tenth chamber. They had photographed every inch of the complex. They had a first radiocarbon date back from the charcoal outline of one of the bison and it confirmed the suspicion that the cave dated to 30,000 BP. They had begun to understand the geological forces that had shaped the formation of the cave. They had comprehensively excavated the floors of Chamber 1 and Chamber 10. In Chamber 1 they had found evidence of a fire pit and an abundance of reindeer bones and signs of a long occupation of the cave mouth. In Chamber 10 they found more Aurignacian blades and flakes, that lovely ivory bear and phenomenally, the fingertip of a human infant. Although it was the only human bone they had unearthed, it was still a miracle find that would be analysed intensively in the weeks to come. Sara Mallory also had a wealth of pollen samples to analyse over the winter. He said nothing of their plant-gathering and kitchen experiments. No one else needed to know about that bit of fringe work for now.

He concluded by reminding everyone that this was just the beginning, not the end. The funding had already come through for three additional seasons and they would meet again in the spring to compare notes they had made during the off-season. He reckoned they’d still be coming to Ruac Cave when they were old and grey, to which Craig Morrison interjected in his Scottish brogue that some of them were already old and grey, thank you very much!

Then Luc raised his glass to the memory of Zvi Alon and Hugh Pineau and begged them all to take care on their journeys home.

The team drank and chatted into the night but Luc withdrew to his caravan. Sara was looking for an excuse to go to him. Checking her email, she found it.

‘Hi,’ she said gently, when he opened the door. ‘Mind some company?’

‘Sure, come in.’

The was only one small light on. He hadn’t been reading, he hadn’t been drinking. It looked like he’d just been sitting and staring.

‘I’ve been really worried about you,’ she said. ‘We all are.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘No, I don’t think you are. When you get back to Bordeaux, maybe you should see someone?’

‘What, like a shrink? You’re joking.’

‘I’m not. You’ve been through a lot.’

He upped his volume. ‘I said I’m fine!’ But he saw her mouth was twitching so he continued, softer, ‘Look, when I get back to the university and I get into my usual routine I’ll be right as rain, as the Brits say. Really I will. And thanks for caring.’

She let them both off the hook with her news. ‘I got an email tonight from Fred Prentice, my contact at PlantaGenetics. They finished their analysis.’

‘Yes?’

‘It sounds like he’s pretty excited but he didn’t want to say anything by email – he said there were intellectual property issues and patent rights that needed to be sorted out. He wants us to come to Cambridge personally.’

‘When?’

‘He suggested Monday. Will you come with me?’

‘I need to close up the dig.’

‘Pierre and Jeremy and the others are quite capable. I think you should come. It’ll do you good.’

Luc mustered a chuckle. ‘If the choice is between a psychiatrist and a visit to the UK, I guess I’m in.’

Instead of sleeping, Luc broke his own rule and went to the cave for one last visit.

Director’s prerogative, he told himself.

Climbing down the ladder in the dark, his miner’s helmet illuminating the cliff wall, he had an unpleasant image of the moment Zvi slipped a rung and plunged to his death, but he shook it off and kept descending.

On the ledge, he put on his Tyvek suit in the dark, unlocked the heavy gate and hit the switch. The halogen lights made the cave bright and harsh, so different from the way it would have looked in prehistory.

He slowly walked to the rear towards his favourite place, the tenth chamber. The bats had all but departed and the cave was truly quiet now.

At the furthest point, he stood face to face with the life-sized bird man in the field of wild barley. He had a candle. He lit it with a disposable lighter then killed the electric lights. Zvi Alon had wanted to do this, to experience the cave in this natural way. It was the right instinct.

In the faltering candle light, the barley seemed to wave. The bird man’s beak seemed to move.

What was he saying?

Luc strained to hear.

What I wouldn’t give, he thought, to be able to stand beside the man who painted these images, to watch him, to understand him, to speak to him.

He blew out the candle to spend some moments in the most complete darkness he had ever known.