The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps. Michel Faber
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you live here as a kid?’
‘Many, many, long, long years,’ he affirmed, in a querulous tone of weary melodrama. ‘Couldn’t get out fast enough.’
Siân puzzled over the two halves of his statement, and couldn’t help thinking there was a flaw in his logic somewhere.
‘I like this place myself,’ she said. It surprised her to hear herself saying it – given the nightmares and the insomnia, she had good reason to associate Whitby with misery. But it was true: she liked the place.
‘But you’re not from here, are you?’
‘No. I’m an archaeologist, working at the dig.’
‘Cool! The sixty skeletons, right?’
‘Among other things, yes.’ She looked away from him, to register her disapproval of his sensationalist instincts, but if he noticed, he didn’t give a toss.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Gothic.’
‘Anglian, actually, as far as we can tell.’
Her attempt to put him in his place hung in the air between them, sounding more and more snooty as she replayed it in her head. She returned her attention to the dog, trying to salvage things by stroking the parts the man wasn’t stroking.
‘What’s his name?’
He hesitated for a moment. ‘Hadrian.’
She snorted helplessly. ‘That’s … that’s an exceptionally crap name. For any dog, but especially this one.’
‘Isn’t it!’ he beamed. ‘My dad was a Roman history buff, you see.’
‘And your name?’
Again he hesitated. ‘Call me Mack.’
‘Short for something?’
‘Magnus.’ His pale blue eyes narrowed. ‘Latin for “great”. Grisly, isn’t it?’
‘Grisly?’
‘Sounds like I’ve got a big head or something.’
‘I’ll reserve judgement on that. It’s a fine, ancient name, anyway.’
‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’
The familiarity of his tone worried her a bit. What delicate work it was, this business of conversing with strangers of the other sex! No wonder she hardly ever attempted it anymore …
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘You know, being an archaeologist and all that.’
‘I’m not actually a fully-fledged archaeologist. Still studying.’
‘Oh? I would’ve thought …’ He caught himself before he could say ‘at your age’ or anything like that, but the implication stabbed straight into Siân – straight into her innermost parts, so to speak. Yes, damn it, she didn’t look like a peachy young thing anymore. What she’d gone through in Bosnia – and since – was written and underlined on her face. “It pleased the Author of our salvation …” Pleased Him to put her body and soul through Hell. In order that her strength might be made perfect in weakness. In order that people she’d only just met would think she was awfully old to be studying for a degree.
‘I would’ve thought archaeology was a hands-on kind of thing,’ he said.
‘So it is. I’m a qualified conservator, actually, specialising in the preservation of paper and parchment. I just fancied a change, thought I should get out more. There’s a nice mixture of people at this dig. Some have been archaeologists for a million years. Some are just kids, getting their first pay-packet.’
‘And then there’s you.’
‘Yes, then there’s me.’
He was staring at her; in fact, both he and his dog were staring at her, and in much the same way, too: eyes wide and sincere, waiting for her to give them the next piece of her.
‘I’m Siân,’ she said, at last.
‘Lovely name. Meaning?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Siân. In Welsh, it means … ?’
She racked her brains for the derivation of her name. ‘I don’t think it means anything much. Jane, I suppose. Just plain Jane.’
‘You’re not plain,’ he spoke up immediately, grateful for the chance to make amends.
To hide her embarrassment, she heaved herself to her feet. ‘Well, it’s nearly time I started work.’ And she steeled herself for the remaining hundred steps.
‘Can I walk with you as far as the church? There’s a run I can do with Hadrian near there, back down to the town …’
‘Sure,’ she said lightly. He mustn’t see her limping. She would do what she could to prevent his attention straying below her waist.
‘So…’ she said, as they set off together, the dog scampering ahead, then scooting back to circle them. ‘Now that your father’s funeral’s over, do you have much more sorting out to do?’
‘It’s finished, really. But I’ve got a research paper to write, for my final year of Medicine. So, I’m using Dad’s house as a kind of … solitary confinement. To get on with it, you know. There’s a lot of distractions in London. Even worse distractions than this fellow …’ And he aimed a slow, playful kick at Hadrian.
‘You’re partaking of a fine Whitby tradition, then,’ said Siân. ‘Think of those monks and nuns sitting in their bare cells, reading and scribing all day.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, I’m sure they got up to a hell of a lot more than that.’
Was this bawdy crack, and the wink that accompanied it, supposed to have any relevance to the two of them, or was it just the usual cynicism that most people had about monastic life? Probably just the usual cynicism, because when they ascended to the point where the turrets of Whitby Abbey were visible, he said: ‘Ah! The lucrative ruins!’ He flung his right arm forward, unfurling his massive hand in a grandiose gesture. ‘See Whitby Abbey and die!’
Siân felt her hackles rise, yet at the same time she was tickled by his theatricality. She’d always detested shy, cringing men.
‘If the Abbey’d had a bit more money over the centuries,’ she retorted, ‘it wouldn’t be ruins.’
‘Oh come on,’ he teased. ‘Ruins are where the real money is, surely? People love it.’ He mimicked an American sightseer posing for his camera-toting wife: ‘“Take a pitcha now, Wilma, of me wid dese here ruins of antiquiddy behind me!”’
Squinting myopically, acting the buffoon, he ought to have looked foolish, but his clowning only served to accentuate how handsome he was. His irreverent grin, and the way he inhabited his body with more grace than his gangly frame ought to allow, were an attractive combination for Siân – a combination she’d been attracted to before, almost fatally. She’d have to be careful with this young man, that’s for sure, if she didn’t want a re-run of … of the Patrick fiasco.
‘Antiquity is exciting,’ she said. ‘It’s good that people are willing to come a long way to see it. They walk up these stone stairs towards that abbey, and they feel they’re literally following in the footsteps of medieval monks and ancient kings. They see those turrets poking up over the headland, and it takes them back eight hundred years …’
‘Ah, but that thing up there isn’t the real Whitby Abbey, is it? It’s a reconstruction: some tourist body’s idea of what a medieval abbey should look like.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Didn’t it all fall down ages ago, and they