Treasures of Time by Penelope Lively

I’m not convinced the cameraman didn’t fake it up a bit. It was a natural for the cameramen – we got some very elegant film – and frankly it was very popular too. The letters are still coming in.’ He shot a sideways glance at Tom. ‘People really are awfully keen on this kind of thing, you know. It seems to fulfil a need of some kind.’
    ‘You shouldn’t encourage them.’
    ‘It was a piece of detached journalism,’ said Tony reprovingly. ‘We made our own position quite clear: uncommitted.’
    ‘Which particular brand of nut is this lady we’re going to see now?’
    ‘Well, it was astrology of a kind, but not quite that. She has this theory that in some parts of England the signs of the zodiac are sort of stamped on the landscape, outlined by old tracks and field boundaries and the edges of woods and roads and so forth.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Tom, ‘what for?’
    ‘That’s not made absolutely clear, of course. At Glastonbury, apparently you get the lot – Pisces and Aquarius and so on – and it’s all something to do with Arthur, she isn’t too explicit about that.’
    ‘I daresay she isn’t.’
    ‘It’s all frightfully far-fetched of course, but you can more or less see what she means when she shows you her maps and things. We tied it in with all the rest of the Glastonbury stuff. She used to live there, but I gather she ran into some kind of trouble with the authorities, she does push her views rather and of course not everyone has much time for it.’
    ‘I’m not surprised, if she was going round claiming that Somerset County Council is guided by unseen forces.’
    ‘Oh, it’s all quite cranky,’ said Tony. ‘One’s perfectly well aware of that, of course. You don’t find it just a bit intriguing all the same?’
    ‘No.’
    There was a pause. They were on the motorway now, gliding up the fast lane, the car a private capsule of tinted glass. Tom went on, ‘Sorry – it’s just that personally I don’t have any time for people attributing psychic energy to bits of Somerset or Wiltshire or wherever.’
    ‘Oh, I take your point. But it goes on, that you can’t deny. Always has. After all, that place with the peculiar name we went to…’
    ‘Charlie’s Tump?’
    ‘That’s right. I mean, Kate was saying it’s called that because of some dotty local belief that Charles I hid there, when in fact he can’t ever have gone near the place.’
    ‘Oh yes, true enough. People have always needed to explain the inexplicable – the physical world and the past both fall into that category. That’s why the place is littered with Devils’ Dykes and Giants’ Causeways and suchlike…’ – Tony nodded sagely – ‘but we’re supposed to know better now. We shouldn’t still be inventing the past. Or using it as a convenience.’ Except, of course, he thought, that we all do that all the time, in our separate ways. He felt with guilt that perhaps he had been a bit dogmatic: Tony, after all, meant well. But Tony did not seem offended, and indeed after driving for a while in silence was now talking about something quite different. ‘Sorry – what?’
    ‘I said ever thought of crossing the Atlantic? Seeing as how things aren’t too good here, jobwise.’
    ‘No,’ said Tom. After a moment, he added ‘It’s not that I think this place owes me a living. More I’d feel it something of a defeat if it couldn’t find a use for me. Also, it so happens I like it here.’
    Tony nodded. He flicked the radio control. ‘… black school-leavers’ said a news-reading voice. ‘A spokesman for the Department of Employment and Industry said the latest figures showed little improvement in the overall situation…’
    ‘Sorry,’ said Tony, stabbing another button: the car was filled with Brahms. ‘That do?’ ‘Grand’ said Tom, staring out at a scenic countryside, pleasantly decorated with grazing animals, its dirt or damp or smells eliminated by a layer of tinted, laminated glass. ‘I