Chapter 4

Rob.

I dare say there will be those out there who are thinking – or even shouting – something like, “What the hell are you messing about at?” Or some variation on the theme.

In almost any porn story the two protagonists would have been in bed doing the bump ugly long before. But this isn’t a porn story. Not like that, anyway.

I’m a heterosexual male, true. But remember that, at twenty-seven years old I’d never had a meaningful relationship with a woman of any age (other than my mother, but that was pretty normal and non-sexual). It seemed to me that Lisa was being very friendly, but I could write that off as her being more interested in Oscar than me. I just couldn’t accept that I, the nerdish biker, might be interesting to a woman, especially as one as spectacular as Lisa.

Lisa, despite (perhaps because of) her appearance, had devoted herself to her career and had made a point of avoiding intimate contacts with her male peers. For some reason, young women, even young women as attractive as Lisa, often lack confidence in their sex appeal. Or personality appeal, for that matter. Why? I have no idea. I only know the above by hearsay and, nowadays, from talking to Lisa. But that came much later.

So, okay, I was an idiot. Make that ‘clueless idiot’.

My next contact with Lisa, a phone call a couple of days later, didn’t help.

“Rob? I wanted to thank you for the great day out at Shuttleworth. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“I enjoyed it too.”

“Good! But I’m afraid I won’t be around for a few weeks. I’m going to spend some time at a dig. It’s important to my research.”

‘Oh, well,’ I thought. ‘I suppose that’s it. Not that I ever expected there to be more. At least she’s letting me down gently’. What I actually said was, “I hope that works out well for you. Enjoy it, if you can.”

“Oh, I can. I love what I do. And this is really important. I’m going to Star Carr for four weeks at least.” But then she added, “You might be interested to visit, perhaps.”

“Maybe. I think I’d be interested to see what you do.”

“If you come, just mention my name.” And she hung up.

I didn’t intend to go, even though it wasn’t so very far away. Instead, I made great progress with my Model 55. I tracked down oil-feed pipes for the head, exhaust pipes and silencers, front and rear mudguards, front and rear number plates. Actually, front number plates, mounted atop the front mudguard, were made non-compulsory in view of the danger they represented in an accident. These days they are only seen on vintage machines. Over the next couple of weeks I was able to finish the last cosmetic details as well as running the motor for the first time and riding the bike round the yard. Normally a vehicle built from parts, or rebuilt having been taken off the register, is issued a ‘Q’ registration. However, a certified vintage or antique classic may be issued a number appropriate to its age. I was happy to know a recognised Norton expert, who willingly wrote a recommendation for me. In due course I would receive a registration number I would carefully paint in white onto the shiny black background; of the rear number plate and both sides of the cleaver mounted atop the front mudguard.

Suddenly, for some reason, I finished a project, sent it in and realised I had nothing pending. I couldn’t ride the Model 55 on the road without a registration and insurance, which hadn’t arrived. So, impulsively, I booked a B&B in Pickering, packed a rucksack with clothes for a week, and set off for the North York Moors. Pickering is one end of the North York Moors Railway, a heritage, steam-hauled line which runs north-south from Pickering to Grosmont and Whitby through the wonderful countryside and I was going to take a ride.

What happened the first morning after I arrived, though, was I found myself riding Oscar east to Scarborough ... and Star Carr. I found it easily enough, and someone went to find Lisa. I can’t describe her expression when she saw me, but it left me in no doubt she was, indeed, pleased to see me. Then her expression changed to uncertainty.

“You look good,” I said. She was in cargo shorts and a loose cotton shirt, her hair pulled back in a pony tail. She was sweating a little.

Her expression cleared and changed to a wry smile. “Liar! But thank you.”

“Lisa,” I hesitated, but went on, “I cannot believe you can ever look anything but good. As it happens, I’m not impressed with artful arrangements of clothes and make-up. You’re working, and how you look is appropriate.” I ran out of words at that point and she wrapped me up in a hug. I was aware – painfully aware – of the pressure of her breasts against me.

“Come on. Let me show you around.”

I followed.

As it happens, I’m interested in almost everything, and I’d watched quite a lot of documentaries about archaeology. As a boy I’d been fascinated by the Romans, perhaps because of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s ‘The Eagle of the Ninth’. Dad told me it had been serialised on the BBC radio back in the day and he’d loved it, when he saw I’d borrowed it from the library. We tried to track down a recording without success.

But prehistory is, well, prehistory. Humans didn’t really settle down until the Neolithic, the New Stone Age, and even then didn’t leave much trace of themselves other than enigmatic stone monuments and stone tools. Go back before then and into the Mesolithic, Lisa’s interest, and you’re lucky to find anything. They used microliths – tiny fragments of flint – to make up their tools, and those are easy to miss unless you riddle every spadeful of soil. It’s certain that they used skins and wood, but those are ephemeral – very occasionally found in unusual conditions like peat bogs. What’s special about Star Carr and a very few other sites is the preservation of organic artefacts. Lisa explained all this to me as we looked at what was going on. It seems that the Mesolithic residents of Star Carr were more settled than had previously thought, and it seemed that they may have been in that transitional period between being nomads and permanent settlement.

But all that’s by the by. Lisa needed to get back to work, though she was more a supervisor than digger at that point. I found myself, trowel in hand, scraping nervously and cautiously away at the soil. Not what I had envisaged that morning.

The pay-off was eating with Lisa and her colleagues and listening to the shop-talk. I was very tired by the time I fell into bed in the B&B after a long, hot, shower.

I didn’t go back the next day. There were several reasons for that, one of which was that I didn’t actually see much of Lisa, and if I went back I’d probably see even less as I spent the day carefully scraping away at soil a millimetre at a time.

Instead, I went for a ride on the steam railway. I was actually eating fish ‘n’ chips in Whitby when my phone rang. Lisa.

“Hi, Lisa.”

“Rob.” She hesitated. “I hope you weren’t bored yesterday?”

“Not at all. But I’d need to learn a lot before I was actually useful. I’d have to admit, your speciality is, um, sort of ... esoteric.”

She laughed, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re absolutely right. One needs to be quite obsessed to enjoy what I do. Other eras, even Iron Age, are much easier to get a handle on. Why I rang, though ... you did say you were staying in Pickering?”

“Yes. I’m in Whitby, though, now. I rode up on the steam railway.”

“Really? That must have been fun.”

“It was.”

“Anyway. I was wondering...” it was a longer hesitation this time, “If I took a day off ... I can, you know ... could I come to see you?”

I answered immediately. “Of course! I’d love to see you again.”

“If I leave right after breakfast, I’ll be there about nine. Where shall we meet?”

“You’re driving?”

“Yes.”

I gave the address I was staying at. “Why not come here? You can park, and we can talk about where to go.”

That suited me down to the ground, since the landlady put breakfast on the table between eight and nine, so I was able to enjoy a leisurely, somewhat fattening, breakfast. And coffee, of course.

Lisa arrived a few minutes after nine, and I went out to meet her. “Hi, Rob!”

“Lisa.” She was dressed in slacks and a blouse that did nothing to conceal her curves. Her hair was still in a pony-tail, and if she was wearing make-up, I couldn’t tell.

“Would you mind going back to the railway? I know there’s quite a lot to see in Pickering, but...”

“Not at all.”

We missed the nine-twenty-five, but that didn’t matter; we went into the tea shop and had coffee and buns. Half-way through our coffee, buns consumed, Lisa reached out and laid her hand on mine. “Rob,”

“Uh huh?”

“When I said I had to work at Star Carr ... did you think I was brushing you off?”

“Well...”

“Be honest, please.”

“Well. sort of, I suppose.”

“I wasn’t.” I didn’t say anything, just raised an eyebrow. “I like you,” she went on. “I like you a lot.”

“I like you, too,” I said, understating.

“Would you teach me to ride a motorbike?”

“I would, but the law says you have to take a CBT course and pass a test.”

“Oh.” Disappointment. “There was one other thing. My thesis is almost complete. For my Master’s I got editor/proofreaders through the University. Would you be interested in checking my Doctoral dissertation? I can pay your usual rates, of course.”