Free The White Father by Julian Mitchell

they wouldn’t be unwelcome, Armitage had said. He took up a spade or a trowel as ordered and dug or scraped where he was told, taking, he noticed, far more care about it than the professionals who tended to shovel where he would sift. Armitage and his assistant, Mrs Blewett, occasionally inspected his work, but always refrained from comment. They would gaze at the variously coloured layers of earth in a trench and nod as though satisfied. Edward was strictly amateur. His finds so far had been two brass clips and an indecipherable coin.
    He bent again to the pavement and brushed away the fall of earth. Wouldn’t the Romans have laughed to see us solemnly sieving their rubbish heaps? Is their central-heating really all that clever? Didn’t they perhaps regard it with the same blasé air that we regard ours? What are archaeologists two thousand years hence going to say about the ruins they dig up? The once-powerful British Empire was rich both at home and abroad. Pottery from as many as seven thousand different potteries has been found all over the world. These shards confirm the existence of major trade routes. The remains of narrow and winding roads throughout Britain indicate that, though difficult and slow, journeys were possible between the main cities.
    But no, that’s all fantasy. Future historians will know all too much about every detail of our lives. Microfilms, card-indices, photostats, tapes, records, books and books of surveys and statistics and analyses—Christ, there are people spending their lives telling us how we are living, and without them we would hardly know. There will be nothing for the future to explain, if there is a future, that is. Poor bloody undergraduates in 3960. Perhaps they’ll have abolished the viva by then. About bloody time, too.
    Edward’s viva was still to come. Notably weak on the Romans and the Dark Ages, he had been reduced to writing a jejeune and deliberately unfinished essay on Hadrian, in the hope that the examiners would assume it was only shortage of time that prevented him from displaying further knowledge.Jutes, Danes, Saxons and Angles were all the same to him, but there was something to be said for the Romans, they were at least reasonably efficient. The invaders who succeeded them had no sense of order at all, and most of them couldn’t even spell their names right. He hoped, without much confidence, that his brief archaeologising might help him to remember about the importance of burial sites as opposed to crematoria. But his mind usually ran on other things.
    Your salad days are over now, Edward. They’re not, daddy-o, not over by any means. Work, who wants to work? The only work worth doing is play, and the only play worth anything is work. Play? No. You’ve got to be left alone, that’s all that matters, you’ve got to stay clear. So you’ve got to have money. So Ed Gilchrist has to make that Top Twenty chart soonest. Backing, that’s the secret. You can sing terribly and get away with it if only you have the right backing. The right backing and the right kind of number. Must make Pete Harrisson take it all more seriously. Thinks he’s too good for pops. Write our own tunes, lyrics, arrangements, snatch all the wages that way, strike real pay dirt. Dirt. Hell, that man’s coming for a drink. Must finish that song tonight, too. Heavy beat, that’s essential. But strings, too, whining away for sentiment . The kids are suckers for sentimental rhythm. Good title, that, Sentimental Rhythm. Probably been used. A bit thirties, too. Perhaps that’s what I ought to go for, old standards. Never make it as a rock singer, too old at twenty-three. Got to be still at bloody school.
    Come on, come on, another foot before we pack it in. How dull can a pavement get? The question is what to sing at the test recording. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Make a song of that. Don’t call me, darling, I’ll call you, just the way I used to do. Call you names. Before we say