Free Worthless Remains by Peter Helton Page A

one.’ We were passing a four-foot terracotta griffin half-swallowed by ivy. ‘Nutters. And they’re all still here, too.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜You’ll find out.’ He stopped for a moment and breathed in deeply. ‘I don’t know, I might get myself buried here when the time comes. I don’t fancy a crowded cemetery.’
    â€˜So you can haunt the place.’
    â€˜The place already has a full complement of ghosts.’
    â€˜Naturally.’
    â€˜Ha! You may mock.’
    I could hear running water. We took a left through an arch in a hedge that was in dire need of trimming and there beyond it lay the ornamental lake, fed by a lively cascade of water tumbling over suspiciously picturesque rocks at the edge of the dense woodland. At the lake’s centre was a tiny wooded island and a small rowing boat made fast to a rickety landing stage near the inlet seemed to invite exploration. Ducks were skirting the reed beds.
    â€˜Quite a duck pond.’ It was probably thirty times the size of our mill pond at home and again it struck me that scale made all the difference.
    â€˜Yeah, I come down here a lot.’ He waved an arm towards the woods on our left where a less than picturesque row of green portable toilets marked their fringe. ‘The archaeologists are all in the woods with their tents. I just hope they don’t set fire to the place . . . Hang on.’ He stood still, listening. From up behind us in the distance came the growling sound of an engine. ‘I bet that’s the mini digger they use; they must be ready to start. Come on.’ He walked back quickly, loath to miss any of the goings-on.
    He had been right, a yellow digger – not as mini as all that – was crawling along the lawn. Any other lawn owner would have greeted the sight of its caterpillar tracks on the grass with dismay but to Stoneking it spelled entertainment. Shortly afterwards a much larger vehicle arrived at the hall. It was a cherry picker for those overhead camera angles. An unimpeded route on to the lawn would have been on the north side, only that already had the catering van and its paraphernalia established on it. No matter, Stoneking personally waved the big Iveco lorry straight through a flower bed at the south end where it left broad tyre marks. What was his gardener’s name again?
    Two girls in identical checked shirts and khaki shorts were now walking their geophysics equipment up and down a marked-out area, scanning the ground. It was another hour before the filming got underway and the activities on the enormous lawn took on a shape TV audiences would have recognized. Stoneking had infected me with his enthusiasm and I stayed close to listen. Enthusiasm was what the director wanted too, and she got it. Guy Middleton and Andrea Clementi, the team leader, did a lively question and answer session about what they were expecting to find.
    â€˜So, Andrea, do you really think there could be a Roman villa under here?’
    â€˜Well, there has been a small excavation here already, done by amateur archaeologists in the late nineteenth century, and that is the conclusion they drew from their finds, which included coloured tesserae and some substantial stonework.’
    â€˜Do we still have any of those finds?’ Guy asked, as he had been told to.
    â€˜Unfortunately the drawings and all those finds are lost. But just
look
at the geophysics results, Guy.’ She produced the A3 printout she had held hidden under the map of the estate. The cameras zoomed in, and Guy wowed at the geophysics results as though he had never seen them before.
    â€˜That’s extraordinary. Could those really be walls . . .?’
    And so it went on. Most of it had been scripted or discussed before, some of it had to be repeated, and yet it all sounded fresh and quite convincing every time. Mark Stoneking himself had refused to be mentioned, nor did he allow