Twenty-five
“It’s beautiful,” said Miranda, looking round her.
Kilterbury Ring was a local beauty spot though its remains¹ were not particularly famous. Theyhad been dismantled² many hundreds of years ago. Yet here and there a tall megalithic stone stillstood, upright, telling of a long past ritual worship. Miranda asked questions.
“Why did they have all these stones here?”
“For ritual. Ritual worship. Ritual sacrifice. You understand about sacrifice, don’t you,Miranda?”
“I think so.”
“It has to be, you see. It’s important.”
“You mean, it’s not a sort of punishment? It’s something else?”
“Yes, it’s something else. You die so that others should live. You die so that beauty should live.
Should come into being. That’s the important thing.”
“I thought perhaps—”
“Yes, Miranda?”
“I thought perhaps you ought to die because what you’ve done has killed someone else.”
“What put that into your head?”
“I was thinking of Joyce. If I hadn’t told her about something, she wouldn’t have died, wouldshe?”
“Perhaps not.”
“I’ve felt worried since Joyce died. I needn’t have told her, need I? I told her because I wantedto have something worth while telling her. She’d been to India and she kept talking about it—about the tigers and about the elephants and their gold hangings and decorations and theirtrappings. And I think, too—suddenly I wanted somebody else to know, because you see I hadn’treally thought about it before.” She added: “Was—was that a sacrifice, too?”
“In a way.”
Miranda remained contemplative, then she said, “Isn’t it time yet?”
“The sun is not quite right yet. Another five minutes, perhaps, and then it will fall directly onthe stone.”
Again they sat silent, beside the car.
“Now, I think,” said Miranda’s companion, looking up at the sky where the sun was dippingtowards the horizon. “Now is a wonderful moment. No one here. Nobody comes up at this time ofday and walks up to the top of Kilterbury Down to see Kilterbury Ring. Too cold in Novemberand the blackberries are over. I’ll show you the double axe³ first. The double axe on the stone.
Carved there when they came from Mycenae or from Crete hundreds of years ago. It’s wonderful,Miranda, isn’t it?”

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