team discovered what has become known as the McRae Stone, incidentally. Have you heard of it?”
“I’m not sure – it rings a vague bell. Do you know for sure that Claudia was in Norway during the war?”
“No, I’m still checking.”
“Well, carry on – don’t let me stop you! And thank you for doing this. I suppose that she didn’t have to be in Norway in person in order to adopt these views,” he added, almost to himself. “The woman that you speak of could have come here. Or they could just have shared ideas, however academics did that then: by post, I suppose, or telephone? And conferences, when there wasn’t a war on?”
Juliet laughed.
“I’ll let you know, sir,” she said. “Don’t put thoughts into my head that I can’t prove. I need to stay objective about this.”
She carried on with her work. Despite trying a variety of search techniques, she could find very little about Claudia’s activities during the war. Perhaps she was not working as an archaeologist then, but had been assigned to some kind of war work. There wasn’t much available on Dr Elida Berg for these years, either, but there was no reason to believe that she had left her post at the University of Oslo. Its curriculum was evidently undisturbed by the German occupation. However, if she published any papers in the years 1939 – 1948, the searches were not flagging them up, which was strange considering how prolific Dr Berg had been in the previous decade.
By the mid-1950s, Claudia was a sort of archaeological superstar. She had become the figurehead of a prototype feminist movement which was also supported by a new generation of self-consciously egalitarian male academics. There were many black-and-white pictures of Claudia in full flood at academic symposia and conferences. By the 1960s, she had gathered around her a coterie of adoring young men. Two of them had already figured in the police investigation: Oliver Sparham and Edmund Baker. Juliet was not particularly surprised by this revelation: Tim had already noted that each of them had a long-term association with the vanished woman and she had expected their names to crop up eventually. The contexts in which they featured seemed innocuous enough: they had participated in digs that had taken place in both the UK and Europe. There were the usual pictures of them standing knee-deep in trenches wearing shorts and sunhats. In some of the photographs, Claudia was posing with them or looking on benevolently as they wielded their shovels. (By the mid-1950s, she had become a bulky, shapeless woman, though still striking of countenance, who dressed most of the time in workman’s overalls.) But the accounts of the digs that Edmund and Oliver and the other young men had worked on were innocent of any political message that Juliet could divine; most were matter-of-fact accounts of excavations that had taken place at the sites of prehistoric farming communities, including some in the Orkneys. There had been no more finds of the calibre of the McRae Stone. Most of the accounts managed to mention the Stone, presumably to increase readership of these later digs by lending archaeological ‘sex appeal’, but none recapitulated Claudia’s semantic theories in detail.
This did not mean that Claudia was not still actively propounding her views, however. During the 1950s and 1960s, she had been invited to give a succession of high-profile public lectures – the Sir Maximus Wheelwright Memorial and BBC Longbourne Lectures in England, the keynote presentation at the Holyrood House Symposium in Scotland, the opening speech at the Fine Gael Conference in Ireland. She had also, rather peculiarly, been presented with the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglaise in 1962 for her writings, though Juliet believed – and her researches confirmed – that this award was usually conferred only on writers of fiction, drama and poetry. Juliet could find no explanation on the Femina magazine’s website for
“I’m not sure – it rings a vague bell. Do you know for sure that Claudia was in Norway during the war?”
“No, I’m still checking.”
“Well, carry on – don’t let me stop you! And thank you for doing this. I suppose that she didn’t have to be in Norway in person in order to adopt these views,” he added, almost to himself. “The woman that you speak of could have come here. Or they could just have shared ideas, however academics did that then: by post, I suppose, or telephone? And conferences, when there wasn’t a war on?”
Juliet laughed.
“I’ll let you know, sir,” she said. “Don’t put thoughts into my head that I can’t prove. I need to stay objective about this.”
She carried on with her work. Despite trying a variety of search techniques, she could find very little about Claudia’s activities during the war. Perhaps she was not working as an archaeologist then, but had been assigned to some kind of war work. There wasn’t much available on Dr Elida Berg for these years, either, but there was no reason to believe that she had left her post at the University of Oslo. Its curriculum was evidently undisturbed by the German occupation. However, if she published any papers in the years 1939 – 1948, the searches were not flagging them up, which was strange considering how prolific Dr Berg had been in the previous decade.
By the mid-1950s, Claudia was a sort of archaeological superstar. She had become the figurehead of a prototype feminist movement which was also supported by a new generation of self-consciously egalitarian male academics. There were many black-and-white pictures of Claudia in full flood at academic symposia and conferences. By the 1960s, she had gathered around her a coterie of adoring young men. Two of them had already figured in the police investigation: Oliver Sparham and Edmund Baker. Juliet was not particularly surprised by this revelation: Tim had already noted that each of them had a long-term association with the vanished woman and she had expected their names to crop up eventually. The contexts in which they featured seemed innocuous enough: they had participated in digs that had taken place in both the UK and Europe. There were the usual pictures of them standing knee-deep in trenches wearing shorts and sunhats. In some of the photographs, Claudia was posing with them or looking on benevolently as they wielded their shovels. (By the mid-1950s, she had become a bulky, shapeless woman, though still striking of countenance, who dressed most of the time in workman’s overalls.) But the accounts of the digs that Edmund and Oliver and the other young men had worked on were innocent of any political message that Juliet could divine; most were matter-of-fact accounts of excavations that had taken place at the sites of prehistoric farming communities, including some in the Orkneys. There had been no more finds of the calibre of the McRae Stone. Most of the accounts managed to mention the Stone, presumably to increase readership of these later digs by lending archaeological ‘sex appeal’, but none recapitulated Claudia’s semantic theories in detail.
This did not mean that Claudia was not still actively propounding her views, however. During the 1950s and 1960s, she had been invited to give a succession of high-profile public lectures – the Sir Maximus Wheelwright Memorial and BBC Longbourne Lectures in England, the keynote presentation at the Holyrood House Symposium in Scotland, the opening speech at the Fine Gael Conference in Ireland. She had also, rather peculiarly, been presented with the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglaise in 1962 for her writings, though Juliet believed – and her researches confirmed – that this award was usually conferred only on writers of fiction, drama and poetry. Juliet could find no explanation on the Femina magazine’s website for
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