Dictated note, J. Mercer

Julian Mercer, same day, evening, in the car. This is a note to myself and to whoever gets these papers, and I'd rather say it while it's fresh than tidy it up later.

I have three documents about Row 7. My plan says twelve. My lifting log says eleven. Mrs. Bardsley says twelve and gives a reason for saying it that is better than either of mine, because she has forty-one years of mowing behind it and I have a fortnight of weather and a schedule.

Now. What I can support. I can support that eleven were lifted, because I have the log and I have my own hands. I can support that the plan carries a twelfth position, drawn and dimensioned, because the plan is in the crate. I can support that Mrs. Bardsley believes there were twelve and has always believed it. Those are three facts and I will write them down as three facts.

What I cannot support is any sentence that makes those three into one. I do not know that I miscounted. I do not know that she is mistaken. I do not know that the ground was disturbed before we came to it, though it is a cemetery beside a road and that is not a rare thing.

And I want to be plain about the temptation, because the temptation is the whole of the danger in this work. The temptation is to pick the document you like and call the other two errors. It is a very comfortable feeling and it has ruined more sites than the machines have.

So: the note stands as an unresolved position. Not a mystery. An unresolved position, of which there is one in every honest excavation I have ever run, and usually more than one.

Last thing, and then I'll stop and drive. She asked me to say it was a quiet place. It was. Whatever the number was, three hundred and forty people were lifted properly this season, and one line on one plan is not what that ground should be remembered for. Put that in the file where somebody will read it.

End of note.