Page 10 of The Start of the Story
‘Of course. It’s not just for show.’ I stood back to allow him room and was mildly pleased by his temporary confusion at the apparent lack of window opening mechanism. ‘It’s a Yorkshire sash. It slides sideways, like this.’ I demonstrated. ‘We kept all the original features when we restored the place.’
Connor nodded and slid the window a few times, experimentally.
‘I need to…’ I made vague hand signals towards the door as though I had to wave to a crowd or scatter grain. ‘So I’ll leave you to settle in.’ Then I berated myself all the way back down the tiny staircase.Whyhad I agreed to this? The cottage already felt too full of people. There were noises I hadn’t made, creaks and bumps overhead, presumably Connor unpacking, although hopefully he wouldn’t be here for long enough toneedto unpack. I’d sent Chess some fairly pointed texts on the subject of finding him somewhere more convenient to stay for the remainder of his six months. Guilt might have provoked me into making my spare room available, but his stay absolutely couldnotbe anything more than fleetingly temporary. There was nowhere for him to sit, for a start – the loveseat sofa that faced the fireplace was only meant for one. Two if they were physically close, and I did not intend to be physically any closer to Professor O’Keefe than the driver and passenger seats in my car.
And where was he going to work? My computer took up the dining table and there wasn’t room in the kitchen for him. Outside? I briefly entertained the idea of Connor O’Keefe sitting dismally out on the step, or on the narrow fringe of garden that fronted the river, overgrown and matted with weeds as it was. The vision of him sitting there damply, making muted duck-call noises, with his feet dangling in the river, was unexpectedlyamusing and I found myself letting out a little giggle, which made me feel better.
When had I last giggled? Chess made me raise the odd smile now and again with her pronouncements, but actuallygiggle? Or laugh? When had that been? Too long ago now for me to remember. I worked too hard to have time for levity: long solo hours recording, typing up notes, compiling and collating. Being a folklorist was a solitary occupation. We roamed the peripheries of life armed with voice recorders and notebooks, grumpy and aloof. There’s not generally a lot of laughs in listening to eighty-year-olds reminiscing over memories handed down from their parents and trying to sort out the tales that might be important, stories that might interleave with others of a similar nature to give a base to local legend. There’s a lot of drinking tea, looking at photo albums and going back over how much better things had been before computerisation. Or decimalisation. Or the car.
In short, it was a job that involved dedication, attention to detail and a kind of detached sociability. None of these things seemed appropriate to being forced to share a house with a Roman historian. A historian who wanted to destroy a local folkloric totem, at that.
I felt my face shrug off the smile and assumed my normal composed expression and went to look busy.
6
Connor had been right about not being a noisy guest. He was almost completely silent, from early evening when he retired upstairs after eating a pack of sandwiches he’d brought with him, until the next morning when he called down from the stairway to the kitchen as I was blearily making myself a cup of tea.
‘May I use the bathroom? I could do with a shower before I start the day. Is that all right now?’
I blinked over my mug. ‘Of course it is.’
‘I didn’t want to interfere with your bathroom schedules, that’s all. Getting ready for work and everything.’
His consideration took some of the irritated wind out of my sails. ‘No, that’s fine. I’ll shower tonight when I get home. Are you wanting a lift through to the university today?’
I put the mug down and began popping bread into the toaster. Two slices – and then another two slices. He must bestarving.
‘Oh, yes, if you’re going through, that would be great.’ His voice receded along the landing as he headed bathroom-wards.‘I’m not lecturing but I want to meet up with the guys who are surveying the land.’
A couple of minutes later he was in the kitchen, hair wet and weighted long with the water, towel over his shoulders and dressed in his usual black.
‘Toast?’ I pushed the plate towards him. He’d been quicker than I’d expected, so I was still sitting on the window seat with my toast dropping crumbs into my lap, staring out across the river to the other side of the disused ford. Ihadbeen intending to be washing up when he came down, or tidying the kitchen, showing how generally full and busy my life was and how much of an imposition he was upon it. But it was seven o’clock and my annoyance hadn’t had chance to crank up to visible level yet.
‘Thanks.’ He grabbed the plate, looked around and saw the butter and jam on the worktop. ‘Is it all right if…?’
His politeness notched the annoyance up one setting. ‘Of course. You don’t have to ask. You’re paying to be here, that gets you use of shower and snacks.’ Moodily I bit into the remaining toast, then threw the crusts out of the window to the assorted duck crowd that had gathered, paddling furiously against the current, for just this occasion.
A quacking, splashing battle ensued. When I glanced away from it, Connor was looking at me, frozen in the act of buttering his toast.
‘I know this is awkward for you,’ he said so quietly that his words were almost lost under the noise of a large white duck dive-bombing one of the mallards. ‘I’m sorry you got talked into it. But I’m really very grateful, truly. I slept last night like the dead for the first time since I arrived over here, and I’m beginning to feel human again.’ One eyebrow lifted and his mouth twitched into the customary smile. ‘So, please make use of me while you’ve got me. Any jobs need doing about the place, I’m your man.’
I closed the window. ‘I do my own jobs,’ I said stiffly and then, aware of how ungracious I’d sounded, ‘but thank you for the offer.’ The damp patch above the back door gave the lie to my words, but I ignored it.
‘Ah, only a thought.’ A buttery moment ensued, and then he went on. ‘I’m fully house-trained, so you can leave me to my laundry and washing up and all that. I’ll make my bed and keep the crumbs to a minimum. Mam ran a very tight household, what with five boys and Da, she wasn’t up for martyring herself to the house.’
I had a vision of Connor’s mother, like a cross between Mrs Doyle fromFather Tedand every stereotypical Irish Mammy I’d ever read about. Plump and censorious, strict about Mass on Sunday, cooking up a storm and fussing over her sons to the extent of them struggling to find girlfriends. Apart from the priestly Eamonn, of course. I could see her ruling the household with a rod of iron amid the chaos of all those boys, having them clamour to make her a cup of tea when she settled herself into an armchair.
‘What with her job, and all,’ Connor went on, biting happily into the toast.
‘What does she do?’ I asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
‘She’s head of the biochemical sciences department,’ he said, turning back to tidy up the jam, so at least he couldn’t see my expression. I was glad, because my mental attempt to overwrite Irish Mammy with Scientist was scrambling my face.
We finished our breakfast in silence. Connor stood and looked out of the window while he ate and I drank the rest of my tea while reading an article in a magazine about the Fairy Census, which collated current belief in the world of the Other. I made a note of the name of the author, in case I needed to contact someone about the future of the Fairy Stane. If Connorand his ranks of students made any attempt to disturb it, I’d rally everyone in the folklore world in an attempt to protect it. He needn’t think he could ride roughshod over lifetimes of belief just to prove a historical point, not without a fight, anyway.
Then I drove us to York.
It was a busy day. I had a meeting with the people who awarded the grants who wanted to see the current stage of my research, so I went armed with some of the more hair-raising tales I’d recorded. Stories of haunted bridges, cursed lanes, the black dog that accompanied travellers on the high moor all went down well. Apparently the Most Haunted influence was still strong among the general public and real-life tales were incredibly popular tourist attractions. Those words, ‘tourist attractions’, made the hair on the back of my neck prickle – what I was doing was collecting oral history, social commentary and myth, all gleaned from lone farms high on the moors as tales told on long dark nights before electricity had come to the villages.
