Page 47 of The Start of the Story
‘I might need you too. I’m looking into the Evercey Manor thing,’ he went on, not even the slightest bit abashed by the fact that my cheeks were beginning to heat up. He might not even have noticed, hopefully. ‘Big Catholic house, all the workers in the faith too. You know that a lot came over from Ireland in the 1840s?’
‘Makes sense.’ I swallowed a painful crust. ‘Fleeing the famine, freedom of worship, all that.’
‘It’s made me think.’ Carelessly he opened the window and flung out a crust. ‘Your Fairy Stane stories, would they have begun around then?’
I thought. ‘Early to mid-nineteenth century, so, yes, I suppose so. That’s about as far back as I can trace a lot of the stories, because that’s when people started to write them down rather than pass them purely through word of mouth. It’s whenfolklore began to gain some traction – people could see the rural ways of life being lost to industrialisation so they started recording some of the tales.’
Connor nodded. ‘Well, I’m thinking there may be a crossover with some Irish stories and legends, y’see.’
I boggled. ‘I thought you thought folklore was a waste of time?’
He gave me a level look. ‘I never said that.’
‘No, but you… you’re ahistorian!’
Connor stood up. ‘I’m a Roman historian by training but I’m an Irish boy by birth, and my granda was one with the songs and the stories. I’ve got Irish legends in my blood, the fairies and thebean sidheand all.’
‘But you want to lift my stone!’
He stood for a moment, staring out of the window at the white acres that stretched off into the distance. ‘I’ve got an idea about the Fairy Stane,’ he said. ‘Not so sure about my Roman settlement but it could link Evercey Manor to your folk tales. I need to do some reading, and possibly talk to Eamonn first. Andthen, well, then I think we might need a wee look at what’s underneath.’
‘The land of the Little People,’ I said grimly. ‘Fairyland. The otherworld.’
‘But don’t you want toknow?’
‘No!’ I snapped, slamming my plate down onto the table. ‘No, I don’t. There has to be mystery and the unknown – that’s why the supernatural is so popular! Peopleneedtheir fairies and their ghosts, because if we discover everything – then what have we got to be curious about?’
Then I turned and stormed out of the kitchen and stomped up the stairs to shut myself in my bedroom.
20
My hopes for a swift end to our joint imprisonment were dashed by the frequent snow showers that came and went throughout the day. The air would darken and the windows became claustrophobic with the dashing of snowflakes against them. Then the snow would whirl away and leave the day a brilliant gold and white for a few minutes before the next shower drew in.
I could hear Connor rattling on his keyboard in his room, while I dragged a huge velvet eiderdown out of the cupboard and wrapped it around me on the loveseat, so I could sit and stare moodily out at the snow. It was nice not to have to work, but Connor’s extreme productivity made me feel both guilty and resentful and his occasional forays out for tea or biscuits sent me scurrying to my computer to try to look busy, even though I hadn’t much to do, apart from look up the weather forecast every ten minutes just in case an unexpected thaw was due.
But at least the winter’s day was short. By three, Connor was back downstairs again, now wearing his all-purpose hoodie and jogging bottoms.
‘It’s the day before Christmas Eve tomorrow,’ he announced, as though I’d been living on the moon for the last six monthsand had become unaware of the calendar. ‘We should go out for a walk.’
I stared at him from under my voluminous wrapping. ‘Have you seen “out”, Connor? There’s three feet of snow and counting. Why would we want to go for a walk in that?’
His face creased in a moment of apparent confusion. ‘Well, it’s… What are you going to do, sit in here until the snow all melts? We always go for a walk on the twenty-third. It’s traditional.’
‘Your traditional, maybe. Not mine.’
‘What are your traditions? Should I expect you out cutting greenery to deck the halls?’ Connor looked around at the obvious lack of any decoration in the house. The only sign that Christmas might be happening at all was two Christmas cards, one from my parents and one from an aged aunt, on the shelf above the log burner.
‘I haven’t really done Christmas for the last few years,’ I said, slightly defensively. He was right, it could have been any season in the cottage, apart from the two squares of card showing robustly secular winter scenes on the shelf. ‘Elliot… well, he died in early November, so I wasn’t up to anything that first year. And after that – there didn’t seem to be any need. I’ve just holed up here with the TV and a big bar of chocolate and got through it.’
‘And before?’ Connor put his hands in his hoodie pockets, tilted his head to one side. ‘What did you do before?’
I unhuddled a little. The velvet of the eiderdown stroked my cheek like a caress.Elliot is gone. But life goes on.‘We’d get up late.’ I smiled at the memory ofwhywe’d got up late. ‘Have a big breakfast, open our presents, walk up on the moor and then come home to cook a massive dinner.’Walking until it got dark, and then the lights of the cottage beckoning us home to the cosy warmth. Fairy lights swinging above the doors, the smell of meat roasting as we walked in, the fug and steamof dinner.Music and laughing and Elliot never knowing how to cook potatoes properly and the annual half-serious half-amused arguing over Monopoly late into the evening while we ate an entire box of chocolate mints as the papers crackled in the fire…‘It was nice,’ I finished.
‘Well, then.’ Connor didn’t seem to know what to say next. ‘Well.’
‘But you might be right,’ I admitted. ‘I can’t sit here on my own every Christmas for the next sixty years. Elliot was always one for the next thing, moving on to the next stage, looking forward. He wouldn’t have liked the idea that I sat here remembering him forever.’
Connor smiled. ‘No.’ He nodded slowly. ‘I can see that. I mean,’ he added quickly, ‘I wouldn’t want anyone pining away after me if I were gone. It would be nice to know that I was remembered with a smile, but not with the memories held up like paragons to aspire to. So, walk tomorrow, then?’ Then quickly, because I’d opened my mouth to object and my expression must have given me away, ‘We could away up to your stone, and have an argument about it, if that would make you feel better?’
