Page 52 of The Start of the Story
I lay stretched across the bed, listening to ducks arguing and feeling the hole where Elliot had existed as one pokes a newlyabsent tooth with a tongue. The wound was less painful than it had been. Elliot wasn’t coming back. I could have a new, different life with his memory as a comfortable place in the back of my mind, like childhood or a lovely holiday.
From outside I could hear a crunch of footsteps in the snow. Connor must be outside, and I wondered what he was doing. The thought that he might be going for that walk alone, uncertain of my commitment to tramping three miles in knee-deep snowfall, struck me and I leaped out of bed to look out of the window.
The door to the woodshed was ajar and a stamped path showed that Connor had been up and down a few times with the wonky wheelbarrow that existed solely for the purpose of transporting logs to the back door. I frowned, wrapped my sturdy dressing gown around me and went onto the landing.
There was an instant smell of ‘green’, and warmth, as though the house had been filled with tree spirits, scenting the air with their perfumes. Cautiously I went down the stairs and stepped into the living room, where the log burner was pushing out a constant heat and a huge pile of logs had been stacked neatly in the holder ready for stoking the blaze.
And the walls were hung with branches. Greenery from conifers and yew, jewel-studded hawthorn twigs with the berries gleaming in the firelight, were on every surface and hanging from the overhead light fitting. The bare black of twisted hazel and birch adorned the dresser and the table bore the bright fluttering chestnut of beech, still holding the last leaves of summer now dried to a leathery tan.
As I stood staring, Connor came in with another armful of logs. ‘Good, you’re up,’ he said cheerily. ‘I hope you don’t mind but it was looking a wee bit unseasonal, so I thought some midwinter décor might be just the thing.’
‘Connor?’
He looked uncertain for a moment, standing in the doorway with his clothes dusted with a mixture of snow and log detritus. ‘Er. Sorry, was I wrong? I didn’t mean to upset you, now, I only wanted…’
‘It’s beautiful.’
I watched his face collapse with relief into a smile that seemed more relaxed, more open than it had before. ‘Now, I’m relieved to hear that. I was a bit worried there for a moment that you might start throwing things.’
I turned, taking in the artful draping of the fir branches that hung around the window and let the sun’s rays filter through in a green net that caught the light and released it gradually across the floor. It smelled like Christmas. ‘It really is gorgeous.’
‘Thank you.’ He sounded humble, which wasn’t like Connor at all. ‘When we spent Christmas with Granda, when I was very young and before the rest of the boys were born, he used to bring the green in at midwinter. I remember the smell of the peat fire and the branches and the whisky and he’d play the pipe and sing. Mam was always a bit tight-lipped about the whole thing. I thought it was just that she didn’t get on so well with Granda, but later I realised that it was the pagan thing she couldn’t deal with. Not really “Church”, all this.’ He indicated with his elbows, his arms being full of wood. ‘But I thought it would be more “you”.’
‘You are amazing,’ I breathed, my breath puffing out in steam because the back door was still wide open, propped by the barrow full of logs.
Connor tried, without notable success, to look modest. ‘New memories. Old ones resurfacing, in my case.’
I shook my head, dizzy with disbelief at the beauty and artistry of it all. ‘You are wasted as a historian, Connor. You need to come to the dark side of pagan mythology.’
‘There’s a fair bit of that in Irish history, to be fair.’ As though becoming aware of the cold creeping in behind him,Connor stepped back and closed the door then came through brandishing his armful of logs. He tipped them down onto the pile in the fire grate and bent to stack them neatly. ‘I thought I’d light the fire too, it’s fair freezing in here now. And the electricity isn’t back.’ He reached up and flicked the switch for the desk lamp, which clicked and did nothing. ‘How long is it usually off for?’
I shivered and came closer to the blaze. ‘Could be hours. Not usually days though, unless it’s this small area and they forget about us. Shall I make some tea and toast?’
He frowned. ‘Electricity is off.’
‘But the log burner is on. I’ve got a stove-top kettle and a toasting fork for just such eventualities.’
Now Connor nodded, slowly. ‘Of course you have. Here’s you all practical and sorted and the folklorist, with the historian imagining eating cold soup and hunks of cheese.’
I laughed and hunted out the big iron kettle, and we sat in front of the flames and ate slightly crunchier than usual toast and drank our tea. Beyond the kitchen window the ducks grumbled.
Then we went for a walk. Through thigh-deep snow, alternately stepping carefully and toppling into gulleys, we made our way up onto the high moor where the snow had scoured and drifted, and some places wore only a couple of centimetres of covering and in others the snow was piled higher than a housetop. Because we kept slipping and tripping and falling and having to pull one another out of drifts, it seemed natural and time-saving for us to go hand in hand along the icy path out across the moor to the Fairy Stane, which lay docile under its white blanket, visible only because of its edges and the way the heather and rushes fringed around its corners.
I let go of Connor’s hand and walked out to stand by the side of the old stone. There were no fairy footprints in the snow,only the runic lettering of pheasants’ feet across its surface, and the stammering prints of a hare that had run across on its way elsewhere.
‘The Little People,’ Connor said quietly. ‘Lovely spot for them.’
I looked around at the smooth humps of the moors stretched out around us, like carefully made beds covered in the purest linen. The sun was shining visible ice from a Wedgwood-blue sky. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ I replied. ‘Who needs fairyland when you’ve got this up here?’
‘Bit chilly for the fairies now.’ Connor jiggled on the spot and rubbed his arms. His big black coat didn’t allow enough room for the layers beneath it that I was wearing under my sturdy waxed jacket.
‘Maybe they knit themselves clothes out of moonbeams and mist,’ I said whimsically. ‘Or rabbit fur and blackbirds’ feathers.’
‘They’d more likely wear the whole rabbit, the murderous little bastards.’ Connor continued to jiggle. ‘You’re a folklorist. You know what the Victorians did to the fairy myth now, dressing it up as babies with wings and all that gossamer nonsense. You know what the fairies were before that lot got at the stories, all wilderness and blood and stealing the newborn from the cradle.’
I looked down again at the Fairy Stane, smooth and unblemished, decorated by nature. ‘These fairies were prime Victorian fodder,’ I said. ‘All the stories I can trace go back to that mid-Victorian era, so strictly rose-petal skirts and cobweb wings down there.’
We stood in silence a little bit longer. From a very long way off came the mew of a buzzard rising on a thermal, but there was nothing else moving anywhere. ‘Doesn’t sound as though they’re partying down there today though, does it?’ Connor said. ‘Not big fans of Christmas though, your average elemental.’
