Page 11 of The Start of the Story
If the fairies had ever danced on that isolated stone, or if their land was captured beneath it, then I was their guardian. And even though I had no personal belief in the Little People, I was still going to make sure their stories and their haunts were marked.
7
The grants people seemed happy enough with the way things were going. The mention of a potential book – which could be displayed in shops, with an atmospheric cover and the possibility of earning real money – cheered them immensely. They fed me custard creams and coffee and released me back into the real world where, buoyed up by relief, I did some shopping and headed back to spend an afternoon forcing Chess to do some actual work while I made phone calls to set up more interviews and tracked down some old paperwork from the library’s archive resources.
I emerged from the office as the sun was going down, to find Connor and Chess sitting together in the library, forming a book club of two around the history section. Far too late I remembered that Chess’s degree was history and that she was only my assistant because there weren’t any folklore graduates in York. Or at least none who wanted to work for a pittance and a grouchy boss.
‘I find the writing approachable, but a little bit lacking in intellectual rigour,’ Chess was saying. As I hadn’t seen her read anything apart fromCosmoin the time that I’d known her, I wasslightly surprised by her assessment. Unless she was covering the subject of women’s magazines, of course, which would have fitted her evaluation just as well as some of the modern takes on historical subjects.
‘A bit populist, you’re right.’ Connor put his cup down and then noticed me. ‘Ah, and you’re here.’
‘Why? You’re not talking about my work, are you?’ I prickled.
‘We are not. You’re a sensitive soul, Rowan.’ He grinned at me, but I wasn’t going to be appeased that easily and kept the scowl I’d assumed as soon as I’d seen him out there, drinking coffee. Nobody had offeredmecoffee.
‘Pragmatic. I prefer pragmatic,’ I said, glancing at their cups in a meaningful way. ‘It’s been a long afternoon and I’d like to get home, so if you two have finished slandering some poor struggling author…?’
‘I’m meant to be going out tonight.’ Chess pulled her phone over and glanced at the screen. ‘Yep. Time to go.’
She collected her coat, bag, keys, hat, scarf, glasses and other accoutrements as though she were a self-assembly version of an assistant, and waved us a cheery farewell, leaving Connor and I in the silent and dark library, surrounded by watchful books.
‘We really weren’t talking about you,’ he said jauntily.
‘I should hope not.’ I prepared to lock up. ‘You need my spare room and Chess needs the job. If you start ganging up behind my back, then she’s looking at going back to shelf-stacking in Tesco and you’ll be sleeping on her sofa.’
‘That really does make you sound a bit sensitive, y’know,’ Connor said in a tone so reasonable that I wanted to punch him. ‘And you can’t afford that, not if you’re putting yourself out there. Publishing theoretical research is a bloody brutal business.’
‘I’m well aware.’ I still sounded stiff and unlike myself. Connor O’Keefe had that effect on me – from his casual butexpensive clothes to his jaunty air of ever so slightly having the upper hand, he made me defensive and wary. To be honest, most historians brought me out in clenched jaws and narrowed eyes, so he was ahead of the crowd there. ‘I’m multi-published in my field.’
‘So, then, why folklore?’ He followed me out and then stood while I set the alarm. I had no idea why the alarm was necessary – the library’s underused nature indicating that the population of this part of York had no insane desire to seize all the books they could carry home, and hit-and-run folklore students were thin on the ground.
‘Someone has to remember,’ I said shortly.
‘Chess said your doctorate is folklore, but your main degree was history, so you switched some time ago?’
I stopped, staring unseeing at the keypad. Here, on this busy street with the dark hustling me to hurry, the memories seemed to press more tightly, provoked by the layers of history that York possessed. Roman, Viking, Norman, Tudor… I could recite the eras as easily as I could rattle off my full name.
‘Someone has to remember. Otherwise the memories die. I started to see that history was folklore written by the winners of battles and backed up with paperwork.’ I pressed the final button and started the march around the soggy corner to where my car was squeezed into the tiny library car park, hopefully giving the full and final impression that this conversation was over. Connor jogged alongside me, seeming not to be cross at the unsurfaced nature of the car park, which sent spatters of mud up my legs with every squelchy footstep.
‘Oh, I’m not saying it’s not an interesting subject. I’m wondering why you chose to switch allegiance.’ He grinned at me, his expression caught for a moment in the lights of a passing car. ‘You could have been one of us.’
‘Iwasone of you,’ I couldn’t help but retort. I needed to learn to bite my tongue and cultivate a serene air that touchy subjects bounced off, but I wasn’t there yet. ‘That’s how I know it’s allevidence, no room for conjecture, it’s walls and measurements and original sources. It’s just all so damnconcrete.’ Then, ashamed of my outburst, I threw my bag onto the back seat of the car and got in behind the wheel. Connor was still standing at the passenger door. ‘Don’t hang about. I’ve got work to do at home.’
‘You haven’t unlocked my door,’ he said, with a curious inflection in his voice, almost as though he was trying to stop other words from coming out.
I pressed the button that opened the other doors and he got in. ‘There you go now,’ he said and his voice was cheery again, with something that sounded almost like relief. Had he thought I’d been going to drive away and leave him?
But then, I thought, steering carefully out into the traffic, I’d done it before, hadn’t I? Maybe he’d been traumatised by being left. After all,I’dknown that he was only a mile from the centre of York, buthehadn’t, when I’d ordered him out at the traffic lights.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, in a small voice that didn’t really want to be heard, just so I could say I’d said it.
‘For maligning my profession? You’re all right, I do it a fair bit myself.’ Connor raised a hand and scuffed through his hair. ‘I’ve no illusions about the way we work, Rowan. But there has to be evidence, otherwise it’s a load of people, each with their own opinions, and that’s not history, that’s a shouting match.’
We reached the edge of the city and the countryside began to unfold on either side of the road in huge patches of black broken by the lights of occasional farmhouses. Trees leaned over the car, skeletal in their winter uniform of branch, twig and owl,whilst beneath our wheels the lost leaves of autumn formed a frictionless carpet.
Neither of us spoke. I wanted to – there were justifications and accusations that I had lined up and ready. I’d used them before, they were a well-trodden path for the arguments that frequently broke out, usually when funding was involved, but for now I kept them stoppered up behind concentration. The winding roads with their impromptu tight bends and suicidal wildlife meant that I didn’t want to be distracted by explaining to Connor why I’d switched from history to folklore. No, scratch that. It wasn’t the distraction. I just didn’t want to talk about it, particularly not to him.
Finally we breasted the last hill and began the descent towards Mill Cottage. I’d left a light on in the porch, as I always did at this time of year, and it glowed, a welcoming beacon in the pool of darkness that was the ford, the river and the house.
