Page 15 of The Start of the Story
1870
The women, shawls over their heads and crying, gathered inside the cottage as the men clustered outside. This was something the men must do, alone. The women would make their own journey out there to the stone, tomorrow maybe, or the day after, carrying their little offerings. But tonight was only for the men.
Jack, whose cottage this was, gathered the box inside his jacket. It had been an heirloom, given to him by his father when he’d married, containing a silver spoon – the family treasure. Now it was going to the stone, containing the weight of their hearts within it.
‘Now then, lads.’ John, who looked after the horses up at the house, was in charge tonight. ‘Stay together. If anyone asks… we’re off to greet the fairies, all right?’ He rested a heavy hand on Jack’s shoulder in a moment of solidarity. ‘All right?’
Jack nodded and adjusted the box. The torches were lit and the procession started, out along the sandy trackway that joined the estate to the neighbouring towns, and then swiftly branching off to cross the moor to where the stone waited for them.
Now
Now that autumn was vanishing, overcome by the onrush of a rapid winter, I was doing less driving about in search of first-person tales, and more cold hard research in warm, soft libraries. Many of those with tales to recount lived in deserted hamlets high in the hills, holding on to a way of life that had vanished twenty or thirty years ago with the coming of computerised farming. Elderly men still carried hay to barns full of cattle, women who’d been born before the war still baked and cleaned farmhouses and drew water from the well. It was a generation that was disappearing rapidly. Each cold winter took another few, and I had to seize my chance to record their memories of traditions and superstitions. But driving fifty miles along sleety lanes to sit in unheated rooms with my recorder during the snatched moments of daylight had taught me to do the recording during summer and spend the winter compiling and cross-referencing with other folklorists in other parts of the country. Plus, I had a cupboard full of donated diaries and observations to sort through. These cold months were a time for hunkering down, drawing the curtains and reading. I drew the line at making jam though.
But being in the office meant being in the forefront of the onslaught that was Chess. ‘He’s good looking, though. How are you getting on?’ Her questions were relentless.
‘He’s a good guest so far, but he can’t stay with me, Chess. He’s the enemy, after all.’
‘History isn’t the enemy, Rowan.’ Chess pursed her prim lips. ‘We’re complementary regimes.’
Nothing complimentary about Professor Connor O’Keefe, I thought mutinously. I’d tried to figure out various ways in which he could have sabotaged my map but couldn’t work out how it could have been done and grudgingly had to accept it as an accident. I even found myself wondering why the hell I had left him that spare key this morning whilst I was sorting through some donated papers and sneezing at the dust. He couldn’t stay much longer. He justcouldn’t.
This was not right. This had to stop. I couldn’t work if I was going to be second-guessing the motives of a man whom I half suspected was already up on the moor with a crowbar and a notebook. He wanted to lift the Fairy Stane. And I wasn’t going to let him.
I realised I’d skimmed several pages of handwritten notes, taken by a lady who’d been an amateur collector of local tales, which had been given to us by her granddaughter who’d found them in the attic. There could be loads of as yet undiscovered tales amid the cramped and crinkled pages, but I wouldn’t know because I’d been too busy dwelling on having Connor O’Keefe as a lodger, and this just wouldn’t do. I needed to pull myself together and… and he needn’t think that trying to get me to open up about my reasons for studying folklore would soften me towards his attitude!
Folklore was folklore, it informed and expanded recent social history. I didn’t need to justify myself or try to explain. If he preferred to stick to solid and concrete evidential history, then good for him.
Good for him.I turned a page so quickly that it nearly tore and I carefully placed the book down onto the desk. I needed to be calm. Methodical. Chess had gone over to the main library to order some research materials so I couldn’t even go and relieve myself of some of the irritation by listening to her recitations of last night’s TV or what someone I didn’t know had said aboutsomebody else that I’d never met and how it had caused a feud that was set to take to social media.
I put my coat on and went out into the windy, rainswept street to try to clear my head. The buildings of York leaned in, crowding above my head in their medieval glory, whilst patches of the old wall shone in the brief sun. At least my office was in a picturesque location, I thought, stomping down the road towards the coffee shop and letting the breeze cool my ears and untangle my hair. Roman, Viking, Norman, Tudor. If it hadn’t been for those pesky Scandinavians it would sound like a litany of past boyfriends’ names, I thought, resisting the temptation to poke the wall vigorously for its historical persistence. Whereas my branch of history was ephemeral, fleeting. Stories of lives that touched the supernatural, or, rather, gave supernatural shape to the as yet unknown. Stories of social warning – grey lady ghosts werealwaysgirls who’d got pregnant out of wedlock and drowned themselves. Unmarried pregnancy and suicide, those twin dark threats that hung over girls, the dual transgressions.
I bought myself a sturdy coffee to give myself an excuse for the walk, and headed back for the office, moving slowly as I sipped, aware of myself moving alone through this crowd while I daydreamed about ways of forcing Connor to leave my cottage. I wanted my space back. I wanted to be left alone in the evenings with my thwarted dreams and my books. I couldn’t mutter to myself as I moved from room to room while Connor was there, he would think I was mad – or even more mad than he obviously currently considered me to be.
I wanted my life back the way it had been.
I even stooped to reading estate agency window adverts of houses for rent, only to find that anywhere on a bus route was prohibitively expensive, and he’d been right, mostly already rented. Then I berated myself again. His accommodationproblems weren’t my problems. I’d got enough on with this book that I’d told the grant providers I was writing in order to justify them continuing to pay for my research. Now I had to get on and write the wretched thing, but how was I going to do that with my brain circling around the issues of having an argumentative historian in my space?
No. He had to go.
I drained the coffee, threw the cup in the recycling, and went to tell the returned Chess that I was heading back to the cottage to work from home for the rest of the day. With a bit of luck Mr Smuggo would still be out, striding around the moors like Heathcliff in better clothes, possibly falling into a bog and drowning. I smiled to myself at the thought.
‘Heading home to spend more time with the good professor?’ Chess was tapping desultorily at her keyboard whilst really reading a fashion blog.
‘Working on a way to get him gone,’ I said. ‘And I haven’t ruled out pushing him in the river or giving him a tent either, so keep your sofa free.’
She chuckled in a way that was designed to make me angry so I snatched up my car keys and stormed out through the back door so as not to upset any of the library patrons who might be innocently browsing the shelves. I stomped across the car park, careless of the splattered mud, and threw myself into my car, seething with resentment again at the fact that I was heading back to an uncertainty of historian and having to think about meals and bathroom time and clean towels instead of my calm isolation.
Chess was obviously trying to set us up, which meant she was also now the enemy. This was ridiculous! All I wanted was peace and quiet, a useable office – which it was more or less, and nicely central – and a snug place to retreat to and finish off my work. That was all! Not too much to ask! And now I’d got – I swungthe wheel sharply and the car oversteered, nearly clipping the grass verge – my assistant playing matchmaker, my downtime disturbed and my cottage…
I remembered the cottage as it had been. Raised voices, as we’d called up and down stairs for advice or tools, evenings spent looking up the best type of walling to install, the most period-appropriate paint finishes. When it had been a project, a proper historical restoration and something that had…
No. Stop it. Now was what was important. And the now contained Connor O’Keefe.
I couldn’t properly appreciate the loveliness of the storm-scoured countryside, the newly planted brown earth sprouting with a thin cover of green, like a hair transplant on a gigantic scalp, or the way the distant sun touched the tops of recently bared trees and highlighted them against the vigorous blue of the sky. But I did, as ever, catch my breath at the top of the rise that led down to the ford, when the thin silver strand of the river at the bottom captured the light and the little cottage glowed in all its whitewashed finish, snug in the landscape as it had been for centuries.
There was no sign of Connor and the door was locked. Hugely relieved, I flopped onto the little loveseat, not even taking off my coat or hanging up my bag. He wasn’t here. Good. I could actually do what I’d said I’d do and start some work before I was interrup…
‘You’re back early.’
