Page 25 of The Start of the Story
‘We do if you try to lift my stone.’
‘Well, all right. Our disciplines aren’tentirelycompatible, perhaps, but we’re still fighting the same battle, to remember the past. And sometimes it feels as though no one cares about what went before.’
‘At least you get television programmes.’ I tried to drink my tea too hot. ‘Digging up gold hoards or building castles, it’s all glamorous and attention-grabbing. I’m lucky if I get the odd podcast and a few panels at a literary festival where they only wanted blood and gore and descriptions of wolf kills.’
‘Ah, that’s rough now.’
We lapsed into silence, or as much silence as can be obtained by two people drinking tea that is rather too warm to go down smoothly, whilst outside waterfowl fight to the death over a Warburton’s crust.
‘Well, I’d better…’ I nodded towards the living room and my computer.
‘Yes, and I ought to…’ Connor indicated his bag on the floor, bulging with paperwork.
‘Right, then.’
‘Right.’
But we continued to occupy the kitchen, sipping our tea, him sitting stretched at the table and me standing leaning against the countertop, feeling the roughness of the wood surface.
‘You rebuilt this place yourselves, then?’ Connor stared out of the window, towards the black night, where occasional wavelets in the passing water caught the lights and gleamed like the eyes of freshwater sharks.
I found myself less reluctant to answer this question than I usually was. ‘Yes. It was a ruin when we bought it. We lived in a friend’s camper van for a year until we got the roof on, and then without water for six months after that. It’s as accurate as we could get it, only we put a bathroom in because there’s a lot I’m prepared to do for historical accuracy but pissing in a bucket is out.’ I smiled at the memory. ‘Elliot could turn his hand to anything, and he had friends who are electricians and plumbers, that kind of thing. He was the sort of person who made friends easily.’
Connor met my eye in our reflections in the window. ‘He sounds like a useful guy.’
‘He was lovely,’ I said, realising that this was probably the first time I’d actually really spoken about Elliot since his death. Being here in this house that he’d done so much work on helped, as though I were being protected from the worst of the memories by being surrounded by evidence of his existence.
‘I can see you miss him.’ There was a note of sadness in Connor’s voice, as though he wasn’t really talking about me but was looking inwards.
I looked at him, but he continued to stare out into the dark. ‘Do you miss her?’ I asked softly. After all, he’d had his hopesand expectations for the future dashed, not quite as definitively as mine had been, but it had still happened.
‘Yes. No.’ He swung around, catching me looking at him. ‘I miss what I thought she was, and what I thought we had.’ He sighed. ‘But none of it was real, I know that now. All the promises and the stories – they were all inventions of the person she wanted to be.’ Another sigh. ‘I feel bad for her husband. Telling me what she’d been up to must have been the worst day of his life.’ He stood up. ‘God knows, it was the worst day of mine.’
‘There will be other women,’ I said.
I got raised eyebrows for that. ‘I’m sure people telling you that you’d find someone else after your husband died didn’t help,’ he said tartly.
‘No. Actually it didn’t. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so glib. It really isn’t that simple, is it?’
‘You have to admit a whole lot of stuff to yourself before you can begin to heal and move forward,’ Connor said, picking up his bag. ‘I have to learn that I can be gullible and stupid when a woman tells me what I want to hear. I am clearly not great at sorting out the truth. And you…’ He stopped.
‘Me? I’m not sure I have to admit anything to myself,’ I said, bridling. ‘Apart from don’t let your husband blithely go off to work when he says he’s not feeling well.’
‘I think you have to admit that memories are all grand and that, but you can’t hang on to them forever.’ He swung his bag up. ‘And I’m off to my room to do some work. Goodnight.’
Leaving me open-mouthed with annoyance, he was gone, quietly, up the stairs. I waited until I heard his door close and then threw one of my shoes at the wall.
12
1898
Betsy was on her way back to the village when she saw May.
Bit of a stuck-up so-and-so May was, everyone thought so. Had ‘ideas above her station’, Mam always said, just because she was a lady’s maid to the young misses up at the house. Always said her haitches, like she was proper posh, and stuck her nose in the air when the parlourmaids tried to talk to her.
So, when Betsy saw her, standing up at the Fairy Stane, she was of half a mind to stick her own nose in the air and keep walking. Let madam stand there on her own, doing whatever, pretend she hadn’t noticed. Until she drew closer, curious as to what May could be doing, and saw that she was crying.
‘All right, love?’ Betsy was a soft-hearted lass, Dad always said. She had no reason to talk to May at all, but she couldn’t leave a girl up there, crying like that, not without trying to make sure she wasn’t hurt.
