Page 26 of The Start of the Story
Obviously surprised at being addressed, May took a step back. ‘I’m well, thank you, Betsy,’ she said, stiff as a broom and trying to hide her face.
‘You don’t look well. You look mazed, lass. What’s up?’ Then, with a growing suspicion, ‘It’s not Master Jack, is it? He beentrying to get you round the back in the laundry room?’ There had been rumours about the son of the house and his tendency to try to bed any of the maids that couldn’t run fast enough. ‘Just tell him to get to…’ Betsy lowered her voice so that nobody passing would hear her use of bad language and tell Dad, ‘…hell.’
May gave a straight-mouthed smile through her tears. ‘I shall remember that,’ she said, then added more quietly, ‘for next time.’
‘Ah, lass, you come on away with me.’ Betsy took May’s arm. The girl resisted at first, then relaxed. ‘Come on. Me mam will have tea on, come and have a cup with us and a warm by the fire. It’s nithering out here tonight. What were you doing up at the stone?’
May looked down at her feet, and Betsy saw a small rag doll flopped face down in the sharp needles of reeds that grew up around the stone. It looked home sewn, loosely stuffed limbs and a stitched petticoat with an embroidered face. ‘Leaving a gift,’ May almost whispered.
Betsy was wise for her years. She’d heard a thing or two that went on up here, the men coming out late at night and the women following a few nights later with flowers and little offerings. Sometimes women came alone, stepping heavily along the worn path that led to the stone. Nobody asked. Nobody talked about their reasons. The fairies took their offerings, that was all anybody needed to know. Things were kept safe.
Betsy looked at the doll again, then picked it up. ‘You know that little Cecilia has just lost her ma,’ she said, straightening the doll’s skirts. ‘Her sister has taken the four little ones and the boys have gone up to Home Farm to help their pa with the cows and the rabbits.’ She didn’t look at May. ‘But little Cissy has gone to old Mother Sleightholme.’ Now she did look up. ‘Reckon she’d love a little poppet like this to play with.’
May opened her mouth as though she was about to speak, but then closed it again and rubbed her wrist over her eyes.
‘After all, the fairies has got each other up here,’ Betsy went on. ‘Little Cissy now, she’s got no one.’
There was a long moment. Eventually May stretched out her hand and took the doll from Betsy. She tweaked its skirts straight and knocked out some grass that had got tangled in the string hair. ‘Yes,’ she said, tiredly. ‘You’re right. Poor little girl.’
Betsy looked at the stone. ‘Aye,’ she said quietly. ‘Poor love. It can’t be easy.’
‘No.’
The two girls shared a look of understanding. Then May gave a small, thin smile. ‘I think a cup of tea sounds like a very good idea,’ she said, linking her arm through Betsy’s. ‘Thank you very much, Betsy.’
Arm in arm they walked off the moor and down towards the village, where smoke spiralled from chimneys into the autumn air. Betsy noticed May look back, just once, but she kept her counsel, as the fairies would, no doubt, keep theirs.
Now
In the morning I took one look out of the window and decided to work from home. Chess had texted me to say that she was poorly and wouldn’t be in. I had everything I needed for the work I was currently doing, and I honestly didn’t fancy spending the scant daylight hours alone in that subterranean office, watching the rain run down the brickwork outside and pinging off all the little green ferny growths.
I’d dreamed of Elliot again. The dreams had almost stopped – those awful, cruel dreams where I’d had him back with me and we’d been doing ordinary, domestic things, or the dreams of him leaving, where I’d watched him pack for a long journey and not known how to say goodbye. This dream had been different, in that he was here, but I was angry with him. In life, our arguments had been few and mostly annoyances about wet washing left in the machine or similar stupid domestic upsets. This time, however, my anger had boiled and ricocheted and turned on Elliot, whilst he had been unconcerned and blank-faced about my fury, carrying on his normal routine as though I weren’t there.
I woke with the anger still scratching at the back of my neck, the rain cascading down the window, a text from Chess in which I could almost hear the snuffling, and decided that I’d stay right here.
I could hear Connor moving about, a bumping presence in the other room, and felt, oddly, better. After three years, I’d come to terms with waking up from dreams of Elliot to a house that echoed with the lack of him, the absence of his bleary face next to me and no random movement of limbs under the duvet. He was gone. But I didn’t have to like it, and hearing Connor shuffle his way to the bathroom and then begin a muttered mumble to himself under the whine of his shaver was somehow comforting.
He couldn’t stay, obviously. I didn’t want him here, and he was irritating in the extreme, but at least I knew what was happening with the dig on the moor and my stone when he was under my eye. Maybe I could get a cat when he went? Just another living presence in the house, so the emptiness didn’t feel so, well,empty. It would be something to come home to, something to greet me at the end of a long day and be pleased tosee me. Yes. I would get a cat, in the spring, when the days were lengthening.
I pulled on a fleecy dressing gown and slouched downstairs, past the bathroom door where Connor was now sluicing water in a fashion that boded damp patches on the carefully sanded and sealed floorboards, although he did always clear up after himself in an almost unnaturally assiduous way.
I flipped bread into the toaster, put the kettle on and went to stand by the window, where the large white duck that seemed to be the ringleader of the avian gang eyeballed me sternly from the water beneath. It was paddling ferociously to maintain crust-grabbing position, an arrowhead pointing upstream, as the water rushed past, its level raised by the night-long rain pouring down off the high moor, swirling it into the colour of bad coffee.
‘You not in today?’ Connor said over my shoulder. ‘You’re usually dressed by now – you not well?’
He sounded surprisingly concerned. ‘Given the weather, I thought I’d work from home; there’s no need for me to be in the office.’
‘Okay, good. Don’t want you getting ill, now. D’you fancy taking me to the site of the old manor up on the moor today? As you’re not going in?’
I sighed. ‘What part of “working from home” is passing you by, Connor?’ I turned around to see him catching the toast as it popped out of the toaster. ‘It’s not a day off. Anyway, why do you want to see the old manor site? There’s nothing left, a bit of a hole where the cellars were, maybe, but all the material was taken down and sold to anyone who needed medieval brick. They bought…’ I stopped. I’d been about to say that the reclamation yard where Elliot had worked had bought several tonnes of the brick and, despite the fact that this had been back in the sixties, there had still been some there. We’d bought a loadto repair the back wall of the cottage. This cottage was part of the manor, and I’d liked that idea.
But after that dream, bringing Elliot into conversation felt unnatural and I was half enjoying this casual breakfast. It was warm and domestic with Connor scraping butter over toast while I made tea and I had a sudden wish that it reallywerea day off and we could sit and chat at the table without the relentless pressure of time; that I didn’t have to switch on my computer and spend a day alone digging through old documents. With that dream still haunting my memory, I wanted someone to keep me from going back over it and pulling out emotions that had already faded, brushing them down and examining them with an intensity they didn’t deserve.
‘Yeah. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’ Connor was already dressed for the moor, his long black coat gone in favour of some unattractive waterproofs that made the noise of an entire campsite being disassembled whenever he moved. ‘I’m away up there anyway. I’ll have a wee poke around by myself.’
Suddenly I couldn’t face a quiet house. ‘Look, I’ll give you a quick tour around the manor site,’ I said. ‘If it’s important. I could do with a bit of atmosphere myself.’
He laughed and glanced at the window, where light was beginning to break over the far hills in a bluster of storm-driven cloud. ‘I don’t think we’re short of that.’
