Page 33 of The Start of the Story
‘You’ve left your marriage?’ I tried to make it sound soft, just a query, but it was clearly more questioning than she could take, and she burst into tears.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she sobbed. ‘Connor is so… he’s great and my husband, well, he goes to work and comes home, and I’ve got the wee ones all day on my own!’
I absolutely was not going to give her any advice or tell her that it sounded as though she’d had an affair with Connor because she was bored and lonely. It would have been cruel, anyway. And it wasn’t my business.Noneof this was anything to do with me. I was just the landlady.
But the memory of the graze of stubble, the sensation of lips against my skin made me shiver.
‘Where is Connor?’ I asked, and there must have been a trace of that remembrance in my voice, because Saoirse looked up sharply through her tears.
‘Outside, on his phone. He’s arranging us a lift back to York,’ she said. ‘One of his students, I think.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, I’d better get dressed and go to work. It’s been nice to meet you, Saoirse,’ I added politely, and she waved a hand as though this were her house and I were an interviewee, failing to get a job.
I went back upstairs. The door to the spare room was open and I peeped around it, to see that Connor’s belongings were all packed up in bags inside the door. The bed was stripped and the spare duvet he’d slept under last night was neatly folded and placed on the mattress.
Elliot’s dressing gown was hung up behind the door. I stared at it for a second. Had I really given it to Connor to put on his girlfriend? I must have been in a state of panic – that dressing gown had been my Elliot substitute for months. I’d slept with it wrapped around his pillow so I would wake to the smell of him beside me, and the warm touch of towelling when I leaned over. Anything was less painful than the bland cold of an empty bedside. And I’d handed it over, as though it meant nothing to me, simply so that Saoirse wouldn’t have to roam around the house wrapped in a skimpy towel. Had itreallybeen for her comfort? Or because I’d feared what Connor might do?
I looked back at the bags, untidily packed and stacked around the bed. So, he was going, then. Fine. Good.
I dressed and went out, past Saoirse, who was still sitting at the table wearing his clothes. I didn’t bother to lock the back door; I didn’t even turn to look as I started the car and drove up the long hill away from the cottage. I didn’t even stop to ask myself why I was crying. I turned the radio on to drown everything out and put my foot down all the way to the office.
15
‘I’m back.’ Chess snuffled her way into the office, divesting herself of layers of coat, scarves and hats as she came. ‘Wow. You look crappy. Have you caught the cold?’
I sat with my head hanging over a handwritten book of charms. I wasn’t reading it. I wasn’t even attempting to turn the pages. I was letting myself settle back into my solitude.
‘I do feel a bit off colour,’ was as far as I would go. ‘But I don’t want to stay at home too often. They might do away with our office if I do that, and it’s good to have somewhere to store everything.’
Maybe Chess was right, I thought. Maybe this feeling was – what was it? A lowering of the spirits, as they would have called it back in the day; that sensation of the shine being taken off things, almost a disappointment in life itself. A ridiculous feeling. I shrugged my shoulders to try to lose the tightness in them, and turned back to the manuscript, a donated artefact from someone’s grandmother, full of potions and spells from a farm near Durham at the turn of the twentieth century. That had been the pivotal era. People had gone past walling up cats as a house protection and putting shoes up chimneys but hadn’t yetmoved into the world of the telephone and artificial fertiliser. They had straddled the world of the past and the world of the now and lived in a time that was fascinating in its near modernity with a twist of superstition.
Chess brought me a cup of tea and I managed to avoid her putting it down on the crabbed pages only by a narrow margin. ‘So—’ she hitched herself against the corner of my desk ‘—what are you doing for Christmas this year? You know you’re always welcome to come to mine – open house and cocktails?’
Christmas. Just under a week away and yesterday I’d been contemplating the solitary day with a measure of contentment. I’d been looking on it as a break from having Connor around – that he’d go back to Ireland for the holiday and then come back. Why did it now feel more like a life sentence?
‘I’m not sure, Chess. But thanks for the invitation.’
‘Or is Connor staying over? You’re welcome to bring him too, of course. I have the feeling he’d liven up a party a treat!’
‘Connor’s moved out,’ I said dully. Those packed bags still stood stacked in my memory, that empty room like a testament to the rest of my life. ‘His ex came back and they were off to look for a hotel in York.’
‘Oh.’ She shifted. ‘That’s a shame.’ Another shift of her weight. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ This was said softly and with a measure of sympathy that I didn’t want, and, besides, it was unwarranted. Connor leaving had always been the desired end result, and Saoirse’s arrival had only precipitated it by a few months. It wasn’t as though it were a huge shock, after all.
‘I’m fine, honestly, Chess. It was a late night, and you might be right, I think I’ve caught something, making me feel a bit run down, that’s all. Look, I’ll head up to the records office. I want to look up some of the old maps and the fresh air will do me good.’
I stood up and my undrunk tea wobbled.
‘If you’re sure.’ Chess’s concern made my eyes water again.Definitely rundown. Probably a virus.‘Get some mince pies while you’re out!’ she called over her shoulder as she went back into her cubbyhole in the library.
I didn’t go to the records office. Instead, I took a walk along the city walls, hoping that the chilly air and cold stone would clear my head. I’d got myself stuck in a revolving series of thoughts of how glad I was that Connor was gone and my house was mine again, and how quiet and empty it was going to seem now.
The potential cat crept a little closer.
Folklore suddenly felt pointless. A jumble of stories, a recited list of inventions and delusions with no more relevance to today than the narrow gateways that filtered ill-tempered traffic in and out of York, all traffic lights and hold ups. Once folklore had been useful. It had helped people make sense of their lives and given them an illusion of control over the natural world. Charms to help the cheese along and fairies to populate the high moors and watch over the cattle, to keep the water flowing and the bogs from sucking sheep under. They’d all meant something, once.
Now I found myself thinking of my years of study and my PhD as cute stories, fit only for pinning to the page to keep the tourists happy. Really, seriously, would itmatterif Connor and his students lifted the Fairy Stane? There was no fairyland. There were no happy endings.
Roman, Viking, Norman, Tudor.I ran the rosary of the ages again. Connor was right, history was real, recorded facts. Folklore was myth and magic, so why was I trying so hard to preserve it?
