by A. J. Elwood
‘Oh,’ Harriet says, her voice bell-like, though she doesn’t sound surprised, not really.
Her mother says something too, in a low voice that still carries easily, loaded with meaning. ‘She should be called Robyn.’
Is she speaking to her daughter? Yet the words go to the heart of me and lodge there. I don’t know why; I don’t know what they’ve done to me. I can’t ask, can’t even look at her again. I walk away from them both, my vision blurring so that I can hardly see. I feel glass under my outstretched hands and grasp for the handle, pulling myself inside, closing the door behind me. I stand there leaning against it, blinking. For a second, sound is distorted, as if my head is underwater, and then the sharp clear note of a blackbird rings out and everything returns.
‘Are you all right?’
I can’t place the voice. When I turn I see Mandy, her face up close to mine and full of concern.
‘I am,’ I say. ‘I’m fine, I’m really fine.’ I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince.
She nods and moves away from me. I turn and focus on the garden again, the lawn the brilliancy of emerald, the tulips vibrantly yellow, hyacinths of all colours waving their heads in the sun. And there are roses, crimson roses scattered everywhere. It’s suddenly too bright to look at. I wonder if that’s a symptom of my pregnancy, if everything is, and again the whole thing seems terribly unlikely. The doctor’s well-worn words of this morning – that it really doesn’t need to be confirmed – seem a thousand years ago. The coldness hasn’t left me. I feel utterly and dreadfully empty.
15
An hour later I’m at home, sitting on the sofa. The TV is too loud, as if I’ve scarcely moved from Sunnyside. I’m still angry at Mandy. She must have been watching me – I don’t think I fainted, not really, but she insisted I had. I found myself kneeling on the carpet, staring into its swirling pattern, right there in the lounge where anyone – everyone – could see. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the temperature in there, always so warm. Had I fainted? Maybe I should be grateful for Mandy’s interference, but there was a look in Patricia’s eyes when they called her in, one that said I knew you wouldn’t last.
Both Edie and Jimmy agreed that I’d passed out, but Patricia’s look hadn’t faded until Mrs Favell and Harriet came in. Mrs Favell took charge at once. She said, in a loud voice that carried across the lounge, that of course I’d been taken ill; I was working too hard; I looked quite dreadful. She added, ‘There are rules about staff being ill, aren’t there?’
It was then that Patricia said I should go home. I called Paul to come and fetch me, though quietly, not wanting to remind them I’d been to the doctors and that he must have driven me. Even though I was being sent home sick, I didn’t want them speculating what might be wrong.
I still don’t quite know what I’m doing here at home in broad daylight. Paul’s behind me in the kitchen, making Horlicks – I didn’t know we possessed such a thing, didn’t like to tell him I hate the taste – but he keeps poking his head over the top of the sofa as if he’s scared I’ll vanish or collapse into its depths or maybe just die while his back’s turned. I wonder if it’s me or the baby he’s worried about and push the thought away. If he knew what had been going through my head of late he’d probably hate me as much as I hate myself.
I stroke my belly. What had I been thinking? My fears seem surreal now I’m home. Harriet hasn’t done anything to me. Nor has Mrs Favell; in fact, she was kind to me. The baby is inside me, growing, probably no bigger than one of my fingernails. Can it feel my feelings? Is it troubled by whatever stress hormones I’ve bathed it in? I can’t allow my thoughts to run away like that. And I’ve left everyone at Sunnyside short-staffed. Guilt washes over me, bringing the taste of iron to the back of my throat, and I swallow hard. Paul passes me a mug and I sip despite my distaste; maybe the baby likes it even if I don’t. My stomach groans at the milky warmth.
Paul’s asked a hundred questions about how I am and he hovers over me now, shutting his mouth at my look. Instead he comes and sits on the sofa, putting his arm around me. I lean into the strength of him. He always seems so comfortable with himself, meeting anything that comes his way, never overwhelmed by the world. I imagine him playing with a little girl, laughing as she tries to kick a brightly coloured ball, picking her up and whirling her through the air as she giggles.
I try to imagine Harriet doing the same thing and I can’t. Charlotte and Harriet: just like in the letters. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, and Harriet’s concern for me was genuine; she had no concept of playing some cruel joke. Still, the way Mrs Favell defended me seems as odd as everything else, perhaps even more so. Or maybe she wanted to be rid of me – after Harriet had touched me.
I touch my belly just as she had, finding the place, remembering the way she nestled in close, that horrible intimacy. I squirm at the thought of it and Paul strokes my hair, tilting his head, resting it on mine.
I know I shouldn’t dwell on it – on them – but the questions keep coming. If Mrs Favell really had written the letters herself, working their own names into some fantastical story, why have the past Charlotte blinded by fairies? It doesn’t make sense. If she is feeding those letters to me – and that’s what it feels like, being fed, irresistible pieces of fairy food, as cursed as it is magical – she’s also handed me the proof that none of it is real. Unless there’s something in the next letter to explain everything – and I suddenly realise that it’s still in my bag. I don’t know how I could have forgotten it. I’m suddenly hungry for the words, for the end of the tale. The family was set to go to the glen once more, armed with nothing but a jug of milk. What could have become of that?
I wriggle out of Paul’s arms, telling him I’m going to put my things away. He smiles and tells me to be careful, cutting off his words at my glare.
As soon as I’m alone I riffle through the papers in my bag, first finding the doctor’s leaflets. The topmost has silhouettes of women at various stages of pregnancy and I grimace at their swelling shapes. I put my hand to my own belly, then pull up my tunic and look at my skin, and I am frozen in horror.
My belly is hardly mounded at all, and yet instead of the smooth, pale skin I’ve always known, always recognised as me, I am encircled by a series of little marks. They look like tiny footprints, as if I really have been touched by the folk – or danced upon, or around. Widdershins, I think. Anti-clockwise. They weren’t there this morning, I’m sure of it. Did they blossom in the preceding hours or was it when Harriet touched me, claiming something of me – inside me – for her own?
I pull down my tunic, not wanting to see them any longer, telling myself they’re stretch marks, nothing but that. But how, when I’m hardly showing? I sit on the bed and wrap my arms around my body. Has she really done something to me – to the baby? I can’t shift my unease. I can’t answer the question.
I drag the air into my lungs. For a moment, I just breathe. I won’t let her get to me. I can choose not to listen – I can choose what to think. She is nothing to me. I find myself rubbing my arm, right over my tattoo: Rose. Claiming my own skin. I lean forward and grasp the letter.
In contrast with the slippery leaflets, the letter is thick and matte and reassuring under my fingers. It doesn’t look like the others, though. The writing is untidy, words scratched into the page as if written in a terrible hurry. The ink is almost black in places, faded and ghost-like in others.
Not knowing if I’m moving on or trying to forget, to bury my fears and step into someone else’s life, I begin to read.
* * *
8th October 1921
Dear Mr Gardner,
Forgive my rather untidy scrawl. I have more news to impart, and write in a state of considerable excitement.
Only a short time has passed since the worried-over visit to the glen. Harriet awoke full of fervent emotion and brimming with its importance, and to deny her – well, I somehow found no way to do so, though I could never have gone there agai
n under any other compulsion. Harriet ran and seized her jug of green milk. And then she said her mother must come too.
Well, here was a difficulty. I said we must go alone and that I could not prevail upon her mother for anything, and Harriet behaved most unlike herself: she stamped, and shouted, and wailed; and her mother came all a-flurry to see what was amiss.
Harriet would not be quieted. She said her mother must and should go, and Charlotte only looked grave, and shuddered as if she were suddenly cold. I must confess that her reluctance spread itself to me; all I could think of was my dream, and that glimpse of an impish face before all went dark.
Then an idea struck me. Charlotte had said she was blinded when a fairy spat in her eye. What if she went to the glen, but kept her good eye covered somehow? I made the suggestion and Harriet fell silent at last, her face all raptness and hope.
Charlotte closed both her eyes. Then she rose and left the room.
Harriet and I looked at each other. We did not know if her mother would return, but after a few minutes she did, and she was dressed as I never thought to see her again. For she had found her widow’s bonnet with its finely meshed veil, the one she had worn when my son was lost to us.
I could not speak. I might have been transported back in time, to the very moment of opening the telegram with shaking hands – it had been sent to Charlotte, but she had been unable to look at it. It was I who had had to break the news.
‘I think he will protect me from them,’ she said simply, and began to put on her coat. And then she stopped and said, ‘But it is not I who should wear this – it is Harriet!’
I put out a hand to stop her. She made a good point of course, but the idea of the child being dressed in such a thing – it seemed an abomination.
Harriet stepped back and said, ‘I shall wear my hat with the low brim. And I will not let go of Grandpapa’s hand.’
As if to demonstrate, she came to my side. Clutching the jug with one hand, she took mine in the other; and I thought at once of some little creature coming and spitting in her eyes, and her unable to throw up either hand to shield them.
But surely that could not be. She is a child; she is an innocent. On how many occasions did the Wright girl play with the fairies? She was perfectly unharmed by her experiences, was she not? And there was also a sense of – well, of being carried along; as if we were all half fallen into a dream, and following the course that we must take. It is fanciful to be sure, but I can think of no better way to describe it.
Still, I prevailed upon Harriet to allow me to carry the jug, and she reluctantly relinquished it, leaving her one hand free. Then we made to set out, but not without a last delay, for Charlotte stopped at the threshold and would not go on.
Then she said, ‘Thus I took the little skeleton. They were supposed to let me in – but it did not happen.’
I could not see her expression. I am not sure I could have looked into her eyes if it had been possible. I remained there fixed to the spot and unable to reply, and then she trembled and stepped out.
You may imagine my feelings. All the horror I had experienced at the loss of the skeleton was before me again – and here was the cause: not a fairy, but the woman who stood to me as a daughter. How could she have done it? But the ‘why’ soon came to outweigh the ‘how’. For what must her feelings have been, to do such a thing? Had the fairies gained a hold over her? I remembered the way she used to hold the box in her hand and stare into it, as if fascinated. Was it only that she wished for nothing more than to go into Fairyland with them, that unknown and perhaps unknowable place? Now we were going straight to them, and holding another gift. Only think what had been her reward before!
Little wonder, then, that she had hesitated. Yet now she strode out boldly, as if to leave us behind. Harriet and I hurried after her. A thousand words crowded my mind, all the things I wanted to say to her mother; but I could not challenge her in front of the child, and we were already committed, and a part of me wished to know what would happen. My curiosity had been roused by the whole affair, and whilst I had come to long for the end of it, I somehow felt that the time was not yet.
Harriet was as good as her word and did not let go of my hand. I was glad, as we went, that my own eye-glasses were in place. Blindness is perhaps the province of the old rather than the young, but believe me when I say that nobody is ever ready for that.
As we went, the sun was shut out by dense clouds which admitted no glimpse of the sky. It was not a bright day and soon it was darker yet for we stepped under the trees, Charlotte still walking ahead of us. She had not once looked back. Harriet and I had not exchanged a word. I felt her fingers close more tightly upon mine as we passed into deeper shadow.
I was surprised by how far autumn has progressed. It was not that there was anything unusual for the time of year, but I realised I had passed many of the preceding days ensconced inside. The air was cold and crisp, but with nothing enlivening in it. Everything was damp, but diminished; the beck had shrunk to a dull trickle. Leaves of russet and brown speckled the earth but all looked limp and rather dismal and it felt that way, too; there was a dead note to the place. It did not at all feel as when I had last seen it, and I wondered if that was because the fairies had gone.
The idea brought with it an odd sense of loss as well as relief. For they were a miracle, were they not? One such as man could marvel over for years to come. And I had seen them, but for everything I had grasped at, I had nothing to show. It reminded me suddenly of the tales I had read in Hartland’s book, of fairy gold that turns to nothing but coal when spied upon too greedily.
Charlotte had continued on, and I still could not see her face. I suddenly wished to do so. I called to her and she halted, her head inclined as if focused upon the stream.
‘Charlotte, perhaps you should cover your good eye,’ I said. ‘Here must do, I think.’ I made to squeeze Harriet’s hand as her fingers slipped from my own. I started, but she was at my side just as ever; she smiled as if in full agreement, and reached for the jug.
I peered into it with distaste, but I could no longer detect the greenish scent; it was lost in the tang of the stream that hung in the air all around us. I gave it to her. I wanted to clasp my hands over Harriet’s eyes but she nodded at me so gravely, as if this is what must be, as if she saw everything.
She turned to the stream, where it fell into the little pool with a dull sound, and no birds sang, and no lights danced about her, and no words were spoken. I heard her breathy intake of air. And she held it high and, as if in a story, tapped her heels together. Then she held the jug over the stream and poured out the contents.
‘The milk is free,’ she said at last. ‘And all shall see!’
I did not know where she had learned the words. The fluid whirled into the eddy, turning it cloudy for an instant, and was gone. Harriet watched, her lips almost forming a smile. I nodded to suggest that we had finished and may leave, but her expression did not change.
‘All done,’ I said, my voice falsely bright, and I turned to where Charlotte had been standing. She was not there.
‘Mama!’ Harriet had seen it too, for her voice lifted in sudden panic. She scrambled past me. I reached for her shoulder and felt it beneath my fingers; then she was running away. Too slow – is that not the way of the old? Too slow and too foolish.
She rushed into the trees. I caught glimpses of her pale dress and flying hair, and then she stopped, because a figure stepped from behind a willow and leaned down and wrapped its arms about her.
It was dark, the figure, half drowned in shadow, and I opened my mouth to call out; then I saw it was only Charlotte, holding her bonnet, and I heard her say Harriet’s name in delight.
Harriet froze. Then she squealed and threw her arms about her mother. Both turned and walked towards me, hand in hand, no sign of fear or concern on their faces; and something about Charlotte’s expression was different.
‘I can see,’ she said, her voice full of gladness
. ‘I see everything!’ She opened and closed both eyes as if to show me, and I think I only looked confused. How could anything have changed so quickly? This was too much, and too soon. It had been too easy. Were the fairies so grateful for a little milk they would bestow such a blessing so simply?
But Charlotte’s joy was contagious, creeping from her to me, and she caught my hand in her younger, stronger fingers, and squeezed it, so hard that it almost pained me. She gave me such a wide smile I could not help smiling back.
‘Is it true?’ I peered at her more closely. Her eyes appeared just as they had before.
She did not answer; she only laughed.
‘I want to go home,’ Harriet said, reaching out for me.
I took her warm fingers in mine, but it was Charlotte who spoke. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘home,’ and we turned towards the house, accompanied by the sound of the beck, Charlotte’s footsteps following behind our own as Harriet skipped at my side.
So great a blessing, for so small a thing – but perhaps it wasn’t so small a thing. Perhaps the fairies saw our offering as an apology. Perhaps they saw it as a promise; or perhaps there had been no fairies, and I was only an old fool. Charlotte really might have been struck by hysteria, and it was only a belief in her daughter’s actions that had released her from whatever spell she had placed over her own mind.
Relief came over me at last. She had her sight – and if there were fairies, they were good after all! It might have been a mistake: they never meant to harm Charlotte’s eye. They did not mean to sting Harriet’s finger. And yet it felt too easy, too neat, almost as if some trick had been played upon me.
Harriet remained quiet all the way home. She smiled secret smiles to herself, no doubt of relief. Charlotte kept silence too, overwhelmed perhaps by her own good fortune and the sight of her child, the world rendered distinct once more, without any trace of a shadow to mar her vision.
It only struck me afterwards that I might have taken the camera. I had quite forgotten my resolve to get more pictures. Perhaps it is just as well. In all honesty, now that we are home together and safe, I hope that we might be done with the whole thing. I remain your humble servant and will answer any questions you require of me, of course, but I think my role as an amateur detective in this matter, such as it was, may well be behind me. I hope you will not mind it, after everything that has befallen us.