‘It was a wide, sloping, odd-shaped field of about forty acres running down to a point, rather like the map of England turned upside down, and with a little wood of larch on one side of it. This particular morning was in April. It was sunny but cold, and the field was bare except for its flints glinting in the sun-beams. It had been sown, but nothing green was showing.
‘Well, I was skirting along the hedge, as I say, but on this side of it, carrying the bird snare I had with me under my jacket, and hardly able to breathe for excitement. I knew exactly – as I peered through the hedge, on which the thorn buds were just breaking green as emeralds – which was the place for me. There was a ditch beyond the hedge, and I could see only a narrow strip of the field at the moment, because of the hedge and bushes in between. But it was truly a little paradise of birds, my dear, and particularly when spring was on its way.
‘Well, on I went until I came to the corner by the rickety old gate, which was tied up with a piece of chain. Between you and me it was a shameful old gate. But that is not our business. And all of a sudden I caught sight of what I supposed was Farmer Jones himself, glaring straight at me across the field, and not thirty yards away. I fairly jumped in my skin at sight of him, turned hot, then cold, and waited, staring back. For that one instant it seemed as if I could see the very colour of his eyeballs moving in his head.
‘But all this was only in the flicker of a moment. No Farmer Jones that, and not even one of his men! It was just Old Joe; our Old Joe. That Old Joe there! Come alive. And after all, what is life, Letitia?’
‘That’s perfectly true, Uncle Tim,’ Letitia whispered, edging a little closer to him. ‘He might be alive at this very instant.’
‘And not only that, you must remember,’ went on Mr Bolsover, ‘this was in Old Joe’s better days. He was young then. He has been peacocked up in many a fine new suit of old clothes since then, and more hats than I could count on twice my fingers. But then he was in his hey-day, in the very bloom of his youth, the glass of fashion and the knave of trumps. And now I wouldn’t part with him for a bag of golden guineas. No, not for twenty bags. And though I am very fond of guineas, the reason for that is, first, that I love him for his own sweet sake alone, and next, my dear Letitia, because one doesn’t very often see – see, I mean – real live fairies in this world.’
Letitia burst out laughing. ‘Real live fairies, Uncle Tim!’ she cried, stooping forward in her amusement and dragging her skirts tight down over her knees. ‘Why, you can’t mean to say, you poor dear, that Old Joe’s a fairy?’
‘No,’ said Mr Bolsover, ‘I didn’t mean to say quite that. Then, as now, Old Joe was the scaringest of scaring scarecrows I have ever set eyes on. But, like the primrose in the poem, he was nothing more. No, it wasn’t Old Joe himself who was the fairy, no more than the house behind us is you and me. Old Joe was merely one of this particular fairy’s rendyvouses, as the old word goes. He was where she was.
‘That morning, I remember, he was wearing a pair of slack black-and-white check trousers and a greenish black coat, very wide at the shoulders. Apart from the stick for his arm, another had been pushed into one of his coat-sleeves for a cudgel. Another with a lump at the top made his head and on that was a hat, a hard, battered, square black hat – like the hats farmers and churchwardens used to wear in those days. He was stooping forward a little, staring across at me as I crouched by the gate. As I say, I hugged the wire snare under my jacket closer, and stared back.
‘Whether it was because of the hot air that was eddying up from the stony soil under the sun, or because of some cheating effect of the light on the chalky field, I can’t say, Letitia. But even while I stood watching him, his head seemed to be ever so gently turning on his shoulders as if he were secretly trying to get a better view of me without my noticing it. Yet all the time I fancied this, I knew it wasn’t true.
‘Still, I was a good deal startled. Quite apart from crows and such riff-raff, he had certainly scared me – for in those days young trespassers (not to mention the old double-toothed man-traps, which were a little before my time) might find themselves in for a smart walloping if they were caught. But even when I had recovered my wits I continued to watch him, and at the same time kept glancing from side to side at the birds that were flighting about me, or feeding, or preening and sunning themselves in the dust. And though by this time I knew him for what he was, I wasn’t by any means at ease.
‘For even if there were no real eyes in his own head, I was perfectly certain that somebody or something was actually looking at me from under that old black hat, or from out of his sleeve – from somewhere about him. The birds were already used to my being there, simply because I remained so still. After perhaps five whole minutes of this, I squatted down at the edge of the field and began to set my trap.
‘But the whole time I was stooping over it, and softly hammering the wooden peg in with a large flint, I was thinking of the old scarecrow – though without looking at him – and knew I was being watched. I say without looking at him, but whenever I got a chance I would snatch a little secret glance at him from between my legs or over my shoulder or from under my arm, pretending that I was doing nothing of the kind. And then at last, the trap finished, I sat down on the grass under the hedge and steadily fixed my eyes on him again.
‘The sun climbed slowly up the blue sky, his rays twinkling from sharp-cut stone to stone and scrap of glass. The hot air rilled on at his feet. The birds went about their business, and nothing else happened. I watched so hard that my eyes began to water, but whatever was hiding there, if anything was hiding there, could be as patient as I was. And at last I turned home again.
‘At the far corner of the field under an old thorn tree I stooped down once more as if I were tying up my shoe lace, and had another long look, and then I was perfectly certain I had caught a glimpse of something moving there. It was as if a face had very stealthily peered out of the shadow of the old scarecrow, and, on sighting me under the thorn tree, had as swiftly withdrawn into hiding again.
‘All the rest of that day I could think of nothing else but Old Joe, assuring myself that my eyes had deceived me, or that a bird perched on his shoulder had fluttered down, or that a very faint breeze from over the open upland had moved in his sleeve. Or that I had made it all up. Yet I knew deep down inside me that this wasn’t true. It was easy to invent explanations, but none of them fitted.’
‘It might, of course, Uncle Tim, you know,’ said Letitia, ‘it might have been not a bird but some little animal, mightn’t it? I once saw a hare skipping about in the middle of a field, and then suddenly, though there wasn’t even the tip of his ear showing before, there was another hare. And then another: would you believe it? And they went racing over the field one after the other until they went right out of sight. Or might it have been a bird, do you think, which was building its nest in Old Joe? Robins, you know, build their nests anywhere, even in an old boot. And I have seen a tit’s nest with I don’t know how many eggs in it in an old pump. And look, Uncle Tim, there is a bird actually perched on Old Joe’s shoulder now! That’s what it might have been, I think – some little animal, or bird nesting.’
‘Well, you shall hear,’ said Uncle Tim. ‘But I am quite certain that if you had been with me that morning, hundreds of years ago, you would have agreed that there was something different about Old Joe; different, I mean, from what he looks like now. He looked queer. I can’t quite explain; but it was the difference between an empty furnished house and the same house with its family in it. It was the difference between fishing in a millpond which has fish in it and in one which has none. It was the difference between you yourself when you are really asleep and when you are only foxing and pretending to be. And what’s more, sure enough, I was right.
‘Now I had my proper bed-time at Mrs Lumb’s; and before it, always, an apple and a glass of milk. My old friend was not only a great believer in apples, but she had seven beautiful Jersey cows, which are a great help,
my dear, not only at bed-time, but with gooseberry tart or apple pie. But she wasn’t one of those Uncle Tims who want everything done exactly at the right moment. She didn’t wait till the clock struck eight (which just shows how easy it is to rhyme if you don’t try to) and then come peeping in to see if I was safe in bed.’
‘Why, you know very well,’ said Letitia, ‘you don’t do that yourself.’
‘Aha!’ said Mr Bolsover, ‘I wonder. People who sleep with one eye open grow as wise as old King Solomon. I creep and I creep and I creep, and every door has a keyhole. But never mind that. That very evening after my first sight of Old Joe, and when if I had been a nice honest boy I should have been in bed, I made my way down to his field again – slipping on from bush to bush, tree to tree, as cautiously as I could, so cautiously that I trod on the scut of a bunny, Esmeralda by name, that happened to be enjoying a dandelion for her supper on the other side of a bramble bush.
‘When I reached my hawthorn tree – and hundreds of years old that looked – I stooped down beside its roots very low to the ground, having made up my mind to watch until the evening grew too dark to see across the field. It was getting towards May, and the air was so sweet and still and fresh that your eyes almost shut with bliss of themselves every time you breathed. And in those days, Letitia, we kept clocks by the sun. We didn’t cheat him in the morning and pay him back in the evenings, as we do now. So there was faded gold and rose in the sky, though he himself was gone down.
‘But apart from the birds and the bunnies, nothing happened except this great Transformation Scene of day turning into night, until it began to be dark. And then it seemed that almost every moment Old Joe, inch by inch, was steadily moving nearer. Seemed, mind you. And then, at the very instant when I noticed the first star – which by its mellow brightness and by where it was, must have been the planet Venus – I saw – well, now, what do you think I saw?’
‘The fairy!’ said Letitia, and sighed.
‘Full marks, my dear,’ said Mr Bolsover, squeezing her hand under his elbow. ‘The fairy. And the odd thing is that I can’t – can’t possibly – describe her. This is perhaps partly because the light wasn’t very good, and partly because my eyes were strained with watching. But mostly for other reasons. I seemed, you see, to be seeing her as if I were imagining her, even though I knew quite well she was there.
‘You must just take my word for it – I knew she was there. She was stooping forward a little, and the top of her head reached, I should say, about up to what one might call Old Joe’s waist. There he is – say the third button down of that old black coat he has on. Her face seemed to be a little long and narrow, but perhaps this was because her fair hair was hanging down on either cheek, straight and fine as combed silk, and in colour between gold and grey – rather like the colour of a phosphorescent fish in the dark, but much more gold than silver. It looks to me, now I come to think of it, that since it was now gloaming I must have been seeing her in part as if by her own light.
‘She stood lovely and motionless as a flower. And merely to gaze at her filled me with a happiness I shall not forget but cannot describe. It was as though I had come without knowing it into the middle of a dream in another world; and cold prickles went down my back, as if at the sound of enchanted music.
‘There was not a breath of wind stirring. Everything around me seemed to have grown much more sharp and clear, even though the light was dim. The flowers were different, the trees, the birds. I seemed to know within me what the flowers were feeling – what it is like to be a plant with green pointed leaves and tiny caterpillar feet, like ivy, climbing from its white creeping roots in the dark earth by fractions of an inch, up the stem of a tree; or to have feathers all over me, and to float lighter than the air, and to be looking out from two small bright round eyes at my bird-world. I can’t explain it, Letitia, but I am sure you will understand.’
Letitia gave two solemn nods. ‘I think so, Uncle Tim – a little. Though I never should have guessed, you know, that any boy was like that.’
‘Boys, my dear, are mainly animals,’ Uncle Tim agreed heartily, ‘and so was I – nine and three-quarter tenths. But it was the other bit, I suppose, that was looking at Old Joe.
‘And I firmly believe that the fairy knew I was there, but that in spite of knowing it, she could not delay doing what she wished to do any longer. For presently, after a minute or two, she drew very gently backwards and out of sight, and then began to hasten away over the field towards the corner of it furthest away from me, keeping all the time as far as she was able so that Old Joe stood in between us, and so prevented me from seeing her clearly, however much I dodged my head from side to side in the attempt to do so. Now that, Letitia, considering that she had her back turned to me, and was flitting along as swiftly as a shadow – that was a very difficult thing to do; and I don’t quite see how she managed it. I am perfectly certain I couldn’t – without once looking back, I mean.’
‘And what,’ said Letitia, ‘was she like from behind?’
Old Mr Bolsover narrowed his eyes, and shut his lips. ‘She was like,’ he said slowly, ‘a wraith of wood smoke from a bonfire. She was like what, if you could see it, you might suppose a puff of wind would be in the light over snow. She was like the ghost of a little waterfall. She moved, I mean, my dear, as if she were hovering on her way; and yet she never left the ground. Far, far more lightly than any gazelle she stepped; and it was so entrancing to watch her in the quiet and dusk of that great field, it fairly took my breath away. And mind you, I was only a clod-hopping boy of about ten.’
Mr Bolsover took a large coloured silk handkerchief out of his pocket and, as if in triumph, blew his nose. ‘I ought to add at once,’ he continued, pushing the handkerchief back into his pocket again except for one bright coloured corner, ‘that this is not a story at all. Not a story, Letitia.’
‘But I think, Uncle Tim, it is a story,’ said Letitia. ‘It doesn’t make stories any worse if they are true. I mean, don’t you think, that all real stories seem better than true? Don’t you think so yourself, Uncle Tim? Just think of the Seven Swans, and Snow White! Oh, all those. At least I do. Please, please go on.’
‘What I mean, my dear, is that a story ought really to be like a piece of music. It should have a beginning and a middle and an end, though you could hardly say which is which when it all comes out together. It ought to be like a whiting with its tail in its mouth – but a live whiting, of course. This one, you see, this one I am telling you, begins – and then goes off into nothing.’
‘I don’t think,’ said Letitia, ‘that matters one atom. Just please go on with the fairy, Uncle Tim.’
‘Well, as soon as she was gone out of sight, my one and only desire was to steal into the field and take a look at Old Joe at close quarters. But upon my word, Letitia, I hadn’t the courage. He was her dwelling-place, her hiding-place, her habitation: at least whenever she needed one. That was certain. Now that she was absent, had forsaken it, had gone away, the very look of him had changed. He was empty, merely a husk; he was just nothing but a hodmadod – Old Joe. Though we won’t think a bit the worse of him for that. Bless me, no! When you have gone day-dreaming, your face, Letitia, I assure you, looks still and quiet and happy. But I am afraid you must be thinking I was an exceedingly stupid boy. You see, I was. And I confess that I simply could not make up my mind to go a step nearer.
‘Old Joe was quite alone now. I wasn’t afraid of him. But after what I had seen I felt a curious strangeness all about me. I was afraid because I felt I had been spying, and that every living thing within view under the quiet sky knew of this and wanted to be rid of my company. I didn’t – which was worse – even go to look at my bird snare. And when I went to the field again it had vanished.
‘Next morning after breakfast with my old friend Mrs Lumb, I talked my way round until at last we came to fairies. “I sometimes wonder if they can be true,” I said to her airily – as if I had just thought of it. Alas, Letitia,
what deceivers we may be! But yes. My old friend believed in fairies all right. I never felt any doubt about that. But she had never seen one. I asked her what she thought a fairy would be like if she ever did see one. She sat in her chair – with her cup in her hand – looking out of the window and munching her toast.
‘“Well, between you and me, my dear Tim,” she said (crunch, crunch), “I never much cared about the flibbertigibbety little creatures which are supposed to find a water-lily as comfortable a place to sleep in as you might find a four-post bed. That, I think, is all my eye and Betty Martin. And I don’t believe myself that any fairy would pay much attention to me (crunch, crunch). I expect (crunch, crunch) they prefer people, if they care for human beings at all, with less of and to them. And probably there are not many of them left in England now. Fairies, I mean. There are too many of us. Mr Lumb, as you know, was an entomologist. Perhaps he would have been able to tell you more about it. Besides (crunch, crunch), he had once seen a ghost.”’
‘Do you really mean,’ said Letitia, ‘that your friend Mrs Lumb’s husband had once seen a ghost, and that he was – was dead too?’
‘That’s what Mrs Lumb meant, my dear, and I asked her what the ghost her husband saw was like. “Well,” she said, “it was like (crunch, crunch) it was like, he told me, seeing something with your eyes shut. It made him feel very cold; the bedroom went black; but he wasn’t frightened.”’
Letitia sidled yet a little closer to her uncle. ‘Between you and me, Uncle Tim,’ she said, ‘I believe that ghost would have given me the shudders. Don’t you? But please let’s go back to your fairy. Did you tell Mrs Lumb about that?’
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