by Heide Goody
“Ah, she was allus skin and bones,” said Rose blithely. “Nice to see a Thorn girl not afraid to eat her fill.”
“Um,” said Ella.
“Don’t mind me, love,” said Rose. “Eat up. I’ll have my fag and then we’ll take a look at t’garden and I’ll tell thee about Carabosse.”
“What is that?”
“She.” Rose inhaled deeply on her cigarette. “She’s tha fairy godmother.”
Their walk around the garden was a tour of odd jobs and tasks that probably made up much of Granny Rose’s daily routine. The first job was throwing a pot of food scraps to the goat.
“Got Nanny here and about two dozen hens in t’shed,” said Rose. “I has only one rule with t’animals.”
“What’s that?”
“The moment any of them starts talking, that bugger’s going in t’pot. That’s rule number three.”
“Number three?”
“Of the rules. I’ve got them all writ down somewhere. Got to have rules on account of Carabosse.” She picked up a bucket of chicken feed and then stopped. “It were my fault.”
“What was?” said Ella.
“All of it. I released her.” She carried the bucket up to the henhouse-cum-garage and threw handfuls down. Chickens came running out from underneath the boxy old car. “When I were a kid. We lived in a rotten back-to-back in Cottingley.”
“Cottingley?” said Ella.
“Bradford, love. S’where I grew up. My folks, my brother and me. There weren’t much of a yard. Big enough for a washing line and an outhouse and not much more.”
“And did you have to work down t’pit for twelve hours to earn one farthing?”
“Cheeky bugger. This was the fifties. We still had rationing from after the war. Meat rationing. Sugar too. Only one kind of cheese.”
“War is hell.”
“And this was before they’d got started on building council houses. Yes, we lived in a back-to-back. Two up, one down and we had to do our business in the garden. Anyroad, we played in t’yard when we weren’t playing out in t’street. I was probably nine. Tha Great Uncle Jack would have been ten. He was sat on the step reading his Dan Dare and I was digging in t’ground with a stick.” Rose mimed the actions as she spoke and pretended to hold something aloft. “I found a jar. A pickling jar, I suppose. Someone had painted summat on t’glass but I couldn’t read it. And it had a fairy inside it.”
“A fairy?”
“A fairy.”
“Any particular kind of fairy?” said Ella.
Rose shrugged and held her thumb and forefinger, five inches apart.
“It were a fairy, love. Yay high. Wispy clothes. Little wings like a thingamajig… a butterfly. A fairy.”
Chickens done, Rose took the empty bucket to the well. She drew up the rope and filled one bucket from the other. A mallet hung from a string beside the well.
“So this fairy in a jar,” said Ella. “It had been buried alive?”
“I don’t know if alive and dead are things that apply to fairies. But she looked pleased as punch that I’d dug her up.”
“So you let her out.”
“Of course, I did. I was a nine-year-old girl and I’d found mesen an honest-to-God fairy. Off popped t’lid and the fairy flew out and in a tiny, high-pitched Pinky and Perky voice said to me” — Rose put on a squeaky voice that sounded more Donald Duck than either Pinky or Perky — “‘Thank you for freeing me. In repayment, I will grant you your heart’s desire.’”
“She granted you a wish then.”
“Well, no. She just said that and flew off. Of course, we ran to tell mother but she just thought we were making it up. Jack and I tried to convince her and we only stopped when our father came home and gave us a clip round the ear for talking twaddle.”
Rose saw Ella looking at the mallet.
“For bopping any frog prince, mermaid or troll stupid enough to come crawling out,” she explained. “Anyroads, father gave us a clip round the ear and that were it. Least for a few years. My father got a building job down this way, through a feller who was his commanding officer in the war, so we moved here. Rushy Glen was tha great grandparents’ house. It was a palace to us. And mebbe I forgot about that fairy. Couldn’t rightly say. That were Carabosse, not that I knew that then.”
Rose led Ella down towards the vegetable patch. “You can help me inspect the beans,” she said as she poured water out on the vegetables.
“What am I looking for?” said Ella and then immediately saw that one of the runner beans was glowing with a regal and golden light.
“Pop it in here,” said Rose. “Don’t let it fall on t’floor or we’ll have bloody giant beanstalks everywhere.”
Ella dropped the magic bean into the empty bucket.
“This is a lovely garden,” said Ella.
“I loved this place as a girl. We — tha Great Uncle Jack and me — went to the local school. Moreton-in-Marsh Secondary Modern. Can’t say I enjoyed it. All us girls learning typing like we were going to land plummy secretarial jobs in the city. Weren’t much use if tha lived in t’wood. Even less use when a bear comes knocking at t’door.”
“Did you just say ‘bear’?”
“Aye.”
Happy with the beans, Rose led her further round the house to where a climbing rose had entwined itself around a rotting trellis.
“Here,” she said, and passed Ella a pair of secateurs. “I hate bloody roses.”
With a pair of shears, Granny Rose snipped the head off one of the red roses. The stem recoiled like a snake and waved its thorns threateningly.
“What kind of rose is this?” said Ella.
“Don’t know its actual name, but I’m pretty sure it ends in ‘magicum’.”
Ella lunged forward like a fencer and cut down a thick stalk. The dying stem writhed on the ground.
“You mentioned a bear,” she said.
“I was fifteen. It were raining that night, coming down in stair-rods. Father would’ve been at t’pub. My mother was babysitting for some family a few miles over. Can’t remember where Jack was, but I were alone in the house. There was a knock at t’door and there stood a bear. Big teeth. Huge paws.”
Ella nodded. “Well, I can imagine you were a little lost for words.”
“Not huge pause,” said Rose irascibly. “Huge paws, as in — Oh, I see.”
Ella was smiling. “You were telling me that a bear came to your door, Granny. It’s a bit unbelievable.”
“Don’t mean it didn’t happen though. He knocked at t’door. I looked him up and down. He was dripping head to toe. And he asked if he could come in and warm up by the fire. Naturally, I was bloody terrified but I had my manners an’ all so I let him in, all stinking like a damp dog, and he sat in front of the fire. Steam came off his fur in clouds. We talked. I don’t remember what about. And I gave him some tinned spam which he wolfed down. And then he was gone leaving a damp patch on the hearth rug and me having to explain to my parents where the spam for tomorrow’s tea had gone.”
“Fairies in jars. Bears. I’m not seeing a link here, Granny.”
“Give me time,” said Rose.
“I mean, some people might argue that there never was a bear.”
Rose paused in her vigorous rose-slaying.
“Is tha saying I’m lying, girl?”
“Maybe it wasn’t a bear. Maybe it was someone else.”
Rose nodded in slow understanding.
“Oh, tha think it might be one of them repressed memory jobbies? Some sinister bloke who I’ve confabulated into a bear to protect my fragile mind?” She cut away a trio of rose heads with a vicious one-two-three. “No, we were too busy in them days for such nonsense. It were a bear.”
“Okay,” said Ella.
Rose picked up a pump-action spray and doused the remains of the rose plant with weed killer.
“It is okay, girl,” she gathered up the chopped pieces of rose plant and threw them in her bucket. “Now listen. Cou
ple of days later, I were walking through the wood and I met a dwarf who was chopping wood and who had — Lord knows how — got his beard stuck in t’cleft of the log he was chopping.” She eyed Ella suspiciously. “Tha’s all right with dwarfs? Tha’s not going to tell me it was my imagination?”
“No,” said Ella. “Me and dwarfs, we have a history.”
“Well, this little bugger were swearing fit to burst. He just kept tugging and hurting hissen and swearing some more. I offered to help. He were so intent on his beard, I don’t know if he even knew I were there. I stepped in and, with the little knife I carried, I cut his beard and set him loose. Well,” said Rose with a theatrically exasperated sigh, “tha’d have thought I’d cut off his goolies way he reacted. Swore like a trooper, he did. Ruined his fine beard, I had, apparently. Not a word of thanks out of him.”
Crossing back over to the henhouse/garage, Rose dumped the rose cuttings and the magic beans in a brazier.
“Over t’next few days,” she said as she doused the lot with lighter fluid, “I met that dwarf again and again. I found him dangling from a tree branch and pulled him down. I found him stuck in a fast-flowing stream and hauled him out. It weren’t ‘til afterwards that I saw t’pattern of things. These weren’t chance meetings. This were a… What would tha call it? A set-up. Each time, I’d rescue him. Each time, the ungrateful bugger’d shake his little red hat in my face and swear at me.”
“Red hat?”
“Aye.”
Rose lit the brazier and the whole lot quickly caught light.
“Psycho, I’ve met him,” said Ella.
The magical rubbish burned with a pungent blue smoke and what sounded like the faintest of screams.
“He’s a git, is what he is,” said Rose. “Final time we met he were down t’bottom of a steep bank. All gravel and loose earth and roots. He were trying desperately to climb up, on account of t’bear that wanted to kill him.”
“The bear you met earlier.”
“Exactly, love.”
“I can see where this is going.”
“Then tha’s smarter than I were at fifteen. Come on.”
They returned to the henhouse and Rose rooted around in the straw and on the back seat of the car for eggs. The car badge identified the vehicle as a Zastava Podvarak. It had all the elegance and aerodynamics of a motorised fridge.
“So,” said Rose as she scrabbled around. “I grabbed a branch and lowered it to that rum bugger of a dwarf and helped him up out of reach of the bear. Was he grateful?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“Correct,” she said, emerging with a bucket full of eggs. “That dwarf had a right go at me, about how I’d been too slow and how he’d nearly died. In t’meantime, the bear had found his own way up the bank. He comes snarling towards us. We were trapped. That dwarf, he starts pleading with t’bear and tells him he should eat me, instead, on account of me having a bit more meat on my bones, which wasn’t summat to be ashamed of in them days neither. Course, bear paid his snivelling no mind and, with a swipe of his claw, knocked him dead.”
“You’re sure he was dead?”
“As I say, I’m not sure if dead and alive apply to these folk. I took him for dead and so did t’bear and, as the bear turned to me he was at once transformed into a young man.”
“A handsome prince.”
“I don’t’ know about prince. And I don’t know about handsome. But he were a young man and completely in the nuddy an’ all. I were fair gobsmacked. Turns out he had been cursed by t’dwarf, summat to do with buried treasure. I don’t clearly recall. Any roads, he was mighty... grateful I’d helped him. Never underestimate the value of a grateful young man, particularly one in the nude.”
“Granny!”
“What? You think we didn’t have sex in them days? We didn’t have televisions then and didn’t have none of tha YouTube or t’internet. We had to make our own entertainment.”
“And then what happened?” Ella asked.
Rose shrugged. “Well, I married him, o’ course. Time for another brew, I reckon.”
Ella followed her back to the kitchen in stunned silence.
“That bear was Granddad Doug?” she said eventually.
Rose nodded. She filled the kettle from the tap, placed it on the wood-burning stove and then, considering the bucket of eggs, said, “Yorkshire pudding for tea I shouldn’t wonder.”
Ella stared in stunned thought a little longer.
“I’m one quarter bear?”
“I don’t know about that. This is magic stuff we’re talking about.”
“I do seem to spend half my time shaving and waxing.”
“I’m not sure it works like that…”
“And I really like salmon.”
Rose opened the twin tub and began arranging Ella’s sodden clothes on the clothes horse in front of the stove. That done, Rose lifted the boiling kettle off the stove and made a fresh pot of tea with tea bags. She glanced up and saw Ella’s look of surprise at such a ‘modern’ concession.
“Won’t give time of day to loose tea,” she said. “I don’t want crowns and stars and other mystical portents appearing at t’bottom of my cup.”
“I can see that might be off-putting,” said Ella.
Rose put a cuppa in front of Ella and set about mixing eggs, flour and milk to make batter.
“Doug and I were married the year after we met,” she said, “and your mum was born not long after that.”
“Married at sixteen? Wasn’t that a bit young?”
“Times were different then, love. No one minded if tha were married at sixteen.”
“To a bear.”
“I met in t’wood. Aye. I didn’t question it. I was happy. And mebbe then I had an inkling that this was the fairy’s doing. This was my heart’s desire.”
“A husband and a child.”
“I know what tha’s thinking.”
“I didn’t say anything, Granny.”
“But you’re thinking it loud enough to hear. Bugger women’s lib. Just because my dreams might be small, they were still mine. Oh, would you look at that.”
Rose showed Ella an egg she had just cracked. Curled up inside the shell was a tiny little girl with skin as pale as albumen and a flower-petal dress the colour of yolk. The little creature yawned, awoke and looked up at Rose with large, innocent eyes.
“I am Eggselina,” it spoke. “Are you my mummy?”
Rose opened the kitchen window and threw the thing out as hard and fast as she could.
“Waste of a bloody good egg,” she said, returning to her mixing bowl. “Now, what was I saying? Oh, aye. Doug and I moved up to Warwickshire. He got a job in woodland management which, far as I could tell, was being a lumberjack without actually cutting down trees. We went up there when your mum, Natalie, was a new-born. We were very happy.”
Ella smiled and felt a curious emotion, the realisation that this woman knew her mum far better and more intimately than she ever would.
“Tha knows tha mum and dad were school sweethearts,” said Rose.
“I do.”
“That was her contrary nature.”
“Contrary to what?”
“What with the fairy trying to set her up with every magical suitor between here and Scotland. You see, the fairy wasn’t just set on giving me my happily ever after. She wanted one for my daughter too. We’d have gentleman callers at all hours. Frog princes. Seventh sons of seventh sons. And wolves, aye. She had to beat them off with a stick. We even came back down here for a bit to get away from them one summer, not long after my own folks died — me and tha granddad, tha mum, young Gavin and some mardy little miss of a friend.”
“Myra.”
“That were her. I wouldn’t say that girl was a wrong ‘un but if you gave her the world on a plate, she’d complain you’d used her best china.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Oh, you’ve met her, have you?”
“Um,” said Ella. �
�She’s marrying dad. In nine days’ time.”
“Dad? Your dad? Gavin?”
“Yes. My dad. I would have sent you an invite but you’ve been kind of hard to find.”
Rose’s face was suddenly ashen. She nearly dropped the bowl of batter, caught it and put it down on the side before she could drop it again.
“No. She can’t,” she whispered. “He can’t.”
Ella took hold of Rose’s upper arm to support the old woman.
“It’s not that bad,” she said. “She is a bit forthright and little bit… totalitarian, but —”
“No, you don’t understand,” said Rose. “He can’t marry her.”
“Why not?”
There were tears in Rose’s eyes.
“Tha mum’s not dead, love. She’s not dead.”
Ella’s first thought was that her Granny was speaking metaphorically, saying that those we love never truly die. But she rejected that thought in less than a second; the profound sadness in Rose’s eyes was evidence of a deeper and more concrete truth. Ella’s second thought was that her Granny was delusional, demented, mad. This was a woman who had just declared that her late husband had previously been a bear. Yes, that was it. Granny Rose had masked it well but she was clearly suffering mental problems in her old age…
Ella stopped herself.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Tha mum had to allow everyone to move on.”
“My mum suffered from undiagnosed hypoglycaemia, fell into a diabetic coma and died,” said Ella, her voice rising and her tone hardening as she spoke. “She died over thirty years ago. Don’t tell me she is alive. That’s a wicked and terrible thing to say!”
“But it’s true,” said Rose softly.
Chapter Six
The guest bedroom again.
Rose bent down and, with an arthritic groan, pulled a large cardboard filing box with reinforced metal corners from under the lowest shelf in the alcove on the right-hand side of the chimney breast.
“Tha’ll have to lift it onto t’bed,” Rose told her. “It’s tha mum’s things, might be summat in there.”
It was heavier than Ella had expected and it bounced heavily on the bed.