Chapter 6
6
Connor had been right about not being a noisy guest. He was almost completely silent, from early evening when he retired upstairs after eating a pack of sandwiches he’d brought with him, until the next morning when he called down from the stairway to the kitchen as I was blearily making myself a cup of tea.
‘May I use the bathroom? I could do with a shower before I start the day. Is that all right now?’
I blinked over my mug. ‘Of course it is.’
‘I didn’t want to interfere with your bathroom schedules, that’s all. Getting ready for work and everything.’
His consideration took some of the irritated wind out of my sails. ‘No, that’s fine. I’ll shower tonight when I get home. Are you wanting a lift through to the university today?’
I put the mug down and began popping bread into the toaster. Two slices – and then another two slices. He must be starving .
‘Oh, yes, if you’re going through, that would be great.’ His voice receded along the landing as he headed bathroom-wards. ‘I’m not lecturing but I want to meet up with the guys who are surveying the land.’
A couple of minutes later he was in the kitchen, hair wet and weighted long with the water, towel over his shoulders and dressed in his usual black.
‘Toast?’ I pushed the plate towards him. He’d been quicker than I’d expected, so I was still sitting on the window seat with my toast dropping crumbs into my lap, staring out across the river to the other side of the disused ford. I had been intending to be washing up when he came down, or tidying the kitchen, showing how generally full and busy my life was and how much of an imposition he was upon it. But it was seven o’clock and my annoyance hadn’t had chance to crank up to visible level yet.
‘Thanks.’ He grabbed the plate, looked around and saw the butter and jam on the worktop. ‘Is it all right if…?’
His politeness notched the annoyance up one setting. ‘Of course. You don’t have to ask. You’re paying to be here, that gets you use of shower and snacks.’ Moodily I bit into the remaining toast, then threw the crusts out of the window to the assorted duck crowd that had gathered, paddling furiously against the current, for just this occasion.
A quacking, splashing battle ensued. When I glanced away from it, Connor was looking at me, frozen in the act of buttering his toast.
‘I know this is awkward for you,’ he said so quietly that his words were almost lost under the noise of a large white duck dive-bombing one of the mallards. ‘I’m sorry you got talked into it. But I’m really very grateful, truly. I slept last night like the dead for the first time since I arrived over here, and I’m beginning to feel human again.’ One eyebrow lifted and his mouth twitched into the customary smile. ‘So, please make use of me while you’ve got me. Any jobs need doing about the place, I’m your man.’
I closed the window. ‘I do my own jobs,’ I said stiffly and then, aware of how ungracious I’d sounded, ‘but thank you for the offer.’ The damp patch above the back door gave the lie to my words, but I ignored it.
‘Ah, only a thought.’ A buttery moment ensued, and then he went on. ‘I’m fully house-trained, so you can leave me to my laundry and washing up and all that. I’ll make my bed and keep the crumbs to a minimum. Mam ran a very tight household, what with five boys and Da, she wasn’t up for martyring herself to the house.’
I had a vision of Connor’s mother, like a cross between Mrs Doyle from Father Ted and every stereotypical Irish Mammy I’d ever read about. Plump and censorious, strict about Mass on Sunday, cooking up a storm and fussing over her sons to the extent of them struggling to find girlfriends. Apart from the priestly Eamonn, of course. I could see her ruling the household with a rod of iron amid the chaos of all those boys, having them clamour to make her a cup of tea when she settled herself into an armchair.
‘What with her job, and all,’ Connor went on, biting happily into the toast.
‘What does she do?’ I asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
‘She’s head of the biochemical sciences department,’ he said, turning back to tidy up the jam, so at least he couldn’t see my expression. I was glad, because my mental attempt to overwrite Irish Mammy with Scientist was scrambling my face.
We finished our breakfast in silence. Connor stood and looked out of the window while he ate and I drank the rest of my tea while reading an article in a magazine about the Fairy Census, which collated current belief in the world of the Other. I made a note of the name of the author, in case I needed to contact someone about the future of the Fairy Stane. If Connor and his ranks of students made any attempt to disturb it, I’d rally everyone in the folklore world in an attempt to protect it. He needn’t think he could ride roughshod over lifetimes of belief just to prove a historical point, not without a fight, anyway.
Then I drove us to York.
It was a busy day. I had a meeting with the people who awarded the grants who wanted to see the current stage of my research, so I went armed with some of the more hair-raising tales I’d recorded. Stories of haunted bridges, cursed lanes, the black dog that accompanied travellers on the high moor all went down well. Apparently the Most Haunted influence was still strong among the general public and real-life tales were incredibly popular tourist attractions. Those words, ‘tourist attractions’, made the hair on the back of my neck prickle – what I was doing was collecting oral history, social commentary and myth, all gleaned from lone farms high on the moors as tales told on long dark nights before electricity had come to the villages.
If the fairies had ever danced on that isolated stone, or if their land was captured beneath it, then I was their guardian. And even though I had no personal belief in the Little People, I was still going to make sure their stories and their haunts were marked.