Chapter 21
21
I spent a very disturbed night, falling in and out of dreams that hinted at guilt and recovery, letting go and holding fast. The brightness of the moon didn’t help either, squinting between the curtains with its light enhanced by the glistening snow beneath it, so that the bedroom felt as though daylight were haunting the night.
I woke up late, disorientated, embarrassed and bleary, with my head still full of Connor and last night’s kiss.
I liked him. A few of the dreams had proved that, allusions of moist heat and another weight in the bed. There was still the matter of his being a historian and diametrically opposed to some of my beliefs, but I’d lived with him here long enough to know that he was reasonably house-trained and, unless that kiss had unleashed a foul-mouthed, slobbish boor that he’d been keeping well hidden, he was pleasant to have around. It didn’t have to be a ‘thing’, anyway, did it? Just a brief encounter. Something to take away the ghost of Elliot in a nice way. A gentle exorcism.
I lay stretched across the bed, listening to ducks arguing and feeling the hole where Elliot had existed as one pokes a newly absent tooth with a tongue. The wound was less painful than it had been. Elliot wasn’t coming back. I could have a new, different life with his memory as a comfortable place in the back of my mind, like childhood or a lovely holiday.
From outside I could hear a crunch of footsteps in the snow. Connor must be outside, and I wondered what he was doing. The thought that he might be going for that walk alone, uncertain of my commitment to tramping three miles in knee-deep snowfall, struck me and I leaped out of bed to look out of the window.
The door to the woodshed was ajar and a stamped path showed that Connor had been up and down a few times with the wonky wheelbarrow that existed solely for the purpose of transporting logs to the back door. I frowned, wrapped my sturdy dressing gown around me and went onto the landing.
There was an instant smell of ‘green’, and warmth, as though the house had been filled with tree spirits, scenting the air with their perfumes. Cautiously I went down the stairs and stepped into the living room, where the log burner was pushing out a constant heat and a huge pile of logs had been stacked neatly in the holder ready for stoking the blaze.
And the walls were hung with branches. Greenery from conifers and yew, jewel-studded hawthorn twigs with the berries gleaming in the firelight, were on every surface and hanging from the overhead light fitting. The bare black of twisted hazel and birch adorned the dresser and the table bore the bright fluttering chestnut of beech, still holding the last leaves of summer now dried to a leathery tan.
As I stood staring, Connor came in with another armful of logs. ‘Good, you’re up,’ he said cheerily. ‘I hope you don’t mind but it was looking a wee bit unseasonal, so I thought some midwinter décor might be just the thing.’
‘Connor?’
He looked uncertain for a moment, standing in the doorway with his clothes dusted with a mixture of snow and log detritus. ‘Er. Sorry, was I wrong? I didn’t mean to upset you, now, I only wanted…’
‘It’s beautiful.’
I watched his face collapse with relief into a smile that seemed more relaxed, more open than it had before. ‘Now, I’m relieved to hear that. I was a bit worried there for a moment that you might start throwing things.’
I turned, taking in the artful draping of the fir branches that hung around the window and let the sun’s rays filter through in a green net that caught the light and released it gradually across the floor. It smelled like Christmas. ‘It really is gorgeous.’
‘Thank you.’ He sounded humble, which wasn’t like Connor at all. ‘When we spent Christmas with Granda, when I was very young and before the rest of the boys were born, he used to bring the green in at midwinter. I remember the smell of the peat fire and the branches and the whisky and he’d play the pipe and sing. Mam was always a bit tight-lipped about the whole thing. I thought it was just that she didn’t get on so well with Granda, but later I realised that it was the pagan thing she couldn’t deal with. Not really “Church”, all this.’ He indicated with his elbows, his arms being full of wood. ‘But I thought it would be more “you”.’
‘You are amazing,’ I breathed, my breath puffing out in steam because the back door was still wide open, propped by the barrow full of logs.
Connor tried, without notable success, to look modest. ‘New memories. Old ones resurfacing, in my case.’
I shook my head, dizzy with disbelief at the beauty and artistry of it all. ‘You are wasted as a historian, Connor. You need to come to the dark side of pagan mythology.’
‘There’s a fair bit of that in Irish history, to be fair.’ As though becoming aware of the cold creeping in behind him, Connor stepped back and closed the door then came through brandishing his armful of logs. He tipped them down onto the pile in the fire grate and bent to stack them neatly. ‘I thought I’d light the fire too, it’s fair freezing in here now. And the electricity isn’t back.’ He reached up and flicked the switch for the desk lamp, which clicked and did nothing. ‘How long is it usually off for?’
I shivered and came closer to the blaze. ‘Could be hours. Not usually days though, unless it’s this small area and they forget about us. Shall I make some tea and toast?’
He frowned. ‘Electricity is off.’
‘But the log burner is on. I’ve got a stove-top kettle and a toasting fork for just such eventualities.’
Now Connor nodded, slowly. ‘Of course you have. Here’s you all practical and sorted and the folklorist, with the historian imagining eating cold soup and hunks of cheese.’
I laughed and hunted out the big iron kettle, and we sat in front of the flames and ate slightly crunchier than usual toast and drank our tea. Beyond the kitchen window the ducks grumbled.
Then we went for a walk. Through thigh-deep snow, alternately stepping carefully and toppling into gulleys, we made our way up onto the high moor where the snow had scoured and drifted, and some places wore only a couple of centimetres of covering and in others the snow was piled higher than a housetop. Because we kept slipping and tripping and falling and having to pull one another out of drifts, it seemed natural and time-saving for us to go hand in hand along the icy path out across the moor to the Fairy Stane, which lay docile under its white blanket, visible only because of its edges and the way the heather and rushes fringed around its corners.
I let go of Connor’s hand and walked out to stand by the side of the old stone. There were no fairy footprints in the snow, only the runic lettering of pheasants’ feet across its surface, and the stammering prints of a hare that had run across on its way elsewhere.
‘The Little People,’ Connor said quietly. ‘Lovely spot for them.’
I looked around at the smooth humps of the moors stretched out around us, like carefully made beds covered in the purest linen. The sun was shining visible ice from a Wedgwood-blue sky. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ I replied. ‘Who needs fairyland when you’ve got this up here?’
‘Bit chilly for the fairies now.’ Connor jiggled on the spot and rubbed his arms. His big black coat didn’t allow enough room for the layers beneath it that I was wearing under my sturdy waxed jacket.
‘Maybe they knit themselves clothes out of moonbeams and mist,’ I said whimsically. ‘Or rabbit fur and blackbirds’ feathers.’
‘They’d more likely wear the whole rabbit, the murderous little bastards.’ Connor continued to jiggle. ‘You’re a folklorist. You know what the Victorians did to the fairy myth now, dressing it up as babies with wings and all that gossamer nonsense. You know what the fairies were before that lot got at the stories, all wilderness and blood and stealing the newborn from the cradle.’
I looked down again at the Fairy Stane, smooth and unblemished, decorated by nature. ‘These fairies were prime Victorian fodder,’ I said. ‘All the stories I can trace go back to that mid-Victorian era, so strictly rose-petal skirts and cobweb wings down there.’
We stood in silence a little bit longer. From a very long way off came the mew of a buzzard rising on a thermal, but there was nothing else moving anywhere. ‘Doesn’t sound as though they’re partying down there today though, does it?’ Connor said. ‘Not big fans of Christmas though, your average elemental.’
‘No,’ I said, slightly sadly. ‘I used to come up here after Elliot died and will them to take me down to fairyland.’
Connor looked at me, then took a couple of steps in to close the gap between us. ‘And how do you feel now?’
I kept my eyes on the stone. ‘I’ll always miss him.’
‘Of course. That’s natural.’
‘But I’m beginning to let myself believe that life goes on. Just a little bit.’ I didn’t dare look up at him. ‘And I don’t have to wait any more.’
Connor let out an enormous breath that clouded the air for a moment, then tattered at the edges and dissipated into the white-cold of the air. ‘I’m a wee bit glad to hear you say that,’ he said quietly. ‘Because I’d really like us to… I dunno what the modern language for it is, to “have something” here.’ I did glance up at his face now, but he was focusing somewhere out in the distance, watching the rising black V shapes of the buzzards climbing the thermal ladder into the vast blue of the sky. ‘Still as the grave,’ he said under his breath.
‘No graves here.’ I pointed, my arm wobbling slightly under the weight of clothing I had on. ‘Over there is the church – you can see the top of the spire. That’s where all the graves are.’ The sudden memory crashed in: a dark, wet day in early November, where the rain had hidden my tears. ‘Elliot’s ashes are there, in the churchyard.’
I felt Connor flick me a look. ‘Do you visit him?’
‘He’s not there.’ I was surprised at how strong my voice sounded. ‘He’s out here.’ I waved the pointing hand, at the moors which lay all ridges and dips beneath the smooth lightness of the snow. ‘He’s everywhere he ever was.’ And I didn’t cry this time.
We stood for a while longer. I didn’t look at the stone again. Connor was right, it was just a stone, but maybe I could look at getting some kind of plaque put on it? So visitors would know why it was here? One of those information boards that dotted the Roman roads or the wells, giving a potted history and a children’s activity, would look nice and mean that everyone knew that this was the Fairy Stane.
Eventually Connor caught at my hand again. ‘Shall we go back?’ he asked. ‘I’m fecking freezing, and we don’t want the fire to go out, now, do we?’
My legs were tired with the strain of stepping through the snow, I was soaked to the gusset and my feet felt as though all my toes had been welded together in liquid nitrogen. ‘Yes.’
I felt his fingers wind through mine. ‘Then I can give you your present,’ he said. ‘I was going to leave it on the table for you to find, when I flew off to Ireland, but, well…’ He nodded out at the snow, which was unavoidably filling my boots again.
‘Oh!’ I was suddenly struck with horror. ‘I didn’t get…’
‘It’s fine. Honestly, Rowan, that’s not what it’s about. This is us, making new memories, remember?’
Ireland. His home. His job, his family. All a few hundred miles away. ‘How long for, though?’ I sounded despondent and I didn’t want to. I wanted to sound upbeat; fine with the prospect of this ‘something’ we had being temporary, a small step I had to get over before I could properly start living my life again. So I added, ‘Not that it matters,’ in as insouciant a tone as I could manage.
My hand got a little shake and his fingers squeezed for a second. ‘For as long as we want,’ he said softly. ‘It’s not just you that’s lost something, you know, Rowan.’
I stopped walking. He pulled up alongside me and turned me into an embrace that was ninety per cent coat. ‘Saoirse has made me afraid to trust my own judgement now. I used to be so sure… so certain of myself, probably a little bit cocky, if I say so myself, a wee bit…’ He tailed off.
‘Arrogant?’ I supplied. ‘Because I’d not put that so much in the past if I were you.’ I hoped the half-laugh in my voice, muffled as it was by acres of wet wool, told him that I was only a bit serious. He had been arrogant, when we’d first met. Had he changed, or had I?
‘That whole business, falling for her and realising that it was all fake, it’s given me a touch of a complex. I’m not quite so keen to throw my heart out there for a tumble and a weekend, do you understand me?’
I couldn’t see his face now it was hidden beyond the embrace.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said slowly.
There was another, puffed-breath pause. I could feel his body swaying slightly; the rough fabric moved against my hands, which had been gathered in and lay in loose fists on his chest. ‘I need this to be something real,’ he said at last.
I had a sudden moment of knowing. As though the thin rays of the sun brought me an insight I hadn’t had before and beamed it directly through the top of my head into my mind. I’m not the only one who’s lost something here. Connor has lost his innocence, his naivety about people, and for him that’s nearly as painful as losing a person.
‘I need it to be real too,’ I said.
The embrace tightened until my nose was squashed against his collarbone and I had to squeak until he let me move back. ‘Well, now.’ His voice was back to its jaunty confidence-filled self. ‘That’s a good thing. Shall we go back and thaw ourselves out now? Only I’ve got the horrible feeling that your cottage is going to be largely made of wet socks for the next day or so.’
He doesn’t want to dwell on it. My mind continued to tick over the thoughts as we walked on, heading down the hill towards the cottage in its snow-lined bowl with the river a dark crack through the perfection. He knows what Saoirse did to him, and he knows I understand.
I can’t keep bringing Elliot into everything. Connor knows. It’s turning-the-page time.