by A. J. Elwood
I refuse to let her see that it bothers me. Anyway, there’s not enough emotion inside me to protest or to cry. I tell myself I’m a shell, blank on the outside, empty inside. I won’t rise to any of it – let that be my revenge.
The poem is by William Blake. It’s from his Songs of Innocence and Experience – this one, I seem to think, is from Experience. It can’t really be anything else.
‘“The Sick Rose”,’ I begin.
‘O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.’
When I look up at Mrs Favell, her shoulders are shuddering. What I can see of her expression is blank but it’s all spilling out from behind the mask, mirth trying to burst free, and as I watch, it does. It floods from her; she makes high-pitched sounds and tears spring from her eyes.
‘Oh, Rose,’ she says. ‘Oh, Rose!’ She pulls a lace handkerchief from her lemon-yellow blouse, placed in the pocket for just such a moment, and wipes her eyes. ‘He’s taking everything from you, isn’t he? And you – you give and you give.’
She moves suddenly and grasps my arm, her fingers digging in deep, wrapping about the bone. I offer no resistance as she pulls me in front of the mirror.
My hair is longer these days, no time to cut it, and it’s pulled back into a tight ponytail that doesn’t help hide how lifeless it is. My tunic, supposedly correctly fitted, sags from my frame. My face is thin – when did my cheeks sink like that? When did my skin get so dry and insipid, my eyes so dull? When did I last really look? It’s as if someone’s sucked the life from me. Is that what she’s showing me?
For a second I feel Alexander’s teeth grinding into my breast. Is that what’s happening – he’s draining me? I jerk my head as if I can escape the thought. Is that really how I see my own child: consuming my flesh, stealing my life away so that only a withered husk – a shell – remains?
‘You look like a consumptive, Rose.’
It’s an old-fashioned way of putting it but she’s right, I do. I don’t have the energy to protest. I can’t even bring myself to move.
‘He’s hungry,’ she says. ‘He always will be. He’ll drink and he’ll eat.’
Something tugs inside me, a pull inescapable and deep. I want to cry, but damn it, I’m not going to. I won’t. Besides, if I let her see that, I’m done for. I don’t know why I should think so, but it’s true. I try to tell myself she’s nothing but a bitter old woman who had something terrible happen to her once, that she should be pitied, not feared. I tell myself I’m not as exhausted, as denuded as I look, but it isn’t any use. Right at this moment, she’s stronger than I am. Her will is keener. I can tell myself what to believe or not to believe, I can tell myself not to listen, but her stories are better than mine.
It will get easier, I tell myself for the hundredth, the thousandth time. Of course it will. She cuts in.
‘Oh dear,’ she says, and there’s sympathy in her voice. It’s worse than the mockery had been. ‘So very tired.’
I swallow down the lump that rises to my throat. She draws something from her sleeve, a length of silk, like a stage conjuror at an outmoded end-of-pier show. It’s another handkerchief, this one smelling of the rosewater I used to make in my mother’s garden, crushing petals into a delicate scent that never would last. She raises it to her lips, touches it with her tongue. She can’t be, but I’m unable to move as she steps closer, tilting her head, considering my reflection. She raises the handkerchief and I shut my eyes as she strokes my eyelids, twice each, with the damp fabric.
I hear her voice by my ear, a soft whisper. ‘We don’t need you any more, Rose.’
I’m not certain if I imagined it. What does she mean, we? Is she referring to everyone at Sunnyside, or she and Harriet? Maybe she means the baby too. I sway on my feet, thinking of her little sleeping face, so perfect. In my mind’s eye she opens her mouth, but when she screams, it’s Alexander’s voice I hear.
My eyes snap open but I can’t see. There’s no room, no mirror, no reflection. There’s nothing and I reach for my eyes, trying to open them, pulling at the lids, but I think they’re open already—
‘Goodness, what a fuss.’ Mrs Favell’s voice is distant again. She’s moved away from me.
My eyes snap open and the room is just as it always was. Was I dreaming on my feet? I’m still standing before the mirror and it tells me the truth. I look a mess, my hair dishevelled, my face pasty. I could never be the heroine of any story. I look like nothing more than a confused child.
‘Perhaps you really should stay away from here,’ she says. Her tone is softer, warmer, honeyed. It snags at something deep inside me, the place where a mother’s love should be. Still I know that her voice is poison, and other words come to me, from another time: And there I shut her wild wild eyes with kisses four.
It’s her poem, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. Is that what she just did to me with her handkerchief? But she won’t close my eyes again. I won’t be blind. It strikes me what an inadequate word ‘fairy’ is, or has become. She is something more, something for which I have no name, but still I recognise her for what she is. I won’t forget again.
And she doesn’t get to win.
‘You’re not going to make me leave,’ I tell her. Then I walk out of the door and close it behind me. There’s no need to slam it. If she really can see right through me, into me, she already knows that I mean it.
7
I don’t see Mrs Favell for the rest of the day and I don’t want to. There’s anger in everything I do – I think of her as I stack the tea things, as I assist Alf in lifting spoonfuls of suet pudding to his lips, as I help the residents take their pills. Anyone can see it in me, I can tell, but they don’t ask what’s wrong and I don’t try to explain. Why would I? Who here could understand, besides Mrs Favell?
I go home and the house is silent. Paul doesn’t answer to my shout and the bassinet is empty. When I look in the hall cupboard, the pram’s gone. He must have taken Alexander for a walk to help him settle. I picture him wrapping him up in blankets, holding him close, and pull a face, then hate myself for doing so. I go into the kitchen. Stuff is strewn everywhere, though no food, nothing ready, only dirty pots and the smell of something off. I run the hot tap, slam pots into the sink, go to the fridge and the cupboards and grab the first things I see: raw meat in a polystyrene tray, a few carrots, some potatoes beginning to soften, some milk for Alexander’s return. I try to calm down, telling myself that Paul wouldn’t be like this and Alexander is especially demanding just now, that it isn’t for ever. An image flashes before me of Harriet, wearing a white blouse, brushing freshly washed hair from her face as she watches over Robyn, sweetly sleeping, and settling down to dinner with – whom? Is she married? Separated? I’ve never considered it.
I wash up, surprising myself by not breaking anything. I picture it though, plates cracking under my hands, glasses splintering into shards that pierce my skin, the brightness of blood spiralling through the water. I stare into it, seeing red against the white of soap suds, but when I blink there’s only grey liquid, grease floating to the surface.
The front door opens and I hear Paul’s shout. It’s so bloody cheerful that I want to erase it, wipe away the expression I know he’s wearing, the one that shows the crow’s feet around his eyes. Footsteps sound behind me but I don’t turn. My back stiffens and I hate myself for that too, for being the way I am, but I can’t help it.
‘Had a good day, love?’ There’s more in the tone than the question implies. He knows I’m pissed off and doesn’t know why: he can’t see it, which infuriates me even more.
He leans in and kisses my cheek. His hair is loose, rough against my skin.
‘I took Alex to the park – he watched the ducks in the pond. Look, I’ll do this. You’re
tired. Why don’t you take him?’
‘It’s “Alex” now?’
My question brings a hurt silence and I’m not surprised. He’s right, I am tired. I turn and hold out my arms and Alexander waves his fists at me. It’s not deliberate, it can’t be – he probably doesn’t even know he’s scowling.
Paul passes him over and I hold him close. His smell is unfamiliar – new fabric softener on his clothes? A different shampoo? Maybe he’s just getting older. I rest my cheek against his, which is cool from being outside. He stiffens, throwing all his limbs out rigid, a solid block of resistance in my arms.
Paul takes the last few items from the sink. ‘Sorry, love. Bit of a mess. Don’t know where the time’s gone. The days fly by so quick.’
Mine don’t, I want to retort, but I swallow it down. The anger is fading and with it everything else, including the memory of what happened with Mrs Favell. Did she really say such things to me? Did she blind me? Suddenly I ache all over. Maybe she was right, I should move on, get another job, somewhere far away from her – but who would have me now?
‘What the hell?’ Paul says.
I soothe Alexander and turn to see. He’s stopped washing up, is standing in front of the food laid out on the worktop, the carrots next to the bloody wrappings from the meat. I’m about to remind him to separate them when I realise what he’s looking at.
Alexander’s bottle, the lid off, is positioned by the window. It’s still full. And in the milk—
Brightness spirals through the liquid, red against the white, already dissolving to pink as it is absorbed into the fluid: my fluid, the milk that came from me.
Paul reaches in, two fingers feeling into the narrow neck, and I open my mouth to tell him it’s sterile, don’t touch it, and he withdraws them dripping, drawing something up out of the milk. It’s meat: raw meat, milk slicking from it and running over Paul’s hands to fall back into the bottle, my baby’s bottle, tainted with blood.
‘What the hell?’ Paul can hardly speak. ‘What is this, Rose?’
Alexander is a sandbag of weight in my arms. I think of my missing phone, of clothes strewn about the house, flour spilled everywhere. As if at my ear, a child’s voice: We need to stop them from being angry about the house.
I don’t know what has happened. I can’t answer, can’t meet Paul’s fixed stare. I have no words to give. How can I say, I didn’t do it? How can I say, It was him?
I can already see the look on Paul’s face, hear the tone of his voice as he asks, Who, Rose? Who exactly do you mean?
But I know who he imagines would do it. What else is he supposed to think? The sting of it spreads its poison through my veins. Does he really suppose I would have fed that stuff to Alexander, holding it for him while he sucked it down?
I see from his expression that he does.
He’s hungry. He always will be. He’ll drink and he’ll eat.
I push Mrs Favell’s words away as Alexander is lifted – almost snatched – from me. Paul wraps his arms around him, greedy; or is he being protective? He doesn’t say another word, only looks at me with eyes that are empty of warmth, empty of anything I want to see. I remember how I’d wanted to wipe the happiness from his expression when he walked in the door. Now I wish I could call it back again. I want everything to be how it was a moment ago.
I run up the stairs and into our room, throw myself down on the bed. I’m still wearing my uniform, as if I still belong to another place, and for a moment I wish I was back there. At least they need me.
I remember the way I’d stared into the washing-up water. The way I thought I’d seen red spreading through the white. But that had only ever been in my mind – hadn’t it? I didn’t do it, I know I didn’t. I don’t remember unwrapping the meat. I couldn’t have hidden my own phone, could I? It wasn’t me who threw flour around the kitchen. None of those things were me.
I bury my face in my hands and listen as Paul moves about downstairs, clattering pans, starting up the sterilizer. I imagine spoiled milk poured down the sink, meat thrown in the bin, everything cleared away and started afresh. Alexander for once isn’t crying. Is he satisfied now? Or is it that he’s content being with his dad, not his stupid, useless, depressed, mad mother?
I fling myself over on the bed and reach for my laptop, shoved into the space under my bedside table. I haven’t read anything in what seems like a very long time. I haven’t had the time or the energy and there’s always something else to do, Alexander needing feeding or changing or soothing, and anyway, it only reminds me of the empty spaces leading all the way down the stairs.
I switch it on, open the book waiting there on the desktop, and stare at the words. It’s the part about protecting a child from being stolen away. A little late for that, I think. A Bible in the cradle will stop a baby being snatched. Iron scissors opened into a cross offer double protection, since fairies hate iron and the sign of Christianity both. They cannot touch salt. A father’s coat spread over an infant will fool the folk into thinking he’s watching over it.
I scroll to the section on ways to rid the house of a changeling.
It’s all superstition and foolishness but I can’t stop myself from drinking in the words. As I do, I picture Alexander’s screaming face. There’s ringing in my ears and I don’t know if it’s real or an echo.
People would expose their baby in a field in the hope that the fairies would return their true child. They would summon the real mother to fetch it by making it cry, by beating or starving it. They would tip it from the cradle and sweep it out of the door. Dig a grave and leave it there all night. Hew off its head. Throw iron objects at it. Changelings fear water: the baby would be flung into a river. They fear fire: it would be suspended over the hearth, thrown onto hot coals. If the baby screams, it’s a changeling; if it flies, shrieking, up the chimney.
I reach for my phone and search the internet for more. And more there is, stories from different times and places, from different cultures – as if everyone knew. As if they had heard the stories, seen the clues, followed the evidence. Just as if they had believed.
They doused the baby in a pool. They exposed it on a beach and ignored its cries as the waves drew near. They dosed it with foxglove, the fairy’s own plant, to put the fairy out of it. Their charms all had one thing in common, I realise: the false child must first be cast out – sent back to the folk – before the true child can be returned.
I read on and find actual cases of it happening. There were families with children who didn’t thrive or who had disabilities, unable to work but still a mouth to feed; one they couldn’t afford or support, not back then. Changelings were often said to be weak and wizened, children who didn’t grow as they should. I suppose it must have been a comfort to those people to tell tales of the fairies. But that was different: they were trapped. They must have gathered around the fire with furtive eyes, trying to justify the things they’d ‘had’ to do to be rid of their changeling child – the things they’d seized upon, the things they’d maybe even wanted to do all along.
The images in my mind multiply, sickening. They make me feel weary, sad, wrung out. Enough. Yet the image that lingers before me is that of the garden at Sunnyside. I see flowers pushing their way up through the soil, pea shoots twining around a stake as the sap rises. And in one forgotten corner, seeded perhaps from the woodland beyond, foxglove stems spire into the air, their purple bell-like flowers speckled with black, like splashes of ink. But that was in the summer, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t be growing now.
I can almost hear my mother’s voice. We had been walking in the woods – I don’t know where or when, only that I was small, and she was there. She was telling me the names of the flowers: campion, celandines, ragged robin. When she reached the foxglove, though, there was not just one name but many: fairy glove. Folk’s glove. Folk’s love.
I know that the plant is poisonous. But when used in the right way, in a special way, the drug within can help too, can’t it? I’m sure
one of the residents at Sunnyside has it in the medication for regulating his heart.
I shake my head, not sure what it is I’m thinking, and the door opens and my own heart flutters.
‘It was just an accident.’ Paul carries Alexander into the room, holding him out like a gift. ‘I know you wouldn’t hurt him.’
An accident? I wonder what kind of accident he thinks could have so tainted the milk, but I don’t reply.
He bends, supporting Alexander’s head so that I can kiss his scalp, which pulses faintly beneath my lips. Paul sits next to me, still holding his child. I don’t know what I feel. Should I be grateful that his anger has softened? Angry that he thinks those words need to be spoken?
I realise the laptop is still open and shove the screen closed. I thrust it back under the bedside table before I reach out and take the baby onto my lap. I wrap my arms around him and lean in and nestle against them both. The baby gives little cries, fluting noises interspersed with breathy gasps. And Paul makes noises in return, meaningless, nothing but a series of empty clicks.
* * *
That night, I sleep badly. When Alexander screams, I get up before Paul wakes. I stand over the crib at the foot of our bed and the baby’s face is pale in the dim light, his mouth a dark hole. For a moment he stops wailing and looks at me. I don’t know if he can focus yet. I don’t know what it is he sees. Still, his eyes seem to take in the entire world.
My vision speckles. Tiredness makes my bones heavy even while my mind feels too light. It’s hard to fix on anything but Paul shifts and murmurs in his sleep so I bend and scoop up the baby. The boards of the stairs are cold against my bare feet as I pad downstairs. I step into the kitchen and he stirs, grabbing my hair, yanking tears from my eyes. I adjust my grip and hold him out, examine his wizened face. So much rage in such a tiny thing. His eyes are still the soft blue-grey of an infant’s, but they don’t look young. He opens his mouth, bawling, revealing an ugly yellow tooth.
