The Hidden People

by Allison Littlewood

  I took a deep breath and went on, reminding myself that though she had possessed some delicacy, she had spent her days surrounded by those who had none, and that despite her City relations, she had few prospects to lift her aloft. I fought down a pang against my father at that, for how had I been better? I had barely thought of her, not for years. I had entered into my own more felicitous union, under the approving gaze of my parent, and had spared little thought, let alone a sovereign, for my poor dear cousin of the north.

  Yet here I was, brought here by some impulse that had bewildered not only my own mind but my father’s and that of my own dear, sensible wife. My head was mazy with sunlight, my step uncertain. Still, at least the thought of her misfortune and our failure to lend her any assistance had smoothed my way: we were the only family who remained to her, and my father had silently agreed to my visiting with a view to seeing if there was anything I could do. And that made the matter of leaving my employment a simple one, for I was currently a clerk in my father’s business, working in turn at each lowly position in order to learn everything that could possibly make me of most use to him; in time, and when he decided it, I would rise to greater heights of responsibility. My father being somewhat harder upon family than those without connection to him, he had not yet seen fit to offer such advancement.

  I shook the thought of such clockwork occupations from me and went on, leaning into the slope as it grew steeper of a sudden. The little path was dry and clean and edged with emerald tufts of grass, dotted with bright daisies. I did not stop until I reached the neatly constructed gate, where I glanced up and saw the cottage, and the reality was so distant from the picture I had built of it that for a moment I thought I was looking upon a vision.

  It was in every way charming: a low, stone structure nestled into the hillside with a roof half covered in moss and twining ivy. It had a somnolent air, its windows being half shuttered like eyes just beginning to close, and it came to me then that they should have been closed properly—and then I realised the shutters had not been made fast to mark my cousin’s demise because her husband was a villain, and there must be none who cared for her enough to carry out even that small service. I recalled the place as I had expected to find it: a hovel, crumbling and dismal and cold, reflecting the heart of the one who had brought her to this pass.

  Swallowing down my anger once more I opened the gate, glancing at the garden to see a profusion of colours just inside the wall—God made their glowing colours—and peas in want of picking, their weight pulling at their stakes.

  No smoke rose from the chimney. No rattle of pans or happy cries came from within. No birds sang. All was as still as if I were in the heart of a forest, until I stirred and walked up to the door, every nerve concentrated upon listening, as if by doing so I could conjure her from the air.

  All things bright and beautiful . . .

  And then something at once choking and bitter impinged upon my senses and my hand shot to my mouth. It was the smell of charring, of some unpleasant meal left too long on the stove: of something gone bad. I coughed it away, but I already knew that it would not leave me, that smell; it was beyond the power of anything to freshen. I stumbled back from the door, imagining what the air must be inside, the miasma trapped therein like some lurking beast. I caught a glimpse through a half-closed shutter as I turned away of a silent hearth, grey with unswept ashes, and then the house was behind me and instead I saw the whole of Halfoak spread below, the image of bucolic peace and calm, and I stumbled from that too and hurried away from it all, up the hill.

  Gradually I began to slow as I realised how the nature of the hillside was changing. More of those bright-eyed daisies peeped from the verdure, and all about me were dandelion clocks, nature’s own timepieces, their heads so laden and gauzy that as I went higher they began to take to the air, floating past me and hurrying onwards, as if carried on a matter of some urgency. I remembered a game I used to play in the park with my mother, so long ago, blowing away the seeds and counting: one . . . two . . . three . . . The total was said to tell the hour of the day, and now here were hundreds of airborne hours and minutes rushing away all about me.

  The sight was calming and my breathing steadied as I went on towards the summit. I found myself drifting for a time and I remember only fragmented images: the rough old back of the tumulus rising before me, the wide vista spread below, an open sky dotted with white scudding cloudlets. And I remember laying my hat upon the bank and leaning back against it, letting time float away while I stared into that blameless and peerless blue.

  When I rose to my feet, the sky was deepening from the colour of forget-me-nots to that of periwinkle, a deeper purpling above promising the onset of evening. My limbs felt light; it was as if I had slept a night and a day away instead of resting for a matter of moments. Quite refreshed, I decided I would make my descent a little further around the hillside, thus avoiding the sight of that sad empty cottage, and I made my object the little stand of oaks. I could just make them out, the leaves dancing in the light breeze, and as I went I saw that the hill was not perfectly round after all; the grove was set into a little ledge, as if someone had taken a spoon to the Pudding Pye and set to.

  I began to see that my progress was not to be so easy after all. The ground had not at first appeared treacherous, but it was made irregular in every direction by unruly tussocks and pocked with rabbit holes that threatened to turn my ankles. The flora grew wilder as I went, wiry brambles gaining thicker stems until they became a thorny wilderness, armed with inch-long daggers that tore at my legs. They soon gave way to dark mounds of growth, thick and matted. There was a warm musty scent that reminded me unpleasantly of what I had sensed—or imagined—about the cottage door. Gorse bushes grew amongst it all, their unruly sharp twigs leavened by flashes of brilliant yellow.

  I took a more circuitous route, beginning to regret my choice of destination; the back of my neck was hotter than ever and I was forced to bat away the cloud of midges which were moving with me. Then a path opened before me: there was a clear way after all, carpeted in a gentle grassy sward. I stepped along it, seeing the grove ahead like some promised land, and was of a sudden reminded of the aisle of a church edged on each side by silent pews: an aisle created by nature, the air heavy and somnolent, laced with only the censer of musky flowers and nature’s hymn of the soft murmur of bees.

  In another moment I emerged into a little clearing. The oaks stood tall and stately about me, whispering their secrets, and before them was a grassy dell with a darker circle marked upon it, caused by some variety of fungi, I guessed, continually spreading outwards from the centre to find fresh sustenance; though I had not before seen such a thing, I had heard them referred to as fairy rings.

  The ledge upon which the trees stood narrowed as it cut into the hill until it was lost in shadows. I found myself drawn inwards, walking beneath the twisting branches as if I could process right into the mound, until the ledge culminated in a darkened cleft, shadowed and obscured by grey rocks jutting from the green. Then I saw something odd amidst the grass. I narrowed my eyes. It looked like nothing so much as a short black handle, bound about with twine darkened at its mid-point, perhaps with the sweat of a man’s hand. I went nearer and bent to examine it more closely. It was sticking into the ground a small distance from the cleft in the rock. I could just see the brighter shine of a blade disappearing into the earth. I was reaching out to grasp it, half bewildered, when an urgent call cut into the air behind me.

  “Nay—tha mustn’t! Dun’t touch it!”

  I whirled about and saw a woman in a simple cotton dress and white pinafore, her head covered by a plain straw bonnet. She was perhaps in her thirties, and she held the hand of a small child; its other was pressed to its face as it sucked its thumb. With dark hair tousled in a tumble of curls and face tanned like a nut, it took me a moment to identify the child as a boy.

  My startlement, I think, surpassed their own, but my next reaction was to wonder a
t her effrontery. “Why ever not?” I asked.

  She looked askance in the direction of the cottage and leaned in, as if from such a distance she could whisper in my ear. “’E put it there!” she said. “’Im!”

  Before I could reply she continued, “It’s to bring ’er ’ome.” She spoke as if this would explain all: her sudden appearance, her odd pronouncements. “It’ll keep t’ door open, till she comes back!”

  “Who ever do you mean, madam?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yon. Lizbeth Higgs. An’t tha ’eard of ’er? Fairies took ’er an’ put that enchanted stock in ’er place. ’Er ’usband, ’e burned it up, see? An’ ’e put that bit o’ bright metal there so as to keep t’ gate open. Otherwise it only opens yance every seven year. This way they’ll ’after give ’er back, see? T’ fairies will. An’ then everyone’ll see ’er, an’ they’ll ’after let ’im loose.”

  I concluded that I was conversing with a madwoman, infected with the same nonsensical superstition which had hastened my cousin’s death, and I pressed my lips tightly closed.

  “I spied yer up yon.” She was obviously not to be deterred. “Up on t’ barrer. Tha mustn’t sleep there. It belongs ter t’ good folk, din’t tha know? Kip up yon and you’ll wake silly; they’ll steal your soul clean away. I came up ter warn yer.” She took a step closer, affecting nothing but concern, and I softened towards her a little. I glanced at her boy, still silent, still with his thumb in his mouth. He stared back at me with eyes as black and bright as sloes.

  “Not from these parts, are yer? Else tha wun’t a come.” She glanced around, drawing her light shawl more tightly about her neck. “I dun’t like it mesel’. I’m off back now. I saw yer and I’ve teld yer, an’ that’s me Christian duty, and it’s done. I’d not be ’ere after sunset for nubbody’s silver, an’ that’s the truth on it. I’ll bid yer good day, sir.”

  Her unexpected politeness rattled me more than all her odd words and prompted me into saying, “Forgive me. You meant well, I’m sure. Lizzie—Elizabeth Higgs was my cousin.”

  At this she looked really quite startled. She took a step back, dragging her silent child with her and gazed about as if made newly nervous. “’Er cousin?” Her expression gave way to a glare as equal parts of disbelief, astonishment and suspicion fought for command of her features. At last, all gave way to a kind of pity. “Why then, sir,” she said, “that bein’ the case . . .”

  I waited, wondering what fantastical utterance would follow upon all that had preceded, and then she took my breath and made my mouth fall open in what, in other circumstances, might have been a quite comical fashion.

  “You’ll be wantin’ ter see ’er then,” she said.

  Chapter Four

  I could scarcely keep up with what happened next. The good lady, who gave her name as Mary Gomersal, marched me once more down the hill and across the stream, along the dusty road and back the way I had come. The child dragged at her heels and spoke not at all. I myself began to feel like a naughty child being led homewards as the door of the Three Horseshoes beckoned and we entered the dark. It took a moment to see that its taproom was now the abode of two old gaffers, the dominoes and scattered pennies on their table leaving little room for two frothing pints of beer.

  The landlord appeared somewhat surprised to see Mrs. Gomersal and her child, particularly, perhaps, because of the presence of a lady in his taproom, but she went towards him directly and said, “This ’ere gennleman’s come to see ’er.”

  His eyebrows shot upwards in imitation of a pantomime clown. “I knows it! ’E’s stopping ’ere.”

  By this time my head was spinning with heat and fatigue and lack of sustenance. Mrs. Gomersal turned to me and narrowed her eyes. “Tha’s seen ’er already?”

  I could only shake my head.

  “Tha knows ’e’s ’er cousin, then?” The good lady addressed the landlord once more.

  The effect of this statement was dramatic; his eyebrows this time sinking as a frown gained mastery of his features. He leaned in towards me, staring as at some hitherto unknown and unsuspected creature. “’Er cousin? Why, yer din’t say—I din’t connect—I mean, I’m sorry, sir. I shall show ’er to thee at once. I thowt—I thowt yer was nobbut a gazer.”

  Such, I supposed, must account to some degree for his bluntness at our first meeting, though a certain brusqueness of manner seemed natural to the fellow. He reached behind the bar and fetched more keys, this time a whole fistful, from which he selected one. Then he stared at it as if a thought had struck him.

  “Come now,” said Mrs. Gomersal, “No more delay. ’E mun see ’er at once.”

  The landlord cast one further look at me—this time one of reproach, as if it were my fault he had not connected my name with that of my cousin—before leading the way back outside into the still-bright evening. “I give ’im t’ best room,” he muttered, “and even warned ’im not ter look on ’er when t’ moon were full. Bad luck, that.”

  I realised he was speaking to Mrs. Gomersal, who had followed us, still with the strange little elf-child in tow. I wondered briefly if she were awaiting some coin and my hand went to my pocket, but then she bustled ahead of us as if to show us the way. I still felt dazed. I had assumed my cousin to have been buried at once and had entertained no expectation of seeing her; I had come only to seek some remembrance perhaps, possibly even a likeness, adorned with a lace handkerchief or a lock of her hair.

  They directed me around the side of the building, the landlord holding open a wicket for me to pass through, and I recognised the outhouses I had spied from my window: the back of the stables, a bay mare nodding over the door of one of the stalls; a workshop; a coal shed; a brew house; a privy. Around a corner there was a smaller rectangle of yard with a pump at its centre, and judging by the damp sheets that twitched idly in the breeze, a wash house.

  “We couldn’t ’ave ’er in t’ back,” Widdop explained. “Crowner din’t like it, but soon as ’e came for the inquest, ’e unnerstood.” His voice had fallen quiet and a little low, so that for a moment I did not take in the words. I preferred not to dwell on what his tone portended. This odd outing had already taken on the nature of a dream, and I knew not how I had come to be here, or what I would do next. I looked down at the cobbles and saw they bore the traces of soapy water. The hems of my trousers were darkened; I had not noticed it before.

  “They’re usin’ t’ yard, while she’s in there,” said my host, then hastily added, “It’s no bother.”

  We ducked beneath the line of washing and I saw a washtub and dolly peg in the yard, the tub still full of greyish water. Set into the wall of the outbuilding behind them was a single plain door and a darkened window, which appeared to have paper pressed against the inside of the glass. He went up to the door and turned the key, then stood aside.

  “I’ll wait,” he said. “While yer pay yer respects, like.”

  Mrs. Gomersal nodded as if that were the right thing, folding her arms. As soon as she let go of her child’s hand he slumped and sat cross-legged at her feet. All three of them looked at me expectantly and I looked back, and then I turned and stared instead at the door. I knew not what lay upon the other side, but I suddenly did not want to see it.

  I swallowed hard, realising that my throat was dry as sand. I could not imagine what this place had to do with my cousin. I had wanted to see where she had lived, and now I had seen it. I had wanted to understand what her story had been; to reconcile myself to the way it had ended. I realised that it had all felt like a story to me, and with good reason—such things did not really happen, not in these days. It was a dream of a tale: far too gone in fantasy for any book.

  But I was here, and it was no story. Instead there was a door, as plain and blank as thousands of others like it, and yet I found myself reluctant to take a step towards it.

  They were waiting for me, however, and so I forced myself to move. At once, my gorge rose. There was just the suggestion of a scent on the air: the
same stench I fancied I had detected outside the cottage on the hill. I swallowed, and at once wished I had not. It was the kind of smell that told on the stomach as well as the nostrils, and I knew I would not be rid of it, not all that evening; possibly not even thereafter.

  I reached out with a hand that no longer felt like my own and pushed the door open a crack. Then I pushed it wider, and without looking around again at the eyes that watched my progress, I stepped inside.

  I blinked to accustom my vision to the shadows, and began to make out particular forms. There was another dolly tub and some draining slats, a bittle and pin abandoned in a dusty corner, a clothes airer and pulley and a large mangle, too heavy to move, all sitting there silent and unused. The windows were indeed covered with thick layers of old newspaper and in the dim light it was difficult to make anything out. Then I realised that what I had at first taken for a mound of laundry upon a table was in fact something else. All at once I saw feet; and from thence, the rough outline of two legs, a torso with arms crossed at its chest; two shoulders; a head, the whole covered with what appeared to be white muslin, barely disguising a rather less respectful piece of oilcloth. Another step, and it was obvious that here was the source of the foulness that had seeped from the door. She should have been buried at once, was my only thought. Why did my father not tell me of this?

  Here was reality, and it was more than my mind could hold. I stopped and gazed upon the pitiful object that had been my cousin; that had been Elizabeth. Linnet, I whispered her name under my breath, and the thought of her brought me to myself. I could almost feel the pressure of her hand taking my left arm as I walked slowly towards what remained. The oilcloth was not seemly. No candle burned for her. The windows being covered—that was as it should be, but oilcloth? I railed against it. Then the idea entered my mind that the poor creature was not even coffined, and my bewilderment gave way to a dull anger.