The Hidden People

by Allison Littlewood

  I encouraged Helena to take a seat and rest herself.

  We had left the grate uncleaned, the hearth unswept and she saw me staring into the cinders. “It is far too hot for a fire, Albie.”

  I turned to her. She had taken up her book once more and was fanning herself with it.

  “I will make us some tea,” I said. “You shall soon feel better.” I forestalled her irritated protest. “You do not need to rouse yourself, my dear—your condition—I shall take care of all. Pray, do not stir.”

  I had started to make my way into the kitchen when I heard a noisy rattling and turned to see Helena struggling to master the hasp to open the casement. I went to help her, pushing the window wide, but my assistance served only to make her more angry and she pointedly returned to her chair and sat there once more, her back perfectly straight, holding up her book. I saw that it was Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell, although I had heard this was in fact a pseudonymous name, designed to protect the respectability of the writer. I had also heard reports of its lurid depictions of rural life—indeed, of Yorkshire life—and the smile I had forced to my lips faded.

  I did not wish to speak of it at that moment and instead I set a kettle to heat. I wondered what my father would think, and decided I did not care. I had ever been a dutiful son, and he had cared for me in return, but the time had come to start making my own way.

  I stood back and stared at the range, remembering laying last night’s fire, taking sheets of paper and stuffing them inside before adding the kindling and the coal. Constable Barraclough’s words returned to me: Could I request that you are vigilant as to the whereabouts of a journal?

  I could not imagine why, if such a thing had existed, it would have been burned, but the idea had taken hold and I leaned in to the grate, the heat searing my face, tightening my skin. Was that how it had felt as her husband held her before the hearth?

  I shook my head; I would not allow my thoughts to wander this path. Instead, leaving the kettle, which would take an age to boil, I went through to the store where my cousin had kept her dusters and brushes and beaters, along with the coal scuttle and kindling. There was a little box of papers, some of them already twisted neatly into spills, and I sifted through them. I found only old newspapers, their ink smudging my fingers, and an occasional household receipt.

  I sighed and started to retrace my steps, only realising upon passing back through the pantry that something had been disturbed. The little jug which Mary Gomersal had presented to Helena filled with her “bis’lings” was no longer stacked neatly alongside the other crockery; it had been smashed into a hundred pieces upon the floor.

  I stared at it, and all the events of the day passed before me. I could not rid myself of the woman’s presence even here—and now I would need to make reparation to her when I could. I swept the pieces into the corner and returned to the kitchen to set out bread and butter, ham and cheese, though I was already growing weary of such simple fare. I contrasted it with the grand dinners at my father’s house, all the several removes served in huge decorated dishes, the silverware that was not thinned with scouring. I sighed once more. I did not wish us to be driven back to the inn, our tails between our legs, to take our meals in their parlour, but I felt a stranger to these domestic matters.

  I stopped what I was doing and set down my knife. I was a stranger to such matters, and so would her husband have been. His domain lay to the other side of the passage where all the accoutrements of his trade were neatly filed; he too would barely have known what transpired here.

  I turned to the coppers and the pans and checked that nothing had been concealed within, glancing briefly at the door. Helena would think me as mad as Mother Draycross if she saw, but of my wife there was no sign; I could not hear so much as the turning of a page. I examined every place a journal might have been concealed, making a thorough search of the store and then the larder and shelves of the pantry, feeling among the jars of flour and rice, tapioca and oatmeal. There was nothing, yet where could be better for a wife to conceal a journal from her husband? I stretched upward, running my hand along the topmost shelf, and my fingers dislodged an unseen object. I grasped it at once, stopping it from rocking, and brought it down. It was a small china jug—I had seen it before, when I first entered this lodging, but not here; then it had been on the hearth, and there had been something inside it. I tilted it towards me and saw the green residue of crushed and unrecognisable herbs. I lifted it to my nose, turning towards the dim light from the little window, and almost dropped it when I saw my wife standing in front of me.

  She clasped her hands before her. She did not blink. “What is it you seek, Husband?”

  Her inflexion was such that I knew not if she was referring to the object I was holding or to my behaviour; I could not help but flinch, but then I straightened. Sometimes a question is only a question, and Helena must have been tired from our exertions; that must surely be the cause of her querulous tone.

  “I am looking for matches, my dear,” I informed her.

  She nodded, as if that were what she had expected to hear—as if that were the lie she had expected to hear—and she left, her skirts sweeping behind her.

  I stared at the empty doorway as the coolness of the pantry swept over me. Yet it was not so very cold as I felt and I pushed another uncomfortable thought aside: that the only chill was in my wife’s look, and that it had spread from her to me. But she had come after me, following me all the way to Yorkshire—there must be something in that. All else was supposition, or more likely, the product of my inflamed imagination. After the ministrations of Mother Draycross, there could be little wonder if my thoughts were running wild. It was as if I rather than my wife were the one taking silly notions from a flighty novel. In a way, perhaps I had, I thought suddenly: surrounded by such deplorable ignorance, by folk whose lives were governed by superstition, I had been laid siege to by such ideas. I realised I must have a care that they did not begin to obscure my own perceptions. I could not allow such fanciful ideas to take on the garment of reason. Why, the way I was dwelling upon them, they could almost seem natural in this forsaken place; almost to have root in reality.

  I found myself thinking of the railway, beating down all such nonsense before it, the rushing heart of its engines bearing it—and the world along with it—towards a more glorious and rational future. Yet it still had to be admitted that it was easier to be a man of sense in the City than in this half-enchanted land.

  I forced a smile onto my face, replaced the jug at the back of the shelf and took the tray with our simple meal into the parlour. My thoughts of the railway might have spilled from my imagination and into the house; the heat from the range had spread from the kitchen and filled the room, despite the open window. Helena was sitting as she had before, as if she had never stirred, her posture as flawless and upright as always. She did not raise her eyes from her book, but her expression was one of exhausted forbearance, as if to say, “You have brought me to this. Now see how I suffer!”

  “Will you take something, my dear?”

  She flicked over a page and I could not but feel the sound was somewhat contemptuous. I set down the tray and said, “Come. It will make you feel better.”

  “Being at home would make me feel better. It would make us both feel better, would it not?”

  I sighed. “Helena—”

  “I am not hungry.”

  “Come, you must eat a little. There is not only you to think of—”

  “I know it! Do you think I do not?” She pushed herself up, her eyes flashing as her cheeks reddened.

  “You are over-exciting yourself, my dear,” I said, willing my voice to remain calm. “Pray, try to regain some composure. Perhaps your novel is a trifle evocative for one of your delicate—”

  “Ha!”

  I fell silent. I had never before seen such an expression on her sweet face. I had never seen her so out of temper, all her cool equanimity quite evaporated. I gathered myself before
I spoke. “I am sorry, my dear, that you are so sadly unlike yourself. So—” Changed, is what I had wanted to say, but I found I could not form the word. “So troubled.” I went to her side and bent, and she looked at me as I lifted the book from her hands. She let me take it, her eyes widening as if awaiting some explanation, but I made none. Instead I examined the cover. “Really, I do not think it suitable, my dear.”

  She let out a sharp cry and snatched for it, and when I held it higher, she cried, “It is mine! Return it at once.”

  “Helena, my dear, I really think it for the best. Later, perhaps.”

  She pushed herself up from her seat and stood before me, her face contorted with rage. “You think I can bear this place, this . . . this!” She gestured at everything around her, encompassing the little room, the hearth, the cottage—the whole village. “You think I can stand to be here without some means of escape, if only into the realm of the imagination?”

  “Escape!” I echoed the words, and I confess I let out a spurt of laughter. I opened the book with an incredulous expression. “Where to, my dear? To Yorkshire?”

  “How dare you! You bring me here, to this awful place, chasing some lost, forgotten—no, not forgotten—”

  “Helena, please be calm. You made the journey of your own accord. I did attempt to reason with you. Perhaps it would be better, after all, if you were to return.”

  “And leave you here, to chase some—some lost dream? Why, you did not even know her. You did not even know what she was!”

  My mouth fell open; I knew not which of her wild statements had shocked me the most. “Helena,” I could only say, “you are not yourself—”

  She drew herself taller. “I am indeed,” she said. “I am exactly who I have always been.”

  “And who is that, pray?” I interjected, though she continued as if I had not.

  “You, however, have dragged me out here, chasing some little hoyden with no breeding and no sense and one who by all accounts had no morals, either! And this—this is the reason you tear me from our comfortable home?”

  I seized her arm. “Helena, stop! This does not become you. You must compose yourself at once.”

  She did not speak. I saw her wince and I forced myself to loosen my grip. “Helena—”

  “Remove your hand. Albie, you did not even know her.”

  “And you did, I suppose?”

  “No, I did not, but—”

  “No.” I found myself breathing heavily. The blood suffused my cheeks. The breeze from the open window touched them and I glanced at the shifting curtains. At least here, in this place of ill-omen, there would be no passers-by to eavesdrop upon us.

  “I heard things,” she said, her voice sullen.

  “Helena, pray do not continue. I think it best if you go to your room for a time and rest. And we should both have something to eat.”

  “At the inn.” She was undeterred. “I heard men talking through the walls. Coarse men. They said that your cousin was no better than she should have been. They said she—”

  “Stop—for shame, Helena! I asked you once. Such men cannot be listened to; no good could ever come of it.”

  “One said he thought her pretty, and another answered that it might have been better if she were not. And then a third said that she was not fairy-struck but fairly struck . . .”

  “Helena!”

  “And now I am here, and you will not even look at me. You will not even hear my words.”

  “You are changed, Helena,” I said. “Sadly changed.” She did not reply. “My cousin is dead, and not just dead: she is murdered. She is the victim of stupidity and cruelty, and now you side with those who stood by and allowed it, those who cut her funeral. Are you then leagued with the rest? Do you not think I should have taken her part? Do you not think that someone should stand friend to her?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Yes, Albie, she is dead. She is quite gone—unless you count the hair you kept in your pocket!”

  Once more I had to breathe deeply. “Think of what you are saying, my dear. I met my cousin once—once—and you are right, Helena; I never knew her as well as I might have done. But I heard her sing, and I conversed with her, and I can assure you that she was not coarse; she was not a—a hoyden, as you have said. She was a sweet country girl, innocent—” I held up a hand to prevent Helena’s interruption. “You are correct that I did not know her, not as I should, but I know the gap she has left behind her, and I cannot leave it that way. Someone must bear witness. Someone must know what happened, and understand, or there is nothing left at all, do you not see?” At that I turned and looked into the fire, at the cold hearth, as if I could read there everything.

  Helena moved away from me. She raised a hand, as if the fire were burning and she must shield herself from its flames, and then she sank to her knees in front of the glass case, in front of the fox, its black eyes gleaming.

  I went to her and placed my hands on her shoulders to steady her. “My dear, please. Let us not have any distance between us.”

  She pulled free and stared into the glass case most intently before tilting her head to one side, as if she were listening.

  “You need to rest,” I said firmly. “The day has overwhelmed your endurance. You must not upset your constitution, especially now.”

  But Helena did not rise; she showed no sign at all of having heard me, but instead opened her lips and began to sing.

  As I walked out one sweet morning

  Across the fields so early

  O there I met with a bonny maid

  As bright as any fairy . . .

  “Where are you going, sweet maid?” said I

  At these words, her voice changed, becoming lower, more insistent; more cruel. I drew away, staring down at her. In that moment, I felt I barely knew my wife at all. “Helena, where did you learn that song?”

  She half turned her head. Her lip curled, an expression I had never before seen on her face.

  “Why, Husband, my new neighbours taught me.”

  “I do not think that you know what you say.”

  “I do not think that you know what you do.”

  “I think you must be ill.”

  She stood, quite suddenly, her back straight, her countenance preternaturally calm. Her hair had come loose of its pins and strands floated about her head. Her eyes, though, were fierce, and involuntarily I stepped away from her.

  “I see her,” she said. “Why, Albie, I see everything. Can you not? You are right: she is so very pretty, with her white cheek turned towards you. What a pity that she does not smile.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “She stands at your side, my dear—that is her place, is it not? She is there now, see? She reaches for your arm.”

  I snatched my hand to my chest and looked at where she stared. Of course there was nothing there. I heard the words Mother Draycross had spoken earlier: I’ve only one eye left but I see more’n you ever will. I wondered what planet my wife had been born under; what she might have seen, had she looked through the crystal egg.

  But Helena had not finished. “I wish you well of each other. She has come back for you, for no one covered the mirror at her death and her soul went into it. Yes! She has returned even from the grave, but oh—pah! The stink of her!”

  I realised there was a smell: the mustiness of unwashed clothes; the musk of unknown herbs and potions; the sourness of an extinguished fire. I almost felt the pressure of the wise woman’s fingers in my hair. And I heard her then, that awful mocking laughter as she looked upon my wife through her crystal, and I shook my head and said without thought, “Was it you she saw, Helena? Or the one you carry?”

  The laughter went on, echoing in my mind, but it was not the harridan’s merriment I heard; it was my wife’s, until she stopped abruptly and stared at me, her eyes as cold and bleak as a grave. Then she spun on her heel and left the room. She slammed the door behind her.

  I took a step backwards, felt the chair behind my
knees and sank onto it. I held up my hands before my face; they were shaking. Now that I was alone, it did not seem possible we could have spoken such words to each other. I let out my own thin laugh, wavering and tremulous, and rather wished that I had not allowed it to escape from my lips.

  Escape. Had she really said that? But surely she could not have meant it.

  I looked about, realising that at some juncture—though I knew not when—I had set down her book. I found it at my side, closed once more, my wife’s place in it quite lost. I took it up and randomly turned its pages: He opened the mysteries of the Fairy Cave, I read. I want to see where the goblin-hunter rises in the marsh, and to hear about the fairishes, as you call them.

  I flicked through the pages more rapidly and saw, show him what you are, imp of Satan. I shook my head as words leaped at me from the page: she must have been a changeling—wicked little soul!

  I closed the book with a sharp snap. I had done well to take it from her. I raised my arm as if to throw the thing into the grate, ready for burning, then felt cool air caressing my cheek and paused. I turned towards the window. Outside, the sky was the colour of flame. It was already sunset.

  The food was still spread upon the table, but I was no longer hungry. I did not know what I should do. I closed the window, pulling it tightly into its frame, and found myself staring at the little gap where the sashes met: a chink that had not been sealed.

  I took up the book once more, staring down at its plain cover. Almost without thought, I opened it and ripped out a page, crumpling it before stuffing it into the gap between the sashes. My hands were still shaking, but I did not care. It was not enough; more pages were needed, and I kept tearing them free until the gap was closed.

  Block up all t’ chinks, she had said.

  I caught up Helena’s shawl where it lay over the back of the chair and went into the passage, the book tucked under my arm. I stuffed the garment into the gap under the front door and tore more pages loose, pushing them into the crack around it and then one more into the keyhole.