The Hidden People

by Allison Littlewood

  “Helena, for the sake of our peace, pray, give me the key you used earlier.” I did not need it now, but I thought it best to settle the matter before we entered. I did not wish to drag further discord inside with us.

  “The key, my love? I have no key.”

  “You must have, my dear. I locked the door earlier this night, to keep you safe. You have found another—let me have it, and I will take care of everything.”

  “I said I have none.”

  “But I locked the door,” I reiterated. “How then would you have me believe that you—you got out?” Escaped was the word I had thought to use, but it was a bad word and I held my tongue.

  “But you see, you could not have locked it, my dear, for I did get out.”

  “I am quite sure that I must have.”

  “And yet the door stands open.”

  I stared at her. I did not know how she could speak so, how she could be so intractable, but I did not press her further. I handed her inside, pausing only to turn my little key in the lock once more. It clicked quite distinctly, and when I tried the handle, I found it locked. I told myself that I could not have turned it properly when I left for the hillside, though I could not see how I had failed to do so.

  I turned from the door and saw the hem of Helena’s nightdress trailing up the stair. Her door opened and closed and there was silence.

  I sighed. I did not wish to speak to her, and I did not wish to retire just then. The strangeness of the evening, my fear at finding her gone, even the bright fizzling starlight, had heated my blood and I knew I would not sleep. I went instead into the parlour and sat there, staring into the dark grate, as images rose before my eyes: Lizzie being forced to her knees before a leaping flame, her fine skin beginning to char. What had they done then? Had they been shocked and horrified when she began to burn? Had they tried to save her?

  I covered my eyes, but the images remained. I let my head fall back and stared instead at the ceiling. There was no sound from Helena’s room, not even the tapping of ewer on washstand or of her brush being set down. There was no tumultuous wind or rattling of windowpanes. All was still. The quiet folk were quiet, after all. I realised I had not heard Helena close her window, so it must still be open, admitting the night air and the heady scent of flowers. I suddenly knew exactly where she stood at this moment: by that open window, staring out into the dark with longing in her eyes, as if that were where she belonged; as if she would prefer to be out there now, wandering the moonlit paths on the hillside, all alone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  That night, I dreamed of my wife. I knew that it was her because of the way she smiled at me: as she had used to smile, open and clean and good—I knew it even though her lovely dark hair had faded to the colour of corn which shone brightly about her as she turned and walked away from me. I did not recognise the room in which she stood, but I suddenly knew that this was our home; we had finally removed from my father’s residence.

  The room was filled with every comfort. China figurines stood in their frozen attitudes upon the mantle and a large glass bell was full of the orange blossom that had been her wedding flowers, reproduced in wax and tied with a white ribbon. I remembered her insistence upon it, the matrimonial fashion set by our good queen. All was as it should be, and I followed her like a man in a fog of happiness.

  I entered a strange hallway, its new crimson carpet protected at the centre with pieces of drugget. Helena was just turning at the corner above me and I saw her full crinoline skirts sweeping around the banisters. She was murmuring as she went, her voice low and sweet; I know not what she said but her tone was full of warmth, of love, and I knew that her words were not intended for me. Still the sound drew me onward. The mahogany balustrade was polished and clean under my hand, the carpet deep and soft beneath its covering, and I felt a swell of pride in my home.

  The landing was empty. I tried to call my wife’s name, but all that emerged was an unintelligible whisper. Her own voice was clear to me again, however, and I followed the sound into the last little room along the passage. Helena was there, her back towards me, bending over something, and when she straightened and turned, I realised with a start that she was holding a baby.

  I could not see it properly, only its white cap and gown, but Helena’s expression was full of a mother’s love; she had a radiance in her eyes I had never seen before. When she saw me watching, her smile broadened, which made me smile back at her, and then she turned a little, revealing the infant’s face.

  My bones were transformed to ice, but then I made out the tiny closed eyes; the lids, translucent as rose petals; a snub nose; sweet little lips that rose to a perfect Cupid’s bow. The child slept soundly in its mother’s arms. I could not move. I do not know what I had expected to see, but the relief was sweeter than anything I could have anticipated. I held out my hands towards it and the child opened its eyes a slit.

  My smile froze on my lips as it opened its lids fully to reveal eyes as dark and dull as pebbles. They were not a child’s eyes; there was no soul in them. They were too large for its face and angled strangely, like a cat’s, and the irises were too large, with hardly any whites to be seen. A thousand colours lay within them, like sunlight shining upon oil. He made their glowing colours, a voice whispered, and the child cried out, a harsh, ratcheting sound like the call of a crow.

  I sat bolt upright, sweat pouring from my face. I was in my own room, in the little cottage halfway up a fairy hill. A breeze touched my skin, blessedly cool, and with a start I saw that the window was once more open and that Helena stood before it, her nightgown shifting about her. Her back was turned, her hair an oily stain.

  “Helena?”

  She slowly turned. The smile upon her face was not open or clean or good. “Yes, my dear—whom did you expect to see?” She watched my consternation spread across my face.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said, “what a father you shall make!”

  I could only stare as she walked from the room, leaving the window open behind her.

  I pushed off my covers and went to it. The moon was sinking; what could still be seen had turned a livid blood-red, masked by trailing threads of cloud. ’S unlucky to look upon it, wi’ t’ moon up high, I thought, and I slammed the window into its frame, pulled the shutters closed and dragged the curtain into place before them.

  I knew I would not be able to find sleep again. Was my wife ill? I should call upon Doctor Newberry in Kelthorpe, perhaps. Had she taken to sleepwalking—even to talking and laughing in her sleep? If I spoke of this on the morrow, would she even remember—and if she did, would she admit to it? I did not know the answers to any of my questions, and nor did I want to think of it now, not with the unlucky moon seeing everything.

  I closed my eyes. I would not have felt so in the City. There, I would have known what to do.

  Instead of trying to sleep I lit the lamp and took out Lizzie’s journal. It made me feel more capable at once; at least here had been one who had looked up to me. By reading her thoughts, perhaps I could make myself feel worthy of her.

  Things that make you a fairy. There’s plenty of them round here, if you believe them all. Not making the butter come right. Burning the joint or spilling milk and not cleaning it up right. Having your chickens die. Not being what they want you to be. Not having a baby. They say changelings are barren, as if it’s a fact and they know them personal. Having the wrong baby. Don’t make me laugh, I said to Jem when he told us that one. Half the village would be fairies at that, not that they say owt, even when they go past their windows with their bellies big and round like the moon. He knew who I meant and I laughed at that. He didn’t, though. He threatened to wipe the smile off me and so I shut my lips, but I don’t need to shut it now I can write it down in this book. He gave it to me—that’s summat else Jem don’t know and he’ll not, neither.

  Aye, fairies. That’s how you know. Hundreds of them, if you could count.

  Thing is, I know I’m not the only
one. I’m used to that now. But Jem don’t see anything, not really, and he don’t have to know it, neither. They say there’s all kinds of blindness, and it’s true.

  Whatever I had sought, I had not found it. My sweet cousin’s words served merely to underline the distance that had existed between us. And her odd modes of expression left me with an increase of confusion rather than of certainty; could her husband truly have read such a thing and thought it a confession? I flicked through more of it, seeing her notes about housekeeping and the local gossip. There was not enough milk to be had, since it had all been sold in Kelthorpe and sent off by train to the cities; the thatcher had not yet paid Jem for his new leathern gaiters; the squire—young or old, I did not know—was not worth a farthing. There was nothing there that would not be expected.

  I skipped ahead a little and a name caught my eye and I began once more to read in earnest.

  Cousin Aikin was round here the other night. He says it isn’t long now and he didn’t look happy about it. I’ve seen her in the village and I think she’s got more like a month to go, but I didn’t say anything. It isn’t worth it. She’s lost her place, of course, though it were him that put it in her, as everyone knows. Jem had me bring out mugs of cider to drink its health, as if it were here now, and as if they even wanted it. It were then that Tommy said summat about changelings and I burst out laughing, and he stopped his drinking and he looked at me and I looked at Jem and he was looking at me too.

  So he had been in the thick of it: Tommy Aikin and Jem had been co-conspirators even then. It was odd to think that the falsity might first have been mentioned by Aikin instead of Lizzie’s husband; had he even known what he was about, planting such a thing in Jem’s mind? And then to return when summoned, to put his hands on her and deal out such rough treatment . . .

  As if they even wanted it. I closed my eyes and saw again the baby of my dream, waking, seeing the dark shine of its gaze through its half-closed eyelids. I lay back on the pillow. What a terrible thing it was, to put about such fantastical notions.

  I drifted for a while, thinking of nothing, and each time I opened my eyes the night had faded a little more, pushed aside by the encroaching dawn. The birds awoke and began their song, no discordance marring it, not today. I could already feel that the day was to be as fine as yesterday and the day before that. All the days of Halfoak, it seemed, were the same. The sun would be rising, a white blaze in the innocent blue, already warming the earth after the rule of night. All greyness would be banished, as would my grey mood. I turned and sat once more upon the bed and found myself reaching, not for Lizzie’s book but my wife’s.

  As I looked at it I pictured Helena reading it: her sweet, oval face, the forehead high and clear; her sudden look; her most unconscious smile. I wondered that I ever could have taken her book from her, and yet with its loose pages and bent corners, I could now scarcely return it. An explanation would be required of me, one I could not readily provide.

  I began to read of Catherine, a wayward and quixotic child, a being rather of the wild moor and the wind and the rain than of the hearth, and I soon became quite lost in the odd story. I could understand why the critics had so spurned it, and yet it was compelling and vivid and elemental. Despite all its strangeness it lulled me into a kind of peace, even a trance. It was a comfort to be enveloped in a world where odd things were accepted so calmly, whilst knowing that at any moment I could close the book upon it all. I did not do so; I read on. I had soon reached the part where the father, who had made such a grave error in bringing the goblin child Heathcliff into his home, was nodding in his chair by the fireside whilst his witchling daughter, at his knee, sang him to sleep, when a darkness closed over me and I myself began to nod, though the sun was surely riding higher, ready to dispel any tiredness. And I almost fancied that young Cathy was sitting at the foot of my bed, her face hidden in the midnight tangles of her hair, and that a song had wended its way through my chamber and into my dreams.

  O there I met with a bonny maid

  As bright as any fairy.

  I sat up straighter, rousing myself. I could indeed hear a song; it was not simply my imagination. Helena’s voice was drifting from the next room.

  I focused on the words before my face, and all the author’s comforts turned to horror. For the father, of course, was not sleeping but dead; the little elf he had raised had sung him into the slumber of eternity.

  I bestirred myself and leaped to my feet. Before I knew what I was about I rapped three times, sharply, on the wall dividing my wife’s room from my own, and her singing stopped at once. I waited for a cry of protest, but none came, and then I jumped myself, for another triple rap had rung out sharply, not from the wall but from the landing. My first thought was that it was Helena, angrily returning my protest, but it could not be—the sound came from somewhere more distant. Then it came again in rapid succession, bang-bang-bang, and I realised with a dart of something like shame that someone was knocking at the door.

  I hurried down the stair, almost tripping over my own feet, and opened it to find Mrs. Gomersal standing upon the step, her surprise at the suddenness of my appearance hardening at once into something else. I bade her good day and she gave an ill-mannered curtsy. I stood a little taller and began to enquire in a cold voice what it was that I could do for her when she said, “Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but it’s delicate.”

  “Then perhaps you should come inside.” I swung the door wider.

  “Sir—no, I think I should not.” She lowered her voice. “It—it’s about your wife, beggin’ your pardon, an’ no offence meant.” Despite her apology her words were spoken without compunction, though she cast a glance over her shoulder as if to ensure that no one was listening. “I saw ’er, sir.”

  I raised my eyebrows, though inwardly my heart sank. I already knew what she was going to say.

  “Sir, flittin’ about by moonlight—it’s not safe, sir, beggin’ yer pardon, and—I saw ’er, sir, drawn to t’ crossroads just like any man what ought to be in a gibbet.”

  “Now wait one moment. I shall not have my wife spoken of in such a way.”

  “No, o’ course not, sir, but I’m not one fer gossip, not me. That’s t’ reason I’m tellin’ thee, see, not no one else. Only it’s a bad sign. I saw ’er all in white, an’ I saw who she were dancin’ wi’ an’ all. No good will come on it, sir. She—she in’t right—I mean, it in’t right for ’er, bein’ ’ere, is it, sir?” She spoke gently, as if to persuade—nay, manipulate—a child into agreeing with her.

  “I think p’raps she’s best taken ’ome. If not—why, who knows what’ll ’appen? ’Appen she’ll be taken ’ersen, aye, stolen away like t’ other were. Best go, sir, wi’out delay. Before it’s too late.”

  I stared in astonishment at such a speech. To be addressed in such outlandish fashion, and by such a person—why, it was scarcely to be borne. And yet I could clearly see the concern written across her features, so I endeavoured to soften my tone. “Madam, this is outrageous—and by your own words, you undo your argument. There is no reason in it; there is nothing scientific or rational. If it were even possible that my wife were stolen away, as you put it, if she were indeed a changeling, how then would it help her to remove her from the place from whence she was stolen? Surely I could not so easily abandon her. Should I not rather do all I can to have her restored to me? What benefit would be gained by fleeing? I should rather administer such cures as I could find . . .”

  My voice failed for a creeping dismay had come upon me even as I uttered those words, and it struck me then that so might a different man have said, one who had perhaps uttered the same protest on the same threshold, though about a different woman; one already burned to a cinder.

  Some might even have listened to him. Some might even have believed him to be justified.

  Mrs. Gomersal gave no indication of what she thought. Her face closed up and her lips pursed. “As you say, sir,” she muttered under her breath, and she drop
ped another small curtsy before turning and marching off through the garden.

  I watched her go with no little relief, then I closed the door and turned to see Helena standing at the stair’s foot, still dressed in her white nightgown, staring at me unblinkingly.

  She did not open her mouth to speak. She only looked upon me a little longer and then she turned and walked back up to her room, her skirts sweeping across the landing, and her door opened and closed quietly and softly, just as if it were an ordinary thing; and as if all that had been said was nothing more than ordinary too.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I had thought of walking into Halfoak again, but after Mrs. Gomersal’s visit I paused at the door, my hat pressed down upon my head and my hand upon the handle, staring down at the keyhole. I could already feel the sun’s heat on the other side and I longed to step from the shadows and into brightness, yet I could not bring myself to do so. I pictured walking along the white road, reaching the brilliant verdancy of the village green and feeling eyes everywhere, eyes upon my back, upon my face, all knowing and unspeaking and yet laughing.

  I let my hand slip from the door handle, persuading myself that I had other tasks before me. I must ensure that Helena was quite well. I should write a few lines to my father; I had brought with me pen, ink and paper for that purpose. I knew he would not be pleased that I had elected to stay longer in Yorkshire. I could imagine his stern glares towards my desk at his offices, the clerks keeping their heads lowered to their tasks to escape becoming the object of his irritation as the great clock struck out another hour. I decided then and there that I would tell him our happy news; that this above all things would please him enough to bear with my sojourn a little longer.