The Hidden People

by Allison Littlewood

  “It’s too ’ot for owt,” the carrier proclaimed over his shoulder. “It’s not right, it’s not, an’ that’s a fact.”

  I made some offering of condolence. So many days I had spent among the country folk, and I had not realised that they might be facing a tragedy more wide-reaching than my own.

  It’s allus summer, under there—that’s all I’m sayin’.

  Should ’ave ’ad a bit o’ rain.

  It’ll keep t’ door open, till she comes back.

  I shook myself to wakefulness as the sudden jolt of the cart announced our arrival. I was once more in Halfoak, standing before its blasted tree and its quiet inn and its church tower with too many hands upon its clock. I was back where it had all begun, and for a moment I did not quite know how I had come to be there.

  I counted out the agreed fivepence fare for the carter and alighted, set to walk once more upon the white road to the fairy hill, where I had so short a time ago taken leave of my wife.

  It was not long until I stood before the little cottage, so familiar now to my eye, suspended halfway up that oddly shaped prominence. All was peace; the door was safely closed. In another moment I realised that the windows were tightly closed too, in spite of the heat, and that furthermore, the whole place felt closed. I knew, before I even looked inside, that the cottage was empty.

  I hurried from room to room, calling Helena’s name, but she did not reply and the things I saw only increased my confusion. Everything was the image of polished, shining tidiness, as if a small army had been at work in my absence. The larder was gleaming, the shelves newly stocked, a fresh jug of milk standing upon the stone shelf, covered by a little cloth fringed with beads. The range had been swept and black-leaded, the open grate filled with coals. The deal table had been scoured. Outside, bright sheets, half damp, were hung to dry. And yet the cottage was as empty as the day I had first seen it.

  I rushed upstairs to the bedroom I had occupied and peered into the loose wainscoting wherein was concealed the journal. The item was still there and I was at once relieved and repelled to see it; I did not touch it, not then. My denial of its existence to the husband of its writer had made of it a distasteful secret.

  Helena had left, it seemed. She had packed her portmanteau and apparently taken her leave, so eager to resume her old life that she could not bring herself to await my return. But how had she accomplished such a feat of tidiness, and why would she trouble to do so?

  I went into her room. There, upon the little birch washstand were her hairbrush and pins, her toothpowder, her bandoline, smelling sweetly of bergamot and lemon. I went to the wardrobe, and there were her clothes, all neatly folded upon its shelves, her bonnets hanging on the little pegs.

  She had not gone. She had not left me. There was no time for relief, however, for the question followed hard upon that realisation: where had she gone?

  I returned to the parlour and finally noticed what I should have seen before: a calling card set upon the table. I picked it up and examined it, and could scarcely have felt greater surprise than if it had been left by the fairies. The name neatly printed upon the card was “Calthorn”; it did not need much deduction for me to conjecture that a visit had been paid by none other than the young squire’s mother.

  My second thought was one of horror: had my wife really gone alone to return the call? When I had last seen her out of doors she had been cavorting in the moonlight . . . but I had found her before simply taking the air upon the hillside; she might have gone there again. And yet I knew that she had not.

  I hurried out into the sun once more and started back the way I had come. The heat was more concentrated than before, the sun baking the world, the sky innocent of any cloud. My frock-coat and hat were interminably hot. Perspiration ran freely down my face; my kerchief was soon damp from wiping it away. The dust from the road was more infuriating than ever. My steps began to meander sidelong across the rutted track and I was forced to concentrate to keep to the straightest way. My head swam; my thoughts were muddled. I glanced up to see someone looking back at me. I half-expected a fox-haired little fellow with merry cheeks, but it was a woman, her face darkly shadowed under the brim of her bonnet, standing on the other side of a gate. I prepared to hail her, but she turned and bent once more to her task, attempting to tie a stem of corn around a stook, but it kept breaking, so dry as it was; everything was so dry. This summer, so fine a thing, was turning to a curse. The earth was parched. It was unnatural—it was abominable.

  I forced my steps onward, my mind wandering, seeing only the ground at my feet. Inwardly I was focused on something else entirely: a thin bright gleam. At first I did not know what it was; at last I saw that it was an iron blade, set into the earth.

  It’ll keep t’ door open, till she comes back.

  It must be removed. If the blade was gone, the door would close. The gateway to the land where it was always summer would shut. The heat of it would stop, entombed inside the hollow hill so it could no longer taint our skies. The dreadful burning that had consumed my cousin, that now consumed the place where she had lived, would come at last to an end.

  I shook my head, dismissing such ideas. They were false visions conjured by the sun, nothing more. I looked up and saw the squire’s residence at last, partially hidden by the undulating field which lay before it. There was a stile set into the stone wall. I took a deep breath, and felt better at once. I climbed over and began to walk across the field. The irregular stubble, all that remained of the cut corn, hissed against my feet, turning my steps and threatening my ankles. Despite the harvest, something still grew among the dried stalks, I noticed: little globular fungi pushed up from the earth, reminding me unpleasantly of scalps half buried in the ground.

  I had thought the field empty, but when I looked about me I saw a little gathering of workers settling down to eat their heels of bread and wedges of yellow cheese. My throat felt drier than ever at the sight. They noticed me watching and stared back at me in astonishment; the rumble of impertinent laughter drifted through the syrupy air. I did not heed it. The grand house was coming into view, already close enough to make out that it was not so grand as I had expected. Throstle Grange was spacious enough, without being extravagantly large, and judging by the crumbling garden wall clasped in a death’s grip by strands of ivy, it was not in the first state of repair.

  I remembered what Widdop had said: that the squire was ill and his wife entirely engaged in his care, and the son too dissolute to manage everything as it should be.

  I neared the top of the field, dismayed to find that there was no corresponding stile at this side; indeed, there was no wall, just a hedge of thickset hawthorn, and only a narrow gap leading through it, choked with nettles and the peeking crimson of poppies. I thought once more of the fellow I had glimpsed, his hair red as a fox, laughing as he sucked the juice from a ripe plum—he had vanished into the hedge so easily, so perhaps it was not so thick. And anyway, I could not bring myself to go back around.

  I lowered my head and pushed my way in among the thorns, to find the gap narrower even than it had appeared. My hat was lifted from my head by pliant twigs; my hands stung with nettles; a sharp thorn laid a scratch across my forehead. I rubbed it with my handkerchief and it came away bloody. I retrieved my hat, the silk quite ruined, and stumbled into a narrow lane of churned mud now baked solid. It ran along the length of the field and at its end, turned around a corner that led down towards the road to Halfoak. I cursed my luck that I had ever seen the stile. If I had gone on but a little further, the way would have been clear before me. I brushed my frock-coat free of the twigs and thorns, but I could not rid the cloth of the smear of sap.

  Ahead of me was a pair of wide wrought-iron gates, which were thrown open. The wall itself was more imposing than it had first appeared and it blocked from view all but the upper storey of the property, which was of brick. Through the opening I could see the entrance, a double doorway painted black and polished to a high gleam, bo
rdered by two stone planters, each with a dead bay tree standing forlorn within it. I stepped forward to see the windows, tall sashes elegantly curtained, and a little more of the yard, which was in sore need of sweeping. Several bantams, prettily barred and speckled, scratched and pecked and dropped their feathers in the dust. A tump of turnips was gracelessly mounded in one corner. Then I forgot my curiosity because the fine black doors swung open and my wife emerged between them.

  I heard the sweetness of her voice as she expressed some pleasantry and I saw her smile as she stepped out. She wore a pretty white dress with a blue flower print and a beribboned bonnet, and she looked cool and respectable as she put up her parasol to cast a little shade across her face.

  A figure appeared in the doorway behind her, a young man with black hair curling down over his ears. His somewhat aquiline nose only slightly marred his otherwise neat features. He was as broad-shouldered as a labourer and yet his stance was louche; as I watched he placed one hand high on the doorjamb and leaned negligently against it. Rumours of his indolence had led me to expect him to be on the verge of manhood, but he was not; he was in his late twenties, about my own age, and easily at a stage in life to have found some useful purpose.

  His lip twisted into something that was half amusement, half leer, and as I watched, he winked at my wife’s retreating form.

  Blood suffused my features. It must be the squire’s son; no servant would lounge in so slovenly a fashion. But Helena did not look back at him. Indeed, she had not moved, but just stood there quite frozen, staring straight at me. Her expression had been overtaken by one of horror—it seemed to me she gazed upon an apparition.

  I glanced behind me, her countenance being such that I half imagined some monstrous beast standing at my back, then I looked down at myself and surveyed my own attire: my greened, stained coat, my trousers covered in chaff and dust. I felt a trickle of sweat—or was it blood?—run from beneath my much-scratched hat and settle upon my eyebrow. I sensed all the impropriety of my sudden appearance there and—although how I could possibly evade the notice of Edmund Calthorn, I didn’t know—I stepped rapidly aside so that I was hidden behind the gatepost.

  A moment later, low words were exchanged and gruff laughter cut into the air, and there came the sound of a door closing. I cursed myself. What had I been thinking? He must have seen me. And why should I be so ashamed that I had taken to skulking behind a gate in such a fashion?

  But it was too late to be anything otherwise than what I was: a foolish spectacle, the subject of laughter even from farm labourers.

  There came Helena’s light step and in another moment her shadow fell across my feet. I did not entirely wish to see her expression, but when I raised my head, her face was as sweet as the day we married—no, sweeter. She showed no sign of noticing my appearance; she simply put out her hand and I roused myself and lent her my arm. Her fingers did not recoil from its dampness.

  “Have you come to take me home, Husband?”

  I did not know how to answer. My thoughts were as disordered as my appearance. I thought of how I had determined to return to my father’s house, to really conduct her home at last, but it seemed such a long way away.

  “Be careful the fairies don’t steal your tongue, my dear,” she said.

  An’ then he reached out wi’ ’is thumb an’ finger an’ ’e plucked it out!

  My arm twitched, but again Helena did not notice anything awry.

  “Have you been visiting?” I forced myself at last to make civil enquiry.

  “I have, Husband. I have been visiting. The squire’s mother kindly called upon me this forenoon. She excused her husband and son for not calling upon you first, as was proper; I do not believe they hold to the conventions in Halfoak as in other places. It had come to her attention that I was at the cottage and she was most concerned. She was quite horrified to find me left alone in such a place, and where a young lady’s life had so recently ended. She thought it terrible indeed, and bade me to spend some time at the Grange, as early as I might.”

  I remained silent, but Helena went on, “She offered most kindly to send a gig for me this afternoon, but I insisted upon walking. It is so fine a day, is it not? Everything is so sure underfoot that it is really quite easy. And so I came, only to find her troubled with a rather severe headache. Fortunately her son was at home. He was so attentive!”

  “How kind of him.”

  “Yes. Yes, he is. Very kind.”

  “And yet—” That was not what I had heard of him, I wanted to add, but then, the fellow had conducted himself with propriety; such could not be said for me. I could only imagine his contempt at seeing me in my dishevelled state. I had been brought low—and anyway, who was I to question his kindness? I, who had been absent whilst my wife sat alone.

  I realised we were halfway along the road. I could hear bright whistling drifting across the fields. I recognised the tune at once.

  As I walked out one sweet morning . . .

  “Are you quite well, my dear?” Helena asked.

  I told myself that the mocking tone in her voice was merely my own imagining, though I could not bring myself to answer.

  We walked on in silence, hearing only the sound of our own steps. Pudding Pye Hill soon came into view, the little path cutting its way up through the green, and I could hear the blissful sound of the trickling brook. Another noise broke into the babble: a sharp giggle, making me start, though in the next moment I saw the cause. A little girl was chasing a magpie along the bridge. It settled directly above the stream and she flapped her arms. It regarded her before taking wing and I heard the whirr of its rapid movement as it departed in a series of black and white flashes.

  She lifted her head and sang after it,

  Tell-pie-tit

  Thy tongue’ll split

  An’ ev’ry dog in the town’ll get a little bit!

  My initial consternation gave way to amusement at her charming game, but my mood darkened again; I could but hope that Edmund Calthorn were not such a “tell-pie-tit” as to put it about that I was a crazed buffoon.

  The girl—I recognised her suddenly as Flora, the child of Mary Gomersal—leaned out over the bridge, spilling more of her wild laughter into the air, and a moment later a second head, its bonnet strings undone, poked up from beneath the bridge to meet her. I caught my breath and almost shouted a warning, but the older girl emerged and scrambled up the banking, her hands filled with dripping watercress.

  The younger child’s shrill voice rang out once more, “Hurry, hurry! Don’t touch t’ water! Peggy Greenteeth’ll steal you away!”

  They ran, squealing with merriment, towards the village. The bright droplets that had spilled behind them turned to dark circles on the road.

  “’Urry up,” said Helena. “It’s not right far now.”

  I turned, slowly, to look at her. She merely twisted her head and met my eyes; under her bonnet, hers were shining darkly bright, like a bird’s.

  “Are you all reet, Albie?”

  “I—I—”

  “Tha dun’t look so good.”

  “No, I—Helena—”

  “What is it, petal?”

  She had never called me such before. Had I really heard her speaking that way, as the country folk did?

  “It’s ’ow yer like it, in’t it? In’t it what tha came a-searchin’ for?”

  I suddenly slumped, and her fingers clawed into my arm and she held me steady.

  “Helena, whatever do you mean by this? Why are you speaking that way? Pray, stop.” I felt the ghost of another hand taking my arm: Lizzie’s light touch upon mine.

  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 shook my head. “I don’t feel . . . Helena, let us go inside.”

  A shy smile crossed her features, a real one this time, making her look younger. “I ’aven’t seen it yet.” She paused. “The cottage, that is, love. We in’t there yet
. Why dun’t you tell me, Albie, do you like me new bonnet?” She let go of my arm at last and stood before me, curtsying this way and that so that I could see. My heart froze. Had someone given it to her? Had I not seen it before, many times? I was almost certain I had. What was in my mind, though, was a slim volume tucked into a gap in the wainscoting; a secret volume; a secret gap.

  “Well, love? What’s tha reckon?”

  “I—I like it, my dear.”

  She tipped her head back, letting out a peal of laughter. It was coarse, uncouth, and I could not bear it, no more than I could bear the roughness of her words. What had been charming on my cousin’s lips was execrable coming from Helena’s.

  “Are yer tellin’ me a falsehood, Albie? Come on, now. Tha wun’t tell no untruth, would yer?”

  I shook my head. Was my wife possessed? How had she become so changed? And yet the explanation must be simple, as such things always turned out to be. She must know of the journal—she had found it and read it; she knew that I had concealed it from her. She knew everything, though I knew not how. But she could not, could she? The only person who could possibly have known that was dead: my cousin. If she had indeed been my cousin. If the person standing in front of me was indeed my wife.

  I stumbled, and once more she caught me, but I drew away from the touch of her hand. I could not bear it.

  “Suit theesen,” she said smartly, and walked up the hill ahead of me, her step as elastic as ever, unbowed by the heat or the distance or my distress or anything at all. As she went, the sunlight rested upon her, caressing the line of her cheek, making her curls appear almost golden where they emerged beneath her bonnet at the nape of her neck.

  I fell to my knees. I did not feel them strike the ground.

  Above me, she opened the gate and walked up the path, though I could not make her out between the lupins and foxgloves nodding their heads over the fence. I did not see her go inside.