Book Read Free

The Hidden People

Page 30

by Allison Littlewood


  I had thought never to see her hand again. Some of the letters were cramped, some bleeding away across the page as if the pen had been a living thing trying to escape her. The rustic style: had I once taken such for charm? It did not seem so now, nor its opposite. It was more as if I held a foreign object, one I could barely identify but that could reveal untold secrets to my eye—and I had no time in which to read it.

  I flattened out the sheets, catching brief lines.

  They said the bairn could not say its name and so they held its nose and poured cure straight down its throat. It coughed and then it swallowed. It didn’t seem to do no harm, but it didn’t do no good neither.

  I saw Essie again to-day. She said they told her it isn’t working and they had to try summat else. She was scared, I think, they had her scared she would never hold her real baby in her arms. I asked what else and she wouldn’t tell me and then she said you take a spade and heat it up over the fire and then you put the baby . . .

  I closed my eyes. Then I opened them and scanned further down the page.

  I told Jem all about it and I said they was mad but he didn’t say owt, he just looked into the fire like he was thinking on it, putting a fairy to the hot metal, and I said aren’t you going to say nowt to your cousin, he’s Essie’s father, someone has to say summat, but he shook his head. And I said I wouldn’t have anything to do with it and neither should he and he gave me this look, like he didn’t rightly know who I was.

  . . . what they did. I can’t think on it. Jem said it’d all come back and it all went like it should but I don’t reckon it and I tried to tell him, but I just cried. I was thinking what I’d do if it was my own baby. Then I said one of us should tell, and the look he gave me . . .

  I folded the sad pages. It was a tale too sorrowful to be told. I did not wish to look upon their secrets; I knew them already. I took up the note I had written to the constable and pushed the sheets inside the envelope just as the stamp of a horse sounded in the lane and a knock rang out upon the door.

  Helena and I rode in silence, but it was a calm silence, accompanied only by the endless clopping of the stolid bay mare. How often a journey seems shorter when one is going home! The fields were almost denuded of their crops, the little that remained so dry it might crumble in the first strong breeze. And still the labourers cut and bundled and raked and stacked, tireless as engines, or so it appeared from this distance, each man and woman and child knowing their part as surely as the fox knows its den and the rabbit its burrow. I turned and looked into the distance and made out the scarecrow I had seen before, though now its jacket had been taken. From here, it barely resembled a man, or indeed, any living form.

  Soon we reached the town, and the bustle and the looming buildings felt strange to me. We stopped briefly at the inn for some refreshment and I put the envelope into the landlord’s hand, pressing upon him the urgency of it reaching the constable before morning. He was a little surprised—if I had stepped out, I could no doubt have discovered the man myself—but I had no wish to be caught up in questions and explanations. For too long my priority had wandered from the requirements of my own family and on this day, I would set all else aside.

  Soon afterwards, the shriek and rumble of the steam engine carried us away from it all, and I was glad to leave it behind me. I did not look out of the windows, but from the corner of my eye I could see the green and gold of the land slipping away behind us. Soon we would reach all the monochrome crowds and hard streets of the City, and I was glad of it: that was where I belonged; it was what I understood. And yet something tugged at my insides, a bond that was being stretched thin but somehow refusing to break.

  I shifted in my seat, remembering something. I caught Helena’s eye and smiled. “I brought this for you,” I said, pulling the reassembled copy of Wuthering Heights from my pocket and passing it to her. “I thought you might like to read it.”

  She stared down at the sorry thing I offered her, with its cover broken and pages hanging from it, and I thought I would have done better to leave it behind us in Halfoak. I expected harsh words, but she simply reached out her hand, very slowly, and took it from me. She held it in her lap, careful not to rub the dusty cover against her clothing.

  “I am sorry,” I said, my voice low, but this time she did not answer.

  It did not seem long until we were crammed into a hansom cab with our bags and racing along, its wheels smooth against the paved road as we passed all manner of city folk: sellers of pies; urchins; ladies with ostrich feathers adorning their hats; hawkers of penny bloods. The weather had turned all to dullness long before we had reached London, but here the sky hung more heavily than ever, the gloom sapping all colour from what lay beneath. Only a sharp chill in the air told that here summer had passed and autumn had come, though without its show of colour or fruitfulness. Before much longer, winter would be breathing down our shirt collars.

  We made good progress, now that the end of our journey was almost within our reach, until we were delayed by a dreadful sight: a dray horse, in trying to turn, had come up against a wooden pavement and slipped. The pitiful creature had broken its knees, and I thought of the bay mare, so sure-footed on the country lanes, but I did not speak of it. Helena kept her silence also, staring down at her gloved hands, though she clenched them tightly around her wretched book.

  Finally, we alighted at the door of my father’s house. Before we had gathered ourselves, the housekeeper emerged to exclaim and wonder over our sudden appearance. My father was at his desk at this hour and would not be home until later; it was better so, since we could settle ourselves and rest from the journey before he demanded an account of everything that had passed since he last laid eyes on us.

  At least he would have the happy news to distract him and I smiled at that thought as I went with Helena through the wide hall and up the stairs, so smooth and solid after what we had been used to these last days, the shining mahogany neatly topped with its scarlet runner and brass fittings, not creaking at all.

  We walked into our rooms and I turned and took her hand. She was still wearing her gloves; I could not tell if her fingers were warm or cool, and her face was empty of expression. “My dear, it will all be better now, I promise you,” I said. “Soon I will become my father’s assistant. We can set up our own establishment. I shall think of nothing else—whatever hard work can achieve, I shall provide it. All will be for you—you and our child!”

  I squeezed her fingers, drawing her to me, but she would not be drawn. She was suddenly stiff and motionless as a statue.

  “Helena, will that not make you happy? Is it not what you desire? That is my only concern now—please be assured of it. I will show you every mark of affection. I will take care of you and the baby, as long as I draw breath—”

  She snatched her fingers from my grasp. Her eyes flashed. “You are not to return to Halfoak?”

  I gathered myself. I could not hide that I had been unprepared for her words—for her insight—even though I had known I must tell her.

  “I have to go back, Helena, though it shall only be for a single day, if my own wishes prevail. It is a matter of the law, my dear, and so I must. It is nothing to do with my own preference.”

  She pressed her lips tightly together, so that they almost could not be seen. It made her look older; different.

  “Helena, please. When you are like this, why, I could almost believe—” I sighed.

  “What do you believe, Albie?” she sneered.

  “I simply do not know you,” I said, softly. I passed a hand across my face. She did not speak, and so I forced myself to go on. “I simply do not know. You must admit, Helena, that your conduct has been at times so very strange—”

  “Strange!” Her eyes flashed with sudden passion. “Strange! You think it strange?” Her tone turned to mockery. “Do you think me a fairy, Albie? Do you think me a stock of wood and your true wife—your dear, sweet, obedient wife—is residing beneath a hollow hill? Is that wh
at you imagine?”

  “I—”

  “My conduct was not strange, Husband. Do you not see why I conducted myself as I did? Why I sometimes barely knew what I did? You took me away from all the comforts of my home, from our acquaintances, from all the life I had known, and you placed me among the most barbaric of strangers. You did not even appear to care about my condition. And you had me live in that dreadful rough cottage, in a land more strange to me than any I have ever known, with no one to help me—”

  I shook my head, unable to believe her onslaught. All I could think of were the words spoken to me by the parson: As for those who seek them out—those who go looking to find evil—why, they shall find it, sir, and only harm shall come to them!

  It was true—it had always been true. But I had to endeavour to make our peace. “Helena, please. I did not ask you to be there, you know that. You did not have to follow me.”

  “Oh, but I did!” she replied. “Of course I did! For it was plain to me that something had begun to take hold of you. I could see it from the first moment your father spoke to us of your cousin, of that—that fairy! The way you looked, the way you grieved—and I did not wish it to continue, Albie. I did not wish to lose you.”

  It was my turn to be silenced.

  “I married you for love, Albie,” she said. “Do you not know that? Did you not see? I had thought ours a marriage of affection, like—like our good queen and her husband! And now Prince Albert is dead, and you are—you. You quit me at the first mention of her, flying out of the door as if you could not go quickly enough, and you barely even looked behind you.”

  I could only stare. I had not suspected my wife of such feeling—of such raw emotion. I had always imagined her to be cool, sensible, controlled, not powerfully affected by anything: a woman after my father’s heart. I had not thought her capable of this. An island, I had thought, an island, surrounded by cool, deep waters. How could I have been so mistaken? And yet, if I had known her so little, how could I ever truly know her at all? How could I ever be certain what she was?

  I think she saw something of what I thought in my eyes, for she stepped back from me and straightened. “I am your wife, Albie,” she said, “in the name of God. And I will be your wife, for that is what I promised to be. But I do not think that I can look at you, not now. Not since—”

  I reached out and touched her arm. “I tried, Helena,” I said. “I wanted to do what I thought to be right. I wanted to do a good thing. Now I feel as if I am drowning. I do not know what I should do; perhaps I never did. But I will love you, Helena. I—” I voiced the thought that had come to me. “You ever steered me aright, my dear. I always trusted you to do that. You were always the one who was so calm, so clear. I am sorry that I forgot it for a time.”

  I took a deep breath and met her gaze. “I promised to take care of you, and I shall. I shall take care of you and I shall love you, Helena; I hope I can do it as you deserve to be loved. I am sorry for all my errors—there have been many, I am certain, and I am ashamed of them. I can only say I shall do better, for you and for the little one.”

  Before my eyes, her face began to change. Emotions gathered in her eyes; they darkened as I watched; her cheeks paled. Anger was there, and fear, and bitterness; and finally all gave way to the most exquisite pain.

  “Helena?” A remnant of fear twisted inside me, and my heart went cold. I felt as if I were standing atop a precipice, with no firm step to be found anywhere, and I did not want her to speak or to move or to look at me that way any longer, but then her face screwed up into the semblance of an infant’s, an angry, furious infant, and I thought of Lizzie’s words in her journal—I couldn’t help but think it were old, older than the hills—and I stepped away from her. I knew it was not her: this could never be her.

  She spoke and the spell was broken. “There is no child, Albie.”

  I was frozen. I did not know how to look at her, how to respond.

  She glared at me, unblinking, unrelenting, her eyes bright with tears that had yet to fall. I could not fathom her words. Had she lied to me? Had there never—

  “Oh, there was a child,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “When I went to Halfoak, there was a child.” Her voice slowed, lowering an octave as a dreadful calm came over her. “That was another reason I followed you, Albie. I wanted you to know. I thought we should be together: husband and wife and their baby—what could be sweeter? But it did not wish to be, Albie. It did not wish to stay!”

  Fairies are barren. The words rose unbidden into my mind. I stepped forward, placing my hands on both her shoulders. “It—went away?”

  She shrugged free of me. “I lost it,” she said. “There was blood—”

  A thought struck me and I turned cold. “I pushed you,” I whispered, “against the bed, and you fell—was that—?”

  She smiled bitterly and shook her head. “It was not your fault, Albie, if that is your chief concern. It simply happened. Perhaps it was not meant to be: we were not a fit family to raise it, and so it left us.” She met my eye with a glare so icy it almost stopped my heart. “There was no love between us,” she said, “and the child should never have been. And so it died, Albie—and you did not even notice it go!”

  I opened and closed my mouth. “But I couldn’t—I didn’t—”

  “You couldn’t? You didn’t? Get out!” She pushed me, beating her hands against my chest. “Get out, Albie!”

  I fell back, driven less by her blows than by her fury, and at last the tears fell, streaming down her face, but I could not cry; not then. I backed away from her, doing at last what she wanted me to do, and all I could feel was a terrible numbness that started somewhere deep within and spread, cold and deadening, through the very heart of my being. I must have stepped over the threshold, for she slammed the door in my face before I even knew I had left her, and I stood quite still, staring at the blank polished wood, hearing not a single sound from within.

  I felt eyes on me then and I turned to see the housekeeper standing at the top of the stairs, a bundle of towels in her hands, her eyes wide. I do not know what it was she saw, but I could not bear it a moment longer and I rushed past her. She cringed back, pressing herself against the wall, and I felt her turn to watch my passing, but I did not look at her; I had to get out. I strode across the tiled floor and reached the front door and spilled through it into the populous, tireless street, where no one would trouble to look at me or even know who I was.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I wandered without pattern or intention. I did not see anything before me, only the images whirling through my mind. I could not fix on anything clearly. There was a man with red hair biting into a yellow plum; a woman’s hands, weaving stems of straw into a little doll; dandelion seeds floating through the air; an iron knife stuck into the ground, concealing—

  But no, I could not think of that. Then I heard in my mind the raucous laughter of the wise woman; I could almost see her pulling at her skirts, and I shook my head—

  —and saw that a woman was standing before me. She was rouged and painted, her hair piled high on her head, her neckline shameless and her skirt tucked up to show her petticoats. She was a harlot; she leered at me through reddened lips—she was a grotesquerie. I heard sounds I knew were not there: discordant music; the excited cries of costermongers spilling from a cheap show; I saw the flash of mottled skin beneath tumbled skirts. I shook my head, backing away. I did not want any of it. I only wanted . . . And I thought of a little hand slipping into my arm, of nut-brown eyes peeping shyly from beneath a faded bonnet.

  I closed my eyes. I only wanted what was gone from me: what could never be within my reach. Was that all it was, really? Was that all I was?

  I turned and made my way through the streets, their high brick walls stained irrevocably with soot, as somewhere a church bell began to chime the hour. Soon my father would leave his place of business and return home. What would he find there? I imagined Helena at the table, composed
once again, her calm, pale face the image of decorum, and quite, quite silent. I pushed the thought away. It was not fair to her. I felt now that I had always been unfair.

  I had believed I had acted for the good, but all was as a quicksand beneath my feet. There was no step I felt sure of taking without causing more harm, and yet I had to go somewhere. I could not bear the thought of my father seeing the chasm that had opened between husband and wife. I could not bear to look upon his disappointment.

  I realised I was making my way back, slowly, in the direction of the station. The realisation did not slow my step nor change my mind. I had nowhere else to go. There was only Halfoak and the thing that I had to do, and so I kept going until a cab appeared at the corner and I hailed it. I hurried to step aboard and it swept me away, the rushing movement providing some small comfort. I felt in my pocket, ensuring I had the means to pay my way: I did, and so it was decided. I would not return to my father’s home tonight. I would allow Helena a little time to gather herself—it was better she be without me for a while, before we could be reconciled. I would finish my business in the country, and then I could return, when it was done at last; when I could truly say to her that we were to begin again. Perhaps then I could find a way to deserve her.

  I found a lodging-house close to the station. The landlady was uncouth, and so tall she might have been stretched to fit her mean, narrow establishment. She led me up the stair, indicated the dingy room I was to occupy, and looked me up and down as if to enquire as to the whereabouts of my luggage. I did not explain.

 

‹ Prev