I used to know a man who was a writer. I mean a real writer. His books were taken seriously enough to be noted in the broadsheets and reviewed in their literary sections and I even saw him on TV a couple of times. I never actually read anything by him, at least, not all the way through. I tried once or twice, but could never get beyond the first few pages.
My most determined attempt came after I saw him speak at a literary festival in Cheltenham. The speech was excellent: intelligent, well delivered, and containing just the right amount of charm and wit. He had the audience won over from the very first sentence. I was impressed and really wanted to read one of his books, but failed to do so even then, giving up partway through the second chapter. Not that it was badly written – far from it. My attention simply wandered elsewhere. None of which I ever admitted to the author, of course.
His name was Jeremy Talbot and he lived in this wonderful cottage tucked away in a forgotten fold of the English countryside. It was one of those villages which, if mentioned at all, are always spoken about in terms of being between places, as if not existing in their own right but only there because they had to come up with something to put between this town and that.
Compton Delby is typical of the many hamlets that are to be found scattered around the Midlands and southern counties; a cluster of buildings which have somehow condensed along a stretch of road like dew gathered on spider silk, and there conspired to become a village. Within its boundaries can be found: a Norman church, a small village store boasting a large plate-glass window at the front and a sub-post office at the back, and a single pub – The White Horse, a coaching inn dating back to the 16th century which, according to the brass plaque by the door, was once the favoured watering hole of a highwayman I’d never heard of.
Summer Cottage is the prettiest and most charming property in a community that prides itself on such. Jeremy had lived there for as long as I’d known him. He always said that the cottage was a magical place, but I think he intended the comment in a dreamy, poetic sense, indicating that he loved his home and everything about it, without having any concept that the words might contain a literal truth.
I, on the other hand, realised from the very first that there was something extraordinary about the cottage.
Jeremy was my dad’s friend really, but I always got on particularly well with him and he seemed far closer to my age than my parents ever did. There was a roguish twinkle in his eye and a sense of rebellious energy about him which I instantly warmed to. That twinkle, combined with the goatee beard he favoured, always put me in mind of mischievous Pan, even in later years when the grey frosting at its fringes spread to completely mask the dark brown it had formerly boasted.
There was nothing sexual to our relationship; I think he might have been gay, though there was never any firm evidence to support such a conclusion. It was just a feeling. He never spoke about any past loves and I don’t recall hearing mention of any partners, male or female. Perhaps his generation were simply more discreet about such things, although he didn’t seem discreet about much else. Jeremy possessed a wicked, irreverent sense of humour and I always had the impression that he went along with society only in as much as he was required to, while privately mocking it from within. I’ve no idea how he and my father ever became friends.
After Dad died we stayed in touch. I would go and see him at Summer Cottage. The visits were not especially frequent but were always much anticipated, with the cottage proving the perfect refuge whenever the pressures of everyday life threatened to overwhelm me. To be honest, it’s pretty hard to recall which I looked forward to visiting more: Jeremy, or Summer Cottage. The latter resonates with happiness in much the same way that a pleasant dream leaves you with a warm feeling and a smile on your face in the morning, even when you can’t actually remember the dream itself and have no idea why you should be so happy. That’s exactly how Summer Cottage has always affected me – wonderful, welcoming and just about perfect in every way.
I felt more at home there than in any of the sequence of anonymous dwellings which my family resided in over the years and referred to as ‘home’. It was as if Summer Cottage were some forgotten remnant of another age, a corner of faery that had been overlooked and left behind by the fey-folk when they abandoned us to our own devices.
Fronted by a tiny strip of garden contained within a white picket fence, the building might have been lifted straight off the cover of one of those souvenir boxes of fudge that are sold in every town with a tenuous claim on history or a hope of attracting tourists. I fell in love with it the first time Dad took me there. Mum never came with us and I never really understood why, except that she didn’t much care for Jeremy.
The cottage itself was beautiful: solid beams and small windows which Mum would probably have put chintz around but Jeremy never did, thank God; steep wooden stairs, a low window on the landing with a broad, unpainted, wooden sill, and irregular-shaped bedrooms – no box rooms here. Two of the bedrooms were built into the eaves and possessed floors which you were never entirely certain weren’t sagging, just a little.
We tended to spend much of the time in the kitchen, which was this huge room with quarry tiled floor, dominated by a wood-burning stove and a big, solid-looking wooden table, around which Jeremy had assembled an assortment of ill-matching chairs. We always ate here and at other times would simply sit around the table, nattering while we steadily drained a pot of coffee or perhaps a coveted bottle of red wine – a souvenir from his latest trip to Italy or Spain.
Sometimes I would stay over, sleeping in the guest bedroom. In latter years there was only one, the other ‘eaves-room’ being cluttered with all the junk and knick-knacks that Jeremy had accumulated but not yet found a home for elsewhere.
I don’t know why I woke up on that particular night. It was almost as if something called to me. Not anything that could be heard, you understand, but something that hooked onto a strand of my inner-self and pulled me awake; an invisible thread that then drew me out of bed and over to the window.
It was one of those moonless nights, when the moon is probably busy renewing itself and in any case has been wrapped away in clouds to keep it coddled and content. My window looked out over the back garden, which is on a couple of different levels. Directly outside the back door is a small stone-laid patio, from which a set of eight or nine steps, bordered by rockery on either side, leads upwards to the lawn, which is more or less flat. There’s a pear tree towards the back of the lawn, in the left corner, and after that come the flower beds, which are slightly raised behind neat little stone walls. Behind them, defining the garden’s border with the fields beyond, is this magnificent, bushy hedge.
Of course, I couldn’t actually see any of this at the time because it was too dark, but I could make out where the hedge was. A whole section of it directly opposite my window was lit up by these tiny lights, like dimmed fairy lights on a Christmas tree. I stood there at the window, leaning on the sill and just watching them. And after watching for a while, I realised that they moved. Not much and not quickly, but unmistakeably, some of them shifted position. Childhood memories leapt to the fore and I suddenly knew what they reminded me of. The Silverkin; you know, those tiny glowing fairy-creatures in the Gossamer books.
I’m not sure how long I watched and afterwards had no recollection of climbing back into bed, but I must have done so at some point, because before long it was morning and I was waking up with my head partway down the mattress and my toes dangling off the end of the bed.
I told Jeremy about the intriguing little lights over breakfast. He was not in the least surprised, barely even looking up from the newspaper as he munched his toast.
“Oh yes, the glow worms,” he said, turning the page. “We see quite a few of them at this time of the year.”
“Glow worms?” I had heard of them, of course, but never expected to see any. “I didn’t know there were any left in England.”
“They’re not as common as they used to be,” he conceded, “but there are still plenty about. People rarely see them, of course – too busy rushing around the countryside in their cars with headlights blazing. Never going to see anything that way.”
I told him about how they reminded me of the Silverkin. The comment seemed to puzzle him for a moment, as if the word ought to mean something but didn’t; then it apparently fell into place. “Emily Mitchell,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in years.”
“You know Emily Mitchell?” I gasped, after I’d managed to lift my jaw from where it had dropped to.
“Yes,” he replied, oblivious. “Known her for yonks.” Then he looked up and grinned, suggesting that maybe he wasn’t quite so oblivious after all. “Would you like to meet her?”
“God, yes!”
So it was arranged. Dinner at Summer Cottage: me, Jeremy, and Emily Mitchell. Can you imagine? I mean, forget pop stars, actors or footballers, this is Emily Mitchell we’re talking about.
I’d wanted to meet her for as long as I can remember, ever since I opened the very first page of the very first book she had written – the one that unveiled Gossamer to the world. When I was younger that ‘wanted’ had been more in the nature of a yearning; an all-consuming childhood ambition which had subsequently been filed away under the heading ‘unrequited’ as I grew older, but which suddenly seemed fresh and desperate again now that opportunity presented itself.
She proved to be exactly as I imagined; a little older and a little frailer than in those old interviews, but just as warm, charming and lovely as you could wish. I kept wanting to pinch myself to make certain that this was really happening.
I loved the Gossamer books when I was a kid and had read them all long before anyone thought to make them into a TV series. I used to dream of growing translucent wings in the moonlight and being able to fly, of having friends as loyal and loving as the Clockwork Monkey and the Silverkin, and foes as terrible and implacable as the Toymaker.
My favourite book in the whole series has to be the third one, in which the Clockwork Monkey gets his wheels. For anyone who hasn’t read it yet, this is the one where the Toymaker kidnaps Monkey and tries to force him to spill all the secrets of Gossamer’s wings. Of course, Monkey refuses to tell and is eventually rescued by Gossamer while the Maker is being led on a wild goose chase by the Silverkin, though not before he has started to dismantle Monkey in a last-ditch attempt to make him talk. Try as she might, Gossamer can’t fit Monkey’s hind-legs back on, but luckily there are lots of bits and pieces of broken toys lying around, and she manages to attach a discarded set of wheels from an old model train onto him instead. The Maker comes back and interrupts her at the last second and there’s a scary bit where he stuns her and you think that she’s going to be caught as well, but then it’s Monkey’s turn to save her, using his new wheels to carry them both away faster than the Toymaker can follow. Phew!
So there I was sitting with my childhood hero, doing my best not to come across like a gushing moron and convinced that I was failing dismally.
“It’s wonderful to be back here,” she said with a wistful sigh. I thought I knew exactly what she meant, because that was how I always felt about Summer Cottage. But then she surprised me. “I used to live here, you know.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes,” Jeremy said, as he topped up my wine glass. “I bought Summer Cottage from Emily. That’s how we met. I was still a mere lecturer in those days, not the ‘celebrated’ author I am now.” The last was said with the familiar self-mocking twinkle.
Emily was gazing around the kitchen with a far-away look in her eye and a small smile at the corners of her mouth. “I’d forgotten how much I miss this place. They were the happiest years of my life, the ones I spent here.”
“Then why did you move?” I blurted out, before it occurred to me that the question might be considered impertinent.
“My husband died – cancer,” she said, adding the last quickly, as if to forestall another inappropriate question, “and there were so many memories. It would have been too painful to stay, but I still sometimes regret ever leaving.
“I wrote the Gossamer books here, you know; all ten of them.”
The comment tipped me over into gushing mode again, I couldn’t help it.
“I have written other books as well,” she said defensively when I paused for breath, “but people only ever seem to remember the Gossamer stories.”
I did actually read one of her later books, but only the one. It lacked the magic of Gossamer, and seemed formulaic and mechanical in comparison. I would have given up on it early but for a sense of determined loyalty which caused me to persevere to the less-than-satisfying end. The same sense of loyalty stopped me from reading any further books – I didn’t want to not like anything written by Gossamer’s author.
“Did you write all your books here?” I asked.
“No, only the Gossamer ones. I think the muse deserted me after Jonathan died.” Then she leant towards me and said in a conspiratorial stage whisper: “Just between you and me, my later books weren’t really all that good, in any case.” All three of us laughed. “I haven’t written anything in years. I don’t dream any more, you see; not about Gossamer.”
That night I saw the glow worms again, or perhaps I dreamt them. This time there seemed to be a pattern within the lights. With only a little imagination, it was possible to make out the word ‘Gossamer’.
Jeremy’s death came as a terrible shock. It was like losing a favourite uncle and affected me equally as badly as when I lost my own parents.
Of course, there was a silver lining, though that sounds almost callous and isn’t meant to be. In fact, I’m sure Jeremy would have been delighted with the way things turned out.
You see, after that evening we spent with Emily Mitchell I did a little digging, and discovered that Jeremy had never published a single thing before moving into Summer Cottage. Only after he moved into that wonderful place did he become a writer.
Two successful authors living consecutively in the same home and writing everything they ever wrote worth talking about while living there?
Emily had been mistaken, I realised, when she claimed that the muse deserted her after her husband died. In fact it was the other way around: she abandoned her muse the day she moved away from Summer Cottage.
Following Jeremy’s death, his home was put up for sale. Of course, things were not that simple. He died without making a will, so probate took an age, but eventually it came on the market. When it did, I bought it. How could I not?
Summer Cottage is now my home and I’m so excited – even more so after the events of yesterday. You see, I’ve made a thrilling discovery. I’m having a lot of work done – the place needs it – rewiring and that sort of thing. It’s funny how as a visitor you fail to notice details which leap out and demand attention once you’re the property’s owner.
In the process of doing something or other, the workmen had to lift up some of the floorboards in the second bedroom, the room I used to sleep in as a guest. Underneath, they found a toy. I’ve no idea how it came to be there, but I think I do know why. It was hiding, staying out of sight while waiting for the right time and the right person to discover it. It’s a cheap plastic promotional toy of the sort that’s given away by the fast food chains with kiddies’ burger meals: a monkey, which originally had mobile back legs by the look of it. But the legs are no longer there. In their place, a short axle has been pushed through the model’s hindquarters and the Monkey now has a set of free-spinning wheels.
There’s a full moon tonight and the Silverkin will come, I can feel it.
I’m sleeping in that eaves-room again and I’ve cleared everything off the windowsill and placed Monkey at the very centre, facing out, so that the Silverkin can see him and he can see them. I’m going to bed now and can’t wait for the dreams to start.
There is one thing that causes me slight concern, and it’s to do with Jeremy.
You see, he wrote horror stories; haunting tales of insidious evil, insane obsession and creeping terror, all of them vividly realised and chillingly told. This was one of the reasons I could never read them – I found them too disturbing.
Still, I’m not Jeremy and my dreams will be different. I know that my dreams will be of Gossamer, of wings, and of flying…