I had first to see to the completion of various other matters regarding the funeral the next day, so that the sun was already beginning to decline from its zenith as I set out upon my task and walked along the now almost familiar lane. I was learning to think of it in local terms, thus it was “along t’ big road” I went, in the direction of “t’ little road,” my steps quite steady so as not to betray my innermost thoughts. My hand strayed so often to the key in my pocket, where I felt also the touch of my cousin’s hair, that if I had found it not I would most sorely have felt its lack.
It may have been an impression lent by the fresh clean air and the perfect sunlight but I had the sense that I was doing the correct thing; that in fact all was right with the world. Something dreadful had happened, interrupting the course of days with its outrage, but calm had returned, along with the natural order of things. God was surely in His heaven, smiling down with the sunlight that warmed me as I went. I realised I had never known a day of tempest in the countryside; all was sunny and beautiful before me, and I found that I could almost forget the purpose for which I had come.
I crossed the little bridge and the softly running waters beneath it and set foot upon the track that led upwards on its singular course to my cousin’s door. I had learned from the landlord that many about these parts called it the Reeling Road; though I knew not why, for it did not reel at all; its course was straight and true. There was no need or opportunity to linger or stray, and almost I wished there were.
The sun grew hotter and the air thicker as I pointed my steps upwards. It reminded me of dreams in which running became at once imperative and impossible, the limbs slowed as if mired in the blackest treacle.
All too soon there was the gate before me, standing a little ajar, and I tried to remember if I had left it that way. My spirit quailed inside me. All was too quiet, too isolated, too ordinary. It took only a few steps to reach the door and I found I was holding my breath as I drew out the key, reluctant to breathe in any of that awful stench. When I did taste the air, I found only the sweetness of honeysuckle and at the edge of my hearing there was sound after all: the somnolent murmur of bees.
I turned the key in the lock. I expected it to stick meanly, some badly made, cheap thing, but it turned true and I heard a sharp snick.
I bowed my head a moment, thinking of the fair curls that had hung down from my cousin’s cap, and then I reached out and turned the handle. The door opened smoothly without creak or jarring. Inside were stone flags, softly gleaming—perhaps from my cousin’s own hand—leading away to a back door, that entrance being guarded by a little mat of oilcloth. The sight of that at first raised unpleasant images in my mind, but this one was neatly cut and placed and had been polished to a sheen like marble.
There were two doors set midway along the passage. To the left, I knew from my glimpse of what felt an age ago, was the parlour. The one to the right was unknown to me. Between them and the back door was a staircase and it occurred to me that I could simply go up and find my cousin’s wardrobe, take what I needed without ever entering another room. And then I told myself I may as well see it all, and I turned to the left and opened the door to the parlour.
As soon as I did, the smell of burning rushed upon me, more strongly than ever. The first thing I saw was the hearth with its spill of cinders; before it was a rag rug, much spotted with sparks from the fire. The fire irons hung neatly on their stand, all save the poker, which was lying upon the hearthstones. A lamp standing on the floor under the hood-end had been knocked awry and was tilted against the edge of the grate. I stood for a while, staring into the empty fire, as if it could whisper all its secrets. I suddenly longed, strongly and painfully, to know the truth, however dreadful, of the last days of my cousin’s life. I shook my head. Could any good be the result of such delving? I had come here to gain some sense of her life. I had come to say good-bye.
I turned about the room. Without knowledge of what had happened in this place, all appeared in almost perfect order. I had expected to find a meanly appointed hovel, but here all was comfort. The table might not have the high mahogany gleam of the one in my father’s house, but it was respectably polished and solidly built. There were some wooden chairs, ill-matching, but serviceable, and a little faded sofa. In one corner, a preserved fox in a glass case endlessly watched the room, its foot set upon a stuffed mouse. The mirror was wider than it was tall, the ceilings being lamentably low, and it hung opposite the fire rather than above it. I noticed that it had not been covered after the sad event.
Over the fire was a plain shelf bearing a framed engraving of a landscape, a few Staffordshireware plates, a Bible, a prayer book and a card whereon was printed the text: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. I stepped closer, staring at it, and only then noticed that a clock stood next to it. It was not ticking; the hands were not moving. Here, time had been stopped, as it should have been. Someone had paid my cousin that little attention at least, even if they had neglected to cover the mirror and shutter the windows. The clock read a little before midnight.
I let my gaze fall to the floor. It was sullied with footprints and little clods of earth, as might be expected after all the tramplings of the constable and others who had been drawn to this place after its occupant had so precipitately left it.
I turned from the sight and towards the windows. The shutters were half open, as I had seen them before, perhaps to shield the contents from the full heat of the sun. I left them for now, though they should have been decently closed upon this scene of grief. I would do it upon leaving; after the funeral let anyone else open them who would.
The walls were of thick stone, and suddenly an image lay before me: a view of London as revealed to me from the train, a terraced kingdom, all colour leached by distance and covered by a constant grey pall. The houses had been identical to my eye, row upon row of pattern-book homes built of brick which was in places so rotten that smoke was escaping sideways from the chimneys.
The cottage spoke of decency and solidity, and yet . . . and yet. He had killed her, my Linnet. How could such a monster have resided within such a home? But I remembered what the landlord had said: that this was an unlucky house, that none would even enter it. That might have been the only reason my cousin’s husband had taken it: because none other would have it. It had been tainted from the start. And if the cottage was comfortable, if it was homely, that was no doubt the work of her hand, not his.
I shook my head. What had happened was abominable and could not belong in any place, no matter what silly ideas had grown up around this one. Superstition must be put down for the good of all. I looked around once more, this time thinking as a rational man. All was just so, save the poker and the lamp. Yet here were other things: a greenish stain on the edge of the rug. A little china jug of something left on the table, smelling at once sweet and sour, though still more pleasant than the burnt air of the room.
I longed suddenly to throw open the shutters and disperse the air, but custom would not allow it; it would be improper until the funeral was over. And for the funeral, a gown—a frock—was needed. I turned my back on the room and the glimpse I could see of a kitchen beyond it, and returned to the hall. Despite all my intentions of rationalism, relief washed over me; I was an intruder expelled from that room, and all the better for it.
There was still one more intrusion to make. I climbed the stairs, hearing the wood creak and resettle. I wondered how many times my cousin had taken just such a course, bearing a candle to light her to bed, never imagining how her life would be curtailed just yards from where she stood. I found at the top of the stair two bedrooms, to my surprise; both had slanting ceilings and were uncarpeted, and both were equipped with washstands and ewers. One bed was hung with red curtains, the other half-curtained in blue. The latter had a lighter, more feminine appearance, and a glimpse into the wardrobe proved me correct; its shelves were full of light colours, of fabrics more delicate and fine than I would have expected of a village cordwainer’s wife. Puzzled, I ran a finger over them, detecting the faintest scent of rose petals, only then realising what I was doing and pulling away, feeling more than ever an intruder. Yet who would perform this service for her if I did not?
I had thought of something in plain white, but instead I found myself unfolding a dress of fine, pretty fabric, trimmed with organdie and with a broad white ribbon at the waist. There was a little bonnet with flowers in a matching colour. Gloves of white kid I placed into my pocket, feeling their softness like skin against my fingers. A memory rose then, of a great clamour of sound: the hissing of a steam engine, the rhythmic rattle of a Jacquard lace machine, the tinkling of a crystal fountain, the high purity of a song. I hung my head, blinded for a moment. I hardly knew how I had come to be here, far distant from my own life and all the people I knew, so surrounded by strangeness I might have been in a foreign land.
A sudden rapping disturbed my reverie. I half expected to see a bird flapping against the windowpane, but there was only the blue sky, God’s own sky, curving above it all. I did not know if I could have imagined the sound. It had been like a knock, though it came from up here rather than below. Then I whirled as I heard a soft scuffling coming from the landing.
I hurried to the door and looked out, but there was nothing to be seen. Was it a mouse?
Another rapping came from the other bedroom and I stared at the closed door. Had I left it shut? I could not be sure. I stepped forward and pushed it open with my foot, still holding my cousin’s dress, suddenly sick at heart as to what I might see, but the room was just as still and quiet as it had been before.
I shook my head. There was no sound save that of my own breathing, and that was too loud and ragged for a grown man. I reminded myself that the house was old and that it was settling around me, adjusting to my sudden presence; that was all.
I turned and made my way back down the stair, eager to be gone. I drew the front door closed behind me, draped the dress over one arm and turned the key. Only then did I recollect that I had not closed the shutters, and yet I found myself so reluctant to re-enter the cottage that I persuaded myself in an instant that it could not possibly matter.
But there was still another room into which I had not looked. Slowly, as if some unseen force were drawing me towards it, I went to the window and peered in. I know not what I expected to find, but it was not what I saw: the opposite wall was lined with shelves crammed full with the moulds of men’s feet. I blinked, and realised they were lasts, some with new leather being formed upon them, all neatly labelled with little squares of cardboard, each no doubt bearing the name of somebody from the village. He had been a cordwainer, had he not? And here was his workshop. I peered around the shutters, my discomfort at being there quite forgotten in my curiosity. There were tools hanging from pegs on the right-hand wall: awls, broad knives, files and implements for which I had no name. A gleaming stack of shoe-buckles sat upon another shelf next to coils of waxed cord. Bowls full of brass sprigs and hobnails sat upon a bench and a paste-pot with its brush jutting from it stood by ready to be applied. There was a pile of tongues, all cut out and ready to be stitched into pairs of boots no doubt paid for by the harvest money that Widdop had spoken of. And in one corner there were sheets of hide, soaking in some unknown substance.
I could not help but think of stories I had heard of the fairies, coming out at night to stitch with their fine needles and tap with their little hammers, carrying out the shoemaker’s art in far more delicate fashion than man’s hand could ever accomplish. Perhaps James Higgs had chosen this cottage for that very purpose; such ideas could not but enhance his industry with a kind of glamour, if tales of the good folk were put about. And then I looked down at the floor and saw no fine pair of fairy-stitched shoes but a pair of rough labourer’s boots, sturdy and strong for tending the fields, and I upbraided myself for falling into such a reverie. I reminded myself of the man who owned such a workshop and what he had done, and the strangeness of my position returned to me: here I was, a stranger to both of them all these long years, peering in at a little corner of their lives. No, of his life—and this whilst I bore his wife’s funeral gown in my arms.
But surely the man deserved no consideration from anyone; it was he who was the intruder now: an intruder upon a sane and rational world. I turned my back on the possessions from which he had rightly been separated and walked out through the gate. I was about to turn down the path and make my way from the hill when instead I glanced up towards the summit.
I froze. A lady was standing there, a short distance away, upon the path that led to the barrow. Her figure was tall and her bearing erect, and her back was turned to me so that I could not see her face. Her dress was gleaming white, almost dazzling in the sun, and a neat bonnet, equally brilliant, entirely hid her hair from view.
I opened my mouth to greet her, but words had left me. I expected every moment that she would turn and I would see her face and an odd reluctance stole over me so that I thought of simply stealing away from her. I was not sure her face was anything I wished to see. An image of the fireplace rose before me, followed by that of a cracked and blackened visage, a body abandoned in a village wash house, and a strange fear took hold of me. What if she should turn as I was trying to leave? What if she started after me, more quickly than ever I could run? In my mind her step was light and airy; she might reach out and grasp my shoulder before I even knew that she followed.
I gritted my teeth, reminding myself that I was not such an ignorant creature as to be afraid, and I walked towards her. The lady, like a being glimpsed within a dream, slowly began to turn. The sun’s light was momentarily dimmed by the passing of some cloud and I saw then that her hair was dark and that her cheek was pale, and as I watched her lips parted into a welcoming smile.
I caught my breath, and then I heard her voice: “Albie—I knew it would be you!”
It was my wife. My wife, standing there on the golden path with the sunlight glancing brightly from her bonnet and her dress—and yet I did not know how she had come to be there; indeed, I doubted the evidence of my eyes.
“Will you not speak?” Her smile, so open, began to fade from her lips.
“I—”
“My dear, are you well? You have turned quite pale.”
I knew that I had to make some reply and so I assured her that I was quite well.
“Are you not pleased to see me? I enquired after you at the inn. They said that you would be here. Such a pretty place, is it not?” Her glance wavered over the cottage and then back towards me. Her eyes narrowed as she fixed upon what I carried, draped across my arms like a—like a body, I thought, and suddenly I could not rid myself of the image.
“I tried the cottage first, since that is where I was directed. My dear, did you not hear my knock?”
I frowned. The rapping I had heard could certainly have been a knock upon the door, and yet it had not sounded so: rather, it had seemed to come from the bedrooms, or even the air itself. But then, I was a stranger to the house; perhaps it possessed odd echoes of which I knew nothing.
I roused myself at last and said, “But, Helena—how came you to be here?”
Her smile had entirely fled her lips. “Why, for you, of course. I came here for you. I sent a telegram . . .”
“But I have not received one—I have had no time to receive one, not here, let alone to tell you—”
“Tell me what, Albie?”
To tell you not to come, is what I had been about to say, and she knew it. I fell silent. I no longer knew what to say; indeed, my head was swimming most alarmingly. It must have been the shock of seeing her, and the heat; it could be nothing to do with the strange notions that had taken up residence in my mind; my imagination was my own and if it were beset by a thousand odd ideas, I would surely not be overwhelmed by it.
“I am sorry, my dear.” I forced a smile. “I am happy to see you, of course—I am merely surprised at your being here. Did my father have no objection to your making the journey?”
“I can manage your father, Albie.” Helena smiled, but I did not; I did not doubt that she could, but I also knew my father to sometimes display a good humour he did not feel. I doubted he had consented to the matter quite so easily as she was making out. It had been an impetuous decision, not at all like her, but there was nothing to be done about it now.
“Come, take my arm and we shall walk back to the village,” I said. “Isn’t it charming? And the air is so pleasant, after the City.” I turned a little towards her and she stared at my arm. No; she was staring downwards and I realised she was still focused upon what I held: another woman’s pretty dress, laid out, like—
No. I would not think of it. Instead, as I folded the garment to hold more easily beneath my other arm, I quickly explained its purpose, and her eyes softened at last, her expression giving way from irritation to concern.
“Oh, Albie!” she said, “I can see things have been difficult for you. It is good that I came.”
Somehow I could not bring myself to voice agreement. It felt rather as if some new disturbance had come and that the air was reacting somehow, re-forming itself around us. But Helena put her hand on my arm and despite my headache, we made our way steadily homewards, or at least, back towards the village. I told her of all that had passed, though I did of course spare her the more lurid particulars of the spectre lying within the inn’s wash house, in the place of my fair cousin.
It was no time at all before we were entering the inn together, and my good host immediately abandoned his position by the casks to greet us both, but mainly, I think, to see what item of clothing I had brought. The moment he laid eyes on it, his countenance fell.
“Is it all right?” I asked, surprised.
“Aye—it’s right enough, I s’pose.”
“Whatever is it? It looks fine enough—it is a quite delicate material, and with a clean white trim, you see here—” I felt Helena’s gaze on my face at my sudden interest in feminine dress, but I did not meet her eye. I still could not imagine what was wrong.
Then he said, “Aye, it’ll do. Prob’ly dun’t mean owt, anyroad. It’s just, wi’ it bein’ green an’ all—”
“Is green unlucky?”
He snorted. “It’s not that—it would be if she were getting wed in it. But it’ll ’ardly matter for owt now, will it? It’s just—well, it’s not right. It’s their colour, in’t it?”
He gloomily pondered the gown, rubbing his whiskers in a musing fashion, and I could do nothing but stare at him. I felt my cheeks redden. But of course, it was “their” colour. How could I not have thought of it? Even if I did not believe in such creatures—and of course, I did not—I should have known that.
I crushed it in my hands as if I could banish it from sight. “I could fetch another,” I said, as I realised too that I had forgotten about inner wear: linens, stockings, a corset, everything that was proper. How had I been so foolish?
“It’ll serve,” he said. “Mary were tellin’ us, she dun’t think she can get ’er dressed right, not really. She might ’ave to cut the frock, lay it on t’ top, like.”
“And it will be a closed coffin, will it not?” Helena’s voice was crisp and clear, all brisk enquiry without a hint of dismay. We both looked up at her as if she had awoken us.
“Aye,” he said, at the same time as I murmured, “Yes.”
“There then,” the landlord said, taking the offending article from me and moving away. “I’ll gerrit sorted.”
I sat for a while with my wife, giving brief answers to her queries about the village and its inhabitants and the funeral, as far as I was able to concentrate through the fog of my thoughts. I told her of the “ca’penter” who was also an undertaker, of the strident parson and his ranting, of Mary Gomersal and her elfin child, feeling all the time at some distance, as if I were still standing in another place; caught, perhaps, on a sunny hillside. But the thing that was uppermost, that refused to be banished from my mind, was to wonder how I ever could have been so foolish as to see that my cousin was sent to her grave wearing the colour of the fairies.