Part 21 (1/2)

As soon as I stepped on the path I felt the breeze. That raised my spirits; the lorries had half deafened me, the grubby light and the clouds of dust had made me feel grimy. Though the gra.s.s was waist high I strode forward, determined to follow the path.

Gra.s.s blurred its meanderings, but I managed to trace it to the far side of the field, only to find that it gave out entirely. I peered about, blinded by smouldering green. Elusive gra.s.shoppers chirred, regular as telephones. Eventually I made my way to the corner where the field met two others. Here the path sneaked through the hedge, almost invisibly. Had it been made difficult to follow?

Beyond the hedge it pa.s.sed close to a pond, whose surface was green as the fields; I slithered on the brink. A dragonfly, its wings wafers of stained ------------------------------------318 gla.s.s, skimmed the pond. The breeze coaxed me along the path, until I reached what I'd thought was the edge of the field, but which proved to be a trough in the ground, about fifteen feet deep.

It wasn't a valley, though its stony floor sloped towards a dark hole ragged with gra.s.s. Its banks were a ma.s.s of gorse and herbs; gorse obscured a dark green mound low down on the far bank. Except that the breeze was urging me, I wouldn't have gone close enough to realise that the mound was a cottage.

It was hardly larger than a room. Moss had blurred its outlines, so that it resembled the banks of the trough; it was impossible to tell where the roof ended and the walls began. Now I could see a window, and I was eager to look in. The breeze guided me forward, caressing and soothing, and I saw where the path led down to the cottage.

I had just climbed down below the edge when the breeze turned cold. Was it the damp, striking upwards from the crack in the earth? The crack was narrower than it had looked, which must be why I was all at once much closer to the cottage--close enough to realise that the cottage must be decaying, eaten away by moss; perhaps that was what I could smell. Inside the cottage a light crept towards the window, a light pale as marsh gas, pale as the face that loomed behind it.

Someone was in there, and I was trespa.s.sing. When I tried to struggle out of the trough, my feet slipped on the path; the breeze was a huge cus.h.i.+on, a softness that forced me backwards. Clutching at gorse, I dragged myself over the edge. n.o.body followed, and by the time I'd fled past the pond I couldn't distinguish the crack in the earth.

I didn't tell my aunt about the incident. Though she insisted I call her Naomi, and let me stay up at night far later than my parents did, I felt she might disapprove. I didn't want her to think that I was still a child. If I hadn't stopped myself brooding about it I might have realised that I felt guiltier than the incident warranted; after all, I had done nothing.

Before long she touched on the subject herself. One night we sat sipping more of the wine we'd had with dinner, something else my parents would have frowned upon if they'd known. Mellowed by wine, I said ”That was a nice meal.” Without warning, to my dismay which I concealed with a laugh, my voice fell an octave.

”You're growing up.” As though that had reminded her, she said ”See what you make of this.”

From a drawer she produced two small grey dresses, too smartly cut for school. One of her clients had brought them for alteration, her two small ------------------------------------319 daughters clutching each other and giggling at me. Aunt Naomi handed me the dresses. ”Look at them closely,” she said.

Handling them made me uneasy. As they drooped emptily over my lap they looked unnervingly minute. Strands of a different grey were woven into the material. Somehow I didn't like to touch those strands.

”I know how you feel,” my aunt said. ”It's the material.”

”What about it?”

”The strands of lighter grey--I think they're hair.”

I handed back the dresses hastily, pinching them by one corner of the shoulders. ”Old f.a.n.n.y Cave made them,” she said as though that explained everything.

”Who's f.a.n.n.y Cave?”

”Maybe she's just an old woman who isn't quite right in the head. I wouldn't trust some of the tales I've heard about her. Mind you, I'd trust her even less.”

I must have looked intrigued, for she said ”She's just an unpleasant old woman, Peter. Take my advice and stay away from her.”

”I can't stay away from her if I don't know where she lives,” I said slyly.

”In a hole in the ground near a pond, so they tell me. You can't even see it from the road, so don't bother trying.”

She took my sudden nervousness for a.s.sent. ”I wish Mrs Gibson hadn't accepted those dresses,” she mused. ”She couldn't bring herself to refuse, she said, when f.a.n.n.y Cave had gone to so much trouble. Well, she said the children felt uncomfortable in them. I'm going to tell her the material isn't good for their skin.”

I should have liked more chance to decide whether I wanted to confess to having gone near f.a.n.n.y Cave's. Still, I felt too guilty to revive the subject or even to show too much interest in the old woman. Two days later I had the chance to see her for myself.

I was mooching about the house, trying to keep out of my aunt's way. There was nowhere downstairs I felt comfortable; her sewing machine chattered in the dining-room, by the table spread with cut-out patterns; dress forms stood in the lounge, waiting for clothes or limbs. From my bedroom window I watched the rain stir the fields into mud, dissolve the fells into mounds of mist. I was glad when the doorbell rang; at least it gave me something to do.

As soon as I opened the door the old woman pushed in. I thought she was impatient for shelter; she wore only a grey dress. Parts of it glistened with rain--or were they patterns of a different grey, symbols of some kind? I ------------------------------------320 found myself squinting at them, trying to make them out, before I looked up at her face.

She was over six feet tall. Her grey hair dangled to her waist. Presumably it smelled of earth; certainly she did. Her leathery face was too small for her body. As it stooped, peering through grey strands at me as though I was merchandise, I thought of a rodent peering from its lair.

She strode into the dining-room. ”You've been saying things about me. You've been telling them not to wear my clothes.”

”I'm sure n.o.body told you that,” my aunt said.

”n.o.body had to.” Her voice sounded stiff and rusty, as if she wasn't used to talking to people. ”I know when anyone meddles in my affairs.”

How could she fit into that dwarfish cottage? I stood in the hall, wondering if my aunt needed help and if I would have the courage to provide it. But now the old woman sounded less threatening than peevish. ”I'm getting old. I need someone to look after me sometimes. I've no children of my own.”

”But giving them clothes won't make them your children.”

Through the doorway I saw the old woman glaring as though she had been found out. ”Don't you meddle in my affairs or I'll meddle in yours,” she said, and stalked away. It must have been the draught of her movements that made the dress patterns fly off the table, some of them into the fire.

For the rest of the day I felt uneasy, almost glad to be going home tomorrow. Clouds oozed down the fells; swaying curtains of rain enclosed the house, beneath the looming sky. The grey had seeped into the house. Together with the lingering smell of earth it made me feel buried alive.

I roamed the house as though it was a cage. Once, as I wandered into the lounge, I thought two figures were waiting in the dimness, arms outstretched to grab me. They were dress forms, and the arms of their dresses hung limp at their sides; I couldn't see how I had made the mistake.

My aunt did most of the chatting at dinner. I kept imagining f.a.n.n.y Cave in her cottage, her long limbs folded up like a spider's in hiding. The cottage must be larger than it looked, but she certainly lived in a lair in the earth-- in the mud, on a day like this.

After dinner we played cards. When I began to nod sleepily my aunt continued playing, though she knew I had a long coach journey in the morning; perhaps she wanted company. By the time I went to bed the rain had stopped; a cheesy moon hung in a rainbow. As I undressed I heard her pegging clothes on the line below my window.

When I'd packed my case I parted the curtains for a last drowsy look at the view. The fells were a moonlit patchwork, black and white. Why was my ------------------------------------321 aunt taking so long to hang out the clothes? I peered down more sharply. There was no sign of her. The clothes were moving by themselves, dancing and swaying in the moonlight, inching along the line towards the house.

When I raised the sash of the window the night seemed perfectly still, no sign of a breeze. Nothing moved on the lawn except the shadows of the clothes, advancing a little and retreating, almost ritualistically. Hovering dresses waved holes where hands should be, nodded the sockets of their necks.

Were they really moving towards the house? Before I could tell, the line gave way, dropping them into the mud of the lawn. When I heard my aunt's vexed cry I slipped the window shut and retreated into bed; somehow I didn't want to admit what I'd seen, whatever it was. Sleep came so quickly that next day I could believe I'd been dreaming.

I didn't tell my parents; I'd learned to suppress details that they might find worrying. They were uneasy with my aunt--she was too careless of propriety, the time she had taken them tramping the fells she'd mocked them for dressing as though they were going out for dinner. I think the only reason they let me stay with her was to get me out of the polluted Birmingham air.

By the time I was due for my next visit I was more than ready. My voice had broken, my body had grown unfamiliar, I felt clumsy, ungainly, neither a man nor myself. My parents didn't help. They'd turned wistful as soon as my voice began to change; my mother treated visitors to photographs of me as a baby. She and my father kept telling me to concentrate on my studies and examining my school books as if p.o.r.nography might lurk behind the covers. They seemed relieved that I attended a boys' school, until my father started wondering nervously if I was ”particularly fond” of any of the boys. After nine months of this sort of thing I was glad to get away at Easter.

As soon as the coach moved off I felt better. In half an hour it left behind the Midlands hills, reefs built of red brick terraces. Lancas.h.i.+re seemed so flat that the glimpses of distant hills might have been mirages. After a couple of hours the fells began, great deceptively gentle monsters that slept at the edges of lakes blue as ice, two sorts of stillness. At least I would be free for a week.

But I was not, for I'd brought my new feelings with me. I knew that as soon as I saw my aunt walking upstairs. She had always seemed much younger than my mother, though there were only two years between them, and I'd been vaguely aware that she often wore tight jeans; now I saw how round her bottom was. I felt breathless with guilt in case she guessed what I was thinking, yet I couldn't look away.

At dinner, whenever she touched me I felt a shock of excitement, too strange and uncontrollable to be pleasant. Her skirts were considerably ------------------------------------322 shorter than my mother's. My feelings crept up on me like the wine, which seemed to be urging them on. Half my conversation seemed fraught with double meanings. At last I found what I thought was a neutral subject. ”Have you seen f.a.n.n.y Cave again?” I said.

”Only once.” My aunt seemed reluctant to talk about her. ”She'd given away some more dresses, and Mrs Gibson referred the mother to me. They were nastier than the others--I'm sure she would have thrown them away even if I hadn't said anything. But old f.a.n.n.y came storming up here, just a few weeks ago. When I wouldn't let her in she stood out there in the pouring rain, threatening all sorts of things.”

”What sorts of things?”

”Oh, just unpleasant things. In the old days they would have burned her at the stake, if that's what they used to do. Anyway,” she said with a frown to close the subject, ”she's gone now.”

”Dead, you mean?” I was impatient with euphemisms.

”n.o.body knows for sure. Most people think she's in the pond. To tell you the truth, I don't think anyone's anxious to look.”