The Unseen (27 page)

Perhaps the most unusual episode in Cold Ash Holt’s history was the publication, in 1911, of a set of photographs, taken by a leading spiritualist of the time, which claimed to show fairies living in the water meadows on the edge of the village. Robin Durrant enjoyed a brief period of fame when the pictures were first published, and were widely accepted as genuine both by his fellow spiritualists and by the general press. They were later discredited, despite the unswerving support of Cold
Ash Holt’s vicar at that time, Albert Canning. Are there fairies in our fields? You decide!

Below were two grainy black and white photographs. The first showed a wide, level meadow, carpeted with high summer grasses and thistles, with tall trees out of focus in the background. In the middle of the picture stood a single tree, a weeping willow by the looks of it; its trunk gnarled and twisted with age, leaves pale as silver. A change in ground levels suggested that it was standing on a river bank, although the water was invisible through the grass. To the right of the tree was a small figure, slightly blurred. It was female, and appeared to have been caught in the act of leaping or dancing. Midway through a giant, exuberant stride, arms and head flung back in abandon, hair so pale it seemed white, streaming out behind it, long and wild, almost half the length of the figure’s overall height. Its face was indistinct, the features not quite captured. Just the juts of a delicate nose and chin; pale, pale skin, and its eyes seemingly closed. It was hard to get a true impression of the figure’s size, since the willow tree might have been fifteen feet high or thirty, the grasses a foot tall or three. It was an oddly unsettling picture. The sky was a flat white, the same colour as the figure’s shapeless, diaphanous dress. The fabric clung to a thin body, flat like a child’s, yet there was something adult in the angular arms and legs; the proportional size of the head to the body. The whole picture had an other-worldly, washed-out glow. As though the light had been peculiar that day, or the air unusually hazy. It was an eerie picture, and Leah stared at it until her eyes ached. The figure seemed more ghost than fairy to her.

In the second picture the figure was even harder to make out. The willow tree dominated the shot, much closer this time, and in its shadow the figure was a pallid smudge, body pressed tight against the trunk, arms reaching up towards its branches, head turned to the side and downwards, so again the face was lost, this time in shadow and behind tresses of its own hair, hanging like
long cobwebs down past its waist. Wishing she had a printer, Leah studied the pictures for a long time, her nose creeping closer to the screen. If you wanted to believe in them, you could, she decided. They were odd, and ambiguous enough; the figure androgynous and indistinct, and yet still giving the impression of great beauty and delicacy. She knew from Mark Canning that the man who’d taken the pictures, Robin Durrant, had been staying at The Rectory at the time, as a guest of the vicar and his wife, Mark’s great-grandparents. In Mark, without even really trying, she had found a direct descendant of the woman who had written letters to the dead soldier; but having access to her DNA would not help with the identification of the soldier. Those were not letters written to a family member, Leah knew instinctively. Had they been written to this Robin Durrant?

Outside, the sun came out, blisteringly bright, making her screen hard to see. Blinking in the sudden glare, Leah turned her body away from the window. She skipped through a few of the paranormal websites, where the pictures and story took second place to the better known Cottingley Fairies, famously championed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. On one site she found a short biography of Robin Durrant, describing him as a theosophist rather than a spiritualist. Leah jotted the unfamiliar word down in her notebook. She leaned back and looked out of the window, at people marching by, squinting. The street outside was rendered black and white by the sudden harsh light; people and buildings were silhouettes, hard outlines. The same sun in a different season would soften everything, and coax out all the many colours. Now it was as sharp and unforgiving as a knife. Leah looked at her watch. Mark Canning had invited her to have a look around The Old Rectory at midday – in an hour’s time. He had told her, in The Swing Bridge pub, that the fairy photographs had always been a source of mild embarrassment to his parents and grandparents, who were deeply logical people and had no time for such things. That an otherwise unimpeachable
ancestor, the vicar Albert Canning, had been taken in by such blatant trickery was considered quite baffling, and tragic.

Leah thought about Mark, picturing him as she had last seen him – in the darkness outside the pub as they had said a stilted goodnight. A tiny muscle in the grey skin under his eye had been caught in a spasmodic twitch, a little hiccough visible even by the wan light of the single bulb above the door. A sure sign of exhaustion, and Leah had put her fingers to her own eye socket, pressing them into the skin in sympathetic agitation. Mark had not seemed to notice the odd gesture. She hadn’t asked him anything more about himself, except in the broadest terms – to establish his relationship to Hester Canning. She had been itching to ask more, but he was so extravagantly cagey about it that she didn’t want to frighten him off. His violent reaction to the idea that she was a journalist and might have an interest in him had of course only served to make her more interested. With only a tiny niggle of guilt, she turned back to her computer and googled him. News articles from recent archives appeared. Not huge headlines, but the kind of story that rumbled on for weeks, getting two or three columns on page eight or nine. She skimmed through a few of the articles, her lip clamped between her teeth in fascination, eyes widening. Vaguely, she now remembered hearing a short piece on the news about the case, but it had been early in the morning when she had been staring listlessly at the TV over her breakfast, and not really listening. Small wonder he did not want to talk to a journalist. The press had given him a rough ride over the previous six months.

At noon she walked up the overgrown path to The Old Rectory again. Drops of rainwater on the knocker wet the palm of her hand, made her shiver and tuck her chin into her scarf. In the ruined vegetation of the garden, small splashes of colour were beginning to show. Occasional purple grape hyacinths, and pale yellow narcissi; the minty green spikes of tulip shoots, nosing their way
between swathes of rotting brown foliage. Leah was reminded of
The Secret Garden
, one of her favourite books as a child. And in spite of the drifts of dead leaves that lay all around, half a foot deep in places, by summer, even if nobody paid it any attention, the garden would be a rich jungle. Plants need much less help to grow than gardeners might like to think, Leah thought. She looked to one side of the door. The wooden frame of the nearest sash window was rotten to the core. The paint was a pattern of chipped scales, the putty securing the glass all but gone; a waxy-looking orange fungus frilled the sodden wood here and there. She jumped slightly at the sound of bolts being drawn back from the door.

Mark opened it with a heave that made it shudder.

‘Bloody thing always did stick in wet weather. Come in out of the rain,’ he said. He’d had a shave since she last saw him, and washed his hair. He still looked worn out, but calmer than before.

‘Thanks. I was just admiring the garden,’ she said, smiling away any implied criticism.

Mark rolled his eyes. ‘I know. The whole place has gone to seed, not just the garden. Dad really let it get away from him. I should have helped him more but … you know how it is. Life gets in the way. It’s been empty for half a year now. Since Dad …’ He hesitated.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry – you lost him?’ Leah asked, gently.

‘In a way, yes. Come through.’ Leah stepped into the hallway, which was wide but gloomy. She looked up. There was no light bulb in the single socket that dangled overhead. Spiders had built a cone of dusty webs around the wire. The air was incredibly still, as if one occupant was not enough for the place, could not hope to fill it. It smelled of damp plaster and cold, gritty floors; and the chill of winter seemed to linger even more than it had outside in the rain. ‘I won’t offer to take your coat – you’ll need it,’ Mark said wryly, as if reading her mind.

‘Old houses can get so chilly.’ She grimaced sympathetically.

‘Especially this one. The boiler’s packed up. The kitchen’s the
only warm place in the house – I’ve managed to get the Rayburn going. Coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

They went along a corridor towards the back of the house, where the kitchen light was casting a warm glow out into the shadows. Leah peered through doorways and into corners, her curiosity irresistible. It didn’t look as though the decor had been updated for twenty or even thirty years. In a sitting room, the sofas and armchairs bore deep impressions in their cushions, moulded and flattened by years of being sat upon. There was a thick layer of dust on the mish-mash of furniture, most of which was dark oak, a wood which Leah had always found oppressive. Dog-eared motoring and fishing magazines in a rack in the hallway were a decade out of date. The shades of reading lamps were faded, bleached by the sun of many summers gone by; and beneath her feet were rugs so threadbare and worn that the original patterns and colours were lost, and only the criss-cross of warp and weft remained. Glancing over his shoulder, Mark caught her quick appraisal of the place.

‘Don’t be too horrified. He’s an old-fashioned bloke, my dad. Saw no reason to change something if it still functioned. And in the months before he moved out he was in no state to redecorate.’

‘I’m not horrified,’ Leah replied hurriedly. ‘I’m just so curious about this place. I’ve read the letters your great-grandma wrote here so many times over—’

‘Did you bring them with you? I’d like to read them,’ he said, pulling out a stool for her at the kitchen island.

‘Of course.’ Leah rummaged in her bag.

‘No rush. Coffee first.’ He filled a battered metal kettle, plonked it on the hot plate. A coal scuttle sat next to the stove, pitch black dust twinkling on its lip. The acrid, sooty smell of it filled the room, and a fine layer of smuts speckled the sticky vinyl counter top. A long, sagging green sofa was set against the opposite wall, with a messy stack of blankets at one end, and a small television sat amidst empty cups on a low coffee table next to it. The kitchen units were
as dated as the rest of the decor – a fake white marble top, with fake beechwood door fronts. Mark jimmied a drawer open, gritting his teeth in irritation. He gave up after a while, snaked his hand in up to the wrist and withdrew it with a teaspoon pinched precariously between his fingertips. ‘You can see why I thought this would be a good place to hide out. It’s the house that time forgot,’ he said, grimly. Leah wondered whether to say anything about the newspaper articles she’d read. She stole a glance at his careworn face, and thought better of it. There was such tension behind his grey eyes; she knew she needed to tread very carefully. But it was all over, supposedly – the court case, at least. He’d been acquitted, and yet he acted as though he was still waiting for a judgement of some kind.

‘It must have been a gorgeous house in its day. I mean, it still is, obviously, it’s just …’ she floundered.

‘Don’t worry. I know it’s in a state – no offence taken. The rectory was often the grandest house in small villages like this, not including the manor, of course. Back in the days when the vicar was the most important person after the land owner.’

‘How is it the house stayed in your family when it stopped being the actual rectory?’

‘I’m not sure. My great-grandparents must have bought it from the church at some point, I suppose.’ He shrugged.

‘Do you have any childhood memories of her? Of Hester Canning?’

‘No, none at all. Sorry. She died before I was born. I remember my grandfather, Thomas, though – Hester’s son; although he died when I was still just a boy.’

‘So this house passed to your parents? Did you grow up here?’

‘No, no. It passed to my uncle and aunt. My cousins lived here as children. I visited sometimes – a few Christmas holidays. The house only came to Dad when my uncle died ten years or so back.’

‘Not to your cousins?’

‘One died in a car accident when he was twenty-two; the other fell out with the family and moved to Australia. Not heard a word
from her in fifteen years.’ He put two mugs of coffee on the work top, and caught her expression. ‘I know, I know. My family isn’t exactly blessed with luck or harmony.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Witness my own current situation,’ he added, almost to himself. ‘What about you? Domestic harmony or
Jeremy Kyle Show?’
he asked. Leah smiled.

‘Domestic harmony, for the most part. We’re very conventional. Home counties, golden retrievers, that kind of thing. My mum is in the WI; Dad plays lawn bowls. You get the picture.’

‘Sounds nice. Wholesome. Do you see a lot of them?’

‘Yes. I suppose so. They never want to come up to London though – too loud for them. I always have to go home to see them.’

‘What made you move to London?’

‘What makes anybody? Work, friends, culture. Isn’t that why you moved there?’ she asked, without thinking. He stiffened, his face darkening.

‘I thought you didn’t know who I was or anything about me?’ he demanded. Leah held up a placating hand.

‘I googled you this morning. Sorry. You were so mysterious the first time we met …’ She tried to smile but Mark’s expression was thunderous.

‘For good reason,’ he said.

‘I know. I mean … I understand. I’m not going to ask you about it,’ she replied. He stared morosely into his coffee cup for a while, dark brows beetling, hooding his eyes.

‘Thank you.’

‘Here are the letters. Have a read,’ Leah said, quickly passing them over.

Mark scanned the pages. ‘Well,’ he said, as he let the sheets of paper fall back onto the counter. ‘I can see why you’re interested in them. Very dramatic, aren’t they? She was in a right knot about something. Living in “fear and suspicion”, and “everything so strange and dark …”’