Away With the Fairies

There is no sex, overt or covert, in this story. It is a plain, simple tale of enchantment.

*****

Tommy had made up his mind. He couldn't stick it all a moment longer. He was going to run away. But where could he go? His Nana lived in Chaddaston, and that was miles and miles away, and he had no idea how to get there. His friends were even further away, and they were only children after all. here was nothing they could do to help.

As far as his mother and father were concerned, he might as well not exist. Their conversation with him seemed to be made up of sharp orders.

"Wash your hands and face before you come and eat."

"Finish the food on your plate. There are millions of starving children in Africa who would be glad of it."

"Don't keep whining at your mother all the time. You should be trying to help her, not for ever demanding."

"Go and get ready for bed. Clean your teeth, put on your pyjamas and come and show me clean hands and face. And don't forget to wash behind your ears - you could grow cabbages there."

"Oh God, you've wet the bed you mucky little pup. Quick let's get the bottom sheet off and into the wash before your mum sees it."

It had not always been like this. Mummy used to help him get dressed, and made putting on his shirt and pullover a sort of game - but now she was so tired all the time. So tired. And Dad didn't have a kind word for anyone. He was off to work on his bike as the factory hooter sounded, and didn't come home until it was nearly Tommy's bedtime.

I don't know where I'll go, he thought, but anything has got to be better than this. They will be glad to see the back of me. Maybe when I'm gone they'll be sorry for being so nasty. I know what I'll do. I won't get ready for bed. I'll sneak out of the back door and go and hide in the Reck. I'll hide in the hidey hole under the big elder bush. If I get hungry I'll eat the berries. I know you can eat them because I used to help Nana make elderberry wine when we lived in Long Eaton.

It all went very well. Tommy took a blanket out of the washing basket and put in mum's shopping bag. Nipping out of the back door was easy-peasy. He pulled the door too without a sound, and went up the street. Sustained by a sense of adventure, he crossed over the big road just as it was getting dark. Before the parkie came along to lock the park gates he was in his hiding place.

As the darkness fell, he wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to be brave. But it was already cold, and the earth under the huge bush smelled sour and nasty. He was sure there were beetles and ants and worms and all sort of creepy-crawlies. The elderberries were far sourer than he remembered, and the taste made his mouth all screwed up. Unable to stop himself, he began to sob quietly, and his nose began to run. Gradually his control slipped until he was crying out his pain and sense of rejection

As he cried, a voice seemed to come up from far underground, booming and indistinct. Just as the voice jerked his attention away from his own misery, he became aware of a tall, tall figure looming over him. In the darkness the figure seemed to carry its own faint, shimmering illumination. He looked up at a face gazing down at him, and that face, even at seven years old, Tommy knew, was the most terrifyingly beautiful thing he had ever seen.

It was pale as fresh snow, gaunt and angular, with a look that said that its wearer was starved, with a hunger that food could not quell and a thirst that drink could not quench. The nose was thin as a blade, with flaring nostrils. The eyes - the eyes, looking out from under deep-shaded brows were almost as pale as the face, but an intense pale greeny-blue like ice crystals.

It was the face of a man, but like no man's face Tommy had ever seen or imagined. He could no more think of disobeying this incarnation of majesty, than he could disobey a policeman. The tall, tall figure stooped and held out his hand, and Tommy took it in his own, small, grimy hand. He clutched tightly to two fingers. They walked together down the staircase that opened up beneath them, and they were immediately surrounded by the dim, shimmering glow that the tall figure carried with him.

They walked through narrow passages, high enough for the tall, etiolate figure to walk without stooping. Tommy did not notice that the hand that he clutched so tightly was still perfectly within his reach as he walked. Ahead the glow intensified and they was walking towards the soft, golden light. The passage opened up into a space, all curves and vaulting arches, no hard, sharp angles, even as the floor met the walls.

The middle of the roomy space was a raised daïs, covered in carpets and cushions in rich, muted colours. Tommy's eyes were compelled to the face of a woman. At first sight she looked very like her male counterpart; as gaunt, as angular and as starkly beautiful; with high cheekbones above hollowed cheeks, deep-set, gleaming eyes of the same crystalline ice-blue-green, and in the eyes and the thin-lipped mouth the same greedy, unappeasable hunger. In that first avid glance she gave him, she saw the terror rise up in him like vomit, and, as he looked, she changed.

Tommy had thought, as he looked at her face, that the dark shadows of her bones showed through the skin, as if he could somehow see through her flesh. Now, he could see the angles soften, the skin plump up, and the icy coldness of her eyes soften. Her lips, thin and pale, reddened and curved in a warm, motherly smile.

Just as the room they were in, far underground, felt warm although he knew it was cold as the grave, so did her face seem warm and loving, although he knew it was cold and rapacious. His yearning to be mothered made him surrender to the seduction and soon he forgot it was an illusion.

"Tommy darling", her sweet voice wheedled, "come and lie down by my side, and let me take care of you. My darling boy, you're so tired, it's long after your bedtime. Would you like me to sing you to sleep?"

It was the voice of his Mummy as she used to be before she got too weary and dispirited to have any energy to spare for him. He lay down, cuddled up along her flank, luxuriating in the feeling of being loved and mothered. Falling asleep, he half-heard the lilting, plaintive sound of a low, soft, sweet voice singing in a language unknown.

ii.

The sun was already high in the sky when Tommy awoke. He was curled up on his side under a bush. His left arm was curled under his head, and when he moved his arm spasmed violently as the blood rushed back. He sat up, gasping with the pain. He looked around, utterly confused. This was not an elder bush; it was a flowering shrub like the ones in mum's garden, a hydrangea. Through its leafy branches he could see that he was not in the Recreation Ground. This was a small, suburban back garden, with a lawn divided into two strips by a crazy-paving path. On either side of the lawn, scalloped flower beds, with small flowers at the front, taller shrubs behind. He looked up the garden in bewilderment, and found he was looking at a new, yellow brick house with a neat tiled roof. Where could he be?

He had to get out of this garden. What if someone should come? They might call a policeman, and Dad would be so cross. He could see a gate on the side of the house by the dustbin. When he got there he could just reach up to a bolt near the top if he dragged the upended wheelbarrow over. Yes, he could reach up and loose the bolt.

He dragged the barrow back to its place and opened the gate wide enough to slide through. He stood in what was clearly a sidestreet, and at the end he could see a main road thick with traffic. The cars were every colour of the rainbow, not just the familiar black, and they were weird shapes, some like boxes, some long and some low on the ground and open topped like racing cars, some large and looming with black-tinted windows. He had never seen cars like them. Where were the Ford Populars and Morris Minors and Volkswagen Beetles? Where were the Reliant Robins; the Messerschmitt bubble cars? What about that new one that only came out last year - the Mini?

When he reached the main road, Tommy was suddenly struck with familiarity. The other side of the road was terraced with large Edwardian houses in faded red brick and terra cotta. One side of the road was strange small houses, tight packed with neat little pocket-handkerchief front gardens, the other traditional, and recognisable. The name of the street across the road from him was Ladysmith Avenue, the street where he lived. Not quite as he knew it. The front gardens with their privet hedges and flower-beds had all gone, replaced with patterned brick or flagged hard standing for cars. The old sash windows with their peeling paint had been replaced with what looked like white plastic and glass, and even the front doors appeared to be white plastic. How could all this have been transformed overnight?

Wondering and trembling he walked unsteadily down to number 44. Like the other houses, it had lost its low walls and latched front gate, its stunted rose bushes with their fierce, stabbing thorns. The old front garden was now a featureless rectangle of dirty, oil-stained concrete, on which crouched a shrouded motorbike. He walked up to the door, and, ignoring the button on the white plastic box that housed bell-push, he rattled the letterbox. Panicking slightly he went on rattling.

A few seconds later the door opened wearily, sticking on the something and making a little grating noise. The faded woman staring at him had sparse grey hair and a face worn into lines of sadness and self-neglect. Tommy thought she looked like his mother, but not his mother. His mother's hair had been all tight, frizzy black curls, unruly and somehow full of life, even when she was bone-weary. This not-mother's hair was straight and lank, hanging around her face as if it was too dispirited to move away.

She stared at him as if what she had always dreaded had now come upon her. Her eyes stared and her mouth fell open to show gleaming white false teeth with unnaturally rosy plastic gums.

"Oh God. You. You little shit. You have come back, just like Mum said you would. You killed them both, and now you have come to gloat."

Then the incongruity of it all overcame her and she began to cry, piteously, slumping against the wall. Her hands covered her face, her fingers curling in to rend the flesh as tears trickled between her fingers. Tommy stood helpless in his fear and bewilderment. Who was this woman? Why was she in his house. What had happened to Mum?

He sat down on the doorstep and began to cry himself. Her grief did not mingle with his fearful self-pity; they remained separate, dissociated. Two people weeping out their misery in solitude, side by side.

She slowly regained some composure, and brought him into the kitchen. She poured him a cup of milk, and put butter and marmite on two slices of bread. He ate and drank ravenously. The cup of tea she had poured five minutes ago was cold, but welcome, and she drank it down.

"Right. Now what is your name?"

"Thomas Stanley Lynne, and I live at number forty-four Ladysmith Avenue, Kegworth, Derbyshire," he recited.

"When's your birthday?"

"Fifteenth of January. I am seven years of age."

"That's what I thought. I am your sister Miriam, I was born three days after you disappeared, fifty-three years ago".

"I never even knew that Mum was going to have a baby. All I knew was that we have just moved house, and everyone was shoutin' an' yelling at me all the time."

"Yes, I know. Mum told me. She was very sorry about that after. Dad never got over your disappearance. He died when I was four. I can hardy remember him at all. Mum died about five years ago. I looked after her all the way through Parkinson's disease. You know, she always said you would come back one day.

"Just before she died she made me promise again to wait here for you. I never believed her; I thought you had to be long since dead. But now, here you are, and you're my responsibility now. Funny, I always wanted a child, but I never dreamt it would be like this."

That evening after dark, Tommy went back to his hydrangea bush, but nothing happened. The fair folk are proud people. They never repeat a joke.