Foxlowe. Eleanor Wasserberg
was just there, said Toby.
—We thought he was a moor spirit, I said to Pet, who’d told us stories about them, how they led you to bogs and marshes, told you riddles, made promises with hidden stings.
Noise drifted down from the house as the others caught the scent of gossip and clattered towards the kitchen.
—If only I were so magical, said the man. —I’m parked over at Ipstones.
Richard, Freya and Dylan burst in, followed by the others. Freya stood for a second, her eyes flicking from the outsider, to us, and then settling on Blue. She had her by the hair before me and Toby could move, and dragged her out of sight, towards the goat shed. The man’s smile disappeared. Richard bounded over next to Egg.
—Hi, he said. —Welcome. Glass of water?
Pet filled a jar.
—We don’t usually sell from the house, said Richard. —We have some goats’ milk, jam and wine, if you’re—
—Unless you’re from a gallery, Dylan said. —We have some new craft pieces ready for market that you’re welcome to look at, and our higher end stuff is in the back.
—Sculpture and pottery mostly, Richard said. —Some paintings.
—Are you lost? Egg asked again.
—Is the girl all right? said the man. —What’s going on?
Folded arms and silence to this. Ellen and Libby were whispering to each other. Toby and I moved closer together. Valentina mouthed Okay? to Toby and he nodded.
—It’s all right, I said.
The man studied Richard’s face. —You’re the owner, he said, not like a question.
—We live as a commune, said Egg, so who owns what doesn’t really —
The man spoke to Richard again. —You’re Ralph’s boy, aren’t you? Same nose, and the clothes—
—Oh, said Richard, and straightened up, grew taller. —You knew—
—I lived here for a while, when I was very young, the man replied.
A ripple went through us. Someone who knew old Foxlowe, before us — not an outsider, but something else, like an old friend we’d forgotten.
The man held up his briefcase.
—I’m supposed to mark them, he said. —Papers. I was on the train. I’ve kept on working, you know. Never wanted to retire.
He looked at the briefcase and down at himself. In the silence Freya’s voice floated, No more said about it. It was her soft voice and so we parted a little as she came back with Blue at her side, hiding her hands in her sleeves, where the new scratches were. I pulled gently at her earlobe, and Toby squeezed her hand.
I found Blue’s ear. —So, how old, do you think? Guess, I whispered.
She sniffed. —A hundred Solstices.
It was the oldest we could imagine. Freya was our eldest grown and she’d lived eighty-two Solstices, summer and winter.
The outside man spoke. —And then. I just, I don’t want to, and I thought, it’s so simple, and I realised I wasn’t far from, well the train was coming through, and I just thought. I always wanted to come back and visit. Silly, really.
He trailed off and looked up at the archway and the old stone there, then looked back, smiling, like he was pleased to find something there. —I always meant to, he went on. — I was ill when it was Ralph’s funeral, and then, well, I didn’t know. You never know, do you, if you should go back, you know, to places you’ve … He spoke to Richard again, —Oh, you’re so like, he said.
Richard pulled at his shirt sleeves.
—Then it just kept playing on my mind, kept thinking about it, on the train, how much I loved it here. Your granddad and me … He nodded at Richard. —Oh we had some laughs, when I was sent up here —
—Maybe more, I whispered to Blue.
—Um, said Richard, —well, I suppose, if you want to look around—
—I heard everything went to you, the man said. —I remember hearing about all that, and it’s Ralph too, isn’t it?
—Richard, Freya corrected him.
—How old are you? asked Blue.
—I am three hundred and fifty-seven today, said the man.
She laughed.
—Aren’t you going to wish me happy birthday? he said.
—You say, Happy birthday, said Richard.
We did, copying the way his voice flew up and down on the words.
On his first day we didn’t talk to Kai much. He told us his old name, and we tried to forget it, in case he stayed. He took a t-shirt from Jumble and wore overalls over it, leaving the brown suit folded in a carrier bag on the back of the kitchen door, ready to be cut up for patches. His first evening with us, he sang with Libby and Dylan; he was good at guitar. He found a mattress in one of the back corridors and Richard said he could have that room, if he wanted.
Days passed. Richard came into our attic and pulled out cobwebbed boxes from the eaves, things we didn’t know were there. He and the man spread out photographs on the kitchen table, and the man found himself, so he said, a boy standing on the back lawns, wearing shorts, his hair cut short, squinting into the camera. He and Richard stayed up late together talking and sifting through pictures, writing things in pencil on the backs. Richard called us to look at them, Blue and me, pointed at dead faces, told us names, but they were like Leavers, just ghosts, and I said so, said, —But they aren’t like us, they just used to live here, and Richard snapped the box of photographs shut. Freya packed them away again, put them back into the eaves. I didn’t like them there, watching us sleep.
The man taught Toby how to play a game with an old ball he’d found in the sheds. He asked Valentina if she minded, and she shrugged and said she didn’t care, then watched them from the kitchen windows. He told me and Blue stories about where he’d come from, Oxford, where there were books buried under the streets, and buildings made out of yellow stone, and Freya let him even though usually we weren’t to talk about old lives, but she said his voice was nice, and she liked listening to it lilt and fall while she worked.
At the end of his first week the weather turned cool, and we made a hot dinner. I dipped bread in egg, pushing it under to make it soggy. Freya took the eggshells and smashed them in her fists.
—So witches can’t use them, she said, and winked at me.
—Can’t we have tomatoes? Ellen said.
—Yeah, no veg all week, said Dylan.
—We’ll all get scurvy, said Pet.
There was a murmur of agreement from Libby and Egg, painting their toenails with tippex.
While we ate, Kai held the conversation. When others spoke, adding anecdotes, we all listened, but when Kai took up the thread again we leaned forward with our forks hanging. He didn’t talk about the outside much but kept coming back to Foxlowe’s old life, and how there had been fires lit in every room, and books covering the walls, and people who brought you things, who just lived there to bring you things, and how he and the man called Ralph had played games on the stairs that sounded like ours, using sacks to race to the bottom. Freya leaned on her hand and watched all this, chewing her eggs, smiling.
—Thing is, Freya said, as she took Kai’s plate.
—Yes, yes, I know, Kai said, smiling. —I’m not an artist, I can’t draw! Not at all! he added, cheerfully. —I heard in one of the villages that’s what it is here now, an artists’ place. Ralph used to paint, you know, he said.
—That’s