Away With The Fairies.

Away With The Fairies.

Every year, when spring comes knocking on winter’s door, and the crocuses and daffodils invade Jack Frost’s crisp blanket by popping up around tree trunks like multicoloured halos, I am often reminded of an incident that happened several years ago, a moment that I will take to my grave.

My wife, Amy and I were tending to our neglected garden at our first home. I was balancing halfway up a ladder, tidying up a shabby conifer tree, and Amy stood on the bottom rung to support me.

“Stop shaking the ladder!” I laughed, as Amy jiggled up and down.

I can remember looking down at the beaming face smiling up at me and thinking how long it had been since I’d seen her smile that way.

As I climbed another rung, Amy grabbed my boot. “Okay, okay,” she said, noticing the horror struck look on my face. She knew I hated heights.

“We’ll never get this garden sorted if you keep that up,” I said, steadying myself, one hand clinging on for dear life, the other desperate not to drop the hedge shears.

She always knew how to get around me, and with puppy eyes and pouting lips she mouthed, “Sorry.” Again that smile. It’s the simplest of communications that evoke the biggest reactions. When she smiled, her cheeks lifted and her eyes seemed to disappear from the effort. That cheeky face always reminded me of our four-year-old daughter, Jessica, the reason we hadn’t had much to smile about in those days.

You see, eighteen months previous to that day, we had lost Jessica to Leukaemia, and Amy, understandably hadn’t laughed or smiled with genuine happiness since. I was beginning to think the best part of her had died along with our little girl. The fact we had around seven months to prepare for the loss didn’t soften the eventual blow; it just made every moment seem like the last. Of course, we were both devastated, but after six months or so, with most of that time spent with a bottle in my mouth, I had wanted some solidity back in our lives again. I was selfish looking back; I wasn’t supporting Amy during my drunken stupor, and hadn’t noticed the preliminary signs of her self-destruction. Her anti-depressants were rapidly vanishing, and the day I found her unconscious, perched upon on the toilet seat, slumped against the bathroom wall, was the day I emptied twenty-four bottles of beer into the kitchen sink. I wished I could understand the maternal bond women have with their kin, but for a man this is impossible; I like to think I did well at turning things around though. To this day, I haven’t got over our loss, and never will.

“We only have the flower beds to weed and then I think we can call the estate agents,” I said, snipping away.

Amy excitedly shook the ladder again. “You mean it?” she asked, her face lighting up.

Jessica had had all her mother’s genes, and there were moments like this, standing up a ladder looking down at my wife’s grinning face, when flashes of Jessica surfaced.

“Yes, I think so,” I replied.

After we had gained some control over our lives, we decided to move house. There were just too many memories in the place, and sometimes when I was alone there, the ambience felt chilly. About a week after Jessica passed away, Amy packed up all of Jess’s things. I put them in boxes and stored them in the loft. I thought I had packed away everything, I should say. One morning we came down to find the fridge had packed up. I pulled it out, and sitting in the empty space was a tiny, pastel yellow bootie Jessica had worn in her first year. It took Amy a full day of tears to get over that, and whilst I was in the loft trying to locate the other bootie, I could smell Jessica, the scent of talc still lingering on her tiny clothes. Needless to say, I was overcome and broke down. The only memory of Jessica Amy allowed on show was a photo sitting on her bedside table.

Cheeky, is the word I would use to describe Jessica. She could be a real little terror too. Like me, she virtually lived in the garden, and she would totter off down to the bottom and play with her dolls amongst the bracken ferns. Her favourite game was “grown-ups” and she would borrow- without asking I may add- various items that belonged to Amy and I. The best example of this was the time Amy had been having a bath, and Jessica had dressed in all of her clothes, a pair of high heels and all her jewellery. When Amy had found out, she hit the roof. Her favourite dress had been torn, a heel snapped off one of the shoes, and a silver necklace given to her by her grandmother, with a small picture of Jessica in the locket, had been lost. We spent hours searching for it, but no luck. “The Fairies took it,” Jessica had said, her eyes wet with tears. Amy shook her head in despair, and I had to laugh inside at that comment. My newspaper would often go missing too, only to turn up with tiny muddy handprints all over it. “I was doing the crossword,” she would say, “and checking my socks and shares.” I really miss her funny little ways.

I had nearly finished trimming the conifer, and as I took another step up, an explosion of black and white feathers burst out at me. I yelped like a dog and Amy roared with laughter as I dropped the shears. “It’s only a magpie, silly” she giggled. “Stop being a big baby.”

I was about to climb down and give Amy a serious tickling, when I noticed something between the branches. I leaned forward, curiously parting them, and sitting there, was a bird’s nest. In it, four eggs cosily nestled together. They were faded turquoise with brown flecks, and I nearly called down to Amy, but noticed something else before I had the chance. I carefully put my hand in between the eggs and wrapped the loop of a silver chain around my index finger, slowly lifting out a thin necklace. With my thumbnail, I popped open the oval locket attached. My heart was pounding and my legs felt like jelly as Jessica smiled out at me.

“What’re you doing?” Amy asked.

I looked down at her bemused face, and gazing back at Jessica again, I snapped the locket shut and carefully replaced it amongst the eggs.

“Oh nothing,” I replied, peering through the branches to the spot where the bracken ferns had overgrown.

Some things are better left with the Fairies.