Jay was trembling and in tears by the time he got back to the fields; he headed for the women working away from the men, instinctively thinking they would be more understanding. With a surge of relief, he saw his mother, the brown scarf knotted around her head to keep off the sun. He shouted and ran, buried himself into her warm and comforting body, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably.
‘What is it? Jay, what’s happened?’
She examined him quickly, checking for injuries. ‘What is it?’ She bent down level with his face and scrutinised him, holding him by the shoulders. The other women gathered round. ‘Had a fright,’ said an old woman there to supervise the younger ones.
Jay was sure they wouldn’t believe him. Who would? They would think he was just trying to get out of work. His mother would be ashamed of him, would say he was letting the family down.
‘What is it?’ his mother said more urgently.
‘I saw... I saw a... I don’t know. I saw someone. Something. Up there. It just appeared in a cave. Out of nothing. Then vanished again.’
There was a titter of nervous laughter; his mother looked alarmed and annoyed at the same time.
‘What do you mean? Where?’
He pointed back up the hill. ‘Beyond the stream,’ he said.
‘In the woods?’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to go there. But I heard a strange noise.’
‘He’s making it up,’ a woman said: Dell, a gossip who never had a good word to say for anyone. She’d once been beautiful, it was said, but the hardness in her face had long since covered any loveliness. Her scorn was enough to make Jay’s mother straighten up with defiance.
‘We’ll go and look,’ she said. ‘Come on, Jay. I’m sure it was just a trick of the light. You had a fright, but don’t worry.’
Her kindness was reassuring and, ignoring the others who clearly now thought this was some sort of childish joke, Jay’s mother took him by the hand. Only one other woman came as well, the eldest of them, who thought it her duty to be present at every disturbance, however minor. Everyone else got back to work.
Jay retraced his steps to the stream, then over it and into the woods. The old widow bowed and muttered to herself to ward off the spirits until they all stood once more, looking into the cave. There was nothing. No sound, no light, and certainly no fairy.
‘It was just here. It really was,’ he said, looking to see whether they were angry or dismissive. He got no hint, though; their expressions were completely unreadable.
‘What did this fairy look like?’
‘A girl,’ Jay said. ‘She had dark hair. She smiled at me. She was so beautiful.’
‘How was she dressed?’
‘Oh, like nothing you have ever seen! A red robe, shiny and glittering, like it was made of rubies.’
‘You’ve never seen a ruby,’ the old widow said. ‘How would you know?’
‘It shone in the light, dazzlingly bright,’ he insisted. ‘It was wonderful. Then she just disappeared.’
The women looked at each other, then shrugged helplessly. ‘Well, there’s nothing here now,’ his mother said. ‘So I think it would be best to forget about it.’
‘Listen, Jay. This is important,’ said the old widow. She bent down and looked him firmly in the eyes. ‘Not a word. You understand? The sooner this is forgotten the better. You don’t want a reputation for being mad, or a trickster, do you?’
He shook his head.
‘Good. Now, if I hear that you’ve been talking about this, then I’ll give you the biggest beating of your life, and I’m a strong old woman. Now, get your water, and let’s go back to work.’
There was an atmosphere for the rest of the day, an odd division between the men, who knew nothing, worked cheerfully and well, and the women, whose mood was subdued, almost fearful. Jay himself remained shaken; he knew, or rather he hoped, that he had not been dreaming. But he also realised that it was unlikely anyone would ever believe him.
Lytten glanced at his companions and smiled briefly. Most were, like him, men in their fifties; all had the care-worn, slightly shabby look of their type. None cared much for elegant clothes, preferring battered tweeds and comfortable, solid shoes. The collars of their shirts were frayed, except for those whose wives turned their shirts before admitting they were beyond repair. The jackets had leather patches sewn onto the elbows to prolong their life; most had socks that had been carefully, and repeatedly, darned. They were, he supposed, his closest friends, people he had known in some cases for decades. Yet he didn’t really think of them as friends, or even as colleagues. He didn’t really know what they were. Just part of his life; the people he spent Saturday with, after some had been in the library and others had worked on the business of teaching for an hour or two.
All of them had a secret passion, which they hid carefully from most of the world. They liked stories. Some had a weakness for detective tales, and had volumes of green-backed Penguins stacked out of sight behind the leather-bound books on Anglo-Saxon history or classical philosophy. Others had an equally fervent and illicit love of science fiction, and adored nothing better than curling up with a tale of interstellar exploration in between lectures on the evolution and reception of the nineteenth-century Russian novel. Others preferred spy stories and adventures, whether Rider Haggard or Buchan or (for the more raffish) James Bond.
Lytten had a weakness for fantastical tales of imaginary lands, peopled (if that was the word) by dragons and trolls and goblins. It was what had drawn him, many years before, into the company of Lewis and Tolkien.
It was an enthusiasm which had taken possession of him when he was thirteen, packed off to bed for four months with measles, then mumps, then chicken pox. So he read. And read, and read. There was nothing else to do; there wasn’t yet even a wireless set to listen to. While his mother kept on bringing him worthy and improving works to read, his father would smuggle in nonsense. Tales of knights and fair maidens, of gods and goddesses, of quests and adventures. He would read, then lie back and dream, improving the stories where he thought the authors had gone wrong. The dragons would become nastier, the women cleverer, the men less boringly virtuous.
Eventually he had started penning such stories himself, but was always too reticent to show them to anyone. He went to war, then became a scholar, a man of intellectual distinction, and the stories were left unfinished. Besides, it was all very well to criticise the works of others, but in fact it was quite hard, he discovered, to tell a story. His first efforts were not that much better than those he so easily faulted.
Gradually he formed a new ambition, and it was this that he was now, on a quiet Saturday in October 1960, going to reveal in all its as yet unfinished glory to his friends in the pub. He had spent years discussing the efforts of others; now, after much prodding, it was his turn.
He hoped they would be responsive; members had come and gone over the years, and the best had disappeared — Lewis sick in Cambridge, Tolkien in retirement, becoming too famous and too old to write much any more. He missed them; he would have enjoyed watching Lewis’s face.
‘Very well, gentlemen, if you could put your drinks down and pay attention, then I will explain.’
‘About time.’
‘In brief...’
‘Surely not?’
‘In brief, I am creating the world.’
He stopped and looked around. The others seemed unimpressed. ‘No goblins?’ one asked hopefully.
Lytten sniffed. ‘No goblins,’ he said. ‘This is serious. I want to construct a society that works. With beliefs, laws, superstitions, customs. With an economy and politics. An entire sociology of the fantastic.’