Tom Tit and Tiller Meg

Tom Tit and Tiller Meg

 

   Now, you pair of dearies, I’ve said before and I’ll say it once more:  it’s no good getting all weepy whiskered just because those villagers have been at you both again.  Cruel is what they are and always has been.  No imaginary enchantments on my part is going to change what’s deep set in their blood.  And no point giving me that black look, Tom!  You know fine I’m immune to that nonsense.  I’d be dead and risen a hundred times if curses was communicated in silly stares.  You go slink off in that corner if you wish, good creature.  Meg, do kindly draw in your claws before you does yourself damage tripping over something.  What power you imagine I have over half wits like they are, I don’t know.

   Don’t dare hiss at me, botheration of a beast, Tom Tit.  Get out of the way for good, agitating all over the scullery floor.  You, Meggy, madam, come down off that shelf, leave my blessed bonny plates alone; you have shattered enough of my crockery.

   She went off, laughing at her fading senses.  Imagine speaking to them that way, as if they were actual household beasts.   It was best sometimes to ignore this double dose of troublesomeness, especially when they were so agitated.  It was different when they carried titbits of interesting tidings into her house, for she had trouble getting herself out and about these days.  So let them slink off now and lick those little wounds inflicted by her sharp tongue.  She contented herself now with playing games with them in her mind rather than in real life, and the silly pair resented her neglect.  She could swear at times that the pair seemed like actual small people on the periphery of her vision.  On other days they were wholly invisible and the only real sign of their being was the tinkle as they danced among her dishes, speaking to each other in their make believe voices. ‘Such gibberish and nonsense,’ she said when she heard them; then she would go off muttering to her chores. 

   Strange that sometimes she was remiss enough to forget about Tom and Meg for days at a stretch.  They had not always been here, but had sidled into her household some time during these half lit years of her old age after her husband died and the children went.  Old Mary sensed their warm presence in the dark scullery corner one night, then heard the purr and lull of two complimentary creatures there.  She had been too afraid to disturb them at first.  What a length of time they slept, and how she burned with wonder at what they manner of things they were.  A cat and a rat?  No, not that.  Her cursed, cloudy eyes could not make them out closely enough and they were tucked in right behind the over-filled scuttle, too heavy for her to disturb.  She was too wary to poke them with a broom.  ‘Let them be, Mary love’ she whispered to herself.  ‘They’ll come out when they’re ready.  Leave them to rest, so long as they are not the sort that breeds and fills my house with more of their own.’

   She laughed at her weary wit and put down water and saps for her guests, wondering again what different combinations seemed likely:  robin red breast and hedgehog? Weasel and field mouse?  Even when they emerged next day from their hiding place, she could not make them out.  They were so fast on their small feet and all at once boldly accustomed to their cluttered surroundings.  So she had to accept that these unbidden creatures should share her home and she stopped actually pondering what they were.  After that she would talk to them  at times as if they were old friends long vanished and now returned, and it seemed like they assumed the shape of those people in the shadows.

   Bless them, they had a way of remembering themselves to her when poor old Mary was lost in her dithering.  They would leap up as she sat dozing, like fizzing coals from the fire, straight onto her knees.  What a start they gave, these heavy lumps of life, making her up and scream, but laughing in the end.  All her flustered outrage could not dislodge them from her lap, if that’s where they chose to be.  She could only settle back down in the rocker and let them stay.  It was startling how warm they grew, but she would not dare put down her shaking hand to stroke what might be fur or feathers or something else besides.

   One morning the weight and warmth of Tom in her lap was particularly uncomfortable.  In the end she asked would he mind moving so she could get up.  But as soon as she said it his purring turned sullen and drowned out her poor voice.  When Mary tried to rise up he made a sound like a growl and then something akin to laughter of a bad sort.

  Then Tom spoke to her directly for the first time.

   ‘Too warm, are you missus?’ he asked.  ‘You’ll be warmer still, come a time soon.  But I’ll pay them back for ye, without a worry.’

  ‘What does the beast mean?’ Old Mary shrieked, and her alarm made Tom Tit flare up in a puff ball that floated away into the dim air and hovered there, bewildered.

    Now Meg joined it with this nonsense.

    ‘He doesn’t mean his words,’ she said, coming close to Mary. ‘It’s old affliction in his bones and his tongue does loosen when he’s well off.  Sit back and be still, Missus Mary.  We’ll look after your poor old body.’

   She was so soothing that Mary did straight away what she was told, and after that they seldom spoke to her directly.  Things were brought into the house by them, maybe in compensation for how much she had been alarmed.  Little shrews and suchlike she could cope with by sweeping away with her besom out the door.  But the sly things would bring in larger culls, like great crows all chewed to bits, and even an old  piebald cat with its hair all risen and its back arched up, that seemed to have succumbed to death only after a terrible battle.

    ‘Bless them no more,’ she thought angrily.  ‘People’s pets brought in all mangled up is no laughing matter.  How they mortally stink!’

   She buried the poor beast in the back garden at night, nearly fainting with the exertion and stress, and she was sure that she was being watched.  Surely that was naughty Tom Tit in the deep shadow of the elder tree, tittering away at her troubles.  ‘Nasty cannibal,’ she hissed at him and went inside.  After that he stayed clear out of her way for a while.  The next bit of unkindness following was when he teased her, she thought, by placing odd little bits of unidentified meat on her lintel and inside her kitchen, that was somehow more disturbing than actual carcasses.  When she cursed him for his evil she seemed to hear his little voice far off, saying, ‘Not long now for thee, Margaret.’

   It made her bitter that he seemed to have turned against her for no reason and she wished that she was able to summon up a black little spell that would spin him off to hell, if only for a time.  ‘And where’s that other one when needs be?’ she asked.

   ‘Right here,’ Meggy said, startlingly next to her ear, though she could not be seen.

   ‘Have you been beside me all along?’ Margaret said grumpily.

   ‘I have always been,’ Meg said.  ‘Don’t be afraid of anything.’

   ‘What’s there to be scared off?  Tell me now.’

   Meg tried to pacify her. ‘Tom’s only gone off because he can’t stand any sort of loss like that he sees coming.  All will be well with us, old Margaret.’

    She felt too perturbed to question Meggy.  Tom Tit was in a huff and was not apparent anywhere.  All Meg would say, in a catty manner, was how else would old Margaret expect Tom to behave, seeing he was a big blue baby.  He was named Tom Titty, she explained, because he never grew up enough to break away from the teat.

   ‘You can trust Tiller Meg,’ Meg said, suddenly childlike. ‘They call me Tiller because I’ll always steer your ship true and straight.’

  The old lady was far from convinced that Meggy was telling her truth.

   ‘Maggie Thomas,’ she scolded herself.  ‘If only you had not admitted that you were lonely, then these visitants would not be so hard to get shifted.  Whatever will they tax me with next?’

   It was not long in coming.  Tom was still not to be seen and now neither was Meggy, but new offerings  still appeared in her house.  There was a muddled pile of broken children’s toys one day and the next a jagged mess of broken plates and jugs that must have originated among her neighbours. Then it was pens and slates for writing on, and slates off the blessed village roofs, bits of thatch and torn up book leaves.  Worse was when her own books got odd black hoof marks over them, then came little puddles in the kitchen which looked like blood.  Lord help her, next came pages from a desecrated bible, which sent her into a sacrilegious frenzy.  

   She got so enraged that her house guests dared not make a move for many days.  The rumpus she caused turning everything over looking for them attracted the attention of her neighbours.  Charles Merryman from over the lane looked in her open casement one afternoon to see what the noise was in aid of.

   ‘Now, Mother Thomas,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘What you been doing all hours with your rumpus?  You planning to flit away and leave the village bereft of your goodness?’

   That was a bitter joke for sure, for he had always wanted her gone, so that he could get his hands on her fine four walls and garden.

   ‘Wish as you want,’ she said tartly.  ‘But be careful if it do come true.’

   He frowned at that a little and asked if it were a threat.

   ‘You’ll see,’ said she.

   ‘I do see,’ he said, boldly sticking his head and shoulders through the window frame.  ‘And others will soon see too.’

   He drew in his loathsome neck and fled and she heard him chanting a prayer like a curse as he fled up the darkening road.  She was in a panic to see what there could be in the room that had sent him off into such strangeness, yet it was such a mess and her eyes so bleary that she could not identify the cause.  In the middle of her frantic search she turned over all the things which were not her own, though none of the things seemed likely to have set him off, being too smashed up to be recognised as someone’s stolen goods.  Suddenly, on a heap of mangled goods, Tom Tit and Tiller Meg appeared in a flash, looking shamefaced.

    She broke off her rummaging to screw up her eyes and stare at them.

   ‘I do believe you’re holding hands, or paws,’ she declared.

    ‘No, we ain’t,’ Tom said.  ‘Anyway, we just come to say sorry.’

    Then they were gone again in another flash.

    There was whispers on the wind – the parson’s thing, the parson’s thing – singing on and on, and the flashes kept on lighting in her head, endlessly.  She collapsed onto the magpie midden, wretched and twitching as the unseen singers circled her all through the night.  Some thoughtful hand covered her in the thing she had been looking for, the shredded cloth that the parson hung over the lectern while he preached his holy nonsense.  Come dawn, she could not move, but only managed to entangle herself more and more in the cloth, which might as well have been a shroud.  She was lying on the floor when they arrived, her accusing neighbours.  But to all their taunts and questions she could only babble in a broken tongued voice.

   They dragged her away quite smartly and soon as you like brought her to trial, then condemned her damn quick (as Tom Tit might blasphemously say).  Charles Merryman was hot to testify against her all sorts of things she could not recall, such as the Devil supping with her nightly and hopping in and out her bed.  Her cottage was crammed full of horned and gnarly unworldly beasts, according to him and other liars he roped in to do her down.  Yet all she could do against their slander was to bleat back with her silly tongue:  baa, baa, baa!

   It hardly surprised her when they dragged her off to Maggoty Hill and trussed her to a withy pole and set the kindling alight beneath her done in body.  Through the heat wave she saw those sullen faced neighbours that hated her.  How unhappy they appeared, when she supposed they would be merry about her getting roasted to hell.  But there, strange in the smoky glow, she swore there was Meg and Tom watching her die intently. Meggy, bless, had paws clamped together and she was singing a hymn, unheard by that crowd of village devils. Tom too was on her side again, though at first she thought he was laughing.  Now he was shouting something and shaking like a sapling all enraged, so she was right sorry for him, bellowing something out that she could not hear.  So she went unknowing into darkness and death.

   Tom Merryman, that well respected villager, took well to his new abode in Mother Thomas’s old house, once he cleared all her junk and dark associations away.  He lived there in good comfort for a season, until the autumn day two foundling creatures crept in across his threshold.  He watched them enter, mesmerised, and forgot any connection they might have stirred in his mind.  So small and lost they were, creeping up to his seat, that he welcomed their company gladly.  He fed them and petted them and let them stay, liking to have them purring and panting close by him.  Yet he never saw how dark their eyes were when they stared at him, nor knew what revenge they were hatching for the sake of poor old Mother Thomas who was all burned away.