The thirteenth tale (35 page)

Then, full of dignified self-pity, I stood up and walked out of
the room.

It wasn’t until the end of the afternoon that she came to find
me on the window seat in the library. I had drawn the curtain to hide me, but
she came straight to the place and peered around. I heard her approaching
steps, felt the curtain move when she lifted it. Forehead pressed against the
glass, I was watching the drops of rain against the window-pane. The wind was
making them shiver; they were constantly threatening to set off on one of their
zigzag courses where they swallow up every droplet in their path and leave a
brief silvery trail behind. She came to me and rested her head against my
shoulder. I shrugged her off angrily. Would not turn and speak to her. She took
my hand and slipped something onto my finger.

I waited for her to go before I looked. A ring. She had given me
a ring.

I twisted the stone inward, to the palm side of my finger, and
brought it close to the window. The light brought the stone to life. Green,
like the color of my eyes. Green, like the color of Emmeline’s eyes. She had given
me a ring. I closed my fingers into my palm and made a tight fist with the
stone at its heart.

John collected buckets of rainwater and emptied them; he peeled
vegetables for the pot; he went to the farm and returned with milk and butter.
But after every task, his slowly gathered energy seemed exhausted, and every
time I wondered whether he would have the strength to heave his lean frame up
from the table to get on with the next thing.

‘Shall we go to the topiary garden?“ I asked him. ”You might show
me what to do there.“

He didn’t reply. He hardly heard me, I think. For a few days I
left it, then I asked again. And again. And again.

Eventually he went to the shed, where he sharpened the pruning
shears with his old smooth rhythm. Then we lifted down the long ladders and
carried them out-of-doors. “Like this,” he said, reaching to show me the safety
catch on the ladder. He extended the ladder against the solid garden wall. I
practiced the safety catch a few times, then went up a few feet and down again.
“It won’t feel so secure when it’s resting against yew,” he told me. “It’s safe
enough, if you get it right. You have to get a feel for it.”

And then we went to the topiary garden. He led me to a
medium-size yew shape that had grown shaggy. I went to rest the ladder against
it, but “No, no,” he cried. “Too impatient.” Three times he walked slowly
around the tree. Then he sat down on the ground and lit a cigarette. I sat down
and he lit one for me, too. “Never cut into the sun,” he told me. And “Don’t
cut into your own shadow.” He drew a few times on his cigarette. “Be wary of
clouds. Don’t let them skew your line when they blow about. Find something
permanent in your line of vision. A roof or a fence. That’s your anchor. And
never be in a hurry. Three times as long in the looking as in the cutting.” He
never lifted his eye from the tree all the time he spoke, and neither did I.
“You have to have a feeling for the back of the tree while you’re trimming the
front, and the other way around. And don’t just cut with the shears. Use your
whole arm. All the way up to your shoulder.”

We finished the cigarettes and stubbed out the ends under the
toes of our boots.

‘And how you see it now, from a distance, keep that in your head
when you’re seeing it close up.“

I was ready.

Three times he let me rest the ladder against the tree before he
was satisfied it was safe. And then I took the shears and went up.

I worked for three hours. At first I was conscious of the
height, kept looking down, had to force myself to go one more step up the
ladder. And each time I moved the ladder, it took me several goes to get it
safe. But gradually the task took me over. I hardly knew how high I was, so
absorbed was my mind in the shape I was making. John stood by, mostly silent.
Once in a while he made a comment—Watch your shadow! or Think of the back!—but
mostly he just watched and smoked. It was only when I came down from the ladder
for the last time, slipped the safety catch and telescoped it, that I realized
how sore my hands were from the weight of the shears. But I didn’t care.

I stood well back to study my work. I walked three times around
the tree. My heart leaped. It was good.

John nodded. “Not bad,” he pronounced. “You’ll do.”

I went to get the ladder from the shed to trim the big bowler
hat, and the ladder was gone. The boy I didn’t like was in the kitchen garden
with the rake. I went up to him, scowling. “Where’s the ladder?” It was the
first time I had spoken to him.

He ignored my brusqueness and answered me politely. “Mr. Digence
took it. He’s around the front, fixing the roof.”

I helped myself to one of the cigarettes John had left in the
shed, and smoked it, sending mean looks to the boy, who eyed it enviously. Then
I sharpened the pruning shears. Then, liking the sharpening, I sharpened the
garden knife, taking my time, doing it well. All the time, behind the rhythm of
the stone against the blade, was the rhythm of the boy’s rake over the soil.
Then I looked at the sun and thought it was getting late to be starting on the
large bowler hat. Then I went to find John.

The ladder was lying on the ground. Its two sections made a
crazy clock-hands angle; the metal channel that was supposed to hold them at a
constant six o’clock had been wrenched from the wood, and great splinters
protruded from the gash in the side rail. Beside the ladder lay John. He did
not move when I touched his shoulder, but he was warm as the sun that touched
his splayed limbs and his bloodied hair. He was staring straight up into the
clear blue sky, but the blue of his eyes was strangely overcast.

The sensible girl deserted me. All of a sudden I was only
myself, just a stupid child, almost nothing at all.

‘What shall I do?“ I whispered.

‘What shall I do?“ My voice frightened me.

Stretched out on the ground, with John’s hand clutched in mine
and shards of gravel digging into my temple, I watched time pass. The shadow of
the library bay spread across the gravel and reached the farthest rungs of the
ladder. Rung after rung it crept up the ladder toward us. It reached the safety
catch.

The safety catch. Why had John not checked the safety catch?
Surely he would have checked it? Of course he would. But if he did check it,
then how… why… ?

It didn’t bear thinking about.

Rung, after rung, after rung, the shadow of the bay crept nearer
and nearer. It reached John’s worsted trousers, then his green shirt, then his
hair—how thin his hair had grown! Why had I not taken better care of him?

It didn’t bear thinking about. Yet how not to think? While I was
noticing the whiteness of John’s hair, I noticed, too, the deep grooves cut
into the earth by the feet of the ladder as it lurched away from under him. No
other signs. Gravel is not sand or snow or even newly dug earth. It does not
hold a footprint. No trace to show how someone might have come, how they might
have loitered at the base of the ladder, how, when they had finished what they
came for, they calmly walked away. For all the gravel could tell me, it might
have been a ghost.

Everything was cold. The gravel, John’s hand, my heart.

I stood up and left John without looking back. I went around the
house to the kitchen garden. The boy was still there; he was putting the rake
and the broom away. He stopped when he saw me approach, stared at me. And then,
when I stopped—Don’t faint! Don’t faint! I told myself—he came running forward
to catch me. I watched him as though from a long, long way away. And I didn’t
faint. Not quite. Instead, when he came close, I felt a voice rise up inside
myself, words that I didn’t choose to say, but which forced their way out of my
strangled throat. “Why doesn’t anybody help me?”

He grasped me under my arms; I slumped against him; he helped me
gently down to the grass. “I’ll help you,” he said. “I will.”

With the death of John-the-dig still fresh in my mind, the
vision of Miss Winter’s face, bereft, still dominating my memory, I barely
noticed the letter that was waiting for me in my room.

I didn’t open it until I had finished my transcription, and when
I did, there wasn’t much to it.

Dear Miss Lea,

After all the assistance your father has given me over the
years, may I say how glad I am to be able in some small way to return the favor
to his daughter.

My initial researches in the United Kingdom have revealed no
indication of the whereabouts of Miss Hester Barrow after her period of
employment at Angelfield. I have found a certain number of documents relating
to her life before that period, and I am compiling a report that you should
have within a few weeks.

My researches are by no means at an end. I have not yet
exhausted my investigation of the Italian connection, and it is more than
likely that some detail arising from the early years will throw up a new line
of inquiry.

Do not despair. If your governess can be found, I will find her.

Yours sincerely, Emmanuel Drake

I put the letter away in a drawer, then pulled on my coat and
gloves. “Come on, then,” I said to Shadow.

He followed me downstairs and outdoors, and we took the path
along the side of the house. Here and there a shrub grown against the wall
caused the path to drift; imperceptibly it led away from the wall, away from
the house, to the mazelike enticements of the garden. I resisted its easy curve
and continued straight on. Keeping the house wall always on my left meant
squeezing behind an ever-widening thicket of densely grown, mature shrubs.
Their gnarled stems caught my ankles; I had to wrap my scarf around my face to
avoid being scratched. The cat accompanied me so far, then stopped, overwhelmed
by the thickness of the undergrowth.

I kept going. And I found what I was looking for. A window,
almost overgrown with ivy, and with such a denseness of evergreen leaf between
it and the garden that the glimmer of light escaping from it would never be
noticed.

Directly inside the window, Miss Winter’s sister sat at a table.
Opposite her was Judith. She was spooning mouthfuls of soup between the
invalid’s raw, patched lips. Suddenly, midway between bowl and mouth, Judith
paused and looked directly toward me. She couldn’t see me; there was too much
ivy. She must have felt the touch of my gaze. After a moment’s pause, she
turned back to her task and carried on. But not before I had noticed something
strange about the spoon. It was a silver spoon with an elongated A in the form
of a stylized angel ornamenting the handle.

I had seen a spoon like that before. A. Angel. Angelfield.
Emmeline had a spoon like that, and so did Aurelius.

Keeping flat to the wall, and with the branches tangling in my
hair, I wriggled back out of the shrubbery. The cat watched me as I brushed the
bits of broken twig and dead leaves from my sleeves and shoulders.

‘Inside?“ I suggested, and he was more than happy to concur.

Mr. Drake hadn’t been able to trace Hester for me. On the other
hand, I had found Emmeline.

THE ETERNAL TWILIGHT

In my study I transcribed; in the garden I wandered; in my
bedroom I stroked the cat and held off my nightmares by staying awake. The
moonlit night when I had seen Emmeline appear in the garden seemed like a dream
to me now, for the sky had closed in again, and we were immersed once more in
the endless twilight.

With the deaths of the Missus and now John-the-dig, an additional
chill crept into Miss Winter’s story. Was it Emmeline—that alarming figure in
the garden—who had tampered with the ladder? I could only wait and let the
story reveal itself. Meanwhile, with December waxing, the shadow hovering at my
window grew always more intense. Her closeness repelled me, her distance broke
my heart, every sight of her evoked in me the familiar combination of fear and
longing.

I got to the library in advance of Miss Winter—morning or
afternoon or evening, I don’t know, they were all the same by now—and stood by
the window to wait. My pale sister pressed her fingers to mine, trapped me in
her imploring gaze, misted the glass with her cool breath. I only had to break
the glass, and I could join her.

‘Whatever are you looking at?“ came Miss Winter’s voice behind
me.

Slowly I turned.

‘Sit down,“ she barked at me. Then, ”Judith, put another log on
the fire, would you, and then bring this girl something to eat.“ I sat down.

Judith brought cocoa and toast. Miss Winter continued her story
while I sipped at the hot cocoa.

‘I’ll help you,“ he said. But what could he do? He was just a
boy.

I got him out of the way. I sent him to fetch Dr. Maudsley, and
while he was gone I made strong, sweet tea and drank a potful. I thought hard
thoughts and I thought them quickly. By the time I was at the dregs, the prick
of tears had quite retreated from my eyes. It was time for action.

By the time the boy returned with the doctor, I was ready. The
moment I heard their steps approaching the house, I turned the corner to meet
them.