The thirteenth tale (42 page)

Between us, in the sickbed, Emmeline’s breath rolled in and out,
in a smooth, imperturbable rhythm, soothing like the sound of waves on a
seashore.

Miss Winter did not speak, and I, too, was silent, composing in
my mind impossible messages I might send to my sister via this imminent
traveler to that other world. With every exhalation, the room seemed filled
with a deeper and more enduring sorrow.

Against the window, a dark silhouette, Miss Winter stirred.

‘You should have this,“ she said, and a movement in the darkness
told me she was holding something out to me across the bed.

My fingers closed on a rectangular leather object with a metal
lock. Some sort of book.

‘From Emmeline’s treasure box. It will not be needed anymore. Go
away. Read it. When you come back we will talk.“

Book in hand, I crossed the room to the door, feeling my way by
the furniture in my path. Behind me was the tide of Emmeline’s breath rolling
in and out.

A DIARY AND A TRAIN

Hester’s diary was damaged. The key was missing, the clasp so
rusted that it left orange stains on your fingers. The first three pages were
stuck together where the glue from the inner cover had melted into them. On
every page the last word dissolved into a brownish tide mark, as if the diary
had been exposed to dirt and damp together. A few pages had been torn; along
the ripped edges was a tantalizing list of fragments: abn, cr, ta, est. Worst of
all, it seemed that the diary had at some point been submerged in water. The
pages undulated; when closed, the diary splayed to more than its intended
thickness.

It was this submersion that was going to cause me the greatest
difficulty. When one glanced at a page, it was clear that it was script. Not
any old script, either, but Hester’s. Here were her firm ascenders, her
balanced, fluid loops; here were her comfortable slant, her economic yet
functional gaps. But on a closer look, the words were blurred and faded. Was
this line an l or a t? Was this curve an a or an e? Or an s, even? Was this
configuration to be read as bet or lost?

It was going to be quite a puzzle. Although I subsequently made
a transcript of the diary, on that day the holiday train was too crowded to
permit pencil and paper. I hunched in my window seat, diary close to my nose,
and pored over the pages, applying myself to the task of deciphering. I managed
one word in three at first, then as I was drawn into the flow of her meaning, the
words began to come halfway to meet me, rewarding my efforts with generous
revelations, until I was able to turn the pages with something like the speed
of reading. In that train, the day before Christmas, Hester came to life.

I will not test your patience by reproducing Hester’s diary here
as it came to me: fragmented and broken. In the spirit of Hester herself, I
have mended and tidied and put in order. I have banished chaos and clutter. I
have replaced doubt with certainty, shadows with clarity, lacunae with
substance. In doing so, I may have occasionally put words into her page that
she never wrote, but I can promise that if I have made mistakes, it is only in
the small things; where it matters I have squinted and scrutinized until I am
as sure as sure can be that I have distinguished her original meaning.

I do not give the entire diary, only an edited selection of
passages. My choice has been dictated first by questions of relevance to my
purpose, which is to tell the story of Miss Winter, and second by my desire to
give an accurate impression of Hester’s life at Angelfield.

Angelfield House is decent enough at a distance, although it
faces the wrong way and the windows are badly positioned, but on approaching,
one sees instantly the state of dilapidation it has been allowed to fall into.
Sections of the stonework are dangerously weathered. Window frames are rotting.
And it did look as though parts of the roof are storm-damaged. I shall make it
apriority to check the ceilings in the attic rooms.

The housekeeper welcomed me at the door. Though she tries to
hide it, I understood immediately that she has difficulty seeing and hearing.
Given her great age, this is no surprise. It also explains the filthy state of
the house, but I suppose the Angelfield family does not want to throw her out
after a lifetime’s service in the house. I can approve their loyalty, though I
fail to see why she cannot be helped by younger, stronger hands.

Mrs. Dunne told me about the household. The family has been
living here with what most would consider a greatly reduced staff for years
now, and it has come to be accepted as part of the way of the house. Quite why
it should be so, I have not yet ascertained, but what I do know is that there
is, outside the family proper, only Mrs. Dunne and a gardener called John
Digence. There are deer (though there is no hunting anymore), but the man who
looks after them is never seen around the house; he takes instruction from the
same solicitor who engaged me and who acts as a kind of estate manager—so far
as there is any estate management. It is Mrs. Dunne herself who deals with the
regular household finances. I supposed that Charles Angelfield looked over the
books and the receipts each week, but Mrs. Dunne only laughed and asked if I thought
she had the sight to go making lists of figures in a book. I cannot help but
think this highly unorthodox. Not that I think Mrs. Dunne untrustworthy. From
what I have seen she gives every indication of being a good-hearted, honest
woman, and it is my hope that when I come to know her better I shall be able to
ascribe her reticence entirely to deafness. I made a note to demonstrate to Mr.
Angelfield the advantages of keeping accurate records and thought that I might
offer to undertake the job myself if he was too busy to do it.

Pondering this, I began to think it time I met my employer, and
could not have been more surprised when Mrs. Dunne told me he spends his entire
day in the old nursery and that it is not his habit to leave it. After a great
many questions I eventually ascertained that he is suffering from some kind of
disorder of the mind. A great pity! Is there anything more sorrowful than a
brain whose proper function has been disrupted?

Mrs. Dunne gave me tea (which I pretended to drink out of
politeness, but later threw into the sink for I had no faith in the cleanliness
of the teacup, having seen the state of the kitchen) and told me a little about
herself. She is in her eighties, never married, and has lived here all her
life. Naturally enough our talk then turned to the family. Mrs. Dunne knew the
mother of the twins as a girl and young woman. She confirmed what I had already
understood: that it is the recent departure of the mother to an asylum for the
sick of mind that precipitated my engagement. She gave me such a contorted
account of the events that precipitated the mother’s committal that I could not
make out whether the woman had or had not attacked the doctor’s wife with a
violin. It hardly matters; clearly there is a family history of disturbance in
the brain, and I confess, my heart beat a little faster when I had it
confirmed. What satisfaction is there, for a governess, in being given the
direction of minds that already run in smooth and untrammeled lines? What
challenge in maintaining ordered thinking in children whose minds are already
neat and tidy? I am not only ready for this job, I have spent years longing for
it. Here, I shall finally find out what my methods are worth!

I inquired after the father’s family—-for though Mr. March is
deceased and the children never knew him, still, his blood is theirs and has an
impact on their natures. Mrs. Dunne was able to tell me very little, though.
Instead, she began a series of anecdotes about the mother and the uncle, which,
if I am to read between the lines (as I’m sure she meant me to), contained
hints of something scandalous… Of course, what she suggests is not at all
likely, not in England at least, and I suspect her of being somewhat fanciful.
The imagination is a healthy thing, and a great many scientific discoveries
could not have been made without it, but it needs to be harnessed to some
serious object if it is to come to anything. Left to wander its own way, it
tends to lead into silliness. Perhaps it is age that makes her mind wander, for
she seems a kind thing in other ways, and not the sort to invent gossip for the
sake of it. In any case, I immediately put the topic firmly from my mind.

As I write this I hear noises outside my room. The girls have
come out of their hiding place and are creeping about the house. They have been
done no favors, allowed to suit themselves like this. They will benefit
enormously from the regime of order, hygiene and discipline that I mean to
instill in the house. I shall not go out to them. No doubt they will expect me
to, and it will suit my purposes to disconcert them at this stage.

Mrs. Dunne showed me the rooms on the ground floor. There is
filth everywhere, all the surfaces thick with dust, and curtains hanging in
tatters, though she does not see it and thinks of them as they were years ago
in the time of the twins’ grandfather, when there was a full staff There is a
piano that may be beyond saving, but I will see what can be done, and a library
that may be full of knowledge once the dust is wiped and one can see what is
there.

The other floors I explored alone, not wanting to inflict too
many stairs at once on Mrs. Dunne. On the first floor I became aware of a
scuffling, a whispering and smothered giggling. I had found my charges. They
had locked the door and fell silent when I tried the handle. I called their
names once, then left them to their own devices and went on to the second
floor. It is a cardinal rule that I do not chase my charges, but train them to
come to me. The second-floor rooms were in the most terrible disorder. Dirty,
but I had come to expect that. Rainwater had come through the roof (I expected
as much) and there were fungi growing in some of the rotting floorboards. This
is a truly unhealthy environment in which to raise children. A number of
floorboards were missing, looked as if they had been deliberately removed. I
shall have to see Mr. Angelfield about getting these repaired. I shall point
out to him that someone could fall downstairs or at the very least twist an
ankle. All the hinges need oiling, and all the doorframes are warped. Wherever
I went I was followed by a squeaking of doors swinging on their hinges, a
creaking of floorboards, and drafts that set curtains fluttering, though it is
impossible to tell exactly where they come from.

I returned to the kitchen as soon as I could. Mrs. Dunne was
preparing our evening meal, and I had no inclination to eat food cooked in pots
as unpleasant as the ones I had seen, so I got stuck into a great pile of
washing up (after giving the sink the most thorough scrubbing it had seen for a
decade) and kept a close eye on her with the preparation. She does her best.

The girls would not come down to eat. I called once and no more.
Mrs. Dunne was all for calling and persuading, but I told her that I have my
methods, and she must be on my side.

The doctor came to dine. As I had been led to expect, the head
of the household did not appear. I had thought the doctor would be offended at
this, but he seemed to find it entirely normal. So it was just the two of us,
and Mrs. Dunne doing her best to wait at table, but needing much help from me.
The doctor is an intelligent, cultivated man. He has a sincere desire to see
the twins improve and has been the prime mover in bringing me to Angelfield. He
explained to me at great length the difficulties I am likely to face here, and
I listened with as much politeness as I could muster. Any governess, after the
few hours I have had in this house, would have a full and clear picture of the
task awaiting her, but he is a man, hence cannot see how tiresome it is to have
explained at length what one has already fully understood. My fidgeting and the
slight sharpness of one or two of my answers entirely escaped his notice, and I
fear that his energy and his analytical skills are not matched by his powers of
observation. I do not criticise him unduly for expecting everyone he meets to
be less able than himself. For he is a clever man, and more than that, he is a
big fish in a small pond. He has adopted an air of quiet modesty, but I see
through that easily enough, for I have disguised myself in exactly the same
manner. However, I shall need his support in the project I have taken on, and
shall work at making him my ally despite his shortcomings.

I hear sounds of an upset from downstairs. Presumably the girls
have discovered the lock on the pantry door. They will be angry and frustrated,
but how else can I train them to proper mealtimes? And without mealtimes, how
can order be restored?

Tomorrow I will start by cleaning this bedroom. I have wiped the
surfaces with a damp cloth this evening, and was tempted to clean the floor,
but told myself no. It will only need doing again tomorrow when I scrub the
walls and take down the curtains that are so thick with dirt. So tonight I
sleep in dirt, but tomorrow I shall sleep in a bright clean room. It will be a
good beginning. For I plan to restore order and discipline to this house, and
to succeed in my aim must first of all make myself a clean room to think in. No
one can think clearly and make progress if she is not surrounded by hygiene and
order.

The twins are crying in the hall. It is time for me to meet my
charges.

I have been so busy organizing the house that I have had little
time for my diary lately, but I must make the time, for it is chiefly in
writing that I record and develop my methods.