The thirteenth tale (48 page)

And someone had been in the potting shed. He hadn’t left the old
newspapers in that state, had he? And those crates—they’d been put away tidy;
he knew they had.

For once he put on the padlock before he went home.

Passing by the garden tap, he noticed it dripping again. Gave it
a firm half turn without even thinking about it. Then, putting his weight into
it, another quarter turn. That should do it.

In the night he awoke, uneasy in his mind for reasons he
couldn’t account for. Where would you sleep, he found himself wondering, if you
couldn’t get into the potting shed and make yourself a bed with newspapers in a
crate? And where would you get water if the tap was turned off so tight you
couldn’t move it? Chiding himself for his midnight foolishness, he opened the
window to feel the temperature. Too late for frosts. Cool for the time of year,
though. And how much colder if you were hungry? And how much darker if you were
a child?

He shook his head and closed the window. No one would abandon a
child in his garden, would they? Of course they wouldn’t. Nevertheless, before
five he was up and out of bed. He took his walk around the garden early,
surveying his vegetables, the topiary garden, planning his work for the day.
All morning he kept an eye out for a floppy hat in the fruit bushes. But there
was nothing to be seen.

‘What’s the matter with you?“ said the Missus when he sat in
silence at her kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee.

‘Nothing,“ he said.

He drained his cup and went back to the garden. He stood and
scanned the fruit bushes with anxious eyes.

Nothing.

At lunchtime he ate half a sandwich, discovered he had no
appetite and left the other half on an upturned flowerpot by the garden tap.
Telling himself he was a fool, he put a biscuit next to it. He turned the tap
on. It took quite an effort even for him. He let the water fall, noisily, into
a tin watering can, emptied it into the nearest bed and refilled it. The
thunder of splashing water resounded around the vegetable garden. He took care
not to look up and around.

Then he took himself a little way off, knelt on the grass, his
back to the tap, and started brushing off some old pots. It was an important
job; it had to be done; you could spread disease if you didn’t clean your pots
properly between planting.

Behind him, the squeak of the tap.

He didn’t turn instantly. He finished the pot he was doing,
brush, brush, brush.

Then he was quick. On his feet, over to the tap, faster than a
fox.

But there was no need for such haste.

The child, frightened, tried to flee but stumbled. Picking
itself up, it limped on a few more steps, then stumbled again. John caught it
up, lifted it—the weight of a cat, no more—turned it to face him, and the hat
fell off.

Little chap was a bag of bones. Starving. Eyes gone crusty, hair
black with dirt, and smelly. Two hot red spots for cheeks. He put a hand to the
child’s forehead and it was burning up. Back in the potting shed he saw its
feet. No shoes, scabby and swollen, pus oozing through the dirt. A thorn or
something, deep inside. The child trembled. Fever, pain, starvation, fear. If
he found an animal in that state, John thought, he’d get his gun and put it out
of its misery.

He locked it in the shed and went to fetch the Missus. She came.
She peered, right up close, got a whiff and stepped back.

‘No, no, I don’t know whose he is. Perhaps if we cleaned him up
a bit?“

‘Dunk him in the water butt, you mean?“

‘Water butt indeed! I’ll go and fill the tub in the kitchen.“

They peeled the stinking rags away from the child. “They’re for
the bonfire,” the Missus said, and tossed them out into the yard. The dirt went
all the way down to the skin; the child was encrusted. The first tub of water
turned instantly black. In order to empty and refill the tub, they lifted the
child out, and it stood, wavering, on its better foot. Naked and dripping,
streaked with rivulets of gray-brown water, all ribs and elbows.

They looked at the child; at each other; at the child again.

‘John, I may be poor of sight, but tell me, are you not seeing
what I’m not seeing?“

‘Aye.“

‘Little chap indeed! It’s a little maid.“

They boiled kettle after kettle, scrubbed at skin and hair with
soap, brushed hardened dirt out from under the nails. Once she was clean they
sterilized tweezers, pulled the thorn from the foot—she flinched but didn’t cry
out—and they dressed and bandaged the wound. They gently rubbed warmed castor
oil into the crust around the eyes. They put calamine lotion onto the flea
bites, petroleum jelly onto the chapped, split lips. They combed tangles out of
long, matted hair. They pressed cool flannels against her forehead and her
burning cheeks. At last they wrapped her in a clean towel and sat her at the
kitchen table, where the Missus spooned soup into her mouth and John peeled her
an apple.

Gulping down the soup, grabbing at the apple slices, she
couldn’t get it down fast enough. The Missus cut a slice of bread and spread it
with butter. The child ate it ravenously.

They watched her. The eyes, cleared of their crust, were slivers
of emerald green. The hair was drying to a bright red-gold. The cheekbones
jutted wide and sharp in the hungry face.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?“ said John.

‘Aye.“

‘Will we tell him?“

‘No.“

‘But she does belong here.“

‘Aye.“

They thought for a moment or two.

‘What about a doctor?“

The pink spots in the child’s face were not so bright. The
Missus put a hand to the forehead. Still hot, but better.

‘We’ll see how she goes tonight. Get the doctor in the morning.“

‘If needs be.“

‘Aye. If needs be.“

‘And so it was settled,“ Miss Winter said. ”I stayed.“

‘What was your name?“

‘The Missus tried to call me Mary, but it didn’t stick. John
called me Shadow, because I stuck to him like a shadow. He taught me to read,
you know, with seed catalogs in the shed, but I soon discovered the library.
Emmeline didn’t call me anything. She didn’t need to, for I was always there.
You only need names for the absent.“

I thought about it all for a while in silence. The ghost child.
No mother. No name. The child whose very existence was a secret. It was
impossible not to feel compassion. And yet…

‘What about Aurelius? You knew what it was like to grow up
without a mother! Why did he have to be abandoned? The bones they found at
Angelfield… I know it must have been Adeline who killed John-the-dig, but what
happened to her afterward? Tell me, what happened the night of the fire?“

We were talking in the dark, and I couldn’t see the expression
on Miss Winter’s face, but she seemed to shiver as she glanced at the figure in
the bed.

‘Pull the sheet over her face, would you? I will tell you about
the baby. I will tell you about the fire. But first, perhaps you could call
Judith? She does not know yet. She will need to call Dr. Clifton. There are
things that need to be done.“

When she came, Judith’s first care was for the living. She took
one look at Miss Winter’s pallor and insisted on putting her to bed and seeing
to her medication before anything. Together we wheeled her to her rooms; Judith
helped her into her nightgown; I made a hot-water bottle and folded the bed
down.

‘I’ll telephone Dr. Clifton now,“ Judith said. ”Will you stay
with Miss Winter?“ But it was only a few minutes later that she reappeared in
the bedroom doorway and beckoned me into the anteroom.

‘I couldn’t speak to him,“ she told me in a whisper. ”It’s the
telephone. The snow has brought the line down.“

We were cut off.

I thought of the policeman’s telephone number on the piece of
paper in my bag and was relieved.

We arranged that I would stay with Miss Winter for the first
shift, so that Judith could go to Emmeline’s room and do what needed to be done
there. She would relieve me later, when Miss Winter’s next medication was due.

It was going to be a long night.

BABY

In Miss Winter’s narrow bed, her frame was marked by only the
smallest rise and fall in the bedclothes. Warily she stole each breath, as
though she expected to be ambushed at any minute. The light from the lamp
sought out her skeleton: It caught her pale cheekbone and illuminated the white
arc of her brow; it sank her eye in a deep pool of shadow.

Over the back of my chair lay a gold silk shawl. I draped it
over the shade so that it might diffuse the light, warm it, make it fall less
brutally upon Miss Winter’s face.

Quietly I sat, quietly I watched, and when she spoke I barely
heard her whisper.

‘The truth? Let me see…

The words drifted from her lips into the air; they hung there
trembling, then found their way and began their journey.

I was not kind to Ambrose. I could have been. In another world,
I might have been. It wouldn’t have been so very hard: He was tall and strong
and his hair was gold in the sun. I knew he liked me and I was not indifferent.
But I hardened my heart. I was bound to Emmeline.

‘Am I not good enough for you?“ he asked me one day. He came
straight out with it, like that.

I pretended not to hear, but he insisted. “If I’m not good
enough, you tell me so to my face!”

‘You can’t read,“ I said, ”and you can’t write!“ He smiled. Took
my pencil from the kitchen windowsill and began to scratch letters onto a piece
of paper. He was slow. The letters were uneven. But it was clear enough.
Ambrose. He wrote his name and when he had done it, he took the paper and held
it out to show me.

I snatched it out of his hand, screwed it into a ball and tossed
it to the floor.

He stopped coming into the kitchen for his tea break. I drank my
tea in the Missus’s chair, missing my cigarette, while I listened for the sound
of his step or the ring of his spade. When he came to the house with the meat,
he passed the bag without a word, eyes averted, face frozen. He had given up.
Later, cleaning the kitchen, I came across the piece of paper with his name on
it. I felt ashamed of myself and put the paper in is game bag hanging behind
the kitchen door, so it would be out of sight.

When did I realize Emmeline was pregnant? A few months after the
boy stopped coming for tea. I knew it before she knew herself; she was hardly
one to notice the changes in her body, or to realize the consciences. I
questioned her about Ambrose. It was hard to make her understand the sense of
my questions, and she quite failed to see why I was angry. “He was so sad” was
all she would tell me. “You were too unkind.” She spoke very gently, full of
compassion for the boy, velveting her reproach for me. I could have shaken her.

‘You do realize that you’re going to have a baby now, don’t
you?“ Mild astonishment passed across her face, then left it tranquil as
before. Nothing, it seemed, could disturb her serenity. I dismissed Ambrose. I
gave him his pay till the end of the week and it him away. I didn’t look at him
while I spoke to him. I didn’t give him any reasons. He didn’t ask any
questions. ”You may as well go immediately,“ I told him, but that wasn’t his
way. He finished the row of planting I had interrupted, cleaned the tools
scrupulously, the way John had taught him, and put them back in the garden
shed, leaving everything neat and tidy. Then he knocked at the kitchen door.

‘What will you do for meat? Do you know how to kill a chicken at
least?“

I shook my head.

‘Come on.“

He jerked his head in the direction of the pen, and I followed
him.

‘Don’t waste any time,“ he instructed me. ”Clean and quick is
the way. No second thoughts.“

He swooped on one of the copper-feathered birds pecking about
our feet and held its body firmly. He mimed the action that would break its
neck. “See?”

I nodded.

‘Go on then.“

He released the bird and it flurried to the ground where its
round back was soon indistinguishable from its neighbors.

‘Now?“

‘What else are you going to eat tonight?“

The sun was gleaming on the feathers of the hens as they pecked
for seeds. I reached for a bird, but it scuttled away. The second one slipped
through my fingers in the same way. Grabbing for a third, this time, clumsily,
I held on to it. It squawked and tried to beat its wings in its panic to
escape, and I wondered how the boy had held his so easily. As I struggled to
keep it still under my arm and get my hands around its neck at the same time, I
felt the boy’s severe eye upon me.

‘Clean and quick,“ he reminded me. He doubted me, I could tell
from his voice.

I was going to kill the bird. I had decided to kill the bird.
So, gripping the bird’s neck, I squeezed. But my hands would only half obey me.
A strangled cry of alarm flew from the bird’s throat, and for a second I
hesitated. With a muscular twist and a flap, the bird slipped from under my
arm. It was only because I was struck by the paralysis of panic that I still
had it by the neck. Wings beating, claws flailing wildly at the air, almost it
lurched away from me.