The thirteenth tale (16 page)

‘Could this be the person you saw?“ the doctor asked his wife.

Mrs. Maudsley measured Isabelle against the picture in her mind.
How many shades separate white from pale yellow? Where exactly is the
borderline between slight and slim? How might a blow to the head affect a
person’s memory? She wavered, then, seeing the emerald eyes and finding an
exact match in her memory, decided.

‘Yes. This is the person.“

The Missus and John-the-dig avoided exchanging a glance.

From that moment, forgetting his wife, it was Isabelle the
doctor attended to. He looked at her closely, kindly, with worry in the back of
his eyes while he asked her question after question. When she refused to answer
he was unrattled, but when she was bothered to reply—by turns arch, impatient,
nonsensical—he listened carefully, nodding as he made notes in his doctor’s
pad. Taking her wrist to measure her pulse, he noted with alarm the cuts and
scars that marked the inside of her forearm.

‘Does she do this herself?“

Reluctantly honest, the Missus murmured, “Yes,” and the doctor
pressed his lips into a worried line.

‘May I have a word with you, sir?“ he asked, turning to Charlie.
Charlie looked blankly at him, but the doctor took him by the elbow— ”The
library, perhaps?“—and led him firmly out of the room.

In the drawing room the Missus and the doctor’s wife waited and
pretended not to pay any attention to the sounds that came from the library.
There was the hum not of voices but of a single voice, calm and measured. When
it stopped, we heard “No” and again “No!” in Charlie’s raised voice, and then
again the low tones of the doctor. They were gone for some time, and we heard
Charlie’s protestations over and over before the door opened and the doctor
came out, looking serious and shaken. Behind him, there was a great howl of
despair and impotence, but the doctor only winced and pulled the door closed
behind him.

‘I’ll make the arrangements with the asylum,“ he told the
Missus. ”Leave the transport to me. Will two o’clock be all right?“

Baffled, she nodded her head, and the doctor’s wife rose to
leave.

At two o’clock three men came to the house, and they led
Isabelle out to a brougham in the drive. She submitted herself to them like a
lamb, settled obediently in the seat, never even looked out as the horses
trotted slowly down the drive, toward the lodge gates.

The twins, unconcerned, were drawing circles with their toes in
the gravel of the drive.

Charlie stood on the steps watching the brougham as it grew
smaller and smaller. He had the air of a child whose favorite toy is being
taken away, and who cannot believe—not quite, not yet—that it is really
happening.

From the hall the Missus and John-the-dig watched him anxiously,
waiting for the realization to dawn.

The car reached the lodge gates and disappeared through them.
Charlie continued to stare at the open gates for three, four, five seconds.

Then his mouth opened. A wide circle, twitching and trembling,
that revealed his quivering tongue, the fleshy redness of his throat, strings
of spittle across a dark cavity. Mesmerized we watched, waiting for the awful
noise to emerge from the gaping, juddering mouth, but the sound was not ready
to come. For long seconds it built up, accumulating inside him until his whole
body seemed full of pent-up sound. At long last he fell to his knees on the
steps and the cry emerged from him. It was not the elephantine bellow we were
expecting, but a damp, nasal snort.

The girls looked up from their toe circles for a moment, then
returned impassively to them. John-the-dig tightened his lips and turned away,
heading back to the garden and work. There was nothing for him to do here. The
Missus went to Charlie, placed a consoling hand on his shoulder and attempted
to persuade him into the house, but he was deaf to her words and only snuffled
and squeaked like a thwarted schoolboy.

And that was that.

That was that? The words were a curiously understated endnote to
the disappearance of Miss Winter’s mother. It was clear that Miss Winter didn’t
think much of Isabelle’s abilities as a parent; indeed the word mother seemed
absent from her lexicon. Perhaps it was understandable; from what I could see,
Isabelle was the least maternal of women. But who was I to judge other people’s
relations with their mothers?

I closed my book, slid my pencil into the spiral and stood up.

‘I’ll be away for three days,“ I reminded her. ”I’ll be back on
Thursday.“

And I left her alone with her wolf.

DICKENS’S STUDY

I finished writing up that day’s notes. All dozen pencils were
blunt now; I had some serious sharpening to do. One by one, I inserted the lead
ends into the sharpener. If you turn the handle slowly and evenly you can sometimes
get the coil of lead-edged wood to twist and dangle in a single drop all the
way to the paper bin, but tonight I was tired, and they kept breaking under
their own weight.

I thought about the story. I had warmed to the Missus and
John-the-dig. Charlie and Isabelle made me nervous. The doctor and his wife had
the best of motives, but I suspected their intervention in the lives of the
twins would come to no good.

The twins themselves puzzled me. I knew what other people
thought of them. John-the-dig thought they couldn’t speak properly; the Missus
believed they didn’t understand other people were alive; the villagers thought
they were wrong in the head. What I didn’t know— and this was more than
curious—was what the storyteller thought. In telling her tale, Miss Winter was
like the light that illuminates everything but itself. She was the disappearing
point at the heart of the narrative. She spoke of they; more recently she had
spoken of we; the absence that perplexed me was I. What could it be that had
caused her to distance herself from her story in this way?

If I were to ask her about it, I knew what she would say. “Miss
Lea, we made an agreement.” Already I had asked her questions about one or two
details of the story, and though from time to time she would answer, when she
didn’t want to, she would remind me of our first meeting. “No cheating. No
looking ahead. No questions.”

I reconciled myself to remaining curious for a long time, and
yet, as it happened, something happened that very evening that cast a certain
illumination on the matter.

I had tidied my desk and was setting about my packing when there
came a tap on my door. I opened it to find Judith in the corridor.

‘Miss Winter wonders whether you have time to see her for a
moment.“

This was Judith’s polite translation of a more abrupt Fetch Miss
Lea, I was in no doubt.

I finished folding a blouse and went down to the library.

Miss Winter was seated in her usual position and the fire was
blazing, but otherwise the room was in darkness.

‘Would you like me to put some lights on?“ I asked from the
doorway.

‘No.“ Her answer came distantly to my ears, and so I walked down
the aisle toward her. The shutters were open, and the dark sky, pricked all
over with stars, was reflected in the mirrors.

When I arrived beside her, the dancing light from the fire
showed me that Miss Winter was distracted. In silence I sat in my place, lulled
by the warmth of the fire, staring into the night sky reflected in the library
mirrors. A quarter of an hour passed while she ruminated, and I waited.

Then she spoke.

‘Have you ever seen that picture of Dickens in his study? It’s
by a man called Buss, I believe. I’ve a reproduction of it somewhere, I’ll look
it out for you. Anyway, in the picture, he has pushed his chair back from his
desk and is drowsing, eyes closed, bearded chin on chest. He is wearing his
slippers. Around his head, characters from his books are drifting in the air
like cigar smoke; some throng above the papers on the desk, others have drifted
behind him, or floated downward as though they believe themselves capable of
walking on their own two feet on the floor. And why not? They are presented
with the same firm lines as the writer himself, so why should they not be as
real as him? They are more real than the books on the shelves, books that are
sketched with the barest hint of a line here and there, fading in places to a
ghostly nothingness.

‘Why recall the picture now, you must be wondering. The reason I
remember it so well is that it seems to be an image of the way I have lived my
own life. I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with
people of my imagination. For nearly sixty years I have eavesdropped with
impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly
into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the
movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have
watched as lovers love, murderers murder and children play their make-believe.
Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains
have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen
away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed
the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that
they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.

‘My study throngs with characters waiting to be written.
Imaginary people, anxious for a life, who tug at my sleeve, crying, ’Me next!
Go on! My turn!‘ I have to select. And once I have chosen, the others lie quiet
for ten months or a year, until I come to the end of the story, and the clamor
starts up again.

‘And every so often, through all these writing years, I have
lifted my head from my page—at the end of a chapter, or in the quiet pause for
thought after a death scene, or sometimes just searching for the right word—and
have seen a face at the back of the crowd. A familiar face. Pale skin, red
hair, a steady green-eyed gaze. I know exactly who she is, yet am always
surprised to see her. Every time she manages to catch me off my guard. Often
she has opened her mouth to speak to me, but for decades she was too far away
to be heard, and besides, as soon as I became aware of her presence I would
avert my gaze and pretend I hadn’t seen her. She was not, I think, taken in.

‘People wonder what makes me so prolific. Well, it’s because of
her. If I have started a new book five minutes after finishing the last, it is
because to look up from my desk would mean meeting her eye.

‘The years have passed; the number of my books on the bookshop
shelves has grown, and consequently the crowd of personages floating in the air
of my study has thinned. With every book that I have written, the babble of
voices has grown quieter, the sense of bustle in my head reduced. The faces
pressing for attention have diminished, and always, at the back of the group
but nearer with every book, there she was. The green-eyed girl. Waiting.

‘The day came when I finished the final draft of my final book.
I wrote the last sentence, placed the last full stop. I knew what was coming.
The pen slipped from my hand and I closed my eyes. ’So,‘ I heard her say, or
perhaps it was me, ’it’s just the two of us now.‘

‘I argued with her for a bit. ’It will never work,‘ I told her.
’It was too long ago, I was only a child, I’ve forgotten.‘ Though I was only
going through the motions.

‘’But I haven’t forgotten,‘ she says. ’Remember when…‘

‘Even I know the inevitable when I see it. I do remember.“

The faint vibration in the air fell still. I turned from my
stargazing to Miss Winter. Her green eyes were staring at a spot in the room as
though they were at that very moment seeing the green-eyed child with the copper
hair.

‘The girl is you.“

‘Me?“ Miss Winter’s eyes turned slowly away from the ghost child
and in my direction. ”No, she is not me. She is—“ She hesitated. ”She is
someone I used to be. That child ceased existing a long, long time ago.

Her life came to an end the night of the fire as surely as
though she had perished in the flames. The person you see before you now is
nothing.“

‘But your career… the stories…“

‘When one is nothing, one invents. It fills a void.“

Then we sat in silence and watched the fire. From time to time
Miss Winter rubbed absently at her palm.

‘Your essay on Jules and Edmond Landier,“ she began after a
time.

I turned reluctantly to her.

‘What made you choose them as a subject? You must have had some
particular interest? Some personal attraction?“

I shook my head. “Nothing special, no.”

And then there was just the stillness of the stars and the
crackling of the fire.

It must have been an hour or so later, when the flames were
lower, that she spoke a third time.

‘Margaret.“ I believe it was the first time she had called me by
my first name. ”When you leave here tomorrow…“

‘Yes?“

‘You will come back, won’t you?“

It was hard to judge her expression in the flickering, dying
light of the fire, and it was hard to tell how far the trembling in her voice
was the effect of fatigue or illness, but it seemed to me, in the moment before
I answered—“Yes. Of course I will come back”—that Miss Winter was afraid.