The thirteenth tale (22 page)

For all my biographical projects I have kept a box of lives. A
box of index cards containing the details—name, occupation, dates, place of
residence and any other piece of information that seems relevant—of all the
significant people in the life of my subject. I never quite know what to make
of my boxes of lives. Depending on my mood they either strike me as a memorial
to gladden the dead (“Look!” I imagine them saying as they peer through the
glass at me. “She’s writing us down on her cards! And to think we’ve been dead
two hundred years!”) or, when the glass is very dark and I feel quite stranded
and alone this side of it, they seem like little cardboard tombstones,
inanimate and cold, and the box itself is as dead as the cemetery. Miss
Winter’s cast of characters was very small, and as I shuffled them in my hands
their sparse flimsiness dismayed me. I was being given a story, but as far as
information went, I was still far short of what I needed.

I took a blank card and began to write.

Hester Barrow

Governess

Angelfield House

Born: ?

Died: ?

I stopped. Thought. Did a few sums on my fingers. The girls had
been only thirteen. And Hester was not old. With all that verve she couldn’t
be. Had she been thirty? What if she were only twenty-five? A mere twelve years
older than the girls themselves… Was it possible? I wondered. Miss Winter, in
her seventies, was dying. But that didn’t necessarily mean a person older than
her would be dead. What were the chances?

There was only one thing to do.

I added another note to the card and underlined it.

FIND HER.

Was it because I had decided to look for Hester that I saw her
that night in a dream?

A plain figure in a neatly belted dressing gown, on the
galleried landing, shaking her head and pursing her lips at the fire-stained
walls, the jagged, broken floorboards and the ivy winding its way up the stone
staircase. In the middle of all this chaos, how lucid everything was close to
her. How soothing. I approached, drawn to her like a moth. But when I entered
her magic circle, nothing happened. I was still in darkness. Hester’s quick
eyes darted here and there, taking in everything, and came to rest on a figure
standing behind my back. My twin, or so I understood in the dream. But when her
eyes passed over me it was without seeing.

I woke, a familiar hot chill in my side, and reexamined the
images from my dream to understand the source of my terror. There was nothing
frightening in Hester herself. Nothing unnerving in the smooth passage of her
eyes over and through my face. It was not what I saw in the dream but what I
was that had me trembling in my bed. If Hester did not see me, then it must be
because I was a ghost. And if I was a ghost, then I was dead. How could it be
otherwise?

I rose and went into the bathroom to rinse my fear away.
Avoiding the mirror, I looked instead at my hands in the water, but the sight
filled me with horror. At the same time as they existed here, I knew they
existed on the other side, too, where they were dead. And the eyes that saw
them, my eyes, were dead in that other place, too. And my mind, which was
thinking these thoughts… was it not also dead? A profound horror took hold of
me. What kind of an unnatural creature was I? What abomination of nature is it
that divides a person between two bodies before birth, and then kills one of
them? And what am I that is left? Half-dead, exiled in the world of the living
by day, while at night, my soul cleaves to its twin in a shadowy limbo.

I lit an early fire, made cocoa, then wrapped myself in dressing
gown and blankets to write a letter to my father. How was the shop, and how was
Mother, and how was he, and how, I wondered, would one go about finding
someone? Did private detectives exist in reality or only in books? I told him
what little I knew about Hester. Could a search be set in motion with so little
information to go on? Would a private detective take on a job like the one I
had in mind? If not, who might?

I reread the letter. Brisk and sensible, it betrayed nothing of
my fear. Dawn was breaking. The trembling had stopped. Soon Judith would be
here with breakfast.

THE EYE IN THE YEW

There was nothing the new governess couldn’t do if she put her
mind to it.

That’s how it seemed at first, anyway.

But after a time difficulties did begin to emerge. The first
thing was her argument with the Missus. Hester, having tidied and cleaned rooms
and left them locked behind her, was put out to discover them unlocked again.
She called the Missus to her. “What need is there,” she asked, “for rooms to be
left open when they are not in use? You can see what happens: The girls go in
as they please and make chaos where there was order before. It makes
unnecessary work for you and for me.”

The Missus seemed entirely to concur, and Hester left the
interview quite satisfied. But a week later, once again, she found doors open
that should have been locked, and with a frown called the Missus once again.
This time she would accept no vague promises but was determined to get to the
heart of the matter.

‘It’s the air,“ explained the Missus. ”Without the air moving
about, a house gets dreadful damp.“

Hester gave the Missus a succinct lecture in simple terms about
air circulation and damp and sent her away, certain that this time she had
solved the difficulty.

A week later she noticed again that doors were unlocked. This
time she did not call the Missus. Instead she reflected. There was more to this
problem of door-locking than met the eye. She resolved that she would study the
Missus, discover by observation what lay behind the unlocking of doors.

The second problem involved John-the-dig. His suspicion of her
had not escaped her notice, but she was not put off. She was a stranger in the
house, and it was up to her to demonstrate that she was there for the good of
all and not to cause trouble. In time, she knew, she would win him over. Yet
though he seemed to get used to her presence, his suspicion was unexpectedly
slow to fade. And then one day suspicion flared into something else. She had
approached him over something quite banal. In our garden she had seen, or so
she maintained, a child from the village who should have been at school. “Who
is the child?” she wanted to know, “Who are his parents?”

‘Nothing to do with me,“ John told her, with a surliness that
took her aback.

‘I don’t say it is,“ she responded calmly, ”but the child should
be in school. I’m sure you’ll agree with me on that. If you will just tell me
who it is, then I will speak to the parents and the schoolmistress about it.“

John-the-dig shrugged his shoulders and made to leave, but she
was not a woman who would be put off in this manner. She darted around him,
stood in front of him and repeated her demand. Why should she not? It was an
entirely reasonable one and she was making it in a civil fashion. Whatever
reason would the man have to refuse?

But refuse he did. “Children from the village do not come up
here” was his only response.

‘This one did,“ she went on.

‘They stay away out of fear.“

‘That’s ridiculous. Whatever do they have to be afraid of here?
The child was in a wide-brimmed hat and a man’s trousers cut down to fit. His
appearance was quite distinctive. You must know who he is.“

“I have seen no such child,” came the answer, dismissively, and
once again John made to leave.

Hester was nothing if not persistent. “But you must have seen
him—”

“It takes a certain kind of mind, Miss, to see things that
aren’t there. Me, I’m a sensible fellow. Where there is nothing to see, I see
nothing. If I were you, Miss, I would do the same. Good day to you.”

With that he left, and this time Hester made no attempt to block
him. She simply stood, shaking her head in bewilderment and wondering what on
earth had got into the man. Angelfield, it seemed, was a house full of puzzles.
Still, there was nothing she liked more than mental exercise. She would soon
get to the bottom of things.

Hester’s gifts of insight and intelligence were quite
extraordinary. Yet counterbalancing these talents was the fact that she did not
know quite who she was up against. Take for instance her habit of leaving the
twins to their own devices for short periods while she followed her own agenda
elsewhere. She watched the twins closely first, evaluating their moods,
weighing up their fatigue, the closeness to mealtimes, their patterns of energy
and rest. When the results of this analysis told her the twins were set for an
hour of quiet indoor lolling, she would leave them unattended. On one of these
occasions she had a special purpose in mind. The doctor had come and she wanted
a particular word with him. A private word.

Foolish Hester. There is no privacy where there are children.

She met him at the front door. “It is a nice day. Shall we walk
in the garden?”

They set off toward the topiary garden, unaware that they were
being followed.

‘You have worked a miracle, Miss Barrow,“ the doctor began.
”Emmeline is transformed.“

‘No,“ said Hester.

‘Yes, I assure you. My expectations have been more than
fulfilled. I am very impressed.“

Hester bowed her head and turned her body fractionally away from
him. Taking her response for modesty, he fell silent, thinking her overwhelmed
by his professions of esteem. The newly clipped yew gave him something to
admire while the governess recovered her sangfroid. It’s just as well he was
engrossed in its geometric lines, else he might have caught her wry look and
realized his error.

Her protesting “No” was far from being the feminine simpering
that the doctor took it for. It was a straightforward statement of fact. Of
course Emmeline was transformed. Given the presence of Hester, how could it
have been otherwise? There was nothing miraculous about it. That is what she
meant by her “No.”

Yet she was not surprised by the condescension in the doctor’s
comment. It was not a world in which signs of genius were likely to be noticed
in governesses, but nonetheless I think she was disappointed. The doctor was
the one person at Angelfield, she thought, who might have understood her. But
he did not understand her.

She turned toward the doctor and found herself facing his back.
He stood, hands in pocket, the line of his shoulders straight, looking up to
where the yew tree ended and the sky began. His neat hair was graying, and
there was a perfect circle of pink scalp an inch and a half wide on the top of
his head.

‘John is making good the damage that the twins did,“ Hester
said.

‘What made them do it?“

‘In Emmeline’s case that is an easy question to answer. Adeline
made her do it. As for what made Adeline do it, that is a harder question
altogether. I doubt she knows herself. Most of the time she is governed by
impulses that appear to have no conscious element. Whatever the reason, the
result was devastating for John. His family has tended this garden for
generations.“

‘Heartless. All the more shocking coming from a child.“

Unseen by the doctor, she pulled another face. Clearly he did
not know much about children. “Heartless indeed. Though children are capable of
great cruelty. Only we do not like to think it of them.”

Slowly they began to walk between the topiary shapes, admiring
the yews while speaking of Hester’s work. Keeping a safe distance, but always
within earshot, a little spy followed them, moving from the protection of one
yew to another. Left and right they moved; sometimes they turned to double back
on themselves; it was a game of angles, an elaborate dance.

‘You are satisfied with the results of your efforts with
Emmeline, I imagine, Miss Barrow?“

‘Yes. With another year or so of my attention, I see no reason
why Emmeline should not give up unruliness for good and become permanently the
sweet girl she knows how to be at her best. She will not be clever, but still,
I see no reason why she should not one day lead a satisfying life separately
from her sister. Perhaps she might even marry. All men do not seek intelligence
in a wife, and Emmeline is very affectionate.“

‘Good, good.“

‘With Adeline it is a different matter entirely.“

They came to a standstill, next to a leafy obelisk with a gash
cut into its side part of the way up. The governess peered at the brown inner
branches and touched one of the new twigs with its bright green leaves that was
growing from the old wood toward the light. She sighed.

‘Adeline puzzles me, Dr. Maudsley. I would value your medical
opinion.“

The doctor gave a courteous half bow. “By all means. What is it
that is troubling you?”

‘I have never known such a confusing child.“ She paused.
”Forgive my slowness, but there is no succinct way to explain the strangeness I
have noticed in her.“

‘Then take your time. I am in no rush.“

The doctor indicated a low bench, at the back of which a hedge
of box had been trained into an elaborately curlicued arch, the kind that
frequently forms the headboard of a highly crafted bedstead. They sat and found
themselves facing the good side of one of the garden’s largest geometrical
pieces. “A dodecahedron, look.”