The thirteenth tale (40 page)

My memory of what happened in Emmeline’s quarters that night is
fragmented. Whole tracts of time have collapsed in on themselves, while other
events seem in my recollection to have happened over and over again in rapid
succession. Faces and expressions loom frighteningly large, then Emmeline and
Aurelius appear as tiny marionettes a great distance away. As for myself, I was
possessed, sleepy, chilled— and distracted during the whole affair by my own
overwhelming preoccupation: my sister.

By a process of logic and reason, I have attempted to place into
a meaningful sequence images that my mind recorded only incompletely and in
random fashion, like events in a dream.

Aurelius and I entered Emmeline’s rooms. Our step was soundless
on the deep carpet. Through one doorway then another we stepped, until we came
to a room with an open door giving onto the garden. Standing in the doorway
with her back to us was a white-haired figure. She was humming. La-la-la-la-la.
That broken piece of melody, without a beginning, without a resolution, that
had haunted me ever since I came to the house. It wormed its way into my head,
where it vied with the high-pitched vibration of my sister. At my side Aurelius
waited for me to announce us to Emmeline. But I could not speak. The universe
was reduced to an unbearable ululation in my head; time stretched into one
eternal second; I was struck dumb. I brought my hands to my ears, desperate to
ease the cacophony. Seeing my gesture, it was Aurelius who spoke. “Margaret!”

And hearing an unknown voice behind her, Emmeline turns. Since
she was taken by surprise, there is anguish in her green eyes. Her lipless
mouth pulls into a distorted O, but the humming does not stop, only veers and
lurches into a shrill wail, like a knife in my head. Aurelius turns in shock
from me to Emmeline and is transfixed by the broken face of the woman who is
his mother. Like scissors, the sound from her lips slashes the air.

For a time I am both blinded and deafened. When I can see again,
Emmeline is crouched on the floor, her keening fallen to a whimper. Aurelius
kneels over her. Her hands scrabble at him, and I do not know whether she means
to clasp him or to repel him, but he takes her hand in his and holds it.

Hand in hand. Blood with blood. He is a monolith of sorrow.

Inside my head, still, a torment of bright white sound. My
sister— My sister—

The world retreats and I find myself alone in an agony of noise.

I know what happened next, even if I can’t remember it. Aurelius
releases Emmeline tenderly onto the floor as he hears steps in the hall, here
is an exclamation as Judith realizes she does not have her keys. In the time it
takes her to go and find a second set—Maurice’s, probably— Aurelius darts
toward the door and disappears into the garden. When Judith at last enters the
room, she stares at Emmeline on the floor, then, with a cry of alarm, steps in
my direction.

But at the time I know none of this. For the light that is my
sister embraces me, possesses me, relieves me of consciousness. At last.

EVERYBODY HAS A STORY

Anxiety, sharp as one of Miss Winter’s green gazes, needles me
awake. What name have I pronounced in my sleep? Who undressed me and put me to
bed? What will they have read into the sign on my skin? What has become of
Aurelius? And what have I done to Emmeline? More than all the rest it is her
distraught face that torments my conscience when it begins its slow ascent out
of sleep.

When I wake I do not know what day or time it is. Judith is
there; she sees me stir and holds a glass to my lips. I drink. Before I can
speak, sleep overwhelms me again.

The second time I woke up, Miss Winter was at my bedside, book
in hand. Her chair was plump with velvet cushions, as always, but with her
tufts of pale hair around her naked face, she looked like a naughty child who
has climbed onto the queen’s throne for a joke.

Hearing me move, she lifted her head from her reading.

‘Dr. Clifton has been. You had a very high temperature.“

I said nothing.

‘We didn’t know it was your birthday,“ she went on. ”We couldn’t
find a card. We don’t go in much for birthdays here. But we brought you some
daphne from the garden.“

In the vase were dark branches, bare of leaf, but with dainty
purple flowers all along their length. They filled the air with a sweet, heady
fragrance.

‘How did you know it was my birthday?“

‘You told us. While you were sleeping. When are you going to
tell me your story, Margaret?“

‘Me? I haven’t got a story,“ I said.

‘Of course you have. Everybody has a story.“

‘Not me.“ I shook my head. In my head I heard indistinct echoes
of words I may have spoken in my sleep.

Miss Winter placed the ribbon at her page and closed the book.

‘Everybody has a story. It’s like families. You might not know
who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might
drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can’t say you haven’t
got them. Same goes for stories. So,“ she concluded, ”everybody has a story.
When are you going to tell me yours?“

‘I’m not.“

She put her head to one side and waited for me to go on.

‘I’ve never told anyone my story. If I’ve got one, that is. And
I can’t see any reason to change now.“

‘I see,“ she said softly, nodding her head as though she really
did. ”Well, it’s your business, of course.“ She turned her hand in her lap and
stared into her damaged palm. ”You are at liberty to say nothing, if that is
what you want. But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need
words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.“
Her eyes swiveled back to me. ”Believe me, Margaret. I know.“

For long stretches of time I slept, and whenever I woke, there
was some invalid’s meal by my bed, prepared by Judith. I ate a mouthful or two,
no more. When Judith came to take the tray away she could not disguise her
disappointment at seeing my leavings, yet she never mentioned it. I was in no
pain—no headache, no chills, no sickness—unless you count profound weariness
and a remorse that weighed heavily in my head and in my heart. What had I done
to Emmeline? And Aurelius? In my waking hours I was tormented by the memory of
that night; the guilt pursued me into sleep.

‘How is Emmeline?“ I asked Judith. ”Is she all right?“

Her answers were indirect: Why should I be worried about Miss
Emmeline when I was poorly myself? Miss Emmeline had not been right for a very
long time. Miss Emmeline was getting on in years.

Her reluctance to spell it out told me everything I wanted to
know. Emmeline was not well. It was my fault.

As for Aurelius, the only thing I could do was write. As soon as
I was able, I had Judith bring me pen and paper and, propped up on a pillow,
drafted a letter. Not satisfied, I attempted another and then another. Never
had I had such difficulty with words. When my bedcover was so strewn with
rejected versions that I despaired at myself, I selected one at random and made
a neat copy:

Dear Aurelius,

Are you all right?

I’m so sorry about what happened. I never meant to hurt anyone.
I was mad, wasn’t I?

When can I see you?

Are we still friends?

Margaret

It would have to do.

Dr. Clifton came. He listened to my heart and asked me lots of
questions. “Insomnia? Irregular sleep? Nightmares?”

I nodded three times.

‘I thought so.“

He took a thermometer and instructed me to place it under my
tongue, then rose and strode to the window. With his back to me, he asked, “And
what do you read?”

With the thermometer in my mouth I could not reply.

“Wuthering Heights—you’ve read that?”

‘Mm-hmm.“

‘And Jane Eyre?“

‘Mm.“

“Sense and Sensibility?”

‘Hm-m.“

He turned and looked gravely at me. “And I suppose you’ve read
these books more than once?”

I nodded and he frowned.

‘Read and reread? Many times?“

Once more I nodded, and his frown deepened.

‘Since childhood?“

I was baffled by his questions, but compelled by the gravity of
his gaze, nodded once again.

Beneath his dark brow his eyes narrowed to slits. I could quite
see how he might frighten his patients into getting well, just to be rid of
him.

And then he leaned close to me to read the thermometer.

People look different from close up. A dark brow is still a dark
brow, but you can see the individual hairs in it, how nearly they are aligned.
The last few brow hairs, very fine, almost invisible, strayed off in the
section of his temple, pointed to the snail-coil of his ear. In the grain his
skin were closely arranged pinpricks of beard. There it was again: that almost
imperceptible flaring of the nostrils, that twitch at the edge the mouth. I had
always taken it for severity, a clue that he thought little of me; but now,
seeing it from so few inches away, it occurred to me that it might not be
disapproval after all. Was it possible, I thought, that Dr. Clifton was
secretly laughing at me?

He removed the thermometer from my mouth, folded his arms and
delivered his diagnosis. “You are suffering from an ailment that afflicts
ladies of romantic imagination. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of
appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to
wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing,
the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However,
unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been
weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No
tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You’ll
survive.”

He looked me straight in the eyes, and I was unable to slide my
gaze away when he said, “You don’t eat enough.”

‘I have no appetite.“

“L’appetit vient en mangeant.”

‘Appetite comes by eating,“ I translated.

‘Exactly. Your appetite will come back. But you must meet it
halfway. You must want it to come.“

It was my turn to frown.

‘Treatment is not complicated: eat, rest and take this…“—he made
quick notes on a pad, tore out a page and placed it on my bedside table—”and
the weakness and fatigue will be gone in a few days.“ Reaching for his case, he
stowed his pen and paper. Then, rising to leave, he hesitated. ”I’d like to ask
you about these dreams of yours, but I suspect you wouldn’t like to tell me…“

Stonily I regarded him. “I wouldn’t.”

His face fell. “Thought not.”

From the door he saluted me and was gone.

I reached for the prescription. In a vigorous scrawl, he had
inked: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Take ten
pages, twice a day, till end of course.

DECEMBER DAYS

Obeying Dr. Clifton’s instructions, I spent two days in bed,
eating and sleeping and reading Sherlock Holmes. I confess I overdosed on my
prescribed treatment, gulping down one story after another. Before the end of
the second day Judith had been down to the library and fetched another volume
of Conan Doyle for me. She had grown suddenly kind toward me since my collapse.
It was not the fact that she was sorry for me that altered her—though she was
sorry— but the fact that now Emmeline’s presence was no longer a secret in the
house, she was at liberty to let her natural sympathies govern her exchanges
with me, instead of maintaining a constantly guarded facade.

‘And has she never said anything about the thirteenth tale?“ she
asked me wistfully one day.

‘Not a word. And to you?“

She shook her head. “Never. It’s strange, isn’t it, after all
she’s written, that the most famous story of all is one that might not even
exist, just think, she could probably publish a book with all the stories
missing and it would still sell like hotcakes.” And then, with a shake of the
lead to clear her thoughts, and a new tone, “So what do you make of Dr.
Clifton, then?”

When Dr. Clifton dropped by to see how I was doing, his eye
alighted on the volumes by my bedside; he said nothing but his nostrils
twitched.

On the third day, feeling as frail as a newborn, I got up. As I
pulled the curtains apart, my room was flooded with a fresh, clean light.
Outside, a brilliant, cloudless blue stretched from horizon to horizon, and
beneath it the garden sparkled with frost. It was as if during those long
overcast days the light had been accumulating behind the cloud, and now that
the cloud was gone there was nothing to stop it flooding down, drenching us in
a fortnight’s worth of illumination at once. Blinking in the brilliance, I felt
something like life begin to move sluggishly in my veins.

Before breakfast I went outdoors. Slowly and cautiously I
stepped around the lawn with Shadow at my heels. It was crisp underfoot, and
everywhere the sun sparkled on icy foliage. The frost-rimed grass held the
imprint of my soles, but at my side Shadow stepped like a dainty ghost, leaving
no prints. At first the cold, dry air was like a knife in my throat, but little
by little it rejuvenated me, and I rejoiced in the exhilaration. Nevertheless,
a few minutes were enough; cheeks tingling, pink-fingered and with aching toes,
I was glad to come back in and Shadow was glad to follow. First breakfast, then
the library sofa, the blazing fire, and something to read.