The Thirteenth Tale

MIDDLES

When I left Yorkshire, November was going strong; by the time I returned it was in its dying days, about to tilt into December.

December gives me headaches and diminishes my already small appetite. It makes me restless in my reading. It keeps me awake at night with its damp, chilly darkness. There is a clock inside me that starts to tick on the first of December, measuring the days, the hours and the minutes, counting down to a certain day, the anniversary of the day my life was made and then unmade: my birthday. I do not like December.

This year the sense of foreboding was made worse by the weather. A heavy sky hovered repressively over the house, casting us into an eternal dim twilight. I arrived back to find Judith scurrying from room to room, collecting desk lamps and standard lamps and reading lamps from guest rooms that were never used, and arranging them in the library, the drawing room, my own rooms. Anything to keep at bay the murky grayness that lurked in every corner, under every chair, in the folds of the curtains and the pleats of the upholstery.

Miss Winter asked no questions about my absence, nor did she tell me anything about the progression of her illness, but even after so short an absence, her decline was clear to see. The cashmere wraps fell in apparently empty folds around her diminished frame, and on her fingers the rubies and emeralds seemed to have expanded, so thin had her hands become. The fine white line that had been visible in her parting before I left had broadened; it crept along each hair, diluting the metallic tones to a weaker shade of orange. But despite her physical frailty, she seemed full of some force, some energy, that overrode both illness and age and made her powerful. As soon as I presented myself in the room, almost before I had sat down and taken out my notebook, she began to speak, picking up the story where she had left off, as though it were brimful in her and could not be contained a moment longer.

With Isabelle gone, it was felt in the village that something should be done for the children. They were thirteen; it was not an age to be left unattended; they needed a woman's influence. Should they not be sent to school somewhere? Though what school would accept children such as these? When a school was found to be out of the question, it was decided that a governess should be employed.

A governess was found. Her name was Hester. Hester Barrow. It was not a pretty name, but then she was not a pretty girl.

Dr. Maudsley organized it all. Charlie, locked in his grief, was scarcely aware of what was going on, and John-the-dig and the Missus, mere servants in the house, were not consulted. The doctor approached Mr. Lomax, the family solicitor, and between the two of them and with a hand from the bank manager, all the arrangements were made. Then it was done.

Helpless, passive, we all shared in the anticipation, each with our particular mix of emotion. The Missus was divided. She felt an instinctive suspicion of this stranger who was to come into her domain, and connected with this suspicion was the fear of being found wanting-for she had been in charge for years and knew her limitations. She also felt hope. Hope that the new arrival would instill a sense of discipline in the children and restore manners and sanity to the house. In fact, so great was her desire for a settled and well-run domestic life that in the advent of the governess's arrival she took to issuing orders, as though we were the sort of children who might comply. Needless to say, we took no notice.

John-the-dig's feelings were less divided, were in fact entirely hostile. He would not be drawn into the Missus's long wonderings about how things would be, and refused by stony silence to encourage the optimism that was ready to take root in her heart. "If she's the right kind of person…" she would say, or "There's no knowing how much better things could be…, " but he stared out of the kitchen window and would not be drawn. When the doctor suggested that he take the brougham to meet the governess at the station he was downright rude. "I've not got the time to be traipsing across the county after damned schoolmistresses," he replied, and the doctor was obliged to make arrangements to collect her himself. Since the incident with the topiary garden, John had not been the same, and now, with the coming of this new change, he spent hours alone, brooding over his own fears and concerns for the future. This incomer meant a fresh pair of eyes, a fresh pair of ears, in a house where no one had looked or listened properly for years. John-the-dig, habituated to secrecy, foresaw trouble.

In our separate ways we all felt daunted. All except Charlie, that is. When the day came, only Charlie was his usual self. Though he was locked away and out of sight, his presence was nonetheless made known by the thundering and clattering that shook the house from time to time, a din to which we 'd all become so accustomed that we scarcely even noticed. In his vigil for Isabelle, the man had no notion of day or time, and the arrival of a governess meant nothing to him.

We were idling that morning in one of the front rooms on the first floor. A bedroom, you'd have called it, if the bed had been visible under the pile of junk that had accumulated there the way junk does over the decades. Emmeline was working away with her nails at the silver embroidery threads that ran through the pattern of the curtains. When she succeeded in freeing one, she surreptitiously put it in her pocket, ready to add later to the magpie stash under her bed. But her concentration was broken. Someone was coming, and whether she knew what that meant or not, she had been contaminated by the sense of expectation that hung about the house.

It was Emmeline who first heard the brougham. From the window we watched the new arrival alight, brush the creases out of her skirt with two brisk strokes of her palms and look about her. She looked at the front door, to her left, to her right, and then-I leaped back-up. Perhaps she took us for a trick of the light or a window drape lifted by the breeze from a broken windowpane. Whatever she saw, it can't have been us.

But we saw her. Through Emmeline's new hole in the curtain we stared. We didn't know what to think. Hester was of average height. Average build. She had hair that was neither yellow nor brown. Skin the same color. Coat, shoes, dress, hat: all in the same indistinct tint. Her face was devoid of any distinguishing feature. And yet we stared. We stared at her until our eyes ached. Every pore in her plain little face was illuminated. Something shone in her clothes and in her hair. Something radiated from her luggage. Something cast a glow around her person, like a lightbulb. Something made her exotic.

We had no idea what it was. We'd never imagined the like of it before.

We found out later, though.

Hester was clean. Scrubbed and soaped and rinsed and buffed and polished all over. You can imagine what she thought of Angelfield. When she 'd been in the house about a quarter of an hour she had the Missus call us. We ignored it and waited to see what happened next. We waited. And waited. Nothing happened. That was where she wrong-footed us for the first time, had we only known it. All our expertise in hiding was useless if she wasn't going to come looking for us. And she did not come. We hung about in the room, growing bored, then vexed by the curiosity that seeded itself in us despite our resistance. We became attentive to the sounds from downstairs: John-thedig's voice, the dragging of furniture, some banging and knocking. Then it fell quiet. At lunchtime we were called and did not go. At six the Missus called us again, "Come and have supper with your new governess, children." We stayed on in the room. No one came. There was the beginning of a sense that the newcomer was a force to be reckoned with.

Later came the sound of the household getting ready for bed. Footsteps on the stairs, the Missus, saying, "I hope you'll be comfortable, Miss," and the voice of the governess, steel in velvet, "I'm sure I will, Mrs. Dunne. Thank you for all your trouble."

"About the girls, Miss Barrow-" "Don't you worry about them, Mrs. Dunne. They'll be all right. Good night." And after the sound of the Missus's feet shuffling cautiously down the stairs, all was quiet.

Night fell and the house slept. Except us. The Missus's attempts to teach us that nighttime was for sleeping had failed as all her lessons had failed, and we had no fear of the dark. Outside the governess's door we listened and heard nothing but the faint scratch scratch of a mouse under the boards, so we went on downstairs, to the larder.

The door would not open. The lock had never been used in our lifetime, but tonight it betrayed itself with a trace of fresh oil.

Emmeline waited patiently, blankly, for the door to open, as she had always waited before. Confident that in a moment there would be bread and butter and jam for the taking.

But there was no need to panic. The Missus's apron pocket. That's where the key would be. That's where the keys always were: a ring of rusted keys, unused, for doors and locks and cupboards all over the house, and any amount of fiddling to know which key matched which lock.

The pocket was empty.

Emmeline stirred, wondered distantly at the delay.

The governess was shaping up into a real challenge. But she wouldn't catch us that way. We would go out. You could always get into one of the cottages for a snack. The handle of the kitchen door turned, then stopped. No amount of tugging and jiggling could free it. It was padlocked.

The broken window in the drawing room had been boarded up, and the shutters secured in the dining room. There was only one other chance. To the hall and the great double doors we went. Emmeline, bewildered, padded along behind. She was hungry. Why all this fuss with doors and windows? How long before she could fill her tummy with food? A shaft of moonlight, tinted blue by the colored glass in the hall windows, was enough to highlight the huge bolts, heavy and out of reach, that had been oiled and slid into place at the top of the double doors.

We were imprisoned.

Emmeline spoke. "Yum yum," she said. She was hungry. And when Emmeline was hungry, Emmeline had to be fed. It was as simple as that. We were in a fix. It was a long time coming, but eventually Emmeline's poor little brain realized that the food she longed for could not be had. A look of bewilderment came into her eyes, and she opened her mouth and wailed.

The sound of her cry carried up the stone staircase, turned into the corridor to the left, rose up another flight of stairs and slipped under the door of the new governess's bedroom.

Soon another noise was added to it. Not the blind shuffle of the Missus, but the smart, metronomic step of Hester Barrow's feet. A brisk, unhurried click, click, click. Down a set of stairs, along a corridor, to the gallery.

took refuge in the folds of the long curtains just before she emerged onto the galleried landing. It was midnight. At the top of the stairs she stood, a compact little figure, neither fat nor thin, set on a sturdy pair of legs, the whole topped by that calm and determined countenance. In her firmly belted blue dressing gown and with her hair neatly brushed, she looked for all the world as though she slept sitting up and ready for morning. Her hair was thin and stuck flat to her head, her face was lumpen and her nose was pudgy. She was plain, if not worse than plain, but plainness on Hester had not remotely the same effect that it might on any other woman. She drew the eye.

Emmeline, at the foot of the stairs, had been sobbing with hunger a moment ago, yet the instant Hester appeared in all her glory, she stopped crying and stared, apparently placated, as though it were a cakestand piled high with cake that had appeared before her.

"How nice to see you," said Hester, coming down the stairs. "Now, who are you? Adeline or Emmeline?"

Emmeline, openmouthed, was silent.

"No matter," the governess said. "Would you like some supper?

And where is your sister? Would she like some, too?" "Yum," said Emmeline, and I didn't know if it was the word supper or Hester herself who had provoked it.

Hester looked around, seeking the other twin. The curtain appeared to her as just a curtain, for after a cursory glance she turned all her attention to Emmeline. "Come with me." She smiled. She drew a key out of her blue pocket. It was a clean blue-silver, buffed to a high shine, and it glinted tantalizingly in the blue light.

It did the trick. "Shiny," Emmeline pronounced and, without knowing what it was or the magic it could work, she followed the key-and Hester with it-back through the cold corridors to the kitchen.

In the folds of the curtain my hunger pangs gave way to anger. Hester and her key! Emmeline! It was like the perambulator all over again. It was love.

That was the first night and it was Hester's victory.

The grubbiness of the house did not transfer itself to our pristine governess the way one might have expected. Instead it was the other way around. The few rays of light, drained and dusty, that managed to penetrate the uncleaned windows and the heavy curtains seemed always to fall on Hester. She gathered them to herself and reflected them back into the gloom, refreshed and vitalized by their contact with her. Little by little the gleam extended from Hester herself to the house. On the first full day it was just her own room that was affected. She took the curtains down and plunged them into a tub of soapy water. She pegged them on the line where the sun and wind woke up the unsuspected pattern of pink and yellow roses. While they were drying, she cleaned the window with newspaper and vinegar to let the light in, and when she could see what she was doing, she scrubbed the room from floor to ceiling. By nightfall she had created a little haven of cleanliness within those four walls. And that was just the beginning.

With soap and with bleach, with energy and with determination, she imposed hygiene on that house. Where for generations the inhabitants had lumbered half-seeing and purposeless, circling after nothing but their own squalid obsessions, Hester came as a spring-cleaning miracle. For thirty years the pace of life indoors had been measured by the slow movement of the motes of dust caught in an occasional ray of weary sunlight. Now Hester's little feet paced out the minutes and the seconds, and with a vigorous swish of a duster, the motes were gone.

After cleanliness came order, and the house was first to feel the changes. Our new governess did a very thorough tour. She went from bottom to top, tutting and frowning on every floor. There was not a single cupboard or alcove that escaped her attention; with pencil and notebook in hand, she scrutinized every room, noting damp patches and rattling windows, testing doors and floorboards for squeaks, trying old keys in old locks, and labeling them. She left doors locked behind her. Though it was only a first "going over," a preparatory stage to the main restoration, nevertheless she made a change in every room she entered: a pile of blankets in a corner folded and left tidily on a chair; a book picked up and tucked under her arm to be returned later to the library; the line of a curtain set straight. All this done with noticeable haste but without the slightest impression of hurry. It seemed she had only to cast her eye about a room for the darkness in it to recede, for the chaos to begin shamefacedly to put itself in order, for the ghosts to beat a retreat. In this manner, every room was Hestered.

The attic, it is true, did stop her in her tracks. Her jaw dropped and she looked aghast at the state of the roof cavity. But even in this chaos she was invincible. She gathered herself together, tightening her lips, and scratched and scribbled away at her page with even greater vigor. The very next day, a builder came. We knew him from the village-an unhurried man with a strolling pace. In speech he stretched out his vowel sounds to give his mouth a rest before the next consonant. He kept six or seven jobs going at once and rarely finished any of them; he spent his working days smoking cigarettes and eyeing the job in hand with a fatalistic shake of the head. He climbed our stairs in his typical lazy fashion, but after he'd been five minutes with Hester we heard his hammer going nineteen to the dozen. She had galvanized him.

Within a few days there were mealtimes, bedtimes, getting-up times. A few days more and there were clean shoes for indoors, clean boots for out. Not only that, but the silk dresses were cleaned, mended, made to fit and hung away for some mythical "best," and new dresses in navy and green cotton poplin with white sashes and collars appeared for everyday.

Emmeline thrived under the new regime. She was well fed at regular hours, allowed to play-under tight supervision-with Hester's shiny keys. She even developed a passion for baths. She struggled at first, yelled and kicked as Hester and the Missus stripped her and lowered her into the tub, but when she saw herself in the mirror afterward, saw herself clean and with her hair neatly braided and tied with a green bow, her mouth opened and she fell into another of her trances. She liked being shiny. Whenever Emmeline was in Hester's presence she used to study her face on the sly, on the lookout for a smile. When Hester did smile-it was not infrequent-Emmeline gazed at her face in delight. Before long she learned to smile back.

Other members of the household flourished, too. The Missus had her eyes examined by the doctor, and with much complaining was taken to a specialist. On her return she could see again. The Missus was so pleased at seeing the house in its new state of cleanliness that all the years she 'd lived in a state of grayness fell away from her, and she was rejuvenated sufficiently to join Hester in this brave new world. Even John-the-dig, who obeyed Hester's orders morosely and kept his dark eyes always firmly averted from her bright, all-seeing ones, could not resist the positive effect of her energy in the household. Without a word to anyone, he took up his shears and entered the topiary garden for the first time since the catastrophe. There he joined his efforts to those already being made by nature to mend the violence of the past.

Charlie was less directly influenced. He kept out of her way and that suited both of them. She had no desire to do anything other than her job, and her job was us. Our minds, our bodies and our souls, yes, but our guardian was outside her jurisdiction, and so she left him alone. She was no Jane Eyre and he was no Mr. Rochester. In the face of her spruce energy he retreated to the old nursery rooms on the second floor behind a firmly locked door, where he and his memories festered together in squalor. For him the Hester effect was limited to an improvement in his diet and a firmer hand over his finances, which, under the honest but flimsy control of the Missus, had been plundered by unscrupulous traders and businesspeople. Neither of these changes for the good did he notice, and if he had noticed them I doubt he would have cared.

But Hester did keep the children under control and out of sight, and had he given it any thought he would have been grateful for this. Under Hester's reign there was no cause for hostile neighbors to come complaining about the twins, no imperative to visit the kitchen and have a sandwich made by the Missus, above all, no need to leave, even for a minute, that realm of the imagination that he inhabited with Isabelle, only with Isabelle, always with Isabelle. What he gave up in territory, he gained in freedom. He never heard Hester; he never saw her; the thought of her never once entered his head. She was entirely satisfactory.

Hester had triumphed. She might have looked like a potato, but there was nothing that girl couldn't do, once she put her mind to it.

Miss Winter paused, her eyes set fixedly on the corner of the room, where her past presented itself to her with more reality than the present and me. At the corners of her mouth and eyes flickered half-expressions of sorrow and distress. Aware of the thinness of the thread that connected her to her past, I was anxious not to break it, but equally anxious for her not to stop her story.

The pause lengthened. "And you?" I prompted softly. "What about you?" "Me?" She blinked vaguely. "Oh, I liked her. That was the trouble." "Trouble?" She blinked again, shuffled in her seat and looked at me with a new, sharp gaze. She had cut the thread. "I think that's enough for today. You can go now."