The Thirteenth Tale

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. Aprivate 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."

Hester disregarded his comment and began her explanation.

"Adeline is a hostile and aggressive child. She resents my presence in the house and resists all my efforts to impose order. Her eating is erratic; she refuses food until she is half starving, and only then will she eat but the merest morsel. She has to be bathed by force, and, despite her thinness, it takes two people to hold her in the water. Any warmth I show her is met by utter indifference. She seems incapable of all the normal range of human emotion, and, I speak frankly to you, Dr. Maudsley, I have wondered whether she has it in her to return to the fold of common humanity."

"Is she intelligent?"

"She is wily. She is cunning. But she cannot be stimulated to take an interest in anything beyond the realm of her own wishes, desires and appetites."

"And in the classroom? "

"You appreciate of course that with girls like these the classroom is not what it might be for normal children. There is no arithmetic, no Latin, no geography. Still, in the interests of order and routine, the children are made to attend for two hours, twice a day, and I educate them by telling stories."

"Does she appreciate these lessons?"

"If only I knew how to answer that question! She is quite wild, Dr. Maudsley. She has to be trapped in the room by trickery, or sometimes I have to get John to bring her by force. She will do anything to avoid it, flailing her arms or else holding her whole body rigid to make it awkward to carry her through the door. Seating her behind a desk is practically impossible. More often than not John is obliged to simply leave her on the floor. She will neither look at me nor listen to me in the classroom, but retreats to some inner world of her own."

The doctor listened closely and nodded. "It is a difficult case. Her behavior causes you greater anxiety and you fear that the results of your efforts may be less successful than with her sister. And yet"-his smile was charming-"forgive me, Miss Barrow, if I do not see why you profess to be baffled by her. On the contrary, your account of her behavior and mental state is more coherent than many a medical student might make, given the same evidence."

She eyed him levelly. "I have not yet come to the confusing part."

"Ah."

"There are methods that have been successful with children like Adeline in the past. There are strategies of my own that I have some faith in and would not hesitate to put into action were it not that…"

Hester hesitated, and this time the doctor was wise enough to wait for her to go on. When she spoke again it was slowly, and she weighed her words with care.

"It is as though there is a mist in Adeline, a mist that separates her not only from humanity but from herself. And sometimes the mist thins, and sometimes the mist clears, and another Adeline appears. And then the mist returns and she is as before."

Hester looked at the doctor, watching his reaction. He frowned, but above his frown, where his hair was receding, his skin was an unwrinkled pink. "What is she like during these periods?"

"The outward signs are very small. For several weeks I was not aware of the phenomenon, and even then I waited some time before being sure enough to come to you."

"I see."

"First of all there is her breathing. It changes sometimes, and I know that though she is pretending to be in a world of her own, she is listening to me. And her hands-"

"Her hands?"

"Usually they are splayed, tense, like this"-Hester demonstrated-"but then sometimes I notice they relax, like this"-and her own fingers relaxed into softness. "It is as if her involvement with the story has captured her attention and in doing so undermined her defenses, so that she relaxes and forgets her show of rejection and defiance. I have worked with a great many difficult children, Dr. Maudsley. I have considerable expertise. And what I have seen amounts to this: Against all the odds, there is afermentation in her."

The doctor did not answer immediately but considered, and Hester seemed gratified at his application.

"Is there any pattern to the emergence of these signs?"

"Nothing I can be sure of as yet, but…"

He put his head on one side, encouraging her to go on.

"It's probably nothing, but certain stories… "

"Stories?"

"Jane Eyre, for instance. I told them a shortened version of the first part, over several days, and I certainly noticed it then. Dickens, too. The historical tales and the moral tales have never had the same effect."

The doctor frowned. "And is it consistent? Does reading Jane Eyre always bring about the changes you have described?"

"No. That is the difficulty."

"Hmm. So what do you mean to do?"

"There are methods for managing selfish and resistant children such as Adeline. A strict regime now might be enough to keep her out of an institution later in life. However, this regime, involving the imposition of strict routine and the removal of much that stimulates her, would be most detrimental to-"

"To the child we see through the gaps in the mist?"

"Precisely. In fact, for that child, nothing would be worse."

"And that child, the girl in the mist, what future could you foresee for her?" "It is a premature question. Suffice it to say that I cannot at present countenance her being lost. Who knows what she might become?"

They sat in silence, gazing at the leafy geometry opposite and contemplating the problem Hester had set out while, unbeknownst to them, the problem itself, well concealed by topiary, stared back at them through the gaps in the branches.

Finally the doctor spoke. "There is no medical condition I know of that would cause mental effects of quite the kind you describe. However, that may be my own ignorance." He waited for her to protest; she didn't. "H-hum. It would be sensible for me to give the child a thorough examination in order to establish her overall state of health, both mental and physical, as a first step."

"That is just what I was thinking," Hester replied. "Now… "-she rummaged in her pocket-"here are my notes. You will find descriptions of each instance I have witnessed, together with some preliminary analysis. Perhaps after the medical you might stay for half an hour to give me your first thoughts? We can decide on the appropriate next step then."

He looked at her in some amazement. She had stepped out of her role as governess, was behaving as though she were some fellow expert!

Hester had caught herself out.

She hesitated. Could she backtrack? Was it too late? She made her resolution. In for a penny, in for a pound. "It's not a dodecahedron," she told him slyly. "It's a tetrahedron."

The doctor rose from the bench, stepped toward the topiary shape. One, two, three, four… His lips moved as he counted. My heart stopped. Was he going to walk around the tree, making his tally of planes and corners? Was he going to trip over me?

But he reached six and stopped. He knew she was right.

Then there was a curious little moment when they just looked at each other. His face was uncertain. What was this woman? By what authority did she speak to him the way she did? She was just a dumpy, potato-faced, provincial governess. Wasn't she?

In silence she stared back at him, transfixed by the uncertainty glimmering in his face. The world seemed to tilt a fraction on its axis, and they each looked awkwardly away. "The medical," Hester began.

"Wednesday afternoon, perhaps?" proposed the doctor.

"Wednesday afternoon."

And the world returned to its proper axis.

They walked back toward the house, and at the turn in the path the doctor took his leave. Behind the yew the little spy bit her nails and wondered.