The Thirteenth Tale

GONE!

Only Charlie was unaffected. There were changes, of course. The proper meals that under Hester's regime had been placed outside his door at breakfast, lunch and dinner became occasional sandwiches, a cold chop and a tomato, a bowl of congealed scrambled egg, appearing at unpredictable intervals, whenever the Missus remembered. It didn't make any difference to Charlie. If he felt hungry and it was there, he might eat a mouthful of yesterday's chop, or a dry end of bread, but if it wasn't there he wouldn't, and his hunger didn't bother him. He had a more powerful hunger to worry about. It was the essence of his life and something that Hester, in her arrival and in her departure, had not changed.

Yet change did come for Charlie, though it had nothing to do with Hester.

From time to time a letter would come to the house, and from time to time someone would open it. A few days after John-the-dig's comment about there having been no letter from Hester, the Missus, finding herself in the hall, noticed a small pile of letters gathering dust on the mat under the letter box. She opened them.

One from Charlie's banker: was he interested in an investment opportunity…?

The second was an invoice from the builders for the work done on the roof.

Was the third from Hester?

No. The third was from the asylum. Isabelle was dead.

The Missus stared at the letter. Dead! Isabelle! Could it be true? Influenza, the letter said.

Charlie would have to be told, but the Missus quailed at the prospect. Better talk to Dig first, she resolved, putting the letters aside. But later, when John was sitting at his place at the kitchen table and she was topping up his cup with fresh tea, there remained no trace of the letter in her mind. It had joined those other, increasingly frequent, lost moments, lived and felt but unrecorded and then lost. Nevertheless, a few days later, passing through the hall with a tray of burnt toast and bacon, she mechanically put the letters on the tray with the food, though she had no memory at all of their contents.

And then the days passed and nothing seemed to happen at all, except that the dust got thicker, and the grime accumulated on the windowpanes, and the playing cards crept farther and farther from their box in the drawing room, and it became easier and easier to forget that there had ever been a Hester.

It was John-the-dig who realized in the silence of the days that something had happened.

He was an outdoors man and not domesticated. Nevertheless he knew that there comes a time when cups cannot be made to do for one more cup of tea without being first washed, and he knew moreover that a plate that has held raw meat cannot be used straight after for cooked. He saw how things were going with the Missus; he was no fool. So when the pile of dirty plates and cups piled up, he would set to and do the washing up. It was an odd thing to see him at the sink in his Wellington boots and his cap, so clumsy with the cloth and china where he was so adroit with his terra-cotta pots and tender plants. And it came to his attention that the number of cups and plates was diminishing. Soon there would not be enough. Where was the missing crockery? He thought instantly of the Missus making her haphazard way upstairs with a plate for Master Charlie. Had he ever seen her return an empty plate to the kitchen? No.

He went upstairs. Outside the locked door, plates and cups were arranged in a long queue. The food, untouched by Charlie, was providing a fine feast for the flies that buzzed over it, and there was a powerful, unpleasant smell. How many days had the Missus been leaving food here without noticing that the previous day's was still untouched? He toted up the number of plates and cups and frowned. That is when he knew.

He did not knock at the door. What was the point? He had to go to his shed for a piece of timber strong enough to use as a battering ram. The noise of it against the oak, the creaking and smashing as metal hinges tore away from wood, was enough to bring us all, even the Missus, to the door.

When the battered door fell open, half broken off its hinges, we could hear buzzing flies, and a terrible stench billowed out, knocking Emmeline and the Missus back a few steps. Even John put his hand to his mouth and turned a shade whiter. "Stay back," he ordered as he entered the room. A few paces behind, I followed him.

We stepped gingerly through the debris of rotting food on the floor of the old nursery, stirring clouds of flies up into the air as we passed. Charlie had been living like an animal. Dirty plates covered with mold were on the floor, on the mantelpiece, on chairs and on the table. The bedroom door was ajar. With the end of the battering ram he still had in his hand, John nudged the door cautiously, and a startled rat came scurrying out over our feet. It was a gruesome scene. More flies, more decomposing food and worse: The man had been ill. A pile of dried, fly-spotted vomit encrusted the rug on the floor. On the table by the bed was a heap of bloody handkerchiefs and the Missus's old darning needle.

The bed was empty. Just crumpled, filthy sheets stained with blood and other human vileness.

We did not speak. We tried not to breathe, and when, of necessity, we inhaled through our mouths, the sick, repugnant air caught in our throats and made us retch. Yet we had not had the worst of it. There was one more room. John had to steel himself to open the door to the bathroom. Even before the door was fully open, we sensed the horror of it. Before it snagged in my nostrils, my skin seemed to smell it, and a cold sweat bloomed all over my body. The toilet was bad enough. The lid was down but could not quite contain the overflowing mess it was supposed to cover. But that was nothing. For in the bath-John took a sharp step back and would have stepped on me if I had not, at the same moment, taken two steps back myself. In the bath was a dark swill of bodily effluence, the stink of which sent John and me racing to the door, back through the rat droppings and the flies, out into the corridor, down the stairs and out of doors.

I was sick. On the green grass, my pile of yellow vomit looked fresh and clean and sweet. "All right," said John, and he patted my back with a hand that was still trembling.

The Missus, having followed at her own hurried shuffle, approached us across the lawn, questions all over her face. What could we tell her?

We had found Charlie's blood. We had found Charlie's shit, Charlie's piss and Charlie's vomit. But Charlie himself? "He's not there," we told her. "He's gone."

I returned to my room, thinking about the story. It was curious in more than one respect. There was Charlie's disappearance, of course, which was an interesting turn of events. It left me thinking about the almanacs and that curious abbreviation: ldd. But there was more. Did she know I had noticed? I had made no outward sign. But I had noticed. Today Miss Winter had said /.

In my room, on a tray next to the ham sandwiches, I found a large brown envelope.

Mr. Lomax, the solicitor, had replied to my letter by return of post. Attached to his brief but kindly note were copies of Hester's contract, which I glanced at and put aside, a letter of recommendation from a Lady Blake in Naples, who wrote positively of Hester's gifts, and, most interesting of all, a letter accepting the offer of employment, written by the miracle worker herself.

Dear Dr. Maudsley, Thankyoufor the offer of work you have kindly made to me. I shall bepleased to take up thepost at Angelfield on the 19th

April as you suggest.

I have made inquiries and gather that the trains run only to Ban-bury.Perhaps you would advise me how I can best make my way to Angelfield from there. I shall arrive at Banbury Station at half past ten.

Yours sincerely, Hester Barrow

There was firmness in Hester's sturdy capitals, consistency in the slant of the letters, a sense of smooth flow in the moderate loops of the g's and the j/s. The letter size was small enough for economy of ink and paper, yet large enough for clarity. There were no embellishments. No elaborate curls, flounces or flourishes. The beauty of the orthography came from the sense of order, balance and proportion that governed each and every letter. It was a good, clean hand. It was Hester herself, made word.

In the top right-hand corner was an address in London. Good, I thought. I can find you now. I reached for paper, and before I began my transcription, wrote a letter to the genealogist Father had recommended. It was a longish letter: I had to introduce myself, for he would doubtless be unaware Mr. Lea even had a daughter; I had to touch lightly on the matter of the almanacs to justify my claim on his time; I had to enumerate everything I knew about Hester: Naples, London, Angelfield. But the gist of my letter was simple: Find her.