The Thirteenth Tale

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 meyour 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 direction of his temple, pointed to the snail-coil of his ear. In the grain of his skin were closely arranged pinpricks of beard. There it was again: that almost imperceptible flaring of the nostrils, that twitch at the edge of 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'appétit 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.