The Thirteenth Tale

BABY

On Miss Winter's narrow bed, her frame was marked by only the smallest rise and fall in the bedclothes. Warily she stole each breath, as though she expected to be ambushed at any minute. The light from the lamp sought out her skeleton: It caught her pale cheekbone and illuminated the white arc of her brow; it sank her eye in a deep pool of shadow.

Over the back of my chair lay a gold silk shawl. I draped it over the shade so that it might diffuse the light, warm it, make it fall less brutally upon Miss Winter's face.

Quietly I sat, quietly I watched, and when she spoke I barely heard her whisper.

"The truth? Let me see… "

The words drifted from her lips into the air; they hung there trembling, then found their way and began their journey.

I was not kind to Ambrose. I could have been. In another world, I might have been. It wouldn't have been so very hard: He was tall and strong and his hair was gold in the sun. I knew he liked me and I was not indifferent. But I hardened my heart. I was bound to Emmeline.

"Am I not good enough for you?" he asked me one day. He came straight out with it, like that.

I pretended not to hear, but he insisted.

"If I'm not good enough, you tell me so to my face!"

"You can't read," I said, "and you can't write!"

He smiled. Took my pencil from the kitchen windowsill and began to scratch letters onto a piece of paper. He was slow. The letters were uneven. But it was clear enough. Ambrose. He wrote his name and when he had done it, he took the paper and held it out to show me.

I snatched it out of his hand, screwed it into a ball and tossed it to the floor.

He stopped coming into the kitchen for his tea break. I drank my tea in the Missus's chair, missing my cigarette, while I listened for the sound of his step or the ring of his spade. When he came to the house with the meat, he passed the bag without a word, eyes averted, face frozen. He had given up. Later, cleaning the kitchen, I came across the piece of paper with his name on it. I felt ashamed of myself and put the paper in his game bag hanging behind the kitchen door, so it would be out of sight.

When did I realize Emmeline was pregnant? A few months after the boy stopped coming for tea. I knew it before she knew herself; she was hardly one to notice the changes in her body, or to realize the consequences. I questioned her about Ambrose. It was hard to make her understand the sense of my questions, and she quite failed to see why I was angry. "He was so sad" was all she would tell me. "You were too unkind." She spoke very gently, full of compassion for the boy, velveting her reproach for me.

I could have shaken her.

"You do realize that you're going to have a baby now, don't you?"

Mild astonishment passed across her face, then left it tranquil as before. Nothing, it seemed, could disturb her serenity. I dismissed Ambrose. I gave him his pay till the end of the week and sent him away. I didn't look at him while I spoke to him. I didn't give him any reasons. He didn't ask any questions. "You may as well go immediately," I told him, but that wasn't his way. He finished the row of planting I had interrupted, cleaned the tools scrupulously, the way John had taught him, and put them back in the garden shed, leaving everything neat and tidy. Then he knocked at the kitchen door.

"What will you do for meat? Do you know how to kill a chicken at least?"

I shook my head.

"Come on."

He jerked his head in the direction of the pen, and I followed him.

"Don't waste any time," he instructed me. "Clean and quick is the way. No second thoughts."

He swooped on one of the copper-feathered birds pecking about our feet and held its body firmly. He mimed the action that would break its neck. "See?"

I nodded.

"Go on then."

He released the bird and it flurried to the ground where its round back was soon indistinguishable from its neighbors. "Now?" "What else are you going to eat tonight?" The sun was gleaming on the feathers of the hens as they pecked for seeds. I reached for a bird, but it scuttled away. The second one slipped through my fingers in the same way. Grabbing for a third, this time, clumsily, I held on to it. It squawked and tried to beat its wings in its panic to escape, and I wondered how the boy had held his so easily. As I struggled to keep it still under my arm and get my hands around its neck at the same time, I felt the boy's severe eye upon me.

"Clean and quick," he reminded me. He doubted me, I could tell from his voice.

I was going to kill the bird. I had decided to kill the bird. So, gripping the bird's neck, I squeezed. But my hands would only half obey me. A strangled cry of alarm flew from the bird's throat, and for a second I hesitated. With a muscular twist and a flap, the bird slipped from under my arm. It was only because I was struck by the paralysis of panic that I still had it by the neck. Wings beating, claws flailing wildly at the air, almost it lurched away from me.

Swiftly, powerfully, the boy took the bird out of my grasp and in a single movement he had done it. He held the body out to me; I forced myself to take it. Warm, heavy, still.

The sun shone on his hair as he looked at me. His look was worse than the claws, worse than the beating wings. Worse than the limp body in my hands.

Without a word he turned his back and walked away.

What good was the boy to me? My heart was not mine to give; it belonged to another, and always had.

I loved Emmeline.

I believe that Emmeline loved me, too. Only she loved Adeline more.

It is a painful thing to love a twin. When Adeline was there, Emme-line's heart was full. She had no need of me, and I was left on the outside, a cast-off, a superfluity, a mere observer of the twins and their twinness.

Only when Adeline went roaming alone was there space in Emme-line's heart for another. Then her sorrow was my joy. Little by little I coaxed her away from her loneliness, offering gifts of silver thread and shiny baubles, until she almost forgot she had been abandoned and gave herself over to the friendship and companionship I could offer. By a fire we played cards, sang, talked. Together we were happy.

Until Adeline came back. Furious with cold and hunger, she would come raging into the house, and the instant she was there, our world of two came to an end, and I was on the outside again.

It wasn't fair. Though Adeline beat her and pulled her hair, Emme-line loved her. Though Adeline abandoned her, Emmeline loved her. Whatever Adeline did, it altered nothing, for Emmeline's love was total. And me? My hair was copper like Adeline's. My eyes were green like Adeline's. In the absence of Adeline, I could fool anyone. But I never fooled Emmeline. Her heart knew the truth.

Emmeline had her baby in January.

No one knew. As she had grown bigger, so she had grown lazier; it was no hardship for her to keep to the confines of the house. She was content to stay inside, yawning in the library, the kitchen, her bedroom. Her retreat was not noticed. Why should it have been? The only visitor to the house was Mr. Lomax; he came on regular days at regular hours. Easy as pie to have her out of the way by the time he knocked on the door.

Our contact with other people was slight. For meat and vegetables we were self-sufficient-I never learned to like killing chickens, but I learned to do it. As for other provisions, I went to the farm in person to collect cheese and milk, and when once a week the shop sent a boy on a bicycle with our other requirements, I met him on the drive and carried the basket to the house myself. I thought it would be a sensible precaution to have another twin seen by someone at least from time to time. Once, when Adeline seemed calm enough, I gave her the coin and sent her to meet the boy on the bicycle. "It was the other one today," I imagined him saying, back at the shop. "The weird one." And I wondered what the doctor would make of it if the boy's account reached his ears. But it soon grew impossible to use Adeline like this again. Emmeline's pregnancy affected her twin curiously: For the first time in her life she discovered an appetite. From being a scrawny bag of bones, she developed plump curves and full breasts. There were times-in half-light, from certain angles-when for a moment even I could not tell them apart. So from time to time on a Wednesday morning, I would be Adeline. I would mess my hair, grime my nails, set my face into a tight, agitated mask and go down the drive to meet the boy on the bicycle. Seeing the speed of my gait as I came down the gravel drive to meet him, he would know it was the other one. I could see his fingers curl anxiously around his handlebars. Watching me surreptitiously, he handed over the basket, then he pocketed his tip and was glad to bicycle away. The following week, when he was met by me as myself, his smile had a touch of relief in it.

Hiding the pregnancy was not difficult. But I was troubled during those months of waiting about the birth itself. I knew what the dangers of labor might be. Isabelle 's mother had not survived her second labor, and I could not put this thought out of my head for more than a few hours at a time. That Emmeline should suffer, that her life should be put in danger-this was unthinkable. On the other hand, the doctor had been no friend of ours and I did not want him at the house. He had seen Isabelle and taken her away. That could not be allowed to happen to Emmeline. He had separated Emmeline and Adeline. That could not be allowed to happen to Emmeline and me. Besides, how could he come without there being immediate complications? And although he had been persuaded, though he did not understand it, that the girl in the mist had broken through the carapace of the mute rag-doll Adeline who had once spent several months with him, if he were once to realize that there were three girls at Angelfield House, he would immediately see the truth of the affair. For a single visit, for the birth itself, I could lock Adeline in the old nursery, and we might get away with it. But once it was known there was a baby in the house, there would be no end of visits. It would be impossible to keep our secret.

I was well aware of the fragility of my position. / knew I belonged here, / knew it was my place. I had no home but Angelfield, no love but Emmeline, no life but this one here, yet I was under no illusions about how tenuous my claim would seem to others. What friends did I have? The doctor could hardly be expected to speak up for me, and though Mr. Lomax was kind to me now, once he knew I had impersonated Adeline, it was inevitable that his attitude would alter. Emmeline's affection for me and mine for her would count as nothing.

Emmeline herself, ignorant and placid, let the days of her confinement pass by untroubled. For me the time was spent in an agony of indecision. How to keep Emmeline safe? How to keep myself safe? Every day I put off the decision to the next. During the first months I felt sure the solution would come to me in time. Had I not resolved everything else, against the odds? Then this, too, could be arranged. But as the time grew nearer, the problem grew more urgent and I was no nearer a decision. I veered in the space of a minute between grabbing my coat to go to the doctor's house, there and then, to tell him everything, and the contrary thought: that to do so was to reveal myself, and that to reveal myself could only lead to my banishment. Tomorrow, I told myself, as I replaced my coat on the hook. I will think of something tomorrow.

But then it was too late for tomorrow.

I woke to a cry. Emmeline!

But it was not Emmeline. Emmeline was huffing and panting; like a beast she snorted and sweated; her eyes bulged and she showed her teeth, but she did not cry out. She ate her pain and it turned to strength inside her. The cry that had woken me, and the cries that continued to resound all around the house, were not hers but Adeline's, and they did not cease till morning, when Emmeline's infant, a boy, was delivered.

It was the seventh of January.

Emmeline slept; she smiled in her sleep.

I bathed the baby. He opened his eyes and goggled, astounded by the touch of the warm water. The sun rose. The time for decisions had come and gone, and no decision had been made, yet here we were, on the other side of disaster, and we were safe. My life could go on.