The Thirteenth Tale

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I went home.

To the bookshop.

"Miss Winter is dead," I told my father.

"And you? How are you?" he asked.

"Alive."

He smiled.

"Tell me about Mum," I said to him. "Why is she the way she is?"

He told me. "She was very ill when you were born. She never saw you before you were taken away. She never saw your sister. She nearly died. By the time she came around, your operation had already taken place and your sister… "

"My sister had died."

"Yes. There was no knowing how it would go with you. I went from her bedside to yours… I thought I was going to lose all three of you. I prayed to every God I had ever heard of to save you. And my prayers were answered. In part. You survived. Your mother never really came back."

There was one other thing I needed to know.

"Why didn't you tell me? About being a twin?"

The face he turned to me was devastated. He swallowed, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse. "The story of your birth is a sad one. Your mother thought it too heavy for a child to bear. At least that's what your mother said. I would have borne it for you, Margaret, if I could. I would have done anything to spare you."

We sat in silence. I thought of all the other questions I might have asked, but now that the moment had come I didn't need to. I reached for my father's hand at the same moment as he reached for mine.

I attended three funerals in as many days.

Miss Winter's mourners were many. The nation grieved for its favorite storyteller, and thousands of readers turned out to pay their respects. I came away as soon as I could, having said my good-byes already.

The second was a quiet affair. There were only Judith, Maurice, the doctor and me to mourn the woman referred to throughout the service as Emmeline. Afterward we said brief farewells and parted.

The third was lonelier still. In a crematorium in Banbury I was the only person in attendance when a bland-faced clergyman oversaw the passing into God's hands of a set of bones, identity unknown. Into God's hands, except that it was me who collected the urn later, "on behalf of the Angelfield family."

There were snowdrops in Angelfield. At least the first signs of them, boring their way through the frozen ground and showing their points, green and fresh, above the snow.

As I stood up I heard a sound. It was Aurelius, arriving at the lychgate. Snow had settled on his shoulders and he was carrying flowers. "Aurelius!" How could he have grown so sad? So pale? "You've changed," I said.

"I have worn myself out on a wild-goose chase." His eyes, always mild, had lightened to the same washed-out blue as the January sky; you could see straight through their transparency to his disappointed heart. "All my life I have wanted to find my family. I wanted to know who I was. And lately I have felt hopeful. I thought there might be some chance of restoration. Now I fear I was mistaken."

We walked along the grass path between the graves and cleared the snow from the bench and sat down before more could fall. Aurelius delved into his pocket and unwrapped two pieces of cake. Absently he handed one to me and dug his teeth into the other.

"Is that what you have for me?" he asked, looking at the casket. "Is that the rest of my story?"

I handed him the casket.

"Isn't it light? Light as air. And yet…" His hand veered to his heart; he sought a gesture to show how heavy his heart was; not finding it, he put down the casket and took another bite of cake.

When he had finished the last morsel he spoke. "If she was my mother, why was I not with her? Why did I not die with her, in this place? Why would she take me away to Mrs. Love's house and then come back here to a house on fire? Why? It doesn't make sense."

I followed him as he stepped off the central path and made his way into the maze of narrow borders between the graves. He stopped at a grave I had looked at before and laid down his flowers. The stone was a simple one.

JOAN MARY LOVE

NEVER FORGOTTEN

Poor Aurelius. He was so very weary. He hardly seemed to notice as I slipped my arm through his. But then he turned to face me fully. "Perhaps it's better not to have a story at all, rather than have one that keeps changing. I have spent my whole life chasing after my story and never quite catching it. Running after my story when I had Mrs. Love all along. She loved me, you know."

"I never doubted it." She had been a good mother to him. Better than either of the twins could have been. "Perhaps it's better not to know," I suggested.

He looked from the gravestone to the white sky. "Doyou think so?"

"No."

"Then why suggest it?"

I slid my arm from his and tucked my cold hands under the arms of my coat. "It's what my mother would say. She thinks a weightless story is better than one that's too heavy." "So. My story is a heavy one." I said nothing, and when the silence grew long, I told him not his story but my own. "I had a sister," I began. "A twin." He turned to face me. His shoulders were solid and wide against the sky and he listened gravely to the story I poured out to him.

"We were joined. Here-" and I brushed my hand down my left side. "She couldn't live without me. She needed my heart to beat for her. But I couldn't live with her. She was draining my strength. They separated us, and she died."

My other hand joined the first over my scar, and I pressed hard. "My mother never told me. She thought it was better for me not to know." "A weightless story." "Yes." "But you do know." I pressed harder. "I found out by accident." "I am sorry," he said. I felt my hands taken by his, and he enclosed both of them into one great fist. Then, with his other arm, he drew me to him. Through layers of coats I felt the softness of his belly, and a rush of noise came to my ear. It is the beating of his heart, I thought. A human heart. By my side. So this is what it's like. I listened.

Then we drew apart.

"And is it better to know?" he asked me.

"I can't tell you. But once you know, it's impossible to go back."

"And you know my story."

"Yes."

"My true story."

"Yes."

He barely hesitated. Just took a breath and seemed to grow a little bigger.

"You had better tell me, then," he said.

I told. And while I told we walked, and when I finished telling we were standing at the place where the snowdrops were pointing through the whiteness of the snow.

With the casket in his hands, Aurelius hesitated. "I have a feeling this is against the rules."

I thought it was, too. "But what else can we do?"

"The rules don't work for this case, do they?"

"Nothing else would be right."

"Come on, then."

We used the cake knife to gouge a hollow in the frozen earth above the coffin of the woman I knew as Emmeline. Aurelius tipped the ashes into it, and we replaced the earth to cover them. Aurelius pressed down with all his weight, and then we rearranged the flowers to hide the disturbance.

"It will level out with the melting of the snow," he said. And he brushed the snow from his trouser legs.

"Aurelius, there is more to your story."

I led him to another part of the churchyard. "You know about your mother now. But you had a father, too." I indicated Ambrose's gravestone. "The A and the S on the piece of paper you showed me. It was his name. His bag, too. It was used for carrying game. That explains the feather."

I paused. It was a lot for Aurelius to take in. When after a long moment he nodded, I went on. "He was a good man. You are very like him."

Aurelius stared. Dazed. More knowledge. More loss. "He is dead. I see."

"That's not all," I said softly. He turned his eyes slowly to mine, and I read in them the fear that there was to be no end to the story of his abandonment.

I took his hand. I smiled at him.

"After you were born, Ambrose married. He had another child."

It took a moment for him to realize what it meant, and when he did, a jolt of excitement brought his frame to life. "You mean… I have… And she… he… she-"

"Yes! A sister!"

The smile grew broad on his face.

I went on. "And she has her own children in turn. A boy and a girl!"

"A niece! And a nephew!"

I took his hands into mine to stop them shaking. "h family, Aurelius.

Your family. You know them already. And they are expecting you."

I could hardly keep up with him as we passed through the lych-gate and strode down the avenue to the white gatehouse. Aurelius never looked back. Only at the gatehouse did we pause, and that was because of me.

"Aurelius! I almost forgot to give you this."

He took the white envelope and opened it, distracted by joy. He drew out the card and gave me a look. "What? Not really?" "Yes. Really." "Today?" "Today!" Something possessed me at that moment. I did something

I have never done in my life before and never expected to do, either. I opened my mouth and shouted at the top of my voice, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

I must have been a bit mad. In any case, I felt embarrassed. Not that Aurelius cared. He was standing motionless, arms stretched out on either side of him, eyes closed and face turned skyward. All the happiness in the world was falling on him with the snow.

In Karen's garden the snow bore the prints of chase games, small footprints and smaller ones following one another in broad circles. The children were nowhere to be seen, but as we got nearer we heard their voices coming from the niche in the yew tree. "Let's play Snow White." "That's a girls'story." "What story do you want to play?" "A story about rockets." "I don't want to be a rocket. Let's be boats." "We were boats yesterday." Hearing the latch of the gate, they peered out o( the tree, and with their hoods hiding their hair, you could hardly tell brother from sister. "It's the cake man!" Karen stepped out of the house and came across the lawn. "Shall I tell you who this is?" she asked the children as she smiled shyly at Aurelius. "This is your uncle."

Aurelius looked from Karen to the children and back to Karen, his eyes scarcely big enough to take in everything he wanted to. He was lost for words, but Karen reached out a tentative hand, and he took it in his.

"It's all a bit…" he began.

"Isn't it?" she agreed. "But we'll get used to it, won't we?"

He nodded.

The children were staring with curiosity at the adult scene.

"What are you playing?" Karen asked, to distract them.

"We don't know," the girl said.

"We can't decide," said her brother.

"Do you know any stories?" Emma asked Aurelius.

"Only one," he told her.

"Only one?" She was astounded. "Has it got any frogs in it?"

"No."

"Dinosaurs?"

"No."

"Secret passages?"

"No."

The children looked at each other. It wasn't much of a story, clearly.

"We know loads of stories," Tom said.

"Loads," she echoed dreamily. "Princesses, frogs, magic castles, fairy godmothers-" "Caterpillars, rabbits, elephants-" "All sorts of animals." "All sorts." They fell into silence, absorbed in shared contemplation of countless different worlds.

Aurelius watched them as though they were a miracle.

Then they returned to the real world. "Millions of stories," the boy said. "Shall I tellyou a story?" the girl asked. I thought perhaps Aurelius had had enough stories for one day, but he nodded his head.

She picked up an imaginary object and placed it in the palm of her right hand. With her left she mimed the opening of a book cover. She glanced up to be sure she had the full attention of her companions. Then her eyes returned to the book in her hand, and she began.

"Once upon a time…"

Karen and Tom and Aurelius: three sets of eyes all resting on Emma and her storytelling. They would be all right together.

Unnoticed, I stepped back from the gate and slipped away along the street.