The Thirteenth Tale

  At last, inevitably, I crashed to the ground, and a wild cry escaped my lips.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear. Did I startle you? Oh dear.’

  I stared back through the archway.

  Leaning over the gallery landing I saw not the skeleton or monster of my imaginings, but a giant. He moved smoothly down the stairs, stepped daintily and unconcernedly through the debris on the floor, and came to stand over me with an expression of the utmost concern on his face.

  ‘Oh my goodness.’

  He must have been six foot four or five, and was broad, so broad that the house seemed to shrink around him.

  ‘I never meant—You see I only thought—Because you’d been there some time, and—But that doesn’t matter now, because the thing is, my dear, are you hurt?’

  I felt reduced to the size of a child. But for all his great dimensions, this man too had something of a child about him. Too plump for wrinkles, he had a round, cherubic face and a halo of silver-blond curls sat neatly around his balding head. His eyes were round like the frames of his spectacles. They were kind and had a blue transparency.

  I must have been looking dazed, and pale too perhaps. He knelt by my side and took my wrist.

  ‘My, my, that was quite a tumble you took. If only I’d—I should never have—Pulse a bit high. Hmm.’

  My shin was stinging. I reached to investigate a tear in the knee of my trousers, and my fingers came away bloodied.

  ‘Dear, oh dear. It’s the leg, is it? Is it broken? Can you move it?’ I wriggled my foot, and the man’s face was a picture of relief.

  ‘Thank goodness. I should never have forgiven myself. Now, you stay there while I—I’ll just get the—Back in a minute.’ And off he went. His feet danced delicately in and out of the jagged edges of wood, then skipped swiftly up the stairs, while the upper half of his body sailed serenely above, as if unconnected to the elaborate footwork going on below.

  I took a deep breath and waited.

  ‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ he announced as he returned. It was a proper first aid kit he had with him, white with a red cross on it, and he took out an antiseptic lotion and some gauze.

  ‘I always said, someone will get hurt in that old place one of these days. I’ve had the kit for years. Better safe than sorry, eh? Oh dear, oh dear!’ He winced with pain as he pressed the stinging pad against my cut shin. ‘Let’s be brave, shall we?’

  ‘Do you have electricity here?’ I asked. I was feeling bewildered.

  ‘Electricity? But it’s a ruin.’ He stared at me, astonished by my question, as though I might have suffered concussion in the fall and lost my reason.

  ‘It’s just that I thought you said you’d put the kettle on.’

  ‘Oh, I see! No! I have a camping stove. I used to have a Thermos flask, but—’ He turned his nose up. ‘Tea from a Thermos is not very nice, is it? Now, does it sting very badly?’

  ‘Only a bit.’

  ‘Good girl. Quite a tumble that was. Now tea – lemon and sugar all right? No milk I’m afraid. No fridge.’

  ‘Lemon will be lovely.’

  ‘Right. Well, let’s make you comfortable. The rain has stopped, so tea outdoors?’ He went to the grand old double door at the front of the house and unlatched it. With a creak smaller than one expected the doors swung open, and I began to get to my feet.

  ‘Don’t move!’

  The giant danced back towards me, bent down and picked me up. I felt myself being raised into the air and carried smoothly outside. He sat me sideways on the back of one of the black cats I had admired an hour earlier.

  ‘You wait there, and when I come back you and I will have a lovely tea!’ and he went back into the house. His huge back glided up the stairs and disappeared into the entrance of the corridor and the third room.

  ‘Comfy?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Marvellous.’ He smiled as though it were indeed marvellous. ‘Now, let us introduce ourselves. My name is Love. Aurelius Alphonse Love. Do call me Aurelius.’ He looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Margaret Lea.’

  ‘Margaret.’ He beamed. ‘Splendid. Quite splendid. Now, eat.’

  Between the ears of the big black cat he had unfolded a napkin, corner by corner. Inside was a dark and sticky slice of cake, cut generously. I bit into it. It was the perfect cake for a cold day: spiced with ginger, sweet but hot. The stranger strained the tea into dainty china cups. He offered me a bowl of sugar lumps, then took a blue velvet pouch from his breast pocket, which he opened. Resting on the velvet was a silver spoon with an elongated A in the form of a stylized angel ornamenting the handle. I took it, stirred my tea, and passed it back to him.

  While I ate and drank, my host sat on the second cat, which took on an unexpected kittenish appearance beneath his great girth. He ate in silence, neatly and with concentration. He watched me eat too, anxious that I should appreciate the food.

  ‘That was lovely,’ I said. ‘Homemade, I think?’

  The gap between the two cats was about ten feet, and to converse we had to raise our voices slightly, giving the conversation a somewhat theatrical air, as though it were some performance. And indeed we had an audience. In the rain-washed light, close to the edge of the woods, a deer, stock still, regarded us curiously. Unblinking, alert, nostrils twitching. Seeing I had spotted it, it made no attempt to run, but decided on the contrary, not to be afraid.

  My companion wiped his fingers on his napkin, then shook it out and folded it into four. ‘You liked it then? The recipe was given to me by Mrs Love. I’ve been making this cake since I was a child. Mrs Love was a wonderful cook. A marvellous woman all round. Of course, she is departed now. A good age. Though one might have hoped—But it was not to be.’

  ‘I see.’ Though I wasn’t sure I did see. Was Mrs Love his wife? Though he’d said he’d been making her cake since he was a child. Surely he couldn’t mean his mother? Why would he call his mother Mrs Love? Two things were clear though: he had loved her and she was dead. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  He accepted my condolences with a sad expression, then brightened. ‘But it’s a fitting memorial, don’t you think? The cake, I mean?’

  ‘Certainly. Was it long ago? That you lost her?’

  He thought. ‘Nearly twenty years. Though it seems more. Or less. Depending on how one looks at it.’

  I nodded. I was none the wiser.

  For a few moments we sat in silence. I looked out to the deer park. At the cusp of the wood, more deer were emerging. They moved with the sunlight across the grassy park. The stinging in my leg had diminished. I was feeling better.

  ‘Tell me…’ the stranger began, and I suspected he had needed to pluck up the courage to ask his question. ‘Do you have a mother?’

  I felt a start of surprise. People hardly ever notice me for long enough to ask me personal questions.

  ‘Do you mind? Forgive me for asking, but—How can I put it? Families are a matter of – of…But if you’d rather not—I am sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said slowly. ‘I don’t mind.’ And actually I didn’t. Perhaps it was the series of shocks I’d had, or else the influence of this queer setting, but it seemed that anything I might say about myself here, to this man, would remain for ever in this place, with him, and have no currency anywhere else in the world. Whatever I said to him would have no consequences. So I answered his question. ‘Yes, I do have a mother.’

  ‘A mother! How—Oh how—’ A curiously intense expression came into his eyes, a sadness or a longing. ‘What could be pleasanter than to have a mother!’ he finally exclaimed. It was clearly an invitation to say more.

  ‘You don’t have a mother, then?’ I asked.

  Aurelius’ face twisted momentarily. ‘Sadly – I have always wanted—Or a father, come to that. Even brothers or sisters. Anyone who actually belonged to me. As a child I used to pretend. I made up an entire family. Generations of it! You’d have laughed!’ There was nothing to laugh at in his face as he sp
oke. ‘But as to an actual mother…A factual, known mother…Of course, everybody has a mother, don’t they? I know that. It’s a question of knowing who that mother is. And I have always hoped that one day—For it’s not out of the question, is it? And so I have never given up hope.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s a very sorry thing.’ He gave a shrug that he wanted to be casual, but wasn’t. ‘I should have liked to have a mother.’

  ‘Mr Love—’

  ‘Aurelius, please.’

  ‘Aurelius. You know with mothers, things aren’t always as pleasant as you might suppose.’

  ‘Ah?’ It seemed to have the force of a great revelation to him. He peered closely at me. ‘Squabbles?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  He frowned. ‘Misunderstandings?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Worse?’ He was stupefied. He sought what the problem might be in the sky, in the woods, and finally, in my eyes.

  ‘Secrets,’ I told him.

  ‘Secrets!’ His eyes widened to perfect circles. Baffled, he shook his head, making an impossible attempt to fathom my meaning. ‘Forgive me,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t know how to help. I know so very little about families. My ignorance is vaster than the sea. I’m sorry about the secrets. I’m sure you are right to feel as you do.’

  Compassion warmed his eyes and he handed me a neatly folded white handkerchief.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It must be delayed shock.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  While I dried my eyes he looked away from me towards the deer park. The sky was darkening by slow degrees. Now, I followed his gaze to see a shimmer of white: the pale coat of the deer as it leapt lightly into the cover of the trees.

  ‘I thought you were a ghost,’ I told him. ‘When I felt the door handle move. Or a skeleton.’

  ‘A skeleton! Me! A skeleton!’ He chuckled, delighted, and his entire body seemed to shake with mirth.

  ‘But you turned out to be a giant.’

  ‘Quite so! A giant.’ He wiped the laughter from his eyes and said, ‘There is a ghost you know – or so they say.’

  I know, I almost said, I saw her, but of course it wasn’t my ghost he was talking about. ‘Have you seen the ghost?’

  ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘Not even the shadow of a ghost.’

  We sat in silence for a moment, each of us contemplating ghosts of our own.

  ‘It’s getting chilly,’ I remarked.

  ‘Leg feeling all right?’

  ‘I think so.’ I slid off the cat’s back and tried my weight on it. ‘Yes. It’s much better now.’

  ‘Wonderful. Wonderful.’

  Our voices were murmurs in the softening light.

  ‘Who exactly was Mrs Love?’

  ‘The lady who took me in. She gave me her name. She gave me her recipe book. She gave me everything, really.’

  I nodded.

  Then I picked up my camera. ‘I think I should be going, actually. I ought to try for some photos at the church before the light quite disappears. Thank you so much for the tea.’

  ‘I must be off in a few minutes myself. It has been so nice to meet you, Margaret. Will you come again?’

  ‘You don’t actually live here, do you?’ I asked doubtfully.

  He laughed. It was a dark, rich sweetness, like the cake.

  ‘Bless me, no. I have a house over there.’ He gestured towards the woods. ‘I just come here in the afternoons. For – well, let’s say for contemplation, shall we?’

  ‘They’re knocking it down soon. I suppose you know?’

  ‘I know.’ He stroked the cat, absently, fondly. ‘It’s a shame, isn’t it? I shall miss the old place. Actually I thought you were one of their people when I heard you. A surveyor or something. But you’re not.’

  ‘No, I’m not a surveyor. I’m writing a book about someone who used to live here.’

  ‘The Angelfield girls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Aurelius nodded ruminatively. ‘They were twins, you know. Imagine that.’ For a moment his eyes were far away.

  ‘Will you come again, Margaret?’ he asked, as I picked up my bag.

  ‘I’m bound to.’

  He reached into his pocket and drew out a card. Aurelius Love, Traditional English Catering for Weddings, Christenings and Parties. He pointed to the address and telephone number. ‘Do telephone me, when you come again. You must come to the cottage and I’ll make you a proper tea.’

  Before we parted, Aurelius took my hand and patted it in an easy, old-fashioned manner. Then his massive frame glided gracefully up the wide sweep of steps and he closed the heavy doors behind him.

  Slowly I walked down the drive to the church, my mind full of the stranger I had just met – met and befriended. It was most unlike me. And as I passed through the lychgate, I reflected that perhaps I was the stranger. Was it just my imagination, or since meeting Miss Winter was I not quite myself?

  Graves

  I had left it too late for the light, and photographs were out of the question. So I took my notebook out for my walk in the churchyard. Angelfield was an old community but a small one, and there were not so very many graves. I found John Digence, Gathered to the Garden of the Lord, and a woman, Martha Dunne, Loyal Servant of our Lord, whose dates corresponded closely enough with what I expected for the Missus. I copied the names, dates and inscriptions into my notebook. One of the graves had fresh flowers on it, a gay bunch of orange chrysanthemums, and I went closer to see who it was who was remembered so warmly. It was Joan Mary Love, Never Forgotten.

  Though I looked, I could not see the Angelfield name anywhere. But it did not puzzle me for more than a minute. The family of the house would not have ordinary graves in the churchyard. Their tombs would be grander affairs, marked by effigies and with long histories carved into their marble slabs. And they would be inside, in the chapel.

  The church was gloomy. The ancient windows, narrow pieces of greenish glass held in a thick stone framework of arches, let in a sepulchral light that weakly illuminated the pale stone arches and columns, the whitened vaults between the black roof timbers and the smooth polished wood of the pews. When my eyes had adjusted, I peered at the memorial stones and monuments in the tiny chapel. Angelfields dead for centuries all had their epitaphs here, line after loquacious line of encomium, expensively carved into costly marble. Another day I would come back to decipher the engravings of these earlier generations; for today it was only a handful of names I was looking for.

  With the death of George Angelfield the family’s loquacity came to an end. Charlie and Isabelle – for presumably it was they who decided – seemed not to have gone to any great lengths in summing up their father’s life and death for generations to come. Released from earthly sorrows, he is with his Saviour now, was the stone’s laconic message. Isabelle’s role in this world and her departure from it were summed up in the most conventional terms: Much loved mother and sister, she is gone to a better place. But I copied it into my notebook all the same, and did a quick calculation. Younger than me! Not so tragically young as her husband, but still, not an age to die.

  I almost missed Charlie’s. Having eliminated every other stone in the chapel, I was about to give up, when my eye finally made out a small, dark stone. So small was it, and so black, that it seemed designed for invisibility, or at least insignificance. There was no gold leaf to give relief to the letters so, unable to make them out by eye, I raised my hand and felt the carving, Braille style, with my fingertips, one word at a time.

  Charlie Angelfield

  He is gone into the dark night.

  We shall never see him more.

  There were no dates.

  I felt a sudden chill. Who had selected these words, I wondered? Was it Vida Winter? And what was the mood behind them? It seemed to me that there was room for a certain ambiguity in the expression. Was it the sorrow of bereavement? Or the triumphant farewell of the survivors to a bad lot?

  Le
aving the church and walking slowly down the gravel drive to the lodge gates, I felt a light, almost weightless scrutiny on my back. Aurelius was gone, so what was it? The Angelfield ghost perhaps? Or the burnt out eyes of the house itself? Most probably it was just a deer, watching me invisibly from the shadow of the woods.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ said my father in the shop that evening, ‘that you can’t come home for a few hours.’

  ‘I am home,’ I protested, feigning ignorance. But I knew it was my mother he was talking about. The truth was that I couldn’t bear her tinny brightness, nor the pristine paleness of her house. I lived in shadows, had made friends with my grief, but in my mother’s house I knew my sorrow was unwelcome. She might have loved a cheerful, chatty daughter, whose brightness would have helped banish her own fears. As it was, she was afraid of my silences. I preferred to stay away. ‘I have so little time,’ I explained. ‘Miss Winter is anxious that we should press on with the work. And it’s only a few weeks till Christmas, after all. I’ll be back again then.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It will be Christmas soon.’

  He seemed sad and worried. I knew I was the cause, and I was sorry I couldn’t do anything about it.

  ‘I’ve packed a few books to take back to Miss Winter’s with me. I’ve put a note on the cards in the index.’

  ‘That’s fine. No problem.’

  That night, drawing me out of sleep, a pressure on the edge of my bed. The angularity of bone pressing against my flesh through the bedclothes.

  It is her! Come for me at last!

  All I have to do is open my eyes and look at her. But fear paralyses me. What will she be like? Like me? Tall and thin with dark eyes? Or – it is this I fear – has she come direct from the grave? What terrible thing is it that I am about to join myself – rejoin myself – to?

  The fear dissolves.