The Thirteenth Tale, Page 36

  I was well aware of the fragility of my position. I knew I belonged here; I 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.

  Fire

  Miss Winter seemed to sense the arrival of Judith, for when the housekeeper looked round the edge of the door, she found us in silence. She had brought me cocoa on a tray, but also offered to replace me if I wanted to sleep. I shook my head. ‘I’m all right, thanks.’

  Miss Winter also refused when Judith reminded her she could take more of the white tablets if she needed them.

  When Judith was gone, Miss Winter closed her eyes again.

  ‘How is the wolf?’ I asked.

  ‘Quiet in the corner,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t he be? He is certain of his victory. So he’s content to bide his time. He knows I’m not going to make a fuss. We’ve agreed terms.’

  ‘What terms?’

  ‘He is going to let me finish my story, and then I am going to let him finish me.’

  She told me the story of the fire, while the wolf counted down the words.

  I had never given a great deal of thought to the baby before he arrived. I had considered the practical aspects of hiding a baby in the house, certainly, and I had a plan for his future. If we could keep him secret for a time, my intention was to allow his presence to be known later. Though it would no doubt be whispered about, he could be introduced as the orphan child of a distant member of the family, and if people chose to wonder about his exact parentage, they were free to do so; nothing they could do would force us to reveal the truth. When making these plans, I had envisaged the baby as a difficulty that needed to be resolved. I had not taken into account that he was my flesh and blood. I had not expected to love him.

  He was Emmeline’s, that was reason enough. He was Ambrose’s. That was a subject I did not dwell on. But he was also mine. I marvelled at his pearly skin, at the pink jut of his lips, at the tentative movements of his tiny hands. The ferocity of my desire to protect him overwhelmed me: I wanted to protect him for Emmeline’s sake, to protect her for his sake, to protect the two of them, for myself. Watching him and Emmeline together, I could not drag my eyes away. They were beautiful. My one desire was to keep them safe. And I soon learned that they needed a guardian to keep them safe.

  Adeline was jealous of the baby. More jealous than she had been of Hester, more jealous than of me. It was only to be expected: Emmeline had been fond of Hester, she loved me, but neither of these affections had touched the supremacy of her feeling for Adeline. But the baby – ah, the baby was different. The baby usurped all.

  I should not have been surprised at the extent of Adeline’s hatred. I knew how ugly her anger could be, had witnessed the extent of her violence. Yet the day I first understood the lengths she might go to, I could scarcely believe it. Passing Emmeline’s bedroom I silently pushed the door open to see if she was still sleeping. I found Adeline in the room, leaning over the crib by the bed, and something in her posture alarmed me. Hearing my step she started, then turned and rushed past me out of the room. In her hands she clutched a small cushion.

  I felt compelled to dash to the cot. The infant was sleeping soundly, hand curled by his ear, breathing his light, delicate baby breath.

  Safe!

  Until next time.

  I began to spy on Adeline. My old days of haunting came in useful again as from behind curtains and yew trees I watched her. There was a randomness in her actions; indoors or outdoors, taking no notice of the time of day or the weather, she engaged in meaningless, repeated actions. She was obeying dictates that were outside my understanding. But gradually one activity came particularly to my attention. Once, twice, three times a day, she came to the coachhouse and left it again, carrying a can of petrol with her each time. She took the can to the drawing room, or the library or the garden. Then she would seem to lose interest. She knew what she was doing, but distantly, half-forgetful. When she wasn’t looking I took the cans away. Whatever did she make of the disappearing cans? She must have thought they had some animus of their own, that they could move about at will. Or perhaps she took her memories of moving them for dreams or plans yet to be realized. Whatever the reason, she did not seem to find it strange that they were not where she had left them. Yet despite the waywardness of the petrol cans, she persisted in fetching them from the coachhouse, and secreting them in various places around the house.

  I seemed to spend half my day returning the cans to the coachhouse. But one day, not wanting to leave Emmeline and the baby asleep and unprotected, I put one instead in the library. Out of sight, behind the books, on an upper shelf. And it occurred to me that perhaps this was a better place. Because by always returning them to the coachhouse, all I was doing was ensuring that it would go on for ever. A merry-go-round. By removing them from the circuit altogether, perhaps I might put an end to the rigmarole.

  Watching her tired me out, but she! She never tired. A little sleep went a long way with her. She could be up and about at any hour of the night. And I was getting sleepy. One day, in the early evening, Emmeline went to bed. The boy was in his cot in her room. He’d been colicky, awake and wailing all day, but now, feeling better, he slept soundly.

  I drew the curtains.

  It was time to go and check on Adeline. I was tired of always being vigilant. Watching Emmeline and her child while they slept, watching Adeline while they were awake, I hardly slept at all. How peaceful it was in the room. Emmeline’s breathing, slowing me down, relaxing me. And alongside it, the light touch of air that was the baby breathing. I remember listening to them, the harmony of it, thinking how tranquil it was, thinking of a way of describing it – that was how I always entertained myself, the putting into words of things I saw and heard – and I thought I would have to describe how the breathing seemed to penetrate me, take over my breath, as though we were all part of the same thing, me and Emmeline and our baby, all three one breath. It took hold of me, this idea, and I felt myself drifting off with them, into
sleep.

  Something woke me. Like a cat I was alert before I ever had my eyes open. I didn’t move, kept my breathing regular, and watched Adeline from between my lashes.

  She bent over the cot, lifted the baby, and was on her way out of the room. I could have called out to stop her. But I didn’t. If I had cried out, she would have postponed her plan, whereas by letting her go on with it, I could find out what she intended and put a stop to it once and for all. The baby stirred in her arms. He was thinking about waking up. He didn’t like to be in anyone’s arms but Emmeline’s and a baby is not taken in by a twin.

  I followed her downstairs to the library and peeped through the door that she had left ajar. The baby was on the desk, next to the pile of books that were never reshelved because I reread them so frequently. Next to their neat rectangle I saw movement in the folds of the baby’s blanket. I heard his muffled half-grunts. He was awake.

  Kneeling by the fireside was Adeline. She took coals from the scuttle, logs from their place by the hearth, and deposited them haphazardly in the fireplace. She did not know how to make a proper fire. I had learned from the Missus the correct arrangement of paper, kindling, coals and logs; Adeline’s fires were wild and random affairs that ought not to burn at all.

  The realization of what she intended slowly unfolded in me.

  She would not succeed, would she? There was only a shadow of warmth in the ashes, not enough to relight coals or logs, and I never left kindling or matches in reach. Hers was a mad fire; it couldn’t catch; I knew it couldn’t. But I could not reassure myself. Her desire for flames was all the kindling she needed. All she had to do was look at something for it to spark. The incendiary magic she possessed was so strong she could set fire to water if she wanted to badly enough.

  In horror I watched her place the baby on the coals, still wrapped in his blanket.

  Then she looked about the room. What was she after?

  When she made for the door and opened it I jumped back into the shadows. But she had not discovered my spying. It was something else she was after. She turned into the passage under the stairs, and disappeared.

  I ran to the fireplace and removed the baby from the pyre. I wrapped his blanket quickly round a moth-eaten bolster from the chaise longue and put it on the coals in his place. But there was no time to flee. I heard steps on the stone flags, a dragging noise that was the sound of a petrol can scraping on the floor, and the door opened just as I stepped back into one of the library bays.

  Hush, I prayed silently, don’t cry now, and I held the infant close to my body so he would not miss the warmth of his blanket.

  Back at the fireplace, head on one side, Adeline surveyed her fire. What was wrong? Had she noticed the change? But it appeared not. She looked around the room. What was it she wanted?

  The baby stirred, a jerk of the arms, a kick of the legs, a tensing of the backbone that is so often the precursor to a wail. I resettled him, head heavy on my shoulder; I felt his breath on my neck. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.

  He was still again, and I watched.

  My books. On the desk. The ones I couldn’t pass without opening at random, for the pleasure of a few words, a quick hello. How incongruous to see them in her hands. Adeline and books? It looked all wrong. Even when she opened the cover, I thought for one long, bizarre moment that she was going to read…

  She tore out pages by the fistful. She scattered them all over the desk; some slid off onto the floor. When she had done with the ripping, she grabbed handfuls of them and screwed them into loose balls. Fast! She was a whirlwind! My neat little volumes, suddenly a paper mountain. To think a book could have so much paper in it! I wanted to cry out, but what? All the words, the beautiful words, pulled apart and crumpled up, and I, in the shadows, speechless.

  She gathered an armful and released them onto the top of the white blanket in the fireplace. Three times I watched her turn from the desk to the fireplace, her arms full of pages, until the hearth was heaped high with torn-up books. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Woman in White…Balls of paper toppled from the height of the pyre, some rolled as far as the carpet, joining those that she had dropped en route.

  One came to a stop at my feet, and silently I dropped down to retrieve it.

  Oh! The outrageous sensation of crumpled paper; words gone wild, flying in all directions, senseless. My heart broke.

  Anger swept me up; it carried me like a piece of flotsam, unable to see or breathe; it roared like an ocean in my head. I might have cried out, leapt like a mad thing from my hiding place and struck her, but I had Emmeline’s treasure in my arms, and so I stood by and watched, trembling, weeping in silence, as her sister desecrated the treasure that was mine.

  At last she was satisfied with her pyre. Yet whichever way you looked at it, the mountain in the hearth was madness itself. It’s all upside down, the Missus would have said; it’ll never light – you want the paper at the bottom. But even if she had built it properly, it would make no difference. She couldn’t light it: she had no matches. And even if she had been able to obtain matches, still she would not achieve her purpose for the boy, her intended victim, was in my arms. And the greatest madness of all: supposing I hadn’t been there to stop her? Supposing I hadn’t rescued the infant and that she had burned him alive? How could she ever imagine that burning her sister’s child would restore her sister to her?

  It was the fire of a madwoman.

  In my arms the baby stirred, and opened his mouth to mewl. What to do? Behind Adeline’s back I softly retreated, then fled to the kitchen.

  I must get the baby to a place of safety, then deal with Adeline later. My mind was working furiously, proposing plan after plan. Emmeline will have no love left for her sister when she realizes what she tried to do. It will be she and I now. We will tell the police that Adeline killed John-the-dig, and they will take her away. No! We will tell Adeline that unless she leaves Angelfield we will tell the police…No! And then suddenly I have it! We will leave Angelfield. Yes! Emmeline and I will leave, with the baby, and we will start a new life, without Adeline, without Angelfield, but together.

  And it all seems so simple I wonder I never thought of it before.

  Hanging from a hook on the kitchen door is Ambrose’s game bag. Swiftly I unfastened the buckles and wrapped the baby in its folds. With the future glowing so brightly it seems realer than the present, I put the page from Jane Eyre in the game bag as well, for safekeeping, and a spoon that is on the kitchen table. We will need that, en route to our new life.

  Now where? Somewhere not far from the house, where there is nothing to hurt him, where he will be warm enough for the few minutes it will take me to come back to the house and fetch Emmeline, and persuade her to follow…

  Not the coachhouse. Adeline sometimes goes there. The church. That is a place she never goes.

  I run down the drive, through the lychgate, and into the church. In the front rows are small tapestry cushions for kneeling. I arrange them into a bed and lay the baby on them in his canvas papoose.

  Now, back to the house.

  I am almost there, when my future shatters. Shards of glass flying through the air, one breaking window then another, and a sinister, living light, prowling in the library. The empty window frame shows me liquid fire spraying the room, petrol cans bursting in the heat. And two figures.

  Emmeline!

  I run. The odour of fire catches my nostrils even in the entrance hall, though the stone floor and walls are cool and the fire has no hold here. But at the door of the library I stop. Flames chase each other up the curtains; bookshelves are ablaze; the fireplace itself is an inferno. In the centre of the room, the twins. For a moment, in all the noise and heat of the fire, I stop dead. Amazed. For Emmeline, the passive, docile Emmeline, is returning blow for blow, kick for kick, bite for bite. She has never retaliated against her sister before, but now she is doing it. For her child.

  Around them, above their heads, one burst of light after an
other as the petrol cans explode, and fire rains down upon the room.

  I open my mouth to call to Emmeline that the baby is safe, but the first breath I draw in is nothing but heat, and I choke.

  I hop over fire, step around it, dodge the fire that falls on me from above, brush fire away with my hands, beat out the fire that grows in my clothes. When I reach the sisters I cannot see them, but reach blindly through the smoke. My touch startles them and they draw apart instantly. There is a moment when I see Emmeline, see her clearly, and she sees me. I grip her hand and pull her, through the flames, through the fire, and we reach the door. But when she realizes what I am doing – leading her away from the fire, to safety, she stops. I tug at her.

  ‘He’s safe.’ My words come in a croak, but they are clear enough.

  Why doesn’t she understand?

  I try again. ‘The baby. I have saved him.’

  Surely she has heard me? Inexplicably she resists my tug, and her hand slips from mine. Where is she? I can see only blackness.

  I stumble forwards into the flames, collide with her form, grasp her and pull.

  Still she won’t stay with me, turns once more into the room.

  Why?

  She is bound to her sister.

  She is bound.

  Blind and with my lungs burning, I follow her into the smoke.

  I will break the bond.

  Eyes closed against the heat, I plunge into the library, arms ahead of me, searching. When my hands reach her in the smoke, I do not let her go. I will not have her die. I will save her. And though she resists, I drag her ferociously to the door and out of it.

  The door is made of oak. It is heavy. It doesn’t burn easily. I push it shut behind us, and the latch engages.

  Beside me, she steps forward, about to open it again. It is something stronger than fire that pulls her into that room.