The Thirteenth Tale

my father while I stood over the pan of milk on the stove.

'No more than you do, I should think,' came the answer.

Then he appeared in the doorway and handed me one of our dog-eared customer cards. 'This is the man to ask. Retired professor of law. Lives in Wales now, but he comes here every summer for a browse and a walk by the river. Nice fellow. Why don't you write? You might ask whether he wants me to hold thatJustitiae Naturalis Principia for him at the same time.'

When I'd finished my cocoa, I went back to the almanac to find out what else I could about Roland March and his family. His uncle had dabbled in art and when I went to the art history section to follow this up, I learned that his portraits, while now acknowledged to be mediocre, had been for a short period the height of fashion. Mortimer's English Provincial Portraiture contained the reproduction of an early portrait by Lewis Anthony March, entitled Roland, nephewof the artist. It is an odd thing to look into the face of a boy who is not quite yet a man, in search of the features of an old woman, his daughter. For some minutes I studied his fleshy, sensual features, his glossy blond hair, the lazy set of his head.

Then I closed the book. I was wasting my time. Were I to look all day and all night, I knew I would not find a trace of the twins he was supposed to have fathered.

IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE BANBURY HERALD

The next day I took the train to Banbury, to the offices of the Ban-bury Herald.

It was a young man who showed me the archives. The wordarchive might sound rather impressive to someone who has not had much to do with them, but to me, who has spent her holidays for years in such places, it came as no surprise to be shown into what was essentially a large, windowless basement cupboard.

'A house fire at Angelfield,' I explained briefly, 'about sixty years ago.' The boy showed me the shelf where the holdings for the relevant period were shelved.

'I'll lift the boxes for you, shall I?'

'And the books pages, too, from about forty years ago, but I'm not sure which year.'

'Books pages? Didn't know the Herald ever had books pages.' And he moved his ladder, retrieved another set of boxes and placed them beside the first one on a long table under a bright light.

'There you are then,' he said cheerily, and he left me to it. The Angelfield fire, I learned, was probably caused by an accident. It was not uncommon for people to stockpile fuel at the time, and it was this that had caused the fire to take hold so fiercely. There had been no one in the house but the two nieces of the owner, both of whom escaped and were in hospital. The owner himself was believed to be abroad. {Believed to be… I wondered. I made a quick note of the dates-another six years were to elapse before the ldd.) The column ended with some comments on the architectural significance of the house, and it was noted that it was uninhabitable in its current state.

I copied out the story and scanned headlines in the following issues in case there were updates but, finding nothing, I put the papers away and turned to the other boxes.

'Tell me the truth,' he had said. The young man in the old-fashioned suit who had interviewed Vida Winter for the Banbury Herald forty years ago. And she had never forgotten his words.

There was no trace of the interview. There was nothing even that could properly be called a books page. The only literary items at all were occasional book reviews under the heading 'You might like to read… ' by a reviewer called Miss Jenkinsop. Twice my eye came to rest on Miss Winter's name in these paragraphs. Miss Jenkinsop had clearly read and enjoyed Miss Winter's novels; her praise was enthusiastic and just, if unscholarly in expression, but it was plain she had never met their author and equally plain that she was not the man in the brown suit.

I closed the last newspaper and folded it neatly in its box.

The man in the brown suit was a fiction. A device to snare me. The fly with which a fisherman baits his line to draw the fish in. It was only to be expected. Perhaps it was the confirmation of the existence of George and Mathilde, Charlie and Isabelle that had raised my hopes. They at least were real people; the man in the brown suit was not.

Putting my hat and gloves on, I left the offices of the Banbury Herald and stepped out into the street.

As I walked along the winter streets looking for a cafe, I remembered the letter Miss Winter had sent me. I remembered the words of the man in the brown suit, and how they had echoed around the rafters of my rooms under the eaves. Yet the man in the brown suit was a figment of her imagination. I should have expected it. She was a spinner of yarns, wasn't she? A storyteller. A fabulist. A liar. And the plea that had so moved me- Tell me the truth-had been uttered by a man who was not even real.

I was at a loss to explain to myself the bitterness of my disappointment.

RUIN

From Banbury I took a bus. 'Angelfield?' said the bus driver. 'No, there's no service to Angelfield. Not yet, anyhow. Might be different when the hotel's built.'

'Are they building there, then?'

'Some old ruin they're pulling down. Going to be a fancy hotel. They might run a bus then, for the staff, but for now the best you can do is get off at the Hare and Hounds on the Cheneys Road and walk from there. 'Bout a mile, I reckon.'

There wasn't much in Angelfield. A single street whose wooden sign read, with logical simplicity, The Street. I walked past a dozen cottages, built in pairs. Here and there a distinctive feature stood out-a large yew tree, a children's swing, a wooden bench-but for the most part each dwelling, with its neatly embroidered thatch, its white gables and the restrained artistry in its brickwork, resembled its neighbor like a mirror image.

The cottage windows looked out onto fields that were neatly defined with hedges and studded here and there with trees. Farther away sheep and cows were visible, and then a densely wooded area, beyond which, according to my map, was the deer park. There was no pavement as such, but that hardly mattered for there was no traffic, either. In fact I saw no sign of human life at all until I passed the last cottage and came to a combined post office and general store.

Two children in yellow mackintoshes came out of the shop and ran down to the road ahead of their mother, who had stopped at the postbox. Small and fair, she was struggling to stick stamps onto envelopes without dropping the newspaper tucked under her arm. The older child, a boy, reached up to put his sweet wrapper in the bin attached to a post at the roadside. He went to take his sister's wrapper, but she resisted. 'I can do it! I can do it!' She stood on tiptoe and stretched up her arm, ignoring her brother's protestations, then tossed the paper toward the mouth of the bin. A breeze caught it and carried it across the road.

'I told you so!'

Both children turned and launched themselves into a dash-then jolted to a halt when they saw me. Two blond fringes flopped down over pairs of identically shaped brown eyes. Two mouths fell into the same expression of surprise. Not twins, no, but so close. I stooped to pick up the wrapper and held it out toward them. The girl, willing to take it, went to step forward. Her brother, more cautious, stuck his arm out to bar her way and called, 'Mum!'

The fair-haired woman watching from the postbox had seen what had happened. 'All right, Tom. Let her take it.' The girl took the paper from my hand without looking at me. 'Say thank you,' the mother called. The children did so in restrained voices, then turned their backs from me and leaped thankfully away. This time the woman lifted her daughter up to reach the bin, and in doing so looked at me again, eyeing my camera with veiled curiosity.

Angelfield was not a place where I could be invisible.