The Thirteenth Tale

'I have seen no such child,' came the answer, dismissively, and once again John made to leave. Hester was nothing if not persistent. 'But you must have seen him-' 'It takes a certain kind of mind, Miss, to see things that aren't there.

Me, I'm a sensible fellow. Where there is nothing to see, I see nothing. If I were you, Miss, I would do the same. Good day to you.'

With that he left, and this time Hester made no attempt to block him. She simply stood, shaking her head in bewilderment and wondering what on earth had got into the man. Angelfield, it seemed, was a house full of puzzles. Still, there was nothing she liked more than mental exercise. She would soon get to the bottom of things.

Hester's gifts of insight and intelligence were quite extraordinary. Yet counterbalancing these talents was the fact that she did not know quite who she was up against. Take for instance her habit of leaving the twins to their own devices for short periods while she followed her own agenda elsewhere. She watched the twins closely first, evaluating their moods, weighing up their fatigue, the closeness to mealtimes, their patterns of energy and rest. When the results of this analysis told her the twins were set for an hour of quiet indoor lolling, she would leave them unattended. On one of these occasions she had a special purpose in mind. The doctor had come and she wanted a particular word with him. Aprivate word.

Foolish Hester. There is no privacy where there are children.

She met him at the front door. 'It is a nice day. Shall we walk in the garden?'

They set off toward the topiary garden, unaware that they were being followed.

'You have worked a miracle, Miss Barrow,' the doctor began. 'Emmeline is transformed.'

'No,' said Hester.

'Yes, I assure you. My expectations have been more than fulfilled. I am very impressed.'

Hester bowed her head and turned her body fractionally away from him. Taking her response for modesty, he fell silent, thinking her overwhelmed by his professions of esteem. The newly clipped yew gave him something to admire while the governess recovered her sangfroid. It's just as well he was engrossed in its geometric lines, else he might have caught her wry look and realized his error.

Her protesting 'No' was far from being the feminine simpering that the doctor took it for. It was a straightforward statement of fact. Of course Emmeline was transformed. Given the presence of Hester, how could it have been otherwise? There was nothing miraculous about it. That is what she meant by her 'No.'

Yet she was not surprised by the condescension in the doctor's comment. It was not a world in which signs of genius were likely to be noticed in governesses, but nonetheless I think she was disappointed. The doctor was the one person at Angelfield, she thought, who might have understood her. But he did not understand her.

She turned toward the doctor and found herself facing his back. He stood, hands in pocket, the line of his shoulders straight, looking up to where the yew tree ended and the sky began. His neat hair was graying, and there was a perfect circle of pink scalp an inch and a half wide on the top of his head.

'John is making good the damage that the twins did,' Hester said.

'What made them do it?'

'In Emmeline's case that is an easy question to answer. Adeline made her do it. As for what made Adeline do it, that is a harder question altogether. I doubt she knows herself. Most of the time she is governed by impulses that appear to have no conscious element. Whatever the reason, the result was devastating for John. His family has tended this garden for generations.'

'Heartless. All the more shocking coming from a child.'

Unseen by the doctor, she pulled another face. Clearly he did not know much about children. 'Heartless indeed. Though children are capable of great cruelty. Only we do not like to think it of them.'

Slowly they began to walk between the topiary shapes, admiring the yews while speaking of Hester's work. Keeping a safe distance, but always within earshot, a little spy followed them, moving from the protection of one yew to another. Left and right they moved; sometimes they turned to double back on themselves; it was a game of angles, an elaborate dance.

'You are satisfied with the results of your efforts with Emmeline, I imagine, Miss Barrow?'

'Yes. With another year or so of my attention, I see no reason why Emmeline should not give up unruliness for good and become permanently the sweet girl she knows how to be at her best. She will not be clever, but still, I see no reason why she should not one day lead a satisfying life separately from her sister. Perhaps she might even marry. All men do not seek intelligence in a wife, and Emmeline is very affectionate.'

'Good, good.'

'With Adeline it is a different matter entirely.'

They came to a standstill, next to a leafy obelisk with a gash cut into its side part of the way up. The governess peered at the brown inner branches and touched one of the new twigs with its bright green leaves that was growing from the old wood toward the light. She sighed.

'Adeline puzzles me, Dr. Maudsley. I would value your medical opinion.' The doctor gave a courteous half bow. 'By all means. What is it that is troubling you?'

'I have never known such a confusing child.' She paused. 'Forgive my slowness, but there is no succinct way to explain the strangeness I have noticed in her.'

'Then take your time. I am in no rush.'

The doctor indicated a low bench, at the back of which a hedge of box had been trained into an elaborately curlicued arch, the kind that frequently forms the headboard of a highly crafted bedstead. They sat and found themselves facing the good side of one of the garden's largest geometrical pieces. 'A dodecahedron, look.'

Hester disregarded his comment and began her explanation.

'Adeline is a hostile and aggressive child. She resents my presence in the house and resists all my efforts to impose order. Her eating is erratic; she refuses food until she is half starving, and only then will she eat but the merest morsel. She has to be bathed by force, and, despite her thinness, it takes two people to hold her in the water. Any warmth I show her is met by utter indifference. She seems incapable of all the normal range of human emotion, and, I speak frankly to you, Dr. Maudsley, I have wondered whether she has it in her to return to the fold of common humanity.'

'Is she intelligent?'

'She is wily. She is cunning. But she cannot be stimulated to take an interest in anything beyond the realm of her own wishes, desires and appetites.'

'And in the classroom? '

'You appreciate of course that with girls like these the classroom is not what it might be for normal children. There is no arithmetic, no Latin, no geography. Still, in the interests of order and routine, the children are made to attend for two hours, twice a day, and I educate them by telling stories.'

'Does she appreciate these lessons?'

'If only I knew how to answer that question! She is quite wild, Dr. Maudsley. She has to be trapped in the room by trickery, or sometimes I have to get John to bring her by force. She will do anything to avoid it, flailing her arms or else holding her whole body rigid to make it awkward to carry her through the door. Seating her behind a desk is practically impossible. More often than not John is obliged to simply leave her on the floor. She will neither look at me nor listen to me in the classroom, but retreats to some inner world of her own.'

The doctor listened closely and nodded. 'It is a difficult case. Her behavior causes you greater anxiety and you fear that the results of your efforts may be less successful than with her sister. And yet'-his smile was charming-'forgive me, Miss Barrow, if I do not see why you profess to be baffled by her. On the contrary, your account of her behavior and mental state is more coherent than many a medical student might make, given the same evidence.'

She eyed him levelly. 'I have not yet come to the confusing part.'

'Ah.'

'There are methods that have been successful with children like Adeline in the past. There are strategies of my own that I have some faith in and would not hesitate to put into action were it not that…'

Hester hesitated, and this time the doctor was wise enough to wait for her to go on. When she spoke again it