The Thirteenth Tale

There were lots of things I might have said, but I said nothing. I just waited for him to return to the present in his own time. When he did, he spoke to me.

'The thing is, it's not my story, is it? I mean, I'm in it, that's obvious, but it's not my story. It belongs to Mrs. Love. The man she wanted to marry; her sister Kitty; her knitting. Her baking. All that is her story. And then just when she thinks it's all coming to an end, I arrive and give the story a new start.

'But that doesn't make it my story, does it? Because before she opened the door… before she heard the sound in the night… before-'

He halted, breathless, made a gesture to cut off his sentence and start again:

'Because for someone to find a baby like that, just find'him, all alone like that in the rain, it means that befiore then, in order for it to happen, of necessity-'

Another frantic erasing gesture of the hands, eyes ranging wildly around the church ceiling as though somewhere he would spot the verb he needed that would allow him finally to anchor what it was he wanted to say:

'Because if Mrs. hove found me, it can only mean that before that happened, someone else, some other person, some mother must have-'

There it was. That verb.

His face froze into despair. His hands, halfway through an agitated gesture, were arrested in an attitude that suggested a plea or a prayer.

There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. I read Aurelius.

Do not abandonme.

I touched my hand to his, and the statue returned to life.

'There's no point waiting for the rain to stop,' I whispered. 'It's set in for the day. My photos can wait. We may as well go.'

'Yes,' he said, with a gruff edge in his throat. 'We may as well.'

THE INHERITANCE

It's a mile and a half direct,' he said, pointing into the woods, 'longer by road.'

We crossed the deer park and had nearly reached the edge of the woods when we heard voices. It was a woman's voice that swam through the rain, up the gravel drive to her children and over the park as far as us. 'I told you, Tom. It's too wet. They can't work when it's raining like this.' The children had come to a halt in disappointment at seeing the stationary cranes and machinery. With their sou'westers over their blond heads, I could not tell them apart. The woman caught up with them, and the family huddled for a moment in a brief conference of mackintoshes.

Aurelius was rapt by the family tableau.

'I've seen them before,' I said. 'Do you know who they are?'

'They're a family. They live in The Street. The house with the swing. Karen looks after the deer here.' 'Do they still hunt here?' 'No. She just looks after them. They're a nice family.' Enviously he gazed after them, then he broke his attention with a shake of his head. 'Mrs. Love was very good to me,' he said, 'and I loved her. All this other stuff-' He made a dismissive gesture and turned toward the woods. 'Come on. Let's go home.'

The family in mackintoshes, turning back toward the lodge gates, had clearly reached the same decision.

Aurelius and I walked through the woods in silent friendship.

There were no leaves to cut out the light and the branches, blackened by rain, reached dark across the watery sky. Stretching out an arm to push away low branches, Aurelius dislodged extra raindrops to add to those that fell on us from the sky. We came across a fallen tree and leaned over it, staring into the dark pool of rain in its hollow that had softened the rotting bark almost to fur.

Then, 'Home,' Aurelius pronounced.

It was a small stone cottage. Built for endurance rather than decoration, but attractive all the same, in its simple and solid lines. Aurelius led me around the side of the house. Was it a hundred years old or two hundred? It was hard to tell. It wasn't the kind of house that a hundred years made much difference to. Except that at the back there was a large new extension, almost as large as the house itself, and taken up entirely with a kitchen.

'My sanctuary,' he said as he showed me in. A massive stainless-steel oven, white walls, two vast fridges-it was a real kitchen for a real cook.

Aurelius pulled out a chair for me and I sat at a small table by a bookcase. The shelves were filled with cookbooks, in French, English, Italian. One book, unlike the others, was out on the table. It was a thick notebook, corners blunt with age, and covered in brown paper that had gone transparent after decades of being handled with buttery fingers. Someone had written RECIPIES on the front, in old-fashioned, school-formed capitals. Some years later the writer had crossed out the second I9 using a different pen.

'May I?' I asked.

'Of course.'

I opened the book and began to leaf through it. Victoria sponge, date and walnut loaf, scones, ginger cake, maids of honor, bakewell tart, rich fruit cake… the spelling and the handwriting improving as the pages turned.

Aurelius turned a dial on the oven, then, moving lightly, assembled his ingredients. After that everything was within reach, and he stretched out an arm for a sieve or a knife without looking. He moved in his kitchen the way drivers change gear in their cars: an arm reaching out smoothly, independently, knowing exactly what to do, while his eyes never left the fixed spot in front of him: the bowl in which he was combining his ingredients. He sieved flour, chopped butter into dice, zested an orange. It was as natural as breathing.

'You see that cupboard?' he said 'There to your left? Would you open it?' Thinking he wanted a piece of equipment, I opened the cupboard door.

'You'll find a bag hanging on a peg inside.'

It was a kind of satchel. Old and curiously designed, its sides were not stitched but just tucked in. It fastened with a buckle, and a long, broad leather strap, attached with a rusty clasp at each side, allowed you presumably to wear it diagonally across your body. The leather was dry and cracked, and the canvas that might once have been khaki was now just the color of age.

'What is it?' I asked.

For a second he raised his eyes from the bowl to me.

'It's the bag I was found in.'

He turned back to combining his ingredients.

The bag he was found in? My eyes moved slowly from the satchel to Aurelius. Even bent over his kneading he was over six feet tall. I had thought him a storybook giant when I first set eyes on him, I remembered. Today the strap wouldn't even go around his girth, yet sixty years ago he had been small enough to fit inside. Dizzy at the thought of what time can do, I sat down again. Who was it that had placed a baby in this satchel so long ago? Folded its canvas around him, fastened the buckle against the weather and placed the strap over her body to carry him, through the night, to Mrs. Love's? I ran my fingers over the places she had touched. Canvas, buckle, strap. Seeking some trace of her. A clue, in Braille or invisible ink or code, that my touch might reveal if only it knew how. It did not know how.

'It's exasperating, isn't it?' Aurelius said.

I heard him slide something into the oven and close the door, then I felt him behind me, looking over my shoulder. 'You open it-I've got flour on my hands.' I undid the buckle and opened the pleats of canvas. They unfolded into a flat circle in the center of which lay a tangle of paper and rag.

'My inheritance,' he announced.