The Thirteenth Tale

I was adjusting the long-distance lens when I caught a slight movement at the edge of the frame. Not my ghost. The children were back. They had seen something in the grass, were bending over it excitedly. What was it? A hedgehog? A snake? Curious, I fine-tuned the focus to see more clearly.

One of the children reached into the long grass and lifted the discovery out of it. It was a yellow builder's hat. With a delighted smile he pushed back his sou'wester-I could see it was the boy now-and placed the hat on his head. Stiff as a soldier he stood, chest out, head up, arms by his side, face intent with concentration to keep the too-large hat from slipping.

Just as he struck his pose there came a small miracle. A shaft of sunlight found its way through a gap in the cloud and fell upon the boy, illuminating him in his moment of glory. I clicked the shutter and my photo was taken. The boy in the hat, over his left shoulder a yellow Keep Out sign, and to his right, in the background, the house, a dismal smudge of gray.

The sun disappeared, and I took my eye off the children to wind the film and tuck my camera away in the dry. When I looked back, the children were halfway down the drive. His left hand in her right, they were whirling around and around as they approached the lodge gates, equal stride, equal weight, each one a perfect counterbalance to the other. With the tails of their mackintoshes flaring behind them, feet barely skimming the ground, they looked as if they were about to lift into the air and fly.

JANE EYRE AND THE FURNACE

When I went back to Yorkshire, I received no explanation for my banishment. Judith greeted me with a constrained smile. The grayness of the daylight had crept under her skin, collected in shadows under her eyes. She pulled the curtains back a few more inches in my sitting room, exposing a bit more window, but it made no difference to the gloom. 'Blasted weather,' she exclaimed, and I thought she seemed at the end of her tether.

Though it was only days, it felt like an eternity. Often night, but never quite day, the darkening effect of the heavy sky threw us all out of time. Miss Winter arrived late to one of our morning meetings. She, too, was pale- faced; I didn't know whether it was the memory of recent pain that put the darkness in her eyes or something else.

'I propose a more flexible timetable for our meetings,' she said when she was settled in her circle of light.

'Of course.' I knew of her bad nights from my interview with the doctor, could see when the medication she took to control her pain was wearing off or had not yet taken full effect. And so we agreed that instead of presenting myself at nine every morning, I would wait instead for a tap at my door.

At first the tap came always between nine and ten. Then it drifted to later. After the doctor altered her dosage, she took to asking for me early in the mornings, but our meetings were shorter; then we fell into a habit of meeting twice or three times a day, at random times. Sometimes she called me when she felt well and spoke at length, and in detail. At other times she called me when she was in pain. Then it was not so much the company she wanted as the anesthetic qualities of the storytelling itself.

The end of my nine o'clocks was another anchor in time gone. I listened to her story, I wrote the story, when I slept I dreamed the story, and when I was awake it was the story that formed the constant backdrop of my thoughts. It was like living entirely inside a book. I didn't even need to emerge to eat, for I could sit at my desk reading my transcript while I ate the meals that Judith brought to my room. Porridge meant it was morning. Soup and salad meant lunchtime. Steak and kidney pie was evening. I remember pondering for a long time over a dish of scrambled egg. What did it mean? It could mean anything. I ate a few mouthfuls and pushed the plate away.

In this long, undifferentiated lapse of time, there were a few incidents that stood out. I noted them at the time, separately from the story, and they are worth recalling here.

This is one.

I was in the library. I was looking for Jane Eyre and found almost a whole shelf of copies. It was the collection of a fanatic: There were cheap, modern copies, with no secondhand value; editions that came up so rarely on the market it would be hard to put a price to them; copies that fell at every point between these two extremes. The one I was looking for was an ordinary, though particular, edition from the turn of the century. While I was browsing, Judith brought Miss Winter in and settled her in her chair by the fire.

When Judith had gone, Miss Winter asked, 'What are you looking for?'

Jane Eyre.

'Do you likeJane Eyre}' she asked.

'Very much. Do you?'

'Yes.' She shivered. 'Shall I stoke up the fire for you?' She lowered her eyelids as if a wave of pain had come over her. 'I suppose so.' Once the fire was burning strongly again, she said, 'Do you have a moment? Sit down, Margaret.' And after a minute of silence she said this. 'Picture a conveyor belt, a huge conveyor belt, and at the end of it a massive furnace. And on the conveyor belt are books. Every copy in the world of every book you've ever loved. All lined up.Jane Eyre. Villette. The Woman in White.'

'Middlemarch, ' I supplied

'Thank you. Middlemarch. And imagine a lever with two labels, On and Off. At the moment the lever is off. And next to it is a human being, with his hand on the lever. About to turn it on. And you can stop it. You have a gun in your hand. All you have to do is pull the trigger. What do you do?'

'No, that's silly.'

'He turns the lever to On. The conveyor belt has started.'

'But it's too extreme, it's hypothetical.'

'First of all, Shirley goes over the edge.'

'I don't like games like this.'

'Now George Sand starts to go up in flames.'

I sighed and closed my eyes.

' Wuthering Heights coming up. Going to let that burn, are you?'

I couldn't help myself. I saw the books, saw their steady process to the mouth of the furnace, and flinched. 'Suit yourself. In it goes. Same for Jane Eyre}' Jane Eyre. I was suddenly dry- mouthed.

'All you have to do is shoot. I won't tell. No one need ever know.' She waited. 'They've started to fall. Just the first few. But there are a lot of copies. You have a moment to make up your mind.'

I rubbed my thumb nervously against a rough edge of nail on my middle finger. 'They're falling faster now.' She did not remove her gaze from me. 'Half of them gone. Think, Margaret. All of Jane Eyre will soon have disappeared forever. Think.' Miss Winter blinked. 'Two thirds gone. Just one person, Margaret. Just one tiny, insignificant little person.' I blinked. 'Still time, but only just. Remember, this person burns books. Does he really deserve to live?' Blink. Blink. 'Last chance.' Blink. Blink. Blink.

Jane Eyre was no more.

'Margaret!'Miss Winter's face twisted in vexation as she spoke; she beat her left hand against the arm of her chair. Even the right hand, injured though it was, twitched in her lap.

Later, when I transcribed it, I thought it was the most spontaneous expression of feeling I had ever seen in Miss Winter. It was a surprising amount of feeling to invest in a mere game.

And my own feelings? Shame. For I had lied. Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eyre over the anonymous stranger with his hand on the lever. Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life. Of course. Unlike Miss Winter, I had been ashamed to say so.

On my way out, I returned to the shelf oijane Eyres and took the one volume that met my criteria. Right age, right kind of paper, right typeface. In my room I turned the pages till I found the place.

'… not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm-not soon enough