The Thirteenth Tale

my most transparent stare. 'In fact, it's a real treat to talk to someone sensible for a change!'

He turned the rumors he had heard over in his mind. One of the twins was not quite right, they said. Well, he concluded, clearly no flies on the other one.

'The pleasure is entirely mutual, Miss, er, forgive me, but what was your father's name again? '

'The name you are after is March. But we have become used to being known by our mother's name. The Angelfield twins, they call us in the village. No one remembers Mr. March, especially us. We never had the chance to meet him, you see. And we have no dealings at all with his family. I have often thought it would be better to change our names formally.

'Can be done. Why not? Simple matter, really.'

'But that's for another day. Today's business… '

'Of course. Now let me put your mind at rest about this funeral. You don't know when your uncle will be back, I take it?' 'It may be quite some time,' I said, which was not exactly a lie. 'It doesn't matter. Either he will be back in time to settle the expenses himself, or if he is not, then I will settle it on his behalf and sort things out when he comes home.'

I turned my face into the picture of relief he was looking for, and while he was still warm with the pleasure of having been able to take the load off my mind, I plied him with a dozen questions about what would happen if a girl like me, having the responsibility of a sister like mine, should have the misfortune of mislaying her guardian for good. In a few words he explained the whole situation to me, and I saw clearly the steps I would have to take and how soon I would need to take them. 'Not that any of this applies to you, in your position!' he concluded, as if he had quite run away with himself in painting this alarming scenario and wished he could take back three quarters of what he had said. 'After all, your uncle will be back with you in a few short days.'

'God willing!' I beamed at him.

We were at the door when Mr. Lomax remembered the essential thing. 'Incidentally, I don't suppose he left an address?' 'You know my uncle!' 'I thought as much. You do know approximately where he is, though?'

I liked Mr. Lomax, but it didn't stop me lying to him when I had to. Lying was second nature to a girl like me. 'Yes… that is, no.' He gave me a serious look. 'Because if you don't know where he is…' His mind returned to all the legalities he had just enumerated for me.

'Well, I can tell you where he said he was going.'

Mr. Lomax looked at me, eyebrows raised.

'He said he was going to Peru.'

Mr. Lomax's rounded eyes bulged, and his mouth dropped open.

'But of course, we both know that's ridiculous, don't we?' I finished. 'He can't possibly be in Peru, can he?' And with my most reassured, most pluckily capable smile, I closed the door behind me, leaving Mr. Lomax to worry on my behalf.

The day of the funeral came and still I hadn't had a chance to cry. Every day there had been something. First the vicar, then villagers arriving warily at the door, wanting to know about wreaths and flowers; even Mrs. Maudsley came, polite but cold, as though I were somehow tainted with Hester's crime. 'Mrs. Proctor, the boy's grandmother, has been a marvel,' I told her. 'Do thank your husband for suggesting it.'

Through it all I suspected that the Proctor boy was keeping an eye on me, though I could never quite catch him at it. John's funeral wasn't the place to cry, either. It was the very last place. For I was Miss Angelfield, and who was he? Only the gardener.

At the end of the service, while the vicar was speaking kindly, uselessly, to Emmeline-Would she like to attend church more frequently? God's love was a blessing to all his creatures-I listened to Mr. Lomax and Dr. Maudsley, who thought themselves out of earshot behind my back.

'A competent girl,' the solicitor said to the doctor. 'I don't think she quite realizes the gravity of the situation; you realize no one knows where the uncle is? But when she does, I've no doubt she'll cope. I've put things in train to sort out the money side of things. She was worried about paying for the gardener's funeral, of all things. A kind heart to go with the wise head on her shoulders.'

'Yes,' said the doctor weakly.

'I was always under the impression-don't know where it came from, mind you-that the two of them were… not quite right. But now I've met them it's plain as day that it's only the one of them afflicted. A mercy. Of course, you'll have known how it was all along, being their doctor.'

The doctor murmured something I did not hear.

'What's that?' the solicitor asked. 'Mist, did you say?'

There was no answer, then the solicitor asked another question. 'Which one is which, though? I never did find out when they came to see me. What is the name of the one who is sensible?'

I turned just enough to be able to see them out of the corner of my eye. The doctor was looking at me with the same expression he had had in his eyes during the whole service. Where was the dull-minded child he had kept in his house for several months? The girl who could not lift a spoon to her lips or speak a word of English, let alone give instructions for a funeral and ask intelligent questions of a solicitor. I understood the source of his bafflement.

His eyes flickered from me to Emmeline, from Emmeline to me.

'I think it's Adeline.' I saw his lips form the name, and I smiled as all his medical theories and experiments came tumbling down about his feet.

Catching his eye, I raised my hand to the pair of them. A gracious gesture of thanks to them for coming to the funeral of a man they hardly knew in order to be of service to me. That's what the solicitor took it for. The doctor may have taken it rather differently.

Later. Many hours later.

The funeral over, at last I could cry.

Except that I couldn't. My tears, kept in too long, had fossilized.

They would have to stay in forever now.

FOSSILIZED TEARS

Excuse me… ' Judith began, and stopped. She pressed her lips tight, then with an uncharacteristic flutter of the hands, 'The doctor is already out on a call-he won't be here for an hour. Please… '

I belted my dressing gown and followed; Judith was half running a few paces ahead. We went up and down flights of stairs, turned into passages and corridors, arrived back on the ground floor but in a part of the house I hadn't seen before. Finally we came to a series of rooms that I took to be Miss Winter's private suite. We paused before a closed door, and Judith gave me a troubled look. I well understood her anxiety. From behind the door there came deep, inhuman sounds, bellows of pain interrupted by jagged gasps for breath. Judith opened the final door and we went in.

I was astonished. No wonder the noise reverberated so! Unlike the rest of the house, with its overstuffed upholstery, lavish drapes, baffled walls and tapestries, this was a spare and naked little room. The walls were bare plaster, the floor simple boards. A plain bookcase in the corner was stuffed with piles of yellowing paper, and in the corner stood a narrow bed with simple white covers. At the window a calico curtain hung limply each side of the panes, letting the night in. Slumped over a plain little school desk, with her back to me, was Miss Winter. Gone were her fiery orange and resplendent purple. She was dressed in a white long-sleeved chemise, and she was weeping.

A harsh, atonal scraping of air over vocal cords. Jarring wails that veered into frighteningly animal moans. Her shoulders heaved and crashed and her torso shuddered; the force traveled through her frail neck to her head, along her arms into her hands, which jolted against the desktop. Judith hurried to replace a cushion beneath Miss Winter's temple; Miss Winter, utterly possessed by the crisis, seemed not to know we were there.

'I've never seen her like this before,' Judith said, fingers pressed to her lips. And with a rising note of panic, 'I don't know what to do.' Miss Winter's mouth gaped and grimaced, contorted into wild, ugly shapes by the grief