With five minutes to spare, I opened the kitchen door and slipped into the garden.
No light from the house, no stars. I stumbled in the darkness; soft soil underfoot and the brush of leaves and branches told me when I had veered off the path. Out of nowhere a branch scratched my face and I closed my eyes to protect them. Inside my head was a half-painful, half-euphoric vibration. I understood entirely. It was her song. My sister was coming.
I reached the meeting point. The darkness stirred itself. It was him. My hand bumped clumsily against him, then felt itself clasped.
‘Are you all right?’
I heard the question, but distantly.
‘Do you have a temperature?’
The words were there; it was curious that they had no meaning.
I’d have liked to tell him about the glorious vibrations, to tell him that my sister was coming, that she would be here with me any minute now. I knew it; I knew it from the heat radiating from her mark on my side. But the white sound of her stood between me and my words and made me dumb.
Aurelius let go of my hand to remove a glove, and I felt his palm, strangely cool in the hot night, on my forehead. ‘You should be in bed,’ he said.
I pulled at Aurelius’s sleeve, a feeble tug, but enough. He followed me through the garden as smoothly as a statue on castors.
I have no memory of Judith’s keys in my hand, though I must have taken them. We must have walked through the long corridors to Emmeline’s apartment, but that too has been wiped from my mind. I do remember the door, but the picture that presents itself to my mind is that it swung open as we reached it, slowly and of its own accord, which I know to be quite impossible. I must have unlocked it, but this piece of reality has been lost and the image of the door opening by itself persists.
My memory of what happened in Emmeline’s quarters that night is fragmented. Whole tracts of time have collapsed in on themselves, whilst other events seem in my recollection to have happened over and over again in rapid succession. Faces and expressions loom frighteningly large, then Emmeline and Aurelius appear as tiny marionettes a great distance away. As for myself I was possessed, sleepy, chilled – and distracted during the whole affair by my own overwhelming preoccupation: my sister.
By a process of logic and reason I have attempted to place into a meaningful sequence images that my mind recorded only incompletely and in random fashion, like events in a dream.
Aurelius and I entered Emmeline’s rooms. Our step was soundless on the deep carpet. Through one doorway then another we stepped, until we came to a room with an open door giving onto the garden. Standing in the doorway with her back to us was a white-haired figure. She was humming. La-la-la-la-la. That broken piece of melody, without a beginning, without a resolution, that had haunted me ever since I came to the house. It wormed its way into my head where it vied with the high-pitched vibration of my sister. At my side Aurelius waited for me to announce ourselves to Emmeline. But I could not speak. The universe was reduced to an unbearable ululation in my head; time stretched into one eternal second; I was struck dumb. I brought my hands to my ears, desperate to ease the cacophony. Seeing my gesture, it was Aurelius who spoke. ‘Margaret!’
And hearing an unknown voice behind her, Emmeline turns.
Taken by surprise, there is anguish in her green eyes. Her lipless mouth pulls into a distorted O, but the humming does not stop, only veers and lurches into a shrill wail, like a knife in my head.
Aurelius turns in shock from me to Emmeline, and is transfixed by the broken face of the woman that is his mother. Like scissors, the sound from her lips slashes the air.
For a time I am both blinded and deafened. When I can see again, Emmeline is crouched on the floor, her keening fallen to a whimper. Aurelius kneels over her. Her hands scrabble at him, and I do not know whether she means to clasp him or to repel him, but he takes her hand in his, and holds it.
Hand in hand. Blood with blood.
He is a monolith of sorrow.
Inside my head, still, a torment of bright, white sound.
My sister—My sister—
The world retreats and I find myself alone in an agony of noise.
I know what happened next, even if I can’t remember it. Aurelius releases Emmeline tenderly onto the floor as he hears steps in the hall. There is an exclamation as Judith realizes she does not have her keys. In the time it takes her to go and find a second set – Maurice’s, probably – Aurelius darts towards the door to the garden and disappears. When Judith at last enters the room she stares at Emmeline on the floor then, with a cry of alarm, steps in my direction.
But at the time I know none of this. For the light that is my sister embraces me, possesses me, relieves me of consciousness.
At last.
Everybody has a Story
Anxiety, sharp as one of Miss Winter’s green gazes, needles me awake. What name have I pronounced in my sleep? Who undressed me and put me to bed? What will they have read into the sign on my skin? What has become of Aurelius? And what have I done to Emmeline? More than all the rest it is her distraught face that torments my conscience when it begins its slow ascent out of sleep.
When I wake I do not know what day or time it is. Judith is there; she sees me stir and holds a glass to my lips. I drink.
Before I can speak, sleep overwhelms me again.
The second time I woke up, Miss Winter was at my bedside, book in hand. Her chair was plump with velvet cushions as always, but with her tufts of pale hair around her naked face, she looked like a naughty child who has climbed onto the queen’s throne for a joke.
Hearing me move, she lifted her head from her reading.
‘Doctor Clifton has been. You had a very high temperature.’
I said nothing.
‘We didn’t know it was your birthday,’ she went on. ‘We couldn’t find a card. We don’t go in much for birthdays here. But we brought you some daphne from the garden.’
In the vase were dark branches, bare of leaf, but with dainty purple flowers all along their length. They filled the air with a sweet, heady fragrance.
‘How did you know it was my birthday?’
‘You told us. While you were sleeping. When are you going to tell me your story, Margaret?’
‘Me? I haven’t got a story,’ I said.
‘Of course you have. Everybody has a story.’
‘Not me.’ I shook my head. In my head I heard indistinct echoes of words I may have spoken in my sleep.
Miss Winter placed the ribbon at her page and closed the book.
‘Everybody has a story. It’s like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can’t say you haven’t got them. Same goes for stories. So,’ she concluded, ‘everybody has a story. When are you going to tell me yours?’
‘I’m not.’
She put her head to one side and waited for me to go on.
‘I’ve never told anyone my story. If I’ve got one, that is. And I can’t see any reason to change now.’
‘I see,’ she said softly, nodding her head as though she really did. ‘Well, it’s your business of course.’ She turned her hand in her lap and stared into her damaged palm. ‘You are at liberty to say nothing if that is what you want. But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.’ Her eyes swivelled back to me. ‘Believe me, Margaret. I know.’
For long stretches of time I slept, and whenever I woke, there was some invalid’s meal by my bed, prepared by Judith. I ate a mouthful or two, no more. When Judith came to take the tray away she could not disguise her disappointment at seeing my leavings, yet she never mentioned it. I was in no pain – no headache, no chills, no sickness – unless you count profound weariness and a remorse that weighed heavily in my head and in my heart. What had I done to Emmeline? And Aurelius? In my waking hour
s I was tormented by the memory of that night; the guilt pursued me into sleep.
‘How is Emmeline?’ I asked Judith. ‘Is she all right?’
Her answers were indirect: why should I be worried about Miss Emmeline when I was poorly myself? Miss Emmeline had not been right for a very long time. Miss Emmeline was getting on in years.
Her reluctance to spell it out told me everything I wanted to know. Emmeline was not well. It was my fault.
As for Aurelius, the only thing I could do was write. As soon as I was able I had Judith bring me pen and paper and, propped up on a pillow, drafted a letter. Not satisfied, I attempted another and then another. Never had I had such difficulty with words. When my bedcover was so strewn with rejected versions that I despaired at myself, I selected one at random and made a neat copy:
Dear Aurelius,
Are you all right?
I’m so sorry about what happened. I never meant to hurt anyone. I was mad, wasn’t I?
When can I see you?
Are we still friends?
Margaret
It would have to do.
Doctor Clifton came. He listened to my heart and asked me lots of questions. ‘Insomnia? Irregular sleep? Nightmares?’
I nodded three times.
‘I thought so.’ He took a thermometer and instructed me to place it under my tongue, then rose and strode to the window. With his back to me, he asked, ‘And what do you read?’
With the thermometer in my mouth I could not reply.
‘Wuthering Heights – you’ve read that?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘And Jane Eyre?’
‘Mm.’
‘Sense and Sensibility?’
‘Hm-m.’
He turned and looked gravely at me. ‘And I suppose you’ve read these books more than once?’
I nodded and he frowned.
‘Read and reread? Many times?’
Once more I nodded, and his frown deepened.
‘Since childhood?’
I was baffled by his questions, but compelled by the gravity of his gaze nodded once again.
Beneath his dark brow his eyes narrowed to slits. I could quite see how he might frighten his patients into getting well, just to be rid of him.
And then he leant close to me to read the thermometer.
People look different from close up. A dark brow is still a dark brow, but you can see the individual hairs in it, how nearly they are aligned. The last few brow hairs, very fine, almost invisible, strayed off in the direction of his temple, pointed to the snail-coil of his ear. In the grain of his skin were closely arranged pinpricks of beard. There it was again: that almost imperceptible flaring of the nostrils, that twitch at the edge of the mouth. I had always taken it for severity, a clue that he thought little of me; but now, seeing it from so few inches away, it occurred to me that it might not be disapproval after all. Was it possible, I thought, that Doctor Clifton was secretly laughing at me?
He removed the thermometer from my mouth, folded his arms, and delivered his diagnosis. ‘You are suffering from an ailment that afflicts ladies of romantic imagination. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. Whilst on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favourite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You’ll survive.’
He looked me straight in the eyes, and I was unable to slide my gaze away when he said, ‘You don’t eat enough.’
‘I have no appetite.’
‘L’appétit vient en mangeant.’
‘Appetite comes by eating,’ I translated.
‘Exactly. Your appetite will come back. But you must meet it halfway. You must want it to come.’
It was my turn to frown.
‘Treatment is not complicated: eat, rest, and take this…’ he made quick notes on a pad, tore out a page and placed it on my bedside table, ‘and the weakness and fatigue will be gone in a few days.’ Reaching for his case, he stowed his pen and paper. Then, rising to leave, he hesitated. ‘I’d like to ask you about these dreams of yours, but I suspect you wouldn’t like to tell me…’
Stonily I regarded him. ‘I wouldn’t.’
His face fell. ‘Thought not.’
From the door he saluted me, and was gone.
I reached for the prescription. In a vigorous scrawl, he had inked: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes. Take ten pages, twice a day, till end of course.
December Days
Obeying Dr Clifton’s instructions, I spent two days in bed, eating and sleeping and reading Sherlock Holmes. I confess I overdosed on my prescribed treatment, gulping down one story after another. Before the end of the second day Judith had been down to the library and fetched another volume of Conan Doyle for me. She had grown suddenly kind towards me since my collapse. It was not the fact that she was sorry for me that altered her – though she was sorry – but the fact that now Emmeline’s presence was no longer a secret in the house, she was at liberty to let her natural sympathies govern her exchanges with me, instead of maintaining a constantly guarded facade.
‘And has she never said anything about the thirteenth tale?’ she asked me, wistfully, one day.
‘Not a word. And to you?’
She shook her head. ‘Never. It’s strange, isn’t it, after all she’s written, that the most famous story of all is one that might not even exist. Just think: she could probably publish a book with all the stories missing and it would still sell like hot cakes.’ And then, with a shake of the head to clear her thoughts, and a new tone, ‘So what do you make of Doctor Clifton, then?’
When Dr Clifton dropped by to see how I was doing, his eye alighted on the volumes by my bedside; he said nothing but his nostrils twitched.
On the third day, feeling as frail as a newborn, I got up. As I pulled the curtains apart, my room was flooded with a fresh, clean light. Outside, a brilliant, cloudless blue stretched from horizon to horizon, and beneath it the garden sparkled with frost. It was as if during those long overcast days the light had been accumulating behind the cloud, and now that the cloud was gone there was nothing to stop it flooding down, drenching us in a fortnight’s worth of illumination at once. Blinking in the brilliance, I felt something like life begin to move sluggishly in my veins.
Before breakfast I went outdoors. Slowly and cautiously I stepped around the lawn with Shadow at my heels. It was crisp underfoot, and everywhere the sun sparkled on icy foliage. The frost-rimed grass held the imprint of my soles, but at my side Shadow stepped like a dainty ghost, leaving no prints. At first the cold, dry air was like a knife in my throat, but little by little it rejuvenated me, and I rejoiced in the exhilaration. Nevertheless, a few minutes were enough; cheeks tingling, pink-fingered and with aching toes, I was glad to come back in and Shadow was glad to follow. First breakfast, then the library sofa, the blazing fire, and something to read.
I could judge how much better I was by the fact that my thoughts turned not to the treasures of Miss Winter’s library, but to her story. Upstairs I retrieved my pile of paper, neglected since the day of my collapse, and brought it back to the warmth of the hearth where, with Shadow by my side, I spent the best part of the daylight hours reading. I read and I read and I read, discovering the story all over again, reminding myself of its puzzles, mysteries and secrets. But there were no revelations. At the end of it all I was as baffled as I had been before I started. Had someone tampered with John-the-dig’s ladder? But who? And what was it that Hester had seen when she thought she saw a ghost? And, more inexplicable than all the rest, how had Adeline, that violent, vagabond of a child, unable to communicate with anyone but her slow-witted sister and capable of heartbreaking acts of horticultural destruc
tion, developed into Miss Winter, the self-disciplined author of dozens of bestselling novels and maker of an exquisite garden, furthermore?
I pushed my pile of papers to one side, stroked Shadow and stared into the fire, longing for the comfort of a story where everything had been planned well in advance, where the confusion of the middle was only invented for my enjoyment, and where I could measure how far away the solution was by feeling the thickness of pages still to come. I had no idea how many pages it would take to complete the story of Emmeline and Adeline, nor even whether there would be time to complete it.
Despite my absorption in my notes, I couldn’t help wondering why I hadn’t seen Miss Winter. Each time I asked after her Judith gave me the same reply: she is with Miss Emmeline. Until evening, when she came with a message from Miss Winter herself: was I feeling well enough to read to her for a while before supper?
When I went to her I found a book – Lady Audley’s Secret – on the table by Miss Winter’s side. I opened it at the bookmark and read. But I had only read a chapter when I stopped, sensing that she wanted to talk to me.
‘What did happen that night?’ Miss Winter asked. ‘The night you fell ill?’
I was nervously glad to have an opportunity for explanation. ‘I already knew Emmeline was in the house. I had heard her at night. I had seen her in the garden. I found her rooms. Then on that particular night I brought someone to see her. Emmeline was startled. The last thing I intended was to frighten her. But she was taken by surprise when she saw us, and—’ My voice caught in my throat.