Diane Setterfield - The Thirteenth Tale

The cat was restless. It was the snow that put him out; he did not like this change in the appearance of his universe. He went from one windowsill to another in search of his lost world, and meowed urgently at Judith, Maurice and me, as though its restoration was in our hands. In comparison, the loss of his mistresses was a small matter that, if he noticed it at all, left him fundamentally undisturbed.

The snow had blockaded us into a sideways extension of time, and we each found our own way of enduring it. Judith, imperturbable, made vegetable soup, cleaned the kitchen cupboards out and, when she ran out of jobs, manicured her nails and did a face pack. Maurice, chafing at the confinement and the inactivity, played endless games of solitaire, but when he had to drink his tea black for lack of milk, Judith played rummy with him to distract him from the bitterness.

As for me, I spent two days writing up my final notes, but when that was done, I found I could not settle to reading. Even Sherlock Holmes could not reach me in the snowlocked landscape. Alone in my room I spent an hour examining my melancholy, trying to name what I thought was a new element in it. I realized that I missed Miss Winter. So, hopeful of human company, I made my way to the kitchen. Maurice was glad to play cards with me, even though I knew only children's games. Then, when Judith's nails were drying, I made the cocoa and tea with no milk, and later let Judith file and polish my own nails.

In this way, we three and the cat sat out the days, locked in with our dead, and with the old year seeming to linger on past its time.

On the fifth day I allowed myself to be overcome by a vast sorrow.

I had done the washing up, and Maurice had dried while Judith played solitaire at the table. We were all glad of a change. And when the washing up was done, I took myself away from their company to the drawing room. The window looked out onto the part of the garden that was in the lee of the house. Here the snow did not drift so high. I opened a window, climbed out into the whiteness and walked across the snow. All the grief I had kept at bay for years by means of books and bookcases approached me now. On a bench sheltered by a tall hedge of yew I abandoned myself to a sorrow that was wide and deep as the snow itself, and as untainted. I cried for Miss Winter, for her ghost, for Adeline and Emmeline. For my sister, my mother and my father. Mostly, and most terribly, I cried for myself. My grief was that of the infant, newly severed from her other half; of the child bent over an old tin, making sudden, shocking sense of a few pieces of paper; and of a grown woman, sitting crying on a bench in the hallucinatory light and silence of the snow.

When I came to myself Dr. Clifton was there. He put an arm around me. "I know," he said. "I know."

He didn't know, of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. "I know," he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.

He led me inside, to warmth.

"Oh dear," said Judith. "Shall I bring cocoa?"

"With a touch of brandy in it, I think," he said.

Maurice pulled out a chair for me and began to stoke the fire.

I sipped the cocoa slowly. There was milk-the doctor had brought it when he came with the farmer on the tractor.

Judith tucked a shawl around me, then started peeling potatoes for dinner. She and Maurice and the doctor made the occasional comment-what we could have for supper, whether the snow was lighter now, how long it would be before the telephone line was restored-and in making them, took it upon themselves to start the laborious process of cranking up life again after death had stopped us all in its tracks.

Little by little the comments melded together and became a conversation. I listened to their voices and, after a time, joined in.

I went home.

To the bookshop.

"Miss Winter is dead," I told my father.

"And you? How are you?" he asked.

"Alive."

He smiled.

"Tell me about Mum," I said to him. "Why is she the way she is?"

He told me. "She was very ill when you were born. She never saw you before you were taken away. She never saw your sister. She nearly died. By the time she came around, your operation had already taken place and your sister… "

"My sister had died."

"Yes. There was no knowing how it would go with you. I went from her bedside to yours… I thought I was going to lose all three of you. I prayed to every God I had ever heard of to save you. And my prayers were answered. In part. You survived. Your mother never really came back."

There was one other thing I needed to know.

"Why didn't you tell me? About being a twin?"

The face he turned to me was devastated. He swallowed, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse. "The story of your birth is a sad one. Your mother thought it too heavy for a child to bear. At least that's what your mother said. I would have borne it for you, Margaret, if I could. I would have done anything to spare you."

We sat in silence. I thought of all the other questions I might have asked, but now that the moment had come I didn't need to. I reached for my father's hand at the same moment as he reached for mine.

I attended three funerals in as many days.

Miss Winter's mourners were many. The nation grieved for its favorite storyteller, and thousands of readers turned out to pay their respects. I came away as soon as I could, having said my good-byes already.

The second was a quiet affair. There were only Judith, Maurice, the doctor and me to mourn the woman referred to throughout the service as Emmeline. Afterward we said brief farewells and parted.

The third was lonelier still. In a crematorium in Banbury I was the only person in attendance when a bland-faced clergyman oversaw the passing into God's hands of a set of bones, identity unknown. Into God's hands, except that it was me who collected the urn later, "on behalf of the Angelfield family."

There were snowdrops in Angelfield. At least the first signs of them, boring their way through the frozen ground and showing their points, green and fresh, above the snow.

As I stood up I heard a sound. It was Aurelius, arriving at the lychgate. Snow had settled on his shoulders and he was carrying flowers. "Aurelius!" How could he have grown so sad? So pale? "You've changed," I said.

"I have worn myself out on a wild-goose chase." His eyes, always mild, had lightened to the same washed-out blue as the January sky; you could see straight through their transparency to his disappointed heart. "All my life I have wanted to find my family. I wanted to know who I was. And lately I have felt hopeful. I thought there might be some chance of restoration. Now I fear I was mistaken."

We walked along the grass path between the graves and cleared the snow from the bench and sat down before more could fall. Aurelius delved into his pocket and unwrapped two pieces of cake. Absently he handed one to me and dug his teeth into the other.

"Is that what you have for me?" he asked, looking at the casket. "Is that the rest of my story?"

I handed him the casket.

"Isn't it light? Light as air. And yet…" His hand veered to his heart; he sought a gesture to show how heavy his heart was; not finding it, he put down the casket and took another bite of cake.

When he had finished the last morsel he spoke. "If she was my mother, why was I not with her? Why did I not die with her, in this place? Why would she take me away to Mrs. Love's house and then come back here to a house on fire? Why? It doesn't make sense."