The thirteenth tale (31 page)

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

Do not abandon me.

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 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 I, 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.

The things looked like a pile of discarded junk waiting to be
swept into the bin, but he gazed at them with the intensity of a boy staring at
a treasure trove. “These things are my story,” he said. “These things tell me
who I am. It’s just a matter of… of understanding them.” His bafflement was
intent but resigned. “I’ve tried all my life to piece them together. I keep
thinking, If only I could find the thread… it would all fall into place. Take
that, for instance—”

It was a piece of cloth. Linen, once white, now yellow. I
disentangled it from the other objects and smoothed it out. It was embroidered
with a pattern of stars and flowers also in white; there were four dainty
mother-of-pearl buttons; it was an infant’s dress or nightgown. Aurelius’s
broad fingers hovered over the tiny garment, wanting to touch, not wanting to
mark it with flour. The narrow sleeves would just fit over a finger now.

‘It’s what I was wearing,“ Aurelius explained.

‘It’s very old.“

‘As old as me, I suppose.“

‘Older than that, even.“

‘Do you think so?“

‘Look at the stitching here—and here. It’s been mended more than
nee. And this button doesn’t match. Other babies wore this before you.“

His eyes flitted from the scrap of linen to me and back to the
cloth, hungry for knowledge.

‘And there’s this.“ He pointed at a page of print. It was torn
from a book and riddled with creases. Taking it in my hands I started to read.

‘… 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—“

Aurelius took up the phrase and continued, reading not from the
page but from memory: “… not soon enough however; the volume was flung, it hit
me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it.”

Of course I recognized it. How could I not, for I had read it
goodness knows how many times. “Jane Eyre, ” I said wonderingly.

‘You recognized it? Yes, it is. I asked a man in a library. It’s
by Charlotte someone. She had a lot of sisters, apparently.“

‘Have you read it?“

‘Started to. It was about a little girl. She’s lost her family,
and so her aunt takes her in. I thought I was on to something with that. Nasty
woman, the aunt, not like Mrs. Love at all. This is one of her cousins throwing
the book at her, on this page. But later she goes to school, a terrible school,
terrible food, but she does make a friend.“ He smiled, remembering his reading.
”Only then the friend died.“ His face fell. ”And after that… I seemed to lose
interest. Didn’t read the end. I couldn’t see how it fitted after that.“ He
shrugged off his puzzlement. ”Have you read it? What happened to her in the
end? Is it relevant?“

‘She falls in love with her employer. His wife—she’s mad, lives
in the house but secretly—tries to burn the house down, and Jane goes away.
When she comes back, the wife has died, and Mr. Rochester is blind, and Jane
marries him.“

‘Ah.“ His forehead wrinkled as he tried to puzzle it all out.
But he gave up. ”No. It doesn’t make sense, does it? The beginning, perhaps.
The girl without the mother. But after that… I wish someone could tell me what
it means. I wish there was someone who could just tell me the truth.“

He turned back to the torn-out page. “Probably it’s not the book
that’s important at all. Perhaps it’s just this page. Perhaps it has some secret
meaning. Look here—”

Inside the back cover of his childhood recipe book were tightly
packed columns and rows of numbers and letters written in a large, boyish hand.
“I used to think it was a code,” he explained. “I tried to decipher it. I tried
the first letter of every word, the first of every line. Or the second. Then I
tried replacing one letter for another.” He pointed to his various trials, eyes
feverish, as though there was still a chance he might see something that had
escaped him before.

I knew it was hopeless.

‘What about this?“ I picked up the next object and couldn’t help
giving a shudder. Clearly it had been a feather once, but now it was a nasty,
dirty-looking thing. Its oils dried up, the barbs had separated into stiff
brown spikes along the cracked spine.

Aurelius shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in helpless
ignorance, and I dropped the feather with relief.

And then there was just one more thing. “Now this…” Aurelius
began, but he didn’t finish. It was a scrap of paper, roughly torn, with a
faded ink stain that might once have been a word. I peered at it closely.

‘I think—“ Aurelius stuttered, ”well, Mrs. Love thought— We both
agreed, in fact“—he looked at me in hope—”that it must be my name.“

He pointed. “It got wet in the rain, but here, just here—” He
led me :o the window, gestured at me to hold the paper scrap up to the light.
‘Something like an A at the beginning. And then an S. Just here, toward he end.
Of course, it’s faded a bit, over the years; you have to look lard, but you can
see it, can’t you?“

I stared at the stain.

‘Can’t you?“

I made a vague motion with my head, neither nod nor shake.

‘You see! It’s obvious when you know what you’re looking for,
isn’t it?

I continued to look, but the phantom letters that he could see
were invisible to my eye.

‘And that,“ he was saying, ”is how Mrs. Love settled on
Aurelius. Though I might just as easily be Alphonse, I suppose.“

He laughed at himself, sadly, uneasily, and turned away. “The
only other thing was the spoon. But you’ve seen that.” He reached into his top
pocket and took out the silver spoon I had seen at our first meeting, when we
ate ginger cake while sitting on the giant cats flanking the steps of
Angelfield House.

‘And the bag itself,“ I wondered. ”What kind of a bag is it?“

‘Just a bag,“ he said vaguely. He lifted it to his face and
sniffed it delicately. ”It used to smell of smoke, but not anymore.“ He passed
it to me, and I bent my nose to it. ”You see? It’s faded now.“

Aurelius opened the oven door and took out a tray of pale gold
biscuits that he set to cool. Then he filled the kettle and prepared a tray.
Cups and saucers, a sugar bowl, a milk jug and little plates.

‘You take this,“ he said, passing the tray to me. He opened a
door that showed a glimpse of a sitting room, old comfy chairs and floral
cushions. ”Make yourself at home. I’ll bring the rest in a minute.“ He kept his
back to me, head bowed as he washed his hands. ”I’ll be with you when I’ve put
these things away.“

I went into Mrs. Love’s front room and sat in a chair by the
fireplace, leaving him to stow his inheritance—his invaluable, indecipherable
inheritance—safely away.